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So I was reading through bits and pieces of the Codex for space marines. It went on about how awesome they were and whatnot, but then it came onto a section that read something along the lines of "they live a really really really long time" (I'm trying my best not to swear :/). So long that they can live for centuries....did you know this? I mean if they can live that long while in constant peril doesn't it make you curious how long they could live if they just lived like the average joe?

Also....tyranids take DNA from what they kill right? I know it's probably been asked before, but wouldn't it make sense for the Tyranids to harvest some of the Space Marine's "superior" corpses and make hybrids? It'd be a horde of space marines that spit more acid and such ._. Why have the tyranids not done this? They took some of the ork genome right?

If I remember correctly, space marines are effectively immortal unless (read: until) killed in battle. Of course, this being 40k, there's probably a contradiction somewhere.

In answer to your second question, I believe there's at least some indication that the tyranids tyrant guard incorporate space marine DNA, but it hasn't got any more widespread than that. Possibly because space marines in the background are far tougher than those in the game, meaning its going to be hard for a hive fleet to get samples?

Who says they haven't used space marine DNA? Everything bigger than a gaunt is a pretty daunting prospect to fight.

One of the older Tyranid Codecies (I think 3rd) stated that it was beleived that the Tyrant Guard were created using Space Marines DNA. It also stated later that comparing the holy warriors of the Astartes to filthy xenos was heresy of the worst kind and that anyone suggesting such a thing deserved death by some horribly slow and painful way that I can't remember.

I'm pretty sure genestealers are somehow related to space marine DNA. they cost almost the same points wise, they both are badass, the look vaguly similar. I never thought about it till just now. Also SM could technically live forever as a dreadnought, as long as it doesnt get blow'd up.

Norwulf: I seem to remember something about genestealers incorporating human DNA. So if I'm right, you're half right

I think the genestealers take dna from whatever the main speacies on the planet that they are infesting so they can whip them out and the fleets can get the dna quick, look at the old genestealer cults

Adrastos wrote:Norwulf: I seem to remember something about genestealers incorporating human DNA. So if I'm right, you're half right

sweet! thats better than nothing lol

Yes Space Marines live very long lives. The Space Wolves current Chapter Master has been leading the Wolves for around 500 years.

The Blood Angels geneseed apparently has the side effect of making you live longer. The Chapter Master Dante is around 1100 years old.

Also an article on what I said before. It sites the 3rd edition Tyranid codex.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Tyrant_Guard

Hey, I was right . Never read any tyranid codex though, guess I must have gotten it from a White Dwarf.

Well, the original CSM are over 10000 years old...

How do CSM replenish their numbers? I read fluff all the time about SM recruiting people, but havent seen anything on CSM. Is it the same process? or is fabius bile doin all the work? clones? zombies?

Norwulf wrote:How do CSM replenish their numbers? I read fluff all the time about SM recruiting people, but havent seen anything on CSM. Is it the same process? or is fabius bile doin all the work? clones? zombies?

Zombie-clones

The CSM cannot replenish with 'pure' geneseed and i doubt it is possible to recrut like the loyal chapters for them.
In "storm of iron", the IW have a 'halfbreed' new CSM and lots of malfunctioning mutants.
Not a problem, since grimdark allows to adjust the available numbers as GW pleases and if that doesnt work its still optional
to drop the CSM = legionaires concept and go with renegades.....

Sgt.Sunshine wrote:So I was reading through bits and pieces of the Codex for space marines. It went on about how awesome they were and whatnot, but then it came onto a section that read something along the lines of "they live a really really really long time" (I'm trying my best not to swear :/). So long that they can live for centuries....did you know this? I mean if they can live that long while in constant peril doesn't it make you curious how long they could live if they just lived like the average joe?

It has been contradicted in GW's own publications. The last Blood Angles codex states that Blood Angels live longer than other space marine chapter, which suggests they are mortal. However Horus Rising, the more recent Horus Heresy novel, explicitly states that Space Marines are immortal. Something along the lines of...'they live until they die in battle.' So it appears GW have done a U turn on this one and now have space marines as immortal. Which is only fitting in my opinion, high blood pressure, Alzheimers and athritis are hardly a fitting end for a super human warrior.

I have no fluff backing for this whatsoever, but perhaps the BA codex and the HH book aren't contradictory? Perhaps, at the time of the HH space marines were immortal, but as the milennia have passed more and more knowledge has been lost or corrupted, including the secret of how to make space marines immortal?

Like I said, I have no proof of this, just thought it might be a possibility.

The books normally do contradict one another. In the first Grey Knights book (called Grey Knights) the Apothicaries organs have begun failing as he grew older (I believe he was around the 400 year mark) and so he had them removed and left battle permanently.

