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Blood Angels Invincible AND Immortal?


Warp Angel

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Okay - I might be missing something here.

 

Blood Angels have a complex recruiting process they run on Baal and it's Moons where once each generation they select 50 recruits. Some of those recruits then can't stay awake for 72 hours and are disappeared. Others don't survive a year on the coffins or go insane. The point here being that there are less than 50 replacements each generation.

 

Depending on whether or not you call a generation 20 or 25 years, you're really looking at about 2-2.5 Marines killed or fallen to the thirst each year. This means that in desperate Crusades in the Eye of Terror, Space Hulk assaults, losses to the Death Company, death from aging, etc... They just don't die.

 

Ever.

 

It gets even more supportive of Blood Angel invincibility. 2.5 Marines per year x 10,000 years equals...

 

We're talking about only 25,000 or so Blood Angels since the 2nd Founding TOTAL.

 

The real numbers being lower than that, because those assume that you get the full 50 from each generation of recruits.

 

This is totally awesome, but contradicts the fluff on Death Company, battles, and casualties...

 

Am I missing something?

uh... not to sure what your getting at :)

 

a generation could also mean 1 year or 10 years far as i know. if someone is born a year after you arent they from a different generation if the gap is at least a year?

 

heh what do i know, never paid attention at school :(

 

thing is, this is a GW fluff line your quoting here. dont look to much into it....

Math is NOT gamesworkshops strong point. You're completely right, 50 recruits doesn't cut it unless that "generation" is about every year or so. There just wouldn't be enough Blood Angels to sustain combat operations with any reliability.

 

I assume that it either happens more often or they let more through.

It's often said that the Space Marines, due to the conditioning, live absurdly long. So each generation of recruits, on the average, could be expected to live a healthy average of 400 years. Dante is around 1000 (I also heard 1500 somewhere) and he seems to be exceptional. So I presume that few are past the 800 year mark, and that's without croaking in (pick one) battle, Black Rage, or spontaneous combustion. Also they say that only 1,000 operate at any given time, so 25,000 trigger-happy troops makes some sense if you remember that one "generation" lasts an average of 400 years.

 

Also the 1st company seems to stand in the dex as "tough to kill," suggesting that they don't exactly die too often... unless I'm the one commanding them on the day of battle, in which case they had better memorize their deathwish... But enough of that. I also think that soldiers are inevitably traded between armies, example being the Ultramarine scout "baws" Sgt. Telion. Though he is only borrowed, he most certainly bounces around between armies and I'm sure that they would loan troops in a similar fashion.

 

Also, is it possible that it's 50 troops per moon/Baal?

I assumed they used the human scale of generation. Death Planet. Low life expectancy. Have kids at 16 or so. I would guess every 16 years they visit the moons.

 

But then there is the Media's version of Generation (i.e. boomers, hippies, gen X, gen y, Millennials), so it could be ten years.

 

Or it could be average training time from scout to assault marine.

 

Suffice it to say, blood angels more than likely recruit much slower than other loyalist chapters.

I assumed they used the human scale of generation. Death Planet. Low life expectancy. Have kids at 16 or so. I would guess every 16 years they visit the moons.

 

But then there is the Media's version of Generation (i.e. boomers, hippies, gen X, gen y, Millennials), so it could be ten years.

 

Or it could be average training time from scout to assault marine.

 

Suffice it to say, blood angels more than likely recruit much slower than other loyalist chapters.

what makes you think they recruit slower? outside of BA i don't get to indepth with my fluff, so if there's info out there feel free to share it, but i've got space marine codexes from 3rd gen on and i've never read anything about codex marine recruitment policies.

The vast majority of Marines are killed in combat well before they reach the age of 400. If it were common for them to live that long, you'd see service studs in everyone's heads, and not just veterans and veteran sergeants. Unless this was changed in recent editions, I think it was always like that. Dante is very much an exception to the rule. Earning just your first service stud for 100 years of service is a huge accomplishment for a Marine.

Dante being about 1500 is bandied around as a plausible total for him nothing official as far as I know. (In that we often assume it would be about ~400 years to work up to captain & make it up the ranks a fair bit + 1100 years leading the chapter.)

 

 

Something else to consider is that the 50 per generation could be from each location. Which would make the numbers abit more plausible.

"Physically the Blood Angels are among the longest lived of all the Space Marine Chapters. One of the peculiarities of their aberrant gene-seed is that it has vastly increased the lifespan of those who bear it, so it is not uncommon for Blood Angels to live for a thousand years. Ineed, the current Commander of the Chapter, Dante, is known to have lived for 1,100 years, and is almost certaintly far older."

 

Codex Blood Angels, page 12.

 

So yeah, they do live long enough, even more so than other Marines. But it doesnt seem to me like the whole trial thing they got going on in Angel's Fall is yearly. It does sound its really every generation, as in father to son thing or so. At least thats the image I get when I read that passage. Especially since the ones that failed, stay and guard the place. It seems they stay there for yeaaaars.

 

Also, I think they also recruit from Baal Prime, so thats extra.... Maybe the other moons too. It specifically talks about the trials in Angel's Fall, but I dont think they expect the tribes from the other moons or Baal Prime to construct space ships to get to Angel's Fall. So there must be other locations, and more recruits. Unless its 50 for all of the locations, which sounds...I dunno.

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