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I'm talking untainted by the ruinous powers, here..
so i read that the oldest loyal astartes is about 1000 years oud (Dante if i recall)
but i always asumed that a space marine can live forever as their biology keeps them in a prime state until... they die... has this been changed?

As far as I know Astartes can live forever. They just develop problems like missiles to the face throughout their lifetimes.

They're said to live about three times as long as a man on average. Chaplain Cassius, the oldest active Ultramarine, is not yet 400 for example. And he calls his Chapter Master "young Calgar". Some Chapters are famous for having a few much older marines than that, like the Space Wolves and Blood Angels - of which it is said they live longer than other marines.

Long-lived is what has been proven. Immortal is most likely just wishful thinking. Older marines are covered in scars (imperfect healing) and often have prosthetic limbs.
Their bodies accumulate irrepairable damage over the years which means they are bound to eventually fail.

i'm thinking along the lines of a lunar wolf that never really got exposed to the warp like the rest of his legion...
i think it said that the first generation can live forever but as the gene seed became impure, they started developing problems.

The problem is: How long does a man live on average in the year 40.000 AD?

In any case, the oldest non-dreadnought Space Marine is 1000 years old, so I would say Space Marines can live really, really long.
Their problem is that they are constantly on the frontlines of war, which makes their live expectancy relatively short.

I doubt any Marine has had the opportunity to test whether or not they can die from old age. As someone already said, they eventually die of "missile to the face." One could simply argue that Dante is so long lived because of sheer luck in avoiding those missiles.

Even if a Marine could functionally live for thousands upon thousands of years, their mental state would eventually suffer. The brain can only handle so much memory before it fills up and you start getting file corruption and memory leaks, so to speak. While some Chaos Marines have lived and experienced 10,000 years, they do have the power of Chaos augmenting them.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The problem is: How long does a man live on average in the year 40.000 AD?.

Ciaphas Cain lived to the ripe old age of 200 (granted, he had a good medical care, being a hero of the imperium and all). The average hive world citizen probably lives long enough to reproduce a few times.

Do they pension any marines off as being too injured or infirm to be of use?

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The problem is: How long does a man live on average in the year 40.000 AD?

In any case, the oldest non-dreadnought Space Marine is 1000 years old, so I would say Space Marines can live really, really long.
Their problem is that they are constantly on the frontlines of war, which makes their live expectancy relatively short.

Not correct, the Oldest non Dreadnought astartes is 10,000 years old, no chaos involvement, its in the awful awful book "pandorax", Its a dark angel Liby that was one of the original 11/12? grey knights.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The problem is: How long does a man live on average in the year 40.000 AD?

In any case, the oldest non-dreadnought Space Marine is 1000 years old, so I would say Space Marines can live really, really long.
Their problem is that they are constantly on the frontlines of war, which makes their live expectancy relatively short.

The oldest known Marine was a 10,000 year old Salamander from the Horus Heresy who eventually died from atrophy. I also recall there being a 10k year old Dark Angels who had activate his Suis-An coma.

Dante is just the oldest living Astartes as of M41. Although I think there may be a 2k or so old Black Templar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
The problem is: How long does a man live on average in the year 40.000 AD?

In any case, the oldest non-dreadnought Space Marine is 1000 years old, so I would say Space Marines can live really, really long.
Their problem is that they are constantly on the frontlines of war, which makes their live expectancy relatively short.

Not correct, the Oldest non Dreadnought astartes is 10,000 years old, no chaos involvement, its in the awful awful book "pandorax", Its a dark angel Liby that was one of the original 11/12? grey knights.

Wait.

Did Zahariel become a freaking Grey Knight?


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 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I doubt any Marine has had the opportunity to test whether or not they can die from old age. As someone already said, they eventually die of "missile to the face." One could simply argue that Dante is so long lived because of sheer luck in avoiding those missiles.

Even if a Marine could functionally live for thousands upon thousands of years, their mental state would eventually suffer. The brain can only handle so much memory before it fills up and you start getting file corruption and memory leaks, so to speak. While some Chaos Marines have lived and experienced 10,000 years, they do have the power of Chaos augmenting them.

Considering they don't die of cancer or brain disease, they obviously regenerate neurons.

This however would mean that they effectively reincarnate after a couple millennia. While you may be biologically immortal, to do so your brain has to regenerate neurons, meaning that you'll slowly lose memories until you remember nothing of your original 1k years of life. So at some point you're effectively a completely different person who only bears physical resemblance to the original, not psychological.

IN Theory forever.
But That has been untested due to their "proffesion"

It depends on your preferred source.

