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Does anyone here know any fluff on how a successor chapter is formed?

From what I've read, it could be as simple as someone with the appropriate authority saying "We need more Chapters to deal with threat X, and Chapter Y is up on the rotation to lose some guys. Your turn."

I imagine there would be other factors as well, like total strength because splitting a Chapter that is already weak can't end well, what kind of wars said Chapter Y is already fighting in, and stuff.

Another reason might be that they detected an instability in the gene-seed, and want to try a 'control group - experimental group' experiment to see what happens. Or to separate the good from the bad and make another chapter with the bad stuff, which could explain why so many successor Chapters went heretic. Other than the sudden need for more renegade chapters to balance loyalists so it doesn't look like the fluff writers favor the loyalists too much more.

There isn't much fluff that I have found, but a successor chapter is created by the Adeptus Mechanicus. The creation of a new chapter has to be approved by the high lords of Terra and the head of the mechanicum, and takes about 55 years.
Rather than splitting a chapter, they use the geneseeds taken from the gene seed tithes and create most of an entire chapters worth of gene seed using "test slaves" to incubate new progenoids.
I'm not sure what they do with the seed then, I presume they pick 1000 suitable humans from Terra and put them all through the normal process

See the Index Astartes if you have a copy.

I would imagine there to be more scout companies as all the newly created space marines wouldnt get to just jump right into tac armour status. Plus it would take quite awhile to create the chapter from mostly scratch meaning either

a) all made at the same time, so alot of scouts, and then the regular amount after to fill in for casualties

b)all the new marines made in a segmented fashion, giving a steady stream of members, keeping the number of scouts fairly constant

Chapters are formed if there is need to.

But the Dark Angels asked nicely the high lords and got the "disciples of caliban" delivered.

I think normally the high senate keeps a number of 1000 chapters around and founds only new ones to replace losses.

So after secound founding, when legions were split up, any following founding may be done in laboratorys of the mechanicum.

I always wondered if the Mentors chapter might be used to initially train a newly founded Chapter, or at least the first hundred or so recruits, and then they could be used to train the rest of the Chapter.

I would guess then that successor chapters formed from the gene seed of an existing chapter would then venerate the primarch of the founding chapter?

I'm just trying to write some fluff for my on SM chapter I'm working on.

I'll check out the Index Astaries Grim, thanks for the heads up.

The high lords of terra see a need for a new chapter to be formed (or are petitioned) and choose a chapter for the gene-seed to be drawn, volunteers from that chapter are formed into the new command structure. The gene-seed stored on mars is used to make new organs and gene-seed for the new rectuits, who are trained by veterans (most of the time from several chapters)