So, setting. Deathwatch kill-team are sent to a quarantined Hive-World to investigate the loss of contact with a Watch-Captain who was investigating stuff and…stuff, trying to make this brief . They meet up with an Inquisitorial squad of Storm Troopers who were sent there for their own purposes, but are willing to help the kill-team to make their way on the planet, since they've been posted there since the beginning of the quarantine (13 years ago).

FAST FORWARD

The two squads decide it to be a good idea to destroy a Tau Forward Operations Base and a Communication Jammer. They ambush a Fire Warrior's Squad and get disguises for the Storm Troopers so that they can go and plant bombs and destroy the FOB while the Kill-Team remakes contact with the Quarantine Fleet by destrying the Jammer. During the jammer fight, the fully cyborg'd Iron Hand Space Marine dies (IMPORTANT)

I roll die to see how bad the Storm Troopers fail at the bombing. The rolls for the STs are 1, 24, 17, 42, while the Tau Forces are 95, 89, 100, 41.

Rulling out a success on all fronts, since I still had side missions to do with the STs, I rule that even if one failed, it was by such a small margin, and the other three succeeded by so much, that the bombing succeeds, and that the ST that failed got his arm ripped out from a Kroot.

FAST FORWARD

The two teams meet back at an old still Operational Imperial Guards Base/Garnison. After much talk and more talk, the conclusion is to give rewards to the overwhelmingly awesome STs. They decide to…help…the armless Storm Trooper.

They basically scavenge everything possible from the Iron Hand and 'made' the Storm Trooper have ALL the SM implants (Except obviously the Gene-seed and some darker, more specific ones that I can't recall exactly). In all, they made a Luther out of the Storm Trooper. I made the Apothecary and the Tech Marine roll their rolls at a secretive difficulty (-80, which I which I use for a 'theoratical impossibility), which they both succeeded.

The current situation, I have the ST currently in a might not survive, and nothing is sure, so that wathever you guys come up can happen

SO THE QUESTIONS ARE :

1) Does the ST survive?

2) Does the implants work?

3) Does that mean that with proper training, he would become a 'Luther' and be a 'Space Marine'?

4) Any corruption points or anything? I have yet to give them anything since I know it happened with the Dark Angels before, and I did not know how to react on such a situation

5) Add anything you want to add here?

Thanks in advance!

I start by saying this is a very interest turn of events. As a role playing gamer, I love to see what ideas players come up with. I do see the difficulty of having a storm tooper become a modern Luther. I mean the science that was used to turn older memebers of "The Order" into super humans but not quite Space Marines was probably lost, but now your players have gone and made all their rolls succesfully leading you to decide what to do with this conundrum.

I am all for letting them go for the ride. I think the story is important. If their characters did this amazing thing let them take the credit. If you do not want to keep the Storm Trooper around for the group to use, I think turning him into an enemy could be fun. A physicallly normal man with augments may be corruptable (even with Schola Progeniumum training). That training could make him an even larger threat to the Imperium. He might even be worth making a recurring villain. Just an idea.

Amenoriel said:

I think you've overlooked an important detail: the killteam used implants out of a fallen battlebrother. The Iron Hands chapter or their Deathwatch superiors will surely want words with them. It's a cool idea but they may get into trouble for not seeking permission first.

1. The implants will not work. The implants cannot be just tossed in. They would need months at least for a process that takes years for aspirants to become Space Marines.

2. You cannot use the organs from another space marine and implant them. After surgeries they become part of their nervous and circulatory systems. You have to have the secondary heart in place and healed before they can perform the other surgeries.

3. Some implants take years - take the Biscopea for example. It takes the specialized food that the aspirants eat and change the body of the Space Marine over time. This process takes years. I will not continue with the implants anymore because the Forge of Strength (this implant) is required before the other surgeries can be done.

Any further and the subject would die. The body needs to heal to be stronger - even then some aspirants die in surgeries to become space marines after this point. So, no. Maybe they could save him but they could not start tossing organs into him without killing him.

Okay. This being said. I would actually make this a bad thing for the characters. Let the marine live but the surgeries they were able to do opened him to the forces of Chaos who offered him a chance to live…. so he chose life… the experiment saves his life but in reality he makes a deal with the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Once back aboard the ship have him mutate all crazy into some sort of Nurgle inspired mutant where the organs are protruding from the body…. or something like that. The characters are responsible and volunteer to correct their mistake.

Depends on you how you want to shape the story IMO.

it could go wrong see above comment.

It coudl go ok. The Iron Fist are unhappy but decide to honor the fallen marine and the ST by lettign it be but they keep a watch out.

It could go too good, some inquisitor hearing of the success start to create a half marine army of is ST and things go from bad to worsth when they get corrupted or the recipy falls into the hand of a Chaos band, now the KT as to go in and clean the information.

they coudl antagonise the Mechanicus by having doen something un acceptabel (i.e. they are in fact jalous and want the how to so they can upgrade themself too).

Some Marines will side with them other will want the head of the KT and the half marine…

Something else is a foot entirely, the ST is a starchild. The augmentation stick and actually improve, a GeenSeed is found after a scan, a completely new type of geenseed. but the KT as developped a very good bound with the starchild, now they must either kill it or save it, maybe even creating an entirely new chapter. (not too canon but then again just twsit the story around 2 or 3 times, players going from him being a Tzench sorcerer too him being the heir to the throne, while the ST only really wants to go home and farm… he is un untouchable super killing machien with no interest in it all…)

have each marine given a opposing direct order from their respective chapter (destroy, recruit, steal the geneseed, challenge, etc) then have the starchild give them a greater thruth… (salient is doomed because of X ), then have the vault open and a recipy to save the emperor using starchild blood is found , with one about a starchild stopping a hive fleet, with one a starchild closing a warp anomaly by sacrificing himself… all written by one different marine of the KT…

etc.

