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Curious to see if you folks could enlighten me on how Marines cope with a mindwipe even if they did it willingly.
For instance how do they explain away large gaps in memory and unremembered and sometimes massive casualties?

Any info into the mindset of a wiped Marine really. Or is it just a blank slate restart mindwipe?

One thing that confuses me is how do they retain the experience they learnt? One of the big advantages an astarte has is his long combat record and training.

Daston wrote:
One thing that confuses me is how do they retain the experience they learnt? One of the big advantages an astarte has is his long combat record and training.

Exactly, was wondering that as well. I just can't make sense of it.

I think it'd be more sensible to implant false memories, rather than mindwiping. Because Marines are almost eidetic, they'd wake up from the mindwiping and go 'Where the hell have the last three days gone?!' or 'Where the hell is Geoff?'

They'd either try to find out (and if they did find out, they'd get mindwiped AGAIN, wake up and go 'Where the hell have the last three days gone?!' and do it again and again) or get ordered not to by the chapter master. That'd potentially ruin marines. If you know for certain you're not being told things - it'd lead to conspiracy theories...

Is there anything about the Sky Sentinels or the BA? (those being the chapters that we know have submitted to mindwiping from the other thread)

It's selective wiping for marines.
Otherwise you would have to completely retrain them ...
(Although it shouldn't take long to get "For the emprah!" and "die,scum" down pat ) - it's the re-shoehorning of religious dogma back into their tiny heads that will take the time. Yeah, yeah, the emperor is not a god, but why do we worship him again?)

PredaKhaine wrote:
Is there anything about the Sky Sentinels or the BA? (those being the chapters that we know have submitted to mindwiping from the other thread)

Also I think the Invaders.

chromedog wrote:It's selective wiping for marines.
Otherwise you would have to completely retrain them ...
(Although it shouldn't take long to get "For the emprah!" and "die,scum" down pat ) - it's the re-shoehorning of religious dogma back into their tiny heads that will take the time. Yeah, yeah, the emperor is not a god, but why do we worship him again?)

But how do they make sense of the lost time and missing comrades?

An image of them doing pressups for however many days is required is implanted into each marines mind, that or Keeping up with the Thorians re runs.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
An image of them doing pressups for however many days is required is implanted into each marines mind, that or Keeping up with the Thorians re runs.

I like the idea that the chapter wakes up one morning battered, bruised and absolutely knackered thinking 'Bloody hell, watching tele is hard work'

"alright Gentlemen...The bruises and wounds and lost comrades are due to your attendance at a intergalactic kegger, everyone drank heavily, and did nasty things with people that you would rather not talk about or mention...so do pushups until you feel forgiven....oh yeah and remember there is no such thing as demons and chaos, just swamp gas reflected off the armored backside of your battle bros! "

The old Inquisition War series mentioned a type of mind wiping/interrogation method that was basically going through all the layers of a persons mind like peeling an onion and reducing them to a baby(I believe "drooling infant was used"), nothing was left and they would have to be retrained completely (Inquisitor Baal Firenze). I think that they aluded to that with the original Space Marine novel and that series with Lexandro d'Arquebus escaping a mind wiping like that, for marines it wouldn't make sense to obliterate everything since they are a huge investment in resources, plus the fact that the hypno conditioning they receive is kind of a requirement to control the new organs in their bodies, you take that out and all sorts of hijinks ensue.

The Soul Drinkers series mentions Inquisitorial Storm Troopers who have been mind wiped after missions, and retrained. Nothing as to how far back it goes. Research is being done in the real world for amnesiac drugs that either prevent memory formation or erase memories completely.

Maybe they just erase the daemons from memory. So the whole experience is there but maybe that thing they shot at or powerfisted is a blur.

A warrior monk who is hypnotically indoctrinated and believes that everything asssignment is an honour, obedience to your superiors is vital and will willingly sacrifice his life to achieve mission goals if it is necessary?

"Brother, you were involved in a mission of vital importance to the chapter. Several of your battle brother were lost, their heroism will not be forgotten even if the manner of their passing must be. For the good of your soul, we have erased the last three years from your memory"

"Fair enough then. Let's kill something!"

I think the being told you have had your memory wiped would be far more damaging than never being told, especially for a marine. After all, you are a post human, a genetic descendent of the Emperor, and your mind is being wiped, and you will most like never know why? What if they have done it before? Am I really the person they say I am?

And now we have someone on the path to the renegade or possible Chaos worship, which is what the practice is supposed to prevent. Would be a great hook though.

It'd be also possible for one of the marines to learn something very effective about demon fighting and then to have it mind scrubbed away.

Then, the next time the chapter fights demons, the chapter master tells them about this tactic and the marines collectively think
'our chapter master is awesome!'

Unfortunately they won't be thinking that for very long...

 piprinx wrote:
Unfortunately they won't be thinking that for very long...

