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@ the OP, you may have misinterpreted a few things. The Black Templars High Marshal Helbrecht (Chapter Master) has a bionic arm (the arm holding the power sword) in the rulebook and on the model.

kronk wrote:@ the OP, you may have misinterpreted a few things.

Mostly the part where it's somehow shameful or heretical to have replacement parts. As long as you lost that hand fighting enemies of the Empire it's perfectly fine to have it replaced with a bionic part. The Iron Hands get funny looks because they choose to do it before actually losing that hand in battle.

In some sources (which, I can't recall at this point), it is said that 'vat-grown' replacement limbs and organs (for lack of a better term) are available, generally to those with a lot of Imperial Clout, but it takes a long time to do so. Thus, to get a Marine back to combat effectiveness, he is generally equipped with bionics instead.

Once equipped, the Marine is the inheritor of what is often a venerated piece of wargear with a combat service record longer than his own. In addition, if another clone limb were grown for him, he would now have to have what is in effect, elective surgery, to replace his current limb/organ.

When the Space Wolves regrew/repaired their guest's badly damaged body, I think it was implied that this process took months, or even years?

Thus, most marines get a bionic replacement, to get back into active duty.

Having just read the Iron Hands novel - they go down the whole flesh is weak path - and in the book end up becoming quite robotic/necron like.

There is an interesting bit by a AM Magos who seeks to make a clear distinction between her cult seeking perfection in a physical form through the augmentation of the inferior human body and the Iron Hands. In her eyes they are biological perfection and so are marring that perfection by their ever growing "need" to replace with it cybernetics etc. Note that she does not condem them as such...........

There is also a passage from the IH's lost Primarch about this issue.