This may sound like making somehtign big of a small thing but the marine recipy is something lost of people would kill for if they found an easy chake and bake geneseed or procedure, even if it is for a short period like the storm marine or whatever the 0.1 marines name was.

I am sort of a stickler for keeping the Adeptus Astartes the way they are. Most Space Marines begin at the age of 10-14 years of age. It takes years for the implants to take effect and begin transforming the body during maturity. Now, if you want to go by the book there are a lot of mistakes during the process. Some Neophytes basically degenerate into maniacs and killers (see page 15 in Deathwatch, final paragraph) and are put into special suicide assault squads. So, I think this would be the case….

… the best outcome for the man they are trying to save would be death. If you want to get crazy with it - turn him into a minion of Chaos on the spot. Perhaps he pretends for a moment but he is no longer who he was before. Now, he is a twisted mutant of chaos - now the creators (your PC's) must destroy this abomination of chaos they have created.

I kind of got the impression from the OP that the group implanted the Iron Hands Cyber rather than his space marine organ implants. So the comments that about the amount of time it takes to become a SM after geneseed implanting is kind of missing the point. Luther was basically a cyborg killing machine. He lacked the geneseed implants of a normal SM. It was just that his implants brought him to a level of super human combat performance similar to that of the regular SM and he was made an honorary "Space Marine".

That being said I would probably rule in the first place that you can't just take random implants and transport them from one person to another but various fluff makes it seem that that kind of thing is possible. However I think a more interesting option would be to allow the process to take to a degree. Give him the various cyber that the SM had that could reasonably be transplanted and some basic increase to a physical stats. (I would avoid increasing WS and BS as that more a matter of training.)

This rewards the players for thier efforts but I would play up the fact that the ST lacks the hypno-indoctornization, training, and chapter culture of the other SM. The way many GM and Players portray SM characters results in pretty inhuman beings who are willing to accept things as common course that would horrify or massivly demorolize normal human beings. (even ones raised by the Imperium as ST.) This would be a good story opportunity for the GM to introduce a counter point to the assumptions that many players make about SM. I would play up the effects of contanstant war, tension, training, and lack of personal life have on the ST. Make him heroic but struggling with feelings of inferiourity and weakness compared to his new brothers.

Than again you can always go with the fairly predicatble "he is tainted by chaos and mutates" option and just have the players wipe him out and write him off as yet more meat for their killing machine.

Implanting Astartes bionics into a baseline human (leaving aside questions of scale/size), especially going above and beyond what's necessary to preserve the STs life for no particular reason, is tech-heresy of the rankest sort. It dishonors the Iron Hands, the Mechanicus, and the Stormtroopers. Think of it from their hapless victim's point of view: he lost his arm in the course of duty, an easily replaceable loss and one he's almost certainly seen several of his comrades recover from. Instead of getting a replacement once back at base, he is fallen upon by inhuman butcher-demigods and is rent limb from limb in some twisted parody of battlefield chirurgery. They replace his functional limbs and organs with arcane systems ripped from the still-warm body of their fallen comrade.

Honestly, twisted medical experiments like that could get them branded hereteks; it's not too far from what Nurgle followers do. The Mechanicus would be outraged, and would almost certainly put the ST to death to recover the bionics. The Iron Hands would be furious at the desecration of their fallen battle brother. If word got out, other Inquisitors might be unwilling to work with the Kill Team due to the risk that they'll suddenly begin eviscerating and experimenting on friendlies.

I would make clear the enormity of the PCs' crimes and give them a chance to conceal it before it's too late.

There must be a dozen reason why this can´t be done or shouldn´t be done. But moving on, it has been done and it is pretty awesome in a role-playing sense. So I would run with it if I were the GM.

As the comments have shown, such an act is pretty much tech-heresy as creating space marines is not just a matter of slapping a few genes or organs in a boy. It is a techno-arcane procedure, filled with religious importance as a new member of a warrior cult is created.

In this case, let's assume some Battle-Brothers or even the Iron Hands chapter approve while other organizations disapprove. The poor ST is taken into custody while the matter is debated. The marines are called to defend and justify their actions before a court-martial. They have to charm, deceive or bluff their judges. Perhaps even explain what they did (medicae or tech-use tests) to show the ad-mech there was no techno-heresy involved.

The doubters finally win and the marines are sanctioned to undertake a penitent mission (or missions). And the ST is to terminated as a warning to all others.

A typically harsh verdict as befitting the callous and harsh Imperium.

Your players will now have to decide if they follow these orders and terminate their ST or if they secretly help him to escape or perhaps go AWOL with him. You could even make this an A-Team-esque development.

"In 817M41 a crack kill unit was sent on a penitent mission by a military court for a crime they didn't mean to commit. These men promptly helped their souped up Storm Trooper friend escape from a maximum security watch-fortress to the Jericho sector underground. Today, hunted by the inquisition, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If there is a problem - if no other kill-team can intervene - and if they can reach it - maybe they can solve it: The Kill-Team!"

All joking aside, I think this is the most logical development. The creation of space marines is such a highly orchestrated endevour and not done lightly. The Imperium is constantly on its guard for space marines going bad and guards against this the best they can. So creating pseudo-space marines will simply be a big no-no. With unfortunate consequences for the players. And an awesome plot development for your campaign.