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.

First off I don't hate the ultramarine, I just dislike how their held as greatest of the loyalist legions. If their the greatest then why are they the ones who usually go renegade. No blood angels founding chapters have despite the red thirst, no dark angels since the heresy, a handful of space wolves, yet I have read many many short stories in which ultras go not just go rouge but go full blown blood for the blood god.

Not sure if trolling...

Blood Angels: Knights of Blood (Flesh Tearer and Blood Drinkers will probably turn eventually)
Dark Angels: HALF of the Legion
Space Wolves: Skyrar's Dark Wolves, many became Red Corsairs, possibly Wolf Brothers

I honestly can't think of many renegade Ultras, examples?

Well ultramarines found something like 10x the other SM geneseeds. There are a lot more of them to go rogue.

For the DA they kill the traitors before they ever get reported. They will literally leave in the middle of a fight to kill any DA traitor marines. Even a whiff of a rumor will attract them to a possible traitor chapter who they will purge with impunity.

Yeah, UM have more traitors from their gene seed because 60% of chapters have Guilliman's geneseed.
But, for the sake of argument:
The DA and their 2nd founding are The Unforgiven, look up why.
BA has been mentioned.
There were WS during the Heresy willing to kill the Khan if he didn't join Horus.
There's at least one very prominent Iron Warrior who used to belong to the RG.
Soul Drinkers, supposedly descended from IF.
SW has also been mentioned.
IH, already border line heresy.
Salamanders, okay I'm stuck.
But this is all without needed to think hard at all.
It's also a fact that GK are the only chapter to not have anyone among them turn to Chaos, that means that every Primarch has naughty sons that aren't getting any pocket money, not just Guilliman's kids.

Dark Angels haven't had problems with treason in the last ten thousand years.

Quick question, with apologies for derailing the thread: Where does the Grey Knight gene seed come from? Some special batch from the emperor's back shelf?

It wasn't half the Dark Angels Legion, it was a single company and a bunch of untested novices, and even among these Luthor faced opposition.

ZSO, SAHAAL wrote:Dark Angels haven't had problems with treason in the last ten thousand years.

They have spent those ten thousand years searching for traitors who came from their legion. It is one of the major themes of the Dark Angels.

Also, what about cases of Dark Angels abandoning the battlefield, or firing on allies? Is that treason?

KnowItAll wrote:It wasn't half the Dark Angels Legion, it was a single company and a bunch of untested novices, and even among these Luthor faced opposition.

Unless you believe the possibility that Luther's faction were the loyalists and the Lion was the renegade. Then again, that might have been retconned with the HH books.

Look the discussion there is facts vs fanfiction. Facts state that Lion was loyal and Luthor the traitor. Fanfiction opposes that view. See what I'm saying? Do people think Lutohr was bald btw?

 Sir Samuel Buca wrote:
Yeah, UM have more traitors from their gene seed because 60% of chapters have Guilliman's geneseed.
But, for the sake of argument:
The DA and their 2nd founding are The Unforgiven, look up why.
BA has been mentioned.
There were WS during the Heresy willing to kill the Khan if he didn't join Horus.
There's at least one very prominent Iron Warrior who used to belong to the RG.
Soul Drinkers, supposedly descended from IF.
SW has also been mentioned.
IH, already border line heresy.
Salamanders, okay I'm stuck.
But this is all without needed to think hard at all.
It's also a fact that GK are the only chapter to not have anyone among them turn to Chaos, that means that every Primarch has naughty sons that aren't getting any pocket money, not just Guilliman's kids.

Salamander's don't have any "official" descendants (only rumours), and they are still reeling from the near extermination 10,000 years ago. I guess they are one chapter with very few traitors, but they exist. See Dragon Warriors, the main villains of the Salamander's books.
Another near exterminated were the Raven Guard, but these guys have lots of descendants so they probably have plenty of traitors. I know the Ultramarine's books have at least 1 Raven Guard character turned Renegade.

 amanita wrote:
Quick question, with apologies for derailing the thread: Where does the Grey Knight gene seed come from? Some special batch from the emperor's back shelf?

