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Space_hoppo wrote: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.

But SW got no "second founding",russ did Not divide them to chapter.

Don't swear or throw away your life at gw fluff .
gw tuned numbers to have enough Marines to get it fluffy .

GW always change the numbers, like blood angels only have '1000' exactly where as they actually have 3000

Thats why i'm stick to the old sizes. Some ancient formations already got 5000 men divided into 1000 and 100.
This also fits for marines. To create a new marine it takes geneseed wich cannot be reproduced easily.
Mentioned somewhere was that in the crusade numbers dropped dramatically by losses in the fierce fights.
The process to refill ranks was speed up and i believe many traitors became marines when control was lazy.
Today its slow down to ensure the candidate fitting in all demands.
And i'm sure no CSM or heretic is able to create new marines or even replenish rank without losing
most of the "willing" victims. To much mutation in the Warp.

Actually the only think limiting the size of the legions was the number of geneseed they had. But they cant make it very well any more. And Fabius Bile can make new marines, he knows about the process better than anyone else, except the Emperor.

Fabius bile pretends he can make new marines. His retinue is a bunch of monsters,not marines.

But he can still make marines, if he rele wanted too, he's just busy making evil marines.

Space_hoppo wrote:But he can still make marines, if he really wanted too, he's just busy making evil marines.

Evil marines,yes?? Those guys fitting into ONE dex?

Make marines,like build a tank? Plant Food? IMHO any chaos/warp touched can't be transformed into a marine.
Too many things must be done to get the whole physique and organs functioning. So he must rely on enslaved
imp citizens, but many won't fit mentally to the process. Most evil marines end up crazy then.

Are CSM ever sane? They are nearly all barking mad as it is. Besides when a new chapter comes to the ranks of the CSM they bring all their gene seed and ability to make marines, it can be done!

Wouldn't the renegade "new chaos" marines outnumber the former traitor legions?
When fleeing into the warp, isn't the same problem at their geneseed after a couple of years?

Not really seeing as only like 1 chapter breaks off every century. And space marines are quite reslient to warpness it can take many centurys for them to mutate.

But this renegade thing is relative new invented by gw to refill chaos. Someday gw just says:

"ok most CSM are ultramarines geneseed so you need only SM dex to play CSM" ???

That i can believe. Damn SM taking over the warhammer world.

Far worse,gw claims ultramarines as Main geneseed source,so in this future
Most Marines are blue.

DAMN GW! I like the blood angels colour or space wolves, anything but Smirf blue marines!

Actually the legions were originally 10 000 strong as stated in the SM codex. Which would mean around 200 000 space marines roughly. Though with attrition the CSM are probably closer to 150 000 today against the SM 1 000 000.

Ratbarf wrote:Actually the legions were originally 10 000 strong as stated in the SM codex. Which would mean around 200 000 space marines roughly. Though with attrition the CSM are probably closer to 150 000 today against the SM 1 000 000.

You're right about standard size of a legion and i believe that different numbers were usual
in 30k.Some legions had more marines ( Ultra = divided at 2.Found to 23 x 1000) while others
were smaller and thats why not every legion got its own expedition in the crusade.

@ Space_hoppo

legions could be of any size. space wolves legion was one of the smallest. the ultramarines were one of the largest.
while in the words of tarrik torgaddon the imperial fists are yellow ragamuffins even though there cool.

Ratbarf wrote:Actually the legions were originally 10 000 strong as stated in the SM codex. Which would mean around 200 000 space marines roughly. Though with attrition the CSM are probably closer to 150 000 today against the SM 1 000 000.

In one of the Games Workshop PC games... Chaos Gate I think it was. It said that (and this is the 41st Mil.) that there were more than 1000 chapters of space marines, each with more than 1000 marines. "a million battle brothers". As far as the pre-heresy numbers I am not sure. The figure for the CSM legions or for the loyalists for that matter is intentionally vague. I would tend to agree that there is little to prevent CSM legions from creating new recruits to fill there ranks as long as they can acquire more gene-seed.

There are a few things to consider here. The original legions were massive. There were around 100,000 Word Bearers before the heresy, and they are stated as the only force that can get close to the amount of Ultramarines there were. Some legions, such as the Thousand Sons, had about 10-15,000. Others stated as being rather small were the Space Wolves. The World Eaters were also a large legion. After Skalathrax, the legion is stated as splitting into hundreds of warbands. If there were only 100 warbands founded, and each had 100 marines, there would be 10,000 World Eaters. But the fluff says hundreds were created, though obviously they would vary in size.

There is also the Warp to consider. While it has been 10,000 years since the Heresy, it has not been 10,000 years to most Chaos Marines. In the novel Soul Hunter, to the Night Lords crew of the Covenant of Blood, it has only been 100 years since the Siege of Terra. To others, such as in the Word Bearers novels, it has been 250 years. Now, if the Word Bearers had 100,000 at the start of the heresy, would they really lose the equilavent of 100 Loyalist chapters in a quarter of a century?

There is also the huge stock of geneseed that the Iron Warriors captured. The berzerker surgeons are also very popular.

After the Badab War, the Red Corsairs escaped with around 200 battle-brothers. Since then (in less than a century), they have become the biggest threat in the Maelstrom, there ranks swelled by traitors.

