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Two part question I guess.

Firstly, how many traitor legions are able to maintain their primarch based geneseed?

Iron Warriors at least have apparently hit a wall in providing their own geneseed and steal it from loyalists or simply turn loyalists to their cause.
Thousand Sons surely have no geneseed left to grow the legion but then they're all pretty much indestructable as they can be resurrected so don't need to recruit.
Would Death Guard even have geneseed themselves?

Secondly, are some legions like the Iron Warriors doomed to genetic extinction with the legion surviving in name only? Is is possible that in the future the Iron Warriors are mostly made up of chaos marines with Imperial Fist and other chapter's geneseed?

Something else, would traitor legions steal geneseed from another traitor legion such as Emperor's Children stealing from Black Legion?

cadbren wrote:

Firstly, how many traitor legions are able to maintain their primarch based geneseed?

Only those qith uncorrupted geneseed.
The warp corrupts the precious geneseed and as its a delicate process already, most of the traitor geneseed may be unusable .
- Alpha Legion. Could have usable geneseed as they stayed in the material verse.
- Night Lords. Didn't run for the eye, so those less afflicted by the warp could provide geneseed.

Still it will be a difference , as the homeworlds are lost and the new recruts wouldn't be subject of some of the environmental effects of said former homeworlds.

cadbren wrote:
Iron Warriors at least have apparently hit a wall in providing their own geneseed and steal it from loyalists or simply turn loyalists to their cause.
Thousand Sons surely have no geneseed left to grow the legion but then they're all pretty much indestructable as they can be resurrected so don't need to recruit.
Would Death Guard even have geneseed themselves?

The death guard is a bit of an undead construct...so maybe doesn't recrut at all anymore. You'd have an apothecary dealing with geneseed and the death guard isn't an apothecarys dream job methinks...

cadbren wrote:
Secondly, are some legions like the Iron Warriors doomed to genetic extinction with the legion surviving in name only? Is is possible that in the future the Iron Warriors are mostly made up of chaos marines with Imperial Fist and other chapter's geneseed?

I guess so. Sooner or later their method to steal loyalist geneseed turns them into smurfs.
GW has favored the red corsairs with lots of coverage compared to the old legions. Its an easy escape route to circumvent the issue of traitor-Legion geneseed if a great portion of CSM isn't a ancient legionaire from the heresy era.

Depending on who you ask, there's probably a ton of Chapters out there descended from loyalists of the Traitor Legions (one Chapter in particular springs to mind).

Who are we asking? People who don't know anything about the fluff?

While it might be an occasional choice for people wanting to make their DIY chapter Extra Special Unique Snowflake, game fluff wise, there are probably no Chapters that are descended from any of the Traitor Legions (muddled origins of the GK aside).

The Codex Astartes set up very rigid doctrines for recruitment and training of new Space Marines, with the very specific intention of eliminating the shortcuts and errors that were believed to have led, in part, to the Heresy. And the fluff says very specifically that the gene seed tithes of the traitor legions were stasis sealed. Why would the Imperium go to that extent and then allow the gene seed of members of those legions to be used? Surely there were members of the Traitor Legions who had stayed loyal. However, assuming they were allowed to continue to serve (though it seems just as likely they weren't), it stands to reason that their gene seed was collected upon their deaths and either destroyed, or returned to the AdMech to be stasis locked like the rest of the Legions.

The Imperium is superstitious and backwards. It's very difficult to believe, other than in the minds of the Unique Snowflake DIYers, that they'd be going through all the time, expense, and effort to create new Space Marine chapters, just to use gene seed they couldn't be confident of. Remember, more than 60% of chapters come from the Ultramarines, simply because the AdMech has complete confidence in the UM's flawless gene seed.

The traitor legions still recruit and train neopyhtes. In the case of the Iron Warriors they breed their new warriors in mutant vat things, which presumably don't give a toss about the gene seed being messed up (there's a high failure rate, but that just means there's plenty of cannon fodder). Newly turned chapters still have stable geneseeds and scouts, in one case the Blood Gorgons who have an active recruitment, or the Soul Drinkers. I wouldn't say that they'd stop making new marines just because of their geneseed being tainted, but they wouldn't sniff at the chance to get some new stuff either, despite the current Chapter geneseeds being worse than the Heresy era ones.

...Oh and though its not been directly confirmed that there are chapters descended from the traitor legions, its been heavily alluded to. For instance the Blood Ravens are explicitly descended from Thousand Sons (originally they were Blood Angels/Raven Guard) loyalists (presumably they didn't want to lose their geneseed, and though what they hey, it must be their idealogy, not their dna that made them turn) who weren't on Prospero when the legion was forced to turn to Chaos.

