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 poda_t wrote:

 purplefood wrote:

 poda_t wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Given that we can map DNA in the 21st century I find it hard to believe that in the 41st century they would inadvertantly create a legion out of traitor DNA.

easy there, we have a reasonably easy time cloning and splicing, and they get all sorts of screwups left right and center any time they do something. I mean, they still use mechanical power for a lot of their systems, so it stands to reason they aren't that bright in the future.
="whats this pile of stuff, can we use it?"
+"what? what's it say on the list"
="Legio Trey-tur"
+"....hm.... odd, haven't heard of them... funny that we find that now, must be one of the dead offshoots of one of the ultramarines..."
="yeah, it's not on any of our charts, and says it's been in stasis for the past 8000 years"
+"what dude! we need to get on that! I can't believe 8000 years of administration let that one slip for so long!, praise the omnissiah WE came along!"
aaaaaaaaaand there you go.

They are fairly bright...
They have teleporters and railguns so they can't be stupid... not entirely anyway.

not that those always work either

Oh yeah and the teleporters we built are so amazing...

"So, my question is: could the Imperium use the gene-seed from the traitor legions stocks?"


I'm surprised so many people said it wasn't possible and just wrote it off. Here, I'll answer the question to you as simply as I can to the extent that "canon" (what could be considered canon given that Warhammer 40k canon is loose) goes:


In-Universe detractors of he Sons of Antaeus, a cursed founding loyalist chapter, point out that their resilience is similar to the Death Guard.

So the answer to your question, "Could the Imperisum use the gene-seed from the traitor legions stocks" is "Some people in the Imperium think they could."



....though honestly, when it comes to the Blood Ravens, I'm kinda amazed so many people think it's not possible for them to be descended from the Thousand Sonsafter a story had a Thousand Sons loyalist who had the symbol of a raven and used their catch phrase. I mean, come on, now. At that point, your only defense is that not every story is canon because there is no canon, but honestly, anyone who uses that defense shouldn't bother taking part in discussions about canon in the first place in my opinion, because according to them, there is no canon.

Really, if I recall correctly, THE HERO OF ISHVAAN (that's his actual title that history has given him!) was a Death Guard member, and the fact that he's known IN UNIVERSE HISTORY as "the hero of Ishvaan" should tell any Imperium member that there were at least SOME members of the traitor legions that were good people, considering one of the most famous HEROS in Imperium history was a Death Guard member. Off the in-universe historical record, one of the original Grey Knight founders was a World Eater. That said, I imagine they'd still want to cover up any Space Marine chapters that came from the traitor legions if only as a matter of honour for them and so they won't have to despair about such things.

 DarthMarko wrote:
sorry dude, agree with you completely...Some guy asked ADB "Why is Magnus neutral?".He said there is still time to change that (read : new novel ), loyalists aren't really an option....So we will see..

You're not digging deep enough.

Read: We are dragging this out for the sake of more money at the expense of plot.

Betrayer destroys the point of Magnus' final scenes in A Thousand Sons.

 Valion wrote:

It's not really creative though, is it? The first DIY chapter ever made was probably an Ultramarines successor, and I'd be willing to bet the second one ever made was a loyalist traitor. It's an old, old, old idea, and it's been done to death.

Meh the whole Ultramarines are resposible for 80%of the geneseed is also kind of limiting and the fact that some loyalists dont have sucessors. I get that it was created to explain why most chapters had exactly the same structure but in a time when they no longer do it could well be lowered.

It's not beating a dead horse, its the heel face turn, the redemption story, and its not a dead horse nor an undead one it's a classic.

It's kind of like the alternate reality episodes that shows up in sci-fi shows, sure it corny sure it has been done, but if done properly it's really enjoyable because it allows us to take a known factor and make if different.

 Valion wrote:

This is where you're confusing perspectives. We know, as readers of the fluff, that the gene seed itself isn't responsible for Chaotic corruption. Characters in-universe, especially 10,000 years after the Heresy, do not. The Emperor's the only one who really understood gene seed in the first place, and he ain't talking. From an in-universe perspective, again, it makes absolutely zero sense to use traitor gene seed to create loyalist chapters. It would, as I said, be like us deciding to use DNA from the Klan to create super-soldiers.

Since every chapter has lost people to chaos it seems kind of strange that they could blame it on the geneseed, in that case they'd have to destroy the adeptus astartes entirely.

Yea, by this point you'd think any remotely rational person (and give the Imperium some credit. They CAN think a little, at least!) would realize that everything is open to chaotic corruption (and again, some of the Heresy's greatest PUBLICALLY KNOWN heros were from the traitor legions). Off the public record, a ton of the original grey knights were traitor legion loyalists. (including TWO Luna Wolves, one who far as I know wasn't even Terran born, despite how their Primarch was the big bad).

