Which Legions Are Still Recruiting in the 41st Millenium

[DarKnight]

We know that the Black Legion is always poaching other Legionaries/Renegades, and the Night Lords steal children, as well as the Iron Warriors, but who else is training and inducting aspirants at this point?

[Lieutenant Steel]

I would not be at all surprised that the Alpha Legion still recruits; IIRC wasn't there a story I've heard mentioned wherein they steal samples of pure-geneseed? They must have some sort of nefarious/ clandestine 'recruitment' process.

[Kol Saresk]

All of the Legions recruit in some fashion. There is a short story that just came out called The Masters, Bidding that shows for the Thousand Sons, Night Lords, Word Bearers and Emperor Children picking aspirants. There's others for the other Legions but I can't think of them.

 

EDIT: Lieutenant Steel, IIRC the story you are thinking of is the Long Games of Carcharius(spelling?) in which the Alpha Legion brainwash some of the Chapter Recruits in a somewhat similar matter to what they did to the Emperor's Swords, except the Crimson Templars have no survivors. But the Alpha Legion did not keep the gene-seed, that went to their Black Legion allies.

 

Another story with gene-seed being stolen from a Mechanicus base is Storm of Iron with the Iron Warriors. The gene-seed they picked up was supposed to go the Black Legion but in Dead Sky, Black Sun, we find out that Honsou kept some of the gene-seed for himself.

[Xin Ceithan]

Aside from the fact discussed elsehwre that that there are no longer any really coherent "Legions" in the 41st, I´d say all of the larger warbands are recruiting at some time. Probably more so on a need based drive than an established pattern and depending on the resources available (Geneseed, Apothecaries, etc). If you read the first story in "Treacheries of the SM" it features warband champions from the EC, NL, WB and even1KSons recruited well after the Heresy.

[the jeske]

DG and 1ksons gene seed doesnt exist anymore and to create 1ksons you need to cast the rubric spell , which needed a lot of 1ksons sorc to cast.

[Vesper]

Aside from the fact discussed elsehwre that that there are no longer any really coherent "Legions" in the 41st

 

That's not so simple. Some Legions are still able to unite and fight as a coherent force. That's the case for the Black Legion, the Word Bearers, the Iron Warriors and maybe the Death Guard. Because all those Legions still have a chain of command that is wider than the simple warband hierarchy. Those Legions are still operationnal, and, in the case of the Black Legion, are quite healthy (they have ten times the numbers of the Word Bearers).

 

On the recruitment thing, it's safe to say that all Legions still recruit, and there is plenty of ways for them to do so. The Black Legion, once again, is quite special in that regard, because Abaddon is so powerful (and has made so many pacts with other Chaos Lords) that other warbands pay tribute to the Black Legion by giving them the gene-seed they loot (we can infere that, in return, the Black Legion offers protection, or means to pursue such raids).

Warbands that come from more fragmented Legions are often on their own, and have to use their own ressources to recruit (capturing children). Then, some warbands are absorbed by stronger ones, because Chaos is the way of the strong and the merciless.

The worst case scenario I can think of would be to be forced to ask Fabius Bile to make some marines for you. Which is still a way to get new marines, yet it may cost a bit to the warband.

[Kol Saresk]

DG and 1ksons gene seed doesnt exist anymore and to create 1ksons you need to cast the rubric spell , which needed a lot of 1ksons sorc to cast.

Not true.

 

http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc69/bleachit54/IMG_4217.png

 

That is straight from the IA article and nothing has yet to contradict it and the short story both Xin Ceithan and I have cited both still support this with new fluff that was published within the last year. The last six months IIRC would be more precise.

[the jeske]

the DG gene seed is destroyed and there is too few 1ksons sorc to get new recruits , not to mention the fact that all the new ones would still suffer from the same mutation problems the pre heresy 1ksons suffered from . Probably more considering the 10k years living in the warp .

 

having a gene seed doesnt mean it is usable for anything . And then you have dudes like madok who are not automatons , but are also made out of armor.

[Kol Saresk]

Wasn't referring to the Death Guard gene-seed, although I'm willing to bet its state is mentioned in the IA article.

 

Madok was one of the sorcerers but he had no physical body except for that one time in the third Ragnar book. And most of the KSons were sorcerers anyway so I'm willing to bet there's more left than we think and apparently they are using it as the short story mentioned has a KSon sorcerer who was recruited from slave stock on the Planet of Sorcerers. So apparently they can and are using it.

[Spaz431]

the DG gene seed is destroyed and there is too few 1ksons sorc to get new recruits , not to mention the fact that all the new ones would still suffer from the same mutation problems the pre heresy 1ksons suffered from . Probably more considering the 10k years living in the warp .

 

having a gene seed doesnt mean it is usable for anything . And then you have dudes like madok who are not automatons , but are also made out of armor.

