Why not make a female inquisitor leading the squad of Marines?

With all of the genetic implants given to marines, I'm pretty sure they'd have figured out whether there was a woman in their order or not.

Besides, whose to say there isn't a chapter of all female space marines out there? Just because they haven't made models for them doesn't mean they don't exist. Armies pop up in the game that never existed before pretty regularly and everyone easily accepts those as cannon. Why not, a little known all female space marine chapter?

You think sisters of battle have have the only female access to power armor?

LeBlanc13 said:

Yes. Sisters of Battle are the *only dedicated militaristic order* that has females with Power Armor. There are no female Space Marines, there never has been, and if they alter the background to suddenly accommodate themthey'll be selling out to the seemingly endless legion of basement dwellers who seem obsessed with superhuman female killing machines(that somehow are still pretty! hurp!).

Deal with it.

If you want a female killing machine there are several ways, but if you want to come anywhere near Space Marine-level without being twice as experienced or a psyker you should say goodbye to the idea of her being beautiful. Assassins can reach similar levels of combat prowess but pay for that with lots of ugly augmentations.

http://www.servantsoftheimperium.com/comic/?comicid=27

By extension a filthy-rich arch-militant or bodyguard of an inquisitor could maybe get similar stuff and a power armour and fight like a Space Marine that way.

You can also kiss the "experienced" part away barring some VERY extreme circumstances. Some of the Astartes fighting on the field(Loyalist side) are hundreds of years old. That, mind you, is discounting the Dreadnoughts who can be thousands of years old, with one even having fought in the Horus Heresy.

And that's not even getting into the Traitor Astartes, quite a few of whom actually participated in the Horus Heresy.

Kanluwen said:

Did you say that when the Necrons were released? How about the Tau?

None of these races existed before their army books came out, but no one ever complained about that.

Why couldn't there be a female chapter of space marines? The fluff doesn't condemn it... It just uses male chapters as an example.

Wny can't geneseed be implanted into women?

"Deal with it." - Nice open minded coment

Can you point to something in the the current rulebooks that states women can't be space marines? It's not addressed because, so far we've only been shown male dominated chapters. I've read no where that geneseed couldn't be implanted into females. In fact, when Sisters of Battle came out, I know a ton of people that started playing them as an all female codex chapter of space marines.

Kanluwen said:

Well, it seems that there are some ways to prolong life without being a Space Marine or a heretic. And In RPG's "experience" is usually something that gets messed up by the leveling system.

LeBlanc13 said:

Sorry, but there is a difference. It was never stated that Eldar and a few others are the only Xenos in existence. Xenos belong to the uncountable enemies of the Empire. However it was specifically stated that the procedure that makes Space Marines out of normal humans ONLY WORKS ON MEN. It was specifically meant to work with male DNA and male hormones. If you want female Space Marines you have to start from the beginning. Maybe they could do so by reverse engineering the gene seed and seeing what had to be changed for that. But they don't have the knowledge anymore. They know how to reproduce old technology but they don't understand it. And if some genius magos biologis would figure it out both he an his creations would be burned alive for desecrating the work of the Emperor.

And why would somebody go through the effort. Space Marines work fine, what could female Space Marines do what the males can't?

LeBlanc13 said:

SoB were GW's attempt to make female space marines... they have the same armor values in the TT, and same WS (I think?).... why a need for female space marines when you have a perfectly viable (and cute) branch of them already.

Mjoellnir said:

Can you point to the exact text in the codex or rulebook that states marines can't be female? I'd prefer not to just take your word for it.

I just don't ever remember reading this anywhere. They refer to marines as brother marine, brother sergeant and so on, but maybe because it was a male chapter. Frankly, I've only seen male references, but I'm open-minded enough to accept it if they state there's a female chapter out there. By no means would they be pretty since most of the hormones injected into them would bulk them up big time.

Maybe they are like dwarves in Tolkien and once they become a marine, you can't tell the difference since they're all chem-gelded anyway.

Six pages and counting...I have a really bad case of Deja Vu .

