Questions About The Legions' Recruitment

[Julgolax]

The Traitor Legions have been around for over 10,000 years so it's no surprise that I'm questioning some things. First off, other than the Night Lords, who's geneseed is still usable? Iron Warriors have stolen Imperial Fists geneseed, of all things, so theirs must not be viable anymore, and I'm not sure about the Alpha Legion.

 

With the Legions who have fully embraced chaos, Word Bearers, Black Legion, and the 4, how do they continue to replenish their numbers, unless they simply don't and the original bloodlines are winnowed away with each passing battle. I'm sure the Word Bearers have a zealous disdain for ANYONE in their ranks who are not of Lorgar's blood.

 

Do any of the Legions keep their geneseed free of Chaos taint, despite it going against the Gods? It certainly would be prudent for them to realize that as much as Chaos mutation is glorious, it does have an adverse effect to gene stocks and continued existence of Chaos Marines.

 

The Black Legion is infamous for accepting any and all into their ranks so long as they pledge themselves to Chaos, to Abaddon, and paint themselves black and gold. They certainly don't have a problem with newcomers obviously but with legions such as the Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, and perhaps even the Alpha Legion to a lesser degree, what are the odds of a traitor marine of different, perhaps even loyalist blood surviving in a foreign legion?

 

Also, interestingly enough, why does cloning never seem to work despite such storied accounts as Abaddon, supposed clone of Horus?

[Rayray]

I think the black legion method is generally accepted for most of the traitor legions. As far as Word Bearers go, while other geneseed would be frowned upon, it only seems logical that the equal dedication to the Dark Gods holds more weight than origins do, depending on the Dark Apostle in charge. Other than that, there's always Fabulous Bile to turn to....

[Sception]

Even Night Lords geneseed is suspect at this point. It's not about whether you 'worship' or 'give in' to chaos, chaos is like radiation, merely being exposed to it is corrupting. Mere mental fortitude can only stave off the effects for so long, the only true preventive measure is absolute mental and spiritual dedication to an innately opposed ideal, like that of the Imperial Cult, and no chaos marines have that. Even the barest trace of pride or self interst is enough for chaos to plant the seeds.

 

Due to the time warping effects of the eye and other persistant warpstorms where chaos marines shelter, there will be some heresy era legionaires young enough to have usable geneseed in all the traitor legions, barring maybe only the thousand sons. Per the Night Lords, remember that Soul Hunter's warband was especially young, subjectively, having experienced only a few hundred years since the heresy. Such will be the exception, not the rule, and for the most part, chaos warbands must turn to other methods of recruitment, including:

 

Hiring Mercenaries

 

Absorbing/Converting existing Chaos Marine warbands (favorite method of the black legion)

 

Corrupting modern loyalist marines (difficult, but especially effective, as it simultaneously weakens the imperium while strengthening chaos)

 

Stealing Loyalist geneseed to create new chaos marines (most common method, but still requires suitable candidates and the medical facilities and expertise to undertake implantation)

 

Hiring Fabious Bile to produce his 'new men', clones with marine-like characteristics made without the use of geneseed.

 

Resisting Attrition. When recruiting is so difficult, a lot of weight is placed on reducing attrition, and well written chaos marine literature will recognize this fact, with chaos marines employing summoned daemons, hordes of cultists, and other strategies to avoid wasting valuable marine lives.

 

There are also supernatural means of resisting attrition. The powers of chaos are able to maintain the souls of their favored champions after death, either preventing death outright or allowing the champion to return to life again and again.

[Leif Bearclaw]

First, just because the Iron Warriors have salvaged gene-seed to create new marines, doesn't mean that their own isn't viable. More gene-seed means a warband has greater recruitment potential, and hence more power. This is especially relevant given that some sources have the attrition rates of recruits amongst the Traitors as notably higher than the Loyalists, so it's entirely conceivable that more gene-seed is required for 10 fully fledged CSMs than 10 loyalist Marines. Either way, a larger gene-seed stockpile is a massive asset to a Warband, whatever the source.

