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Somehow, this makes more sense in my mind than the way Marines usually do it.

1: Clone a large batch of children utilizing a respectable Marine's DNA.
2: Train and test the children using the usual methods of the chapter
3: As each of the children is near-identical in DNA, they won't reject the geneseed

Aside from the religious mumbo-jumbo that might resist it, it seems far more intelligent to do this than what they currently do, which often leaves candidates rejected because, despite their skill, they're genetically unviable. And even if they are viable sometimes they aren't viable ENOUGH. So apparently genetic diversity is a BAD thing to Astartes, meaning cloning would be beneficial to them.

I'm not sure whether the Imperium has pefected cloning if it has then it is a good idea otherwise it would be hit and miss, admittedly with a higher success rate than what they do already.

We've perfected cloning now, so it seems a bit unlikely the Imperium would not be able to do it if they wanted to.

Kilkrazy wrote:We've perfected cloning now, so it seems a bit unlikely the Imperium would not be able to do it if they wanted to.

The only reference i can find is the DKoK regiments being essentially test tube clones and they have a special grant for that because the Bilogis arm of the Mechanicus says it's heretical etc

well I don't know if this is actually what they do but they probably clone the geneseed because it is faster but the materials to make it happen are harder to come by hence it takes forever?

Melissia wrote:
Aside from the religious mumbo-jumbo that might resist it, it seems far more intelligent to do this than what they currently do, which often leaves candidates rejected because, despite their skill, they're genetically unviable. And even if they are viable sometimes they aren't viable ENOUGH. So apparently genetic diversity is a BAD thing to Astartes, meaning cloning would be beneficial to them.

Er, no actually it wouldn't be. Cloning, while replicating the original cell structure, also causes problems over long periods of time. It's the whole "copy of a copy of a copy" problem.

Cloning technololgy is available to the Imperium. The DKoK are clones. (How has Kanluwen not seen this thread??? *edit* Oh, lol, he just changed his avatar.) I don't know if copy of a copy, etc, would be problematic but Melissa is wrong to dismiss the "religious mumbo jumbo" because there is no way the SM view it is mere mumbo jumbo. That said, I don't know that they would reject cloning on a "religious" basis. Maybe the technology is simply not available to them. People have a way of overstating how influential Astartes are with regard to other segments of the Imperium.

I would suspect that the current recruiting practices are promulgated by the Codex--which means that they are the best possible ones and any divergence could only foster the taint of Chaos.

Cloning is abhorred in the Imperium, I'm guessing it's abhorred for a couple of reasons:

1. Cloning doesn't reproduce the soul, which is handy if you want to produce human flesh to experiment upon without creating a possible gateway into the Warp, or as wetware for servitors, but useless if you want a person. The Astartes process seems to depend on the recipient having enormous strength of will and other qualities associated with a soul.

Basically the recruitment process put precedence for screening on aptitude with genetic compatibility coming a far second, with the Astartes willing to put up with recruits dying from genetic incompatibility. Souls come first in recruitment and those can't be reproduced through cloning.

2. Genetic variation is a good thing. A legion of cloned Astartes would all be vulnerable to exactly the same pathogens, etc, quite aside from the issues that a lack of soul would generate - I doubt that Blanks or Pariahs would be suitable candidates for the Astartes uplift.

3. Interestingly the gene-seed itself is cloned, but then they probably want to preserve both the material itself in a relatively stable condition, as well as the memetics it instantiates. This suggests that the Astartes process requires a marriage of asexual and sexual reproduction. I personally like to think of the Astartes process inverting a male's reproductive processes so that instead of producing sperm and androgens, what used to be gonads in a man produces stem cells and astartes-specific hormones in an Astartes.

Remember that Horus' body was cloned, and that clone was destroyed by Abbadon: It wasn't Horus brought back from the dead, it was mere flesh without the important psychic superstructure that made it the Primarch Horus.

The memetics that geneseed implantation delivers is as much a graft to the soul as the geneseed itself is a graft to the genetic structure of the recipient's body. Human technology, unlike that of the Eldar for example, is not up to the preservation and transferrance of the soul.

@Nurglitch:

Cloning does not reproduce the cloned subject's particular soul (as per your fluff example) but I don't know that the resulting clone has no soul. Any fluff to back up this claim?

I don't think that susceptibility to a certain disease is a very good argument that genetic variation is of any benefit to Astartes given that their trasformation leaves them immune to just about everything short of daemonic plagues.

Are Blanks and Pariahs truly "souless" or is that merely an epitaph?