Hopefully FFG releases some sneak peek materiel soon, so we can have something new to talk about. A page listing the available Chapters would be nice. Pretty please .

What it brings to the game is your own imagination. Since GW left two 1st Founding Space Marine Legions open to player creativity, why couldn't either one of those Legions be female?

Here's how I'd introduce an all female Space Marine Legion: Seeing as how many of the 1st Founding Legions have backgrounds rooted in Terran history i.e. Space Wolves have an intensely rich Nordic feel and look to them, Ultramarines go with the Roman Empire approach, I'd go the Amazonian route with them. Who's to say that the reason there are no Imperial records on them wasn't the Emperor's own doing? What if he commanded an entire Legion to do something in secret.

There's plenty of reasons this could happen and once again, if you want to have an all-female Space Marine Legion, I say go for it.

Ooohh!!!

What if the 'stricken' from record chapters were female chapters?

Nice, huh?

LeBlanc13 said:

LeBlanc13 said:

Necron existed in the fluff beforehand, don't know where you were. In fact, they were introduced courtesy of the Sisters of Battle and the Necrontyr slaughtering one of their Sanctuary worlds before fading away.

Now, if you were to say the C'Tan....then I'd agree. We'd heard nothing of them beforehand, much less the fact that apparently one of the C'Tan is responsible for the Tyranids.

And it's been explained why there can't be geneseed implanted into women. It was *made* to work with the male physiology, and the geneseed itself was the work of the Emperor's scientific knowledge. With him rotting away on the Golden Throne, there's no possible way to build upon his workbecause he didn't make the process of creating the geneseed itself public knowledge. He didn't even share it with the bloody Primarchs, his Chosen Sons.The only reason the Imperium can still produce geneseed is through minor cloning and imitation, like the vast amounts of Imperial technology out there.

Let female Space Marines die already.

Aajav-Khan said:

GO IMPERIAL FISTS!

LeBlanc13 said:

Warhammer 40,000 Compendium, page 9

'They must be male because zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types...'

It's also in White Dwarf 249 and a few other places over the years.

Many people in the thread have suggested ways in which a female character can work alongside a Deathwatch Kill Team (Inquisitor, Assassin etc.).

Likewise suggestions have been made on ways to just ignore it for your game. Sure, you're not going to be following the canon setting, but it's your game.

Evilref said:

By compendium, did you mean the current rulebook?

A previous edition doesn't work for me. GW changes canon all the time in new editions of the game and allows the novels to run rampant with changing "The Truth" of what everyone knows.

@kanluwen, yes the necrons were mentioned before their army book came out.... You failed to answer the tau though. While Kroot were mentioned in prior rulebooks, the Tau were not. Frankly, I'm just giving you too much information to latch onto. At least Evilref is trying to show me what I've asked for.

LeBlanc13 said:

Look, you can shift the goalposts and set the terms of your argument however you like. If you want to say that your game can have female Space Marines then, as previously said many times, it's your game, you can do what you want with it.

As far as official game canon is concerned, however, no, there are no female Space Marines. There has not been anything published to say there are. There have been many books published to say there aren't. This subject has been dredged up thousands of times over the years, I'm sure it will continue to be dredged up.

The absence of something being explicitely said in the 5th edition Codex doesn't mean the position's changed and they're retroactively existant in the Imperium.

.

Thank you, unfortunately I don't have every Warhammer 40k book and didn't want to come with a wiki article.

Sorry, LeBlanc but canon remains as long as it is retconned. Evilref showed you what is the actual state, now you have to prove a retcon.

And please leave the two lost Primarchs alone, as far as I remember they were mentioned as male:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Two_unknown_legions

20 statues of the Primarchs were erected in the Imperial Palace on Terra. By the time of the Horus Heresy, plinths II and XI "...had been vacant for a long time. No-one ever spoke of those two absent brothers [and] their separate tragedies."

So no female Spacies either.

Is it so hard to understand that the Emperor was a genius chauvinist?

