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Sure its still Space Fantasy, but the greater numbers of marines, and the fact that Imperial tech and tactics are only being used against themselves, makes the universe seem less ridiculous to me.

Does anyone else feel its easier to suspend the Space-Warhammer-disbelief when thinking about the Heresy setting?

The whole thing feels more grounded. A lot of the personalities
In 40k are immortal cardboard cutouts.

In the Heresy you have intrigue, people fighting on the wrong side due to bad information, and best of all you have redemption.

When was the last time you saw people getting pardoned for their misdeeds in 40k? (Outside of the Mantis Warriors Space Marines).

The other bit that drew me to the Heresy, is that the ruleset allows you more freedom to play with all of the toys. In 40k, which I feel is wayyyy to focused on the tournament "meta" and is tweaking the game so often I feel like checking to see if Games Workshop has been bought out by Wizards of the Coast and they decided to run the game like a demented version of Magic the Gathering's Pro Tour.

It might be that we have decent filled out background on characters who've we gotten to know, love or hate, who live and die (sometimes honorably, sometimes poorly), or just not make it in time to save the day (we're looking at you Bobby G).

All in all, it's the deeper setting that makes the space opera of the Horus Heresy work.

I really wish I felt as good about 40k as I do 30k.

Only if you think 40k is just the story of humans in a galaxy with thousands of aliens that have histories as long or longer, with just as much intrigue and story.

40ks strength is it's setting. Without it humans are just a bunch of actual history and tropes mushed together to generate a pseudo intellectual story.

The galaxy would continue on just fine if humans disappeared and in fact has a 60 million year history that doesn't include them.

That's 6000x the lifespan of the imperium where history occurred with more variety and story than one human betrays another and laments over flexed muscles about brotherhood.

Heresy is a historical game.

We know the outcome, we know the turning points. It’s a closed tale of betrayal, intrigue and wholesale slaughter.

40K?

It’s a sandbox. A background setting where sure, the narrative focuses on large events, but the vast majority of the galaxy remains unexplored, and a place where pretty much anything can happen.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Heresy is a historical game.

We know the outcome, we know the turning points. It’s a closed tale of betrayal, intrigue and wholesale slaughter.

40K?

It’s a sandbox. A background setting where sure, the narrative focuses on large events, but the vast majority of the galaxy remains unexplored, and a place where pretty much anything can happen.

Yes but what I'm saying is that when you attempt to 'believe' in the setting, do you fund Heresy easier to mentally stomach?

I find the fact that the legions are much bigger than a 40k chapter makes the logistics seem less ridiculous. Also the civil war makes it seem more reasonable that the combatants would choose to engage in vicious ground battle rather than say just nuke xenos from orbit.

It…depends.

For the big sweeping battles? Yes, Heresy makes more sense as you’re potentially talking thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Astartes, backed up by unknown number of Auxilia, Militia, Mechanicum, Questoris, Titans and who knows what else.

Certainly, some 40K novels seem odd for the scale of Marine deployments. And Marines certainly pop up way more often than their numbers would suggest, and suffer seemingly unsustainable casualties on the regular - with only some Chapters being shattered to the point of extinction.

But for exploring? 40K is the place to do it.

Maybe I am having a personal schism with 40K.

Lately I feel like the only way immersion isn't broken is when considering the Heresy, or if I head-canon limit 40K to just Orks fighting themselves or maybe World Eaters.

I don't think there are actually that many more Marines in 40k than 30k. 40k has ~1 million. A typical 30k legion had ~100000 at the onset of the HH, so lets say 2 million for 18 legions including random units scattered on garrison duty, the same order of magnitude. The legions can achieve a greater concentration of force, but they are probably in less warzones at once.

Also, I think Marines are suffering unsustainable casualties on the regular... due to the unsustainable crises of the beginning of M42. Gak is hitting the fan.

It’s the concentration thereof, and the relatively rapid replacement of recruits.

The Legions, either due to the process better better understood and less wonky Geneseed could rebuild from staggering losses. The only reason the Ravenguard got special tech was they needed those replacements now.

