Can chaos create all new marines?

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Now I know geneseed is needed to create a new marine, but I’m sure bile or someone maybe even the dark mechanicus, sure has raided a chapter or two’s geneseed stocks.

but do the traitor legions have the infrastructure to actually recruit new aspirants from worlds they control?

[Gilbertus1]

The dark gods could conjure up something, couldnt they?

A giant daemonic womb that "grows" marines, (just throwing out ideas, its probably wrong lol)

[Guzzlrr]

@Gilbertus1 you are Very Close, I'm sure there's other and probably more successful methods now but Yeah, they have a way of Creating new Marines that is pretty horrific, the book Dead Sky, Black Sun (which is pretty old now) goes into detail, Slave women though warp voodoo made to give birth to Skinless Chaos Marines (which the mothers then die in the birthing process) the skin from the "mother" is used to skin the marine. 

been a while since i read that book but that's what I remember.

A high Rate of Failure as well I believe many marines just come out as warp spawned mutants

Edited July 9, 2022 by Guzzlrr

[Pirate Empress]

Yeah, it's why Fabius Bile is so integral to the Long War. He can purify geneseed for warbands as well as just straight up clone Astartes to get around that pesky needing untainted progenoid glands thing.

[Lord Abaia]

In the epilogue of the Night Lords trilogy a new marine is created from geneseed which had been extracted from a heresy-era legionary.

There's also examples of chaos warbands stealing functional geneseed from loyalist chapters. One prominent example is the Fall of Vilamus, where the Red Corsairs sacked the Marines Errant's fortress monastery and made off with their geneseed stores. I don't know if it was explicitly stated that the geneseed would be implanted into recruits or if this was just a way to hurt the Marines Errant. I was always under the impression that it was used to grow the Red Corsairs though.

I can't think of any specific examples of other Legions or warbands doing this, but I vaguely recall there being examples of it. Maybe some of the Thousand Sons lore describes other chapters geneseed being used to create spawn or helbrutes or something.

[Toldavf]

If you have geneseed, kidnapped aspirants and an apothecary with the skills a strike cruiser would have enough room to train them. The big issue to swelling the ranks of the traitors is equipping them.  Power armour is not easy to aquire, it's possible the Dark mech can build new suits but those would be expensive, you can steel suits from other warbands or loyalist corpses but that has obvious risks.  I think the best way to get new suits would be to ambush the cargo hauler with them on striking quickly and leaving before you face reprisal it's still risky and may not be worth it depending on the transports escorts. 

[Brother Nathan]

loyalists defeat traitors they destroy the leavings. traitors however will loot and deface and use and recycle everything. some legions will find this harder than others and will depend n ow they survved this long. thousand sons i doubt can do much. worldeaters must have excellent medics with how mangled Khârn returns... geenseed production depending on how the warp now is with them. iron warriors have books with one fairly well described series of production methods in it. id say the non aligned legions have more luck with such providing apothecary's have survived enough to do the necessary experiments. 

and then theres corrupting loyalists / renegades getting used and folded in etc... 

[Marshal Mittens]

I am fairly sure I have read that Deathguard and some other legions were still recruiting new marines? I would imagine most Khorne based legions would have much mutation either? 

 

Nightlords and Alpha Legion are probably good too?

[Gilbertus1]

4 hours ago, Guzzlrr said:

A high Rate of Failure as well I believe many marines just come out as warp spawned mutants

Now we know where some of the accursed cultists come from ;)

Thanks for the explanation.

 

[BrainFireBob]

Hypno training was used on the Sable Swords by the NL ot AL.

If the gene seed isn't too mutated, it's usable by the traitors if they have access to an Apothecarion. Problem's just that.

Bile can fix it, if you can pay his price. There's the Daemonculaba, used in Dead Sky, Black Sun. 

The Death Guard still recruit from their Plague Planets. Slave gladiators on Medrengard compete to induct, so they have facilities. Some Crusade era warships had Apothecarions on board, so that was an option. 

One of my favorite WD stories was a Chaos Marine inspiring a rebellion amongst nomads that led to SMs showing up. The CSM took something from their necks and asked a surviving rebel "if he wanted to serve the gods."

1K Sons have always bothered me for the same reason as BAs. They've had 10k years and the gene-seed from the Sorcerers who survived the Rubric. (Similarly, after 10K years, Baal's only an irradiated wasteland if they keep seeding it with radiation- whatever from the original nuke war would've decayed already.)

[WrathOfTheLion]

22 hours ago, Magpie Knight said:

In the epilogue of the Night Lords trilogy a new marine is created from geneseed which had been extracted from a heresy-era legionary.

There's also examples of chaos warbands stealing functional geneseed from loyalist chapters. One prominent example is the Fall of Vilamus, where the Red Corsairs sacked the Marines Errant's fortress monastery and made off with their geneseed stores. I don't know if it was explicitly stated that the geneseed would be implanted into recruits or if this was just a way to hurt the Marines Errant. I was always under the impression that it was used to grow the Red Corsairs though.

