In the eyes of empirials, yes. But in the eyes of their fellow mechnicus, no.

When did Space Marines get immortality?

Last I heard they could live for a few hundred years, but that was it.

I must be out of the loop on something. Can anyone shed some light?

LeBlanc13 said:

My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that the original space marines didn't age. At least as far as they knew. However, over time they lost needed implants for this (a long with several others). So some could be immortal, but the rest are simply long lived.

Hellebore said:

There is no "normal" lifespan for Space Marines. That is one of the sacrifices the Space Marines make to protect humanity, their very mortality. One of the oldest known Space Marines is the Blood Angels Chaptermaster Dante, he was recreated as a marine over 1,100 years ago. Marines do not die of old age or natural causes (unless you count getting trampled by a Carnifex as natural). Theirs is a life of battle, there is little time for them to get old.

It is the implants that the Marines recieve that extend their lifespans indefinetly.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Yup, a brand new creation barely 10,000 years old! Heck, that's not even enough time to figure out nuclear fusion much less your own limitations ;-) Gotta love 40k and it's treatment of time XD

ImperialJannisary said:

Except for one very important fact: Blood Angels and their successors are noted for being extremely long-lived by Space Marine standards (with Lord-Commander Dante given as a prime example of this)... it is actually impossible for one immortal being to be considered more long-lived than another, given that any immortal being by definition has a theoretically infinite lifespan.

The Astartes aren't immortal. The fact that Blood Angels are notable for being able to grow to extremely old ages is a perfect demonstration of this.

It's been clarely stated that Astartes are 'effectively immortal' during the times of even before the Hersey. You all do know what that is right? Baring a death by outside sources an Astartes that does not fight will never die unless by an accident. It's just no Astartes has lived as long as say from the time of thier creation up to the present due to, well war. The eldest (as stated before in this thread) seem to be only a millenium and a half old.

It was when most of the technology for creating them was lost that they might have started to lose this 'ability' via the implants that were lost. After all the Emperor is an immortal. (He was walking around the earth in the 8th millenia BC for pete's sake).

In the same light, can anyone confirm more information about the Proto-Astartes (Custodians). It just seems that seeing as they are to a Space Marine what a Space Marine is to a Guardsman, that they too would be effectively immortal, and if so, any orignals would be over 11,000+ years old.

Oh, and almost forgot about the Sensei. (Featured in the third edition was it?) They are the Emperors unknown immortal (again effectively as they can be killed just never age) children.

Yes we realise that, in fact it was what I was complaining against in my previous post.

There is no point in saying the blood angels are a particularly long lived marine chapter if they are ALL immortal. The only way that would work is if the angels were much more resilient to damage so that they could live longer by being killed less often. Otherwise, saying the blood angels are the longest lived chapter is like saying infinity+1. Immortality is for ever, no matter who you are.

It destabilises the original story, homogenising marines and ultimately making them less interesting.

Considering the people of the crusade were intelligent non-fearing individuals, their opinions were much better informed than the modern tech-fearing primitives that inhabit the Imperium. As such making uncertain statements and not knowing things like the lifespan of a space marine is much less likely THEN than it is NOW. So, if they said a space marine was functionally immortal in the heresy, it has a much higher chance of being correct than the superstitious, uncertain blathering produced by your average Imeprial peasant of the 41st millennium.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

Except that, even during the Great Crusades none save the Emperor knew all the secrets of Astartes physiology, and only Astartes Apothecaries knew enough to actually carry out the procedures - even in that age of knowledge and enlightenment, very few people knew anything about the Astartes themselves. Beyond that, it was the Astartes themselves (or rather, Captain Garviel Loken - it might simply be his own opinion, as I can't recall it being stated anywhere else but in his dialogue with the Remembrancers near the start of Horus Rising) who claimed Immortality in the HH novels, which is a reasonable assertion to make given that they don't age in the same way as humans (an older marine doesn't slow down like an elderly human, or at least, not to the same extent). If you don't age like normal humans, you've never heard of an Astartes dying in any way except as a result of battlefield injuries, and knowledge of the intricacies of your genetics and physiology is a closely-guarded secret, then the only answer you can give to the question of Astartes mortality is "I don't know".

