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So I've been working on some custom fluff for a successor chapter of Blood Angels, named the Crimson Knights, and I've got a bit of a question regarding Space Marines.

I know that they are subject to intensive psychological training to prepare them for battle, possibly to the point of brainwashing.

My question is: How human are Space Marines? Do they have friends? Remember family? Have enemies among their same force? (I.E. Gabriel Seth hating Mephiston?) Do Space Marines enjoy leisure time and relaxation?

Ultimately, I'm unclear on if a Space Marine is conditioned to the point of being almost a kamikaze soldier who will die for his cause and feel nothing, or if they're still ultimately human and are just extremely loyal.

My arguments would be as follows.

One one hand you have extreme brainwashing. That suggests that Space Marines would be almost robotic in nature, just fighting for the emperor.

On the other hand, Chaos suggests that Space Marines have personal motives, there is cannon for Gabriel and Mephiston hating each other, etc.

Thank!

It varies from author to author, but overall Space Marines are not human at all. Space Marines have only one single purpose (defending the Imperium), and their every living moment is dedicated to the pursuit of this purpose. Their only form of 'free time' is meditation. All other time is spent waging war or preparing for war. Generally, Space Marines do not remember or care for their families. They are completely brainwashed into being loyal only to the Chapter and the God-Emperor.

Space Marines do have emotions and somewhat differing personalities. They can also have friends and rivals (though no Space Marine would ever put his friends before his loyalty to the Chapter)
Chaos and renegade Space Marines can of course develop motives beyond "defend the Imperium", but these motives are always related to war and power, the only things Space Marines know.

So they are not robots, but they do dedicate themselves to their chapter and warfare to the exclusion of everything else. Every activity they engage in is related to war. Basically, they are just living, sentient weapons.
Compared to a normal human, a Space Marine is an extremely boring personality.

See also this (from the 3rd ed codex):
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Marine

One of my favorite 40k quotes is thus, from Saint Praxides: "When it was over, when the blood had dried and the fires had died down, then we found we were the same as we had always been - small and terrified human beings, with only the light of the Emperor to see by in this dark galaxy of sin."

Space Marines cannot say that about themselves. They are not small, terrified human beings. They are legendary, living weapons, forged of the Emperor's might. The longer they serve, the more distant from humanity they become (as demonstrated in Dawn of War 2 with Thaddeus), losing the rush of battle and instead gaining simple steadfast determination and heroic willpower in the face of certain defeat-- and the capability to turn certain defeat in to unlikely victory.

And the price they pay for this is their humanity. Even the closest to the common man, those such as Salamanders, Ultramarines, and Space Wolves, have lost something of themselves in pursuit of power to combat the enemies of the Imperium.

To put it in Orky terms, Space Marines are the really big fraggin' gun of the Imperium, that the Imperium takes out for special occasions when it needs to shoot an enemy REALLY ZOGGIN' HARD.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
It varies from author to author, but overall Space Marines are not human at all. Space Marines have only one single purpose (defending the Imperium), and their every living moment is dedicated to the pursuit of this purpose. Their only form of 'free time' is meditation. All other time is spent waging war or preparing for war. Generally, Space Marines do not remember or care for their families. They are completely brainwashed into being loyal only to the Chapter and the God-Emperor.

Space Marines do have emotions and somewhat differing personalities. They can also have friends and rivals (though no Space Marine would ever put his friends before his loyalty to the Chapter)
Chaos and renegade Space Marines can of course develop motives beyond "defend the Imperium", but these motives are always related to war and power, the only things Space Marines know.

So they are not robots, but they do dedicate themselves to their chapter and warfare to the exclusion of everything else. Every activity they engage in is related to war. Basically, they are just living, sentient weapons.
Compared to a normal human, a Space Marine is an extremely boring personality.

I would recommend reading more of the fiction.

