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IIRC, it actually says two or three times, which is a bit low, considering ages of certain marines.

 Wyzilla wrote:
There is no "evidence" to counter. We have no record of any Astartes dying of old age, and we know of two that were over 10k years old, and one that was over 2,000. Meaning the claims of Dante being unique in age is false and only remarkable in that he has not died from injury.

The evidence is that the Blood Angels codex has stated that Blood Angels have unusually long lifespans even for Astartes ever since the Angels of Death codex. That note is still present in the new 7th edition codex. Like many things in 40k, you just pick the one you like the best.

7th edition BA codex, pg 18: "Physically the Blood Angels are among the longest lived of all the Space Marine Chapters. One of the peculiarities of their aberrant gene-seed is that it has vastly increased the lifespan of those who bear it, so it is not unheard of for Blood Angels to live for a thousand years."

We're not just making it up, but if you prefer the version that they are immortal then have it at.

so we have a record of someone in universe saying blood angels live many times longer than normal marines that hasn't changed since second

Copy paste, and has been retconned but GW never bothers to fact check there own fluff, hence we get contradictions all the time.

Just for the record, I don't think space marines are immortal as they die from wounds etc.

but what we have is old fluff that hasn't changed and has been directly contradicted several times, 1000 years + may be unusual for modern astartes but clearly its not for the originals, as both warp related and non warp related marines have lived 10k years+, if this was myth busters then the space marine that only lives 500 years and dies of old age is busted.

 Orblivion wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
There is no "evidence" to counter. We have no record of any Astartes dying of old age, and we know of two that were over 10k years old, and one that was over 2,000. Meaning the claims of Dante being unique in age is false and only remarkable in that he has not died from injury.

The evidence is that the Blood Angels codex has stated that Blood Angels have unusually long lifespans even for Astartes ever since the Angels of Death codex. That note is still present in the new 7th edition codex. Like many things in 40k, you just pick the one you like the best.

7th edition BA codex, pg 18: "Physically the Blood Angels are among the longest lived of all the Space Marine Chapters. One of the peculiarities of their aberrant gene-seed is that it has vastly increased the lifespan of those who bear it, so it is not unheard of for Blood Angels to live for a thousand years."

We're not just making it up, but if you prefer the version that they are immortal then have it at.

But that does not make sense.

How can they be unusually long-lived if no Marine dies of age anyway?

Maybe Blood Angels are luckier than most Marines? I would say 4-500 years old being the upper limit myself with all the information given. 300 is probably the average.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Orblivion wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
There is no "evidence" to counter. We have no record of any Astartes dying of old age, and we know of two that were over 10k years old, and one that was over 2,000. Meaning the claims of Dante being unique in age is false and only remarkable in that he has not died from injury.

The evidence is that the Blood Angels codex has stated that Blood Angels have unusually long lifespans even for Astartes ever since the Angels of Death codex. That note is still present in the new 7th edition codex. Like many things in 40k, you just pick the one you like the best.

7th edition BA codex, pg 18: "Physically the Blood Angels are among the longest lived of all the Space Marine Chapters. One of the peculiarities of their aberrant gene-seed is that it has vastly increased the lifespan of those who bear it, so it is not unheard of for Blood Angels to live for a thousand years."

We're not just making it up, but if you prefer the version that they are immortal then have it at.

But that does not make sense.

How can they be unusually long-lived if no Marine dies of age anyway?

Because maybe they can die of old age, simply that most Marines don't ever get the chance.

Sure, there's one or two outliers that live to exceptional ages, Blood Angels or otherwise... but these are a handful of people out of the literally-millions of Space Marines that don't make it to the first century.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Maybe Blood Angels are luckier than most Marines? I would say 4-500 years old being the upper limit myself with all the information given. 300 is probably the average.

For average numbers I would have to agree with 500-600 being an average older space marine and around 300 as an average for a regular SM due to a SM standard occupational hazards of being a SM. Like a missile or melta gun to the face, or a las-gun in the eye.

Don't forget there is also Logan Grimnar with his rumored age of being around 1000 years old. Also as it is about non-dreadknoght marines Bejorn is out of the question.

Though I think reasonably 1000 years may not be out of the question for how long a SM can live.

 fox-light713 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Maybe Blood Angels are luckier than most Marines? I would say 4-500 years old being the upper limit myself with all the information given. 300 is probably the average.

For average numbers I would have to agree with 500-600 being an average older space marine and around 300 as an average for a regular SM due to a SM standard occupational hazards of being a SM. Like a missile or melta gun to the face, or a las-gun in the eye.

Don't forget there is also Logan Grimnar with his rumored age of being around 1000 years old. Also as it is about non-dreadknoght marines Bejorn is out of the question.

