Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Are they still able to do this? I've yet to read a recent piece of fluff with this taking place.
Or is GW's rules-design department simply phasing this out, pretending it never existed like some kind of mark of shame.

Sort of...
It's not in the gameplay that's for sure...

Yeah. Sergeant Learchus had to eat a Tau brain in to get some codes in Courage in Honor.

read the second newest Ultra Marine book the scout Sgt in the book eats a Tau's brain the learn how to fly a skimmer

Read the Soul Drinker: Omnibus its kinda their trademark

The Omophagea implant is also in the Deathwatch RPG.

Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do? It would make more sense to rob an enemies memories through psychic means.

Cheesecat wrote:Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do?

Apparently not.

Nerivant wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do?

Apparently not.

Wouldn't the space marine's stomach acid destroy the food's genetic material though?

Cheesecat wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do?

Apparently not.

Wouldn't the space marine's stomach acid destroy the food's genetic material though?

Four nerve bundles are implanted connecting the spine and the stomach wall. Able to 'read' or absorb genetic material consumed by the marine, the omophagea transmits the gained information to the Marine's brain as a set of memories or experiences.

I doubt it will ever get more intricate than that; Space Marine biology is basically space Voodoo.

Lictors do it too. Kroot don't steal memories but they stomach has its own brain too.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Lictors do it too. Kroot don't steal memories but they stomach has its own brain too.

If anything, the Kroot take it up to eleven.

Lictors and SM's do it for info, Kroot do it to evolve.

Eating enemies is suitably grimdark, so it seems the trait gets around.

Nerivant wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:

Nerivant wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do?

Apparently not.

Wouldn't the space marine's stomach acid destroy the food's genetic material though?

Four nerve bundles are implanted connecting the spine and the stomach wall. Able to 'read' or absorb genetic material consumed by the marine, the omophagea transmits the gained information to the Marine's brain as a set of memories or experiences.

I doubt it will ever get more intricate than that; Space Marine biology is basically space Voodoo.

Doesn't the brain absorb and interpret information, it would make more sense if the space marine's brain attempted to interpret the contents held within the omophagea.

Yeah I always this thought it was pretty stupid. Especially considering how religiously the Imperium follow the whole "unclean xeno" thing, and how dangerous "alien" mindsets are to good honest humans.

Cheesecat wrote:
Doesn't the brain absorb and interpret information, it would make more sense if the space marine's brain attempted to interpret the contents held within the omophagea.

That would make much more sense than how they have it, but since there is a shortage of sense in the 41st millennium, Space Marines process information with their stomach lining.

Talk about thinking with your gut.

This is the best in Deathwatch, me and my squad do it pretty often, it can also temporarily give the Space Marine some of the attributes of whatever it eats.

Kroot and Genestealers can extract the genes, not the memories (and yes, some Ork knowledge like Warp drive technology is said to be genetically encoded). When I read "Courage and Honour" and the Sergeant is eating a Tau brain to get the driving manual for a skimmer, I cursed the author for his incompetence, then learned that this actually is current fluff and repeated in the Deathwatch RPG. Still ridiculous.

Yes, I thought it was more like the gained some instinctual knowledge (which I prefer) but it is straight up Lictoresque brain eating.

There's some scientific basis for this...there was a famous experiment with flatworms back in the '50's that seemed to show that memories could indeed be "eaten:"

http://www.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/bpp2mem1.html

"The flat-worm or planarian is a very simple invertebrate, nevertheless, in 1955 Thompson and McConnell showed that planaria could be classically conditioned to avoid light by pairing a light CS with an electric shock US. ...In 1962 McConnell performed an experiment which appeared to be even more dramatic demonstration of this. After training some planaria he ground them up and fed them to other planaria. These animals were quicker at learning the light-shock association than controls who were fed ground-up untrained worms. "

Ahh cannibalism: where would science be without you?

Cheesecat wrote:Isn't it biologically speaking impossible to do? It would make more sense to rob an enemies memories through psychic means.

40k is science fantasy, 40k science beats real world science

Nerivant wrote:

Cheesecat wrote:
Doesn't the brain absorb and interpret information, it would make more sense if the space marine's brain attempted to interpret the contents held within the omophagea.

That would make much more sense than how they have it, but since there is a shortage of sense in the 41st millennium, Space Marines process information with their stomach lining.

Talk about thinking with your gut.