Nurglitch wrote:Interestingly the gene-seed itself is cloned, but then they probably want to preserve both the material itself in a relatively stable condition, as well as the memetics it instantiates. This suggests that the Astartes process requires a marriage of asexual and sexual reproduction.

Could you extrapolate?

If cloning doesn't reproduce the subject's soul as well as their flesh, where would the clone get its soul from? Cloning Horus' body didn't bring Horus back to life. All you're left with is an artificial blank, mere meat.

Regarding Blanks and Pariahs, Blanks are naturally soulless, and Pariahs are psychic abominations that not only lack a soul but have a ravening psychic vacuum in place of a soul. That's explained in the rules for the Culexus Assassin and the Necron Pariah. A blank simply has the Soulless rule, while a Pariah has the Soulless and Psychic Abomination rules.

What would you like extrapolated?

Manchu wrote:@Nurglitch:

Cloning does not reproduce the cloned subject's particular soul (as per your fluff example) but I don't know that the resulting clone has no soul. Any fluff to back up this claim?

Not fluff, persay, but Eisenhorn makes mention of the fact that a large amount of Servitors in Inquisitorial Black Ships are cloned husks so as to prevent Daemonic possession.

I don't think that susceptibility to a certain disease is a very good argument that genetic variation is of any benefit to Astartes given that their trasformation leaves them immune to just about everything short of daemonic plagues.

Funny enough, I can give you an example here:

There's actually something in the Star Wars "Republic Commando" novels similar to this. The Confederation of Independent Systems(read: the "Separatist" baddies that Palpatine ran from the prequels) were working on a series of bio-weapons intended to target only certain parts of the Clone genetic structures that would only kill clones. Clones themselves had the same in-built protection from pathogens that you see in Space Marines(partly because of their genetic make-up being the same all-around when it came to immune systems), but given that it's just a matter of modifying a virus/pathogen to target a specific part of the target genetic structure...that same clone physiology makes it waaaaay easier to hit them with a targeted bioweapon.

Are Blanks and Pariahs truly "soulless" or is that merely an epitaph?

Blanks aren't the same as Pariahs, truly.
"Blanks" just have no presence in the Warp. Whether through diligent training in being able to shield their thoughts from it, or whatever...they effectively register as having "no souls" to the Immaterium.
Pariahs, on the other hand, have a negative effect on the Warp. For some reason, they seem to(for lack of a better term) draw Warp energies into themselves, effectively grounding Warp powers out. But at the same time, they have "something" about them that puts people off to them, making it seem like they're soulless heathens.

Manchu wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:Interestingly the gene-seed itself is cloned, but then they probably want to preserve both the material itself in a relatively stable condition, as well as the memetics it instantiates. This suggests that the Astartes process requires a marriage of asexual and sexual reproduction.

Could you extrapolate?

Geneseed is cloned, then the cloned geneseed is what's inserted into the Astartes until it "matures". Some Chapters insert two pieces of geneseed, then remove them from the Astartes as it matures to then use the material from it for the next generation of Astartes.
(All theory time here):

If you used cloned troops, the geneseed might not be compatible with those cloned troops as it needs the varying characteristics of different hosts to let it mature since it was originally present in thousands upon thousands of different Astartes during the Heresy and afterwards.

Think of it like an organ transplant. Try as you might: you can't force an incompatible donor's organ to an incompatible recipient.

As I see it, Melissa's theory could work, for maybe a generation or two, but the adverse effects of the 'copy+paste repeat' formula mentioned above would likely degenerate the clones over time.

Perhaps the cause of the chapters refusing to clone is that a marine, after going through the marine creation process, simply cannot be cloned. It stands to reason that after the marine receives the various genetic enhancements, alterations and implantations he is basically un-clonable. Or perhaps the residual Primarch (or Emperor) DNA in the implants prevent cloning somehow or are too advanced to be cloned.

Of course, these are based on interpretations of fluff, not my understanding of biology.

Or it could just be because cloning "elite" shock troops is a stupid idea.

Part of what makes an Astartes is the conditions they grow up in and the experiences/trials they go through to even become a member of the Scout Company. That influences their behavior, their drive to succeed, etc.

Cloning's all fine and dandy when creating a veritable meatcan army...but when it comes to Special Forces, it's the experience that matters.
You don't want them all thinking or behaving exactly the same, which is what you would get with memory imprinted clones.

Battle_Brother_Bruening wrote:well I don't know if this is actually what they do but they probably clone the geneseed because it is faster but the materials to make it happen are harder to come by hence it takes forever?

It takes nine months for unskilled labour to produce a clone out of basic foodstuffs.