Though I think reasonably 1000 years may not be out of the question for how long a SM can live.

Grimnar is almost 700 years old.

Figure out how the tech works and you'd have your answer. There's no reason life extension or any sort of biological 'augmentation' along those lines, has to be permanant just from a single treatment or require absolutely no adjustment/amintenance of any kind (and I know there's fluff indicating Astartes need their unusual biologies tweaked and maintained even after they get implanted.)

You could argue, for example, that the supposed Space Marine 'immortality' only lasted as long as they were given the right/correct treatments and biological maintenance to keep their bodies in that optimal state, but that over time various reasons (including mutation of the geneseed, corruption of the techniques and processes involved in creating and maintaining the Astartes into ritual, etc.) they lost the ability to maintain that optimum state. I mean its not even like all chapters neccesarily go about creating their recruits the same way (Blood Angels method vs Space Wolf, for example.) But without more data, its speculative.

If you mean the average lifespan of an imperial citizen, I think it will vary wildly between folks. Factory workers may live till like 20's and die of war/wounds/maltreatment

Aristos or inquisitors that can pay for jeuvnat treatments or some mechanicus magos have clocked in at least 200 yrs+. I vaguely remember some old arch magos at least around 400 yrs in rogue trader

Never heard about a space marine just passed away when not fightibg

 Psienesis wrote:


Because maybe they can die of old age, simply that most Marines don't ever get the chance.

Sure, there's one or two outliers that live to exceptional ages, Blood Angels or otherwise... but these are a handful of people out of the literally-millions of Space Marines that don't make it to the first century.

Not most, all. No Marine has ever died of old age.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Not most, all. No Marine has ever died of old age.

Source?

Edit: You know what, let's save the conjecture-fest for another day.

 Ashiraya wrote:

No Marine has ever been shown, mentioned, described or otherwise implied to have died of old age.

So? Has there ever been an explicit mention of an Ogryn dying of old age? Or a Ratling? Even a normal guardsman? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Ogrns, ratlings etc. Have never been stated as being functionally immortal, space marines have and we have examples of marines that live thousands of years, please provide any non old retconned fluff that supports the 5-600 life span as unless I've missed something (could have happened) then there is no support

 Formosa wrote:
Ogrns, ratlings etc. Have never been stated as being functionally immortal, space marines have and we have examples of marines that live thousands of years, please provide any non old retconned fluff that supports the 5-600 life span as unless I've missed something (could have happened) then there is no support

If you're free to ignore something in a brand new codex just because you think its old and they forgot to retcon it, then it just supports my suggestion that everyone should just go with the version that they prefer. At the end of the day who the hell cares how anyone else chooses to interpret the lore?

 Formosa wrote:
Ogrns, ratlings etc. Have never been stated as being functionally immortal, space marines have and we have examples of marines that live thousands of years, please provide any non old retconned fluff that supports the 5-600 life span as unless I've missed something (could have happened) then there is no support

Cassius is 'old' nearing four hundred. 6E BRB says marines live two or three times as long as a normal man. And of course then there is the Blood Angels, the bit about their longevity once again repeated in their newest codex. Where is your immortality quote from? Horus Rising perhaps? That was in 2006, so definitely older than 6E BRB, and said as a in-character comment by a person with incomplete knowledge (as marines were new then.) Even HH novels have showed marines ageing since then, so I'm sure BL realised their mistake too.

Pandorax this year actually, as already stated by several people several times.
So cassius is old for a space marine, so he lived more than the average 200 years, that makes him old because he is alive and has survived, show me where it states that due to his age he is dieing or infirm.

Blood Angel longevity is 3rd person referring to blood angels living a long time for space marines, again this makes absolutely no reference to how long marines live and from the perspective of the narrative it is a long time. Show me in that reference of the average life span of uninjured space marine during of natural causes.

Space marines do live 2)3 Times the span of a normal man, then die from combat, show me in that reference it referring to the space marines living full spans and living out there lives.

Do we have any examples of immortal Space Marines?

Do we have any backup for the headcanon saying the reason that plenty of CSM have survived since the Heresy is Chaos extending their lives?

We have statements saying it's not the Warp shortening their time ('Veterans of ten millennia of warfare' and similar quotes dot the Black Legion supplement, for example) and 10k+ years is, while not immortal, not far off.

We have supporting evidence yes, but eternal life I myself highly doubt, but from a human perspective they are functionally immortal.

Here's the problem with the fluff, on the one hand we have the codexs saying that marines are old and live x years (human perspective), on the other we have marines that have lived thousands of years un aided by the warp or dreadnought sarchopogi, so when the fluff says "they live only x years" and we have several incidents that they infact live longer, then one can only be interpreted as in universe conjecture and the other is 1st hand or 1st person perspective, then we can only go with the first hand experience.