At least in the 30k fiction, here's a couple of points to consider. Luther and his followers are profoundly driven by emotion and he uses rhetoric to appeal to their emotions and feeling of patriotism towards Caliban, desire for freedom and independence. The Lord Cypher is obsessed above all else with the containment of an ancient power on Caliban. Typhus is deeply slighted by the rejection he feels from his Primarch Mortarion and greatly heartened by the reception he receives from Horus. Zahariel becomes passionately driven by a desire to free the ancient force within Caliban. Or take the stories of Garviel Loken or Nathaniel Garro.

Or take Cypher who defends an Imperial Guardsman from an oncoming horde of Nurgle cultists, then forces him to swear an oath promising not to reveal his appearance to anyone.

But 30k fiction sucks though. It basically removes all the good parts about marines and turns them in to ultrapowerful mary sue humans instead.

They are 0% human.

They are as alien to humans as Eldar and Orks are.

They are physiologically nothing like humans. They are psychologically nothing like humans.

They are less human than servitors. At least human medical science works on them.

 TedNugent wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
It varies from author to author, but overall Space Marines are not human at all. Space Marines have only one single purpose (defending the Imperium), and their every living moment is dedicated to the pursuit of this purpose. Their only form of 'free time' is meditation. All other time is spent waging war or preparing for war. Generally, Space Marines do not remember or care for their families. They are completely brainwashed into being loyal only to the Chapter and the God-Emperor.

Space Marines do have emotions and somewhat differing personalities. They can also have friends and rivals (though no Space Marine would ever put his friends before his loyalty to the Chapter)
Chaos and renegade Space Marines can of course develop motives beyond "defend the Imperium", but these motives are always related to war and power, the only things Space Marines know.

So they are not robots, but they do dedicate themselves to their chapter and warfare to the exclusion of everything else. Every activity they engage in is related to war. Basically, they are just living, sentient weapons.
Compared to a normal human, a Space Marine is an extremely boring personality.

I would recommend reading more of the fiction.

At least in the 30k fiction, here's a couple of points to consider. Luther and his followers are profoundly driven by emotion and he uses rhetoric to appeal to their emotions and feeling of patriotism towards Caliban, desire for freedom and independence. The Lord Cypher is obsessed above all else with the containment of an ancient power on Caliban. Typhus is deeply slighted by the rejection he feels from his Primarch Mortarion and greatly heartened by the reception he receives from Horus. Zahariel becomes passionately driven by a desire to free the ancient force within Caliban. Or take the stories of Garviel Loken or Nathaniel Garro.

Or take Cypher who defends an Imperial Guardsman from an oncoming horde of Nurgle cultists, then forces him to swear an oath promising not to reveal his appearance to anyone.

30k Space Marines are profoundly different from 40k Space Marines. They did not go through anything resembling the extreme indoctrination/brainwashing that Space Marines go through in 40k (partly because they had not yet realised how dangerous it could be but mostly because there simply was no time since Space Marines were pretty much mass production back then). Space Marines in 30k were a lot more human in many regards, experiencing a greater range of emotions, being less restricted by Chapter doctrines, often interacting with elements outside of their Chapter and Legion and even engaging in activities unrelated to warfare.
Basically, Space Marines in 30k are just superhuman warriors. Space Marines in 40k are obsessively zealous superhuman warrior monks.

We also have 40k examples of SM expressing more than battle-lust and brotherhood.

With regards to examples, we can start with the oh-so-perfect Ultramarines, namely Cato Sicarius, who is basically the definition of a glory hound, takes criticism very poorly, and has the whole thing with Ventris.
Or we could try the Salamanders trilogy. Hi there Iagon, who commits blackmail, murder, and self mutilation to try and allow his buddy to ascend to captain. We also see backroom discussions about the suitability of the captain from the majority of the sergeants (8 out of 12, from memory). This is noteworthy as there is no sign of any chaos influence on the marines until much later in the series.