Modern day? I still question the true necessity of the trials. Is it that they need to ensure only peak candidates Because The Conversion Process, or is it when you can only have a relatively set number of Astartes under your Command, you might as well be super selective from the outset, to reduce the chance of rejection and other foul ups? Basically very different selection pressures on a Chapter and a Legion.

And when a Legion came a-knocking? It was mob handed, with a company seemingly being modern Chapter strength, complete with fleet, support, Auxilia etc. And if it was an Explorator Crusade Fleet? That’s a lot of military strength coordinated under a single command - with the promise of reinforcements if you’re especially troublesome.

Deployed against non-Astartes foes? That typically proved to be a pretty short battle. Not entirely one sided like, but pretty quick.

Further on recruitment? With no “legal” limit on Legion size, that was most likely an ongoing, continuous operation on Home and Claimed worlds, with recruits being sent back from where the Legion happened to be if they’d had successful Compliance (fight compliance, or thank goodness you’re here compliance)

Sort of. The setting is smaller but that highlights the problems with time, logistics, travel etc. far far more.

You also had secrets revealed, that I thought were great. Especially about stuff that was super common in the 40k 'verse that we've read about for years. Case in point: The Golden Throne.

I won't spoil anything here, but the "why" it exists is and what it's purpose truly is was amazing.

I think that's why I love the Heresy timeliness, it took all the "canon" you thought you knew from random scraps of Intel gleaned from codexes and WD articles and changed up a lot of it, and challenged your expectations.

Yes and no. The more focused nature of the setting and conflict makes it more cohesive as a setting and you don't get as many questions that arise regarding the impact or influence of other factions on events, but I think the numbers and scale makes less sense than that of 40k, especially with regards to the Astartes.

In 40k the number of marines out there is nebulous and less well defined, we can hardware away those inconsistencies with the idea that there's enough chapters out there to cover everything as written, and that poor record keeping explains many of the inconsistencies.

In HH there simply aren't enough marines to make the numbers work in the required timeframe. It's like a 12-+4 year conflict but in that times panic the deployment sizes indicated in the books and the pace of replacements needed to cover losses exceed the available strength of the legions going into the conflict. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I never understood why they felt they had to make the Heresy take place in that extremely short amount of time when they could have literally make it last close to 1000 years. Yes, some of the human not-SM characters wouldn't work then, but most of them have been invented with the book series anyway and rejuvenation technics were already available.
As an aside, they made the same mistake with the War of the Beast. When they told me in the last novel the whole thing took place in, I think, 2 years, I was like, wtf? You could have filled the whole M32 we know nothing about anyway with that event and decided it's only two years?!

As for Marine numbers, I agree they're ridiculously low, but that goes for both settings. Death Guard and Black Legion even have the same numbers in both.

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I've never encountered a source suggesting Marines take 10-20 years to create.

Index Astartes I (from 3rd edition, so very established lore) gives the first round of implants being inserted age 10-12, and the final implants at age 16-18. That gives a typical range of 4-8 years for creating a Marine. However, it explicitly points out that 16-18 is the usual range for completing the implantation process and that pressures during wartime can accelerate the process. How much it can be accelerated is an open question, but presumably to less than 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this could be reduced to a year or two even within the normal processes.

However, the concept of Inductii has been added to HH lore for Marines created through extreme accelerated processes that were generally considered to be dangerous and create an inferior Marine in various ways. This specifically accounts for the increased output during the Horus Heresy. Presumably these Inductii were typically 10-12 years old, which is pretty horrific when you think about it. The Siege of Terra consisted of a minority of decades-old veterans leading hordes of child soldiers against each other.

The C.S. Goto novel Dawn of War: Ascension has essentially one major subplot, and that is the speedy implantation of a teenager from valorous guardsmen to Space Marine (The body horror medical scenes are a the best grimdark example of why I'm glad I'm not a Space Marine).

The Apothecary mentions that the youngest aspirant for implantation was 10 years old.

Also in this "How fast can we make a Space Marine" section of story, they plan to have him ready for the scout squads obscenely quickly.

But we've had 40k examples of mass increases in numbers of Space Marines. Look at the 666th Chapter. Malcadore shunts Titan and Diemos into the warp as a backup plan and when the HH is over they return to the universe with almost full fighting strength.