Hellebore said:

The immortal stuff in the HH was because none of the space marines had yet died of natural causes, the Great Crusade didn't last long enough for a marine to die of old age (only a few hundred years) and most of the oldest ones died on the battlefield so at that point the theory was that they were immortal or at least might be. In fact it even says in the HH books that they weren't sure.

A normal marine is not immortal they do age and will eventually die although the chances of them getting to that age are very small due to the life they lead. An old Ultramarine is 400yrs (Ancient Galitan I think was that old) old whereas an old Blood angel i.e. Dante is 1100yrs old. Logan Grimnar is 700years old but not the oldest Space Wolf.

The way I see it (and this is just my opinion) is that Marine biology is relitivly unstable (From an Index Astartes article IIRC) requireing regular monitoring of many chemicals in the body in order for the marine to stay healthy over the course of many years their body will degrade as they go for periods where they cannot access these chemicals due to extended battlefield opperations or other reasons. This will cut down the ammount of time they can live before organs begin to fail. The Blood Angel and Space Wolf geenseed is different enough that they may not require such a strict monitoring or that their bodies are better at producing the right amount of whatever they need. The fact that Blood Angels spend alot of time between missions in a sarchophicas, which among other things purifies thier blood, may help by repairing damage to their cells, a feature that other marines do not have access to.

Kaihlik

Kaihlik said:

Sure, that's the only rationalisation of that particular point that I will accept. However, people like Dezmond (whether antagonistically or truthfully) take it as truth that Spes mareenz are even more SOOPADOOPALEETSPECIAL.

Given GW's track record with space marines, there is ample evidence they WOULD do this and so it isn't a clear cut case of 'inferred to be immortal' or 'could be but we aren't sure'. In the case of anything else in 40k most likely, but marines not so much.

Kaihlik said:

Absolutely. If you don't take the HH at face value which many fanbois have.

The IA astartes article makes it clear that a marine requires continuous metabolic control. Their hormone levels are ruthlessly controlled and their metabolism continuously checked and modified. They need that chemical therapy for their entire lives. Without it their biology would destabilise and they would die.

So, according to the article about marine creation, they are biochemically fragile beings. This fits fine with the idea of them being shock troops where they might see an hour of battle at a given time. Short stretches of battle allow their metabolisms to be checked and fixed every day.

But then you get the spes mareenz from the codex, where apparently Shrike and a large group of marines survived without resupply or aid for several years behind enemy lines. Where's their unstable biology there? This is what I don't like, the newer background tramples all over the older background simply to make something look KEWL. Shrike TOTALLY DESTROYED the enemy all NINJA LIKE with his leet stealth skillz. Cuz, you know, using a JUMP PACK is REAL stealthy, so he and his posse ninjajumped into the enemy for THREE YEARS with nothing but their leet powers to keep them alive. You should totally buy this model kiddies cuz he is so hard he ignores his own creation limitations, along with anyone inspired by his AWESOME pheremones.

(I can't believe there isn't a 'rolleyes' smiley).

Hellebore

I have the 4 index astartes compilations that they produced and they are a great source of background for marines. I am willing to concede that marines can work for very extended periods of time as I'm pretty sure I remember that their power armour monitors and controls their metabloism to a certain extent and they probably have an Apothacary with them during these missions but I believe that their long term health would suffer from it especially if done repeatedly. It may take those marines months of intensive chemical therapy to get their systems back to normal after something like that, of course GW dont care about that cause it doesn't sell marines.

I just wish GW would stop pushing marines in the wrong direction, they are meant to be the ultimate strike force hitting hard at vital points and leaving the enemy crippled and unable to fight effectivly against the rest of the Imperial forces. They aren't front line troops, they have weaknesses and they can be beaten. I hated the story in the new marine book where the Iron Hands (I think) aparently captured a system in days (or weeks cant remember) one after the other. What a load of crap. The travel time between planets would have made that one Impossible and then there is the massive amount of time it would take to subdue the army of a planet with only 1000 marines assuming they didn't take horrendous casualties which they would have.

