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I've been thinking about this for a while now, Since cadians are supposed to be some of the best trianed, most disciplined IG troops drilled from a young age in war why isn't a chapter formed to help defend the cadian gate using cadian citizens and recruits? I was thinking of making a small marine army using this as the background especially focused on deffensive tactics. Do any of you know of any reasons this wouldn't be possible/acceptable?

Cheers, Lappie

If you like it - its valid

I think that the Imperium is quite happy with the calibre of the Guard / pdf on Cadia as is. To be fair, there are many many planets who can provide as suitable recruits to be transformed into Astartes. Many of the known chapters prefer more primative and feral populations ot recruit from -few seem to recruit from the mainstream Imperial worlds. Might be to keep the mystic as well as provide certain traits.

but if you like the idea - write and model it up

It's not in fluff, but the premise is perfectly valid in my opinion. A defensive marine chapter painted up in the Cadian colors sounds great, maybe you could have scouts wielding lasguns as a parallel to the youth regiments.

As I recall several chapters guard the Eye of Terror. Not Cadia specifically, but these would be close by if the situation is ever desperate enough. The group is known as the Astartes Praeses, twenty chapters assigned to guard the regions surrounding the Eye of Terror. Out of the twenty ten names are known (one gone renegade) and one chapter is said to have been destroyed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astartes_Praeses

Because you would need to take resources away from somewhere to make the chapter, and cadia has bigger problems. Who would you take away to make the chapter? Every man, women, child, dog and pile of lint is busy defending cadia.

Spetulhu wrote:As I recall several chapters guard the Eye of Terror. Not Cadia specifically, but these would be close by if the situation is ever desperate enough. The group is known as the Astartes Praeses, twenty chapters assigned to guard the regions surrounding the Eye of Terror. Out of the twenty ten names are known (one gone renegade) and one chapter is said to have been destroyed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astartes_Praeses

I knew that there were chapters whose soul purpose was guarding the eye but what I was asking if there was any reason why a new chapter couldn't be formed from cadians. I just thought it's be an interesting background for a marine chapter.

On that note what are the main colours for cadian PDF forces? I know the cadian 8th colours are green and beige/khaki.

The same I would assume.

It's green and khaki. Youth regiments have a white strip down the helmet.

I don't see why Space Marines would go looking at Cadia for recruitment. Generally, young feral tribesmen fit their aspirant requirments more than boy soldiers.

Same happens with Catachan. If it is the deadliest world in the Imperium why don't use it to recruit aspirants?

Lappie wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:As I recall several chapters guard the Eye of Terror. Not Cadia specifically, but these would be close by if the situation is ever desperate enough. The group is known as the Astartes Praeses, twenty chapters assigned to guard the regions surrounding the Eye of Terror. Out of the twenty ten names are known (one gone renegade) and one chapter is said to have been destroyed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astartes_Praeses

I knew that there were chapters whose sole purpose was guarding the Eye but what I was asking if there was any reason why a new Chapter couldn't be formed from Cadians. I just thought it's be an interesting background for a Marine Chapter.

As was mentioned, taking recruits from Cadia is a no-no. The amount of populace they'd have to potentially draw away just to get started and have recruits is silly and would damage the Cadians overall.

More likely than not, we'll see something soon about the Cadians having some kind of 'resistance' to genetic tampering which explains the low occurrence of mutations among their births, despite proximity to the Eye of Terror.

On that note what are the main colours for cadian PDF forces? I know the Cadian 8th colours are green and beige/khaki.

Cadian "PDF" does not exist. They have what is called the "Interior Guard", which are Cadian Shock regiments rotated in and out to stand watch over the homeworld. The exact number of regiments on Cadia isn't mentioned.

The green and khaki uniform thing is kind of a misnomer. There is no 'set' uniform color for Cadia, with them having different uniforms for different climates. Green and khaki is the 'temperate' uniform, which you normally would see on campaigns or on the Interior Guard in the midrange climes of Cadia. You might see other regiments of the Interior Guard wearing urban puzzle camo, arctic camo, things like that.

The Ultramarines are quite successful in recruiting from their own civilized worlds. If I'm not mistaken, the Crimson Fists do the same. Cadia would be a good place to recruit from if the above two examples are anything to go by.

The Ultramarines recruit from an entire 'empire', and it's a rather idyllic one at that. There's very little war, outside of Ork raiders or the occasional Tyranid Hive Fleet getting hungry.

Crimson Fists, again, were recruiting from a rather idyllic world where they didn't need to worry about maintaining standing armies on an everyday basis.