 

Jeske, to politely disagree, until such time that it says the seed is distroyed, we have to assume that Fabius Bile can replicate gene seeds for many of the more mutated of the former legions. Also please remember that time still flows differently in the warp. The writers have stated that some of the former legion marines that were at the battle of Terra could easily leave the warp and only feel like the battle could have been days or years ago.

[Kol Saresk]

Or however long it took for them to get from Terra to the Eye.

[Sception]

All of the legions still recruit. Apart from maybe Alpha Legion, none of them do so in the typical space marine manner of passing on their Primarch's geneseed. All the legions of the eye have seen their gene seed mutated beyond usability by warp exposure. Mostly the traitor legions use captured loyalist geneseed to create new marines (hence why there's so many stories of chaos marines targeting loyalist gene seed reserves). Other sources of new recruits are post-heresy traitor marines converted to chaos and inducted into the ranks, and artificially created 'new men', chemically, surgically, and daemonically enhanced soldiers equivalent to space marines in size, skill, and strength - these are primarily Bile's creations, he's been seeking to emulate the emperor's creation of the original space marines since before the end of the Heresy.

 

In this way, new Chaos Legionnaires are inducted into the ranks, but they aren't true legion members in the sense of carrying on the geneseed of the traitor primarchs. Again, Alpha Legion may be an exception to this. Or maybe not. Even the thousand sons recruit this way - Magnus, after all, was not happy with Ahriman's rubric and would have been seeking to rebuild a living legion.

[Kol Saresk]

Not entirely true Malisteen. Some of the Legions are said to still have pure gene-seed, most notably the Night Lords and Alpha Legion, and apparently the Thousand Sons since nothing mentions them having mutations post-Rubric and I do recall it being said that the Rubric was a success in permanently halting the Flesh Change at the cost of creating the Rubric Marines out of the non-psyker KSons. Most of the "Chaos Marines stealing gene-seed" stories are usually Chaos Marines stealing it for the Black Legion(with the Fall of Vilamus being an exception) which suggests one of two things, whoever is stealing the gene-seed needs pure stock(which I think Storm of Iron does say about the Black Legion) or because they do not have ample gene-seed resources of their own(Red Corsairs are our prime example for this one).

 

Also, on the note of the New Men, IIRC part of their fluff is that Bile makes them and spreads them throughout the Imperium to wreak havoc, at least those he doesn't keep by his side. So while it is a possibility, there isn't much chance of the New Men being in the Legions as the EC recruit in the aforementioned short story was implanted by Bile and is not a New Man. Although it be argued that he came right before the New Men as he is a "newer" warlord. It's definitely a possibility that they are there, but until something says that is where they are going, it's merely conjecture. Although, if something to the contrary exists I would love to see it. Seriously, I love new fluff. Unless it sucks.

[TheDarkApostle]

The Heroes and Villain article on Fabious Bile say that he has possession of all the 9 Legion's gene legacy and have done his outmost to keep them all as pure as possible, countering sudden mutations without corrupting the geneseed itself.

 

And this is why he's so needed by the traitor Legions. He's been able to keep the gene-seeds pure and stable for all these 10000 years in the Eye.

 

TDA

[Kol Saresk]

The Heroes and Villains articl? :lol: I need it.

[Spaz431]

It was a white dwarf. It also had the play rules for Cypher.

[Kol Saresk]

Well, snap.

[Lay]

Yeah, UK WD 278.

According to it, Bile is also responsible for refining the recruitment process for aspirants and creating new CSM through cloning and daemon-wombs that are fed loyalist geneseed (similar to the Daemonculaba in "Dead Sky, Black Sun").

 

If we go way back, even "Realms of Chaos" and the 2nd edition Codex said that all Legions were actively recruiting. If anything, I can't recall a single source stating that there's a legion that is unable to create new Marines.

[TheDarkApostle]

Yeah, UK WD 278.

According to it, Bile is also responsible for refining the recruitment process for aspirants and creating new CSM through cloning and daemon-wombs that are fed loyalist geneseed (similar to the Daemonculaba in "Dead Sky, Black Sun").

 

If we go way back, even "Realms of Chaos" and the 2nd edition Codex said that all Legions were actively recruiting. If anything, I can't recall a single source stating that there's a legion that is unable to create new Marines.

More than similar to Daemonculaba, I recall it even saying outright in the flavour text in the article that it was Bile himself who had named it Daemonculaba!

 

Also it goes on a bit with him ranting about how every day he keeps refining the transformation process to allow only one in 10,000 aspirants to survive instead of the Loyalist scums who keep it 1 in 100 surviving, because they need to be absolutely pure in their hate of the Imperium if the Legions are to survive.

 

But given the innumerable masses they transform every day even with those odds he should still be able to churn out far more marines than your average chapters.

 

TDA

[the jeske]

Wasn't referring to the Death Guard gene-seed, although I'm willing to bet its state is mentioned in the IA article.