Honestly it's to the point that I kinda don't see what the Dark Angels' big deal with the whole dishonour thing is. It's official that only the Grey Knights have never ever lost an astartes to Chaos, and no one publically knows they exist, which basically means that it's publically official in-universe (to anyone who knows what Chaos is, at least) that no space marine chapter has ever not lost a member to chaos.

That said, again, I can still see why they'd want to cover up a space marine chapter descending from a traitor primarch. Even if there'd be no shame from being descended from a loyalist hero of the Heresy that rebelled against their traitorist primarchs, I doubt any space marine chapter would want to have to say their Primarch is one of the traitor ones. Thus it'd be heavily covered up just to make things easier on everyone.

the deal with the fallen is that the unforgiven have done some pretty shade stuff to hide them. First it was probably a matter of pride, "we deal with this internally no one will ever know of this dishonour". Then after keeping it quiet a few centuries they suddenly realised that they had been withholding information from the imperium. "But hey as soon as we get the fallen no one will have to know".
Then someone else nearly found out and the unforgiven did something to prevent it. all of the sudden they were working against imperial authorities. "But hey it'll be fine f we can get all the fallen, cause then no one will ever find out".
Then came the day they killed to keep their secret, and so on. They're really no covering up the fallen they're covering up the fact that they've been lying for ten thousand years and what they've done to keep their secrets. The fallen must be found because once they are found the risk of being exposed is basically gone.

 TheDungen wrote:
Meh the whole Ultramarines are resposible for 80%of the geneseed is also kind of limiting and the fact that some loyalists dont have sucessors. I get that it was created to explain why most chapters had exactly the same structure but in a time when they no longer do it could well be lowered.

It's only "limiting" if you look at Space Marines as a vehicle for personal creativity. And that ain't how they're looked at in-universe.

Since every chapter has lost people to chaos it seems kind of strange that they could blame it on the geneseed, in that case they'd have to destroy the adeptus astartes entirely.

Not really. There is a massive difference in scale between a chapter and a legion. And I'd be willing to bet they don't use gene seed tithes from chapters that turned traitor, either.

Put it this way: you order 100 cartons of milk from two different companies. Company A provides 99 cartons of spoiled milk and 1 carton of unspoiled. Company B provides 99 cartons of unspoiled milk and 1 carton of spoiled.

The argument that the proponents of the, "The Imperium uses Traitor gene seed to make Spehss Mehrenes!" are making is, "Of course you keep ordering from Company A! Sure, they gave you terrible milk, but the next time, they might give you super-awesome milk!" Nobody would ever actually do that, of course, they would exclusively use Company B. But because nobody is thinking about this from a logical perspective, but rather a, "My loyal Night Lords are awesome, lololololol" one, you get nonsensical arguments for Company A.

The UM thing makes sense, actually, if you think about it, though I believe it was 60%, not 80%. Most of the 2nd Founding chapters came from the UM, and since that time, the additional Successor Chapters that descend from UM Successor Chapters simply proves the viability of UM geneseed.

Yo, dawg, I herd you liek ultramarine...

 Valion wrote:

 TheDungen wrote:
Meh the whole Ultramarines are resposible for 80%of the geneseed is also kind of limiting and the fact that some loyalists dont have sucessors. I get that it was created to explain why most chapters had exactly the same structure but in a time when they no longer do it could well be lowered.

It's only "limiting" if you look at Space Marines as a vehicle for personal creativity. And that ain't how they're looked at in-universe.

Since every chapter has lost people to chaos it seems kind of strange that they could blame it on the geneseed, in that case they'd have to destroy the adeptus astartes entirely.

Not really. There is a massive difference in scale between a chapter and a legion. And I'd be willing to bet they don't use gene seed tithes from chapters that turned traitor, either.

Put it this way: you order 100 cartons of milk from two different companies. Company A provides 99 cartons of spoiled milk and 1 carton of unspoiled. Company B provides 99 cartons of unspoiled milk and 1 carton of spoiled.

The argument that the proponents of the, "The Imperium uses Traitor gene seed to make Spehss Mehrenes!" are making is, "Of course you keep ordering from Company A! Sure, they gave you terrible milk, but the next time, they might give you super-awesome milk!" Nobody would ever actually do that, of course, they would exclusively use Company B. But because nobody is thinking about this from a logical perspective, but rather a, "My loyal Night Lords are awesome, lololololol" one, you get nonsensical arguments for Company A.

