Ian Watson also described in a lot more detail some of the darker more unsavory initiation rituals of the Imperial Fists to celebrate certain stages of implantation and their predilection for masochism. Presumably other Chapters have similar rituals. Of course these days that would conflict with the shiny image of
SM as noble knights or action heroes.
Next came the grafting in of the Preomnor, the second stomach seated within the chest that would let a Marine eat poisonous victuals, if need be, and nourish himself upon mere roughage.
To celebrate the success of this implant, a feast of foul unfood was held in the banner-decked Assimularum Hall, presided over by Commander Vladimir Pugh himself and the Masters of the Chapter. The cadets, who had fasted for five days, now gorged themselves on toxic fungi from a death world specially grown in the hydro-culture vats, slurped up glutinous soup made from decomposing venom-gland fish, devoured foul cadavers heaped with stenchful excremental sauce, and chewed their way through discarded parchment and leather, while officers, Battle Brothers, and older cadets dined more modestly on fresh fruit and vegetables. After half an hour, if each junior cadet was able to fill a three-litre vessel with vomit, the celebratns cleansed their palates with avocado and mango, eggplants and gloryberries.
A similar ritual follows the Omophagea where (not for the squeamish)
This kind of stuff really drives home that the Imperium is a sick society and that Space Marines are not heroes in shiny armor but the brutal enforcers of a tyrannical militaristic theocracy, but against them are also arrayed the madness of Chaos, the swarms of the aliens, and the corruption of ordinary humans.
