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Something that has really bothered me about space marines is their recruitment process (as I know it anyway). Mostly they either go for the psychotic killers or best warriors of a feral planet. Now, I understand that they need them to be able to kill, BUT SURELY with the geneseed and the whole becoming an astartes brute strength simply doesn't matter. Indeed, kind of in the way of Captain America (cheesey reference just popped into my head) wouldn't it be better to go for someone with personal qualities such as cunning, intelligence, charisma? Indeed, even with our modern soldiers the officers tend to be the ones who've had degrees (not always of course) etc. or end up coming from fancy places blah blah blah. So do all space marine chapters recruit in such a manner?

I see where you're coming from, the recruits probably go through so much brainwashing and indoctrination that by the time they're ready for battle they could have been given an entirely new personality anyway. I think the whole thing about choosing the ones with a talent for fighting is an example of them preferring it to sound "grimdark."

I believe the Raven Guard look for more intellectual traits, but you need to realise that the process of being turned into a Marine is itself very traumatic. They have to use the healthiest, strongest recruits or the recruits stand a huge chance of dying on the operating table.

The physical requirements are so the bodies of the recruits have a chance of surviving the transformation process. Only the toughest specimens can survive, and even then not all do. The process not only can it will kill you if you fail it. its very rare for someone to fail and survive at the same time.

The mental and personality traits are programmed in via hypnosis and outright brainwashing. They have no need for the person to remember who they were before their recruitment, that person is dead and has been reborn as Astartes.

LordGirrit wrote:Something that has really bothered me about space marines is their recruitment process (as I know it anyway). Mostly they either go for the psychotic killers or best warriors of a feral planet. Now, I understand that they need them to be able to kill, BUT SURELY with the geneseed and the whole becoming an astartes brute strength simply doesn't matter. Indeed, kind of in the way of Captain America (cheesey reference just popped into my head) wouldn't it be better to go for someone with personal qualities such as cunning, intelligence, charisma? Indeed, even with our modern soldiers the officers tend to be the ones who've had degrees (not always of course) etc. or end up coming from fancy places blah blah blah. So do all space marine chapters recruit in such a manner?

Look at real armies.

They recruit for brute strength, but when looking for Officers they pick intelligent people.

Space Marines basically recruit for physical traits and of the recruits they do get the more intelligent ones will get promotions.

It should also be noted that most SM homeworlds are Feral Worlds, where people have only recently discovered fire, consider a sharp rock a goddam great hand-to-hand weapon, and not only kill their own food, but skin it for clothing.

These mofos, largely, aren't philosophers and scientists. Sure, Blood Angels and Ultramarines and such have advanced worlds to draw from... but then you have Space Wolves, Space Sharks, Minotaurs, Salamanders (semi-civilized on what amounts to a near-Death World planet), and the BT pulling kids off whatever rock they've recently pacified. These guys are going to become Space Marines. They want them equipped to handle a level of combat that would utterly break lesser men.

And, also, as the saying in the IoM goes... a small mind is easily filled with faith. This doesn't have to be a religious creed, but a faith in their Chapter, its teachings, its combat doctrine, and in the Imperium in general.

 LoneLictor wrote:

They recruit for brute strength, but when looking for Officers they pick intelligent people.

Thats how I know you haven't been in the military Just because you have a degree doesn't mean your intelligent. Often, you'll find many lowly Infantry NCOs and enlisted with college degrees. C's get degrees, man.

 Psienesis wrote:
It should also be noted that most SM homeworlds are Feral Worlds, where people have only recently discovered fire, consider a sharp rock a goddam great hand-to-hand weapon, and not only kill their own food, but skin it for clothing.

These mofos, largely, aren't philosophers and scientists. Sure, Blood Angels and Ultramarines and such have advanced worlds to draw from... but then you have Space Wolves, Space Sharks, Minotaurs, Salamanders (semi-civilized on what amounts to a near-Death World planet), and the BT pulling kids off whatever rock they've recently pacified. These guys are going to become Space Marines. They want them equipped to handle a level of combat that would utterly break lesser men.

And, also, as the saying in the IoM goes... a small mind is easily filled with faith. This doesn't have to be a religious creed, but a faith in their Chapter, its teachings, its combat doctrine, and in the Imperium in general.

And primitive technology =/= stupid. You can still have quite intelligent people from such a source.

They live in a space-faring society. If they haven't yet figured out that a grass yurt on a wind-swept plain does not resist a thunderstorm better than a brick house, then, yeah, they're pretty fething stupid.