The varieties of the Warp can do amazing things with time.... sometimes.

Well, even a lead time of 8 years doesn't mean you can't mass produce Marines. You just have to plan for them to start coming off the production line in 8 years. Likewise for geneseed- it takes 55 years to go from one to 1000 geneseed when raising a new Chapter, and this goes up exponentially.

The Imperium has the geneseed to make enormous numbers of Marines. It has largely been a political choice to limit Marine Chapters to ~1000 because a bunch of very independent and powerful military forces is a potential disaster to control.

chaos0xomega wrote:

In HH there simply aren't enough marines to make the numbers work in the required timeframe. It's like a 12-+4 year conflict but in that times panic the deployment sizes indicated in the books and the pace of replacements needed to cover losses exceed the available strength of the legions going into the conflict. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

When it comes to recruitment during the Heresy it's important to remember that the technology used was superior and more centralised than post-Heresy. Access to an uncorrupted source of geneseed (well mostly until later in the war) and a lack of ten thousand years of genetic drift or degradation do wonders for cranking out new Astartes. Throw in the fact that, unlike most Chapters, the Legions had far larger fiefdoms, with recruitment drives being constant rather than ritualistic.
There were no limits on how large a Legion could grow except for rates of attrition; indeed, that's why the XIIIth grew to the size it did. The skills of the Selenar Genecult and the Emperor's geneticists also meant that the Legions could pick up a thousand-odd Aspirants and have a high percentage of them pass out the other side as Astartes.
It's never explicitly said that Astartes can be made from adults (at least not those older than maybe 20ish) but the science of the time allowed the likes of Luther and Kor Phaeron to be made into Astartes Lite. As the Heresy ground on, it would have been one of the many ways that the Legions rapidly increased their sizes alongside the more common flash inductions on the Loyalist side and the experimental freaks of the Traitors.

Post-Heresy has not just the technological decline but the institution of far more rituals and checks on the Astartes. Many would only recruit from their homeworld or perhaps one other recruiting world, while others would become roving fleets with very few chances to replace losses.
The political limit on Chapter size and the constant testing of geneseed for impurity also limit the size to which a Chapter can grow. If even a third of a Chapter's stores are sent away to the Mechanicus every few years that can have a big impact on the ability to recruit.
Then we add in the rituals, rites, and observances that a lot of Chapters have that their parent Legion might have balked at as wasteful or religious and you have a strong system to prevent a Chapter from growing too large.

The trick is not to think too hard about any of the numbers in the setting. GW sure didn't, and they've shown little interest in coming up with more "realistic" numbers since.

I added the quotes because in the end this is a space fantasy setting focused on rule of cool over realism. There are parts that simply don't add up, and there will be more. This used to annoy me greatly, but I've found it more productive to focus on the parts of the setting I do like (chainsword goes vrrrrrrrrr). I'll satisfy my love for details that actually make sense with other settings that at least make an effort.

shortymcnostrill wrote:
The trick is not to think too hard about any of the numbers in the setting. GW sure didn't, and they've shown little interest in coming up with more "realistic" numbers since.

I added the quotes because in the end this is a space fantasy setting focused on rule of cool over realism. There are parts that simply don't add up, and there will be more. This used to annoy me greatly, but I've found it more productive to focus on the parts of the setting I do like (chainsword goes vrrrrrrrrr). I'll satisfy my love for details that actually make sense with other settings that at least make an effort.

This reminds me of another space fantasy franchise that was free and loose with the details (Star Wars)...
Then in The Phantom Menacethey attempted to quantify the Force with the Midichlorian debacle.

Sometimes it's best not to try to explain everything and just enjoy the ride.

Especially if your ride is a giant mech with a wolf's head.

The other issue with 40K is that if they did realistic numbers there's a good chance most people wouldn't be able to grasp them all that well. We can understand that a military organisation with only 1K Marines in it is a very small elite military force at the army level. It's much harder to conceptualise that when the number might be 10Million per chapter; which might be a much more realistic number for the size of the Imperium.

There comes a point at which most people lose the ability to envision things or change their perception of things, like numbers. Realistic numbers can be super insanely hard to conceptualise when you've such an insanely vast setting. At that point you don't need accuracy you need "It's the length of 4 football pitches" type information. Something which conveys not just raw data, but the concept of the data and what it represents to the readers.

