A problem with the Primaris

I have, sitting, primed and awaiting paint for over a year now, a bunch of Primaris Space Marines. Once I finish my current painting batches (WWII Heer, autumn 1943, Operation Barbarossa, and squat self propelled guns), i need a change of pace, and the simple heraldry of marines seems a welcome change. The problem is that I'm far from sure how my Chapter, The Holy, Secular Brotherhood of the order of the Nephilim (there's a joke in there for Latin scholars, and another for occultists), or The Nephilim, are a Dark Angels successor, and the way that these outsiders will be integrated into the Byzantine anachronism of the First Legion's organisational structures, and the mysteries that they all hold dear has largely been glossed over.

The Unforgiven have ancient secrets that are kept from the general Imperium, some of which are even kept from certain parts of the Chapters, because you can't be too careful. I can't imagine my recalcitrant Order, who still use vast numbers of relic vehicles, and equipment, including Mk. 1 RH-1-N0 transports and their derived variants, Mk. 1 Land Speeders, Vincent Black Shadow bikes, Bullock Mk. IV jetbikes, Mk. VI armour and other such arcana, who have orders upon orders upon patronage that creates a rich tapestry for markings, will accept newcomers into their ranks happily and willingly. The fact that none of the Lion, Luther, or any recorded Lord Cypher agreed with much of the doctrine pursued by Guilliman during the Crusade and the Heresy adds a further level of distrust to these new infiltrators, foisted upon them by the resurrected Avenging Son. Who knows where these new forces' loyalties lie, or, even, whence their geneseed derived?

With that in mind, i dived into the dusty catacombs, looking for inspiration.

Way, way back, in the earliest records, the Dark Angels, founded by Lynn Elginson, had arcane rituals, mostly involving the sharing of blood through chalices, something now much more in keeping with the Blood Angels (this was in Rogue Trader), and they dressed in black, with a red stripe on their helmets and red Chapter icon on their right shoulder. Ranks were indicated by modification and addiction to the helmet stripe. Simple and straightforward. In White Dwarf #102, they got their first major deviation from template in the form of the Ravenwing as their second company (at that stage all mounted on jetbikes).

In November 1989 came the Space Marine Paint Set, which gave us gun metal and 2 colours for the main colour of the armour of the Blood Angels, Space Wolves, Salamanders and Ultramarines. This new scheme removed the helmet stripe, and cemented the now familiar squad markings for Tactical and Assault squads, that first appeared 14 months earlier, in the army list. Dark Angels weren't included, but the Salamander highlight colour, Salamander Green, would come to have great import. Around the same time, supplements for Space Hulk created a distinction of the Dark Angels first company, who were, apparently, all recruited from the same tribe of Native Americans in Space, and so decided that, when the mission they were sent on seemed likely to have high casualties, they painted their armour white. Thus the bone-coloured armour of the Dark Angels first company.

In June of 1990, in issue 126, there was an article on building Regiments for your space marines in the new Space Marine game, which brought infantry to the Horus Heresy era battlefields of the original Adeptus Titanicus. The article gave additional conditions for Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels and Ultramarines. I'll transcribe the entire section on the Dark Angels:

"THE DARK ANGELS
"The Dark Angels have a powerful attachment to the rituals and traditions of their homeworld. In honour of their ancestors, they apply the ancient precepts of battle to their forces: find your enemy's weakness, test your skills against him and then make the killing blow. To this end, a Dark Angel regiment often has the three companies of the first battalion dedicated to this ideal: Death Wing, Iron Wing and Raven Wing. Sometimes the entire regiment is organized on these lines but this is rarer. The following list allow you to create the Dark Angel company wings:

"1ST COMPANY: THE DEATH WING
"0-2 ASSAULT DETACHMENTS
"0-2 DEVASTATOR DETACHMENTS
"1-3 TERMINATOR DETACHMENTS

"2ND COMPANY: THE IRON WING
"0-3 TACTICAL DETACHMENTS
"0-1 SUPPORT DETACHMENT
"0-1 DREADNOUGHT DETACHMENT
"0-3 ARMOURED DETACHMENTS
"0-1 ORDINATUS DETACHMENTS

"3RD COMPANY: THE RAVEN WING
"0-3 SKIMMER DETACHMENTS
"1 RECON DETACHMENT
"0-2 BIKE DETACHMENTS

"Terminators in the Death Wing do not count towards the normal regimental maximum of twelve Terminator detachments. Devastator and assault detachments in the Death Wing may be made elite for a 20% increase in their BR."

The regiments in question were 9 companies strong, plus regimental and battalion HQs, so, essentially, a modern Chapter. Those detachments, by the way, consisted of:
Regimental HQ: 1 command stand, plus 6 other detachments;
Battalion HQ (3 of which came free): 2 Assault stands, 1 commander, 1 Land Raider, 2 Land Speeders;
Tactical: 4 Tactical and 4 Support stands (the latter had a heavy weapon), 2 Commanders;
Assault: 4 Assault stands and 1 Commander;
Devastator: 4 Devastator stands, 1 Commander;
Terminator: 4 Terminator stands;
Support: 5 Tarantulas, Rapiers, Mole Mortars or Thudd Guns;
Dreadnought: 5 Dreadnoughts;
Skimmer: 5 jetbike stands or Land Speeders;
Recon: 2 Land Speeders;
Bike: 5 bike stands;
Armoured: 2 Land Raiders or 3 Predators;
Ordinatus: 3 Whirlwinds or Vindicators.