If you are spending every day of your life searching for food and trying to survive you are not going to be able to advance your technology. Doesn't mean you are stupid.

Furyou Miko wrote: healthiest, strongest recruits or the recruits stand a huge chance of dying on the operating table.

The Blood Angels recruit malnourished, radiation-blasted desert people.

The geneseed does not care how healthy you are, or how skilled.

Survival has nothing to do with health. The Space Wolves recruit on these criteria:

"Often the the chosen ones are on the pointof death, but as long as their wounds are to the fore, the strangers do not care."

"For my own part, I come down on the side of courage. For courage can sometimes make a virtue of inexperience. I myself have commanded Imperial Guard troops whose probitor units have achieved great things, because they were too inexperienced to realise that their goal was impossible."


They recruit people who are extremely reckless and courageous. You could say that they want every recruit to have enough ambition to become a wolf lord.

Ultramarines, the most structured chapter, recruit children who excel in a structured environment. It is likely they want recruits who make good line soldiers, who work in the system.

SO, OP: The answer is that space marines do not recruit for strength or intelligence per se, it is that the gene seed only works with people who most closely match their gene-seeds' values. After all, the Primarchs were created with warp power, so gene-seed may be inherently warp sensitive material. Making someone into a space marine is effectively grafting nineteen miniature clones of a primarch onto someone's body, and if that material is warp sensitive, then the parties have to be good psychic matches, as well as good tissue matches.

Battle wounds don't exactly count as being unhealthy in this context. And they aren't subjected to the transformation till long after those wounds have healed.

The Space Wolves recruit children who were at the forefront of their village's attack on another village, to take their land and their resources during Fenris' many periods of upheaval. Those injuries they received are injuries from spears, swords and axes... what they're looking for is for kids who didn't turn to run away.

I cannot remember which novel it was in, but I seem to recall an Imperial Guard General explaining to his immediate subordinate why he wasn't happy that they had been supplemented with a Space Marine task force on their current theater of operations. He said something about Space Marines recruiting kids when they are teens and think they are indestructible and unstoppable, and then turn them into Space Marines and keep them in that mindset.

 Phiasco II wrote:
I cannot remember which novel it was in, but I seem to recall an Imperial Guard General explaining to his immediate subordinate why he wasn't happy that they had been supplemented with a Space Marine task force on their current theater of operations. He said something about Space Marines recruiting kids when they are teens and think they are indestructible and unstoppable, and then turn them into Space Marines and keep them in that mindset.

Dunno, but it sounds awful, lol. Either that or it was the author deliberately showing how the Imperial Guard don't really even know much about the Marines.



Ultimately, it's not really true that Chapters would recruit the strongest children. It would be far more important to them to ensure they are recruiting kids who are biologically compatible with the implants. Geneseed is a limited resource. No matter whether you recruit the skinny kid or the stocky kid, they all end up as seven and a half foot tall bulked out murder machines, because the process of becoming a Space Marine includes genetic and biological manipulation and a series of implanted organs. They make Space Marines. They don't recruit them. The Space Wolves do what they do because it is what they've always done, not because it makes any sense. The mindset of the child you take is irrelevant when you're going to overwrite their entire personality over years of indoctrination.

In fact, since the implantation process says it is supposed to start before the recruit is 12 years old (that's the youngest maximum age on the process), it's entirely likely that recruits are being selected by most chapters at 6-8 years old. Why? Well, it's pretty simple. A Chapter is going to want to make sure that the recruit is capable of receiving the implants, and capable of being mentally conditioned, etc, before they start sticking organs and gene seed in them. And that process probably isn't quick or immediate.


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 Firehead158 wrote:

 LoneLictor wrote:

They recruit for brute strength, but when looking for Officers they pick intelligent people.

Thats how I know you haven't been in the military Just because you have a degree doesn't mean your intelligent. Often, you'll find many lowly Infantry NCOs and enlisted with college degrees. C's get degrees, man.

As much as I enjoy poking fun at the officer corps as only existing to perpetuate itself, officer recruiting is pretty strict these days. I had college friends who tried to get in the military and were rejected because their grades weren't good enough.

But, yeah, having a college degree, and even getting good grades is no real indicator of intelligence. And even at that, being smart doesn't necessarily make you a good leader.

Nah, they can tell pretty quickly if the aspirant is compatible with a simple field test. That doesn't mean the process will work, there is still a failure rate of the geneseed being rejected but its cut down considerably.

And aspirants can be selected between the ages of 10 and 16. The process requires the kid to be in the early stages of puberty for the implants to take hold. If its too early or too late the process fails. 6-8 would be way too early.

