Legion recruiting during the great crusade

[Laughingman]

Got a question, how different where the recruiting practices of the old legions from the later codex compliant chapters? I assume the standards were somewhat lower, if not more industrial in scale. In particular I was apprehensive of Fenris, Nocturnes, or Baals ability to produce 90,000+ legionaries, to the standards of the later space marine chapters. 

[karden00]

I dont imagine those worlds produced quite that many legionaries at any certain point in the Crusade. Remember, lots of the original legionaries came from Terra, not those death worlds. 

 

Then again, 90,000+ people isn't a shockingly large number, when you think in planetary terms. 

Sure, it takes a lot more than 90,000 aspirants to get to 90,000 legionaries, but even if youre looking at a 4-1 ratio, 370,000 young males across an entire planet shouldnt be that hard to come by. We would have to go pretty far back in our own pre-history to have trouble with that. 

Buuuut you also have to consider that that could mean 370,000 young men not making babies, as Battlestar Galactica would say.....

Is it possible this wasn't the most thought out setting of all time....?

[Kinstryfe]

The implication I've gotten from a lot of fluff has been that the entire process of making an Astartes was much easier and possibly more potent back when the Primarchs were directly available as a source of geneseed/genetic material. Great Crusade era sources tend to not emphasize (to my memory) the large failure rates, and even adults are able to be successfully made into Astartes or pseudo-Astartes (albeit with a specifically mentioned very low success rate). It sounds like it's making a copy of a copy of a copy versus copying the original repeatedly. Eventually things get fuzzy and less viable over time.

 

It's also been stated that some Legions recruited from multiple planets (I'm thinking the Ultras and Sotha as an example), and I'd imagine the same FF Chapters that recruit from a variety of sources now likely also did so then (the First being an exception). There's also some possibility that some chapters have particular quirks that aided them in this challenge. The Blood Angels use direct blood of Sanguinius to help effect the change. The Vyka's geneseed is seemingly irreversibly tied to the particular gene-crafting that created the people of Fenris. It's possible that in both cases there is a factor weighted in the favor of the Legions where successful indoctrination rates are concerned.

 

Additionally, practically speaking, the removal of many young males won't necessarily affect birth rates, both due to the options of men fathering multiple children thru multiple couplings, and men having a lesser tie between age and practical virility. I don't believe I've ever read a piece of lore that went into much detail about Imperial traditions when it comes to coupling and reproduction, but on many planets where manpower is essential to military or industrial functions, it may be less about nuclear families with 2.5 kids and more about just making enough new bodies to man the machinery.

[Laughingman]

I dont imagine those worlds produced quite that many legionaries at any certain point in the Crusade. Remember, lots of the original legionaries came from Terra, not those death worlds. 

 

Then again, 90,000+ people isn't a shockingly large number, when you think in planetary terms. 

Sure, it takes a lot more than 90,000 aspirants to get to 90,000 legionaries, but even if youre looking at a 4-1 ratio, 370,000 young males across an entire planet shouldnt be that hard to come by. We would have to go pretty far back in our own pre-history to have trouble with that. 

Buuuut you also have to consider that that could mean 370,000 young men not making babies, as Battlestar Galactica would say.....

Is it possible this wasn't the most thought out setting of all time....?

 

I believe Wraith of Magnus claimed that Fenris had a total population of roughly 3.4 million in M41, Assuming the population has been stable for 10K years (that a big if) and roughly half of those are female, that leaves 1.7 million males, Assuming life is short a brutal on Fenris, then we can assume that a disproportionate % of the population will be younger (Lets say 44% are under age 15 like modern day Nigeria. That  Leaves something like 748,000 person pool of potential aspirants at any one time. 

 

That leaves several more questions 

 

Anybody know the ratio of aspirants that make it to be space marines? 

What was the size of the Aspirant influxes in the Great crusade era?

Edited January 7, 2018 by Laughingman

[Plasmablasts]

So, Fenris’s total population was just slightly higher than that of Wales? (3.1 m in 2016, according to Wikipedia.) Edited January 7, 2018 by Plasmablasts

[Laughingman]

So, Fenris’s total population was just slightly higher than that of Wales?

 

40k Lore is rarely written by people with backgrounds in demographics, or logistics. So they come up with numbers that make no sense for such things....