 

As for Chaos taint, Fabius' fluff specifically states that he has bartered his services to all the Legions to replenish their numbers. Chaos taint be damned, he's Fabius Bile, if anyone can salvage a somewhat usable Marine from a mutated progenoid, it's him.

[Lord Asvaldir]

When you consider just how long the various chaos space marines have been fighting, it's impossible to have the legion go through ten thousand years of war and not recruit more marines. Yes there are more space marines turning over to chaos all the time, but it's not nearly a large enough number to replace losses, and renegades tend to form their own warbands anyway. 

 

So while I've never seen it really mentioned in GW literature, the traitor legions must be using gene seed to create new marines. Why else would Huron Blackheart launch a raid to recover gene seed (I think that was mentioned in our previous codex). GW has never been good with numbers, but if you just consider that the traitor legions just have to replenish their ranks, and rarely do so through turning more marines to chaos, gene seed is the only way to get more marines. 

[Julgolax]

I always thought that regardless of affiliation, the space marines apothicarion keeps the geneseed locked within a vault which is surrounded by a field of some kind, weather it be a gellar field, void shield, or stasis field. This would certainly be necessary, even to the traitor legions that still care (excluding the World Eaters and Thousand Sons and Death Guard) if they want to continue to keep their bloodline alive. Radiation aside, if Corpsemasters (chaos apothicaries) do exist in some form, would take measures to keep chaos taint away from slaves they capture for the process of growing and harvesting new geneseed.

 

Myself, as a fan of the Night Lords, Emperor's Children, Black Legion, Word Bearers, and other traitors; I'd like to think that these guys aren't completely irresponsible with their most important asset. They can't extract the geneseed from fallen chaos space marines because it's obviously rife with mutation and radiation, and thus is unusable for re-cultivation. They'd have to use slaves in great numbers to cultivate new geneseeds for implantation into viable captures of course.

[Sception]

The geneseed comes from the marines. As you point out, locking it in a field post-extraction does nothing to prevent its corruption while the host marine is still alive and kicking. The cost of creating new marines and operating the kinds of fields you describe is too great to make long term cultivation of sheltered genestock viable. I'm not saying there are no chaos lords who do it, but it simply cannot be a major portion of the recruitment strategy for any major modern multi-warband chaos force.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

Is there anything confirming Chaos corruption actually makes geneseed unusable? I just assumed it messed up some of the fine tuned stuff and made the subjects more prone to being gribbly. Usually when we talk about corrupted geneseed in terms of loyalists, it results in marines that are crazed, spiky, deformed etc, all of which seem like things Chaos Marines would be alright with.

[Lord Asvaldir]

I see no reason why chaos marines would not used corrupted gene seed. In fact especially with fanatical warbands like the Word Bearers, why would they care? They would probably see more chaos corruption as a good thing. Less fanatical legions like the Night Lords might take more care in protecting their gene seed, but I'm sure it's corrupted in some way. My guess would be it brings out the character flaws from each legion more-like Logar's fanaticism for the Word Bearers, or the madness of Conrad Cruze for a Night Lords legionary, which makes a lot of sense for explaining chaos marines behavior.  

[Tenebris]

This question was asked at least twenty times since I am a brother of B&C and twenty times my answer is the following:

 

Consider everything you know about the loyalist genelines, how space marine chapters replenish their numbers, how the Lords of Terra decree new "Foundings" and how many traits, defects and blessings accompany these genelines. 

 

Consider also all that has been ever said and written about the legions of Chaos. Everything from sorcery, arcane technology to the miracles of resurrection, apotheosis, spawnhood and genecraft. 

 

Now multiply all the above by a hundred fold and you have the answer to your question. Chaos not only is able to create new marines but many dead ones are returned to life by means of necromancy, sorcery, divine intervention or forbidden technology. Many more chaos space marines are created from the harvested geneseed, entire warbands are brought to life with both conventional and arcane technology and this is just the tip of the iceberg. To say that the traitor legions lack for manpower is a grave prejudice since the more recent the lore, the more we know that this is not the case. 

