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Do Space Marine Chapters have more than one Chapter Master? Now, you have Marius Calgar for the Ultramarines or Asterion Moloc for the Minotaurs, but you may also bring generic CMs for those respective chapters, or any chapter. What are their places in the ranks of the chapters?

There is only one chapter master, the rest are captains or wolf lords or what the chapter tradition calls them.

 thunderingjove wrote:
Do Space Marine Chapters have more than one Chapter Master? Now, you have Marius Calgar for the Ultramarines or Asterion Moloc for the Minotaurs, but you may also bring generic CMs for those respective chapters, or any chapter. What are their places in the ranks of the chapters?

The generic chapter masters are just there to allow you to create your own, they aren't meant to indicate that a chapter has more than one.

Technically the Iron Hands can have multiple "Chapter Masters." Depending on now the clan council votes, there could be the former one working side-by-side with the current vote-in

If there were to be a Spartan-esque Space Marine Chapter, it would be fitting for them to have two Chapter Masters.

As Starhunter25 said, the Iron Hands have no true Chapter Masters, instead they use a council to decide upon all major actions for the chapter.

Black Templars also have a unique structure with Marshals and such, but they also are well over one thousand Astartes and thus require an extended command structure to maintain order.

WH40k doesn't exist in a static time bubble. If you make a generic chapter master and are running Ultramarines, you could always say your Ultramarines army you've collected is from some long ago time under some different chapter master if you wanted it to make sense fluff-wise.

The White Consuls have two Chapter Masters, but most Chapters have only the one. As for generic Chapter Masters in the Ultramarines or whatever, they could represent a previous or later Chapter Master or an especially hard Captain or Sergeant or Champion or whatever if you want.

Alternatively, the term Chapter Master, as far as it pertains to the game rules, represents a Marine with a particular level of skill and responsibility. Fluffwise this could represent the actual Chapter Master, or it could be another high level and experienced Marine, such as the CM's executive officer, a co-master for chapters ruled by council, or the CM's protege being groomed for command.

 Orblivion wrote:

 thunderingjove wrote:
Do Space Marine Chapters have more than one Chapter Master? Now, you have Marius Calgar for the Ultramarines or Asterion Moloc for the Minotaurs, but you may also bring generic CMs for those respective chapters, or any chapter. What are their places in the ranks of the chapters?

The generic chapter masters are just there to allow you to create your own, they aren't meant to indicate that a chapter has more than one.

This is what I would interpret that to be. A generic profile entry for the DIY chapters.

 Flinty wrote:
Alternatively, the term Chapter Master, as far as it pertains to the game rules, represents a Marine with a particular level of skill and responsibility. Fluffwise this could represent the actual Chapter Master, or it could be another high level and experienced Marine, such as the CM's executive officer, a co-master for chapters ruled by council, or the CM's protege being groomed for command.

This is where my curosity was going, a person no in command of a company, not a librarian, chaplain, or techmarine, but somebody with significant authority over a particular part of the organization.

As mentioned above the White Consuls have two chapter masters

I always treated this as HQ's you can purchase are representative of a class similar to a RPG and not a particular position. For example you can easily have 2 chapter masters which is unusual. However some of the chapters don't have such a position (iron hands) therefore the chapter master HQ selection must refer to a SM with a certain level of ability, access to equipment, and authority over chapter resources.

Alternatively you could have the fluff represent two chapters with the same parent legion fighting side by side.

You could easily represent two Chapter Masters within an organization as being in charge of different things.

In the Ultramarines fluff, there is a Chapter Master and then 10 Captains, each in charge of a different aspect of the overall Chapter... Master of Recruits, Master of the Arsenal, etc.

Imagine a different scenario where There is a Chapter Master (Lord of the Hearth) who oversees the fortress homeworld, recruiting, the arsenal, etc. He would have three Captains reporting to him... 2 backup companies and the Scout company.

The other Chapter Master could be the Warmaker and would oversee all combat actions. He would have seven Captains reporting to him to represent the other seven companies.

The Lord of the Hearth has authority over all logisitics and defense issues. The Warmaker has authority over all combat scenarios. If one goes down, the other takes over all operations until a new master is appointed.

The trick with these sorts of things is to just be creative. The answer to almost every "can I..." question asked here is YES!

You just need to come up with a plausible reason. Some things are just easier to justify than others.

 King Pariah wrote:
If there were to be a Spartan-esque Space Marine Chapter, it would be fitting for them to have two Chapter Masters.

I actually have a Spartan themed chapter and love this idea!

You could always go old-skool, back in 1st edition the first company wasn't led by a Captain, but by the Chapters Lieutenant-Commander, the second in command of the Chapter (in RT all Chapter Masters held the Adeptus Terra rank of Imperial Commander).

 Kriswall wrote:
In the Ultramarines fluff, there is a Chapter Master and then 10 Captains, each in charge of a different aspect of the overall Chapter... Master of Recruits, Master of the Arsenal, etc.

Or the second Chapter Master could be used to represent one of those special positions. The guys are ranked Captains but one could well be just as powerful as the one chosen as Chapter Master - he didn't receive as many votes or has only become so good later.

You could have multiple Chapter Masters, if that's really what you want to do.

I'm building a Sons of Medusa army right now, Clan Mageara to start and according to lore from the Badab War books there is one Chapter Master or Iron Thane, for each Clan. So for me, since these guys are non-codex compliant I could end up with three Chapter Master models!

Of course the way it works for the SoM is that the 3 Chapter Masters all meet up in a council with the Chapters Techmarines and Venerable Dreads to make big decisions. But for the most part the 3 big-wigs do as they please...

 Kriswall wrote:
You could easily represent two Chapter Masters within an organization as being in charge of different things.

In the Ultramarines fluff, there is a Chapter Master and then 10 Captains, each in charge of a different aspect of the overall Chapter... Master of Recruits, Master of the Arsenal, etc.

Imagine a different scenario where There is a Chapter Master (Lord of the Hearth) who oversees the fortress homeworld, recruiting, the arsenal, etc. He would have three Captains reporting to him... 2 backup companies and the Scout company.

The other Chapter Master could be the Warmaker and would oversee all combat actions. He would have seven Captains reporting to him to represent the other seven companies.

The Lord of the Hearth has authority over all logisitics and defense issues. The Warmaker has authority over all combat scenarios. If one goes down, the other takes over all operations until a new master is appointed.

The trick with these sorts of things is to just be creative. The answer to almost every "can I..." question asked here is YES!

You just need to come up with a plausible reason. Some things are just easier to justify than others.

which is more or less what the white consels do