Gene-seed rejection rates

[Daylight]

Ok, so from what I understand the legions with the highest gene-seed acceptance rates included the Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors, whereas those with the highest rejection rate included the Blood Angels and the Space Wolves. With that said, where would other legions fall on this spectrum? The Imperial Fists had high rates of recruitment but their implantation process was said to be painful. The Ultramarines were the largest legion due in part to the 500 worlds, but I assume they had among the highest acceptance/success rates, as even in 40k their gene-seed is said to be very pure (along with the Dark Angels, whom I assume also had high success rates). Do those assumptions seem reasonable? I guess we won't know until the Calth book comes out, but I feel like the only way the Ultras would have been able to keep up their huge numbers would be a low failure rate.

[Urael]

Well, based on an entry in Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe, possible candidates are tested prior to ever getting close to implantation. Those who have a good percentile chance of acceptance, say 80% and up, get to have a chance.  Those who reject implementation later on... well, you ever wonder where all those Servitors come from? :)

[depthcharge12]

Well, based on an entry in Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe, possible candidates are tested prior to ever getting close to implantation. Those who have a good percentile chance of acceptance, say 80% and up, get to have a chance.  Those who reject implementation later on... well, you ever wonder where all those Servitors come from? :)

 

Yeah....

 

 

Punching little kids in the stomach with a narthecium....don't know how well that one was thought out.

[Daylight]

After reading more of Extermination, I saw that the Raven Guard character Kaedes Nex was turned into a space marine when he was well above the ideal age of implantation. The fact that this succeeded likely means that the Raven Guard gene-seed was very stable, correct? Was there any indication given to the XIX's size pre-Gate 42?

[Conn Eremon]

They lost thousands, leaving only 80,000 afterwards. No specific numbers given. Just that part of saying 'thousands of Raven Guard, the bulk of them Terran-born, had given their lives before the shattered walls.'

[Daylight]

They lost thousands, leaving only 80,000 afterwards. No specific numbers given. Just that part of saying 'thousands of Raven Guard, the bulk of them Terran-born, had given their lives before the shattered walls.'

Ah, ok thanks. What of the Imperial Fists' gene-seed? I know in 40k they have the highest (or among the highest) recruitment rate of any chapter, and in 30k their gene-seed's activation process is very painful, but no mention is made of its success rate. I assume the IF took high casualties, but (as stated in book 3 they recruited in large numbers) made up for it in rapid recruitment, leading to their size being around 100,000; however, the Iron Warriors also took massive casualties but were around 180,000 strong, maybe due to their gene-seed being easily accepted?

[Uprising]

Accounting to ADB Night lord trilogy, problems would a raise for some were they would gain Konard Curze vision and foresight, causing many to go insane.  So their rejection rate would probably be mid level, even though IA stated their gene seed was extremely pure, even in 40k night lord.    

 

Also didn't the thousand son have horribly high rejection rate with their gene seed due to the psyker power?  

[Daylight]

Accounting to ADB Night lord trilogy, problems would a raise for some were they would gain Konard Curze vision and foresight, causing many to go insane.  So their rejection rate would probably be mid level, even though IA stated their gene seed was extremely pure, even in 40k night lord.    

 

Also didn't the thousand son have horribly high rejection rate with their gene seed due to the psyker power?  

I would assume the TS did have high rejection rate, as Extermination states that the 6th and 9th (SW and BA) had problems with implantation before the gene-wrights of luna were captured. I figure that the legions with higher numbers probably had better success rates.

[Relict]

The Sons of Horus and Word Bearers were also in the upper quartile in terms of manpower - the XVII Legion in particular was speculated to have enlarged itself enough to rival the Ultramarines during the 40-year span between their rebuke on Khur and the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. Given that they put on the appearance of renewed zeal in conquest during those 40 years (and naturally the higher casualty rate that such a rapid rate of conquests would entail, with the replacement recruits coming exclusively from Colchis), Lorgar's gene-seed must had been fairly stable as well. 

