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“To all intents and purposes, and by every measurement known to the gene-scientists and gerontologists, the Astartes, like the primarchs, were immortals. Age would not wither them, nor bring them down. They would live forever… five thousand years, ten thousand, beyond even that into some unimaginable millennium.”
- quote taken from Horus Rising by Dan Abnett

So, we’ve established that astartes are effectively immortal (so long as they don’t get killed) and could theoretically live forever. I have a couple of quick questions regarding this:

1. What would a 10,000 year old astartes look like (i.e. would he look really bloody old)?
2. How would this incredible age affect an astartes? Would he be considerably slower or weaker? What about his mental health?
3. Are there any examples (outside of a dreadnought’s sarcophagus) in 40k literature of extremely ancient astartes?

Any help, advice or pointers to existing canon would be most useful!

Cheers Dakka!

Look at Abaddon, Typhus, Kharn and any of the Traitor Legionnaires who have survived this time. There are plenty of 10000+ year old veterans in 40K.

In fairness Abaddon, Typhus, Kharn, etc and any Veteran of the Long War will have spent periods in the warp and thus time may have passed differently for them.

I believe in the Night Lords trilogy by Aaron Dempski Bowden, the main character Talos who fought during the Heresy has only subjectively aged ~100 years since the Battle of the Imperial Palace.

There are some notable exceptions, the main one being the Alpha Legion who made a point of not setting up in either the Eye or the Maelstrom but any information on them is...suspect.

Also of course there could be marines who spent time in the warp and experienced far more than 10,000 years, the Warp being what it is. But I don't believe we've ever seen one who has specifically been around for 10,000+ years in real space.

Bjorn the fell handed is still cutting about and he was from the 30k era. Obviously being dreadnought clad takes a few years off you and adds 10lbs but he's still in pretty good condition

In one of the first five horus heresy novels there was an astartes that they called half heard or something like that. I am not sure how old they said he was but he was made out to be aged.

Immortal in theory maybe, in practice they do suffer wear and tear that will eventually make them unfit for service or even dead of age. The oldest active Ultramarine is Chaplain Cassius at barely 400, and he looks like a cranky 80 year old man who could fall over dead at any moment.

Not to mention death in combat which claims most of them within their first couple centuries.

 Voodoo_Chile wrote:
In fairness Abaddon, Typhus, Kharn, etc and any Veteran of the Long War will have spent periods in the warp and thus time may have passed differently for them.

I believe in the Night Lords trilogy by Aaron Dempski Bowden, the main character Talos who fought during the Heresy has only subjectively aged ~100 years since the Battle of the Imperial Palace.

There are some notable exceptions, the main one being the Alpha Legion who made a point of not setting up in either the Eye or the Maelstrom but any information on them is...suspect.

Also of course there could be marines who spent time in the warp and experienced far more than 10,000 years, the Warp being what it is. But I don't believe we've ever seen one who has specifically been around for 10,000+ years in real space.

Time flows strangely in the warp, of course. It is described as speeding up or slowing down seemingly at random. There are so many mentions of 10000 years ('Ten Millenia of Hatred' from the Black Legion supplement, for example) that it seems to average out at 10000, or something. Dunno.

Cheers guys. I am specifically interested in non-Chaos space marines, and any astartes who hasn't spent a distorted/inordinate amount of time in the empyrean. And I'm not interested in dreadnoughts (thanks anyway badgermeister - and I thought being interred within a dreadnought added more like 10,000 lbs)!

If there are no examples of regular astartes reaching their 10th millennium in real space (I can't think of any myself), then what are the oldest space marines we know of serving the Emperor? Are there any who are maybe just a couple of millennia old? Can they still fight?

I know Long Fangs are pretty dang old, and the minis certainly look like they're pushing pensioner age...

Barabas Dantioch is a Loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith who was assigned command of a garrison after being aged several thousand years (I think - don't have the book to hand) by a Hurd weapon. He's showing signs of old age at that point but still kills a titan.

 chilledmonkeybrains wrote:
Cheers guys. I am specifically interested in non-Chaos space marines, and any astartes who hasn't spent a distorted/inordinate amount of time in the empyrean. And I'm not interested in dreadnoughts (thanks anyway badgermeister - and I thought being interred within a dreadnought added more like 10,000 lbs)!

If there are no examples of regular astartes reaching their 10th millennium in real space (I can't think of any myself), then what are the oldest space marines we know of serving the Emperor? Are there any who are maybe just a couple of millennia old? Can they still fight?

I know Long Fangs are pretty dang old, and the minis certainly look like they're pushing pensioner age...

Dante and the BA are one of the longest lived chapters - Dante has been cm for 1100 years - so he's actually even older than that.

There was a salamander in a short story (can't remember which) who was insanely old - he'd been trapped somewhere for millenia and could only accept the emp's peace. I think it was a nick kyme short story, but I could be mis-remembering.

Christopher300 wrote:In one of the first five horus heresy novels there was an astartes that they called half heard or something like that. I am not sure how old they said he was but he was made out to be aged.

