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The question is fairly simple how many (in raw numbers or proportion) Space Marines and Sisters of Battle have fallen to the lure of Chaos since the Horus Heresy?

A lot more Marines than Sisters. Only a single sister has ever fallen for Chaos and how cannon she is maybe up for debate. Marines turn renegade or traitor not very often but rather, I'd suggest less then 10%, probably around 8. Still a lot of marines though.

Depends on if you allow for things other than Codex: Sisters of Battle.

In 'canon' sources (BL and other GW approved material) we're looking at at least one whole order that we know of (The Sisterhood of Sorrowed Matrons were purged by Inquisitor Gelt aboard the hulk of the Merciful Saint, a hospital ship turned nightmare abattoir. [from Creatures Anathema]). plus misc smaller amounts.

in Cain's Last Stand he gets specific with three squads advancing on his position, but since they're breaking through elsewhere, we can surmise there are more of them than that.

Miriael Sabathiel converts an unknown number of other sisters who are with her in an assault on a shrine world but I am still searching for the fluff on that's source.

Fallen to chaos....

How would dark angels, Blood angels, grey knights and rate on that scale ?

epronovost wrote:
The question is fairly simple how many (in raw numbers or proportion) Space Marines and Sisters of Battle have fallen to the lure of Chaos since the Horus Heresy?

Space Marines: Including the Traitor Legions, a million.

Sisters: Zero.

Going by the codex only one sister has ever willingly turned from the Emperors light. Several novels have a handful of sisters being influenced by chaos but those are dubious in nature. Over all marines falling to chaos is fairly rare, and it is even rarer for a sister to fall. Additionally no Grey Knight has ever fallen to chaos.

 Psienesis wrote:
Space Marines: Including the Traitor Legions, a million..

None of the traitor legions were at full strength, remember they had to purge the Marines who did not fall from their ranks. Figure more around 500k

As far as proportion goes, it's hard to say, we're not sure how many sisters there are, or if any we do not know about have fallen to chaos, as Orders Minoris seem to appear and disappear all the time.

I have one piece of fluff I would like to call into question, and that's that all sisters go to either Ophelia or Terra. The sheer number of scholas and the difficulty of warp travel make this unlikely at best. Factor in that demand is high even in sectors at relative peace, and that cardinals may create entire orders minoris with a simple writ and you have a serious issue. Factor in that both planets also do things besides just cater to SoB and the thing become impossible.

Sisters, very few to none

Grey knights none, ever.

Space marines, a awful lot!

Custodious, also far as know, 0

I wouldn't say a lot outside the Hersey, especially compared to the average human. Most of the heresy can be blamed on the marines ultimately being more loyal to their local general than the Imperium. Not unlike what happened several time with the roman legions they are partially based on.

Considering GW doesn't love the Sisters as much as the Space Marines (bloody shame really), we don't have an even pool of stories to draw from. It is a very one sided endeavor.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
Going by the codex only one sister has ever willingly turned from the Emperors light. Several novels have a handful of sisters being influenced by chaos but those are dubious in nature. Over all marines falling to chaos is fairly rare, and it is even rarer for a sister to fall. Additionally no Grey Knight has ever fallen to chaos.

Sabbathiel is not a studio character and appears in no Codices.

 Psienesis wrote:

Sabbathiel is not a studio character and appears in no Codices.

She appears in a BL publication and has never been retconned.

I was under the assumption that the actual character isn't but the line of one sister falling was in the second edition codex.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I was under the assumption that the actual character isn't but the line of one sister falling was in the second edition codex.

She was built on by GW and Sabertooth games for an expansion for Dark Millennium which was a card game published by Sabertooth and GW jointly. (a special edition card for it was found in copies of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade). She's the subject of a short story by Dan Abnett in the book that accompanied it from BL.

I stand corrected then. It kinda bothers me that every time sisters fall it's to Slaanesh especially among the fanbase. It almost always comes out to be some poorly written, weird naked nun fetish.

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epronovost wrote:
The question is fairly simple how many (in raw numbers or proportion) Space Marines and Sisters of Battle have fallen to the lure of Chaos since the Horus Heresy?

Miriael Sabathiel, of the Order of Our Martyred Lady, was the only Sororitas who ever willingly threw in with the Ruinous Powers. She is a Champion of Slaanesh.


The other instances of fallen Sororitas have been your standard corruption/unholy subversion, as opposed to willingly walking the Path to Glory. But such is extremely rare.


There have been many rather dramatic cases of Astartes turning traitor. But the problem with that one is that not all who do go rogue turn to the forces of Chaos. I can't guess at any percentages. All I know is that it's been more common in the past for Astartes than Sororitas.

These are the ways in which a person can fall to Chaos as far as I am aware: mind controlled (like it was the case for the 60 or so Sisters in Cain's Last Stand), fooled by illusions, drugs or other spells like that (like it's the case for some remembrencer and Space Marine in Fulgrim), converted to the Gods of Chaos (like the Word Bearer and most of the loge), forced into the arms of the gods of Chaos by the Imperium paranoia (like the Thousand Sons), corrupted by the direct influence of the warp/chaos artefact (like the Crimson Slaughter). Off all of these, only one can be said to be truly willing and it also doesn't seem to be the most common. Those turning to Chaos via corruption brougth by artefact or warp power leaking in reality seems to take that prize in my opinion.