Blood Angels do live the longest yeah, but space marines in general live a long time. What would you expect, they are super soldiers! However, they still age, and I assume they still "Grow old and die" (edit: Maybe the Venerable Dreadnought is a kind of space marine nursing home :3 )

CSM are probably a bit closer to the "Live on until your killed" type of long life (more because they live in the warp...and time makes no sense there)

At first though I thought this was a thread about what life would be like in a space marine chapter lol.

starbomber109 wrote:Blood Angels do live the longest yeah, but space marines in general live a long time. What would you expect, they are super soldiers! However, they still age, and I assume they still "Grow old and die" (edit: Maybe the Venerable Dreadnought is a kind of space marine nursing home :3 )

CSM are probably a bit closer to the "Live on until your killed" type of long life (more because they live in the warp...and time makes no sense there)

At first though I thought this was a thread about what life would be like in a space marine chapter lol.

Space marine nursing homes! i love it. I wonder if they get alzhimer's etc? doesnt seem likely.

I origionally thought this thread was about space marine lifestyle as well

Hmm maybe I need to think about the titles more xD
I knew they'd live a long time, but centuries?
Also for the apothecary and his organ's failing it could just be the organ's fault? xD

For the intergration for the space marine into the nids I was thinking more along the lines of every single thing, but I haven't read the codex >_>

I wouldn't have thought that they'd get a chance to develop age related infirmary. As soon as their physical and mental condition starts to deteriorate then they're odds of making it off the next battlefield (or even training exercise) is going to be severly reduced.

BA fluff is odd. I have read that Dante is about 1100 years old. Also I have reade that he has been leading the BAs for 1100 years...

You can imagine a 900 year old veteran picking up the new iAuspex 3G and thinking how much simpler things were when "'e was a lad"

Jimi Nemesis wrote:BA fluff is odd. I have read that Dante is about 1100 years old. Also I have reade that he has been leading the BAs for 1100 years...

You can imagine a 900 year old veteran picking up the new iAuspex 3G and thinking how much simpler things were when "'e was a lad"

Isn't the Imperium too afraid to invent new things? Apparently all their Vox messages are sent over a GSM network

I dont think Space Marines are immortal. Dante is 110 and Logan Grimnar is even older. In the first space wolf omnibus he was like 600 year years old and that was jumping to the past. So in the modern setting for 40k he is up over a thousand years as well. A reason he is called the Old Wolf.

CSM are not really immortal time just moves differently in the Warp. The Undivided Armies would rely on conventional means to replinsh their numbers. Dealing with Fabius Bile or any who know the process. While the Cult Marines have a longer lifespan thanks to their assoication with one of the ruinous powers.

hawkeye wrote:Yes Space Marines live very long lives. The Space Wolves current Chapter Master has been leading the Wolves for around 500 years.

I think that number is actually 700 years

Something to keep in mind that Space Marines undergo lots of chemotherapy and hormone-therapy. They're not that self-sustaining. I'd expect it's the Chapters with the purer gene-seed (or possibly corrupt gene-seed...) that live longer because their artificial mutation stays stable longer.

Also, remember that the Great Crusade was only something like two or three hundred years long before the Horus Heresy: it's entirely possible that at the time there wasn't the time or lack of resources for a Space Marine to die of gene-seed malfunction.

Remember, the way chromsomes work is that you have two alternatives: cancer, or death. In the case of Space Marines, I'd imagine that both are kept at bay by careful monitoring, and given the debasement of said monitoring in the background, it seems pretty reasonable for Space Marines to gain a life-span, or an approximate period of time before the cumulative defects in their gene-seed, therapeutic controls, and environmental damage over-comes their ability to regenerate.

Something I've been considering as a background explanation for the Astartes process is that the gene-seed is an artificial set of chromosomes that don't produce gametes. Instead, what would have been gonads in an Astartes-modified human produce a relatively limitless supply of stem-cells which circulate around an Astartes body and continually replace existing cells. Of course, the 'relatively' part of this limitless supply depends on the aforementioned factors of mutation, degradation, and monitoring.

In effect an Astartes encapsulates generations of humanity in his own body, replenishing himself rather than producing offspring, until something goes wrong and a morbid mutation takes hold, in which case the end result is atypical mutation of the organism, insanity, or death.

So back to the defective gene-seed idea. The Blood Angels have a gene-seed imprinted with the psychic death mask of their Primarch, meaning that they have a remarkably pure gene-seed, physically, with a mutation that can be activated by psychic stress.

GW seriously contradicts itself where SM and age are concerned....suffice to say, your plastic troops can live as long as you wish, and to hell with the fluff!

Its actually a bug bear of mine that GW can't be bothered to clear up their act on certain aspects of their created universe, its just sloppy and unorganised, not to mention it limits the enjoyment of the setting as it does not appear cohesive!!