Midichlorians are a reflection of someone’s potential with the Force, not the source of it.

Akin to measuring bacteria to judge the cleanliness of the surface. It’s not dirty because bacteria, the bacteria are there because it’s dirty and hasn’t been properly cleaned.

Back to the modern recruitment process. We again see different selection pressures on Chapters compared to Legions. Even casualty rates will be greatly different, because Marines are now rarely the backbone of a military effort.

So as well as having a firm cap on how many Brothers you’re meant to have, you need replacements on a less regular basis.

Add in geneseed degradation (pre-Cawl anyways), and allowing recruits time to heal and acclimatise to the latest round of implants may be equal parts luxury compared to the demands of expanding a Legion to However Many We Can Equip And Support, and how quickly you need said recruits.

In other threads we’ve covered that Marines are really, really difficult to kill compared to a standard human. And so whilst they no doubt suffer ongoing losses, it may be relatively few per year across the Chapter.

I can’t and won’t offer a firm number on that, due to lack of data, but let’s say 50 Brothers need replacing a year, on average. A Legion would need to replace that sort on potentially a weekly, if not daily, basis simply because they were getting stuck in more often during the Crusade, and on average, dealing with far nastier foes (humans with more advanced tech, the various species rendered extinct etc) on a longer basis than their now preferred and ideal use as shock troops that get in, make a massive mess then get out.

So it may be that ideally, a recruit should be the result of years of processing and training, and due to a lessened demand, a modern Chapter can plan around that.

Crusade? Were they expected to live and serve for decades if not centuries, or was it all rather more disposable? Purer Geneseed, fewer steps in the chain of knowledge on how to make a Marine, access to replacement technology as and when needed all make a difference when looking to speed up the process after a particularly protracted xenocide.

 Haighus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I've never encountered a source suggesting Marines take 10-20 years to create.

Index Astartes I (from 3rd edition, so very established lore) gives the first round of implants being inserted age 10-12, and the final implants at age 16-18. That gives a typical range of 4-8 years for creating a Marine. However, it explicitly points out that 16-18 is the usual range for completing the implantation process and that pressures during wartime can accelerate the process. How much it can be accelerated is an open question, but presumably to less than 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this could be reduced to a year or two even within the normal processes.

However, the concept of Inductii has been added to HH lore for Marines created through extreme accelerated processes that were generally considered to be dangerous and create an inferior Marine in various ways. This specifically accounts for the increased output during the Horus Heresy. Presumably these Inductii were typically 10-12 years old, which is pretty horrific when you think about it. The Siege of Terra consisted of a minority of decades-old veterans leading hordes of child soldiers against each other.

That's all well and good but the process starts well before they receive implants, chapters start out by recruiting candidates when they're as young as like 6l5 years old and subjecting them to years of indoctrination and training before implants even begin.

The Heresy era is more boring.

Only half of what we think of as the 40k universe is fighting, and they're all fighting in a single giant conflict.

It's dull.

We went from thousands of wars by dozens of factions to "every human in the universe is fighting in a single war for a single purpose, and no one else matters or even seems to exist"

It's so dull compared to 40k I can't even figure out why 40k fans find it interesting.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Spoiler:

 Haighus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I've never encountered a source suggesting Marines take 10-20 years to create.

Index Astartes I (from 3rd edition, so very established lore) gives the first round of implants being inserted age 10-12, and the final implants at age 16-18. That gives a typical range of 4-8 years for creating a Marine. However, it explicitly points out that 16-18 is the usual range for completing the implantation process and that pressures during wartime can accelerate the process. How much it can be accelerated is an open question, but presumably to less than 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this could be reduced to a year or two even within the normal processes.

However, the concept of Inductii has been added to HH lore for Marines created through extreme accelerated processes that were generally considered to be dangerous and create an inferior Marine in various ways. This specifically accounts for the increased output during the Horus Heresy. Presumably these Inductii were typically 10-12 years old, which is pretty horrific when you think about it. The Siege of Terra consisted of a minority of decades-old veterans leading hordes of child soldiers against each other.

