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Is it explained where Primaris Marines actually come from - are they made the same way as Space Marines in that they are recruits from a planet that undergo augmentation or are they grown in vats or something like that?

For example do the Salamander primaris marines have black skin and red eyes?

Some (most? maybe?) I've never bothered to follow up with the Marine Codex. The novels present most of the named ones as Heresy-era) are Heresy-era marines the Cawl selected and kept in stasis while he worked out improvements.

Truthfully, I can't see Cawl bothering to keep the recruiting traditions for new ones- it just isn't something he'd care about. Truthfully I like that idea. All <chapter> are <X> from Planet <Y> is a little dull.

Originally they were post Unification era Marine recruits that have been enhanced by forbidden technology, if I understand correctly.

Each chapter now has what the need to develop their own though, so they can be from anywhere.

Originally they were a mixture of post Heresy recruits from terra, mars and the various first founding homeworlds given the enhanced Primaris gene seed. Primaris gene seed isn’t some massively new thing, it’s the same gene seed given a spring cleaning to reduce degradation and mutations with 3 extra organs.

As Guilliman went around the galaxy in his indomitus crusade he dropped off Primaris everywhere he went. Some were attached to existing chapters, others formed new all Primaris chapters in important areas. He also gave all these chapters the ability to create their own Primaris from their local recruits.

It’s been about 200 years since Primaris first arrived so I’d guess locally recruited Primaris make up the majority of their numbers by now.

codex space wolves makes note of a ferensian primaris marine, so it sounds like the space wolves have made at least one batch

The original Primaris recruits were created just after the end of the Horus Heresy, then placed in stasis; Guilliman getting his throat cut by Fulgrim put a halt to the plan, and the ossification of the Imperial cult and the Emperor's subsequent rise to godhood (and thus making any changes to his creations becoming heresy) meant Belisarius Cawl had to take it underground; continuing development on his own in secret, creating a legion of new recruits in stasis over the millennia. Those are the ones who made up the new CHapters of the Ultima Founding and the Unnumbered Sons (originally deployed as a large force of Marines, but subsequently broken up as reinforcements for existing Chapters). By now, the facilities for producing new Primaris Marines have been distributed to the Chapters themselves, from their usual recruiting sources.

 timmythetool wrote:
Is it explained where Primaris Marines actually come from - are they made the same way as Space Marines in that they are recruits from a planet that undergo augmentation or are they grown in vats or something like that?

The primaris spacemarines was made deep down in the dark styrene dungeons of Games Workshops Imperial injection moulding factories on ancient Terra. The Ordos Marketeficarum had long wished that the biggest selling range needed models on a more exagerated scale with a more elite statline, but the Officio Accountus had resisted introducing new model ranges that would cut into sales of existing models, in the time it would take to transition every single to Space Marine to the new format. So the Primaris Marine was born. Because what can boost sales more than space super soldiers, if not space super-duper soldiers?