While I think GW was having a bit of fun with the Raven allusion in Thousand Sons, I don't think we'll ever see any confirmation that the Blood Ravens are of Thousand Sons descent, because it contradicts too heavily with the established fluff. However, allowing the sort of inside jokes and references are pretty typical of GW.

Even though GW has included pictures of them in the rulebooks as a way to effectively tie the video games to the tabletop game, the Blood Ravens really only "effectively" exist in the Dawn of War games, and it's likely to stay that way.

BTW, might want to hit up your dictionary. Something cannot be both alluded to, and explicitly stated, lol. Those are nearly opposite concepts.

0.o I mean that they haven't directly stated it, but that its an open secret. When they did find out where they came from they had the files destroyed. Meh, whatever, leave it to the Horus Heresy novels to ever decide what happened to the traitor legion loyalists. Apparently the short story "Rebirth"from Age of Darkness has a group of Thousand Sons who weren't on Prospero (who's armour is pre-heresy Thousand Sons colours, ie the Blood Ravens, bar the Black, and who's symbol is a raven) has a seer, Arvida, who has a name which sounds like the Librarian Vidya, state the Blood Raven's motto. ...Yeah, really subtle.

...Doesn't having a Index Astartes article for them make them official fluff?

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Who are we asking? People who don't know anything about the fluff?

.

If "we" would like an answer from these , we have you for this purpose around.

There is an index astartes about a founding with geneseed of questionable origin.

=P I'd say that the Cursed Founding Chapters probably have a bit of the loyalist traitor's geneseed in them. Of course they screwed up, though I'd guess it wasn't down to corruption from them specifically (ie, oh look World Eaters, hmn, they were good at rage, now how do we exploit this?). The Blood Gorgons being notable from that lot, ie the only named ones to turn to Chaos (there's a short story, well a dozen pages, on Fabius Bile turning up and walking out of a Cursed Founding research facility with a bunch of willing super marines).=/

Traitor Legions have many ways of making new astartes.

Stealing geneseed.

Having Fabius Bile create geneseed.

Cloning.

Turning loyalsits to their cause.

Possibly even magic of the warp.

The traitor legions also have dark mechanicus... it's possible there are "dark magos biologis" in the Eye.

DeffDred wrote:Traitor Legions have many ways of making new astartes.

Stealing geneseed.

Having Fabius Bile create geneseed.

Cloning.

Turning loyalsits to their cause.

Possibly even magic of the warp.

The traitor legions also have dark mechanicus... it's possible there are "dark magos biologis" in the Eye.

Pretty much this. The traitor legions aren't in any danger of going extinct. Corrupt? Yeah, sure, but that goes with the territory.

The night lords and alpha legion still have pretty pure geneseed as far as I know. Alpha legion never fled to the eye of terror and one can assume that there's still a good portion of them that do not worship chaos and are thus pretty safe from mutations. Night lords have been mentioned to have surprisingly pure geneseed (comparable to ultras in purity) and this may be due to lack of worship of the gods.

Wyrmalla wrote:...Doesn't having a Index Astartes article for them make them official fluff?

Did I not address this? There is the marketing wisdom of having the Blood Ravens in the tabletop game and some of the game's literature which allows players who come to 40K though the video game have something familiar available to them instead of asking "But wut about Blud Ravinz?". However the chapter still exists almost exclusively for the Dawn of War series as it was created specifically by their design team. That's why I was very careful to say "effectively" exists only in the Dawn of War game series. I apologize for using complex ideas in a forum. I sometimes forgot the efficiency of brevity is lost on the average Internet reader.

1hadhq wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Who are we asking? People who don't know anything about the fluff? .

If "we" would like an answer from these , we have you for this purpose around.

There is an index astartes about a founding with geneseed of questionable origin.

I know English probably isn't your first language, so perhaps the context of a guy saying "a ton of chapters" may be lost on you. The idea is ludicrous to anyone who thinks about it for a second. There are only 1000 total Chapters, and we know that more than 600 of them come from the Ultramarines, specifically because their gene seed is verified pure. That leaves less than 400 Chapters to divide between the other seven loyalist chapters (since we know they don't use the Space Wolves). After we whittle down that 400 with all of those, where is this "ton" coming from that might (according to some opinions) have traitor gene seed? Unless by "ton" we actually mean "perhaps a handful". People don't think about the numbers when they say these silly things. Yes, the Dark Founding gives a little wiggle room for the Special Unique Snowflake DIYers, but it also has never been used in any official material to suggest the use of traitor legion gene seed.