We see again and again that the Space Marines are both utterly inhuman and at the same time more human than we ever were. We see them express rage, pride, doubt (basically every inner circle DA ever), weariness (Dante, Cassius), and envy, as well as regret, brotherhood, admiration and respect for brave guardsmen, an even occasionally an appreciation for finer things not directly war related (Cconversations between Ventris and Pausanius about wines and rock carvings, Grimaldus appreciating the interior of chuch, the Salamanders in general, etc.)

Hopefully that's decipherable.

As with nearly everything in the 40k universe, it depends.

Some chapters like the Black Templars go heavily for brainwashing into narrow-minded fanatics.

Some chapters like the Salamanders are much more lenient. Need to find a source, but some Sallies retain family ties.

Even if Marines are brainwashed, there's no guarantee that it will work effectively. Nothing else does in the 40k universe.

If you want your chapter to not be brainwashed killing machines then by all means. If you want some fluff direction on how to avoid the 'special snowflake' thing that might come from that then i'm sure we can help inject enough grimdark broken-ness into them for it to work

Space Marines are very much human. Just heavily modified and indoctrinated.

That's like saying a jet plane is very much a car, just heavily modified.

Look ma, they both have wheels! Clearly they're the same!

There's such a substantial amount of differences between the two that they really can't be called the same. They're in the same category-- and if you define "humanity" as "every offshoot of humans that has ever existed including unnatural ones" then yeah sure I guess. But I don't really define human that way.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
Space Marines are very much human. Just heavily modified and indoctrinated.

By and large, 40k astartes (30k astartes are a different story all-together) are definitely not human. This is an interesting thing in that in those stories that they aren't the POVs, they are seen as very distant and almost alien. The best example of this would be Dan Abnett's salvation reach. Meanwhile, wherever they are the POVs, you see them "considering" themselves humanlike and flaunting how they feel emotions "far deeper than humans" to paraphrase Uriel Ventris during his second visit to Pavonis... but ultimately they are quickly brushed aside.

And this constitutes one of the strengths of 40k space marines. They think they are human-like. They are taught and indoctrinated to believe so. But, barring the salamanders, this is not the case. This humanity only happens inside their heads and the rest of the galaxy sees them as much aliens as other species.

They are trans-human. I don't think you can put a neat percentage on how human they are but it is a good way south of 100% and a good way north of 0%.

A bit fuzzy but if I recall, when created and while the Emperor was alive and Krumping about, the Marines were transhuman but the Primarch were definitely not human (cocktail of stem cells, empy dna and daemon stuff).

Even with the psycho-indoctrination I'd say it will depend heavily on what the Chapter considers proper and how strong a personality the initiate had before becoming a marine.

Some can't remember anything (or at least very little) of the time before joining their Chapter, and these I'd expect to be the least human-like of them all. All they know is battle, preparing for battle and waiting for the next battle. Others will seem more human, especially those from Chapters that encourage some sort of recreational activity (Space Wolf feasting, Blood Angels and Imperial Fists artistry, Salamander smithing and so on). It gives them something else to focus on besides combat.

And far as I know marines are supposed to receive a certain amount of time off combat rotation - IIRC Tycho's description in the Blood Angels Codex mentions him being put on permanent combat duty since his hatred or Orks makes free time frustratingly hard for him. Whatever marines do when off-duty is probably still mostly preparing for battle but Chapters that do other things would let the marines do that too.

Even those for whom HAD a history and memory as a human slowly drift distant from it as their service drags on and on in to the centuries. As they travel across the galaxy battling constantly, their human family dies off due to aging (and with most marine recruiting worlds being feral, their life expectancy isn't that long to begin with), leaving at best unknown distant descendants that the marine never personally knew.

 Melissia wrote:
That's like saying a jet plane is very much a car, just heavily modified.

Look ma, they both have wheels! Clearly they're the same!

There's such a substantial amount of differences between the two that they really can't be called the same. They're in the same category-- and if you define "humanity" as "every offshoot of humans that has ever existed including unnatural ones" then yeah sure I guess. But I don't really define human that way.