Humans only live for 50years in real life, apart from all the ones that live longer, that's what it reads like to me.

If you can clarify it then thanks, as I love the fluff of this game and enjoy discussing it.

To me, it seems like Marines can easily live 10k+ years out of combat. Loyalists constantly have to dash from battle to battle to help keep together their Imperium, whereas CSM have an impenetrable safe-zone in the Eye of Terror and can pick their fights, meaning they will never have to sacrifice their lives to defend some shrine or forge world.

Of course, exceptions exist for both sides (Black Templars Grand Marshal Ludoldus has been High Marshal for at least two thousand years) but that is what seems to make most sense. It appears BA gene-seed grants them some quirk of fate, for greater battle-fortune. +1 fate point?

 Ashiraya wrote:
It appears BA gene-seed grants them some quirk of fate, for greater battle-fortune. +1 fate point?

Not to mention Commander Dante artwork suggests he wouldn't be ashamed for his looks among the High Elves in Middle Earth... Eternally young in body and appearance, while SW go grey, hairy and longfanged and UM just go old. No, I'd rather think the few examples going beyond any reasonable count of years are extreme outliers and freaks. That Salamander dying on his post had spent almost all his life in stasis using his extra-special Space Marine physique, after all. A Chaos marine could well get killed and come back from the Warp to fight every time because he's in a time loop.

Hmm... Ludoldus is also a bit of a mystery. The records of the Jerulas Crusade (645.M39) say he's a veteran of the Vinculus Crusade (833.M41). Which would require some serious time travel (ofc possible with the Warp being what it is) or some crappy records keeping, not impossible either if there were two or more Templars named Ludoldus and they kept the change in command secret. Knights did sometimes take their teacher's or liege's name to carry on a Holy Task.

10,000 years is actually rather very, very far off from "immortal". Compared to the age of, say, Sol, it's the mere blink of an eye. Compared to the age of, say, any Necron anywhere, it's ridiculously, laughably short... like, roughly 1/100th of that age.

hence why I said from a human perspective

 Mozzyfuzzy wrote:
And what's the standard lifespan of a normal person in 40k?

If they're not named in the first chapter of the book, roughly four sentences.

I just recently read all the BA, GK, and SW books back to back, and am currently reading Heroes of the Space Marines because I have no life, so I've got a few lines stuck in my head on the subject. Almost every CSM story mentions something to the effect of time meaning nothing inside the Eye of Terror, so there's your lifespan. Unless you're one of the Thousand Sons, in which case you get to poof in and out of existence as a corrupted soul trapped in empty armor whenever someone with more balls than brains summons you (see: every Space Wolf book ever). The point being that CSM's are not a good reference point. Termies don't count either. You're not "unaffected" if you're just a floating brain inside a stompy-tank. Also throw out anyone who's spent his life sleeping or inside a magic box.

I'm not sure how educated the GW fluffmasters are, but there is a difference between lifespan and life-expectancy. Life expectancy refers to the number of years a person is expected to live, based on the statistical average. Lifespan refers to the maximum number of years that a person can potentially expect to live based on the greatest number of years anyone from the same data set has lived. So, somewhere about 122 years, for us regular squishy ole' humans. Somewhere in the low thousand range for Blood Angels (Dante, pushing 2k, though even he doesn't remember). High hundreds if you're a Space Wolf (Ulrick the Slayer in his 700's). Probably about the same for the other chapters (unless you're a Flesh Tearer or some other poor gene-cursed chapter).

Now, to throw a wrench in the monkeyworks... In the second BA omnibus (whichever book has mutant/demon things trying to eat their way into Sanguinious's sarcophagus), I vaguely remember Dante thinking about the chapter master he replaced, and I'd swear it seemed to imply that the dude croaked of old age. Though I may be wrong. Anyone have the book handy and want to power read it to find that part?

Regarding the note that no marines will have the possibility to die of old age I found a note (might be in the latest BA codex, will have to look it up) of a marine taking out of combat duty and kept alive because of his wisdom. Apparently it was some hideous wound that made him unfit for combat.

I know, with all that tech replacing body parts (iron hands...) and great, dying warriors being put in dreadnoughts it sounds unlikely, but I'm to look it up right away.

space marines are biologically immortal.

Anyone know of any sources that mention the adeptus custodes dying from old age? Obviously they are not identical to marines but close enough to perhaps give us an idea of their life spans. I recall at least one heresy book having a character question how long they can actually live. I seem to recall the character having been a marine for something like 200 years at that point. That seems to show, at least in 30k, that 200 years was definitely not a normal lifespan for an imperial "citizen". So my guess isif or argument sake that a normal human in 40k that lives on a decent planet has a life span under 200 years for sure.