But they'll think it next time too

 piprinx wrote:
I think the being told you have had your memory wiped would be far more damaging than never being told, especially for a marine. After all, you are a post human, a genetic descendent of the Emperor, and your mind is being wiped, and you will most like never know why? What if they have done it before? Am I really the person they say I am?

And now we have someone on the path to the renegade or possible Chaos worship, which is what the practice is supposed to prevent. Would be a great hook though.

But the marines themselves AREN'T genetic descendants of the emperor. The organs do NOT change their DNA at all. In the same way a donor kidney will not change YOUR DNA.
The PRIMARCHs were, but marines are NOT their genetic descendants, either. ONLY their progenoid organs and the ADDITIONAL necessary for "marines" made by the gene-seeds (stem cells for those organs) are the descendants.

 chromedog wrote:

 piprinx wrote:
I think the being told you have had your memory wiped would be far more damaging than never being told, especially for a marine. After all, you are a post human, a genetic descendent of the Emperor, and your mind is being wiped, and you will most like never know why? What if they have done it before? Am I really the person they say I am?

And now we have someone on the path to the renegade or possible Chaos worship, which is what the practice is supposed to prevent. Would be a great hook though.

But the marines themselves AREN'T genetic descendants of the emperor. The organs do NOT change their DNA at all. In the same way a donor kidney will not change YOUR DNA.
The PRIMARCHs were, but marines are NOT their genetic descendants, either. ONLY their progenoid organs and the ADDITIONAL necessary for "marines" made by the gene-seeds (stem cells for those organs) are the descendants.

I wholly agree with that statement (Especially since it gives me ammunition against smug "The Emperors Gift" GK players) but my sentiment remains the same. They have organs which are created from gene seed, changing them drastically from baseline humanity, the gene seed comes from the primarchs, the primarchs are partial clones of the Emperor. While marines may not be able to take a blood test and be told that the Emperor is their grandfather by DNA except for the extra organs implanted into them, they would not exist in the state they do without those same organs. When you combine that with the chapter cults who might have a view of the Emperor as superhuman instead of a God, it's reasonable, I think, to assume they would consider themselves descendents of the Emperor as a created life form.

Heh.

I think a lot of people are still thinking of Space Marines too much like "normal men". We're talking about a bunch of warrior monks who are all hypno-indoctrinated upon signing up, and whose day of activities in the Fortress-Monastery features a whopping 15 minutes of spare time in-between training, training and training - and some Chapters do not even allow that much because it's deemed "luxury".

In this light, it may seem doubtful that a Space Marine would start to question his existence after being subjected to such a procedure. Instead, I would picture it like this:
Marine, waking up on a table: "Where am ... what happened?"
Apothecary: "Brother Castus, your last mission exposed your mind to corruption. Your memories had to be erased."
Marine: "... Very well."

Such is the price of war. It is an important thematic element of the setting that very, very few things in the Imperium of Man are regarded as sacred. And just like a single life, a single person's memories are also not counted amongst them.

I do not deem it unfeasible that a mind-wipe could essentially be a reset button. Basic skills can be re-learned by letting them run the flash training program again. Yes, specific expertise will be lost, but to be fair - it's not like mindwipes would happen every Tuesday at 11:00. This is a fairly uncommon thing to happen due to the rarity of the chain of events that would necessitate it, at least from how I've read it.

Lynata and Graphite have got the gist of it. It's not a TOTAL mindwipe, only the relevant time period is lost - and your average Marine wouldn't really care too much once they've been informed that, yes, their memory disappearing was deliberate.

I imagine it's something that's addressed pretty much as soon as they come out of the mindwipe process. Much more like a debriefing than a reintegration.

As Piprinx says a mind wipe reduces the recipient to an infantile state. How you then go about potty training a Marine isn't described.

More recent examples conform to the eneral min-wiping seen in various novels and films which is really more a memory wipe but hey, there you go.

Someone else mentioned above about possible corruption coming as a result and this is a theme I have used with my DIY Chapter.

My parents lived and worked in Papua New Guinea for many years so I have always had an interest in PNG and used the cannabalistic ancestor worship as part of my Chapter's background. Marines would consume a portion of a fallen battle-brother to absorb his memories.

These was then moddified to implant an entire life onto mind-wiped marines but was also used by the Chaplains who had fallen to Khorne worship to secretly and slowly corrupt the whole Chapter. This plan was thwarted eventually but several companies were lost to Chaos.

In the aftermath some Marines were wiped again to hide the truth.

If they have the ability to actually erase memories, it would also be safe to assume they could selectively erase memories. So only the details of the mission itself.

And Marines are likely told that on occasion, when dealing with the Inquisition, they will have their memories wiped.

It is implied that selective mind-wiping is something the AdMech is very capable of doing, as this is a treatment often used on the various Officio Assassinorum and Assassin Temple operatives.

They can also completely erase your mind, which is part of turning someone into a servitor (the brain is then used as both the hard drive and the CPU for the programming engrams for whatever kind of servitor the subject is going to be).

These, of course, are not the same treatments, and not used to the same ends.