Some say biologically immortal, others say a few centuries.

 Wyzilla wrote:
The oldest known Marine was a 10,000 year old Salamander from the Horus Heresy who eventually died from atrophy.

More accurately: Brother Gravius had become fused to his post over the millennia. There was discussion of moving him, but events on Scoria forced the Salamanders' hands. In the end, Gravius received "the Emperor's Peace through a nerve-serum injection" from Apothecary Fugis. Baring that and the destruction of Scoria, it's uncertain how much longer he would have lived; however, Fugis' own thoughts seem to indicate not long: "By the laws of nature, the ancient Salamander should not still be alive...Gravius was nearing the end of his endurance."

Plus, he would have been closer to 11,000 years old at death - Dropsite Massacre was 006.M31, The Scorian Prophecy was 962.M41, and he was at least in his teens (minimum) at Isstvan.

I'm curious how this would work as well. We have Dante, who is 1000 something and still kicking it, and we got guys apparently like the Mortificators Chapter Master, who is only 300 younger (I don't know what the source is on this one, so take that with a grain of salt).

I always like to assume they are not immortal, but can live probably thousands of years if nothing kills them first

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I doubt any Marine has had the opportunity to test whether or not they can die from old age. As someone already said, they eventually die of "missile to the face." One could simply argue that Dante is so long lived because of sheer luck in avoiding those missiles.

Even if a Marine could functionally live for thousands upon thousands of years, their mental state would eventually suffer. The brain can only handle so much memory before it fills up and you start getting file corruption and memory leaks, so to speak. While some Chaos Marines have lived and experienced 10,000 years, they do have the power of Chaos augmenting them.

In 2nd ed there was a story about a space marine (admittedly chaos) that would have to periodically subject himself to selective mind wipes; deleting old and un-needed memories from his mind. Obviously, this could be a trick he had to learn through necessity (some HH chaos veterans are ancient), but perhaps it is an ability all marines are capable of learning to mitigate the continuous assimilation of new knowledge/experience throughout their potentially enormous lives.

Its up to your own interpretation really. There is evidence that Astartes are immortal, and there is evidence that they are not. So you just kind of pick the one you like and go with it.

If you decide that you prefer them to be mortal, then its still tough to narrow down exactly how long they should live. Dante is over 1000 years old, but it is explicitly stated that Blood Angels have longer lifespans than other Astartes. But then you have the Space Wolf Ulrik who is estimated to be between 750-1000 years old.

I can't remember which codex I read it in but I thought Dante was around 1200years old he is the oldest serving Space Marine. Blood Angels do have an unusual prolonged life span for an Astartes

Phoowie beaten to it.

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
The oldest known Marine was a 10,000 year old Salamander from the Horus Heresy who eventually died from atrophy.

More accurately: Brother Gravius had become fused to his post over the millennia. There was discussion of moving him, but events on Scoria forced the Salamanders' hands. In the end, Gravius received "the Emperor's Peace through a nerve-serum injection" from Apothecary Fugis. Baring that and the destruction of Scoria, it's uncertain how much longer he would have lived; however, Fugis' own thoughts seem to indicate not long: "By the laws of nature, the ancient Salamander should not still be alive...Gravius was nearing the end of his endurance."

Plus, he would have been closer to 11,000 years old at death - Dropsite Massacre was 006.M31, The Scorian Prophecy was 962.M41, and he was at least in his teens (minimum) at Isstvan.

By atrophy.

Even if you're immortal, you still have to exercise. Otherwise your body will turn to mush and you'll experience all sorts of wonderful diseases, demigod or not.


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 Orblivion wrote:
Its up to your own interpretation really. There is evidence that Astartes are immortal, and there is evidence that they are not. So you just kind of pick the one you like and go with it.

If you decide that you prefer them to be mortal, then its still tough to narrow down exactly how long they should live. Dante is over 1000 years old, but it is explicitly stated that Blood Angels have longer lifespans than other Astartes. But then you have the Space Wolf Ulrik who is estimated to be between 750-1000 years old.

There is no "evidence" to counter. We have no record of any Astartes dying of old age, and we know of two that were over 10k years old, and one that was over 2,000. Meaning the claims of Dante being unique in age is false and only remarkable in that he has not died from injury.

They are not immortal. Space marines have a lifespan many times of a normal man and Blood Angels have longer lifespan than other marines. These both clearly indicate a limited lifespan. Sus-an-coma can prolong this lifespan significantly, as it seems to almost completely stop ageing. Based on Chaplain Cassius a marine with UM geneseed would probably have a maximum lifespan of five or six centuries; of course most die much before that in combat.