Grey Templar wrote:And aspirants can be selected between the ages of 10 and 16.

It amazes me how many people get that wrong.


Nope. It's 10-12 and it always has been. A sixteen year old would already be too old for Phases 1-5.

Except the Space Wolves, but that's because they have had so many bad writers, and the Space Wolves are a Viking trope, where the style has always been more important than the substance when it came to some of the fluff writing.

Remember, recruiting varies between chapters. some chapters may give a larger focus to intelligence than another chapter. The more intelligent ones are probably shipped off to become techmarines and apothecaries.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Phiasco II wrote:
I cannot remember which novel it was in, but I seem to recall an Imperial Guard General explaining to his immediate subordinate why he wasn't happy that they had been supplemented with a Space Marine task force on their current theater of operations. He said something about Space Marines recruiting kids when they are teens and think they are indestructible and unstoppable, and then turn them into Space Marines and keep them in that mindset.

Dunno, but it sounds awful, lol. Either that or it was the author deliberately showing how the Imperial Guard don't really even know much about the Marines.

Yeah, it was definitely the commanders opinion, and he was kinda a dick anyway and got almost everyone killed.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Nah, they can tell pretty quickly if the aspirant is compatible with a simple field test. That doesn't mean the process will work, there is still a failure rate of the geneseed being rejected but its cut down considerably.

And aspirants can be selected between the ages of 10 and 16. The process requires the kid to be in the early stages of puberty for the implants to take hold. If its too early or too late the process fails. 6-8 would be way too early.

Plus, the other thing is that selecting them early isn't about the implantation process. It's about everything else that goes into be a Space Marine. Discipline, combats skills, drills, and knowledge. Teamwork, small unit tactics. Psycho-contiditioning and programming. Love thy Emprah and all that jazz.

Building a Space Marine starts at 10-12 when the start jamming all the goodies into his body. But that's just the part that involves surgery and gene therapies. But you can't implant knowing no fear, and obedience lol. That stuff has to be conditioned. You can't implant muscle memory and trained responses, they have to be practiced.

Under "recruiting for intelligence" it's largely unnecessary, as the Marine's brain is not only given a new persona, but is also modified for intelligence. From what I remember of reading the SM codex, and the "Ultramarines Omnibus" they are far more intelligent than any normal human.

Therefore the only thing they need to look for in a recruit is the ability to survive the training, and genetic compatibility.

The thing is, the world of 40K is like modern Earth would be after the Soviets and Nazis won WW2 and split the world between them. There isn't any fundamental difference between the Imperium and Chaos in terms of what happens to the people.

The Space Marines cannot be recruited for raw intelligence. Anyone intelligent would see through the deception.

As far as I know, Marines simply develop intelligence and battle smarts while on crusade or whatever, and those that don't die and are replaced with other, better Scouts... You have to remember that Scouts have to survive, sometimes hundreds of battles before they are elected to become a marine, they must have had some kind of mental wit to stay alive for that long, eh? ;D

You could be a super genius and it wouldn't matter. All your education would be cast aside when the Librarians remove all the useless knowlege from your mind.

They put everything in your head that you need, like how to speak gothic, what the names of everyone in your chapter are, where the bathrooms are in the fortress.

They remove the useless stuff, who your mother is and what she looks like, your favorite pet, the biology classes you took (thats the work of the Magos Biologis afterall).

Maybe Iron Hands? I don't see Marines recruiting for intelligence outside of those that specialize in tech.

They don't go for the smart ones, they go for the strong ones. Space Marines aren't smart, they're strong and durable.

I suppose the chapters with a bigger eye for strategy such as the Imperial Fists could see intelligence as a helpful, but even then they take recruits from street gangs of hive worlds.

If you want to put your intelligence to proper use, you'd join the Inquisition or the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Or the various Adepta of Adeptus Terra.

When you buy a hammer, do you buy that hammer because, it will help you choose the best type of nail for your particular job, cook you dinner, and help your wife pick out a dress. OR do you buy that hammer, because it can hit stuff hard.......

Eldercaveman wrote:
When you buy a hammer, do you buy that hammer because, it will help you choose the best type of nail for your particular job, cook you dinner, and help your wife pick out a dress. OR do you buy that hammer, because it can hit stuff hard.......

Marines are surgical tools. They be recruited for power and natural ability, like a scalpel. Quite powerful when used correctly, and is a specialised tool.

Hammers are guardsmen.

Just correcting metaphors