Chaos Space Marine Recruiting

[Mister Space Marine]

Greetings heretics. If i remember correctly chaos space marines can't be self supporting because the warp corrupts the gene seed to the point that its useless and can't be re-implanted. I also seem to recall that someone stole a bunch of geneseed from a rather unfortunate chapter. How would having a gene seed help a chaos legion if you can't use it because you are too chaosy?

 

How do chaos space marines get more recruits? Is it only by turning loyal space marines? Or do they press gang people to implant the gene seed and then turn them?

 

Also, how many space marines do they get a year? And do Chaos space marines still operate in legions?

 

And does chaos boost your power the same no matter how weak you are to begin with? Ie. could corrupt guardsmen become as powerful as corrupt space marines?

 

And why do chaos psykers have to take perils of the warp? They live there.

 

thanks

[Lay]

If i remember correctly chaos space marines can't be self supporting because the warp corrupts the gene seed to the point that its useless and can't be re-implanted.

The 2E Chaos Codex states that the legions actively recruit from the denizens of the Eye. Their process of creating new Marines is more dangerous than the one used by the loyalists and it is left to the will of the gods whether a recruit survives or not.

 

There's also an interesting White Dwarf article on Fabius Bile, according to which corrupted gene-seed is an issue that varies from legion to legion. Bile tries to maintain the purity of each legion's gene-seed, since they regard it as a genetic link to their Primarch which they wish to maintain.

 

Of course, stealing gene-seed from loyalists is also a valid option as seen in 'Storm of Iron' and the 'Fall of Vilamus' story in the 5E rulebook.

[nightlordsrock3564]

according to soul hunter by aaron dembski-bowden the black legion went to a prison and released all the prisoners i am not sure whether they became marines or just cultists

[Xeonic]

This post is almost entirely speculation on my part. Disclaimer over.

 

Greetings heretics. If i remember correctly chaos space marines can't be self supporting because the warp corrupts the gene seed to the point that its useless and can't be re-implanted. I also seem to recall that someone stole a bunch of geneseed from a rather unfortunate chapter. How would having a gene seed help a chaos legion if you can't use it because you are too chaosy?

I have the feeling most chaos marine don't care how corrupt their geneseed is, or how dangerous it would be to implant into an aspirant. Most likely the chaos marines have a much larger rate of neophyte attrition than loyalist legions. They just don't care, the geneseed goes into the next guy.

Also remember the chaos legions don't have to tithe any of their geneseed to the admech, so have that much more for their own use.

How do chaos space marines get more recruits? Is it only by turning loyal space marines? Or do they press gang people to implant the gene seed and then turn them?

Most legions would likely only give the dubious honor to those mortals "blessed by the dark gods" some legions probably wouldn't care who, and may take any like minded followers, pirates, prisoners or whatever.

 

The Iron warriors in Storm of Iron and dead sky black sun captured and used loyalist geneseed to bolster their ranks. Honsou in peticular was created with Imperial Fist geneseed, and was much distrusted for it. Good enough for troops, but really had to earn a spot of leadership to get respect.

Also, how many space marines do they get a year? And do Chaos space marines still operate in legions?

That's impossible to guess, as there's no fixed rate of recruitment for either chaos or loyalist marines. It would depend on how many eligible candidates and/or geneseed they have lying around at a time.

 

Second part, yes, some do. Some(most) of the legions are shattered though, many following those leaders who lead them during the heresy. The legion that most generally deploys as unified formations with even a fraction of it's former fighting strength is the Black Legion.

And does chaos boost your power the same no matter how weak you are to begin with? Ie. could corrupt guardsmen become as powerful as corrupt space marines?

Think of it like this: If you have a 2.5 liter V6 and a 5 liter V8 and put the same supercharger on each, which would be more powerful? Why do you think that is?

I'll give you a one word hint: Potential.

And why do chaos psykers have to take perils of the warp? They live there.

Despite any misconceptions you may have, sorcerer's do actually have to maintain their own minds and not give themselves completely over to being a creature of chaos. This struggle for their minds is what the perils of the warp attack represents. There are very scary things in the warp and they love to munch on psykers. Read P50 of the BRB.

[AbyssKnight]

Chaos Marine recruitment has been touched on in multiple places, but not covered in depth in anything I have read.

