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Did every single space marine in the legion have psychic powers?

I think they were.With my vague memory of A Thousand Sons,they were grouped according to psychic specialization ( ie shooting / telling the future and what have you ).

Small disclaimer as this may be completely off the mark.

I think that originally only some of them were, but the latest fluff has had them all as psykers from what I remember of A Thousand Sons.

I'm actually currently reading "A Thousand Sons". It would seem that they all possess some sort of psychic ability.

I just finished A Thousand Sons. And yes, they do all possess psychic powers

No, they didn't. Number of psykers was indeed great amongst them compared to other legions. But, Ahriman's ritual wouldn't be so controversial if greater part of legion wouldn't have been psykers. Also, psykers are damn rare even in w40k universe, so how do you imagine legion would find enough recruits for themselves if all of them must be psykers?

They seem to operate like Grey Knights.

Everyone has psychic powers, but the rank and file seem to be fairly moderate personally in comparison to Captains like Ahriman or Phosis T'kar, but the entire army operates as essentially a Hive Mind, they are all mentally linked and are able to achieve more devastating effects in a group than alone, with Magnus being the center of this psychic web, connecting them all.

 Ernestas wrote:
No, they didn't. Number of psykers was indeed great amongst them compared to other legions. But, Ahriman's ritual wouldn't be so controversial if greater part of legion wouldn't have been psykers. Also, psykers are damn rare even in w40k universe, so how do you imagine legion would find enough recruits for themselves if all of them must be psykers?

The rubric destroyed all of the marines with weak psychic powers.

Not originally I don't think, but as others have said they seem to have changed that in the HH novel series.
Ahriman's entry in 3.5 said; "Those Thousand Sons with sorcerous powers survived it with their powers augmented, those without sorcerous powers were reduced to dust"

It used to be that they all didn't, and those TS' became Rubric Marines. These days it's all screwed up though.

Not all did, A majority did however. When I say majority I mean like a major high percentage did.

Animus wrote:
Not originally I don't think, but as others have said they seem to have changed that in the HH novel series.
Ahriman's entry in 3.5 said; "Those Thousand Sons with sorcerous powers survived it with their powers augmented, those without sorcerous powers were reduced to dust"

Perhaps the apparent disconnect in the fluff can be rationalised using a distinction between psychic ability and sorcery. So, maybe they were all psychic, but in the majority this was weak (e.g. weak telepathy or something), and only a few had the training/power to extend it to sorcery. Then the Rubric could have 'dusted' only the former set.

It seems like they had a lot of psykers but also non-psykers that achieved their power through sorcery.

Its correct to say a majority of the 1k sons marines had psychic abilities, fast forward to the rubric of ahriman being set off to save the 1k sons from a rampant mutation problem, and whoever had decent psychic abilities had their abilities boosted but the marines who either didnt have psychic powers or who's psychic powers were not strong enough, turned to dust in their own armor for eternity.

No, not all had psychic powers, however they did try and recruit as many psykers as they could, no matter what their level of ability. However to survive the ruberic you had to be at least a mid-level psyker.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
They seem to operate like Grey Knights.

Everyone has psychic powers, but the rank and file seem to be fairly moderate personally in comparison to Captains like Ahriman or Phosis T'kar, but the entire army operates as essentially a Hive Mind, they are all mentally linked and are able to achieve more devastating effects in a group than alone, with Magnus being the center of this psychic web, connecting them all.

This is how I imagine them working,i need to go back and give A Thousand Sons another read.

Ernestas wrote: Also, psykers are damn rare even in w40k universe, so how do you imagine legion would find enough recruits for themselves if all of them must be psykers?

Many recruits who show no psychic promise end up developing these powers sometime after they become full-fledged Space Marines. It's a pretty safe assumption that geneseed can jump-start the evolutionary leap that makes one a psyker. When the geneseed in question is coming from friggin' Magnus the Red, the chance of that happening increases a hundred-fold.

Magos Explorator wrote:
Perhaps the apparent disconnect in the fluff can be rationalised using a distinction between psychic ability and sorcery. So, maybe they were all psychic, but in the majority this was weak (e.g. weak telepathy or something), and only a few had the training/power to extend it to sorcery. Then the Rubric could have 'dusted' only the former set.

PrinceRaven wrote:It seems like they had a lot of psykers but also non-psykers that achieved their power through sorcery.