Saying "Ultramarines did it!" isn't exactly the best example, since the situations are dramatically different.

Saying that feral tribesmen fit better that civilized people isn't wholly accurate, as the two examples provided show, that was what I was really replying to. Obviously there are other reasons as to why Cadia may not be a good place, but it isn't the quality of the populace that's holding them back.

Kanluwen wrote:
Cadian "PDF" does not exist. They have what is called the "Interior Guard", which are Cadian Shock regiments rotated in and out to stand watch over the homeworld. The exact number of regiments on Cadia isn't mentioned.

I know they are called the interior guard, I said PDF to simplify things incase not everyone knew. From what I read they do function as a PDF and the best are selected to be shock troops, never heard of it being a rotational thing since when you go off somewhere on crusade or to fight some other campaign there's little chance you'll end up coming home again.

Lappie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Cadian "PDF" does not exist. They have what is called the "Interior Guard", which are Cadian Shock regiments rotated in and out to stand watch over the homeworld. The exact number of regiments on Cadia isn't mentioned.

I know they are called the interior guard, I said PDF to simplify things incase not everyone knew. From what I read they do function as a PDF and the best are selected to be shock troops, never heard of it being a rotational thing since when you go off somewhere on crusade or to fight some other campaign there's little chance you'll end up coming home again.

Then you read wrong, because the few pieces on the Interior Guard talks about how regiments are rotated by a selection process which isn't described.

You're right about the "Crusade" and campaign bit making it difficult, but more likely than not the selection process is done based on what regiments suffer heavy casualties on campaign.

"The best" of Cadians aren't selected to be Shock Troops. Every Cadian soldier is a Shock Troop. "The best" are selected to be Kasrkin.

Like I have to keep saying though: Don't say PDF when referring to the Interior Guard. The acronym PDF refers to a specific form of Imperial military organization. They are, by and large, a mix of professional and volunteer soldiers trained to a bare minimum when compared with the Imperial Guard(and a laughable standard when compared with professional soldiery like the Cadians) and have been equipped to deal with small raiding parties, insurgents, and cells of heretics.
The Interior Guard is full-on Imperial Guard regiments, through and through, armed and equipped like any force leading an assault on an enemy held world.

the Marine chapter which guards the Cadian Gate is the GKs.

Deamons are always pouring out so the GKs keep a permant garrison on several of the worlds in the area. it is the front line in the war against chaos.

Recruitment and training

As a fortress world, most of the population of Cadia is under arms, and most aspire to join the ranks of the Imperial Guard or the Cadian Interior Guard, Cadia's PDF. Cadia's militarization is such that most children learn military doctrine before they can walk, inspiring maxims such as: "any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by the age of 10 was born on the wrong planet" and "If the ammo ain't live, this ain't no Cadian practice".

Cadian youth begin training in the Youth Armies, and eventually are inducted into the Whiteshields, where they fight alongside Cadian regiments and gain vital experience through actual combat. The best and most promising of the Youth Army cadets are selected for special training, eventually joining the elite Kasrkin.

Describes them as Cadia's PDF right there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cadian Shock Troops

Cadia's planetary defence forces are known as the Interior Guard. It is from this guard that the Imperium draws the famed Cadian Shock Troopers regiments, widely regarded as the best soldiers in the Imperium short of the superhuman Space Marines.

Also there.

Lappie wrote:

Recruitment and training

As a fortress world, most of the population of Cadia is under arms, and most aspire to join the ranks of the Imperial Guard or the Cadian Interior Guard, Cadia's PDF. Cadia's militarization is such that most children learn military doctrine before they can walk, inspiring maxims such as: "any Cadian who can't field-strip his own lasgun by the age of 10 was born on the wrong planet" and "If the ammo ain't live, this ain't no Cadian practice".

Cadian youth begin training in the Youth Armies, and eventually are inducted into the Whiteshields, where they fight alongside Cadian regiments and gain vital experience through actual combat. The best and most promising of the Youth Army cadets are selected for special training, eventually joining the elite Kasrkin.

Describes them as Cadia's PDF right there.

Because they are Cadia's planetary defense force.

That doesn't "make them PDF" in the general sense. This isn't really complex to understand.
You tried using the term interchangeably. It's not. Interior Guard are not PDF, except in the sense that they defend the planet. They are equipped, as standard, for the Imperial Guard.

Cadian Shock Troops

Cadia's planetary defence forces are known as the Interior Guard. It is from this guard that the Imperium draws the famed Cadian Shock Troopers regiments, widely regarded as the best soldiers in the Imperium short of the superhuman Space Marines.