 

Flesh and Iron illustrates, tangentially, that some Chaos Marines still maintain recruitment worlds outside the Eye of Terror. Lexicanum mentions some other Chaos Marine warbands also maintaining homeworlds in real space. The Death Shadows had Sybari until Hive Fleet Behemoth ate it; and the Company of Shadow has kept Bastonbeil for 900 years.

Storm of Iron shows the Iron Warriors capturing a store of untainted loyalist geneseed so Abaddon can create additional marines, and a main character in the book, Honsou, was himself implanted with Imperial Fist rather than Iron Warrior geneseed.

Soul Hunter has a scene where the main character, Talos, former apothecary in the Night Lords, mentions needing to begin recruiting to rebuild the company soon and he still harvests the geneseed from fallen Night Lords for when that time comes.

 

I imagine the Legions/Warbands all approach recruitment differently. For groups with relatively pure geneseed, they would prefer to use their own. For groups whose geneseed is too mutated to work, they would have to rely on captured geneseed or absorbing smaller groups of marines. The Word Bears are surrounded by human cultists, and Alpha Legion has their spy networks that could provide human aspirants. Other legions may raid prison worlds or ships for initiates, for recruit from worlds in rebellion.

 

There have been several novels that followed a loyalist marine through his initiation process (Space Wolf, Sons of Dorn) or where a marine flashes back to parts of his time as an initiate. I think it would be great to see a recruitment story novel from Black Library for a Chaos Marine perspective.

[AekoldHelbrass]

There have been several novels that followed a loyalist marine through his initiation process (Space Wolf, Sons of Dorn) or where a marine flashes back to parts of his time as an initiate. I think it would be great to see a recruitment story novel from Black Library for a Chaos Marine perspective.

Actually there are some.

Dead Sky, Black Sun describes funny procedure, when human prisoners are held in cages and fed with flesh and blood of killed Iron Warriors, and because of this children are grown into marines at once, but skinless, so they are getting skin from other prisoners and throwing failed children into river. Some of them can survive though, and were used by Ventris and company.

Let the Galaxy Burn or Heroes of the Space Marines (read them one by one so can't remember exact source of stories). There was one story where small Night Lords warband came to some world to take recruits. So it looks like their recruitment process didn't changed much since Heresy, while they can preserve purity of geneseed because they are operating far from Eye of Terror. Another story described apothecary of Avenging Sons,

they fought with World Eaters, and in the end apothecary was captured by World Eaters, and talked to World Eaters apothecary a bit. It was not obvious for me were the described heretics Space Marines or just traitors, but World Eater wanted those 2 genes from Avenging Son to perform some experiments and create another bunch of World Eaters, because their own geneseed is too mutated for experiments like this.

 

[TheDarkApostle]

It will wary from Legion to Legion, some Legions will have the ability to sustain themselves (Iron Warriors being the noted example, with other large organized Legions being fairly easily suspected of being able, Word Bearers and Night Lords, I'm looking at you).

 

That said, the genetic purity will also vary greatly from Legion to Legion, whereas some Legions are even noted for having even more pure Geneseed than some of the Loyalist chapters! (Night Lords, source: Night Lords IA), most commonly employed however is Fabius Bile who not only can create Geneseed and Marines from scratch (source: Fabius Bile IA) but he also knowns how to clone Marines. (same source as previously). The reason the Imperials don't use cloning is because it would adversely effect their geneseed and also it would stop them from getting more and more genetic diverse. Not to mention how unethical it is in Imperial eyes. :)

 

Also while Bile's turning process might have a handful successes per tens of thousands "aspirants" compared to the Space Marine a handful in a hundred it's not really like the Legions of Chaos cares that much about a few hundred thousand slaves.

 

TDA

[AbyssKnight]

AekoldHelbrass,

I would not consider Dead Sky, Black Sun or either short story you mentioned to really be a recruitment story in the same way Space Wolf and Sons of Dorn are. The stories do touch on briefly on parts of the recruitment process as implemented by particular groups, but they aren't the focus of the story.

 

The loyalist stories follow the initiates all the way through the process from being chosen as promising human warriors through the implantation and indoctrination processes into becoming full battle-brothers. There's really nothing like that for Chaos marines. Since the various groups do vary so much it could only cover one method, but give it a full start to end treatment.

[AekoldHelbrass]

The loyalist stories follow the initiates all the way through the process from being chosen as promising human warriors through the implantation and indoctrination processes into becoming full battle-brothers. There's really nothing like that for Chaos marines. Since the various groups do vary so much it could only cover one method, but give it a full start to end treatment.

