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General question about Chaos here: Where do new Chaos marines come from? I figure there are a few main sources:

1: Original traitors: Probably a lot are dead by now, but plenty are still kicking.
2: New traitors: At what rate do they leave chapters? Do single Marines book, or squads, companies? How does that work?
3: Creation of new Marines: I thought I had read in previous fluff that Fabius Bile can make new marines from normal humans. Is that the case?
4: Some wierd daemon trick to make normal humans marines: ?

All told, I just don't see how they really keep their numbers up. Is there something I am missing here, or does it really just not make sense that there should be any left in the universe at all?

I believe it is also firmly hinted at in the fluff that it is possible for CSM to create new Space Marines using Imperial procedures. At the very least, the story of the assualt on the Wolf of Fenris from the new Codex references the Red Corsairs gathering up the geneseed of their fallen and that of the Space Wolves for future use.

I would have to go take a look at the new Codex again, but as I recall it also hints at a fairly high rate of desertion from the current Marines compared to their standing strength at any given time. Minor defections (like the one veteran sergant getting insanely bored on what amounted to garrison/genestealer killing duty, eventually killing his squad mates and leading an entire world into rebellion) seem much more frequent than previously portrayed. Major breaks like the Red Corsairs (keep in mind that this one incident came to involve 3 full Chapters of Marines in rebellion) were also cast as a bit less unbelievable than in the past, at least to my eyes.

So I think that geneseed reuse (including the ability to use that of fallen loyalist Marines) and continuing trickle of deserters keeps them fighting on at a relatively high strength.

Perhaps part of their longevity can be ascribed to the extent to which they spend their days in the Eye of Terror, where the favor of the Chaos divinities could impart unnatural longevity or bring one back from the dead (think the Slaanesh special character, but with less drama.)

Plus the fact that so many Black Crusades have failed to topple the Imperium points out a strategic issue-the Chaos Marines have sufficient force to conquer limited areas if they gather in force. This is because Imperial defenses are usually dispersed to deal with the more usual raiding parties. As the Imperium responds to major invasions, however, their weight in numbers begins to tell and push the foe back.

Additionally, their strength can always be augmented by local supporters/cultists and Daemons to greatly increase their field strength beyond what the number of Marines in the field alone would indicate.

Chaos marines come from all of the groups you mentioned except for number 4. really most traitor marines come from the old legions, or new renegade squads/chapters. you'd be surprised how many heresy era chaos marines are around. they really never die because once you enter the warp time and space, and psychics go to all hell. time is not linear in the warp, so one warrior may live forever in the warp until he dies on a battlefield and even then some ten thousand years later he might walk out of an open warp storm thinking it was the same day he went into it. therefore chaos will always be a scourge upon the real world so long as warp storms like the eye of terror and such stay open in our dimension.


also there are many times raider by chaos followers on marine chapter gene seed banks where they steal and chaos up hundreds/thousands of the precious gene seed

I'll need help learning how to "grey out" text, but I'll try to do this without too many spoilers. I'm bad at this however so consider yourselves warned.

We know Fabius Bile is capable of creating space marines - we know about his nasty abilities and his ambition from Fulgrim. We know he was able to clone a Primarch (Horus no less!). I think, somewhere, it mentions the Chaos legions having much less rigorous standards than Loyalist Chapters, so they may be able to increase their numbers faster than Imperial Chapters. I think though that the Big Question with regards to Legions would answer a lot of our concerns. After all, if a Legion had a minimum of 10,000 Marines (and the Ultramarines having apparently over a hundred thousand)...

Alpharius Walks however has a very good point - even the massive Black Crusades have failed to topple the Imperium. Even with some ability to rebuild their numbers (new traitors, the lack of physics in the Eye, cloned or otherwise created Marines), their numbers really aren't that large. Perhaps GW needs to stop playing up the Chaos Marines so much, and allow other forces to join in.

Good point on the reduced screening-I would imagine that the CSM could use reduced mental screening and other psychological techniques used by the loyalists. This would both increase their body of qualifying applicants and ease the recruitment & training process. Perhaps the process could even be seen as similar to old RT fluff with violent hive gangs being conscripted en masse based on their successful use of violence? Works for me.

