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I'm aware that Chaos Space Marines take slaves (Heretics) or whatever mortal soldiers they use, but from what admittedly little canon I have read about them it seems like all CSMs are first-founding and first-generation. Are there any Chaos Space Marines that actively implant gene-seed into initiates? Or are CSMs dying in number with every Black Crusade?

Just like normal SM do, they find people and implant their gene seed, however, of course they would only have minor amounts of any sort of gene seed with them after the HH, so it involves a lot more...tampering with the warp...

It all depends on the Legion or Warband, some may recruit through more conventional methods, some even recruit promising adults do to their ability to make things work by using the Warp or Fabius Bile's research.

Do you have any specific references? I just got done reading Soul Hunter of the Night Lords and they were down to just over 30 Astartes in a company by the end of the book. Just no recruiting.

The Chaos Space Marine Codex for Fabius Bile's information.

The Night Lords in Soul Hunter would steer away from using Chaos to make adults into Astartes as many Night Lords abhor the Darker Powers. In Soul Hunter they make mention of Talos wanting to make mention to The Exalted that they need to go find suitable recruits, which most likely would be young males who survive a Night Lord attack and prove promising prospects.

In one of the Ultramarine books they deal extensively with people called the Unfleashed who if I remember correctly are used by the Iron Warriors to make replacement Astartes.

As for using Chaos Sorcery to infuse replacement Astartes I cant recall where I heard that but I see no reason why it wouldn't work. It is after all magic.

How they recruit really all depends on the Warband.

I remember reading on the 13th black crusade campain website that abbadon conquered an Imperial penal world. The prisoners were drafted into his legions of renegade soldiers. The most psychopathic and violent of these prisoners were implanted with black legion geene seed and fought for Abbadon as CSM.

So yes, it seems that CSM legions are capable of recruiting new members for their warbands, though in much more limited numbers than loyalist chapters.

In addition, we must consider the fact that small groups of loyalists (or sometimes entire chapters) space marines can defect to chaos.
For instance, the 4th edition CSM codex mentions a space wolves strike cruiser (the Wolfe of Fenris) that was captured by a warband of red corsairs. The space wolves that survived the boarding assault preferred treason to death and joined the red corsairs. This is only one of various examples when post heresy SM turned renegade and joined the forces of chaos.

Hence, the CSM warbands are able to compensate for their losses by recruiting new renegade astartes.

Geneseed won't be as readily available to Chaos Marines as they don't have the stores like the Imperium does.

They salvage Geneseed from wherever they can obtain it. Apothacarys Honour, a short story, has a renegade Apothacary of the World Eaters hunt down an Avenging Son Apothacary to abstract his geneseed. Honsou of the Iron Warriors is an example of where loyalist geneseed has been used to create a new Chaos Marine.

The Iron Warrions use or used to use the Daemonculaba to create new marines using captured Geneseed. It's from Dead Sky, Black Sun, which I haven't read in it's entirety.

Also the Novel Storm of Iron has an assault on Hydra Cordatus to capture geneseed for the Warmaster.

The major issue is the geneseed.
There is a limited ressource of geneseed generally, and Csm have to rely on the dark mech and psychos like Fab B.
So tainted geneseed won't work, most legions lost too many Marines over time to compensate.
Actual numbers should be rather low, so GW moved on to Renegades and made "original HH" marines less common.

As stated in this thread, Csm could recrut if the geneseed is not corrupted ( but it is mostly ), thus have to rely upon a different method to create something that may
be considered a Csm.
Some like the NL may have a few members who could contribute geneseed that isn't too corrupted.
Some have to rely on stolen geneseed, thus creating even when successful no marine of their own Primarchs geneseed but a halfbreed or worse.

Pure 1st founding legion geneseed is rare in the ranks of the traitors.
Renegades and stolen geneseed most likely change the basic traits sooner or later to the traits of the UM as these are soo common ( 60% +- of genseed ) .

The Csm inevitable turn into sons of Gullyman

Like those have said before, it depends. Chaos isn't supported by the Imperium (obviously) so they don't have ll the resources that they do. They'll really do anything to get more recruits.

Read Storm of Iron. I won't spoil anything, but it's a good read related to your question.

I think that CSM's steal thier geneseed supplies from the stores of loyalist marines. When they get the chance. Apart from that, there are quite a number of traitor marines from later foundings. It is stated that the Grey Knights are the only chapter to not lose a single marine to Chaos. This would imply that every other chapter has lost some number of marines to the dark powers, numbers ranging from a couple to an entire chapter. Cheers!

It reads in 3rd editon chaos codex that fabius bile yearned for greater knowledge, and unlocked the secrets of the creation of space marines and cloning. So chaos warlords pay him huge prices to create more chaos space marines to replace losses


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So yeah, technically they are all 3rd founding, as many of them are the same person. Several times over

Yes, the Traitor Legions do actively recruit, at least in the case of several known Legions, and not all of them are veterans of the Crusade.

I would say it depends on the legion how they create new marines, but many of the 'Excommunicate Traitoris' Legions are likely running low on gene-seed...and may be resorting to other means.

That's why they loot from the loyalist Astartes. Big Chaos raids have been made to capture stocks of loyalist gene-seed, which is then used to create new Chaos Space Marines.

Likewise, they have no compunctions about stealing gene-seed from loyalists they've slain in combat, along with equipment.

An excellent example is Honsou of the Iron Warriors, as stated above, born as Astartes from the gene-seed of Rogal Dorn, and forever named 'half-breed' due to it.

Gene-forging facilities are often found on S.M ships so if C.S.M capture them then they can make new marines by stealing gene seed from loyalists or getting it conventionally, assuming the "original" C.S.M didn't have these facilities available.
I expect the warp comes into it as well.

Do not forget that most CSM were once full members of other chapters.

Necanor wrote:Do not forget that most CSM were once full members of other chapters.

Actually full members of Legions, chapters being created after the HH.

My question is, who harvests the gene seed? Does every CSM warband have Fabius Bile-like people who take care of that? Since gene seed can't be created, only harvested, WTF does it come from?

Anyone?

Gene-seed comes from space marines, iirc each space marine has 2 gene-seed, so when these geneseed are mature, they are harvested.

Conservationist wrote:Gene-seed comes from space marines, iirc each space marine has 2 gene-seed, so when these geneseed are mature, they are harvested.

Okay, yeah, now that you mention that, I do recall the "Making of a Space Marine" article in the Index Astartes saying that. Still, it stands to reason that CSM would'ent have nearly the stock that loyalist would have.

In one of the Word Bearers books there is a member of the Arbites who wounds the First Acolyte during the initial stages of the assault on the planets capital. Well he survives being thrown several stories and becomes a slave building the Gehemenet, he's chained next to one of the traitors that deactivated the orbital defence system and when he discovers this he kills himand earns a measure of respect for it.

Well he eventually starts to go insane and the other slaves and overseers fear him, huge amounts of daemons are drawn to his soul in the Warp and even the Chaos Marines start to see something more in him and he is eventually set free to fight against the Imperium. If he had survived he would probably have been made into a Chaos Marine, but he commited suicide

Just thought I'd point out another example.

In heroes of the space marines. There is a short story about the night lords going to a planet and then do this thing where they start killing everyone and the ones who survived become chaos space marines.