SonofDorn said:

It should be remembered that the Legions themselves are lost as well as the Primarchs. They didn't take part in the Heresy one way or another (they were lost before it, we know that much), so consequently they'd not be involved in the Second Founding (the division into Chapters), or in the founding of the Inquisition and its attendant Orders Militant. They wouldn't, for example, have the traditional ties to the Deathwatch that many contemporary Chapters possess.

The Primarchs were male, all twenty of them - Rogal Dorn is noted as having looked upon the statues of the Primarchs during the fortification of Terra at the start of the Heresy (this is in the short story/audiobook "The Lightning Tower"), musing upon the empty plinths of the 2nd and 11th as his "two absent brothers [and] their separate tragedies."

Essentially, the canon doesn't allow for girls to become Space Marines, much as it doesn't allow full-grown men (aspirants are all children or adolescents, remember), chimpanzees or Orks to become Astartes. It's been stated repeatedly over the years, and not a single example of a female Space Marine exists within over two decades of published material.

Feel free to ignore canon for your own games... but don't expect to find justification within the published lore if you do.

LeBlanc13 said:

By the by, the days of the novels running rampant changing "The Truth" are over, and have been since C.S. Goto royally raped the background with his Twilight-esque Eldar on Space Marine love stories. So, you're wrong on that. The only real 'changes' since then have been through poor editing or more modern Codexes compared to old 3rd editions(Daemonhunters/Witchhunters/Necrons/Dark Eldar compared to Tau, Tyranids, Apocalypse, etc).

And those ones where the fluff doesn't line up are...gasp shock...being redone either way, so they'll probably be y'know...in line with the current stuff.

But as for the Tau...big whoop if they weren't mentioned in some tiny B&W illustration in the early rulebooks. Neither were female Space Marines.

Ever. The only 'example of a female Space Marine' that people cling to is a Female Adventurer in Power Armor from Games Workshop's early days.

And guess what? That was a mislabelling of the product itself, since it was supposed to be "Female Adventurer in Space Marine Power Armor", but the first run was mislabelled on the blister.

But anyways, it doesn't seem like you want anything from the canon that will disprove your hackjob female Space Marines. You're as bad as the Chaos Tau(hurr!) or Slaanesh Eldar(...really? REALLY? yeah. that'll bloody happen), or the worst of all: the bloody Squat players who still think it's funny when given facetime with the studio members to ask "Hurr hurr WHY NO SQUATS?!".

Evilref said:

Been a hot topic for a long time, huh?

Well I've been around since 2nd Edition and I've always been open to the possibility.

Honestly, I've not been arguing this other than to ask where it states they can't exist.

Glad you pointed out a source, but we all know things change from edition to edition in the game. The fact that current products don't cover it could mean it's on the horizon.

I won't bother you guys anymore with my challenging of your opinions. You don't seem to like it much and honestly, I didn't mean any harm or really care very much whether there is or isn't a female chapter.

Opinion implies that we don't have written proof to back it up.

Stating that "it's not in the current background material I've read" doesn't mean it's on the horizon. If that were true, the Imperial Guard are getting Land Speeders and Jetbikes next Codex and the Dark Eldar are going to ride Rosie O'Donnell into battle.

Kanluwen said:

Okay, now it's going off-topic but I have to ask. I understand why Chaos Tau aren't possible (Tau are a bunch of weird pseudo-pariahs with no connection to the warp as far as I remember), I would really like to play against Slaanesh Eldar (don't even have to paint an army for that, Slaanesh eats their souls before they deploy, I win by default ), but what's so bad about Squats? I know that they practically wrote them out of the background, but were they ever important enough that their (non-)existence changes the setting in any big way?

Kanluwen said:

I have written proof too. I've got an entire current edition that doesn't say anywhere that female marines don't exist.

Anyway, stop dragging me back in. I concede...

Live in your male dominated space marine world.

LeBlanc13 said:

The absence of something doesn't prove its existence. That's a fundamental point of both logic and science.

Evilref said:

...don't forget rules lawyering too!