I think you are missing the point, it says that nerves are added linking the stomach to the spine. The Spine is directly linked to the brain so it is perfectly fine to have the receptors in the stomach and the actual interpretation occuring in the brain.
It is the same as skin, the sense of touch is not discerned by the skin but by the brain/CNS

BluntmanDC wrote:
I think you are missing the point, it says that nerves are added linking the stomach to the spine. The Spine is directly linked to the brain so it is perfectly fine to have the receptors in the stomach and the actual interpretation occuring in the brain.
It is the same as skin, the sense of touch is not discerned by the skin but by the brain/CNS

According to what I quoted, the information is received by the brain already translated into memories and experiences.

Krogen wrote:Read the Soul Drinker: Omnibus its kinda their trademark

I don't recall them eating brains in that...

Commissar Molotov wrote:There's some scientific basis for this...there was a famous experiment with flatworms back in the '50's that seemed to show that memories could indeed be "eaten:"

http://www.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/bpp2mem1.html

"The flat-worm or planarian is a very simple invertebrate, nevertheless, in 1955 Thompson and McConnell showed that planaria could be classically conditioned to avoid light by pairing a light CS with an electric shock US. ...In 1962 McConnell performed an experiment which appeared to be even more dramatic demonstration of this. After training some planaria he ground them up and fed them to other planaria. These animals were quicker at learning the light-shock association than controls who were fed ground-up untrained worms. "

"This experiment intended to show that memory could perhaps be transferred chemically. The experiment was repeated with mice, fish, and rats, but it always failed to produce the same results. The perceived explanation was that rather than memory being transferred to the other animals, it was the hormones in the ingested ground animals that changed its behavior.[6] McConnell believed that this was evidence of a chemical basis for memory, which he identified as memory RNA. McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias.[7][8] No blinded experiment has ever reproduced his results. Subsequent explanations of maze-running enhancements associated with cannibalism of trained planarian worms were that the untrained flatworms were only following tracks left on the dirty glassware rather than absorbing the memory of their fodder". from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian#Biochemical_memory_experiments

So no, according to the current state of knowledge good old Learchus could eat a thousand Tau brains and wouldn't get a single piece of information out of it if it wouldn't be for the vodoo biology which
powers the Emprah's finest.

Whats wrong with Space Marines eating other organisms to gain knowledge? How come its stupid when a space marine eats another organism to see its memory but it's not stupid when an Ork nails together 10000 sheets of metal to make a giant walker that can house ten guns and a cannon the size of a tank?

I find nothing wrong with this fluff at all, and I still count it as fluff since it is in the current SM codex. I'm guess they use The Remembrancer's organ to track, trace, and gain knowledge for utilitarian purposes, and as such, is a necessity for an Astartes. Like many of the people in above posts said. Its Science Fiction and fantasy. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant unless it makes you so uncomfortable that you have to either pick at it or pretend it doesn't exist.

Because when Orks do it it's funny...

purplefood wrote:Because when Orks do it it's funny...

And GW can make money off of it

kenshin620 wrote:

purplefood wrote:Because when Orks do it it's funny...

And GW can make money off of it

Exactly...

Soul Hunter by Aaron Dembski Bowden. Only a brief mention, but it is in there. For a more detailed description, check out the Soul Drinkers books by Ben Counter. Assuming you can get through the typos, they are all about that particular practice. As mentioned above, the current Space Marine Codex still lists it as one of the abilities of the Space Marines.

The gist I get is that doing the whole 'eating things and absorbing their memories' is only practiced on sentient beings by the more feral Chapters, the ones who are either already tainted by Chaos, or real close to the edge.

When I first read this in the main Codex, I kind of assumed it was more of a survivalist's tool. If you are stranded on an alien planet, you need to know where to fiind food, water, shelter, and what local hazards to avoid. Rather than extensive training, all a Space Marine stranded in the desert needs to do is find and eat a lizard, or even a piece of carrion, in order to gain the requisite survival skills. Applying this tool to sentient beings isn't something I see a whole bunch of Ultramarines, Salamanders, or Imperial Fists doing on a regular basis.

LumenPraebeo wrote:Whats wrong with Space Marines eating other organisms to gain knowledge? How come its stupid when a space marine eats another organism to see its memory but it's not stupid when an Ork nails together 10000 sheets of metal to make a giant walker that can house ten guns and a cannon the size of a tank?.

/thread