But said spoiled milk was good enough to found the Grey Knights with, ahh logic and 40k they go so will together

The GK weren't founded on traitor geneseed

the kicker is that the contraband argument makes no sense in the 40k universe. The logical extension of the spoiled milk argument and not using traitor geneseed because of unreliability is the complete death of the imperium because of the inherent lack of reliability in of psykers, and their tendency to get posessed, or spontaneously combust in a giant welter of flaming gore when said posession doesn't go to plan.

They were founded by former (some) members of the original traitor legions, so I guess you can have a traitor mentor and lead the army designed to hunt demons, but years after the heresy we can't possibly have loyalist descended from traitors.

I think you might all be taking the plastic space men a tad to seriously, 40k fluff is written like a 16 year olds creative writing project, so if people want to trounce that fluff who really gives a flying feth.

So there you go you win, it's totally impossible and not fluffy.

Now if you excuse me my female half-elder chaos space marine slannesh worshipping Grey Knights, need their pink and purple highlights done

Considering how... Tattered Imperial organisation is (couldn't find the right word), I'm sure it could happen, probably not intentionally, but it could be a mistake. I saw one on here a while back, a theory about how the Alpha Legion, using their plants in the Raven Guard, could have infiltrated their gene-seed and swapped it out for their own, which would result in an Alpha-Legion (ideologically) successor chapter, but with Raven Guard tactics ;D


Automatically Appended Next Post:

2x210 wrote:
They were founded by former (some) members of the original traitor legions, so I guess you can have a traitor mentor and lead the army designed to hunt demons, but years after the heresy we can't possibly have loyalist descended from traitors.

I think you might all be taking the plastic space men a tad to seriously, 40k fluff is written like a 16 year olds creative writing project, so if people want to trounce that fluff who really gives a flying feth.

So there you go you win, it's totally impossible and not fluffy.

Now if you excuse me my female half-elder chaos space marine slannesh worshipping Grey Knights, need their pink and purple highlights done

Nghh. Pink Slaanesh... WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE PINK?? IT COULD BE RED :C
-Hipster

Well, again, it's already speculated in-universe that a chapter is descended from traitor gene seed (Sons of Antaeus) so clearly some members of the Imperium think it's possible.

No. The Grey Knights use their own gene seed, widely thought to be derived directly from the Emperor. The loyalists from the traitor legions recruited by Malcador did not form the Grey Knights, they formed the Knights-Errant, a forerunner to the Grey Knights. Not the same thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 poda_t wrote:
the kicker is that the contraband argument makes no sense in the 40k universe. The logical extension of the spoiled milk argument and not using traitor geneseed because of unreliability is the complete death of the imperium because of the inherent lack of reliability in of psykers, and their tendency to get posessed, or spontaneously combust in a giant welter of flaming gore when said posession doesn't go to plan.

The difference there is that psykers are necessary, whereas ULTRA-COOL LOYALIST TRAITOR CHAPTERZ aren't. There's more than enough Loyalist gene seed to meet the Imperium's needs.

2x210 wrote:
They were founded by former (some) members of the original traitor legions, so I guess you can have a traitor mentor and lead the army designed to hunt demons, but years after the heresy we can't possibly have loyalist descended from traitors.

I think you might all be taking the plastic space men a tad to seriously, 40k fluff is written like a 16 year olds creative writing project, so if people want to trounce that fluff who really gives a flying feth.

So there you go you win, it's totally impossible and not fluffy.

Now if you excuse me my female half-elder chaos space marine slannesh worshipping Grey Knights, need their pink and purple highlights done

Yeah I agree with that. My only problem comes when people try to have it make sense in terms of the background. Just make the army look cool and no one will care.

Seems most of you think the Imperium is founded on reason. It´s not. Blind adherence to tradition, superstition and dogma is on the other hand what drives the imperium today. Most educated people and the elite of authority have no idea what happened during the heresy, as it is shrouded in myth and superstition. Some probably think that the Traitor legions where some kind of metafor or the like.
As for the Geneseed of former traitors, how easy would it be to manipulate the facts after all this time. Imagine a simple misunderstanding, a switching of labels, a lost cryo container being found with no information to go with it.... Mistakes are made.

Not to mention the imperium is bureaucracy hell. The motion to have traitor geneseed outlawed may still be in process 10.000 years later.

 Valion wrote:

There's more than enough Loyalist gene seed to meet the Imperium's needs.

I would love to know your source on this. The entire premise of the 40k universe is that the imperium's needs are not being met, which is why we have the problem of the existence of tau, orks, traitors, necrons, eldar etc in the first place. If the imperium's needs are being met, we don't have a game to play.

 tarnish wrote:
Imagine a simple misunderstanding, a switching of labels.