Now that's an interesting question.

At the risk of delving far too far down the philosophical road, at what point does something stop being 'human'?

Is a Space Marine not human because they've been augmented by various technological devices (biologically based, but still engineered implants)?

Is a chap with a pacemaker less human because he has a technological device regulating his heartbeat?

Is an amputee a little less human because they have a technological device replacing a leg?

Is there some point where someone stops becoming human because of all these things that are changed? A percentage perhaps?

I do get your point though. They're genetically human, but very, very distinct physiologically. To the point where if they weren't engineered (and thus still share our DNA), they would absolutely be classified as a separate species. If they could procreate, their offspring would be human, not Astartes. That's the definition of a species after all.

Probably 'post-human' would be the best overall descriptor methinks...

Teo wrote:
So I've been working on some custom fluff for a successor chapter of Blood Angels, named the Crimson Knights, and I've got a bit of a question regarding Space Marines.

I know that they are subject to intensive psychological training to prepare them for battle, possibly to the point of brainwashing.

My question is: How human are Space Marines? Do they have friends? Remember family? Have enemies among their same force? (I.E. Gabriel Seth hating Mephiston?) Do Space Marines enjoy leisure time and relaxation?

Ultimately, I'm unclear on if a Space Marine is conditioned to the point of being almost a kamikaze soldier who will die for his cause and feel nothing, or if they're still ultimately human and are just extremely loyal.

My arguments would be as follows.

One one hand you have extreme brainwashing. That suggests that Space Marines would be almost robotic in nature, just fighting for the emperor.

On the other hand, Chaos suggests that Space Marines have personal motives, there is cannon for Gabriel and Mephiston hating each other, etc.

Thank!

It depends largely on the chapter. They do undergo intense mental conditioning, purging them of many undesirable human instincts and enhancing others. Loyalty, courage, and their mental capabilities are enhanced. Their responses to danger are altered. They don't necessarily lose all sense of fear, just their response to fear changes. Instead of becoming panicked, a space marine will keep his cool if he is afraid of something. His fight or flight response will be kicked into overdrive, and he'll make the rational decision.

A space marine doesn't become a mindless robot. He still has personality, and some emotions, but all under a cold calculating mind. Think of them somewhat like Vulkans from Star Trek, but instead of suppressing their emotions they are simply in complete control(most of the time).

Chaos Space Marines, due to the corrupting nature of Chaos, might show what would technically be cowardice. Though the proper term might simply be selfishness. They've had their selflessness nature replaced by one that is ultimately self-serving. Each one is out for himself ultimately. So he's not going to sacrifice himself needlessly. But he's not going to cower in a corner scared to death.


Some chapters, notably the Salamanders, allow and even encourage initiates to maintain contact with their families. A Salamander may even be "adopted" into a family. They spend time with their family when they're home on Nocturne. Most chapters don't do this of course, but some might, to varying degrees. Most don't do this because they give themselves to the Imperium. They can't afford getting bogged down by sentiment or attachment to a particular group of humans.

I found the DoW2 campaign well-written and accurate for this. They show variety but have a different starting point.

Space Marines are much more human then they want to and pretend to be. Space Marines call humans "mortal" at various point forgetting their own mortality. They call mankind weak and affraid only to be proven wrong time and time again. They want to be known as the superior warriors, demi-gods of war only to be forced to rely on normal humans to achieve victory or compensate for their own defeat. It's not a Space Marine who chassed Thrakka from Armageddon, neither one who reunited the dislocating Imperium after the Reign of Blood. It's normal man who held the Gates of Cadia shut for 10 000 years and who died standing there.

Space Marines relationship with humanity is complex and contradictory. They are, deep down, humans, but hate to recognise it and to embrace it. They pity, distrust and mock humans, but admire them at the same time. Their world and sense of self has been twisted by war and indoctrination to a point where they hate half of themselves, the human part, and don't trust the other half, the Space Marine part.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I found the DoW2 campaign well-written and accurate for this. They show variety but have a different starting point.