 

The Word Bearers do have almost the entirety of their geneforging capacity intact, they can literally create new Hosts, and for their legion a thousand dead marines is just part of the arithmetic of faith and war. We know of Fabius but it is not hard to imagine the vast geneforging facilities of the Great Crusade era to be replicated in some shape and form. The Alpha Legion can recover from any loss, so can the Black Legion, so its seems it is also the case with the Iron Warriors, Death Guard and even to some extent the Night Lords. 

 

The mutagenic factor of the Warp is indeed a problem but it is no different from the genetic deviancy present during the GC era in the legions like the Emperor's Children, Thousand Sons, Blood Angels... it works both ways, not just as a negative factor, but I assume more often than not as a boon. A marine with three eyes, an extra set of lungs and maybe seven tongues is a perfectly viable specimen of astartes, what matters is just the performance on the battlefield and nothing else.

 

It takes some time but the Rubicae can be resurrected, the Plague Marines restored with fell necromancy and entire hosts of dead astartes plugged into artificial life with the proscribed technology of the Dark Mechanicus. All this without even scratching the main body of the iceberg in question, the divine power of the Chaos Gods and Daemons.

 

For all intents and purposes the traitor legions are immortal, can recuperate from their losses and have a chance at immortality. As an added bonus the Warp works to their favor for we have a myriad of warbands in their astartes prime as we have entire hosts of loyalist space marines now under the aegis of Chaos. Keep in mind that Chaos is unhindered by laws, dogmas, genetic policies and eugenics, Chaos is eternal, immortal, ever evolving, ever adapting, ever returning.

 

The single warband is what the texts often speak as walking on the edge between life and death, suffering from the peculiar effects of both Warp and constant warfare. But in truth in Chaos only the weak die, the strong prosper, thrive and multiply. So when we read that a warband struggles that is the portrayal of that moment in their personal history for there are countless means for those who wish to replenish the ranks of their warriors, means both arcane, divine and technological.  

 

An example of how things work with Chaos.

 

When creating a Space Marine a loyalist chapter would often select a small batch of recruits who have survived a dire trial and those genetically stable will receive the geneseed. Let's say that of twenty aspirants, five will make it to adeptus astartes battle brother.

 

A Chaos warband would simply find a batch of suitable candidates, namely from their slave stock or from a conquered people, often from a barbaric culture. These candidates would be pitted one against the other in a contest and than the survivors would receive the geneseed. Due to the influence of the Warp let's say that the geneseed is corrupted which simply means that instead of twenty aspirants, two hundred will receive the genessed. Most of them would horribly die in the process and let's say seven "stable" space marines will be the result and a dozen or so abominations as the runts of the litter. These abominations will never make it to astartes but can easily act as fearsome auxiliaries.

 

As you see the trick is only in the numbers. What is the result of the above is that a Chaos warband has to raid often for genetically stable and fierce slaves, that is all and that the few knowledgeable in genecrafting do their homework and splice regularly the geneseed zygotes.    

[Lay]

The old White Dwarf article on Fabius Bile (UK issue 278) has some information on this.

Quick summary:

- All legions revere the gene-seed of their Primarchs and wish to maintain a genetic link to them.

- Each legion has its own implantation process for gene-seed. It's Bile's job to "refine" it by making it deadlier for aspirants.

- The Legions suffer from varying degrees of degeneration and mutation, though NL are the purest in terms of resisting mutation.

- One extreme case is the Black Legion, whose gene-seed deteriorates due to so many of them becoming possessed. Abaddon has hired Bile to stabilize them using stolen gene-seed from Hydra Cordatus (a reference to  "Storm of Iron"). Bile even claims he can make them superior to 30k Marines.

- Also, the Emperor's Children's use of drugs has ruined their "Catalepsean node" (helps them stay awake for long periods of time). They now suffer from hallucinations and extreme paranoia whenever they try to sleep. Bile found a cure using the Canis Helix of a captured Space Wolf, but most legionnaires would rather explore this new experience to the very limit.

 

The article doesn't mention any Legion's gene-seed having become completely unusable though.