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Through my reading of Ravenor, I have discovered what might just be the single most important and relevant fluff excerpts ever put to paper.

That Dan Abnett's Marines are not generally upwards of eight feet tall.

The answer lies with Arianhrod, the swordswoman from the feral world of Carthae, a member of Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn's retinue. She appears briefly in Eisenhorn, though she dies in the scene she is introduced. Perhaps more importantly is that she appears in a flashback in Ravenor.

In the flashback, Zygmunt Molotch remarks that Arianhrod is a truly statuesque woman, "almost Astartes height" (pg. 626 of the omnibus). As I read this, I scratched my chin, vaguely recalling that Arianhrod's height was stated in the first chapter of Malleus, the second Eisenhorn book.

I went digging and indeed it was, her height listed as "well over two meters". At first I was distraught, barely able to contain my sorrow at finding the statement I recalled was so vague, so unusable.

But alas, my despair was short-lived, as the very same chapter gave the length of Barbarisator, her sword: 1.5 meters. As I read this, I wept tears of joy, hopped from my computer chair in happiness, and punched out my cat.

Why, you ask?

It is simple: Arianhrod's blade is stated by Molotch to be two-thirds her own height.

From here, it was a simple calculation. Half of 1.5 is 0.75, multiply by three and you get 2.25 meters, or 7'4" for the uninitiated. So a 7'4" woman is "almost" the height of a Space Marine, who in most material hover around the seven to seven and a half foot range on average. At best, Abnett Marines are only a little more than half a foot taller than studio Marines.

But wait, some of you disrespectful naysayers might exclaim. In Eisenhorn, did not the honorable Inquisitor mention that a Space Marine's polite as feth extended pinky was "the size of an arbite's truncheon"?

Well, yes, but you have to consider that Eisenhorn is told entirely in first-person by Eisenhorn himself. It is entirely possible that he was committing himself to some narrative hyperbole. And he'd almost have to. Assuming a truncheon length of 22 inches, we are talking about Marines that are over forty feet tall. Even Abnett is not so absurd, surely?

tl;dr, Abnett Marines are 7.5'ish tall, not the gigantism-infected freaks they are commonly thought to be.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
It is entirely possible that he was committing himself to some narrative hyperbole.

The same could be said of "almost Astartes height."
I also don't seem what kind of police baton would be 22 meters long.

7'4" isn't that far off 8', 8" isn't that much of a difference at those heights. Besides it's all first person perspective and could easily be hyperbole on the Inquistor's part

22 METERS?????

What truncheons have the Arbites been using? Ones to batter down titans?

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
7'4" isn't that far off 8', 8" isn't that much of a difference at those heights. Besides it's all first person perspective and could easily be hyperbole on the Inquistor's part

It's almost a foot an a half of difference...

Don't be absurd.
SM are at least 10'

Nah, they are 12 stories tall and made of radiation.

No, they are the size of emperor titans and bleed cheese.

Graphite wrote:
22 METERS?????

Calm down, I made a typo.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
7'4" isn't that far off 8', 8" isn't that much of a difference at those heights. Besides it's all first person perspective and could easily be hyperbole on the Inquistor's part

Astartes have not been 8 feet tall. That famous chart with Jes started at 1 foot, not zero.

And the more annoying size problem in the book is the 60 meter tall Warlord titan, a number which has been repeated a few other places now by other writers.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
7'4" isn't that far off 8', 8" isn't that much of a difference at those heights. Besides it's all first person perspective and could easily be hyperbole on the Inquistor's part

It's almost a foot an a half of difference...

A foot and a half? Check your math. 8' is only 8" more than 7'4". A foot and a half is 18". From the perspective of an average height UK male, which I think we can safely assume is the standard in the 40k Universe and which is currently around 5'8", both 7'4" and 8'0" are "fething tall" and could both be classified as near Astartes height when compared to a normal man (or woman who would be closer to 5'4" on average).

 Kriswall wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
7'4" isn't that far off 8', 8" isn't that much of a difference at those heights. Besides it's all first person perspective and could easily be hyperbole on the Inquistor's part

It's almost a foot an a half of difference...

A foot and a half? Check your math. 8' is only 8" more than 7'4". A foot and a half is 18". From the perspective of an average height UK male, which I think we can safely assume is the standard in the 40k Universe and which is currently around 5'8", both 7'4" and 8'0" are "fething tall" and could both be classified as near Astartes height when compared to a normal man (or woman who would be closer to 5'4" on average).

Whoops, my bad. That's what happens when I do math quickly.

Space Marines being more than 2.5 meters tall does seem very silly to me. Being large has advantages, but being too large is horrible. At a size of 2.5 meters, it is becoming a huge disadvantage.
2-2.5 meters does sound perfectly reasonable though.

Whenever I read that, I assumed that Arianhrod was closing in on the height of a Space Marine out of his armor. It seemed the most reasonable explanation. I also assume that in armor-out of armor is playing into the differing height calculations over the years. That gives a lot of the figures some wiggle room.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Space Marines being more than 2.5 meters tall does seem very silly to me. Being large has advantages, but being too large is horrible. At a size of 2.5 meters, it is becoming a huge disadvantage.
2-2.5 meters does sound perfectly reasonable though.

There would definitely be diminishing returns the bigger they got. One of those things being simple things like the load bearing ability of man-sized structures, the ability to maneuver in stairwells, corridors, doorways, etc.

