Lore question - Lifespans and timelines

[Berzul]

This has been extremely useful. Thank you all.

 

So, what I did was this:

 

Presuming a "current date" at 111.M42 (since, from then on, time gets wonky), I stated that the captain was born on 834.M41, and got his command on 024.M42, at the age of 190. Himself being over 277 years old. Then, for the sergeant, I stated that he was born on 029.M42, getting promoted to sergeant of the 3rd Tactical Squad of the 2nd Company on the year 077.M42, at the age of 48, with him being 82 years old at "present".

[Brother Tyler]

I split the side discussion about the age of Ulrik the Slayer into its own topic in the Space Wolves forum.

[War Angel]

I split the side discussion about the age of Ulrik the Slayer into its own topic in the Space Wolves forum.

For a second I thought that was vital to this discussion, but I think most of us have agreed they don

[Brother Tyler]

No, most of us agree that the lore says they die.

 

The Ulrik thing was a tangent.

[War Angel]

Not of old age. Not of old age that has been documented. In theory they are like lobsters.

[Iron Lord]

I think for the time you have in the position they are incredibly young. A 60-ish year old Space Marine Sergeant with 40 years as a Sergeant would have become a Sergeant at 20, basically a couple years after becoming a Battle Brother in his first reserve Company. He would need at Least a couple of decades first. Remember generally AFTER becoming a Scout, they are in the Devastator Company, then Assault Company, then Reserve Company, then Battle Company. He might make Sergeant in one of the Reserve Companies, usually a Battle Company. I would think that making Sergeant by 80 would be uncommon, earlier than that rare but possible.

 

A Captain spending a century in the position currently at 250 years old would be possible, he’d have to be exceptional either in prowess or circumstance to be so young but I think thst would be possible.

 

True. For comparison, Logan Grimnar (assuming he was about 13 or so when recruited) would have been around 57 when he became a Wolf Guard, would have become a Grey Hunter (Space Wolves Tactical  Marine) not too long before, and he became a Wolf Lord (Captain equivalent) when he was 115 or so,  and Great Wolf (Chapter Master equivalent) at 140-odd. But he's  considered exceptional.

 

 

 

If the "present  day" is 111.M42 or so, Pollandus, the Primaris Ultramarine whose career is described in the second 8e Space Marine Codex, must have been promoted fast, since he grew up on Talassar, and is not implied to have been frozen for 8000 years (so probably one of the first Primaris recruits after Cawl gave the Ultramarines the Primaris-making procedures), and has already risen to the 1st Company and died on his second mission with them. Before then he'd served as a 5th Company Sergeant for "several decades", and was a 6th Company Sergeant at some point before that.

 

If he was recruited around 001.M42, was in the 1st company for only about a year, right before the "present", dying during the "present year", was in the 5th Company as a Sergeant for 2 decades before that, and was only a Sergeant in the 6th Company for a very short time before transferring - that still means he took less than 90 years to rise from New Recruit to Sergeant.

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote a couple of long articles on this, in which I tried to square the circle on the Chapter size limit of 1,000 against the reported ages of marines. If you'd like to read the reasoning behind my conclusions, they're on +Death of a Rubricist+ here: Part I and Part II.

 

Good essays - but Calgar has to be quite a lot more than 300:

 

In the case of exceptional Chapters, like the Blood Angels, they can be much older; but the Codex model outlined here matches nicely with the exemplars of the Codex; the Ultramarines; who have a 300-year old Chapter Master and an (exceptional) 400-year old Chaplain.

 

+ Back in the mists of time, Codex: Ultramarines explicitly gave marines a lifespan of three hundred years, after which they would start to show signs of extreme old age. This still fits neatly with the info from the Horus Heresy series, and since we know Calgar is three hundred and looking old, that still seems to fit. Cassius is noted as remarkable for being four centuries old and still fighting.

 

- he was Chapter Master in 698. M41 when he led the Corinthian Crusade, 301  years before "the present" (999.M41 in this context). More  likely, he's only a handful of years younger than Cassius, at most.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Iron Lord