 

Madok was one of the sorcerers but he had no physical body except for that one time in the third Ragnar book. And most of the KSons were sorcerers anyway so I'm willing to bet there's more left than we think and apparently they are using it as the short story mentioned has a KSon sorcerer who was recruited from slave stock on the Planet of Sorcerers. So apparently they can and are using it.

 

you take the smallest legion there was. decimate it by space wolfs [which are good at decimating] , then you wreck them by mutation and teleport them to the eye . without gene seed storing/creating facilities . then you cast the rubric , because the 1ksons are mutating so bad , they may die out. you end up with automatons and sorc with may or may not have a body . If they have one it is severly mutated . Now you have to look for an apothecary who was also a sorc at the same time[if he wasnt he is an automaton now] and have to find a place to do the whole gene seed creating/implanting thing . Now even if the 1ksons gene seed was like the DA pre-heresy one , rebuilding would take ages . because you would only get seed from dead sorc and all of them were brothers so already one seed was harvested .

thing is 1ksons seed was border line unstable ,how many sorc would have to be dead to get 1 organ to split in to a new seed ?

 

Also it goes on a bit with him ranting about how every day he keeps refining the transformation process to allow only one in 10,000 aspirants to survive instead of the Loyalist scums who keep it 1 in 100 surviving, because they need to be absolutely pure in their hate of the Imperium if the Legions are to survive.

pff GK take only psykers of considerable power , and have ten times the death ratio other marines have , while the pool of aspirants is much smaller . actualy considering the death ratio for GK marines , there has to be a lot of black ships , like milions of them .

 

 

also most of biles marines are vat grown , he needs 10000 tries because clones are unstable they die or are damged more offten then not.

[Excessus]

To find a sorcerer that is an apothecary wouldn't be so tricky for TS though, since their apothecary most likely was a part of the cult of pavoni(healers). Besides, I remember a source somewhere describing Ahriman with an actual body post heresy, so no, the sorcerers are not just empty shells. Sorcerers such as Khrove has been added to the TS ranks post-heresy, though they are mostly only said to have undergone "genetic enhancements" and geneseed is not mentioned per se...

[Kol Saresk]

Jeske, the Emperor's Children are the ones with the "smallest Legion" fluff, not the Thousand Sons. It's in False Gods, Fulgrim and possibly even Betrayal. The Thousand Sons' name is why the mortal was asking why they were always named that because they were named that before the 1,000 survivors of the Flesh Change and the 1,000 of Prospero. So, at this point in time, pre-Rubric, they are the size of a modern Chapter. The Rubric turned all non-psyker Marines into Rubrics. Even if they number 1/10th of the full strength, since there is a Chapter known as the Crimson Fists who were beaten to numbers too small to have survived and yet, look where they are now it's more of a possibility than "it will never happen." Of course, this is all assuming in the belief that the Thousand Sons are trying to outnumber the Black Legion, which is going to take a bit longer.

 

There is apparently a decent enough number left that they can still recruit and form people into new sorcerers. Also, if you recall the very fluff of the gene-seed, one marine makes two progenoid glands which results in two, new gene-seeds. So one dead sorcerer has the potential to help in the creation of two aspirants. The biggest part of the aspirant is getting the aspirant to make it to the gene-seed implantation.

 

Oh, also Tizca was transported to the Eye with the KSons and also Magnus can apparently build buildings out of the earth. Since we're going into "speculation-mode" it is more than plausible some sort of gene-seed storage survived, perhaps even with the gene-seed inside, especially since most of the Thousand Sons that were in the fleet survived Prospero intact except for the one that went back.

 

Excessus, I just read through the passage of Khrove's initiation for clarification, no mention of what was done to his body is made. It simply says how the Thousand Sons found him, what studies he went through, what he had to learn to do like drive the Legion's vehicles, use a bolter and chainsword, when he was given his armor and he modified it with warp runes and then he gets cut off. However, the fact that he is a newer KSon combined the IA article, that combination of sources would usually say gene-seed although gene-hancements is a less likely, but plausible outcome.

[Brother Ambroz]

Maybe Ahriman's new book will shed some light on the Thousand Sons recruitment methods. Or at least how the Ahriman sect recruits.

[Lepaca]

All traitor legions (in whatever form they may still exist) still recruit. Even the 1K Sons.

 

A way question I always asked myself is: Can legions which still have their primarch still harvest gene-seed from them?

[Xin Ceithan]

Regarding harvesting from the remaining Primarchs, I' d say not very likely.

They are no longer entirely physical beings and probably too changed for geneseed harvesting.

I would point to the whole "halfbreed" Thing in the IW stories for a reference - why use "other" seed at all if you had a source? But it's a fluff point and thus "fluffy". One could certainly field a Unit of Possesed and Claim the changes ob the DP geneseed instead of regular possession.