Horus Heresy Veterans that are somehow older than 10k

[Moonreaper666]

There have been many Horus Heresy Veterans that have only aged a few centuries or millenia to the present day due to random time dilation in the times they live in the Warp

 

I was wondering if there was a Chaos Space Marine, normal mortal, mutant or alien that is like 15-20k years old in the lore?

[Doom Herald]

I know in Void Stalker, it is mentioned that there are some Traitor Legionaires that are well older than 10,000 years due to time in the Warp. I dont recall any specific names being stated though.

 

I believe Eldrad was pretty old even before the Heresy and he is still alive.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Doom Herald

[Quixus]

I believe Eldrad was pretty old even before the Heresy and he is still alive.

Well that is a filthy Xeno. Who knows what trickery they employ.

[Qkhitai]

Arguleon Veq is implied to have already lived a long time before he became a Word Bearer during the Heresy, so he could arguably be over 15 or 20,000 years old (if we assume the novel he appears in is set in M41, which isn't ever directly stated). That does conflict with the lore regarding how Space Marines are created though, and does come from the 3rd ed era, where the fluff was a little more malleable and authors tended to play a bit more fast and loose with these things. As such, its veracity in the canon might be debatable these days.

[MegaVolt87]

Surely the very few surviving Unification era Terran vets would technically be the oldest, if not still active then in a dread at least. 

[Goreshed]

Have they really named one? No. Outside of Arguleon Veq that Qkhitai named there really hasn't been to my knowledge. Is it possible? Sure, it's the warp, times moves in all directions and it would in theory be possible for someone to be much older on that scale. There have been a couple cases in the novels where a character remarks to another that they are older because of time spent in stasis traveling to an area instead of the warp and such. It really depends on how that time is counted.

[Gederas]

The two 100% confirmed oldest are Ahriman and Khârn, who were born pre-Unification Wars on Terra, and inducted into their Legions during/after the Unification Wars, so roughly 13,000 for both of them.

[Leif Bearclaw]

The two 100% confirmed oldest are Ahriman and Khârn, who were born pre-Unification Wars on Terra, and inducted into their Legions during/after the Unification Wars, so roughly 13,000 for both of them.

Where are you getting the 13,000 figure? Firstly, Ahriman is stated to have been recruited as an Astartes after the alliance with Mars (so at the start of the Great Crusade), making Ahriman 'only' around 10,000 years old in realspace terms (give or take a century here of there, both for the 200 years of the Great Crusade, plus Warp shenanigans). Then Khârn, although Terran born, is specifically noted as having been trained on Bodt, so he must have been born during the Great Crusade to have still been young enough to join the Legion when it was recruiting away from Sol. So again 'only' around 10k years old by realspace standards. Lastly, where does the idea that Terran unification took 3000 years come from? That seems mad. Not only does the Great Crusade encounter Eldar still reeling from the Fall (the Fall generally being seen as the end of the warp storms isolating Terra and instigating the rise of the Imperium), which would be bizarre if the Fall was millennia in the past. Then there's the implication it took the Emperor 15 times longer to conquer Terra than the rest of the galaxy (200 years for the GC vs 3000 for Unification), which just rings false. Lastly, there's the life of Arik Taranis. Noted as being one of the first 'proto-Astartes' (so Thunder Warriors) it seems he served for pretty much the entire Unification War. But the idea of Thunder Warriors living for 3000+ years (making Taranis substanitally older by Ararat than even Dante in m41) would seem to run contrary to the idea that they were genetically unstable, more crude than Astartes etc. So it seems more likely that the UNification wars were substantially shorter than 3000 years.

 

All info corroborated by Lexicanum at time of writing.

[Kite Senet]

Well, as I understand the history, Ahriman seems to have been, with the rest of the first-batch Astartes, present at the start of the Great Crusade in ~798 M30 (according to Lexicanum), and it is currently early M42, so Ahriman would actually be a little over 11,200 years old.

 

That said, I suspect he's spent so much time in the Eye of Terror that timey-wimey warp garbage could easily modify his actual age by several orders of magnitude.

[Qkhitai]

Arguleon Veq is implied to have already lived a long time before he became a Word Bearer during the Heresy, so he could arguably be over 15 or 20,000 years old (if we assume the novel he appears in is set in M41, which isn't ever directly stated). That does conflict with the lore regarding how Space Marines are created though, and does come from the 3rd ed era, where the fluff was a little more malleable and authors tended to play a bit more fast and loose with these things. As such, its veracity in the canon might be debatable these days.

 

 

Just to follow up on this, having picked up a copy of Daemon World:

 

'Most, however, agree that it was during the time of the Blind Crusade, when the mindless herds of humankind were united in the Imperium of the Corpse-God, that Veq began his conquest. Perhaps one hundred and fifty centuries passed between that time and the current age, and yet the legacy of Arguleon Veq still covers Torvendis like a thousand scars.'

 

'Amakyre had known Karnulon (Veq). Karnulon had been there in the depths of the Heresy, and had weathered ten thousand years of war in the name of Chaos. Amakyre remembered those twin lightning claws that sent crescents of power arcing off his dark scarlet power armour, the hard-edged face that had never aged and was lined with experience rather than years. He remembered how Karnulon had been taken to the court of Lorgar himself, and had perhaps even spoken with that reclusive giant, before rumours of his education in sorcery and his rapid warp-mastery of magic.'

 

'Karnulon has served since before the Heresy, he has learned at the court of Primarch Lorgar himself.'

 

'The man who had been called Kron by some, and Karnulon by others, was now content to think of himself by his first and greatest name: Arguleon Veq.'

 

So the books says Veq 'began his conquest' 15,000 years ago. It's probably wise for us to say that this was written prior to HH fluff being fully fleshed out, so the 'Blind Crusade' is the Great Crusade, which would be 10,000 years prior to M41 (unless we concede the book is written either in M46 or that time in the Maelstrom flows differently). However, the fact that his first and greatest name (Arguleon Veq) predates his joining the Word Bearers, and that he must have achieved a lot prior to becoming a Space Marine, 'when the Maelstrom was still young'. Of course, we don't really know when the Maelstrom was born, but Veq was assuredly active pre-Heresy/Great Crusade, since Amakyre notes that Veq served as a Word Bearer for ten thousand years. As such, if, under the name Karnulon, Veq was a Word Bearer for ten thousand years, he would have have to have spent a considerable amount of time prior to assuming this identity cementing his legacy as Arguleon Veq. I would suppose that Ben Counter's intention here was that Veq is at least 15,000 years old, with 10,000 years in service with the Word Bearers? 

 

Again, it's old fluff, and it doesn't gel with a lot of the new FW/BL canon, but he's probably the oldest Chaos Marine we know about.

[MegaVolt87]

Not just the date, seems out of scope of induction of only pre-pubescents as proper legionary candidates. Unless the kid was an alpha level psyker, what could they really achieve that's significant? Definitely must be adults being able to become full Astartes is how it reads.