Some of you use the absence of evidence as proof. It's cool if you want to do that to form interpretations or your own DIY Special Unique Snowflake Chapter, but passing it off as "proof" is silly, and liable to be scoffed at by more discerning people. I'm asking who these people are who believe "a ton of Chapters" are descended from traitor gene seed. Because they definitely don't know the fluff. It's my personal opinion (separate from the proof. See, this part is where some of you get derailed. You can't differentiate between opinion and fact) that there's no reason for there to be Space Marine chapters descended from traitor gene seed. It's introducing an extra variable into an expensive and time consuming process that is rigorously controlled by multiple agencies. That seems contrary to the practices of a superstitious, backwards, bureaucratic, static thinking entity like the Imperium. You're welcome to form your own opinion. But that's all it will be.

Wyrmalla wrote:...Doesn't having a Index Astartes article for them make them official fluff?

yes, index astartes is an official publication of GW, sold in codex sized form for a while. ( part 1-4 ).

Veteran Sergeant wrote:I know English probably isn't your first language, so perhaps the context of a guy saying "a ton of chapters" may be lost on you.

Who posted about a "ton of chapters" at all?

As far as i can spot on this monitor: it was you.
So why?
Because you can't disprove articles written by GW maybe and try to distract?

Geneseed is surely controlled as best as possible, but there is no such thing as a complete listing of all the foundings and the chapters involved. Its a decision of the open minded : "we tell you there are 1k now and we hint at some of the chapters going back to 2nd founding, but you will get hints on dark secrets, forbidden experiments etc to make it more awesome and extra dark" vs your idea of: "the iom is in control of it and keeps it so tight no mistakes occur and no data is lost.Don't dare to think about the 50% no longer used or our freindly =I= agent comes knocking at your door". 100% control doesn't happen, ever.
Plus, geneseed wasn't the reason to turn. Its locked away to deny a ressource to steal, its locked away to take no chance a flaw was missed. The existance of loyalists in the traitor legions and the first massacre on istvaan 3 is proof of the posibility to create loyal astartes from these sources. Index astartes shows attempts to use pure or use re-configurated geneseed of unknown origin and its results of marines who show traits usually deemed typical for legions which turned traitor.



So no, complexity is not an issue. To turn a lighthearted forum discussion about the background of little plastic men into a test of grammar, reading comprehension, intelligence etc etc each time you post, is.

Whoever supports creations like Blood Ravens has to suffer the writing of CS Goto. I for one consider this punishment enough.

Ignore VS, he always does this.

=/ I kind of distrust fluff that has there only being 1000 chapters, with most of them being Ultramarine descendants. By this I mean that there's presumably more, just that the administratum just doesn't know how many there are and has given an estimate. Is that 1000 including all the traitor chapters, ie hundreds, over the past 10,000 years? The fluff's a little silly in general, so I don't see why it can't be malleable enough for come up with their own conclusions and ideas about it without others saying it contradicts their understanding of it and being picky. Meh, its a big galaxy, I'm sure there's been at least one example of some magos biologist thinking "what if" and spawning a chapter from traitor legion geneseeds. Its fiction, I wouldn't stick to it too much, GW doesn't for one. XD

The number of loyalist marines is slightly higher in 40k than what it was at the start of the heresy.

At the start of the heresy there were 9 loyalist legions with an average strength of 100,000. Actually that's an assumption as the average legion size is based on all 18 legions but I'm assuming a 50/50 split.

That gives around 900,000

In 40k there are approximately 1000 chapters at any given time of 1000 marines each (ignoring marines outside of the company structure).

That gives around 1,000,000

Probably a topic on its own but I assume the chaos marines are numerically inferior to the loyalists.




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DeffDred wrote:Traitor Legions have many ways of making new astartes.

Stealing geneseed.

Not genetic brothers though.

Having Fabius Bile create geneseed.

shudders You probably don't want to know where it's been or what it's from or what it can do.

Cloning.

That could be interesting, though given the varying levels of corruption in chaos marines your clone might turn out to be an organic shoulder pad based on where the material came from or a boot with teeth. It could be a flappy piece of black carapace with attached lungs and eyeballs.

Turning loyalsits to their cause.

Tis a glorious tradition of the astartes from the days of old.

Possibly even magic of the warp.

What, like a shipload of marines gets copied and suddenly there are two shiploads of marines?

I'd assume the word bearers and the black legion have the resources to make their own gene seed, but in "Storm of Iron" the one warsmith stole a crap load of gene seed for Abaddon in rerurn for daemon~hood. Probably easier to steal than make...

Possibly even magic of the warp.

What, like a shipload of marines gets copied and suddenly there are two shiploads of marines?

well the fluff does say that ships can emerge from the warp before the even left so for a time you have double the marines that were on board, and being chaos you could always mess with causality and send you self a message saying dont make the warp jump