Nurglitch wrote:If cloning doesn't reproduce the subject's soul as well as their flesh, where would the clone get its soul from?

Where do non-cloned subjects get their souls from? Sexual reproduction?

Regarding blanks, my question is do they truly lack souls or is "souless" simply a grimdark literary flourish? Having a soul that doesn't register in the Warp is not necessarily the same as having no soul, unless the 40k defnition of soul is the immaterial reflection of the material consciousness--which definition is pretty problematic. Regarding pariahs, having a soul that disrupts the Warp is also not the same as having no soul or some kind of "anti-soul" (will read their entries when I get home, hwoever).

Nurglitch wrote:What would you like extrapolated?

The text that I quoted. To wit, what about the implantation of geneseeds into a (by defauilt in Melissa's hypothetical) compatible donor implies the need for hosts to originate via sexual reproduction.

Why would they want to? Marine chapters don't need many new recruits, lots of chapters sustain themselves entirely from one feral world, which would have a tiny population, and a chapter based on a developed (much less hive) world like Ultramar have massively more potential recruits than they can possibly take in. Sure, some candidates don't make it through the training, and some can't take the gene-seed, but no one in 40k, much less space marines, is exactly squemish, so they don't care about the rejection rate.

Cloning has a lot of problems - it may not copy the soul in 40k, which is pretty important. Realistic cloning just makes a baby with the same genetics as the cloned person, it doesn't give them the same mind or upbringing, so the chapter has to raise a bunch of babies. More magical types of cloning run into problems with chaos corruption. All cloning runs into the 'same vulnerability' issue, both for biological agents and posession (if they have really similar minds, a single demon might be able to control a whole company at once). Geneseed doesn't seem to be identical from each marine, so there's no guarantee all the clones would react the same.

There's no reason for marine chapters to consider using cloning if it even would work, and lots of potential drawbacks.

Kanluwen wrote:Part of what makes an Astartes is the conditions they grow up in and the experiences/trials they go through to even become a member of the Scout Company. That influences their behavior, their drive to succeed, etc.

A clone will still have personal experiences, given time, right? Presumably, you could clone up a batch of normal humans and see which of those could make it into the scout company.

Twins have souls. They are clones.

That's a good point, KK. I reckon we'll have to drum up a definition of "soul" in 40k before long.

Killkrazy:

Twins share the same soul. As the Cabal notes in Legion Alpharius and Omegon are one soul in two bodies.

Manchu wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Part of what makes an Astartes is the conditions they grow up in and the experiences/trials they go through to even become a member of the Scout Company. That influences their behavior, their drive to succeed, etc.

A clone will still have personal experiences, given time, right? Presumably, you could clone up a batch of normal humans and see which of those could make it into the scout company.

A clone will still have personal experiences, sure.

But they won't be the experiences that made a farmboy with a penchant for stealth into a Captain Shrike.

Manchu:

Non-cloned subjects get their soul from sexual reproduction. Just as the DNA/RNA of two parts parents recombine into that of a single individual, and hence the information that those molecules store and transcribe, so too does the soul. Cloning a body merely reproduces the material, it doesn't reproduce the soul. I'd doubt that personal experiences will allow the clone to generate a soul, since Blanks are naturally occurring and they don't generate souls over the course of a life-time. They go through life as zombies, with no more presence in the Warp than a chair. So clone-flesh is handy for use as components in machinery that you want to be resistant to possession, or to retain some special psychic property of the original donor (aka geneseed), but useless if you want to graft additional memetic augmentation to it.

Remember that the creation of an Astartes post-human is as much spiritual as it is physical. You're not going to make a Space Marine out of a human lacking a soul anymore than you're going to make a Space Marine out of a human lacking a body.


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Regarding Blanks, I'll put in that I don't believe they have experiences. They're what in philosophy these days is termed a 'zombie' or a person that has no 'inside' or 'qualia' or 'experience', but is otherwise physically indistinguishable from a normal person because they act like they can do thinks like imagine, feel, etc, but there's really nothing going on inside of them.

I like the way this syncs with the tendency of Blanks in the novels to have a porn habit, as a behavioural expression of their inability to feel.

Doesn't the alpha legion clone? I'm pretty sure chaos does it all the time. I think the problem is coming around geneseed, not specific warriors. They get their pick of the best of the best among candidates. Some new blood would be more than welcome in most chapters, I assume. No reason to clone. Unless you clone the primarch or something.

In the Last Chancers series there were 2 people who were cloned by the mechanicus, they were cloned from Lord Solar Macharius (without his knowledge) they were then taught everything about fighting that they could and sent into battle.
All but 2 died because they ddn't have Macharius' faith in the Emperor or something like that anyway.

