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How do?

In my other thread about Cawl and the Primaris, and how they’re not in fact his own work, a comment reminded me of something I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of. And as the title suggests, it’s do with Geneseed.

As we know, Geneseed is what allows a human to become Post-Human, and possibly (I’m hazy here) an Astartes become Primaris. And it’s also long established that each and every fully fledged Astartes has not one, but two, Progenoid Glands. And it’s from these that future Geneseed is harvested.

But what I cannot find a definite answer on is whether or not these can be harvested and regrown within a healthy, still living Astartes. I’m also unsure how long the Progenoid takes to mature to the point of usefulness.

Because that’s a very important question when it comes to the sustainability of the Astartes.

Consider. If it’s a one and done job? Either harvested when mature or at the point of death? Each Astartes can only benefit two aspirants. No more. Possibly less if their body rejects the implant process/training and they die ‘orrible splotchy deff,

And we’ve seen many Chapters driven to the absolute brink - and the same for more than one Legion (Iron Hands and Raven Guard spring to mind).

So whilst I’ve no canonical source, it does strike me that they do, overtime, regrow. Because that’s simply the most efficient design. Not only does it mean each individual Astarte could, potentially, father multiple future Astartes, but it also means they can be harvested periodically without needing to be dead.

But hey. There’s me talking sense about stuff in 40k, a background where sense is for wimps.

However, I’m not as well read as I could be on the modern background. So maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe I’ve missed many things, and 40k being 40k, perhaps those sources appear contradictory?

Help me out, Dakka.

Speculation and general chin wagging very much welcome. But if you’ve got a source to cite, don’t hold back. I’m Jonesing, man!

I have no source but I'm pretty sure there's geneseed harvested at death and one that can be harvested every five years that builds the Chapters stores/tithe of gene seed.

There's also the cloning of geneseed.

Sources please

I needs them! I craves them! The precious!

Each Marine has 2 progenoid glands, one in the neck and one in the chest. Their job is to harvest genetic material from the other implants to form germ cells that can be used to culture new implants. One matures and can be harvested after 5 years, the other after 10 years (I forget which way around it is).

Marines cannot regrow progenoid glands since they themselves are one of the implants that they receive. A progenoid gland is cultured into a full set of organ implants which includes 2 further progenoid glands to be implanted. It is possible that the implants were deliberately created this way to place a limit on the speed with which new Marines can be created.

What is more puzzling is why Chapters seemingly only extract the progenoids on death. This exposes the Apothecary to extra danger and increases the risk of glands being lost in battle. It is possible that the removal of glands is fatal to the Marine so is only performed once he is deceased.

 Karhedron wrote:

What is more puzzling is why Chapters seemingly only extract the progenoids on death. This exposes the Apothecary to extra danger and increases the risk of glands being lost in battle. It is possible that the removal of glands is fatal to the Marine so is only performed once he is deceased.

The way that makes sense to me is it's like organ donation. There are organs that can be donated while the donor is alive, but those don't get the same public attention as all of the organs that you have to be dead to donate.

And, like the saying goes, "routine surgery" is still surgery. It's completely harmless to a fallen marine to quickly and efficiently cut through to where the glands are. Safely removing the organs from a living patient (safely, for the patient) is a bit more work. I'll admit that I refreshed my memory from one of the wikis, but the two glands are in the neck and chest and to get to the one in the chest, the apothecary has to cut through the enhanced rib cage.

So I could see the neck gland after five years being the outpatient organ donation that no one gets really excited about, and its the chest organ that causes all the drama.

There's some maturity times in Legion of the Damned. The one where it's actually about the Excoriators with hardly any LotD. They mention 5 year maturity and the other one is longer but I can't remember exactly. It may be 10 years, but 25 years is in there. It may have been his 10 year one was harvested 25 years earlier. God that was a wishy washy post.

You need the rites of initiation PDF that they had up on the website. It was an excerpt from one of the index astartes from ~15 years ago.

See here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2tewmhahg1ptadt/1372944531240.pdf?dl=0

They can only be harvested once.

phillv85 wrote:
There's some maturity times in Legion of the Damned. The one where it's actually about the Excoriators with hardly any LotD. They mention 5 year maturity and the other one is longer but I can't remember exactly. It may be 10 years, but 25 years is in there. It may have been his 10 year one was harvested 25 years earlier. God that was a wishy washy post.

I had a chance to speak with Laurie Goulding about this exact instance, as it opened up a whole interesting set of hypotheses for me on why marines don't harvest the progenoid early. His response was that this was an error on the part of the editor and that progenoids can not be harvested prior to death. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thefirstexpedition/viewtopic.php?p=40002164#p40002164