I would put the post Heresy Marine at around 5% of traitor to Chaos forces. This is mostly due to genetic deviancy (Cursed Founding), sabotage (Shadow Legion) or sheer poor luck soo to speak more than corruptibility. For Sister, I would have think at around 0.2% mostly due to extreme circomstances too like pillaging the mind of a Greater Daemon (Daemonifuge).

 jhe90 wrote:


Grey knights none, ever.

Sure lets go with the official numbers and don't get blammed.

There is at least one in Daemonifuge
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Ephrael_Stern

With Sisters of Battle it's murky because in almost all cases, they still think they're fighting for the will of the emperor (just horribly, horribly skewed). Or mind controlled. Only that one Sister actually embraces a Chaos God as her new deity, and this sort of technicality means that it's hard to determine if they really had "fallen" or not.

Space marines are much easier to measure because when they fall, they pretty much come out screaming their chosen god's name. Same goes for Imperial Guard Regiments.

Actually, there's a lot in daemonifuge.

The sister who tries to murder Aphrael Stern might conceivably be an imposter, but she's known by the other sister she talks to, so she's not an unknown infiltrator.

She is definitely a true-believer cultist, to the point of having the mark bone-burned into her skull (hidden under the flesh), and is the reason the Inquisition takes stuff seriously.

In addition, the Keeper of Secret's 'Daughters' are the remains of the order based there - and they're properly chaos marine equivalents, warped armour, distended faces, horns, the works.

I think that the main issue is that we have a very small number of samples to draw from, from several editions of 40k with several different levels of 'grimdark'.

I'm gonna go with as many as the writers want, simply because this is the case, you'll never get an accurate number because the setting is so vast and open to everyone's input.
for instance if the fluff for someone's army is that they have a warband of marines fallen to chaos then they can make it as big/small as they want to hence why you won't ever get an accurate number, it may not be official fluff from GW/BL but who's to say it isn't any less canon, after all the whole point of creating your own chapter/clan/dynasty/craftworld/sept etc is to create and add to the universe, heck in official publications this is even encouraged.

In terms of marines we know tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands have gone over to chaos. (9 legions with tens of thousands each during the heresy for a start)

in terms of sisters we have fluff accounts of some going over (possibly one) but I don't see any reason to think they are immune to corruption, perhaps less susceptible but not immune. For one they are still "only" human, ok with indoctrination etc but still subject to human frailty. and secondly because "never" just does not happen.

TheWanderer wrote:
In terms of marines we know tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands have gone over to chaos. (9 legions with tens of thousands each during the heresy for a start)

in terms of sisters we have fluff accounts of some going over (possibly one) but I don't see any reason to think they are immune to corruption, perhaps less susceptible but not immune. For one they are still "only" human, ok with indoctrination etc but still subject to human frailty. and secondly because "never" just does not happen.

Beside the Grey Knights, every single Imperial organisation lost at leadt one of its member to the forces of Chaos. Of course Space Marine lost hundreds of thousand of their bretheren to Chaos during the Horus Heresy. The interesting question is what how many fell after this event. Beside the Cursed Founding, I don't think there has been other massive rebellion event.

Even then with the Grey Knights it's still murky.

The Daemon codex mention Slaanesh corrupting a Silver-armoured warrior who had the strength of will to make it through all 6 rings of his/her realm uncorrupted before turning as soon as they encountered Slaamesh (While not explicitly mentioned to be a Grey Knight, the description heavily implies it).

Then there's the passage where the Changling plants the seed of doubt into the mind of a new Grey Knight initiate about the state of the Imperium and if what they're doing (exterminating billions of innocents in order to try and banish one daemon). Ok, he doesn't exactly fall to Chaos, but the initiate is certainly corrupted in a sense and the path to darkness has been paved.

epronovost wrote:
The interesting question is what how many fell after this event. Beside the Cursed Founding, I don't think there has been other massive rebellion event.

Off the top of my head - Badab War? several chapters went traitor. Astral Claws of Luft Huron fame plus a couple of others.

TheWanderer wrote:

epronovost wrote:
The interesting question is what how many fell after this event. Beside the Cursed Founding, I don't think there has been other massive rebellion event.

Off the top of my head - Badab War? several chapters went traitor. Astral Claws of Luft Huron fame plus a couple of others.

I thougth about it. but the allies of Huron were simply tricked by him. They didn't turn to Chaos and were allow to make penence. I don't think there as been much more than the Astral Claws who turned to Chaos.


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 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Even then with the Grey Knights it's still murky.

The Daemon codex mention Slaanesh corrupting a Silver-armoured warrior who had the strength of will to make it through all 6 rings of his/her realm uncorrupted before turning as soon as they encountered Slaamesh (While not explicitly mentioned to be a Grey Knight, the description heavily implies it).

Then there's the passage where the Changling plants the seed of doubt into the mind of a new Grey Knight initiate about the state of the Imperium and if what they're doing (exterminating billions of innocents in order to try and banish one daemon). Ok, he doesn't exactly fall to Chaos, but the initiate is certainly corrupted in a sense and the path to darkness has been paved.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

a quick scan down the list of chaos warbands etc on 40k lex I picked up notes of 15 loyalist chapters that have gone over to chaos, and that was before I got beyond the letter B.

average that across the alphabet and you are looking at 15 x 13. chapters so best part of 200,000 marines going chaos after the heresy.

I would suggest that's a minimum starting point.