Liam Kelly said:

my god emperor's throne...a female space marine of khorne *shudders* soo much blood....i think khorne would be scared of them...or slaneeshi space marines now itd be the poor male adepts that get a virgin sacrafice!!! me likey

Cailieg said:

That's pretty **** awesome.

Do you have that write-up posted on a blog or something? or is it all hard copy notes?

I'd be quite interested in reading what you have written down.

I do have extensive hard notes I am copying and adding art done by my spouse to.

I intend to post them for peaching once done with the transfer. To me they fulfill the role I need them to and add a bit of spice to the roleplay with the myriad of questions they bring to the table. And they present an alternative that is not a geneseeded female, that I found to be perfect for my own use.

Alexis

*smiles*

Cailieg said:

i too would be quite interested in seeing this as well...and the artwork.

See now it be intresting to do a Deathwatch Adventure when they have to put down a foul xenos backed plot to make Female Astertes actually...

I have to say that most of the posts are looking from a PC point of view based in our time frame............

Now lets look at the make up of the distant far future of a grim battle torn universe. First the make up of the gov. itself is that of serfdom. Just look back into the days of knights on horse back and such things. Knights which can be linked to the astertes are in all instances male.

I'm sorry to say (and yes I am prepared for the flaming) women are not knights there for they are not Astertes....If you want to make the "Jon of Arc" argument...remember she was burnt at the stake for being a HERETIC.

Yes you can play a battle nun(sister of battle) which can be on par in power with SMs (political power)...so yes the best idea is either learn to role play a male...or play a sister of battle/ or even an RT....Deathwatch have to get around this verse....or even the interrogator that is the "handler" of the Deathwatch team.. I choose interrogator since giving the reins of power to a PC does not always turn out well.

female space marines? wots next? male sisters of battle? its your game at the ent of the day and you can do as you please but a line has to be drawn some where, sm have and always will only ever be male and thats how i'm running my games, any problems then the person does not have to play, i'm so not going to feck with that part of 40k cannon.

female sm, sorry I find the idea funny, but not in a good way lol LOL

RedSkull said:

Actually both in the romantic litterature that the "modern" idea of a knight springs from and in actual history there are instances of women (other than Joan d'Arc) who rode into battle with the men as warriors, some disguised as a man others with the hair out and wearing plated skirts and all, I kid you not, they look awesome.

The Adeptus Astartes being "knights in space" don't normally have female members, that said there is nothing in the gene therapy that they recieve that suggests that the treatment should be gender specific, all of the functions affected by the zygote are present in all human beings regardless and affected by the same hormones ect, hemotypes and genetic origin (asian, european ect) would have a far greater effect on compatability than gender, there being no female marines would more be a codex thing, that no woman shall enter this brotherhood of warriors.

That said, no I am not going to allow female space marines, they are boys, however there are some probably some upgrades running around out there, that can compete with them. Techguard being one that springs to mind.

Here is my Rouge Trader group's solution: (though it may not be kosher with hardcore 40k players)

Make a Marine and make it a Sister of Battle who is basically a guinea pig with a newly modified geneseed. Or just simply use the Ascension book's rules for a Sister of Battle and do some modifying so she can keep up with the Marines.

We came up with these because one of our members does not like to cross-play as a guy.

UncleArkie said:

This part isn't true. The biological differences between the genders are much greater than racial ones and the female body devotes far more space to reproductive organs. Considering that the genetic template that Marines are altered towards is male and the extra organs and augmentations are based on male physiology, its highly unlikely that the procedure would work on women. The procedure has a fairly high wash out rate just with men and their physiology and response to hormones matches up better than women.

Having said that, its clear that the technology exists to engineer super soldiers. The Emperor conquered Earth with legions of genetically altered super soldiers who were essentially protomarines, there is the Custodes who also predate the Marines, Assassins receive biomechanical and genetic augmentation and then there are the Orks and the Eldar who are essentially engineered warrior races. Female super soldiers are completely plausible.

Cynical Cat said:

Plausable, just not something the Imperium does. I'd be shocked if some of the protomarines weren't female honestly. But...no record of any of a Marines level of genetic re-engineering being done on a female in the canon. The Imperium doesn't have the resources to duplicate the feat of creating primarchs (heck, the Emperor didn't, pre heresy, stated canon fact), and that seems to have been the starting part for the legions.

I think for folks wanting to stick to canon as closely as possible and want a female space marine equivilent are going to have to look into basing it around the gene-therapy/bionics/training that inquisitors, assassins and such can undergo.

On a side note, since I can't recall off the top of my head (and I'm not suggesting they leave the Palace anyway) has there ever been made reference to a female Custode?

Dodskrigaren said:

No there are no female Custodes. Its amazing how hard you people try to shoehorn in your crappy ideas.

I like how the imagination comes out for reasons why not to have female space marines. There are some good ideas out there too. I just don't understand how one simple idea like this can close so many minds. I understand lore must be followed but lets face it. You can't make a good story without braking away from the mold.