Yeah, I remember him - Iacton Cruze the Half-Heard. Not sure how old he would have been, although certainly no more than a couple of centuries I wouold have thought, due to the time between the creation of the astartes and the book(s) in question.

Spetulhu wrote:Immortal in theory maybe, in practice they do suffer wear and tear that will eventually make them unfit for service or even dead of age. The oldest active Ultramarine is Chaplain Cassius at barely 400, and he looks like a cranky 80 year old man who could fall over dead at any moment.

Not to mention death in combat which claims most of them within their first couple centuries.

400 years old, eh? That's disappointing. I was hoping to find a marine who's at least a thousand (and doesn't look like a cranky 80 year old man who could fall over dead at any moment!

I think I ninja'd you

Ninja'd

Did I just ninja with another ninja?

 PredaKhaine wrote:

 chilledmonkeybrains wrote:
Cheers guys. I am specifically interested in non-Chaos space marines, and any astartes who hasn't spent a distorted/inordinate amount of time in the empyrean. And I'm not interested in dreadnoughts (thanks anyway badgermeister - and I thought being interred within a dreadnought added more like 10,000 lbs)!

If there are no examples of regular astartes reaching their 10th millennium in real space (I can't think of any myself), then what are the oldest space marines we know of serving the Emperor? Are there any who are maybe just a couple of millennia old? Can they still fight?

I know Long Fangs are pretty dang old, and the minis certainly look like they're pushing pensioner age...

Dante and the BA are one of the longest lived chapters - Dante has been cm for 1100 years - so he's actually even older than that.

There was a salamander in a short story (can't remember which) who was insanely old - he'd been trapped somewhere for millenia and could only accept the emp's peace. I think it was a nick kyme short story, but I could be mis-remembering.

That was in "Firedrake" the Salamanders book series, he had been just sitting there for milenia, and had atophied to near-death, preserving himself and the armor he was guarding by sleeping.
I'm of the opinion that we'll never find out for real how long an active marine can live for, since battle kinda keeps that from being discovered.

 PredaKhaine wrote:
Did I just ninja with another ninja?

Multi-Ninja

 iGuy91 wrote:

 PredaKhaine wrote:

 chilledmonkeybrains wrote:
Cheers guys. I am specifically interested in non-Chaos space marines, and any astartes who hasn't spent a distorted/inordinate amount of time in the empyrean. And I'm not interested in dreadnoughts (thanks anyway badgermeister - and I thought being interred within a dreadnought added more like 10,000 lbs)!

If there are no examples of regular astartes reaching their 10th millennium in real space (I can't think of any myself), then what are the oldest space marines we know of serving the Emperor? Are there any who are maybe just a couple of millennia old? Can they still fight?

I know Long Fangs are pretty dang old, and the minis certainly look like they're pushing pensioner age...

Dante and the BA are one of the longest lived chapters - Dante has been cm for 1100 years - so he's actually even older than that.

There was a salamander in a short story (can't remember which) who was insanely old - he'd been trapped somewhere for millenia and could only accept the emp's peace. I think it was a nick kyme short story, but I could be mis-remembering.

That was in "Firedrake" the Salamanders book series, he had been just sitting there for milenia, and had atophied to near-death, preserving himself and the armor he was guarding by sleeping.
I'm of the opinion that we'll never find out for real how long an active marine can live for, since battle kinda keeps that from being discovered.

Cheers - that was going to bug me

PML - ninja'd

Well the oldest marine I'm aware of is Chapter Master Dante. He's apparently been CM for 1000+ years so he's probably at least 1100 years old and still going strong.
This is complete un founded speculation but if you can survive to be 10 times the age of an unmodified, unrejev'd human then I don't see why whatever biological function is keeping you hale and hearty can't keep it up indefinitely. But only the Emperor knows the limits of the Space Marines.

If I had to guess (Again completely pulling this out of my ass) what non-Chaos, non-Dreadnought Space Marine characters that might have survived to the 40th Millennium from the Heresy, I'd have to say the odds are with someone like Loken, Garro or Qurze. The Knights Errant (Possible founders of the Inquisition and/or Grey Knights). Particularly if they were on Titan when Malcador pulled it out of realspace and were training the Grey Knight Initiates during the Heresy.
Afterwards if they didn't get involved in the Scouring then they may have remained on tTitan to train the successive generations of Grey Knight members.
Again this is just me making stuff up as there is no evidence of this and odds are the Knights Errant will die gloriously getting their revenge but I like the notion of Loyal former members of Traitor legions training the Grey Knights.

The oldest is probably the grey knight from the new book Pandorax.

Yep, new record for oldest marine.

Niexist wrote:
The oldest is probably the grey knight from the new book Pandorax.

This. Epimetheus was chilling in the Emerald Vault for the past 10000 years or so, although is was in his induced stasis it.

Luthor was just an enhanced human not full astares. He been out of the warp imprisoned since the herasy. Granted some fluff mentions stasis inprisonment.

Ulrik the slayer is probably around 1k years old. He's overseen a few space wolves chapter masters into the chapter. One old fluff made a reference he knew Bjorn pre dreadnought but it was pretty vague.

There are a few but lack the fluff details on them.