Raise undead?

1hadhq wrote: Posted july 2008

dakkawolf wrote: Posted sept 2010.

Rabid Ferret wrote: Posted feb 2011

Somehow, starting a new thread would enable to use more recent fluff.

Wehrkind wrote: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?

1. Most of the traitors are still alive. They die much less often than your games actually represent I'm sure like 80% of them are still alive
2. Very rarely. The badab war was the last big influx of traitors, I think. And these guys aren't even legionnaires, they're just pissed of loyalists, which makes them unworthy of being called 'traitors' at all. They're losers. The Legions would just as soon kill them as they would fight with them.
3. Yeah, they have gene-seed. Lots of it. Abaddon is harvesting all he can get, with the help of a couple other legions. The Iron Warriors had some sort of clone thing going on for a while, but some ultramarine dude messed that up
4. None, that I know of. They can make them daemons, but not marines....Although I feel like I've heard something about that somewhere..... I don't know.

Wow... I saw this pop up in my subscribed thread list and thought "Huh... that's a pretty good question."

Then I realized that's because I asked it 3 years ago. A question for the ages indeed!

Samus_aran115 wrote:
1. Most of the traitors are still alive. They die much less often than your games actually represent I'm sure like 80% of them are still alive

I think that is impossible. The traitors got their asses kicked during the Heresy. Every bit of fluff says that the battle of terra was the bloodiest battle involving SM of all times, a real bloody mess. It is impossible that the traitor legions lost only 20% of their strength during the siege, and I'm not even mentioning the developments of the heresy, the Great Scouring, etc...

If 80% of the original traitor marines were still alive and kickin', how would the imperium be able to hold them at bay in the Eye with the 20 or so loyalist chapters guarding it? How would the traitors ever be able to fail 13 black crusades with 80% of their original strength?

The CSM numbers' must have been quite depleted since the HH. Think about it: the surviving CSM went through the HH, the siege of Terra (for most of them), the Great Scouring, wars with their fellow CSM in the Eye just after the HH and 10 000 years of continuous battles, raids, sieges and black crusades.

In my opinion, the surviving CSM are very few in numbers, and they are the biggest badasses of the entire galaxy!

You're definitely right about the 80 percent. However, again, 10,000 years to the Imperium is not 10,000 years to most of the CSM. See my above post.

Laodamia wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:
1. Most of the traitors are still alive. They die much less often than your games actually represent I'm sure like 80% of them are still alive

I think that is impossible. The traitors got their asses kicked during the Heresy. Every bit of fluff says that the battle of terra was the bloodiest battle involving SM of all times, a real bloody mess. It is impossible that the traitor legions lost only 20% of their strength during the siege, and I'm not even mentioning the developments of the heresy, the Great Scouring, etc...

If 80% of the original traitor marines were still alive and kickin', how would the imperium be able to hold them at bay in the Eye with the 20 or so loyalist chapters guarding it? How would the traitors ever be able to fail 13 black crusades with 80% of their original strength?

The CSM numbers' must have been quite depleted since the HH. Think about it: the surviving CSM went through the HH, the siege of Terra (for most of them), the Great Scouring, wars with their fellow CSM in the Eye just after the HH and 10 000 years of continuous battles, raids, sieges and black crusades.

In my opinion, the surviving CSM are very few in numbers, and they are the biggest badasses of the entire galaxy!

Well, I meant more along the lines of "80% of the marines who survived the heresy", so probably about 50% of the original legionnaires. Seeing as legions were several times larger than chapters, it's still a considerable amount of marines.(I've heard something about legions being hundreds of thousands strong, but I doubt it. I'd say the largest legion was like 25,000 guys)

The Word Bearers had 100,000. Read The First Heretic. And they are said to be the only legion to even come close to matching the Ultramarines. So the Ultramarines could have had as many as 120-150,000 Marines.

"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!

" I read that one, good book. Yeh it appears chaos marines can create new marines from any source of genesead, including harvesting there own. As they live so long it would be safe to assume they can take some now and then to create new marines also. Plus in that book chaos got so much geneseed that they would be making chaos marines as fast as they could for hundereds of years.

1hadhq wrote:

Space_hoppo wrote: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.

But SW got no "second founding",russ did Not divide them to chapter.

Don't swear or throw away your life at gw fluff .
gw tuned numbers to have enough Marines to get it fluffy .

Oh, so that's why the Space Marine codex lists a second founding of the Space Wolves then? The Wolf Brothers.

They didn't last long due to mutation, but there was definitely a second founding from Space Wolves.

Skimming through the posts it seems that there is a part of this Chaos Marine creation bit that people have missed. According to fluff and theory, the world of WFB is inside the Eye of Terror, and that Sigmund was a lost Primarch. Obviously in WFB we have Chaos Warriors and in fluff for that game there have been times when advanced weaponry, bolters and such have shown up. So if you think about it, it would not be hard for the Traitor Legions to cull from this world, and make new Chaos Marines as long as they have Gene Seed, and as stated above, they HAVE gene seed. Maybe not as much as the Imperium but enough to make trouble for the next 10K years.

^That fluff was removed a long time ago.