The Imperial Armour books treat Marines more appropriately it seems as in them they are used for specialised missions and they are generaly feared as opponents because they are highly trained and well equipt not because they are teh leet pwnzorrs. I started as a SM player in 40K (Blood Angels) but as I have read more into the background and gotten a good grasp of the setting I have come to prefer Imperial Guard. I would love to play a narrative campaign invoving Imperial Guard and in very certain missions space marines come in to preform a specific objective but I doubt i'll have the chance.

I am much more interested in a realistic representation of marines and their style of warfare than the fanboish stuff that appeared in the latest marine codex and that gets spoted across the forums every so often.

/rant

Kaihlik

Oh god a Space Marine thread dare I touch it?

First what is realistic for a SM is what GW says it is, they created the 40k realm.

Second what GW says is not always consistent.

So what are we to believe?

Well having read a large number of fluff books, the TT codexes, and the various 40k RPG games I have yet to find reference to a SM dying of old age or even being retired due to old age. The closest is in the Space marine novels by king it describes the aging process as varying from space wolf to space wolf. This however appears to affect appearance only. Plenty of references to the SM living until killed in battle. The blood angels being considered a long lived chapter could simply refer to their average age. Which could be due to any number of circumstances including dumb luck.

GW has pretty much gone the way of making SM demi-gods.

But ou know what? It does not matter. If a fanboy gets in your face to much you can throw the following at them. All of which are also undisputed in cannon and fluff.

1. Half of them turned traitor.

2. There are only a million of them (at full strength with all 1000 chapters) in empire of a million inhabited worlds + colonies,outposts,tradeports,uninhabited systems, etc.

3. Virtually no chapter is at full strength and some chapters hide themselves away and or fight very infrequently.

What does all that mean? Simple, that there are not enough of them to matter even if they were all demi-gods. The real defense of the imperium is handled by the Guard. So when the fan boy gets too ferocious with you just go, yep the SM are both TeH UbAr, AND completly irrelevant.

When a company of space marines leads a defense against an ork invasion and protect a planet from falling into greenskin hands, its mundane and hoh hum.

When Commissar Cain and Gunnar Jurgen do it, its epic heroism.

When a space marine captain kills a blood letter of Khorne in single combat, its dull and expected.

When Commissar Cain does it its exciting and thrilling.

I really dont care how long Space Marines live. I view half the novels and stories of the fluff as just that, pulp fiction dime novels and propaganda spread out amongst the Imperium to allow the people to sleep better at night.

+++++Oh god a Space Marine thread+++++

It wasn't me!

--

All threads are space marine threads. If only because one is pointedly not talking about GWs favorite power armoured supermen.

--

I rather like the idea that every Marine is followed around by a sorta Pit Crew who clean and carry his weapons and bring him reloads and monitor his metabolism and also a choir that sing the hymns to the emperor required for proper ambience. And his assigned rememberancer to record his deeds. Maybe a team of rememberancers.

There is nothing like having staff.

Peacekeeper_b said:

A very good point. Its very interesting that Space Marines are supposed to on a regular basis fight overwhelming odds and win.

But yet during the Plague of Unbelief the fact that the Space Marines did just that is a hugely promoted like it was something special for them.

Its also interesting to notice that during the Age of Apostasy a number of Space Marine clans joined Thor to assult Earth, but it took an inside job to finish off Vandire.

I think you're right, that the novels are pulp fiction and Penny Dreadfuls. The Space Marines are power, but not so powerful that they themselves can defend the Universe, or even multiple clans are able to assault a super-fortified world.

Let them be Immortal, who cares. In the end its the common man, not a super-soldier, that is doing most of the fighting and dying in the Imperium. Guardsmen, Inquisitors, The Navy, the Arbitrators. This fixation on the Marines is nothing more then propaganda, when the true heroes are living and dying every second by the thousands.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Mundane might be too strong a word as although the astartes are supposed to win, it could still be a pretty amazing sight. From a 40k perspective it could be construed as literal divine intervention.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Unless you ask Cain and he says it was luck not to mention having a squad of troopers at his back. The second one was pretty gimpy to begin with.

But the Cain novels - finished Hero of the Imperium omnibus, got better as the books went on but still pretty pulpy - was the secondary reasoning behind starting this post.

