From a comment on the Fortress world topic about geneseed repositories.

I know that marine chapters have to submit 10% of their geneseed to Mars for testing to stop mutations, etc.

Obviously the chapters would have a store and every now and then send off a batch to the Admech.

Someone mentioned worlds that act as geneseed repositories. Do these actually exist in game?

Are there worlds where the admech store geneseed or would it just be on Mars? With only 1 million marines across the galaxy (or there about) they wouldn't need much room surely.

The Storm of Iron book I think, an army of Iron Warriors (under the halfbreed) assaults and then steals a lot of geneseed from a frootress to fees gene stock to is Fleshless spacemarine farm. the novel ties in with the Ultramarine serie.

In one old fluff text, Inquisitor is talking with Representive of the Silver Skulls Space Marine Chapter in theis Battlebarge. They come to thick adamantium vault door and Inquisitor asks whats inside and the Marine answers their Chapter's future. He then makes statement that even if the Battlebarge is destroyed the vault will endure and their chapter can pick it up.

Some Chapters keep their geneseed in one repository (usually Fortress World or other heavily defended planet) but some have dispersed their geneseed repositories to many differend locations. So that if one repository is lost Chapter doesn't lost all it's geneseed.

And to the book crisaron mentioned. The planet was AdMech's repository but no one knew that but AdMech.

So any planet could be secret geneseed repository, even some Death World. No need for great continents of Guard because every plant and animal is apex predator itself. And what better than hide huge underground laboratories to some Feral World where locals dont snoop around because they fear the evil spirits and dead men who might guard the vaults (Read Servo-skulls and Servitors)

The 5% Geneseed tithe is given to the Admech for storage and studies. The adMech insure that the geneseed remain stable through the chapters progression...

The Void Dragon have been know to refuse the geneseed tithe lately, it is beleived the "bone talon mutation" is one of the main reason they avoid the tithe so no one figures that they are so prone to mutations.

Also when the geneseed storage reach a critical point, Admech may decide to create a new chapter, outside of the control of it's parent chapter. This explains the many different chapters with no know origins and/or dubious origins.

I was the one who mentioned that little tidbit in the other thread so I guess I'll give my input as well, though I think the basics have been covered.

Each marine chapter is required to give up a tithe, so that some of it can be tested to make sure the chapter isn't devolving, or dabbling in things best left unknown. Another portion is set aside so that new chapters can be founded, or an older chapter has a source of replacement geneseed in the event that they lose acess to their primary sources (usually through most of that chapters Astartes dieing in horrible ways). Each of those two allotments then seem to get parcelled around by either the high lords of terra, or the Fabricator General of Mars depending on what fluff you've read. Though it's worth noting that only the high lords can commission new foundings, and it seems experimenting on the gene seed is a quick path to servitordom.

Since the Imperium loves its redundancy it has several storage areas for both gathering the tithe, and keeping stocks of it preserved for when its needed. The repository used in Storm of Iron seems to be of the latter, and apparently had seeds from multiple chapters which may or may not all have been descendants of the Imperial Fists.

Individual chapters also keep their own stores, though it seems each chapter (or family tree of each legion) has their own traditions in that regard. Most apparently use their primary world for the majority of such storage, but more nomadic fleets would obviously use a dispersed method. Also worth noting that each individual astartes ship likely has an area in which the gene seed of fallen marines can be stored until the ship returns to its home base. So, again, you end up with a wide dispersement of the resources a chapter requires to continue producing new warriors.

It also seems some chapters play fast and loose with what they send back for testing, with some notably divergent chapters having unusually pure genetic tests for people with giant bladed bones growing out of their faces. There are also chapters which may operate under special mandate, and or severe isolation and thus not much is known about the state of their tithes or even their true purposes.

Then there are chapters that have been declared renegade, or traitors both of which usually find that their tithed gene seed is quickly purged to prevent its contamination from being reused. These tend to become very protective of their personal stocks, and they may even raid other chapters to procure new seeds in order to stave off extinction. Chaos aligned astartes are especially known to do this with at least two such incidents being the primary plot for two novels.

As far as the canonicity of all of what I just said I'd say I have it almost exactly right. Though it really depends on how much faith you put in Black Library novels, and in the fluff of older editions which has been known to change slightly over the years.

And all of that can make for some wonderful Rogue Trader adventures. Finding some lost astartes gene seed and getting it back to its parent chapter is a good way to earn some brownie points with that group. Then there's the less than emperor loving angles you can exploit, such as selling them to bored nobles, rogue adeptus factions, or chaos space marines who need to replenish their numbers.

