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http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/wnt/blog.jsp?pid=13700002

Games Workshop wrote:It’s a rare, almost unheard-of occurrence, but there have been times in Imperial history when a Space Marine Chapter has turned renegade. Censored, erased from all records and declared Excommunicate Traitoris, they are sentenced to death by any Imperial forces that come into contact with them. Such was the tragic fate of Chapter Master Sevastus Kranon and the Crimson Sabres, later to be known as the Crimson Slaughter.

Emphasis mine.

Almost unheard of in Imperial history?

Seems like a larger percentage of the Chaos Marines are Legionnaires than we thought.

At least it's a massive poke in the eye for those who propagate the idea that they'd turn at a whim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oops, wrong forum. Requesting move.

Wasn't there almost an entire founding of that was sent by on crusade into the eye of terror and all but three chapters turned renegade?

Nearly a quarter of Space Marine Chapters ever founded have turned, including fully half of the First Founding Legions.

I'd chalk that up to GW's studio overinflating the purity...

... and, also, because most Imperial citizens can not name more than a handful of Chapters, as the homeworlds of those that go bad are generally wiped out. So the occurrence *is* almost unheard of... because those that do hear about it get killed, and it's not like there's a galactic news or data network to share this information on.

There are a few dozen named Renegade Chapters at least aren't there, which would work out at, roughly, 2-5% of all Chapters having gone renegade so, in those terms it is quite rare.

If what GW are saying now is that it is almost unheard of then all the material produced so far about Renegades seems to point to a different conclusion. That doesn't even cover individual Marines turning renegade from even such vaunted Chapters as the Ultramarines.

Being aware of Chaos, or Chaos space marines is a crime punishable by death.

The Lexicanum article lists 134 entries for Chaos Space Marines, including the original Traitor Legions, and that's not even getting into those Chapters, like the Souldrinkers, who are just renegades...

... seems it's a lot more common than GW thinks. 135 entries is more than 10% of all Chapters currently in existence.

Mind you, many of the traitor chapters probably endure while the Imperium fills their vacant spot.

1000 loyal chapters - 1 traitor = 999 loyal & 1 traitor

But then presumably the Imperium fills the spot.

1000 loyal chapters & 1 traitor.

Meaning that 135 entries =/= 13.5% of all Space Marines.

Especially since the 1000 chapter thing does not count traitors at all.

Right, which means that the count of Traitor Space Marine groups is currently equal to 13.5% of all Space Marine Chapters currently existing.

That's still a fething fairly frequent event. If 13.5% of the current total population of Earth suddenly dropped dead, people would freak the hell out, even if we'd have replaced them in just a few years with new people being born.

135/1135x100 = 11.89% of all space marine chapters to 2d.p. Not too far from 13.5% tbf...

Reading this, one might view it as GW "bigging up" the Marines. Like they do with any faction when said faction is in the spotlight.

I'm certainly not of the opinion that they turn particularly frequently, but I do think it happens more often than that quote would imply if taken literally.

I imagine it'd look more like GW wants if they named the other 480 or so Ultramarine derivatives and 190 or so Dark Angel derivatives that are supposedly out in the galaxy somewhere.

Isn't that about right? 50% are Smurf wannabes and 20% DA "successor chapters"? Is there a breakdown of where the other 30% comes from? Would that count, say, the Carcharadons, who are probably the remains of a loyalist Nightlord company?

IIRC, 60% of all "modern" SM Chapters are UM successors. The SW have none. If the DA are another 20%, that leaves 20% being from other sources, including the mystery-meat Chapters like the Blood Ravens.

There's supposedly 1000 SM Chapters in existence at any one point in time. There isn't an event where there were 1135 and 135 dropped away. There were 1000, and 135 went over to the other team, and then they replaced that 135 with a new 135 with new names and paint...

Even at ~12%, that's still fairly common.

 Psienesis wrote:
Right, which means that the count of Traitor Space Marine groups is currently equal to 13.5% of all Space Marine Chapters currently existing.

That's still a fething fairly frequent event. If 13.5% of the current total population of Earth suddenly dropped dead, people would freak the hell out, even if we'd have replaced them in just a few years with new people being born.