As far as Genestealers and SM DNA....its a myth that you can select "aspects" of a DNA strand to tailor make specific organisms....I think one genetic engineer is reported to have said something along the lines of "theres no such gene for an Elephants trunk"....in other words, the Elephant is the byproduct of a complex code of DNA, no one aspect of the final product can be extracted and grafted on its own!

So genestealers would need to baiscally re-write their code from the ground up to create a Super Genestealer SM Hybrid, and considering the variations of coding possible, it would takes hundreds of years to find the exact code that would give you a designer organism....this is why it takes us so long to find cures at a genetic level, and why cloning is a very iffy practice at best!

TauAdmiral wrote:CSM are not really immortal time just moves differently in the Warp. The Undivided Armies would rely on conventional means to replinsh their numbers. Dealing with Fabius Bile or any who know the process. While the Cult Marines have a longer lifespan thanks to their assoication with one of the ruinous powers.

Isn't there a story in the BGB about the Red Corsairs specifically targeting a fortress monastery to get more geneseed?

yes there is but it did not say what thay did with it, i assume its like in Dead Sky, Black Sun where the IW were kidnapping young boys and putting them in the womb monsters or something.( naughty, naughty )

If the gene-seed does work like Nurglich said that would basically erase the aging process, since there is evidence that aging happens on a
genetic leval with the DNA simply degrading(resulting in mutations,cancer,alzheimers....) as time goes on. Making a compleatly new set of DNA for the space marine every few years by meshing the recruits own DNA with every Space Marine that has had the gland before simply freezes the aging process at the apparent age of 35-45 years. (you gotta admit Calgar still looks pretty sharp )

Naturally there is still degrading of the DNA as Space marine generation come and go. thats why Legion DNA would be so valuable(Salamandar Book 1, Tome of Fire trilogy anyone, has the next one come out yet???) no influence of generations of human DNA.

also can Space Marines reproduce naturally, would this result in a hybrid or simply not work

Nurglitch wrote:Something to keep in mind that Space Marines undergo lots of chemotherapy and hormone-therapy. They're not that self-sustaining. I'd expect it's the Chapters with the purer gene-seed (or possibly corrupt gene-seed...) that live longer because their artificial mutation stays stable longer.

Also, remember that the Great Crusade was only something like two or three hundred years long before the Horus Heresy: it's entirely possible that at the time there wasn't the time or lack of resources for a Space Marine to die of gene-seed malfunction.

Remember, the way chromsomes work is that you have two alternatives: cancer, or death. In the case of Space Marines, I'd imagine that both are kept at bay by careful monitoring, and given the debasement of said monitoring in the background, it seems pretty reasonable for Space Marines to gain a life-span, or an approximate period of time before the cumulative defects in their gene-seed, therapeutic controls, and environmental damage over-comes their ability to regenerate.

Something I've been considering as a background explanation for the Astartes process is that the gene-seed is an artificial set of chromosomes that don't produce gametes. Instead, what would have been gonads in an Astartes-modified human produce a relatively limitless supply of stem-cells which circulate around an Astartes body and continually replace existing cells. Of course, the 'relatively' part of this limitless supply depends on the aforementioned factors of mutation, degradation, and monitoring.

In effect an Astartes encapsulates generations of humanity in his own body, replenishing himself rather than producing offspring, until something goes wrong and a morbid mutation takes hold, in which case the end result is atypical mutation of the organism, insanity, or death.

So back to the defective gene-seed idea. The Blood Angels have a gene-seed imprinted with the psychic death mask of their Primarch, meaning that they have a remarkably pure gene-seed, physically, with a mutation that can be activated by psychic stress.

I quite like this idea, it connects alot of dots GW lesft blank.

whatwhat wrote:

Sgt.Sunshine wrote:So I was reading through bits and pieces of the Codex for space marines. It went on about how awesome they were and whatnot, but then it came onto a section that read something along the lines of "they live a really really really long time" (I'm trying my best not to swear :/). So long that they can live for centuries....did you know this? I mean if they can live that long while in constant peril doesn't it make you curious how long they could live if they just lived like the average joe?

It has been contradicted in GW's own publications. The last Blood Angles codex states that Blood Angels live longer than other space marine chapter, which suggests they are mortal. However Horus Rising, the more recent Horus Heresy novel, explicitly states that Space Marines are immortal. Something along the lines of...'they live until they die in battle.' So it appears GW have done a U turn on this one and now have space marines as immortal. Which is only fitting in my opinion, high blood pressure, Alzheimers and athritis are hardly a fitting end for a super human warrior.

Food for thought: What if by "live longer" they mean that Blood Angels are superior and harder to kill in combat? I supposed I'm a little biased, but still...