[Kinstryfe]

Fenris is often depicted as having a small population mainly because it is such a harsh and unforgiving climate that the official Imperial Census Bureau tends to give up on the count after the third time the tectonic plates tear themselves apart and reknit together into new landmasses.

[Marshal Rohr]

Guys, Fenris has always had a population in the low single digits millions. In Inferno it suggests humans shouldn’t even be able to continue life there, but somehow do.

[Laughingman]

My point still stands, Especially given the theoretical child Mortality rate of Fenris, which is likely dreadful, in excess of 30%-50% child mortality rate suffered by pre-modern humans.

[Marshal Rohr]

I’m pretty sure Inferno addresses it but I don’t have the passages in hand. My point isn’t that Wrath of Fenris is accurate, but that Inferno is a better alternative explanation.

[Gorgoff]

Iron Warriors took whole generations of young boys with them to fuel their crusades. That led finally to the little tussle in Olympia. ;)

[LilShah]

I’d argue that Legion recruiting was more industrial than Chapter recruiting. Remember 30k is supposed to be the era when things start looking up for humanity.

[Crizza]

During the great cursade the Legiones Astartes could produce an Astartes every year.
Thy took children, pumped them full of the necessary organs and after a year they were hypnoconditioned.
This is a point that freaked me out: Your typical Astartes was a child soldier...

[Marshal Rohr]

During the great cursade the Legiones Astartes could produce an Astartes every year.

Thy took children, pumped them full of the necessary organs and after a year they were hypnoconditioned.

This is a point that freaked me out: Your typical Astartes was a child soldier...

Wasn’t the process in Praetorian of Dorn longer than a year?

[LilShah]

During the great cursade the Legiones Astartes could produce an Astartes every year.

Thy took children, pumped them full of the necessary organs and after a year they were hypnoconditioned.

This is a point that freaked me out: Your typical Astartes was a child soldier...

 

During the great cursade the Legiones Astartes could produce an Astartes every year.

Thy took children, pumped them full of the necessary organs and after a year they were hypnoconditioned.

This is a point that freaked me out: Your typical Astartes was a child soldier...

Wasn’t the process in Praetorian of Dorn longer than a year?

From what I understand you could really stretch it thin like Garland Surlak did on Bodt, making Astartes within two years but a lot of them liable to organ failure and even more dying with the Butcher’s Nails being implanted.

 

But the ideal way of making Astartes (according to the Index Astartes) is to take child from the ages of 11-13 submit them to initial physical testing and then gradually start implanting organs into them over the course of 9-10 years implant all the organs whilst undergoing training and hypnoindoctrination. If we factor in that Primarch gene-seed was readily available and fresher we can take a year off the training and add it to the age of recruitment at most. So when an Astartes finishes being made they are effectively hormonally warriors that are 18 in their aging process (which itself has been severely slowed) and thus in the ‘prime’ of their life, but they are stuck in a limbo of perpetual-puberty.

 

And here is where we see that people like Luther, Erebus, Zahariel, Thengir’s sons and Amon are mortals. Their organs would have give out eventually due to the fact their aging process had already started when they were inducted into the Legions, due to being fully fledged adults, and thus not true Astartes.

 

As for child soldiers, I agree it’s a horrible thing and despise it, and I’d even agree that the majority of Chapters in 40k do apply as using them but...

 

I feel it’s slightly different with the Legions. Whilst they definitely can’t retire until death, the majority of the Legions are formed from home worlds and liberated planets where the Primarchs are Demi-gods that more often than not established a century long golden age. Unlike Hivedwelling teens press ganged to fight for a visiting chapter the young males of their planets were most likely always told to aspire to be like their heroes and legendary protectors. So IMHO it’s a bit different to a real child-soldier. Not extremely different but still a bit.

Edited January 11, 2018 by LilShah

[Laughingman]

I assumed the legions were making legiones astartes in less then 10 years, They took a child, turned him into a monster, and promptly killing the vast majority of them within a couple of decades in costly compliance actions.

 

The actual recruiting process likely varied wildly, some legions simply showed up on a hive world arrested/shackled/dragged every able body youth ganger between 10-15 to waiting ships, took the top 5% made them into space marines, then conscripted the rests into imperial army regiments. Others used highly regimented selection processes to select individual to become space marine.

[bluntblade]

During the great cursade the Legiones Astartes could produce an Astartes every year.

