Thousand Sons: how do they replace Rubric Marines?

[Bulwyf]

There's any number of Chaos legions that you wonder how they manage to reproduce their numbers. The one Legion I can't understand how they manage to replace casualties are the Thousand Sons. I understand how a renegade Librarian could become a sorcerer but how the heck do they replace the Rubric Marines? It has been almost 10k years since they were created by Ahriman. So how exactly do they make more? Once the armor has been destroyed the soul trapped in the Rubric Marine is lost for good. You can't replace them with normal gene seed Marine recruits for obvious reasons. So what's the logic (if any) of how they keep up their numbers of Rubric marines?

[Kristoff]

They rebuild the armor and reinfuse the armor with the soul of the brother who inhabited it earlier. Simple.

[Bulwyf]

They rebuild the armor and reinfuse the armor with the soul of the brother who inhabited it earlier. Simple.

 

And how do they do that when the soul is lost forever when the armor is destroyed? How do they rebuild armor suits they aren't able to recover? Your explanation does not make sense, no offense.

[The Colossus]

They summon it from the warp: "How the Thousand Sons currently maintain their numbers is unknown, although they have been observed carrying out an apparent resurrection ritual at least once. On this occasion the spirits of deceased Thousand Sons were summoned from the warp into mortal bodies (whether living or dead making no particular difference), bodies which then transformed themselves into reborn Thousand Sons" (Source: Lexicanum, Grey Hunter Novel)

[Eerie]

A thread in the Tzeentch subsection evolved into a similar discussion a while back:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=238162

 

'Grey Hunter' novel seems indeed the only source that gives a hint. GW themselves never answered that question.

 

A related question that I have begun to find much more interesting is whether there is a stable number of Rubrics since the heresy that if killed can be resurrected or whether the TSons are able to create completely new ones.

Reason: 'A Thousand Sons' novel gave a precise number of Thousand Sons that survived the battle of Prospero. Something like 1.200 or so. Quite a lot of these fell to the flesh change before Ahriman came forward with the Rubric. So when the Rubric was originally cast we can in fact assume that true to their name there where only roughly 1.000 of them left. Now, assuming that 1/10 of the legion survived and became sorcerers and 9/10 were turned into dust, we have something like a hundred sorcerers and about 900 Rubric Marines during the heresy era. And to top it of, following the Rubric the legion, tiny as it already was, broke up into two subfactions, the Ahriman and the Magnus camps.

 

Thus, even if they are able to resurrect their fallen Rubrics, if they could not create entirely new Rubrics they would hardly be able to achieve anything in the greater scheme of things as they are even smaller than a loyalist chapter.

[minigun762]

I'm going to bump this over to the Thousand Sons thread where is should get more direct attention.

[Bulwyf]

A thread in the Tzeentch subsection evolved into a similar discussion a while back:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=238162

 

'Grey Hunter' novel seems indeed the only source that gives a hint. GW themselves never answered that question.

 

A related question that I have begun to find much more interesting is whether there is a stable number of Rubrics since the heresy that if killed can be resurrected or whether the TSons are able to create completely new ones.

Reason: 'A Thousand Sons' novel gave a precise number of Thousand Sons that survived the battle of Prospero. Something like 1.200 or so. Quite a lot of these fell to the flesh change before Ahriman came forward with the Rubric. So when the Rubric was originally cast we can in fact assume that true to their name there where only roughly 1.000 of them left. Now, assuming that 1/10 of the legion survived and became sorcerers and 9/10 were turned into dust, we have something like a hundred sorcerers and about 900 Rubric Marines during the heresy era. And to top it of, following the Rubric the legion, tiny as it already was, broke up into two subfactions, the Ahriman and the Magnus camps.

 

Thus, even if they are able to resurrect their fallen Rubrics, if they could not create entirely new Rubrics they would hardly be able to achieve anything in the greater scheme of things as they are even smaller than a loyalist chapter.

 

You see I remember Grey Hunter's bit about this but it seems to be contradicted in other novels. For instance in the Battle of the Fang novel you see hundreds of Rubric Marines in the pro Magnus camp attacking the Fang and when they are killed the text reads as if the Rubric Marines are very much dead and the responses from the TS sorcerers agrees with that. I can't remember which part but I remember one of the TS sorcerers lamenting how their former brothers are dust in suits and when they are destroyed that brother is lost for good.

 

Which is why I'm confused as to how the interior logic of this holds water or if quite frankly this is just a deus ex machina mechanism designed to make the TS more interesting and their story more tragic. We should just accept that somehow the TS can keep cooking up Rubric Marines out of thin air for fluff reasons.

[G3rman]

Or maybe you should accept the fluff that doesn't make the TS actually magical and realize that contradiction in novels will happen. No one has the right answer in this case if multiple novels give answers for either side, go with the one that makes sense.

 

Until GW straight up gives an answer, then its up to perspective.

[Clewz]

in the words of Paul Daniels - Its magic

[Eerie]

Of course it is, it's the Thousand Sons after all :D

 

No, I think everybody would be happy and content if GW would provide us with some sort of explanation, no matter how vague and far-fetched. GW likes to keep their tiny secrets to hold up the aura of mysticism, and there's no problem with that. We don't need an in-depth description of every single step taken.

 

But not knowing any answer to this quite fundamental issue may restrict the way you can think off or imagine stories for your warband. Many are uncomfortable with making things up that aren't at least partially supported by official background.

 

A TSons warlord who wants to conquer a planet or something but feels he has not enough Marines to do so at the moment, can he just "breed" more Rubrics until he deems their number sufficient or would he be forced to look at other ways to expand the number of soldiers (e.g. bargaining rival warbands into his service)?

 

You may not want to write a story if you fear others may critizice it for a lack of canon.

[Wulf Vengis]

I believe in Grey Hunter it wasnt a Rubric who was resurrected but an actual legionaire. I could be wrong but this gives me another reason to reread the Ragnar series sooo...

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

Even though everything is pretty much left to your imagination in regards to the "souls" inside the Rubricae, I plead you to read Atlas Infernal and Battle of the Fang.

 

This way, you can see for yourself how someone else goes into great detail in describing living-breathing-rubrics in action (ha!).

 

Each one of my sorcerers has a canopic jar. I think it's from the Aegyptus mini line? These collect the souls of destroyed Rubricae which can either be saved for later implantation into various Marks of armor, or detonated in a firey storm on enemy vehicles as "Melta Bomb" counts as.

 

Cheers

[Spaakl Daakli]

Each one of my sorcerers has a canopic jar. I think it's from the Aegyptus mini line? These collect the souls of destroyed Rubricae which can either be saved for later implantation into various Marks of armor, or detonated in a firey storm on enemy vehicles as "Melta Bomb" counts as.

 

This is seriously sensational, especially as I am one with a passion for AEgyptus as well as Thousand Sons.

 

This thread has highlighted exactly how fortunate we are that the Thousand Suns are virtually the one original legion to have very little work done to it in regards to expanding its background. Our's is the one legion where we can actally create the lore.

 

:D

[Ah-a-nothepsis]

I think we're very fortunate, indeed.

 

@the OP:

I also believe that when the Thousand Sons go to "war", it's in numbers no larger than what you field on the tabletop. Regardless of where we get our Rubrics from, it's clear that we are declining in number.. A fact that I find appealing.

[roman117]