Blanks do have souls. Their soul is simply a "negative" psychic presence, so to speak. Like the difference between matter and antimatter-- only the effect really only goes one way.

Kanluwen wrote:Er, no actually it wouldn't be. Cloning, while replicating the original cell structure, also causes problems over long periods of time. It's the whole "copy of a copy of a copy" problem.

Which Marines already should be suffering from anyway because of their limited genetic variation (the gene-seed apparently being hideously picky in that regards).

Manchu wrote:but Melissa is wrong to dismiss the "religious mumbo jumbo"

I dismissed the religious aspect because it's debatable whether or not each individual Marine chapter believes in it anyway. Some would, some wouldn't, and so it's best to focus on a different aspect of the conversation.

Nurglitch wrote:2. Genetic variation is a good thing. A legion of cloned Astartes would all be vulnerable to exactly the same pathogens, etc, quite aside from the issues that a lack of soul would generate - I doubt that Blanks or Pariahs would be suitable candidates for the Astartes uplift.

Except genetic variation is impossible with the nature of the gene-seed.

Melissia wrote:Somehow, this makes more sense in my mind than the way Marines usually do it.

1: Clone a large batch of children utilizing a respectable Marine's DNA.
2: Train and test the children using the usual methods of the chapter
3: As each of the children is near-identical in DNA, they won't reject the geneseed

Aside from the religious mumbo-jumbo that might resist it, it seems far more intelligent to do this than what they currently do, which often leaves candidates rejected because, despite their skill, they're genetically unviable. And even if they are viable sometimes they aren't viable ENOUGH. So apparently genetic diversity is a BAD thing to Astartes, meaning cloning would be beneficial to them.

Basically, it has all the disadvatages of Asexual reproduction. They would all have the same strengths and weaknesses. That's why sexual reproduction was "invented". Group strength through diversity.

In other words what if the host was allergic to peanuts? A whole chapter could be wiped out by by a jar of planters! Damn you Mr. Peanut!!!

@Nurglitch: I'm intrigued by your argument from (or parallel to) biology but I am still not seeing the logical connections very clearly. Assuming that a soul in 40k is the immaterial part of a material consciousness (or are consciousness and soul really separable?), I'm not sure why a clone or blank--who are seemingly capable of self-reflection--would not have one.

Also, what philosophers describe those "zombies" you mention? Is the description purely rhetorical/hypothetical, or do they posit that such people actually exist. I find the notion that philosophers would say such thing disturbing at the same level as discussion of the ubermensch.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:

Manchu wrote:but Melissa is wrong to dismiss the "religious mumbo jumbo"

I dismissed the religious aspect because it's debatable whether or not each individual Marine chapter believes in it anyway. Some would, some wouldn't, and so it's best to focus on a different aspect of the conversation.

So you're basically thinking of an "out there" DIY chapter or some heretics?

Yes, or just a shift in philosophy. Which, despite the Imperium's reputation, does happen.

Melissia wrote:Blanks do have souls. Their soul is simply a "negative" psychic presence, so to speak. Like the difference between matter and antimatter-- only the effect really only goes one way.

Kanluwen wrote:Er, no actually it wouldn't be. Cloning, while replicating the original cell structure, also causes problems over long periods of time. It's the whole "copy of a copy of a copy" problem.

Which Marines already should be suffering from anyway because of their limited genetic variation (the gene-seed apparently being hideously picky in that regards).

"Gene-seed" isn't as picky as you think it is, considering it anchors itself to traits found in individuals from all across the bloody Imperium.
That's a pretty big difference from "limited genetic variation".

Melissia wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:2. Genetic variation is a good thing. A legion of cloned Astartes would all be vulnerable to exactly the same pathogens, etc, quite aside from the issues that a lack of soul would generate - I doubt that Blanks or Pariahs would be suitable candidates for the Astartes uplift.

Except genetic variation is impossible with the nature of the gene-seed.

See above.

If Space Marine Chapters recruited from "only" one genepool(one specific family group or region of a planet, etc), then you might have a point.
But that's not the case. Individuals come from all over the Imperium for some Chapters, and even the Chapters that maintain one specific recruiting ground(ex: Iron Hands) don't exclusively recruit from one family or bloodline.

@Melissa: I could actually see the Iron hands doing things at least close to this. Of all the Codex: Ultramrines chapters, I'd say the Iron Hands are the most divergent (at least from a spiritual persepctive).

@kanluwen: Are you saying that hosts may reject the geneseed for non-genetic (even non-biological) reasons?