Surprised it's taken this long to come up. I can see the someone from the inquisition doing this. Think of it like raising a adopted child

When you consider these kinds of questions, it isn't important to look at the "if", but the "why".

A Space Marine Chapter is an incredibly time consuming and expensive thing to create. Think about it. Every new chapter needs:

Its own fleet. Which means building or appropriating a bunch of hard to make vessels. This is the big one people usually don't think about. And then you have to train/appropriate crews for these vessels.

Its own armory. Enough terminator armor, power armor, weapons, dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, Rhinos, Predators, Thunderhawks, etc. for an entire Chapter.

1000 new Space Marines. These don't grow on trees. They have to be recruited, trained, and then a command staff assembled for them. Then you need librarians, and apothecaries and techmarines.


So, with all that, you come to the critical question:

"We've spent all this time and money. Should we go with a known quantity and use reliable gene seed, or should we gamble on this gene seed from those crazy guys who turned traitor ten thousand years ago?"

The answer to this question is why they almost always use the Ultramarines, lol. And why there aren't very many Blood Angels successors, and no Space Wolves. If they don't use the gene seed from loyal chapters because it can't be trusted, why would they use it from traitor ones?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 poda_t wrote:

 Valion wrote:

There's more than enough Loyalist gene seed to meet the Imperium's needs.

I would love to know your source on this. The entire premise of the 40k universe is that the imperium's needs are not being met, which is why we have the problem of the existence of tau, orks, traitors, necrons, eldar etc in the first place. If the imperium's needs are being met, we don't have a game to play.

There's probably no shortage of gene seed. But a Space Marine chapter needs a lot more than just Marines in it, as I detailed above. It's all of that stuff that is probably in short supply.

And then there's all those ancient rules everyone follows just because that's what they've always done. Not everything the Imperium does makes sense, but given how easily and quickly the Legions were able to replicate Marines, a lack of gene seed is unlikely to be the limiting factor. Bureaucracy is more likely, lol.


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 TheDungen wrote:
Not to mention the imperium is bureaucracy hell. The motion to have traitor geneseed outlawed may still be in process 10.000 years later.

Unlikely. All that was decided right after the Heresy, before the rise of the Administratum. You have to remember that the Imperium [i]used[/i to be a well oiled machine. It was ten thousand years of being run by corrupt and short sighted humans that made it into what it is today. When the traitor gene seed was stasis-locked, Guilliman was at the head of the High Lords.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:


And then there's all those ancient rules everyone follows just because that's what they've always done. Not everything the Imperium does makes sense, but given how easily and quickly the Legions were able to replicate Marines, a lack of gene seed is unlikely to be the limiting factor. Bureaucracy is more likely, lol.

You say that nothing in the imperium makes sense, so, by default, that states that traitor geneseed would be both used and banned.
Again, we've got the same problem. The imperium's monolithic bureaucracy makes things very slow and possible for things to fall through the cracks. There is absolutely no reason that a random container or a box of items should go unlabeled and missing. Take for instance that recently, my university (University of calgary) had some professors that were digging through a forgotten sub-basement room in the engineering complex, and just so happened to have found TNT sitting in a few boxes. Yes. Forgotten explosive substances that were accessible to anyone who found a dusty room in a subbasement of the engineering department of the local university. Monolithic bureaucracies have a tendency of losing track of things, or taking so long to do something that by the end the whole point is forgotten, and then in the end, the grunt who gets told to repeat X a few hundred times eventually gives up, does it only a few tens of times, and then dumps it in an unmarked box and throws it over to somewhere else rather than do whatever it was he was supposed to do with it. I've seen it done in tiny offices all too often, never mind massive firms. Never mind that things that keep getting pushed back as more pressing matters step up, ineveitably, some things just fall off the calendar and don't get dealt with, until some other paper pusher walks into storage closet 12 to discover a huge mess that needs dealing with.

As to the marine replication, i don't think they have it. Those that do have it, it's a highly unstable technology that often results in mutation, and then it's repressed anyway because of the heretical nature of it. I don't deny that it happens, I think theres a BA successor that uses cloning, but looking at the raven guard, their cloning and marine acceleration parties were crashed by the alpha legion back during the horus heresy. Since then cloning and accelleration tech has been in short supply, and shortening ever since. A number of the loyalist legions and descendant chapters have serious problems with their own geneseed, mark of the wulfen, the black rage, salamander mutations....etc. A puritan imperium would have purged the elements out that appear to have a serious dysfunction, yet mutants and geneticcaly hard-wired nut-cases continue to operate in the name of the imperium.

