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How to chapters like thousand sons death guard gain ne members

I recall the Thousand Sons being able to summon the souls of dead members to inhabit new bodies/suits of armour and also being able to perform smaller versions of the rubric.

The Death Guard i don't think would recruit new marines in the traditional sense, their geneseed (and physical condition) is far too degraded. Instead they would likely adopt suitable candidates into the ranks of the plague marines or infect aspirants.

I wrote this awhile ago. I don't remember why. I figure it belongs here. Most of it is just speculation.

How the Traitor Legions Maintain Their Numbers

Replacement
Whenever a Traitor Legionnaire is slain, his geneseed and armor are recovered (if possible) and used to create a new Astartes. Most of the Legions (esp. the Black Legion and the Night Lords) prefer to promote from within, only giving the geneseed to the mortal serfs and slaves that have been with them since the Horus Heresy. To them, anyone less than 10,000 years old is an interloper in their divine quest against the Emperor.
Used Primarily By: Black Legion, World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, Night Lords, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion

Cloning
There are cloning techniques that allow a Traitor Legionnaire to be almost perfectly recreated. The clone has the exact same skills and memories of the original. However, this technique is highly dangerous and expensive. Furthermore, many of the Traitor Legionnaires don't want an exact copy of themselves running around.
Used Primarily By: World Eaters, Alpha Legion

Resurrection
If an especially mutated Astartes is slain (for example a Daemon Prince or Plague Marine) and his corpse is mostly intact, it is possible to resurrect the Astartes using sorcery. This procedure poses few safety risks, and has a success rate of about 85%.
Used Primarily By: Thousand Sons, Death Guard, Word Bearers

Recruitment
Some renegade Space Marines Chapters and Imperial Guard regiments are begrudgingly accepted into the Traitor Legions. The Traitor Legionnaires regard these 'upstarts' with disdain, often using them as cannon fodder or sending them on suicide missions.
Used Primarily By: Black Legion, Death Guard, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, Alpha Legion

Forging
The Thousand Sons Legion have discovered that they can create new Rubric Marines (referred to by the Imperium as 'Ghost Soldiers') simply by forging new suits of power armor and putting them through an arcane ritual.
Used Primarily By: Thousand Sons

Possession
In some cases, where a corpse is too damaged to be resurrected, it can still be brought back to life via possession. A powerful daemon is introduced to the corpse, invigorating it with warp energy and creating a Possessed Marine. Sometimes the Traitor Legionnaire's soul survives this process and he spends the rest of his days sharing his body with the Daemons. In other cases his soul his obliterated.
Used Primarily By: Word Bearers

Legion Sizes

Since the Horus Heresy, the Black Legion, Word Bearers, Death Guard and Thousand Sons have grown in size (especially the Black Legion, which is now as strong as the Ultramarines were at their peak). On the other hand, the World Eaters and Emperor's Children are shadows of their former selves, lacking the resources necessary to replenish their battlefield losses. Khorne and Slaanesh have grown bored of their own favored Legions, focusing their attention on the renegade Chapters of the Maelstrom instead. The Night Lords are the smallest of the Traitor Legions, fighting not for the Gods but out of bitterness and hatred. The Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion are almost the exact same size they've been since the Great Crusade.

 rems01 wrote:
I recall the Thousand Sons being able to summon the souls of dead members to inhabit new bodies/suits of armour

I think that was only in one really old space wolf novel. I believe that since the chaos codex mentions no such methods, it is probably out of date. I just assume the Thousand Sons never get replaced. Plague marines apparently can be created, just need nurgle to sneeze on you enough times and be sufficiently green.
I always sorta figured the original traitor legions have gradually been losing strength for 10k years despite replacements and all of them are more or less increasingly undermanned, but the emphasis in danger that chaos poses is shifting from CSM and to the daemons themselves and normal human chaos followers, so it's not as important as it sounds.

For every geenseed they put into a new marine, two come out when he dies, if they can recover them. Every sucsessfull battle agenst loyalist they swell in numbers, since the are not to picky about where the geenseed come from. Raid on geenseed banks also happends from time to time.

Deathguard apothycaryes most likely have a way to suficently infect new aspirantes, and unless it is stated that Thousand Sons can not be summond back they can. Lack of new fluff do not remove old fluff.

Old fluff incoming: When Angron attackt Armageddon he did so with 50000 Berzerkers. At the time it was writen the Legions where 10000 strong. So after the loss at Terra, the frakture of the Legion by Kharn and sevral thousend years of infighting and just being the most bloodthirsty Legion they had swelled atleast 5 times since the peak before the Heresy.

This is not very relevant anymore, but GW have atleast in the past said that Chaos grows in number.

The sorcerors of the Death Guard are able to infect new members with the Plague Marine virus according to the 4E codex. Rubric Marines never really die, so they don't need to be replaced, and Ahriman at least gets new sorcerors from cults.

 LoneLictor wrote:
Replacement
Whenever a Traitor Legionnaire is slain, his geneseed and armor are recovered (if possible) and used to create a new Astartes. Most of the Legions (esp. the Black Legion and the Night Lords) prefer to promote from within, only giving the geneseed to the mortal serfs and slaves that have been with them since the Horus Heresy. To them, anyone less than 10,000 years old is an interloper in their divine quest against the Emperor.

There some problems with this:
1. As marines from the Great Crusade it is unlikely that many Chaos Marines carried mature progeniod glands at the time of the Heresy. This is due to the fact that each legion had a massive recruitment drive and there was no ritual masking the scientific procedure involved. They knew when they were mature and remove them straight away for use.
2. Any Chaos legionnaire that did have progeniod glands at the time of the Heresy would find that upon maturity it would be pretty useless due to warp damage.

See the below evidence for where new CSM come from:

Within the Eye the Traitor Legions fight constant wars amongst themselves for gene-seed, slaves, resources, or martial honour. New Chaos Space Marines are recruited from the most dangerous heretics that are drawn into the Eye by the lure of Chaos, or else selected from the masses of slave-warriors who fight eternal battles for the amusement of the Dark Gods. The implantation of recruits is a brutal affair, quite unlike the carefully measured program of development used by Imperial Space Marines. Whether the candidate lives or dies is left to the will of the Chaos Gods. Initiation rites are similarly debased and savage, ensuring that only the toughest initiates ever survive.

p. 19, 2nd edition Chaos Codex.