 

The World Eaters were noted to suffer high attrition rates (Extermination notes that only Angron had less regard for the lives of his men than Perturabo) during the Great Crusade, yet they still had 150,000 legionaries prior to Isstvan III. This also means a fairly stable gene-seed. 

 

The Emperor's Children and Death Guard gene-seeds should be stable as well prior to their corruption. Post-corruption, I imagine their gene-seeds to be next to useless for creating new Legionaries. 

[Daylight]

Good points, and that makes me wonder if the UMs were so large simply because of their huge recruitment base and not because of exceptionally good acceptance rates. I guess we will have to wait and see what FW says in the coming books, but I assume that the highest acceptance rates were likely the Iron Warriors, Dark Angels, Alpha Legion, Ultramarines, and Word Bearers, with the Iron Warriors and Dark Angels perhaps being the best. I know the EC were known to have super pure gene-seeds, but they were small because of the accident that happened to their stores early on.

[Aegnor]

And the EC super purity was caused by very strict standards, rejecting anything that seems even possibly off. This probably kept them pure but small, unlike the UM and Dark Angels who were pure and large.

[Balthamal]

It was mentioned somewhere that the Blood Angels actually had excellent rates of implantation taking successfully which they'd almost had to have given the small recruiting pool available from Baal and it's moons (not counting Terra or any other fiefs awarded to them) to be able to sustain a Legion of over a hundred thousand.

 

The Ultramarines and Word Bearers were the only 2 to be acknowledged as clearing the 200k mark, mainly due to the huge recruiting pools they had. If the Ultras were taking from 500 worlds, and had the logistics their Primarch was renowned for set up, Ultramar would literally be a conveyor belt of Astartes production. As for the XVII, they deliberately targeted worlds containing populations as close to pure strain humanity as possible for compliance in order to boost the numbers up. The other 2-3 Legions in the top bracket of numbers are the World Eaters as said in Betrayal (the shocking attrition rate demanded a huge influx of new blood though how they managed to stay ahead of it is something of a dark miracle), the Night Lords as per Massacre (it was speculated that they harvested populations for initiates as well as using advanced accelerated techniques to reduce the lead time to months instead of years) and in all likelihood the Iron Warriors (hard to see a mathematician like Perturabo not calculating exactly how to increase the development of his Legion onto an industrial scale

[Daylight]

Ah, interesting points. I found this chart on lexicanum

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/6/6a/Geneseed_mutation_DWRB.jpg

(for 40k, not the HH though), and the Fists are up there with the Ultras and DA. So does that mean that they just took so many casualties that despite having very high acceptance rates the IF never got much bigger than 100,000? Extermination also says the processes the Fists used to activate the gene-seed inflicted extreme pain, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it failed any more often than, say, the Iron Warriors or Ultramarines, does it?

[Balthamal]

Pretty much all the gene seed implantation process inflicted pain in one form or another but in the Imperial Fists it was somewhat excessive but then again given the fact Dorn valued endurance and fortitude in his Legion is it's a surprise. 

 

As for numbers, remember the Imperial Fists lost a hefty chunk of their Legion at Phall

[Leif Bearclaw]

Actually the 100,000 figure for the Fists is pre Phall. Plus the chunk wasn't too hefty. approximately 20,000 by my estmation. We're told the Retribution fleet was  'almost a third of the Legion's strength in ships and warriors'. So 500 ships and approx 30,000 marines. Then we're told 'barley a third of the original strength of the Retribution fleet made it to the Warp intact'. While not all of them made it back to Terra for a while, you're still looking at over 10,000 Astartes and over 150 ships escaping. That's less, both proportionally and absolutely, than the toll Istvaan III took on the first wave of Traitors.

[MrBear]

In Void Stalker there is a conversation where it is stated that 61 children are adapting well to the Night Lord gene seed and over 200 have died during the procedure, these numbers are considered a very good survival rate. So ordinarly maybe 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 survives among NL candidates?