Thanx for hint, will read those as soon as possible then.

 

Yet another thing, Tales of Heresy story Call of the Lion mentions that it is possible to take gene-seed before Space Marine died. So, loyal Chapters have their honors, have to check if gene-seed was not corrupted by Chaos and may not have more than 1000 of warriors, that's why they are sending apothecary everywhere. But there are no apothecaries in Chaos Codexes, so maybe Chaos Legions just taking warriors gene-seed as soon as it's matured, so they are not losing gene-seed because no one came to take it from fallen?

[Csm001]

Let the Galaxy Burn or Heroes of the Space Marines (read them one by one so can't remember exact source of stories). There was one story where small Night Lords warband came to some world to take recruits. So it looks like their recruitment process didn't changed much since Heresy, while they can preserve purity of geneseed because they are operating far from Eye of Terror.

 

"Nightfall - Peter Fehervari. Heroes of the Space Marines". The NL take a background world and turn it into a recruitmen camp.

The other one, about World Eaters and Avenging Sons, is "Apothecary´s Honour - Simon Jowett. Let the Galaxy Burn".

 

Both of them are great.

[Brother Ambroz]

How do chaos space marines get more recruits? Is it only by turning loyal space marines? Or do they press gang people to implant the gene seed and then turn them?

 

In the book "Flesh and Iron" by Henry Zou, the Chaos Renegade chapter was using that world as a recruitment base.

[minigun762]

But there are no apothecaries in Chaos Codexes, so maybe Chaos Legions just taking warriors gene-seed as soon as it's matured, so they are not losing gene-seed because no one came to take it from fallen?

 

I think the fact that there are no apothecaries in the codex =/= there are no Chaos apothecaries at all.

 

Besides Fabius Bile, we have mentions of the a former apothecary Night Lord in Soul Hunter and of the Red Corsair's main apothecary in the Codex (during the story of the taking of the SW Strike Cruiser I believe).

 

Then there are other references to non-apothecaries being able to harvest geneseed.

 

Between it all, I think there are enough trainded Chaos Marines to maintain the process of geneseed removal.

[Brother Elochai]

according to soul hunter by aaron dembski-bowden the black legion went to a prison and released all the prisoners i am not sure whether they became marines or just cultists

 

The prisoners were released to be used mostly as cultists, I think they took several million, if my memory of the book serves me right. Of course, I'm not sure if they can take hardened, older prisoners and implant them with gene-seed, as I know the loyalist chapters try for younger people than what most prisoners are.

 

 

As to the apothecaries, as also stated in Soul Hunter; there is no longer any rank in chaos chapters as they try to stray away from their loyalist brothers, however a former apothecary is questioned on his duty to remove gene-seed. The also mentions the former-apothecary's brothers also harvesting gene-seed as well as armor from fallen brothers, as they have no way to get new armor, and no new gene-seed. It is not stated who specifically has the knowledge to implant the gene-seed into recruits, but prospective recruiting is mentioned, as is stating that multiple members of a night lords claw do harvest gene-seed.

[Chengar Qordath]

Also while Bile's turning process might have a handful successes per tens of thousands "aspirants" compared to the Space Marine a handful in a hundred it's not really like the Legions of Chaos cares that much about a few hundred thousand slaves.

Indeed; as I recall, Bile has actually gone out of his way to make the process more dangerous, since he believes that a higher mortality rate among aspirants means that those who survive the process are the best of the best.

[Hellios]

Think of it like this: If you have a 2.5 liter V6 and a 5 liter V8 and put the same supercharger on each, which would be more powerful? Why do you think that is?

I'll give you a one word hint: Potential.

 

I'm going to have to disagree with you here... At lower levels what you say might be true.... the chaos space marine with the giant crab claw might be stronger than the normal human with the crab claw. However if you become a daemon prince (especially once you've lost your mortal body), which would be easier for marines (I guess) then it is a matter of favour. Now I imagine the Daemon Primarchs to be powerful by Daemon prince standards and that is partly to do with how strong they started off as mortals. However I don't know how strong they are to say Doom Breed who as far as I know is a really old champion of khorne who was just a normal mortal and became a daemon prince... It could well be that he has more favour (if he is still around) than Angron and if that was the case he may well be more powerful (have more gifts) although Angron could be a more skilled warrior for example.

 

When you become a DP it isn't about adding stuff to the car but getting a totally new car and keeping the old number plate!