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 Melissia wrote:
That kind of bottles the mind. How exactly would the all-male primarchs be a new race if they can't reproduce though?

If you replaced humanity with the primarchs, humanity would vanish in a generation. Sure that generation would be longer than a normal generation, but they'd still die off eventually.

Besides vulken?

 Desubot wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
That kind of bottles the mind. How exactly would the all-male primarchs be a new race if they can't reproduce though?

If you replaced humanity with the primarchs, humanity would vanish in a generation. Sure that generation would be longer than a normal generation, but they'd still die off eventually.

Besides vulken?

I'm sure the Emperor could find away to kill him (Soul blasting a la Horus).

 Melissia wrote:
That kind of bottles the mind. How exactly would the all-male primarchs be a new race if they can't reproduce though?

If you replaced humanity with the primarchs, humanity would vanish in a generation. Sure that generation would be longer than a normal generation, but they'd still die off eventually.

Space Marines can be viewed as a parasitic species living in a symbiotic relationship with their host species(humans)

Like a virus, they require a host species to reproduce(co-opting host members to create new space marines)

Thus they are a different species, albeit one which requires a different one to reproduce.

Not really all that different from a fig wasp or any virus.

Or just modified humans. I don't view Space Marines as a different species since they didn't evolve to their current state. The change from human to marine is more of a metamorphic change like what caterpillars are to butterflies.

So, yes, Space Marines are still Homo Sapiens Sapiens. They just have a few extra gubbins stuck in them.

 Melissia wrote:
That kind of bottles the mind. How exactly would the all-male primarchs be a new race if they can't reproduce though?

If you replaced humanity with the primarchs, humanity would vanish in a generation. Sure that generation would be longer than a normal generation, but they'd still die off eventually.

Maybe he wanted to make them all perpetuals as well?

 Melissia wrote:
That kind of bottles the mind. How exactly would the all-male primarchs be a new race if they can't reproduce though?

If you replaced humanity with the primarchs, humanity would vanish in a generation. Sure that generation would be longer than a normal generation, but they'd still die off eventually.

Here's the actual quote: "The Emperor's intention was to create a whole race of super-humans from the genetic blueprint of the Primarchs." The Lost and The Damned page 177.

We know that this new race is distinct from the Space Marines as a later paragraph describes them as 'another plan' after the Primarchs are scattered. It throws up some interesting possibilities about male and female super-humans and whilst it would be highly unlikely that one or both of the missing Primarchs were female given all of the hints we have about them talking about brothers and not sister/s we don't know for certain.

Irrespective of that the Emperor's intention of creating a new super-race does beg a rather more fundamental question, what was His plan for ordinary humans? We know that the Thunder Warriors were created with an in-built self-destruct mechanism which is utterly ruthless (especially in comparison to how the Astartes are feted as Mankind's shining beacon of hope and not convenient and disposable like the Thunder Warriors who were amongst other things, experiments needed to hone the techniques required to make the Primarchs) and we should also consider the Shaman. Yes they guided humanity and lived alongside ordinary humans but at the end of the day they poured themselves into the New Man for one reason only, their own personal survival and the Emperor didn't necessarily make the Primarchs as the best super-humans possible, He made them using his own genetic material with the intention that they would be like Him; might it not be possible that there is a less than honourable reason for this? Then we have the Emperor and His armies of super-humans destroying utterly any that weren't interested in His grand plan for the galaxy even if they were otherwise decent human beings getting along just fine.

There is a reason why the visions shown to Horus convinced him that the Emperor needed to be destroyed; even if that future was as a result of Horus's rebellion.

The new super race could have been intended as a refinement of the Legiones Astartes project so that the Imperium could produce soldiers much more efficiently

The Emperor's plan for a super-race predates the Astartes which only came about as a result of the loss of the Primarchs and the Emperor's need to get on with the Great Crusade due to the birth of Slaanesh. After the Primarchs were lost and the Astartes were created it would seem the Emperor abandoned His plans for the super-race and even if He intended to get back around to it, Horus put paid to any such eventuality.