Considering Space Marines are immensely complex genetically engineered beings, how could they not have died out or not be an obvious heretical construct that was granted special dispensation? Considering how much simple mechanics and engineering has become superstition and ceremony, how exactly would a state of the art genetics lab have survived unscathed unless such technology has been kept secret from the Mechanicus and has remained 'science' instead of superstition. Reminds me of the paper airplane scene in Planet of the Apes where you can make machine guns and manufacture gunpower, some rudimentary medical knowledge but that is about it.

Then again, I might be thinking about it too much and should just go along for the ride and not try to make everyting in the universe coherent and logical. But glaring inconsistencies for major plot devices are a little irritating.

The Space Marines are just that....marines. They are shock troops and not intended for long term slugging. They can win a battle but one chapter by itself can not win a war. When you read about marines taking down whole worlds, in reality they fail to mention the dozens of imperial guard battle cruisers that are coming in to hold the world and mop up the mess.

It's all fluff.

Roughly half the marines in the galaxy are evil. There may only be 9 chapters that fall under the evil category, but they are stronger in numbers since they were not forced to break down into 1000 man chapters. The marine chapters fighting for the emperor have been ham-strung by their own people. It's for the good of mankind that their strength was reduced in order to avoid another Horus Heresy.

Now they are effective at what they do, which is to take a rebellious world and hold it until the guard can get there, but that's about all they can do. 1000 marines cannot hold 1.4 trillion people in check, but they can take and hold an area until reinforcments arrive.

As far as marine life spans. I think they have the ability to live over longer periods of time, but how much of this is due to them being placed in stasis, how much of it is chemically induced, no one knows. We know the oldest living marine is 1100 years old in the Blood Angels, but generally, due to the combatative nature of what they do, they usually die of unnatural causes.

Why worry about it? That's my thought. It doesn't matter because they will eventually die.

Actually, the oldest marine (outside of a dreadnought, or induced sus-an, or warp-fuelled longevity/time dilation) is, I believe, around the 1600yr old mark- the veteran sergeant that recruited the 1100yr old Dante is still going strong.

There is a reference to retired marines in the 3rd edition Space Marine codex, where it mentions that a number of teaching positions or titles from the Headquarters staff are held by marines to old and/or injured to fight anymore. Likewise, the apothecary in the Grey Knights series *spits* was old enough to have been pulled from the field to a rear echelon posting.

I have a theory on why old age should be a factor- Larraman's Organ. Aging is the result of the fact that as we grow older, cells die off, and the cells that replace them aren't quite as good. This is essentially a long term description of healing; with each cell dying off being effectively a new injury. Astartes have an (admittedly fragile) uber-biology which will heal faster and better than our own (provided it's being kept in balance by drug therapy and so-on), meaning that having reached their physical prime at about the same time they finish implantation (not a coincidence, for several reasons), all that excellent healing can go to keeping them that way (ie: fighting off old age), barring any injuries taken in the line of duty. However, even for marines, that healing isn't perfect- they form scar tissue. Scar tissue is not as flexible, not as efficient as the tissue is replaces, and thanks to Larraman's Organ, they can form it with incredible ease and speed. Indeed. I imagine that a heavily wounded marine (but not sufficiently to require bionics) will spend most of his med bay time having the scar tissue removed and his Larraman cells suppressed, so that when he heals he has a full range of movement in the wounded area.

Now, that can be done on the outside, but what happens when a marine starts to get nodules of less responsive tissue building up on his internal organs? When the uber-healing of his body takes the form of replacing failing cells with Larraman-induced scar tissue? I imagine that as a marine starts to near the millennium mark he will have built up sufficient systemic scarring to make it hard for him to bend over and tie his bootlaces (not thanks to failing joints, as might be the case in regular humans, but because most of his musculature and internal organs will be covered in stiff scar tissue), his lungs won't be able to process as much oxygen (scarred alveoli), his kidneys will be less efficient, et cetera, et cetera.

The Blood Angels' marked longevity is thus perhaps the result of a less efficient Larraman's Organ? Maybe their biology is better at healing without scarring, thanks to some quirk of their First Founding geneseed, or medical practices? Whatever the reason (and I doubt GW will come out and say, as 'old marines get scarred to death by their own aging anatomy' is not particularly cool), Blood Angels have a greater active life (barring accident or injury).