Also there.

There's nothing that says the Imperium wouldn't found a Chapter based on Cadia. It makes sense that, of the twenty that guard the Cadian Gate, at least one would have a fortress there, and probably one or two might recruit from there.

Recruitment for a SM Chapter wouldn't impact the Cadian population in the slightest. There are what, 1000 Marines in a Chapter, give or take? Let's say only one in ten prospects from a normal world will pass muster... Not everyone who fails dies (it's been stated in several places that those who fail and survive become Chapter serfs... no reason they can't be sent back to Cadia as potential Kasrkin). But lets assume a 75% casualty rate, just to be grimdark. That's 10,000 people recruited to make one Chapter, with 2,500 surviving and of those 1,000 making the cut. Given that a Chapter doesn't recruit all 1000 Marines every single year (that's what happens when Chapters are wiped out) they'd probably only need to recruit 100 or so every year to fill battle losses. So, that's 1000 people being recruited per annum.

Compare that with how many get drafted into the Interior Guard alone, never mind how many end up in the IG proper (Cadia contributes hundreds, if not thousands of regiments to the IG) and you see that Space Marine recruitment isn't even big enough to warrant being called a drop in the bucket.

So there's no plausible reason why you can't create a Cadian-based Chapter of Marines. Especially since GW has not explicitly stated that there are no SM Chapters drawing from Cadia. After all, if GW has not said "it never happens" then there is plenty of room to say "it might very well happen".

Surely you're generalising. It depends on the planet which the PDF is from. Planets that are well equipped and attacked more often have much better PDF than ones that never see any action apart from the odd uprising.

When the vast majority is what Kanluwen described, then yeah, you can generalize.

squidhills wrote:There's nothing that says the Imperium wouldn't found a Chapter based on Cadia. It makes sense that, of the twenty that guard the Cadian Gate, at least one would have a fortress there, and probably one or two might recruit from there.

Recruitment for a SM Chapter wouldn't impact the Cadian population in the slightest. There are what, 1000 Marines in a Chapter, give or take? Let's say only one in ten prospects from a normal world will pass muster... Not everyone who fails dies (it's been stated in several places that those who fail and survive become Chapter serfs... no reason they can't be sent back to Cadia as potential Kasrkin). But lets assume a 75% casualty rate, just to be grimdark. That's 10,000 people recruited to make one Chapter, with 2,500 surviving and of those 1,000 making the cut. Given that a Chapter doesn't recruit all 1000 Marines every single year (that's what happens when Chapters are wiped out) they'd probably only need to recruit 100 or so every year to fill battle losses. So, that's 1000 people being recruited per annum.

Compare that with how many get drafted into the Interior Guard alone, never mind how many end up in the IG proper (Cadia contributes hundreds, if not thousands of regiments to the IG) and you see that Space Marine recruitment isn't even big enough to warrant being called a drop in the bucket.

So there's no plausible reason why you can't create a Cadian-based Chapter of Marines. Especially since GW has not explicitly stated that there are no SM Chapters drawing from Cadia. After all, if GW has not said "it never happens" then there is plenty of room to say "it might very well happen".

This is exactly what I was thinking the amount of citizens needed to found a chapter is tiny compared to even the size of one guard regiment

squidhills wrote:There's nothing that says the Imperium wouldn't found a Chapter based on Cadia. It makes sense that, of the twenty that guard the Cadian Gate, at least one would have a fortress there, and probably one or two might recruit from there.

Having a fortress there, and feasibly recruiting from there are two very different things.

To give a good example, I'd point you towards "The Purging of Kadillus". The Dark Angels maintain a Fortress Monastery on one of a pair of twin planets. One planet is civilized, with a technology base large enough to support a large scale mobilization of a PDF or even Guard Foundings.

The other planet, which the Dark Angels recruit from but have no Fortress-Monastery on, is purposely kept at a level of barbarism and feudal tribes.
Why? It's easier to indoctrinate youths into the methods of the Astartes in that way.

Recruitment for a SM Chapter wouldn't impact the Cadian population in the slightest. There are what, 1000 Marines in a Chapter, give or take? Let's say only one in ten prospects from a normal world will pass muster... Not everyone who fails dies (it's been stated in several places that those who fail and survive become Chapter serfs... no reason they can't be sent back to Cadia as potential Kasrkin).

"Those who fail and survive" are actually pretty rare.