This doesn't work either, since the only Thousand Sons who were trusted to practice "sorcery" (and really, up until Magnus' trip to Terra, their only "sorcery" was making a Warp familiar to boost their powers), were the highest ranking members who had progressed the furthest among the Enumerations. The typical line grunt who only had an inkling of psychic power didn't even know about the familiars, much less practice "sorcery". These weaker minds were destroyed by the Rubric, whereas the most talented became even more so.

I think the Grey Knights analogy works the best, considering Thousand Sons used psychic powers to facilitate everything from intelligence gathering, to logistics, to field communication. Maybe the Fourth Fellowship didn't become Blood Ravens, but rather the first Grey Knights? Probably not, but fun to think about.

As for the new fluff not matching up with the old, when are people going to accept that the HH telling of events is very different from the Index Astartes? In the Index Astartes, Magnus was literally a cyclops, told the Emperor about Horus' betrayal, the Emperor didn't believe him and actively ordered him destroyed/was talked into it by Russ, the Space Wolves actually sacked Prospero on their own without help from Custodes and Sisters of Silence, and Russ didn't need a hand from Tzeench to defeat Magnus.

I don't think so.

Only their Sorcerors had psychic powers. The rest did not.

the Thousand Sons only had a higher occurrence of psykers among their recruits, as well as a general obsession with the occult.

I appear to be missing the latest in Black Library fluff knowledge...but even if this outright states all Thousand Sons were psychic, it's taking a hell of a liberty. If you look at Codex Chaos, for the last few editions the Rubric of Ahriman has the answer in its description of the cut-off point. The Sons turned to dust and shut in their armour were those who had "little or no" psychic ability.

Couple this up with the rough estimate of having about one Sorcerer to every 10 Thousand Sons on the tabletop, and you have a greater picture of a Legion with a great many more psykers than other Legions, but still hardly even a majority (as an example, an increase of 1,000 psykers is still only 1% of a Legion of 100,000).

You can't base the estimate on 40K squads of Sorcerer + Rubrics, since many talented sorcerers were destroyed by the rubric as well.

They may not have all been psychic (I am having trouble finding the particular quote), but their performances on Shrike and Prospero (and wherever that Titan thing was when they made Wyrdmake crap themselves) shows that they had far far more than 1% rate of psychic gifts. I would say at least half were capable psykers.

Well considering that the Rubric greatly enhanced their abilities to the point that they became lvl 1 psykers with the worst psychic powers in the game they have must have started as some of the weakest psykers in galaxy.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
Well considering that the Rubric greatly enhanced their abilities to the point that they became lvl 1 psykers with the worst psychic powers in the game they have must have started as some of the weakest psykers in galaxy.

SInce when SCM crunch even remotely follows fluff?

It really all depends on which source you're looking at. If you go by GW's studio fluff, the Thousand Sons "merely" had a very high amount of Astartes with some measure of psychic power as a consequence of their Primarch's geneseed. If you go by BL's Horus Heresy novels, it may well be they were all psykers. Contradictions between sources are not a new phenomenon, and the writers themselves have previously commented about how it would be a mistake to assume that any single account would be the "truth".

WD #267 Index Astartes : The Thousand Sons

That's old and probably isn't cannon any more.

That might be a possibility if this franchise would have a canon.

It is entirely intentional that the various sources conflict.

BaconUprising wrote:
That's old and probably isn't cannon any more.

What are you talking about? Click that link, dude's got a cannon pointed right the feth at you.

More on point, though, it's as canon as anything else in the setting, because that's how the setting works. What a BL novel states, suggests or implies does not invalidate a previous telling of an event, it simply provides you with a different perspective and opinion on it. You're free to take whichever view you want, or even make up your own (though, in the latter case, it's a lot harder to discuss the various topics).

Nope your right. Guess we will have to wait till the HH prospero book to get a definitive answer...

But the whole point is that there never will be a "definitive" answer. Not unless GW changes its approach to the background, anyways, which from how the writers sound like seems rather unlikely.

Ugh, why does every conversation devolve into a discussion of what GW considers canon or not? Seriously, Dakka needs to just put in big bold letters at the top of the background forum section that there is no canon. Sure, Lynata would have absolutely nothing to post anymore, but that's a small price to pay for my sanity.

I'd second that notion.

I would certainly have less to post, but it's not like I would have nothing to say about other topics - or throw various links to obscure sources around like I did above with the Index Astartes article.

Whilst I understand that my remarks on the subject of "canon" may be annoying, I feel it is an important detail that needs to be raised in any thread where a question revolves around conflicting sources. I mean, how can you dodge an elephant as large as that once it's in the room?