Let me rephrase that: how hard should it be for a heretic to set up the processes for making new space marines without it being made without skin, or having him turn out like Fieravius Carron?

Do you mean "make a new space marine" like "turn a human into a space marine using the geneseed of a Traitor Marine, or a captured Loyalist?

Hard, but not impossible. The Traitor Legions do, as far as I know, recruit.

If you mean "recreate the Primarch project from scratch" then *really really difficult*. Like entire-campaign-level difficult.

From what the core book explains, to make a CSM, you take a potential candidate, stuck a few Marine implants/organs in him, wait for a while, and if he doesn't die in horrible, horrible pain, he is now a CSM!

In truth, a Heretic on his own should be near on impossible, and entire campaign arc for the character could be centered on several things.

First off, there is only one, who out loud, proclaims he has unlocked the secrets of the Gene-seed essentailly. And that is former Chief Apohtecary Fabious Bile of the Emperor's Children. An arc could be derived in which the Heretic attempts to gain Fabious Bile's interest, this alone would finding out how to actually send him a message, delivering that message (which should take a VERY, VERY long time). Arranging transport to wherever Fabious says to go (you as the DM can make it interesting in the regard of getting into the Eye of Terror, past the Cadian Gate, or perhaps somewhere else in the Galaxy, regardless it shouldn't be something quick and simple). Once the heretic meets Fabious, he should attempt to impress him further, a series of Phsyical, Mental challenges designed to test the character's body and mind if he is a suitable candidate. (You can make something like 20 Challenges, and only count 15 of them, but do not tell the Player how many actually count, or which ones do).

Now, if the player Succeeds: Remove the player for several weeks while he undergoes the rapid transformation, do inform the player this has to be done as he is become a trans-human. I would say to make it interesting, if the party does not already have a Gene-seed on hand to use in the implantation process, you as the DM should have the player roll a D5, 1-2 Loyalist, 3-4 Chaos, 5 DM's choice. Then, roll a D10 as to where this Gene-seed Fabious is implanting comes from, Is it from the Imperial Fists and it's successors? Or is it his own from the Emperor's Children? If on the intial D5, it became DM's choice, just pick where the Gene-seed is coming from.

The player should pay for some of the talents that come with the Chaos Space Marine character. Also, it is entirely likely that the player is missing one of his organs, simply because Fabious did not have it. (the more the Heretic Brings, the more he'll potentially receive).

There is an alternative…however, Lord Alpharius forbids me to touch upon the subject, perhaps if you prove your loyalty to the Alpha Legion, I may be persuaded to discuss such issues.

Chastity said:

That's what I've been contemplating. What all should go into the process of making new space marines as far as a PC or detailed NPC is concerned?

So I found that the standard method of chapter creation is that a Magos Biologis takes a single geneseed, sticks it into an immobilized test slave (hopefully one who is not kept conscious and in a constantly miserable state, though being 40k I'm sure that's the tradition!), waits for it to mature, puts 2 more into 2 more slaves, and so forth and so on, until after 55 years, 1 geneseed has become 1000.

Now this is interesting, because there are many references to people dying horribly in the process of creating new space marines; something like only a 1 in 1,000 (1 in 10k for a mention I recall of CSM recruitment) applicant success rate works. The fact that they wait 55 years to create 1000 geneseed from 1 sample suggests that either the highly skilled Magos is able to ensure a 100% success rate, or that failed applicants don't ruin the geneseed (At least, not when tended to be the highly skilled Magos Biologis)… as if it did, you'd want to wait a bit longer to get a million geneseed samples (for the 1 in 1000 success rate bit).

In addition, I can't imagine the actual multiplication of geneseed requiring a tremendous amount of resources (for the scale of 40k, anyway) -- just healthy slaves and healthy geneseed, the former an easy acquisitions test and the latter a matter of fighting some loyalists (if you don't want to find out what possibly hilarious effects jamming CSM geneseed into people will have) and perhaps corrupting or mind controlling an apothecary… given just a couple progenoids from a single dead marine, implanted into two test-slaves (lets call them Adam and Steve) to start could probably whip up a few legions worth of geneseed in under a hundred years, and you probably wouldn't need more resources to replicate all that geneseed other than an apothecary (hopefully one not driven too crazy in the process of making him sympathetic to the cause), or a magos-biologis (ditto).