I can't think of any specific examples of other Legions or warbands doing this, but I vaguely recall there being examples of it. Maybe some of the Thousand Sons lore describes other chapters geneseed being used to create spawn or helbrutes or something.

In the new Codex, it says they used some of the geneseed from the Fall of Vilamus to make new Astartes, and used some of it to trade with other Warbands/Legions, who I guess would have also used it to make new Astartes.

[Karhedron]

Some worlds on the fringes of the EOT have chaos-worshiping human populations. Young aspirants fight for the honour of joining the warriors of the gods. This is not unlike imperial recruitment methods. Some less mutated Marines have viable geneseed but raiding loyalist Chapters' geneseeds is a popular one. I seem to recall Iron Warriors favour stolen Imperial Fists geneseed. Then, as others have said, there are more exotic ways of producing new recruits.

[MegaVolt87]

Yes they can now. CSM have bases and strongholds in real space again since the fall of Cadia. There haven't been this many Legion forces in realspace since the Scouring era. So, a return to normal for recruitment is plausible and possible. You could have bartered with Bile for stock on the way to real space or you could be finally cracking that reserve sitting in stasis + warded etc to re-build. 

[Galron]

In Storm of Iron, their entire purpose was to break into the fortress and steal the mechanicus repository of geneseed. Some of which the IW lord consumed which turned him into a daemon prince and then they took the rest for making more marines. It also mentions that Honsue, the main protagonist who was an IW captain, was a mutt and was created from Imperial Fist geneseed originally. He was derided and picked on the entire book from the "bad" guy who was a Heresy veteran for being unpure. But in the end, Honsue winds up leading the entire warband when the lord goes daemon prince and decides to go walk about in the warp. The old terminator captain gets stepped on by a warhound, and the bad dude gets killed I think by a blood thirster of his own creation from a possessed slave. One of the best books Black Library ever printed and well worth the read.

[RolandTHTG]

On 7/9/2022 at 5:01 PM, BrainFireBob said:

 

1K Sons have always bothered me for the same reason as BAs. They've had 10k years and the gene-seed from the Sorcerers who survived the Rubric. (Similarly, after 10K years, Baal's only an irradiated wasteland if they keep seeding it with radiation- whatever from the original nuke war would've decayed already.)

The thousand sons keep their numbers up because they are apparently able to "re-summon" a rubric as long as they have a piece of his armor and his name. Then between a small number of new sorcerers created from existing geenseed and recruiting other renegade marine sorcerers, they are able to maintain their force numbers. 

[SillyDreadnought]

On 7/9/2022 at 4:27 PM, Guzzlrr said:

you are Very Close, I'm sure there's other and probably more successful methods now but Yeah, they have a way of Creating new Marines that is pretty horrific, the book Dead Sky, Black Sun (which is pretty old now) goes into detail, Slave women though warp voodoo made to give birth to Skinless Chaos Marines (which the mothers then die in the birthing process) the skin from the "mother" is used to skin the marine. 

Alternatively you could read the Night Lords Trilogy where, in the third book, the warband has 250 boys ready for mass implantation of the organs. And a very skilled Apothecary to do it.

Baby's first body horror in the Daemonculaba is honestly the most embarrassing way to go about it when the Legions already perfected mass implantation methods during the Heresy. 

[Xenith]

2 hours ago, SillyDreadnought said:

Baby's first body horror in the Daemonculaba is honestly the most embarrassing way to go about it when the Legions already perfected mass implantation methods during the Heresy. 

Just remember that Dead Sky, Black Sun was written at a point in the lore before the heresy was fleshed out, and traitor legions had largely lost most of their apothecaries, Bile being pretty much the only one able to make new marines, while traitors were clinging on to existence. Though I guess Honsou had to come from somewhere?

[BrainFireBob]

Honorable Soulaka. He's a Bile creation, or his gene-seed is

[Cheex]

The recent Index: World Eaters explicitly talks about Berzerker-surgeons recruiting new Marines.

[sitnam]

12 hours ago, SillyDreadnought said:

Alternatively you could read the Night Lords Trilogy where, in the third book, the warband has 250 boys ready for mass implantation of the organs. And a very skilled Apothecary to do it.

Baby's first body horror in the Daemonculaba is honestly the most embarrassing way to go about it when the Legions already perfected mass implantation methods during the Heresy. 

I think the issue with the Chaos Marines recruitment is three fold:

1) Mass geneseed degradation from the Eye of Terror

2) Lack of skilled apothecaries

3) Lack of a stable recruit population

These three factors likely limit the mass production methods used during the Heresy. The NL in the book circumvented all three of these factors. Warband that are unable too have to turn to alternative means. The whole reason Fabius Bile holds such power is his genecraft skill being sold to the various Chaos factions

Edited July 21, 2022 by sitnam

[BrainFireBob]

Bile's primary service may be repairing mutation and making gene-seed viable again. He has samples of all the Primarchs