But lets assume a 75% casualty rate, just to be grimdark. That's 10,000 people recruited to make one Chapter, with 2,500 surviving and of those 1,000 making the cut. Given that a Chapter doesn't recruit all 1000 Marines every single year (that's what happens when Chapters are wiped out) they'd probably only need to recruit 100 or so every year to fill battle losses. So, that's 1000 people being recruited per annum.

Which is a Regiment being recruited and potentially killed off, annually.

Compare that with how many get drafted into the Interior Guard alone, never mind how many end up in the IG proper (Cadia contributes hundreds, if not thousands of regiments to the IG) and you see that Space Marine recruitment isn't even big enough to warrant being called a drop in the bucket.

There's no "draft" on Cadia. You either serve in the military or serve in some industry supporting the military if you cannot serve in the military. They do not have farms or anything like that, they have worlds that farm for them. They have entire agriworlds and forgeworlds devoted to making sure the Cadian Shock stay equipped and able to fight.

So there's no plausible reason why you can't create a Cadian-based Chapter of Marines. Especially since GW has not explicitly stated that there are no SM Chapters drawing from Cadia. After all, if GW has not said "it never happens" then there is plenty of room to say "it might very well happen".

Saying that there are no SM Chapters drawing from Cadia, while drawing from other worlds as well is a completely different story than exclusively recruiting from Cadia.

Plus, they have said as much in a vague statement during the EOT campaign that the Astartes do not touch the planet because they're not stupid enough to draw recruits from active warzones.

iproxtaco wrote:When the vast majority is what Kanluwen described, then yeah, you can generalize.

It's only the vast majority because there arne so many planets in the Imperium, and most arn't under constant threat of attack, still no reason to presume a PDF can't be relatively well trained.

Lappie wrote:Surely you're generalising. It depends on the planet which the PDF is from. Planets that are well equipped and attacked more often have much better PDF than ones that never see any action apart from the odd uprising.

I'm generalizing, of course. The planets that are well equipped and attacked often will have a much better PDF than ones that never see any action apart from the odd uprising.

The thing that you're missing is that planets that are well equipped AND attacked often are not as common as you think.
Equipping PDF is done by the Governor of a planet, not the Imperium at large. Some planets will also have PDFs that consist of Guardsmen who 'won' the planet in question, or any number of odd circumstances.

But the vast majority are exactly as I said: decently equipped to deal with internal threats and occasional raids. Anything larger, and they request aid from the Imperial Guard. It's what the Guard is for.

Kanluwen wrote:. They do not have farms or anything like that, they have worlds that farm for them.

Although heavily militarized, Cadia is largely self-sufficient, and exports huge amounts of weapons to its neighbouring planets

Lappie wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:When the vast majority is what Kanluwen described, then yeah, you can generalize.

It's only the vast majority because there are so many planets in the Imperium, and most aren't under constant threat of attack, still no reason to presume a PDF can't be relatively well trained.

I should also note that the level of training for PDFs really doesn't differ by and large. Experience does not equal training. Experience is an outside factor, which is a terrible indicator of how well trained a PDF is or how effective they will be.

We'll use a theoretical example here.
Let's say the planet Gudrun, a decent technologically based world that has an Inquisitorial presence as well, is training their PDF. They recruit individuals from all walks of life, from gangers who got involved in plenty of brawls and knifefights to ex-Guard veterans to noblemen's sons who never fired a shot in their life.

Now, you've got the makings of a nasty force based on the idea of "experience" because they clearly will have many experienced individuals right?
Wrong. Gangers who were involved in brawls and knifefights have just as little in the way of experience/training as the noblemen's sons who never fired a shot in their life. They have no idea how to operate in combat situations, they have no idea how to behave or utilize fire discipline, or any number of the important things that those Guard veterans already knew how to do.

Kanluwen wrote:Plus, they have said as much in a vague statement during the EOT campaign that the Astartes do not touch the planet because they're not stupid enough to draw recruits from active warzones.

This is the only thing that successfully counters anything in my post. If GW said that SM Chapters do not pull from Cadia, even if it was back in the Eye of Terror campaign book, then SM Chapters do not pull from Cadia, end of story. Any thing else was just supposition.

Lappie wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:. They do not have farms or anything like that, they have worlds that farm for them.

Although heavily militarized, Cadia is largely self-sufficient, and exports huge amounts of weapons to its neighbouring planets

And the thing you're missing is that Cadia has an entire system that makes them "largely self-sufficient".

I suggest you look up the planets Kantrael, Fremas, Belisar, Demios Binary, Ormantep, Vorga Torq, Xersia, Helotas, Barisa, Exeltra Minor, and Clausten.