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Hey guys,

Quick question to the 30k fans.

The first recruits of the legions were taken from Terra, did these Astarte use gene seeds from their Primarch and then they were put with their legion. For example everyone in line 1 received the Lions gene seed and then they all went off and joined the 1st legion to do some good old fashioned crusading?

If this is the case how did they react to the more extreme gene seeds? Did the adepts know some of the recruits that took Russ' gene seed would turn into crazed werewolf type people or that the ones that got through it OK would sprout k-nines? Or was the Emperor there personally to oversee it and knew of the uh challenges his son's children might have to face?

How do you think this went down?

Try not to think about it too much, because it exposes some serious plot-holes in the creation of the Legions Astartes and the later Space Marine Chapters... perhaps most overtly in the case of the Space Wolves.

That was pure first gen gene seed plus the Emperor was on hand to work some of science magic as only the inventor could.

maybe the problems only came on after it was later generation versions, and no master scientist to edit and work the process.

The Emperor knew how to create gene-seed just from the genetic material he had leftover from the primarchs. So it wasn't necessarily more extreme gene-seed, it was just mostly pure at the time. I say mostly because some legions had trouble with their gene-seed even before their primarchs were found.

The forge world Horus Heresy books go into detail about this for many of the legions. While the extreme cases of Blood Angels and Space Wolves haven't been detailed yet, we do know that for the Raven Guard and the Salamanders, Terran recruits displayed minor changes, while the full changes developed once relations with their respective primarchs was established. For instance, the Raven Guard Terran recruits would develop black hair, pale skin, or black eyes, but rarely all three. After finding Corax, it became extremely common for all three traits to develop. Terran Salamanders had slightly darkened skin and reddish eyes, but those recruited from Nocturne, as well as those Salamander Terrans who traveled to Nocturne developed extremely dark skin and glowing red eyes.

Most of the legions recruited from specific locations around Terra, fitting with when a new legion was needed to bring a region to compliance.

I would think Blood Angels are and were perfectly capable of going through the standard gene-seed implantation process. They just found out at some point that they didn't need to thanks to Sanguinius' blood.

I highly doubt that any of the Primarch-specific traits developed until after gene-seed was taken directly from the Primarchs themselves. I mean, seriously, the Salamander gene-seed would not have developed darkened skin and red eyes if not for the mutations developed by Vulkan on Nocturne.

Maybe not primarch-specific mutations, but the Thousand Sons were afflicted by the Flesh Change before Magnus was discovered. The gene-seed was never perfect for some of the legions.

I've always thought the gene-seed takes up DNA from the implanted, thus the next generation will have parts from the previous generations, and in the case of the Wolves, is how they eventually became Fenris-exclusive. Alternatively, it could be the Emperor used magic to divine what population would be best for all Legions, and thus found compatible humans on Terra.

The gene-seed has degenerated - and did so quickly. Due to the speed at which the Legions were built, there was a lot of mutation at the start. In Legion, the Kabal mention only the Alpha Legion are genetically pure enough as they haven't needed to replace as many SMs. Hell, even the Emperor's Children caught some virus that gave them Chaos cancer.

The Legions themselves were mostly taken from geographical areas in big projects. E.g. the first Raven Guard were all from the Asiatic Dustfields. The Night Lords' first recruits were from Terra's prisoners' children.

 Psienesis wrote:
Try not to think about it too much, because it exposes some serious plot-holes in the creation of the Legions Astartes and the later Space Marine Chapters... perhaps most overtly in the case of the Space Wolves.

The excuse in fluff is gene-seed only began to show its flaws over centuries, by which point all the Primarchs had already been found. First-gen gene-seed was pure.

Night Lords Terrans were taken from under Terra in the sewers and cave systems. They already were highly adapted to life in the dark, getting the implants slated for the Night Lords just made them that much better. That said I doubt there was a lot of physical differences between Terran Night Lords and Nostromo Night Lords. Both lived in the dark. The Terran ones were actually probably better at it.