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I thought I'd put all these questions in one thread instead of splitting them into 3 separate threads and clogging up the background page. These questions are pretty specific, so sorry if they seem a little janky or confusing:

1. Does the Blood Angel Gene Seed have any effects on the skin colour of their marines? I'm asking cos I'd like to paint a black Space Marine scout from that Chapter, but am unsure if the Gene Seed has an effect on the skin of said Chapter, since I've only ever seen white/tanned Blood Angels. I know that the Salamanders have a lot of black marines, but I don't know if that's down to their Gene Seed or the places they recruit from.

2. Can Space Marine Captains fulfil other combat roles other than fighting on the ground? Could they, for instance, pilot aircraft instead of just Techmarines, or be Tank Commanders?

3. Anyone by chance know the colour of Tyranid blood? Is it consistent across the whole race, or does it change from Hive Fleet to Hive Fleet? If so, the colour I'm looking for is for Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Thanks in advance for your responses!

G.A

 General Annoyance wrote:
I thought I'd put all these questions in one thread instead of splitting them into 3 separate threads and clogging up the background page. These questions are pretty specific, so sorry if they seem a little janky or confusing:

1. Does the Blood Angel Gene Seed have any effects on the skin colour of their marines? I'm asking cos I'd like to paint a black Space Marine scout from that Chapter, but am unsure if the Gene Seed has an effect on the skin of said Chapter, since I've only ever seen white/tanned Blood Angels. I know that the Salamanders have a lot of black marines, but I don't know if that's down to their Gene Seed or the places they recruit from.

Seeing as BA incarcerate their new recruits in NOT-coffins to purge them of their rad-sickness, and they then emerge angelic and in Sanguinus' image, I'm not sure if skin colour would be overwritten or not. I doubt many people would have an issue with it though, unlike pale Salamanders or dark-skinned Raven Guard.

2. Can Space Marine Captains fulfil other combat roles other than fighting on the ground? Could they, for instance, pilot aircraft instead of just Techmarines, or be Tank Commanders?

A Captain is unlikely to be trained in vehicle combat, so would need training to do so. However, a Techmarine or Armoury-Brother trained to might be promoted to Captain, probably in the 6th (Biker), 7th (Land Speeder), 8th (Assault), or 9th (Devastator) Companies. It can happen, but mostly, they operate on foot with their battle brothers.

3. Anyone by chance know the colour of Tyranid blood? Is it consistent across the whole race, or does it change from Hive Fleet to Hive Fleet? If so, the colour I'm looking for is for Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Probably varies. I can imagine Leviathan's blood is green (good spot colour) or reddish. I think this one is down to you though.

"In his image" does tend to mean skin color also. As for the Salamanders, their skin tone is a combination of geneseed effect and planetary radiation. Terran Salamanders had darker skin and subtly red eyes, but Salamanders from Nocturne, as well as any Salamanders recruited from elsewhere, who were then exposed to Nocturne radiation, had coal black skin and practically glowing red eyes.

As a note, as of the 7th edition codex the 7th company has been expanded to also fill the role of pilots for all astartes gunships.

Sgt_Smudge wrote:

A Captain is unlikely to be trained in vehicle combat, so would need training to do so. However, a Techmarine or Armoury-Brother trained to might be promoted to Captain, probably in the 6th (Biker), 7th (Land Speeder), 8th (Assault), or 9th (Devastator) Companies. It can happen, but mostly, they operate on foot with their battle brothers.

Probably varies. I can imagine Leviathan's blood is green (good spot colour) or reddish. I think this one is down to you though.

Cool, the second question was more about something that had been on my mind, the third is for a more practical painting reason - I'd like to splatter some Tyranid blood across a BA Scout Sergeant's chainsword, and have been thinking about doing yellow as a good contrasting colour. Then again, I may just do straight up Blood for the Blood God since it's such a nice paint

jareddm wrote:"In his image" does tend to mean skin color also. As for the Salamanders, their skin tone is a combination of geneseed effect and planetary radiation. Terran Salamanders had darker skin and subtly red eyes, but Salamanders from Nocturne, as well as any Salamanders recruited from elsewhere, who were then exposed to Nocturne radiation, had coal black skin and practically glowing red eyes.

As a note, as of the 7th edition codex the 7th company has been expanded to also fill the role of pilots for all astartes gunships.

It tends to mean so, or does it always change their skin colour? Because if I can pass off a marine as being originally dark skinned and not being affected by the gene seed, then that'd be great

Good to know about the update

G.A

 General Annoyance wrote:
I thought I'd put all these questions in one thread instead of splitting them into 3 separate threads and clogging up the background page. These questions are pretty specific, so sorry if they seem a little janky or confusing:

1. Does the Blood Angel Gene Seed have any effects on the skin colour of their marines? I'm asking cos I'd like to paint a black Space Marine scout from that Chapter, but am unsure if the Gene Seed has an effect on the skin of said Chapter, since I've only ever seen white/tanned Blood Angels. I know that the Salamanders have a lot of black marines, but I don't know if that's down to their Gene Seed or the places they recruit from.

2. Can Space Marine Captains fulfil other combat roles other than fighting on the ground? Could they, for instance, pilot aircraft instead of just Techmarines, or be Tank Commanders?

3. Anyone by chance know the colour of Tyranid blood? Is it consistent across the whole race, or does it change from Hive Fleet to Hive Fleet? If so, the colour I'm looking for is for Hive Fleet Leviathan.

Thanks in advance for your responses!

G.A

It's worth mentioning Salamanders aren't what we call black (dark brown). They're a very dark shade of grey, effectively.

I've not heard of anything that would stop you, fluff-wise, from painting a black Scout - AFAIK, the ethnicities of Baal aren't really mentioned.

Tyranid "blood" is usually described as 'purple ichor', and given that most Tyranid constructs are less "animals evolved over millions of years to survive and pass on the DNA" than "organic machines designed to carry out a function quickly then be broken down into goop" it's probably not even really blood as we understand it. Full of phage cells and so on.

Anyway, purple is the prevailing colour in literature, but with Tyranids you can easily justify any colour you want (based on what would be pleasing to paint) on the grounds that this bacth of organisms have something in their blood to combat local environmental conditions that happens to have given them green/red/blue/yellow/whatever blood.

About the Blood angels skin. I think that the ethnic origin of the Blood Angels is not largerly mentioned in the books, but the vampire theme suggest a pale skin. On the other hand the name Baal references a Phoenician deity and most of the Blood Angels have Italian names (Lorenzo, Leonatos, Furio..) so I can easily imagine a mediterranean colour skin.

I don´t think that doing a black skin space marine is anti-background. Probably, after 39.000 years humanity would be mixed and the heritage will be more about culture than colours. In fact, now is hard to say what is the main colour skin of some of the european countries.