(A stand was 5 infantry or 2 bikes.)

I liked the idea of the wings, and so my successor Chapter has an Iron Wing, containing all of the heavy armour. Beyond that it's clear that tradition is important, and, for reasons of [CLASSIFIED], my Chapter would be emulating the old Legion Regiments as far as possible.

At the end of August 1990, while my life was in upheaval as my family moved house to a new town, a little to the north of the one where we'd lived until then, and I started at a new school in the next town in the other direction (this happened on the same day), issue 129 came out (dated September). This heralded the space marines joining the Imperial Guard, squats, genestealers, orks and Craftworlds in having metal models with plastic arms and weapons, with the new Mk7 Marines Boxset, which didn't actually get released until October. This was the birth of the now ubiquitous Mk. VII armour, and was accompanied by an article on the different marks of marine armour, their development, etc., and a brand new markings scheme.

Where before a marine's heraldry, both Chapter and squad-type, sometimes even armament and rank, were all squeezed onto the right pauldron, the new mark allowed it to be spread over both. Chapter badges moved to the left, leaving the right shoulder for tactical and squad markings. It's from this article that the modern red helmets for Ultramarine sergeants, white for Veterans, and coloured trim on the shoulders to indicate company is drawn. It's from this article that we derive the Blood Angels' company markings, reversed shoulder colours for sergeants and helmet colours indicating squad type.

The Dark Angels went through a huge change. Up until this point, they wore black, with red icons. Suddenly, their first company all wore white armour, with green chest eagles, and the rest wore Salamander Green, highlighted with yellow, with the company colour on their chest eagles (2 - white; 3 - red, 4 - yellow, 5 - black, 6 - grey, 7 - light green, 8 - blue, and 9 - purple). I really didn't like it. As such, i decided long ago to completely ignore this abomination.

Issue 142, dated October 1991, gave colour schemes for the Blood Angels, Ultra-Marines and Dark Angels for Epic. Second edition Epic, which came out a month or two earlier (depending on geographical location and adherence to release dates), shifted the game from the 31st millennium to the 41st, and so marine forces were no longer as restricted in colour scheme/Chapter, but it left a number of problems:
1) first edition had used the same models for both sides of the Heresy, so there were numerous forces painted in the colours of the traitor legions; and
2) we went from the fairly freeform regiments above to an era of the standardised Chapter structure of 10 companies, each of 100 marines plus command staff.

The article in question gave us answers to the questions of what the three Chapters would do, when numbers exceeded the standard limits. Blood Angels would freely add new companies, with a freeform company mark. Ultra-Marines would add extra companies by splitting the colours of the company colours with the left white (black for 11th) and the right the colour of the parallel company without the additional ten for companies 11-20; switched to the other side should they need companies 21-30. So, I thought, right, I'll just add the Primaris marines as a new company, either with split colours or a new colour...

...then i read the Dark Angels section. My heart sank when, with my Chapter being ultra-traditional, i read the last paragraph:

"If the Dark Angels need to add more troops they do not create new companies but simply add new detachments to the existing companies."

This little bit of ephemera is why Dark Angels don't have Captains, etc.: a company is nominally led by the most senior officer in the company, irrespective of nominal rank, creating the Byzantine structure of command that the Unforgiven share.

So, a new company is out.

Thus, I've decided to add the Dark Imperium contents to my third company, since it's already an even-strength company, with a Master, 3 Lieutenants, 2 Command squads, 6 Tactical squads, 2 Devastator squads, 2 Assault squads (one of which is split into a 5-man assault squad and a 5-man Veterans squad), and 2 Veteran squads with combi-weapons (basically the majority of my marines from first edition, all of them in Mk. 6 Beaky armour). The new Captain in Gravis Armour will be subsidiary to Master Xaphan "The Firebrand", on an equal footing with Elect Helal Ha Xaphan, who has served as the Firebrand's 2-i-c for a good few editions now.

So, they'll have green left arms, since that's how i chose to mark third company many, many years ago. Beyond that, will they be accepted, as outsiders, if they don the Chapter's Blessed purple, or will they have been equipped with black armour, since that's the nominal colour of the inner circle, or something else to keep them as "other"? They certainly won't have earned the right to wear the Chapter's sacred heraldry, since most of the Chapter hasn't, instead wearing badges to indicate specialist training regimes, which they won't, immediately have had access to, but will they have been arrayed with the sacred heraldry of the broken blade, or the common honorific of the horned skull, by pencil pushers who don't understand the arcane significance therein? Or will they be arrayed in a different Chapter's colours, being slowly integrated into the arcane web of the Unforgiven?

Since I decided early on that, while I was keeping the 3 Wings from issue 126, that my first company, while containing most of my Terminators, wouldn't be my actual Deathwing, but it would be a separate conglomeration of hand-picked units and individuals, who thus bore a simple, uniform black, without reference to squad or company, i could do the Primaris with white or bone armour. Of course, with my marines on snowy, white bases, this might backfire badly.

Basically, research has only made things more confusing, not less. Until last night, i thought they'd be dressed in white, with trim in purple and green, but the Dark Angels themselves, who have far more to hide (what with having their Primarch and Luther both sleeping within their crypt), have accepted them in to the normal colours, etc. Now, I'm wondering about putting them in purple, or possibly even camouflage...

It'll be a week or so until I have to decide, so I have time to mull it over still.