So once you have arbitrary amounts of geneseed to whip up your new freak legions, what sort of task does it become to actually go from progenoid -> abundant hordes of new CSMs?

- Well, if space marines are the "best of the best of the best, with honors," presumably you'd want, best-quality warrior kids (how young do they gotta be, exactly?). Not sure what sort of resolution you'd want for this sort of thing.

- Presumably, implanting would require some sort of Medicine test… or Toughness test on part of the recipient… and facilities of some kind. Hopefully something more sophisticated than the usual implication of "take a rusty ice cream scoop and squish progenoid glands into their body."

- I'm not sure what kind of resources or expertise should be required to finish the astartification process. There are references to nutritional supplements or drugs and stuff that space marines need, I'm not sure to what extent these would be significant expenditures.

- All things considered, should there be significant costs or difficulties past obtaining the geneseed, doing olympics type stuff among 1,000 young candidates (for loyalist-tier recruits) or 10,000 (for CSM-tier recruits), and the defending your base of operation and keeping it a secret, and such?

The part that consists of actually building, buying or stealing the legion gear is, of course, another matter altogether.

None of this is really on the topic of turning a human PC into a CSM -- all the players I know are already fully committed in terms of whether they want a human or CSM, and probably most PC heretics are going to be too old. I don't think anyone wants to be Anakin Skywalker of 40k.

Don't you have to be a young teenage male of appropriate build and stuff to become a space marine, chaos or no?

Gavinfoxx said:

To make an Astartes, you normally surgically implant certain organs. This process only works in young males.

However! Sorcery and vile surgeries could possibly create a 'tall, strong, fast, tough guy' that you could hand a Bolter to and stuff into a suit of Power Armour.

Hmm, if it's that easy, why haven't Chaos forces already overrun the loyalist, with supreme amounts of chaos space marines?

Also from Lexicanum http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Chaos_Space_Marine#.UGFILGIoESU

Creation of new Chaos Marines

The Chaos Marines still maintain the process of gene-seeding - the transformation of humans into superhumans through organ implantation and associated psychological and chemical conditioning - in order to create new Chaos Marines. The children that are turned into new Chaos Marines are bred from slave stock and captives acquired from raids on Imperial worlds6 p. 243. The process is a brutal ordeal, differing from the carefully measured program of development used by Imperial Space Marines7.

In every Legion, Apothecaries, or their Chaos Marine equivalents, are still charged with the important task of retrieving the gene-seed organs from their fallen brethren

Deinos said:

Weirdly enough, there's precedent for this. Kor Phaeron (first captain - Word Bearers) was made astartes in old age (through genetic engineeringand augmetics), and Luther (DA) didn't quite end up to be astartes, but was definitely "improved". These, however, are special cases, and I would definitely forbid it for a PC to become a chaos marine at an older age.

Generally, the legions recruit quite vigorously. For example, in *BEWARE! HUGE STORM OF IRON SPOILER!* SoI, they steal geneseed and gift it to Abaddon to make new Legionnaires, and there's the whole Iron Warriors recruitment program in Dead Sky, Black Sun.

@PnPGamer

Hmm, if it's that easy, why haven't Chaos forces already overrun the loyalist, with supreme amounts of chaos space marines?

Because Chaos logistics suck. Having a Space Marine is one thing (and the implantation process will require massive ressources alone), equipping him is another. A Space Marine without his high-level equipment acting as a massive force multiplier is not much more than a regular chaos mutant - which you can produce rather easily by just pumping twenty random people full of warp energy and recruiting the two that don't devolve into spawn.

That being said, I fully believe there are more CSMs than Astartes because the CSMs are not bound by the 1000 marines per chapter, 1000 chapters rule.

So we could say that this is a matter of quantity over quality?