Dante is apparently in pretty good shape for it. He was made chapter master about 1100 years ago, and was a captain under the previous TWO chapter masters. So obviously he had to build up to being a captain as well, so he's at least 14-1500.

He also had a chaos sorcerer drain a few decades of life off him with some spell, after which he revealed his face to the sorcerer and basically said "do I look like I care about a few decades?" And then axed him.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Carlson793 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
The oldest known Marine was a 10,000 year old Salamander from the Horus Heresy who eventually died from atrophy.

More accurately: Brother Gravius had become fused to his post over the millennia. There was discussion of moving him, but events on Scoria forced the Salamanders' hands. In the end, Gravius received "the Emperor's Peace through a nerve-serum injection" from Apothecary Fugis. Baring that and the destruction of Scoria, it's uncertain how much longer he would have lived; however, Fugis' own thoughts seem to indicate not long: "By the laws of nature, the ancient Salamander should not still be alive...Gravius was nearing the end of his endurance."

Plus, he would have been closer to 11,000 years old at death - Dropsite Massacre was 006.M31, The Scorian Prophecy was 962.M41, and he was at least in his teens (minimum) at Isstvan.

By atrophy.

Even if you're immortal, you still have to exercise. Otherwise your body will turn to mush and you'll experience all sorts of wonderful diseases, demigod or not.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orblivion wrote:
Its up to your own interpretation really. There is evidence that Astartes are immortal, and there is evidence that they are not. So you just kind of pick the one you like and go with it.

If you decide that you prefer them to be mortal, then its still tough to narrow down exactly how long they should live. Dante is over 1000 years old, but it is explicitly stated that Blood Angels have longer lifespans than other Astartes. But then you have the Space Wolf Ulrik who is estimated to be between 750-1000 years old.

There is no "evidence" to counter. We have no record of any Astartes dying of old age, and we know of two that were over 10k years old, and one that was over 2,000. Meaning the claims of Dante being unique in age is false and only remarkable in that he has not died from injury.

Well you have Lion El Johnson who is lying in a state of rest and another Primarch who is frozen in time so not sure the moving is necessary.

Well to be fair, Primarchs ignore laws of physics and nature in pretty much everything they do.

 Crimson wrote:
They are not immortal. Space marines have a lifespan many times of a normal man and Blood Angels have longer lifespan than other marines. These both clearly indicate a limited lifespan. Sus-an-coma can prolong this lifespan significantly, as it seems to almost completely stop ageing. Based on Chaplain Cassius a marine with UM geneseed would probably have a maximum lifespan of five or six centuries; of course most die much before that in combat.

Except two Astartes who lived for ten thousand years, one who's two thousand years old, and Dante who's 1,200 years old. There's no evidence at all to support any claims of a limited lifespan, and you need actual evidence to defend anything you claim.

Otherwise it's simply "headcanon", IE fan fiction that is not true to the IP established lore. Because there is nothing to support Astartes having a maximum lifespan of a couple centuries. Unless you're arguing they have a cap of a million years, but as we have zero information, we can only conclude that they are indeed biologically immortal for at least ten thousand years or more.

Don't forget that there is a space wolf in a dreadnought that fought during the great crusade and still carries memories of the Emperor walking amongst men.

well we could get a rough estimate if BL ever write about the custodes as they aren't on the front lines while they're not exactly space marines they are the closest equivalent ,
even if they all died in the heresy a new batch would have been created to guard the palace and throne

 Wyzilla wrote:
There's no evidence at all to support any claims of a limited lifespan, and you need actual evidence to defend anything you claim.

The evidence is that they flat out say it. Those exceptions you mention are special cases, achieved either by sus-an membrane or BA gene-seed.

 Crimson wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
There's no evidence at all to support any claims of a limited lifespan, and you need actual evidence to defend anything you claim.

The evidence is that they flat out say it. Those exceptions you mention are special cases, achieved either by sus-an membrane or BA gene-seed.

Oh cool, if they flat out state it then you should have no issues providing citations for when any space marine has died of old age or provide evidence of any of your assertions.

I might have missed something so I'll give youthe benefit of the doubt

If we are told that marines have a lifespan many times that of a normal man*, or that Blood Angels have a longer lifespan than other marines**, then we in fact have been told that marines have limited lifespans.

* 6E BRB
** Probably in every BA codex.

How many times is "many times" though? is it say 5 times? or are we talking 35,754 times?

And what's the standard lifespan of a normal person in 40k?