I doubt GW will stop playing up CSM because the story line is too central to their conception of the 40k universe, and it provides some of the more riveting drama/fluff/plot lines. But I agree that at the end of the day the CSM are just one threat amongst many-more sinister in some ways perhaps (the mental resources required to fight off an Ork horde are probably a bit less than that required to fight against the Daemonic) but ultimately just one amongst many.

But that takes us a bit off point . . . so I would just reiterate that it seems within the context of the new CSM Codex and past fluff that the forces of Chaos have ways of keeping their strength up and of using convenient force multipliers to remain a compelling threat.

Well the Alpha legion supposedly uses a mixture of standard practices and that entire hypnotic suggestion in loyal inducties to cause them to turn to chaos and join the Alpha legion.
But then again the A-Legion isnt in the Eye of Terror 99% of the time so must have a much bigger turnover.

Going by novels,Most of the Word Bearers(Dark Apostle) must but origional first founding with little to no new inducties.



The Thousand Sons can't be getting replacements but I heard (from a friend who read a novel I haven't ) that when a Rubric marine falls it only takes some time for him to reanimate his armor if its fixed. Anyone heard this or is he bs-ing. And as for replacement Sorcerors,Well the Rubric also increased their power 10-fold so replacements of that calibre would be nigh impossible to find.

Those are all really good points. The option of stealing geneseed from the fallen hadn't occured to me at all.

The reason the thought was coming up at all is that I was figuring there is a very finite number of Marines at any one time (compared to say IG or SoB). Even if the attrition from minor desertion and renegade acts were pretty high, say 15%, and assuming a very large pool of traitors from the original legions, that makes for a very limited amount of CSM that can die before one starts noticing the lack.

Basically, it occured to me that Chaos definitely needs a cultist/naughty IG entry in their codex since having that many chaos marines in one place should be relatively rare. However, perhaps being able to make their own new CSM based of geneseed harvested after battles will help mitigate the issue a good bit.

In the Space Wolf books the Ksons are resurrecting their dead into Rubrics, not sure how cannon that is.

like i said the warp works in such a way that one can die and years later appear again from a warp storm like it was the day he entered the warp. time does not work linearly in the warp so once you enter you could in fact leave it then infinite numbers of times (as long as when you entered there was no gellar field protecting you) this is especially so if you embrace the chaos gods who can in fact grant you eternal life

Loyalist marines have pretty strict screening because they don't want someone to go crazy on them. Most CSM don't care if someone does, at the worst, they just throw them at the enemy lines as a distraction.

Also, in the fluff CSM generally aren't portrayed as showing up in company level formations (Storm of Iron being an exception), it's mostly a couple squads of CSM reinforcing a bunch of cultists. So, CSM may be relatively rare in 40k. In the fluff, the enemy is more often crazed civilians, a genestealer cult, renegade guard - and they're backed up by one or two powerful units of shock troops (daemons, genestealers, or CSM).

Also consider that CSM have no qualms about warring with each other, and the original legions have expended a lot of resources warring with each other over the milleia since Horus' death. The World Eaters even turned on each other.

Storm of Iron addresses several of your points.

It has original traitor marines. It has Iron Warrior marines that were made from Imperial Fist gene seed. It has normal humans being turned into Power Armor wearing Khorne Beserkers through Demonic Tricks.

The new chaos codex seems to support the whole modern day traitors thing too. So, all 4 option seem viable.

@Voodoo_Chile yes and yes the book about the 1000 Sons was i think the third space wolf book

well Chaos has stolen half of the "new" gene seed in the imperium. The other half being on mars, so i rekon they got more marines than space marines do lol

see storm of iron for details alright read

If I remember correctly, I know that deamon princes can't die, and that sorcers can't as well. Not entirely sure about the the regular grunts but it could easily apply to them as well.

If I remember correctly, when Chaos Space Marine dies its relatively the same as being excersized, so he can't return to the regular galaxy for a hundred years and a day after he was "killed" But after time they reconstitute in the warp and eventually return for another round. (kind of like a "We'll Be Back in a While" deal) That way they don't really need new recruits, they just wait around until all their dead guys come back. Though they could easily get new marines from traitor chapters and creating marines. (Now I don't think the above appleid before the seige of Terra, thats why Horus and a lot of the Legions that had not yet entered the eye would have had major holes in their legion that could use filling seeing as they wouldn't regenerate.)