Because it wasn't at all a joke... wait.

 poda_t wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:


And then there's all those ancient rules everyone follows just because that's what they've always done. Not everything the Imperium does makes sense, but given how easily and quickly the Legions were able to replicate Marines, a lack of gene seed is unlikely to be the limiting factor. Bureaucracy is more likely, lol.

You say that nothing in the imperium makes sense.

There is a massive, Eye of Terror sized difference between the word "nothing" and the phrase "not everything".

Please revisit your answer.

The "bureaucracy" argument is going to be a tough one to push. Mechanicus Adeptus Biologis are the ones who conduct the gene seed tithes, are the ones who transport them, and are the ones who store them. But yes, theoretically, the Imperium can use traitor gene-seed.

The 40K universe is a big place. Chapters have been created with mixed gene seed, such as the Relictors, who were an Ultramarines DA mix. It's possible that there have been chapters created with traitor geneseed, though it would be kept hush.

As to it being bad fluff, I would say that it's kind cheesy just to come out and say "oh, xyz chapter has Luna Wolves geneseed and they're loyalist." Rather, I think GW made the right decision at only hinting at it. That's just my opinion, it's not an absolute that I'm trying to force on everybody. (Totally not being passive aggressive btw)

Yeah any chapter that starts calling horus their progenitor isn't going to last long, regardless if they know that to be the case or not.

While the argument of geneseed shortage has a merit being largely discounted here, the very obvious point of simply having more geneseed to produce more marines across more chapters seems to have been completely ignored.

The material costs of a chapter have been explained, yet this is a cost the imperium would gladly absorb. If a star system were told it may host a new chapter, how quickly would they begin exporting massive amounts of material to be able to fund whatever they could to make this real? With the 41st millennium being the charnel house it is, I believe every monstrously wealthy system of planets would almost demand their own chapter in-system. It would not be hard to appropriate funds and get the cogs moving if the Inquisition baited the lines right in the systems where they could draw the most materials at small cost to the war machine. If you're trying to push chapters left and right and drop them in zones where they're twice as likely to encounter a Hrud migration, or WAAAGH!, or tomb world, or splinter fleet....why not use the questionable seed instead of wasting stable geneseed?

The chapters involved in the Badab incident could feasibly be said to be drawn from traitor stock(not all of them, obviously). Those sent to punish them could feasibly also be from that same stock and any losses incurred on the sanctioned chapters' parts would be deemed acceptable.

With the growing trend of genetic diversity between chapters, it's a fool's argument to say none of the traitor geneseed was ever used for a loyalist chapter. Accepting this seems to be the hard part for many.

 Shidank wrote:
While the argument of geneseed shortage has a merit being largely discounted here, the very obvious point of simply having more geneseed to produce more marines across more chapters seems to have been completely ignored.

The material costs of a chapter have been explained, yet this is a cost the imperium would gladly absorb. If a star system were told it may host a new chapter, how quickly would they begin exporting massive amounts of material to be able to fund whatever they could to make this real? With the 41st millennium being the charnel house it is, I believe every monstrously wealthy system of planets would almost demand their own chapter in-system. It would not be hard to appropriate funds and get the cogs moving if the Inquisition baited the lines right in the systems where they could draw the most materials at small cost to the war machine. If you're trying to push chapters left and right and drop them in zones where they're twice as likely to encounter a Hrud migration, or WAAAGH!, or tomb world, or splinter fleet....why not use the questionable seed instead of wasting stable geneseed?

The chapters involved in the Badab incident could feasibly be said to be drawn from traitor stock(not all of them, obviously). Those sent to punish them could feasibly also be from that same stock and any losses incurred on the sanctioned chapters' parts would be deemed acceptable.

With the growing trend of genetic diversity between chapters, it's a fool's argument to say none of the traitor geneseed was ever used for a loyalist chapter. Accepting this seems to be the hard part for many.

Exalted for truth. Congratulations, your first post was awesome

Using traitor geneseed makes as much sense as making a chapter of daemonically possessed marines and they'd never do.. oh wait.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080503232140/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/Troops/exorcists.html

 PunkNeverDie110 wrote:
What? BR are canon, they were mentioned in a old SM Codex (don't remember what edition, though) then DoW came out and they had a huge wave of popularity.

Blood Ravens were created for Dawn of War - Relic wanted to do their own thing without upsetting fans of existing chapters (too bad the powers behind the Ultramarines movie didn't have that foresight..), they subsequently made it into the 4th edition Space Marine Codex. They also got a proper pukka Index Astartes article in WD.