Lysander has some years but was lost in the warp for some time


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Custodians the emperors gaurd are 10k years mind you.

I imagined 1.5k old Dante to look like VC Vlad out of his armour.

High marshal Ludoldus was head of the black Templars for over 2000 years topping Dante's service record

Let us not also forget Cypher, who has been around since the Horus Heresy

He is still mentally astute enough to cause undue Chaos in populations where he shows and have the Imperium fix the systems into model examples of how the Imperium SHOULD be after he leaves (depending on which side you think Cypher is on, either one takes the ability to delve into the psyche of the population).

His physical abilities of accuracy with his pistols is legendary as the best ever recorded...he has NEVER been seen to miss with his weapons.

I'd say he aged pretty well, and is the best (at least in my opinion) example of a Space Marine at 10,000 years old still kicking arse in the name of his God(s).

Cypher is a moriat... Imagine if he gets those rules in 40k

 chilledmonkeybrains wrote:

“To all intents and purposes, and by every measurement known to the gene-scientists and gerontologists, the Astartes, like the primarchs, were immortals. Age would not wither them, nor bring them down. They would live forever… five thousand years, ten thousand, beyond even that into some unimaginable millennium.”
- quote taken from Horus Rising by Dan Abnett

So, we’ve established that astartes are effectively immortal (so long as they don’t get killed) and could theoretically live forever. I have a couple of quick questions regarding this:

1. What would a 10,000 year old astartes look like (i.e. would he look really bloody old)?
2. How would this incredible age affect an astartes? Would he be considerably slower or weaker? What about his mental health?
3. Are there any examples (outside of a dreadnought’s sarcophagus) in 40k literature of extremely ancient astartes?

Any help, advice or pointers to existing canon would be most useful!

Cheers Dakka!

An important thing to remember is that the novels aren't canon. They contradict the codexes, they contradict each other, and they even contradict themselves on occasion. So the "immortal astartes" quote should be taken as either authorial embellishment, exaggeration, or bullgak.

The only Marine who has been confirmed to have survived since the Heresy is Bjorn the Fell Handed, and he spent most of that time in a dreadnaught sarcophagus. The BA codex in past editions made mention of the fact that BAs are longer-lived than other astartes. Since you can't be "longer-lived" than someone who is immortal, logic therefore dictates that other astartes are NOT immortal. And since "longer-lived" does not mean immortal, only that one has a longer (but still finite) life span, logic dictates that BAs are NOT immortal, either. So if the longest-lived astartes are not immortal, then none of them are immortal.

They do have longer lifespans than ordinary humans, but exactly how long they live is hard to pin down, since they keep dying of bolter wounds instead of old age. As mentioned earlier, Chaplain Cassius of the UM is 400 and looks every year of it. Dante has been going strong for more than 1000 years, and looks middle-aged at most (because BAs are vampires ). Space Wolves seem to have longer lifespans than regular astartes, though probably still shorter than BAs. The implication is that certain types of geneseed are more or less likely to produce longer lifespans in their respective astartes. BA geneseed provides much longer lifespan, so BA successor chapters tend to live a long time, too (unless the Black Rage sets in first). Ultramarines seem to have a fairly short lifespan, for an astartes (only 400 years before you turn into a grumpy old man?) so maybe their geneseed isn't so super-perfect-wonderful after all, Matt Ward... >.>

We don't know much about the other geneseed lines (Salamanders, Imperial Fists, White Scars, etc) to guess at how long they tend to live, but again, it's going to be less than a BA. Exactly how much less is still open to interpretation, though.

As for whether or not a really old astartes would be affected by old age... Cassius is still kicking @$$ for the Emperor, so it probably doesn't slow a marine down too much. Or maybe he hasn't hit the point where his body simply can not go on...? It's hard to say. Logic would imply that, since they can show physical signs of aging, the physical deterioration of abilities would be present, as well. Meaning that as an astartes gets older, he gets slower and weaker, just like a regular human. It just takes a lot longer before it starts to impact his abilities on the battlefield. Although, once the deterioration starts to set in, the changes of dying in battle (or winding up in a dreadnaught) steadily increase.

As for mental deterioration... it was mentioned in one of the codexes a while back that dreadnaughts do suffer some mental deterioration. They spend most of their time asleep, and are only active for battles. The longer they spend asleep, the harder it is to get them mentally focused on their task (but once they are able to focus, they seem to operate pretty well). It may be that all that time asleep causes parts of their brain to suffer, or it may be that old age is doing it. It isn't clear on the exact cause, all it shows is that the older a dreadnaught, the worse off its mental faculties become.

I thought it was the other way with dreadnoughts, that being awake caused them to go crazy due to the constant link with the machine spirit.

I also read somewhere that there are iron hands that are no more than a brain and bionics, Id imagine those marines could live pretty long

Bjorn is still sane, so mentally they should be completely fine. age wise... well....

Actually, he's not. He's senile as hell, and often thinks he's in, like, M34 or something. It takes the Rune Priests longer and longer to wake him each time they do so, and he will often refer to them, or to the other command-staff of the Chapter, as long-dead members of the Chapter who once held those jobs.