No one knows. Some assume the God-Emperor, Himself, but that doesn't make any sense, as he was not a Space Marine. The origins of their gene-seed is a mystery. They also have never had a member fall to Chaos (though that may have changed, but it is as-yet unconfirmed).

Beaviz81 wrote:Look the discussion there is facts vs fanfiction. Facts state that Lion was loyal and Luthor the traitor. Fanfiction opposes that view. See what I'm saying? Do people think Lutohr was bald btw?

Facts? Fanfiction? There is no such distinction in 40K, all sources whether from the studio material or Black Library are equally valid.

ashrog wrote:

KnowItAll wrote:It wasn't half the Dark Angels Legion, it was a single company and a bunch of untested novices, and even among these Luthor faced opposition.

Unless you believe the possibility that Luther's faction were the loyalists and the Lion was the renegade. Then again, that might have been retconned with the HH books.

Even in the context of Gav Thorpe's Angels of Darkness, the suggestion that the Lion was sitting out of the conflict to see who wins was a mere theory. Since Astellan also confessed to be the one to fire on the Dark Angels fleet without authorization or orders from Luther, this could well just have been a particularly paranoid theory from a particularly slighted Dark Angel. From the HH Dark Angels novels, we know that the Caliban-stationed DA kept hearing conflicting rumors of the war, and some of those rumors painted the Lion as traitor. Then there was the fact that the Imperial garrison left behind to supervise, turned out to be a Chaos cult determined to feed the entire planet to daemon worms. When last we heard from him, Luthor was harnessing the powers of a daemon "with the best intentions", and we all know where that leads.

There is indeed that distinction. BL is a contracted company, so if the truth is written it must be weighed against what's stated by official GW-sources like codexes and such. But BL-fluff is in general the second-best source to judge thing of in 40k.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
There is indeed that distinction. BL is a contracted company, so if the truth is written it must be weighed against what's stated by official GW-sources like codexes and such. But BL-fluff is in general the second-best source to judge thing of in 40k.

Except that it's not a contracted company. It's directly owned by GW in the same way Forgeworld is.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
There is indeed that distinction. BL is a contracted company, so if the truth is written it must be weighed against what's stated by official GW-sources like codexes and such. But BL-fluff is in general the second-best source to judge thing of in 40k.

You are incorrect, they are a fully-owned subsidiary and their books carry the same weight (or actually lack thereof given GW's stance of "everything is canon and nothing is") as any codex. I'm sure if you ask nicely, Lynata will be in here with a dozen GW' quotes that showcase how wrong you are. If anything, given the novels' greater level of detail and more frequent use of omniscient third party narrators, they could be argued to hold more weight. But again, there is no canon and it's all valid depending on your interpretation.

Its a fallacy based off a poor understanding of mathematics as far as I can see.

Think of it like this, say there are 6 million convicted muggers in America, and only 1 million in the UK, it doesn't mean British men are less likely to be muggers in real terms.

The UM made absolutely gak loads of successors, so they get more traitors, it doesn't mean one is more likely to turn than the other, it's simply about personality not inherited flaws, think nurture over nature.

I do recall....er.. I forget which story, but I think its a short story I read a few years ago by Graham McNeill, and when the Chaos guys are at a tourney, one of the traitors who hates the Ultramarines (I think it was Vaanes) bitterly notices that there are no Ultramarines present amongst the renegade chapters.

The scions of Gulliman are noble and stoic! I am now reading Mark of Calth after reading ATSKNF and I think Gulliman is my favourite primarch, I admire his bookishness and smarts over his brawn in the same way that Donatello was my favorite ninja turtle!

Ironic for a man as physically mighty as me eh?

There are Ultramarine-traitors. But they are of the more puritan chapters, and amongst them that have the least number of traitors I guess. That's something they bury of course. You don't have your failures as your posterboys.