That's all well and good but the process starts well before they receive implants, chapters start out by recruiting candidates when they're as young as like 6l5 years old and subjecting them to years of indoctrination and training before implants even begin.

Eh? I've not encountered that either, outside of the academies on Ultramar. A 5 year old can't prove themselves in combat. A ten year old can at least take orders and fight. Again, Index Astartes suggests that indoctrination and training occur alongside implantation, with only compatibility testing being required prior to beginning implantation.

I won't lie, i really really liked the older editions of the Horus Heresy (ie, 2nd and 3rd edition) which heavily implied that tax inequality was a key factor in the whole debacle.

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:
I won't lie, i really really liked the older editions of the Horus Heresy (ie, 2nd and 3rd edition) which heavily implied that tax inequality was a key factor in the whole debacle.

Very realistic.

"I wasn't too fussed about Khorne, but then that Emperor put the taxes up and I thought, 'Blood for the Blood God', y'know?"

 Haighus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I've never encountered a source suggesting Marines take 10-20 years to create.

Index Astartes I (from 3rd edition, so very established lore) gives the first round of implants being inserted age 10-12, and the final implants at age 16-18. That gives a typical range of 4-8 years for creating a Marine. However, it explicitly points out that 16-18 is the usual range for completing the implantation process and that pressures during wartime can accelerate the process. How much it can be accelerated is an open question, but presumably to less than 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this could be reduced to a year or two even within the normal processes.

However, the concept of Inductii has been added to HH lore for Marines created through extreme accelerated processes that were generally considered to be dangerous and create an inferior Marine in various ways. This specifically accounts for the increased output during the Horus Heresy. Presumably these Inductii were typically 10-12 years old, which is pretty horrific when you think about it. The Siege of Terra consisted of a minority of decades-old veterans leading hordes of child soldiers against each other.

WD#458 implied it took "years" to make a aspirant ready to become Astartes



The Tome Keepers were founded in 546.M32 in the wake of the War of the Beast. The war against the Orks had taken a huge toll on the Imperium’s armies, and new Space Marine Chapters were required to defend the Imperium from the galaxy’s many threats. Gene-seed was taken out of cryo-storage and new samples received from all extant Chapters. It was from the Ultramarines’ gene-stock that Chapter 281 – later to be known as the Tome Keepers – was born.

As with most newly created Chapters, officers and specialists were requisitioned from the parent Chapter. Captain Caelus Viator, formerly of the Ultramarines 2nd Company, was elevated to the rank of Chapter Master, and he oversaw the creation and training of four hundred battle-brothers over the following two decades. Their training ground would be that of Dornak IV, a barren death world in the Segmentum Solar. The new aspirants were subjected to years of harsh physical training, psycho-indoctrination, genetic alteration and painful surgical enhancements before they were ready to become warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. Several hundred passed the gruelling tests. Many thousands did not.

As Viator’s forces came to battlefield readiness, the Chapter’s assets were also assigned. Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers arrived from far Macragge, along with armoured vehicles, aircraft, Drop Pods, Dreadnought chassis and twenty venerated suits of Tactical Dreadnought armour. Accompanying these war assets were thousands of Chapter serfs – logisticians, tech-savants, ship crews, medicae personnel, fabricators, artisans, requisitioners, architects, servitors and countless others. Supplies were accumulated from planetary tithes, ammunition was allocated, litanies were recited, and machine spirits were appeased. In the year 567.M32, Chapter 281 was declared ready to serve the Emperor.

Ugh, the Tome Keepers.

Let's scrub off all this Blood Raven red and call ourselves the Tome Keepers.

"What, and everyone has there own book? By the Great Father, someone stole something from us!"-- Sergeant Trius, Blood Ravens, 5th Company

Sorry for the angry aside (anyone want to guess which marine chapter I used to play a long-time ago?).

Honestly, I like the separate feelings of the Horus Heresy and 40k.

HH is a super zoomed in story, that exists as one little slice of the expansive universe.

I like it when an author or GW picks one little spot on the map and digs deeply. The last time I really enjoyed a story was The Sabbat World Crusade.