Depends on what you're comparing. I'd assume there are CSMs both weaker (small warbands dabbling in creation rites and barely getting it right) and stronger (Fabius Bile's latest "1 in 100 survives? Not deadly enough yet…" creations) than the loyalists, with the upper echelons mostly being more powerful simply because they're older. Then again, chances are that small warbands won't encounter loyalist chapters all that often because they will mostly do hit&run attacks and hopefully be long gone before the Imperial Guard and Astartes ever get near the assaulted planet, meaning they will most often fight PDF forces and thus have the upper hand quality-wise.

I was comparing them to the Astartes, but that's a good point.

CSM are, if something, individually supperior to their imperial counterparts. They tend to be more experienced in various theatres of war, and thwy are also empowered by the gods' gifts. Therefore, a starting BC CSM chara is much more powerful than a starting Deathwatch character.

The main thing that keeps them from storming the galaxy is, most likely, the billions upon billions of the imperial army and navy, as well as the mechanicum's troops. If Abaddon (or any other) tried to go straight for terra, they would simply lose due to attrition. Chaos has an abundance of elite warriors, but this is no match for the imperium's fleet and numbers.

Additionally, chaos has to be on the offensive. Which means that the imperium has the full benefits of fortifications, planetary defences etc. And it doesn't matter if it's a puny human or a supreme post-human warrior firing that heavy cannon on the citadel, you're dying all the same

PnPgamer said:

One is that unless you're in particular danger from the Imperium, its always going to be more beneficial to attack fellow heretics of the opposite alignment for the lucrative infamy and corruption rewards -- there are actually few specific incentives to go after the Imperium. I think its quite likely that any one Legion is potentially a standalone threat to the Imperium -- Angron and the World Eaters did, in fact, form a standalone threat to the Imperium for over a hundred years, like we're talking about "there's these dudes killing everyone and we can't actually dislodge them at all." But attacking other Chaos followers is often more tantalizing.

Two is that yes, you can totally make a million CSM (or so it appears, using Fabulous's technique, and you "only" need a billion slaves). All that will do, by itself, is make you Space China… a lot of troops, but how do you get them into position?

Cifer said:

Noone is going to destroy your homeworld because you have a couple extra hundred Space Marines, even if you're not some prestigious First Founding Chapter. The Tyrant of Badab was brought down because he tripled the size of his Chapter through an aggressive program of expansion over several decades, and absorbing a few hundred Marines from an 'extinct' Chapter. And also built massed conventional forces.

Most Chapters would likely suffer enough regular attrition that the 1,000 limit isn't an issue. With varying levels of tolerance granted by the Adeptus Terra, since the First and Second Founding Chapters generally act in concert often enough that they might as well be considered Legions in effect.

Chaos really has everything going against them, compared to Loyalist Astartes. Their only real advantage being that they're dishonourable enough to steal geneseed. But everything else, from workable facilities and staff skilled enough to man them, to availability of equipment, and the just plain hostility toward all life of the places that Chaos Marines make their lairs. The once great Traitor Legions are a broken force that are a shadow of their former glory, just like the Imperium that birthed them.

@Blood Pact

And you think the majority of loyalist chapters wouldn't be honourable enough to keep to the 1000 marines rule?

Cifer said:

Fixed it for you.

And yes, I do, because it's Guilleman's rule, not the Emperor's, which makes it just a suggestion at best.

You're the one trying to say something as silly as a Chapter just stopping recruitment because it hit an arbitrary number. Oh noes, 1,001 would just be to horrible to countenance!

And even so, geneseed doesn't spoil, not with cryogenic storage facilities, or stasis fields. Which actually means they can stockpile it for a rainy day, and not suffer too greatly, should they unexpectedly take mass casualties.

Hell, the Traitor Legions don't even bother to collect the geneseed from their fallen all the time, let alone worry overly much about storing it.

Blood Pact said:

Remember that not just half the astartes, but pretty much half the everything else defected, to include techpriests, defected. Its not as if a handful of space marines one day went on vacation and didn't come back. The Imperium hasn't stood idle, yet people expect me to believe that the forces of Chaos have?