I'm pretty sure 1000%+ of the earth's population dropped dead over the course of 2000 years of humanity's history. With the Imperium, 135 chapters turning over the course of 10,000 years might not be that many depending on how often new chapters are founded. Unless I'm making an overlooked logical misstep here (I'm sleepy and am about to head off for a nap)

...that said, it's 135 warbands, not chapters, right? Not all of them are cases of entire chapters going renegade, I think. Hell, pretty sure at least one fourth of those are warbands that broke off from the original traitor legions, if not more (it was only recently with the Abyssal Crusade in 6th Edition that GW started emphasizing or ret-conning various renegade warbands to have come from places other than the original traitor legions)

Well, there's not that many Foundings of Space Marines. It's happened less than 30 times in 10,000 years. That's, like, rare-comet appearance rare.

According to the list on Lexicanum, most of those Traitor Space Marines are from unknown origins, so it's impossible to say where they originate from, at least without digging into the individual articles on each entry, which will take a whole lotta time I don't have.

 Troike wrote:
Reading this, one might view it as GW "bigging up" the Marines. Like they do with any faction when said faction is in the spotlight.

EVERY ARMY SUCKS EXCEPT THIS ONE AND IF IT WEREN'T FOR EVERY OTHER FORCE TRYING TO KILL IT THEY WOULD ALL BE CRUSHED!

The Badab war must be nearly unheard of, then.

The Badab War is not a common occurance.

@Psienesis, I think a good number of Chapters are created independently from foundings. That part I am unsure of, however.

 Psienesis wrote:
The Lexicanum article lists 134 entries for Chaos Space Marines, including the original Traitor Legions, and that's not even getting into those Chapters, like the Souldrinkers, who are just renegades...

... seems it's a lot more common than GW thinks. 135 entries is more than 10% of all Chapters currently in existence.

Except there's a thousand Chapters on average in existence at any one time, and traitor warbands don't have a habit of disappearing. For all we know, each century a chapter might fall to Chaos as more Chapters are created and more are destroyed in the line of duty. Their rate of falling to Chaos is fairly low, just that it ends up stacking pretty damn high.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The Lexicanum article lists 134 entries for Chaos Space Marines, including the original Traitor Legions, and that's not even getting into those Chapters, like the Souldrinkers, who are just renegades...

... seems it's a lot more common than GW thinks. 135 entries is more than 10% of all Chapters currently in existence.

Except there's a thousand Chapters on average in existence at any one time, and traitor warbands don't have a habit of disappearing. For all we know, each century a chapter might fall to Chaos as more Chapters are created and more are destroyed in the line of duty. Their rate of falling to Chaos is fairly low, just that it ends up stacking pretty damn high.

But you also have to consider the rate at which Chaos warbands are lost to the warp/battle/mutation/demons/other warbands...

 BrotherOfBone wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The Lexicanum article lists 134 entries for Chaos Space Marines, including the original Traitor Legions, and that's not even getting into those Chapters, like the Souldrinkers, who are just renegades...

... seems it's a lot more common than GW thinks. 135 entries is more than 10% of all Chapters currently in existence.

Except there's a thousand Chapters on average in existence at any one time, and traitor warbands don't have a habit of disappearing. For all we know, each century a chapter might fall to Chaos as more Chapters are created and more are destroyed in the line of duty. Their rate of falling to Chaos is fairly low, just that it ends up stacking pretty damn high.

But you also have to consider the rate at which Chaos warbands are lost to the warp/battle/mutation/demons/other warbands...

Not really that often actually. It's more common for them to stick around for an incredibly long time, or be rolled into one of the welcoming legions like the Black Legion.
(Or other warbands like the Red Corsairs.)

It’s a rare, almost unheard-of occurrence, but there have been times in Imperial history when a Space Marine Chapter has turned renegade. Censored, erased from all records and declared Excommunicate Traitoris

one might wonder if there is a relation

Exactly, if a squad or company of Space Marines goes rogue who's to say they don't just fold themselves into an existing warband?

It seems to me that it's just Chapters that are declared "Excommunicate Traitoris", I'd imagine individuals are just stricken from Imperial records.

Games Workshop wrote:It’s a rare, almost unheard-of occurrence, but there have been times in Imperial history when a Space Marine Chapter has turned renegade.