It felt fleshed out, and more real. I love little details that go from author to author as they share the same univers, much like my three favorite shared universe authors of yesteryear (Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard, and Howard Lovecraft).

Just my opinion.

Huh, found a snippet whilst digging through the 3rd Space Marine codex. There is a timeline regarding Astartes development, and it specifically notes that the Legions got the implantation process down to a single year during the Heresy, but that this was "fundamentally flawed" (presumably these are what is now called Inductii). So there is at least one source stating a year using emergency measures. A modern Chapter might try to accelerate the process in a similar way in extremis, but probably with even worse results given the degradation in medical knowledge regarding Astartes. 11-12 year old Astartes taking to the battlefield is, indeed, a thing. Makes me wonder if the "fundamental" flaw is that 11 year olds don't make great soldiers even if you give them the body of an adult super soldier.

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
. Established fluff has long been that it takes like 10-20 years to produce a new marine, but the HH lore says the legions accelerated the process to meet the losses incurred. In order for that to work in a way that meshes with data points given in the fluff you'd be looking at marines being cranked out in weeks or months.

There's also the fact that HH lore is explicit in having adults become marines whereas in 40k that's a process that needs to start at childhood.

I've never encountered a source suggesting Marines take 10-20 years to create.

Index Astartes I (from 3rd edition, so very established lore) gives the first round of implants being inserted age 10-12, and the final implants at age 16-18. That gives a typical range of 4-8 years for creating a Marine. However, it explicitly points out that 16-18 is the usual range for completing the implantation process and that pressures during wartime can accelerate the process. How much it can be accelerated is an open question, but presumably to less than 4 years. I wouldn't be surprised if this could be reduced to a year or two even within the normal processes.

However, the concept of Inductii has been added to HH lore for Marines created through extreme accelerated processes that were generally considered to be dangerous and create an inferior Marine in various ways. This specifically accounts for the increased output during the Horus Heresy. Presumably these Inductii were typically 10-12 years old, which is pretty horrific when you think about it. The Siege of Terra consisted of a minority of decades-old veterans leading hordes of child soldiers against each other.

WD#458 implied it took "years" to make a aspirant ready to become Astartes



The Tome Keepers were founded in 546.M32 in the wake of the War of the Beast. The war against the Orks had taken a huge toll on the Imperium’s armies, and new Space Marine Chapters were required to defend the Imperium from the galaxy’s many threats. Gene-seed was taken out of cryo-storage and new samples received from all extant Chapters. It was from the Ultramarines’ gene-stock that Chapter 281 – later to be known as the Tome Keepers – was born.

As with most newly created Chapters, officers and specialists were requisitioned from the parent Chapter. Captain Caelus Viator, formerly of the Ultramarines 2nd Company, was elevated to the rank of Chapter Master, and he oversaw the creation and training of four hundred battle-brothers over the following two decades. Their training ground would be that of Dornak IV, a barren death world in the Segmentum Solar. The new aspirants were subjected to years of harsh physical training, psycho-indoctrination, genetic alteration and painful surgical enhancements before they were ready to become warriors of the Adeptus Astartes. Several hundred passed the gruelling tests. Many thousands did not.

As Viator’s forces came to battlefield readiness, the Chapter’s assets were also assigned. Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers arrived from far Macragge, along with armoured vehicles, aircraft, Drop Pods, Dreadnought chassis and twenty venerated suits of Tactical Dreadnought armour. Accompanying these war assets were thousands of Chapter serfs – logisticians, tech-savants, ship crews, medicae personnel, fabricators, artisans, requisitioners, architects, servitors and countless others. Supplies were accumulated from planetary tithes, ammunition was allocated, litanies were recited, and machine spirits were appeased. In the year 567.M32, Chapter 281 was declared ready to serve the Emperor.

Four to eight years is years, so supports Index Astartes

It took them 20 years to build an entire Chapter. Quite impressive really.

Throw in the industrial might of the Crusade-era Imperium and the fact that the a fair few Legions would scoop up a couple hundred locals as new Aspirants and the attrition rate isn't that hard to believe.

The Emperor also wasn't above cheating the system and artificially increasing a Legion homeworlds population. Fenris had hundreds of feral tribes relocated to boost the recruitment pool of the VIth Legion.