Also, yeah, a few loyalist chapters may be over strength, but the numbers given are always "about a thousand chapters, about a million astartes." That's… tiny. In all likelihood every legion outnumbers the loyalists (with the possible exception of the Thousand Sons, if you really believe that, for some reason, they stopped recruiting, and possibly the Death Guard, who may not even have the intact anatomy enough to have discernable space marine organs left), and the math easily shows that fact even with 99% chance of chaos screwup rate piled upon 99% chance of mundane screwup rate, that after 500 years and a single dead marine body, you can exceed the sum total of the old legions. The vast numbers of the old legions were made as a spur of the moment reaction to the loss of the primarchs and using their leftovers and the resources of a single world, and nothing suggests that the tiny numbers of astartes are for practical resource considerations rather than the overwhelming fear of Horus Heresy Mk2.

Even Huron Blackheart, a renegade who went into it not thinking it through well at all and being constantly attacked and without much in the way of time to plan or prepare has managed to build up a force that "exceeds the legions of old." When CSM attack the Imperium -- and the Imperium is allowed time to muster reinforcements -- they are portrayed as being outnumbered by 10-100 to 1, not by billions to 1. CSM forces are always attacking in enormous brute force strikes and usually getting wiped out to a man, yet portrayed as a constant threat and described as "The Greatest Foe of the Imperium." You're not going to get me to believe that they're some kind of tiny group of stragglers on an asteroid somewhere, talking about how they're going to totally screw up a minimall in the Imperium… CSM attacks are dramatic invasions, planet wide calamities, not a handful of dudes meandering about lost in a hive. And the "planet wide calamity" nature of the CSM is not portrayed as a function of their fleet support and they rarely have drop pods.

Also, as far as game portrayal is concerned, compare the availability of loyalists vs CSM -- a single CSM's services is of availability -20 (Very Rare), a single loyalist's services is of availability -70 (Unique). On top of that, in TT, loyalist squads go up to about 10 or so typically, while CSM squads go up to around 20.

They are said to be the greatest foe of the Imperium, but if they were as scant as some people in this thread believe, your planet could have been invaded by a Chaos Legions for years without anyone in your city noticing, and certainly without anything above the local PDF needed to be called upon. A tiny amount of dudes in big armor aren't going to be hard for some sniper squads to pick off as they wander.

Lastly, the Eye of Terror isn't as uninhabitable as some people think -- if a daemon prince conquers a world in the material universe, the Chaos Gods give it to him as his plaything to rule over, with him being able to stipulate the way the local environment will turn out and such. Most of the daemon primarchs likely want their legion to thrive so that they can get revenge, and all you really need is one world. More may be nice too.

I've always felt that the numbers were probably more or less quite similar with regards to Marines, my understanding of the Heresy led me to believe that the Legions split more or less 50/50. Now yes it is true that Legions are bigger than Chapters, but then there are far fewer Legions than Chapters. The Chapters are, afterall, simply the result of a policy of power decentralisation that came about after the Heresy.

The intervening period between then and now, the Long War, has seen the Legions fragment somewhat and I doubt there is any uniform unit strength any more at any given moment the fortunes of war govern the numbers of any one Legion ranging from potentially thousands in the case of the original Traitor Legions to a mere few dozen when it comes to the many splintered off-shoots that make up the uncountable Warbands.

Recruitment wise I'd say that the Imperium has the edge, since they're well supplied and most Chapters can do it from a place of relative safety but the Lords of Terra place quite a lot of emphasis on Guilleman's 'suggestion' and Chapters, like the constantly crusading Black Templars, have to justify going over the limit. That rule rein's in their pace of recruitment I think. As for the Legion's, their recruitment can be a lot more aggressive, it is more likely however dogged by many more concerns, they have already been stated (safety, success rates, logistics etc) and I could see these problems being more than enough to slow down recruitment to near Loyalist levels, despite their best efforts.

And just to quickly address the point about CSM invasions I think it's also important to remember the fractious nature of the Chaos forces, a Chaos invasion would more than likely involve millions upon millions of renegades, mercenaries and slaves but even if an entire Legion committed its forces they should still only make up a fraction of the numbers required to take control of a world. The days of seeing an entire Legion arrayed on one battlefield are few and far between, the chances are a Legion's various Companies can be better used against particular targets dotted all over the world. Multiple Legions working together is also the stuff of nightmare, and while possible, mercifully rare.

DW