This sounds like an in-universe statement. Generally, it is almost unheard of that a Marine chapter falls, because all records are destroyed and anyone who knows about it is killed. Of course we know about it, because we have the advantage of an outside vantage point. I find that GW differs from other companies fluff writers in this regard, often presenting things from the view of certain in-universe sources instead of from an impartial omniscient observer. This often leads to confusion, but allows them to offer multiple conflicting views of the same universe.

Yep, it's pretty hard for Marines to go rogue. Generally, not counting individual people, large swaths of marines turn to chaos probably only once every few hundred years. The vast bulk of Chaos marines are legionaries.

It is Propaganda to ease the minds of the populous

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

Games Workshop wrote:It’s a rare, almost unheard-of occurrence, but there have been times in Imperial history when a Space Marine Chapter has turned renegade. Censored, erased from all records and declared Excommunicate Traitoris, they are sentenced to death by any Imperial forces that come into contact with them. Such was the tragic fate of Chapter Master Sevastus Kranon and the Crimson Sabres, later to be known as the Crimson Slaughter.

Emphasis mine.

Re-emphasized.

Its rare for an entire chapter to turn traitor, but individual marines or small groups would be more common.

The last survivor(s) of an ill-fated mission who become disillusioned with their chapter and turn their back on their oaths, a marine who feels as though his self-less mission is unfair and decides to strike out and gain power for himself, a grudge with some other Imperial organization or individual turns into a blood-feud that eventually leads to an otherwise loyal individual becoming a renegade, etc...

Honestly, I don't think we have the hard numbers to determine if SM Fall more or less frequently than they 'should'.

If they did fall more frequently than would be expected, I'd say it's not because they are in some way more susceptible to chaos corruption (though I do find that idea interesting), I'd say it would be because they are a bigger target. Chaos will be trying a lot harder to corrupt SMs than regular imperials, because each SM that Falls, is a little victory. Not just "one more Super Solider for our army, one less for our Enemy" but it is also a psychological / ideological victory. "Even your greatest champions can fall to our dark temptations! What hope do you have?". That sort of thing.

I think its referencing entire chapters that fall, not like squads or companies etc.

That happens a lot more often I guess and they then go on to for warbands of their own.

 Grey Templar wrote:


Re-emphasized.

Its rare for an entire chapter to turn traitor, but individual marines or small groups would be more common.

The last survivor(s) of an ill-fated mission who become disillusioned with their chapter and turn their back on their oaths, a marine who feels as though his self-less mission is unfair and decides to strike out and gain power for himself, a grudge with some other Imperial organization or individual turns into a blood-feud that eventually leads to an otherwise loyal individual becoming a renegade, etc...

What Templar said

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/wnt/blog.jsp?pid=13700002

Games Workshop wrote:It’s a rare, almost unheard-of occurrence, but there have been times in Imperial history when a Space Marine Chapter has turned renegade. Censored, erased from all records and declared Excommunicate Traitoris, they are sentenced to death by any Imperial forces that come into contact with them. Such was the tragic fate of Chapter Master Sevastus Kranon and the Crimson Sabres, later to be known as the Crimson Slaughter.

Emphasis mine.

Almost unheard of in Imperial history?

Seems like a larger percentage of the Chaos Marines are Legionnaires than we thought.

At least it's a massive poke in the eye for those who propagate the idea that they'd turn at a whim.
.

emphasis mine. this is talking ab out entire chapters turning renegade: it's much for common for it to happen on isolated squad level type missions with Chaotic (Or sometimes just really valuable) artefacts pressent

There's a line in the wiki where their position as independent super humans means that Space Marines must always be careful lest they fall to their own pride and hubris, etc. Generally they undergo a lot of conditioning and psychological profiling to avoid this, but the sheer nature of their position as elevated super heros that function independent of other organizations makes them targets for corruption.

...not that I know exactly where the wiki got that from.

The Badab War isn't a common occurrence. It was stated to have been the biggest astartes vs astartes battle since the Heresy (which means it's a nearly one-of-a-kind occurrence) and technically only one chapter fell to Chaos during it, anyways. In this case, the wiki includes a line "A man with a personality like Huron's should have never been allowed to be chapter master in the first place" (paraphrased) with wording indicating that the Imperpium/Astartes usually try to look out for that sort of thing, but again it's a wiki.

I'm going off of memory here since I don't have time to flip through descriptions of all 135 warbands either but my memory is that most of those descriptions include the words "off-shoot/warband of (insert an original traitor legion here)"