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Night Lords recruitment


Brother Heinrich

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I have a question for those who have access to Massacre, can anyone confirm that the initial recruitment source for the VIII Legion was a massive prison on Terra? As fitting as that bit of fluff sounds, it seems to run against GW's established fluff of Astartes recruits having to be prepubescent males. It just doesn't seem plausible that there is some massive, Riddick-esque, super-max penitentiary filled with murderous, psychotic children.

Even on Nostramo it doesn't seem likely that more than a handful of children would be twisted enough to be actual murderers. I can understand thieves most certainly, but I fail to see the child gang-soldiers aspect. It's not like Nostramo is Somalia or Zaire, it may be corrupt but there is an established, criminal order to life that is rigidly controlled by each gang's muscle. Things still get done, people still do work, the output just goes to each territories' boss instead of the greater good of society.

Idk, I may be opening up a huge can of worms with my fellow Night Lords, but what is our legion if not a fractured mass of psychopathic idealists. Come at me brothers... devil.gif

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Back in the legion days... the conversion process didn't have to start as young.  Young adults (i'm guessing 18-25) could have gone under the conversion as well...  The older one got, the less likely it would be to succeed.  But it still could succeed (I.E. Wolf Brothers during the Space Wolves Legion days)

Back in the legion days... the conversion process didn't have to start as young.  Young adults (i'm guessing 18-25) could have gone under the conversion as well...  The older one got, the less likely it would be to succeed.  But it still could succeed (I.E. Wolf Brothers during the Space Wolves Legion days)

Is their anywhere that this is confirmed? I know they could make half-astartes like Kor Phaeron and Luther, but I thought they had to be pre-teens for full successful implantation.

Russ and his jarls are the only source I can recall. They were adult chieftains, made into full, Astartes when Russ was found. But there are comments and tidbits here and there that talk about how the process was better, and how the restriction to kids only was because it aided indoctrination and implantation.

In the Scars episodic novel, it mentions in... part 7, iirc, that Yesugei and Hasik are two of the oldest Scars that were with the Khan over a century before when the Emperor first came to Chogoris, and because they were so much older than the normal ascension age(as they call it), it was quite a painful process. In fact, a lot of the Khan's original soldiers who attempted ascension beyond the suggested age threshold died in the process.

 

After the primarchs were found and given their Legion armies, with new marines made from their surviving troops, it sounds like the ascension process was forbidden for anyone too old. So from the beginning, yes, the VIII could be the dregs of 30k society turned into genetic super soldiers with the best weapons and armor mankind could build. We are then surprised at how they turned out. ;)

Yeah, we have so many cultural themes that it would be somewhat odd if the legions didn't recruit from those regions to begin with before they found their primarch.

 

I mean, I thought it was somewhat odd already that the Thousand Sons recruited from Iran, as is the case with Ahriman and his brother, but it is possible that the Achaemenid of the Unification Wars is similar to the historical Achaemenid Empire as its greater extent, which included Egypt.  Still though, if I were the writers, I'd still call it Egypt or Aegyptus or whatever.

Riddick-esque, super-max penitentiary filled with murderous, psychotic children.

 

 

I think it's less a case of a giant supermax prison filled with children and more a case of several giant supermax prison cavern systems which have adolescents/youths among their populations

As an Australian I take offense at being labeled a psychotic murdering :cuss: decended from criminals who live in a dark former prison colony without hope.

 

Many parts of Australia do indeed have sunlight, and some do not have lethal native lifeforms.

 

Thankyou.

 

 

 

 

 

;)

Do I have to crack some :cussing skulls open here? Yes we're violent drinks with anger issues.

 

But I'm sure as hell no nightlord

 

As an Australian I take offense at being labeled a psychotic murdering :cuss: decended from criminals who live in a dark former prison colony without hope.

 

Many parts of Australia do indeed have sunlight, and some do not have lethal native lifeforms.

 

Thankyou.

 

 

 

 

 

;)

That's true but I believe the Elizabeth bogan native to SA is a testament to your argument

Ehhhhhh I dont know if I buy into this (Australian jokes aside).

 

I kind of wanted the Legion to have a different beginning. Having the initial legion be criminal/lawless stock, and then having the same environment in Nostramo?

 

Seems a touch forced no?

 

I imagine the mind-wiping associated with the ascension surgeries to become a Spessh Mareen were intended to remove the criminal tendencies of the stock the VIII Legion(not the Night Lords) was made from. I mean, if you're setting out to make 20 18 enormous armies to give to your 20 18 God-Sons, and part of that process includes a mind wipe, why not make use of the rats in the cellar?

 

I also don't think that all of the NL marines made from the Nostramo population were criminals, because when the Emperor found Curze, he had scared the entire population of the planet straight. After he left on the Big E's Great Crusade, they started to backslide into their nefarious ways and the recruits from them might not have been of the best stock. Take, for example, A D-Bs characters from the Talos books: by the time they were recruited, the world had done a complete 180 in the decades since Curze left, falling back into its old criminal ways.

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