Hmmm more evidence that CSM need a cultist/traitor entry in their books.

Ahh well. Thanks for the info guys! This one had been niggling at me for a while!

Alot of the short stories and comics have csm stealing gene seed and capturing marines to take their organs.

csm are not able to live forever.when you read carefully
no normal csm returns after death,only possesed and
demons will vanish into the warp.

I think it was in the last Chaos Codex that they mentioned that Fabius Bile had the ability to create Marines.

Aside from that, they still get the trickle of renegades and traitor Chapters from time to time. Plus the original Legions were massive, so a lot of them are still kicking around.

And in fluff terms, Marines are super soldiers, so even a small number of them are dangerous. Combine that with thousands of years of combat experience and enhancements from Chaos, and very few CSMs become a very big problem.

100 night lords, backed up by cultists ravaged one planet entirely and razed it's capitol. it took just those 100 night lords to bring down a PDF. that attests to the astartes power

A maximum of 20.000 csm from
9 Legions plus 15-20.000 renegades.

Legions could muster 10-25.000 SM
each,9 of them should have 150.000
when in full strenght.
take out the loyalists and combat
losses and you will get 50-70.000 at
Terra.After that and 10.000 years in
conflicts, there maybe 15-20000 left.

but those that become possed, ascend to daemonhood and are overall liked by the gods don't actually die, they just come back after a couple thousand years (which in the warp could be like three days outside)

!SPOILER!


In the Novel "Storm of Iron" the Iron Warriors are on a mission to crack a fortress the contains gene seed for Abaddon. Well to make a long but very cool story short they get into the place and theres gene seed tanks as far as the eye can see i mean millions and millions of tanks of the stuff and one of the main characters Honsou has gene seed implanted in him from a dead Imperial Fist in him * therefore hated by his buddies* yeah then Honsou pwnes them all and comes back in a secound novel "Dead Sky, Black Sun" both must read books!

And New 'zerks and plague marines can be created by certain methods. Some warbands, particularly the Black Legion, recruit Berzerker-Surgeons to perform the neuro-surgery and also very powerful Nurglesque sorcerers can bestow Plague Marine-hood upon willing Marines.

yay reading new fluff! not as good as the old stuff in my view

There just aren't that many CSM, just like there aren't that many loyalist SM. The vast majority of the Imperium is defended by Imperial Guard. The vast majority of Chaos forces is made up of cultists, demons, traitors, mutants, etc. But this isn't represented by the codex.

I would have to say the Orginal could be up to 1,000,000 CSM maximum! (Because the two forces were equal in number at the HH and There were 1000 chapters made of 1000 men (1000 X 1000 is 1 million) And every now and again chapters come over to replace the daead so there could be a good half million left alive?

Space_hoppo wrote:I would have to say the Orginal could be up to 1,000,000 CSM maximum! (Because the two forces were equal in number at the HH and There were 1000 chapters made of 1000 men (1000 X 1000 is 1 million) And every now and again chapters come over to replace the daead so there could be a good half million left alive?

Loyalists today x2 = CSM + SM at 30k ? Stick to the numbers in the books and you'll see that GW changed them.
A legion had grandcompanies and i never read of higher than 20-30 of them. To fix 1.000.000 into 9 legions,
you need 100.000 per legio, 4.000 per grandcompany. A little oversized ?

Not really considering the size of the galaxy with its millions of worlds. There was at least 10-20 marines per plant. Also a SW great company have 1000 men and theres 13 of them.

Space_hoppo wrote:Not really considering the size of the galaxy with its millions of worlds. There was at least 10-20 marines per plant. Also a SW great company have 1000 men and theres 13 of them.

13x1000=13.000 ? 1 Legion = 10.000-25000 => 20 Legions=200.000 - 500000.
How did you count 1.000.000 from this source?

The Space Wolves Chapter has 13 companies in the present day of 40k. And i swear that they said legions were 100,000 marines to 250,000 marines, but for the life of me i cannot find it anywhere.