Thy took children, pumped them full of the necessary organs and after a year they were hypnoconditioned.

This is a point that freaked me out: Your typical Astartes was a child soldier...

You're confusing the Crusade with the Heresy. Those techniques began being used en masse following Isstvan.

 

Though the World Eaters did go for drastically accelerated induction.

[Kasper_Hawser]

I assumed the legions were making legiones astartes in less then 10 years, They took a child, turned him into a monster, and promptly killing the vast majority of them within a couple of decades in costly compliance actions.

 

The actual recruiting process likely varied wildly, some legions simply showed up on a hive world arrested/shackled/dragged every able body youth ganger between 10-15 to waiting ships, took the top 5% made them into space marines, then conscripted the rests into imperial army regiments. Others used highly regimented selection processes to select individual to become space marine.

 

we also have the matter of gene seed mutations, which for some legions, particularly Thousand Sons and Space Wolves, would be even slower than the usual decade to create proper Astartes. 

 

Bear in mind GW writers don't really do much research to being consistent on legion numbers and recruitment. Like why the Ultramarines number nearly 200K at one point when the Word Bearers at their height was roughly 100K. Unless the smurfs were lazier than the other legions (unlikely considering the huge amount of awards and what not they got), this either means some legions had it easier in induction and training, while others just fought smarter and were careful about throwing their marines into the grinder (which Great Crusade era marines could do)

 

(source: ADB First Heretic says that EXCEPT for the Ultramarines, the Word Bearer numbers is the second largest of the legions yet they achieved the least conquest before Monarchia)

 

Even when every legionaire was Terran, the recruiting process seems quite different. Night Lords were taken from prison nations even then, Emperor's Children were taken from fallen lords, etc.

[M@verik115]

Iron Warriors took whole generations of young boys with them to fuel their crusades. That led finally to the little tussle in Olympia.

Those poor boys...

[bluntblade]

Ferrus took tithes of mortals to supplement Medusa's population, and Russ might have done the same. An interesting twist on the methods used by some Legions.

[Lord Tharand]

It's mentioned time and again in the black books that the legions would take tithes from planets they conquered before moving on.  Basically they were always taking in new stock to replenish the ranks. 

 

Also the black books talk a lot about the different legions success rates with implantation of the geneseed.

[TheRealMcCagh]

I wonder if they drew from the people on board the ships as well. It seems like vessels always had a massive city of serfs and undesirables in the underdecks. During the crusade there probably wasn't as much mutation. 

[Calas Typhon]

Most Legions as pointed out would recruit as they went along from world to world, with possibly the exception of three or four who would probably strictly recruit from their homeworld. 

 

The Death Guard after being reunited with Mortarion made Barbarus a vat for breeding new warriors for the Legion, Its one of the only Legion homeworlds that took to recruiting very very large amounts of population with no hatred in return and no uprisings as we see with Olympia and Nostramo. I would presume that the Iron Hands and Medusa were very similar, both of the legion homeworlds population would die to have their sons become the warriors of their planets saviours due to the culture of the planets and reliance on strength. 

 

The World Eaters and Iron Warriors would take to worlds I would imagine picking up whole generations of youth and elders for the war machine to work on ships or become new Legionaries. World Eaters are confirmed to do this as they are almost as diverse in homeworld backgrounds for Legionaries as the Ultramarines are.

 

Sons of Horus, White Scars, Salamanders and Blood Angels I would imagine would primarily recruit from their homeworlds only but allow exceptions when they find them. 

 

The other Legions recruit from everywhere or its unknown. 

Edited January 11, 2018 by Calas Typhon

[Elzender]

In Extermination, page 60, the Imperial Fists are described as recruiting from all planets they conquered, and it is stated that in some instances massive recruitments ended up forming entire companies, battalions or even regiments. Actually, a previous paragraph says that all legions recruited from across the galaxy, but I understand it is more of a generalization, and also states that some Legions tended to get most recruits from a single planet.

 

Edit: added page number and phrase rewritten for clarity.

Edited January 11, 2018 by Elzender

[TheRealMcCagh]

In one of the books it talks about how the Iron Hands would take people from other planets and bring them back to Medusa. I'm not sure if the tithe themselves would go on to be recruited or if it was just their offspring after they grew up on Medusa.