My thoughts were more to do with various background things in my own campaigns and run like this.

The original legions that remained loyal were cut don in size dramatically. The space wolves founded only one new chapter. To cut a long story short, it didn't end well.

But what happened then to all the other Space Wolves. Given the rough times post heresy one would expect heavy fighting and very heavy casualties, but given that the space wolves are the space wolves, its also likely they won most engagements and managed to recover the geneseed of fallen brothers.

Future recruitment concentrated on quality over quantity and only to keep numbers around the 2,000 mark that the Wolves seem to hang around.

So where did the geneseed go? Why into storage of course. Something so precious wouldn't be discarded.

Maybe, deep within the fang, where only the iron and wolf priests go, there are stasis vaults. row upon row of them, guarded by dreadnaughts, servitors and other things less well known. And in each vault lies the geneseed of a hundred astartes, in pristine state and waiting for Russ' return to be placed back into service.

Perhaps other chapters, particularly the older ones, also have some kind of similar practice. Maybe the Salamanders, having suffered such horrific battle caualties at Isstvan (and the huge amount of time it must have cost them to get back up to fighting strength) might have taken care to carefully husband their geneseed, placing it into storage and going to great lengths to recover it. Making extremely secure repositories.

Maybe some chapters use sedated bodies to grow more geneseed, over the centuries and millenia building their stocks.

Could the most ancient chapters be holding onto huge geneseed stocks? Just waiting for the return of their primarchs or some other galaxy shaking event to suddenly swell their numbers?

Could make for some fun plot.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

The space wolves don't follow the Codex Astartes- This means they don't care about the rulings like having only 1000 Marines at a time.

So the Space Wolves Chapter is bigger than other SM Chapters- this HAS lead to incidents with rest of the Imperium before. I believe in a novel, the Space Wolves captured an Navy ship and hijacked it, adding it to their fleet. Obviously, as one of the original Legions, the Space Wolves are given more leeway than other SMs would be given.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the space wolves apparently have a number of 'lost companies' as well as good number of members on detached duty. This combined with the fact they have roughly twelve companies each between 100 to 200 members means that there very well could be a couple thousand Space Wolves mucking things up in the galaxy...and possibly beyond.

Though it's worth mentioning more recent fluff states that the original legion was smaller than the other astartes legions. Though whether this was because they were constantly fighting, or because they purposely stayed that way isn't stated.

Also worth mentioning that I don't think (but really have no proof XD) that even the Ultramarines have only 1000 marines at the best of times. They also employ units that are outside the standard company command structure, which would give them a handful to a couple hundred extra marines scattered about the galaxy.

On a related note, theres a great write up somewhere on the web of why the 1000 marines per chapter (for codex chapters) is likely an under estimate.

Basically it comes down to the fact that the 1000 marines are all accounted for in the company structures but do NOT take account of the command structure (i.e. the captains and their command squads, the chapter master, tech marines, apothecaries, chaplains, librarians) and more importantly space marine vehicles which are crewed by marines in addition to the company troops. i.e. a company has 10 squads of 10 marines + more marines in predators, landraiders, etc.

NewAgeOfPower said:

No to mention Black Templars.

Nobody knows the full might of Black Templars but High Marshal himself, but there has been speculations that they count in old Legio Astartes numbers. Meaning about 100 000+ Black Templars running around Galaxy and bringing Emperors Justice to enemies of Imperium.

One might suspect that with 100,000 marines, someone important enough to wag a finger might have noticed. Which of course is an excellent argument for not having too many of them in any one place.

Still, the Black Templars are certainly far larger than most chapters. And can probably disguise that very well with their seperate crusade fleets.

Actually, thinking about my last post i'm now thinking it hard to find anyone powerful enough to wag a finger at a chapter of 100,000 space marines. Not a group you want to piss off.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

My point exactly Gribble_the_Munchkin

*facepalm*

Their last Codex lists them only as having as many as 6,000 Space Marines. And we're never really given a date for when that number is quoted, not to mention that the entry itself states that it's pure speculation on the part of the powers that be, within the Imperium.

And going by the Horus Heresy novels, a Legion is only about 10,000 Astartes, not 100,000.

Blood Pact said:

10 thousand or 100 thousand meh. One Zero here or there no problem. But still about 6000 Black Templars is still 5000 over Codex Approved. Not force you want to start arguing about rules that there are too much Marines in the Chapter if they ever choose to start Crusade against you.