When people say "in armour" and "out of armour" I always imagine them wearing platforms to make them taller.

... not sure why

Of of the worst things that we choose to argue and debate about, really.

It is easily 'solved' when you realize that there's height variations among marines, just like there is among normal humans!

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Nah, they are 12 stories tall and made of radiation.

Washington, Washington!

Sorry, I had to

Astartes have always been and always shall be 7ft6 on average.

Only the Primarchs were suffering from extreme gigantasism. Probably because they were grown with warp science and techno-wizardry

Does anyone here know how “wide” a marine can get?

A meter to a meter and a half, proportionately. They're big dudes.

I think that this image is pretty accurate as to how big they really are. Of course, different chapters and even battle-brothers are going to be larger or smaller based on their original genes etc. For the most part I would consider this image to reflect the average in all respects. I actually imagine them a little bit smaller in terms of width, as I am sure their armor is very thick. For instance, there appears to be very minimal armor around the hands. I would imagine that the hands are a bit skinnier, allowing for more armor all around. Same with the chest. It seems that most of the armor is actually body, which I do not believe to be true. Without their armor these guys would look pretty weirdly proportioned, but it's not as extreme as the image seems to show (imo), maybe with the exception of their head. In model terms, their heads would need to be very small w/o a helmet, or have a larger helmet to make sense. In model form their bare heads are just as big as one with a helmet it seems. I am sure it's jsut for aesthetic purposes, but always something to consider.



I dunno what basketball player is 7' 6"... w/e you get the idea.

It's a pretty good picture. Even though it's pushing towards the 7'6" end of the range rather than using Jes Goodwin's 7 feet, it gives a good idea of just how massive these bodies are in terms of width. I especially like the "cross sections" with the muscles and the skeleton.

As for the armour, of course the various sources of fluff will differ greatly here depending on what you're looking at, too, but Codex Angels of Death mentioned that Marine PA armour plating being up to 1 inch thick.

I have a feeling a lot of people just assume armour needs to be massive and ultrathick because that's how various video games and artwork tend to portray stuff, yet aside from the weight factor this is actually highly impractical as it limits the mobility of your limbs. If you look at the Marine Scout miniatures, have you ever tried posing them with a sniper rifle? They can hardly bend their arms in a way that they can actually look through the scope, just because Heroscale makes their chests so absurdly huge!

It took me a lot of time to get used to the idea of "thinner armour" myself - a development that only started after my first LARP in platemail - but if you look at that Marine on the picture and think the plating on the arm and hand is too thin, you'd either have to scale down the arm and hand inside, or scale up the armour, and both would look weird imo.

Don't forget that Marines also have to wear the carapace, and the armour also includes sensors, power cables, synthetic muscles and a whole host of other systems like gyroscopic stabilizers and some hydraulic systems in addition to the external protective layer - it's a power-armoured exoskeleton.

IMO marines are much more likely to be 7'5" - 8'5" tall, and weigh in the region of 500lbs. Their bones are hardened, but the structure would have to be different too, and their muscle fibers would probably be modified at the genetic level to be much stronger and more efficient that a normal humans - it would be that in equal combination with additional mass that would provide their strength.

The carapace?

The Black carapace is IMPLANTED BELOW the dermal layer of the skin. It's not so much worn as PART of them.

Their muscle/bone links would be improved, too. No point having stronger muscles and bones if they aren't tied to the joints properly - it's part of the SM 'transformation' process.

There are whole parts of the SM creation stages that don't make sense from a biology point of view.
The ribcage is supposedly ossified into one mass of bone (an internal carapace plate) instead of the flexible cage that holds your squishy bits together. The flex is needed to allow the lungs to inflate/deflate properly.

Now, if instead of an solid mass of bone (they got it wrong. It's the SKULL that's a solid mass of bone - you don't need a lot of brains to repeat "For the emprah!" and "kil kil kil" ) - in the chest, the ribs form overlapping plates that overlay each other, it would preserve the flexibility whilst still affording better protection to the squishy bits.

It's still another layer that isn't muscle that's required to use the exoskeleton. That's it's only function so in essence, it is part of the power armour just as much as it is part of the marine. It's still an artificial layer of synthetic material, not part of the marine's flesh.

Anyway, the fused rib cage can make sense, if one doesn't think purely from the perspective of current human biology - from what we can see the power armour chest piece cannot expand and contract, so from a flexibility point of view, an expanding rib cage wouldn't be required as the power armour will be the limiting factor regarding the range of movement a marine has, so that's not needed, boom gone (waste not, improve everything :p) As for being able to breathe, it's the diaphragm and surrounding muscles that enable you to breathe, the rib cage is merely an evolutionary compromise to allow humans to have expanding and contracting torso with some protection. IRL other organisms have hard shells and lungs that expand and contract without issue.

Also I'm not just talking about "improvements" to the skeletal structure - it would have to be a different structure to cope with the extra height and the larger mass of a marine.

I'm a little bit sad about finding out that space marines aren't that tall. But I guess that different chapters have different growth scales (ex. black dragons). In some books they're just to tall. I fricken hate you black library, why do you have to confuse me!!!

 Lynata wrote:
It's a pretty good picture. Even though it's pushing towards the 7'6" end of the range rather than using Jes Goodwin's 7 feet,

Jes Goodwin's Marine isn't standing straight up.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Jes Goodwin's Marine isn't standing straight up.

This is true.