Agreed. That was one of the best Space Marine focused fictions in the setting if you ignore the insane feats they could pull off because of the gameplay mechanics.

There modified extremely in body. Yes human. Where human. Afterwards there not much human that's not been upgraded.

But the base line is human.

There mentaly indoceinated to be thr ultimate soldiers.
There again just not human, they know little fear. Photographic memory, insane reaction times.

Yes still human as such but their minds been rebuilt to best fight war.

 jhe90 wrote:
They know little fear.

If that was the rule Fear might actually be a semi-useful USR...

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 jhe90 wrote:
They know little fear.

If that was the rule Fear might actually be a semi-useful USR...

Aye . Well fluff wise even if they do feel fear it does not effect combat efichancy .
Unlike guard they do not lose head.

And yes.. That rule against marines is pretty damn hard to make good use of.

I always thought a better way of doing ATSKNF is to make it so that they auto-rally after fleeing.

If there's something that causes Fear, then it's some sort of super-terrifying root-emotion technomancy from the abyss, rather than something that's just a bit scary. They should run, but instantly rally once the spell is broken.

That way, it'd still be useful for flushing them out of cover and stuff like that, but they'd still be buffed against Fear-based stuff.

@Ynneadwraith

Or you could make two rule one named fear and one, more powerful named terror. Marines are immune to the first, but not the second.

That'd work too yeah although it would mean the re-writing of a ton of different units, rather than just the single rule for Marines (although given that there's a bajillion Marine codices that might be more balanced that I'm thinking...).

I read a quote in WD once which catagourised 40k marines into 3 groups.

1: 30k traitors legions. Pretty angry.

2: 40k space marines. Inhuman instruments of destruction.

3: 40k traitor marines. SM that got their humanity back.

I like the quote that "chaos marines of 40k are marines who got their humanity back". Dudes that for whatever reason doesn't want to be instruments of destruction. Dudes that wants to experience feelings or possibly just a simpler life, or maybe dudes that don't like the Imperium and have their own ideas for better Imperium policies. It's not really well represented in the rules, but there's some pretty big character potentials here.

Concerning family and non battle brother bonds the Ultramarines book bring it up on several ocassions. The main character, Uriel Ventris (Captain of the 4th company) talks with a Mortfactors chaplain about his time before becomming an SM. He's also very proud to be family related to an old hero, the Captain of the 1st company during the battle for Maccrage (hive fleet behemoth battle), something that apparently made the recruitment personel take special notice of him. It's also stated that families who have ancestors that became SM, at least in Ultramar, enjoy higher social standings. Since the shrine of the Primarch was open to pilgrims one could easily imagine a few SM standing guard seeing or meeting old family members. It does raise the questions if SM that meet a family relative that also became an SM, maybe 100years later or so, share some form of connection or not. My guess is that it does, though indictrinations would never allow them to put anything but the chapter and Imperium first.

Chaos Marines are some of the most inhuman marines out there, really. They're what you get when you take someone who already gave up their humanity to become a powerful monster on the battlefield... and have them give up what little left links them to humanity to become a cruel warmaking beast in the name of thirsting gods.

 Melissia wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I found the DoW2 campaign well-written and accurate for this. They show variety but have a different starting point.

Agreed. That was one of the best Space Marine focused fictions in the setting if you ignore the insane feats they could pull off because of the gameplay mechanics.

To be fair, I feel like some of those feats were balanced by the sheer attrition you are taking. You can somehow lose twice your entire chapter's worth of marines over the course of a successful campaign and no one bats an eye.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
Chaos Marines are some of the most inhuman marines out there, really. They're what you get when you take someone who already gave up their humanity to become a powerful monster on the battlefield... and have them give up what little left links them to humanity to become a cruel warmaking beast in the name of thirsting gods.

Try the Night Lords books. They are great. There is more to CSM than what one would think.