You want a lore reason why there can be female space marines try this: One or two of the Primarchs were female. During the Horus Heresy these chapters suffered heavy losses and at the conclusion of the this war their gene seed was all but lost. With the chapters deletion from imperial records they were all but lost to history. Long after the Horus Heresy a space marine chapter looking through their vaults came across a stasis chamber that they have no record of. After opening it they find a batch of gene seeds. Tests show that these are not like their gene seeds and a journal found with them tells the story of the lost chapter. The journal explains that this lost primarch was like a sister to the primarch that founded this chapter. Feeling he owes it to his primarch the chapter master allows one of the gene seeds to be used on a single female.

Now i know people are going to say "oh god" and "that can't happen" but this dose fit the lore. The next argument would be "The lore says all the Primarchs were male, they were even called the sons of the Emperor" I agree with this but two Primarchs were totally removed from records. So if anything in Imperial history hinted at their existence it would have to be removed. There you have it. A lore reason for female space marines. If someone can prove to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that this could not have happened i will retract my arguments and apologize to everyone on this forum.

Man, my reasoning on this is shamelessly metagame.

Women spend a lot of time, even in the modern era, getting told about all the **** they can't do in real life because of their gender. I'm not going to turn around and pull the same crap on them in a game that's supposed to be for fun; if playing a female SM helps them identify with their character, I'm going to go for it. Fine, in my personal canon, there's a gender split in most chapters that tends to average out to 70/30. Personally, I think a Space Wolf Den Mother type is a fairly sensible character concept.

I think it's really much too easy to say that "well, that's just the setting, suck it up and deal" when you're not a member of the gender that gets discriminated against all the time in daily life.

The Wyzard said:

First sensible thing said in this debate

Jude Order said:

Its amazing how incapable of reading some people are. I was just asking a question, I don't think there should be female space marines, never have one even supported the idea. I was simply asking a question. If your not capable of understanding all the words in a question, don't answer it.

Dodskrigaren said:

They've never gone into detail about the nature of the protomarines or the Custodes as far as I can recall. The Custodes are probably very hard to create, given their limited number and their superiority to Space Marines.

The Primarchs are creations of warp arts/science/sorcery as much as genetic engineering. They acted as the genetic template for their legions. Creating new Marines is going to be easier than creating new primarchs, not that I'm saying it's going to be easy. It's not really the most impressive things about them. Assassins, heavily augmented skitarii, arch-magoses, and so forth have demonstrated physical abilities to rival or exceed those of Marines but those are singular individuals who have received a massive investment in high technology. Another way of saying that is there are a number of ways to augment individuals to Marine level performance, but Marines seem to be the most practical way of getting large numbers of individuals at those performance levels. Considering the amount of time and money invested in creating a single assassin or arch-magos (don't forget all the candidates who never measure up, but suck up resources until they fall by the wayside) sticking a self replicating engineered organs into a bunch of half feral warrior teenagers and taking those who make the cut all the way is actually the cheapest way to go.

The Wyzard said:

This wins for worst reasoning in the thread. Just cater to whatever they want because you think they're an oppressed minority. Thats just dumb.

Jude Order said:

Works in real life.

Cynical Cat said:

Yeah, I know the Custodes haven't had a lot of detail developed about them, that part was just purely me drawing a blank on them and being to lazy to go looking up the books I know they are in.

As to the new marines deal, what you listed is /why/ I don't think the Imperium can do it. It is cheaper to make Marines. But the fact that it would be, and they don't, I think means they can't.

Recruits must be fairly young, because implants often do not become fully functional if the recipient has reached a certain level of physical maturity. They must be male because the zygotes are keyed to male hormones and tissue types. Only a small percentage of people are compatible to receive the implants and hypno-suggestion to turn them into Marines. Before the process of implantation begins the potential recruit receives tissue compatibility tests and psychological screening. If the testing proves successful the recruit becomes a neophyte. After the organ implantation process he becomes an initiate.1

Even once the organs are implanted they are generally inactive or useless without associated training and hypnotherapy and chemical treatment. Most recruits join the ranks as a brother between the age of 16-18 years.

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

For a standard gene seed thats true but that says nothing about other types of gene seeds. There could be other gene seeds keyed to female biology, as there is nothing saying that such things could not exist. Therefore by cannon such things could exist.

Logan Ambrose said:

When discussing rules, the "it doesn't say I can't, therefore I can" is a dangerous path to start down. It's not quite the same with background discussions, but I still don't personally see it as a valid assertion.

As far as GW and their licencees are concerned, there aren't any female Space Marines. Consequently, there will never be any female Space Marines featured in an official publication. That much is simple and unavoidable.

If you, for whatever reason, feel a need to include female Space Marines - and in your own personal campaign settings, there is no reason why you shouldn't change things to suit your personal tastes - then why not just go out and say that, in your campaign, they do exist, rather than trying to squeeze them into existence via obscure loopholes and selective interpretation of the background.

That dose not change the fact that there is room in the lore for it to happen.

Dodskrigaren said:

Whatever you were trying to convey in that statement doesn't come through. If you mean "they haven't cooked up any super soldiers that beat Space Marines once costs are taken into consideration" you're right. That hasn't stopped them from trying in the past and doesn't mean someone somewhere can't make a breakthrough (it doesn't have to cost effective overall to justify a few characters, just an a successful but overly expensive experiment) if a GM absolutely has to have female super soldiers in his game. I loath the idea (hey let's twist the canon because I really want to play a transhuman demigod, but it absolutely can't be a different gender than that of my meat body), but it's within the boundaries of what's possible in the universe.