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having a good laugh reading this thread..

but @Sgt_Smudge If Fabious Bile is good enough to work out how to do something like a female Spacemarine. What makes you think in a galaxy of over a biliion trillion people, he would be the only one?

GodDamUser wrote:
having a good laugh reading this thread..

but @Sgt_Smudge If Fabious Bile is good enough to work out how to do something like a female Spacemarine. What makes you think in a galaxy of over a biliion trillion people, he would be the only one?

Ambition and warp magic. He'd be like Abbadon if Abbadon took biology instead of the "how to be bad at your job for 10,000 years" course.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Ambition and warp magic. He'd be like Abbadon if Abbadon took biology instead of the "how to be bad at your job for 10,000 years" course.

but Fabious was already playing around with Genetics and 'improving' Spacemarines before the Horus Heresy had started in which he would of been only 100years old at max

GodDamUser wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Ambition and warp magic. He'd be like Abbadon if Abbadon took biology instead of the "how to be bad at your job for 10,000 years" course.

but Fabious was already playing around with Genetics and 'improving' Spacemarines before the Horus Heresy had started in which he would of been only 100years old at max

A gene-seed can be fiddled with up to a point. I thought you were talking about the almost-Horus he made after they were pushed into the EoT.

Well I mean I can buy the heretek storyline for female marines, while not actual Imperial Spacemarines, you just use the same rules

And if you want a fluffy reason for that.. the same Heretek raised them to a very strictly following the Codex Astarte

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
Ambition and warp magic. He'd be like Abbadon if Abbadon took biology instead of the "how to be bad at your job for 10,000 years" course.

but Fabious was already playing around with Genetics and 'improving' Spacemarines before the Horus Heresy had started in which he would of been only 100years old at max

A gene-seed can be fiddled with up to a point. I thought you were talking about the almost-Horus he made after they were pushed into the EoT.

Off-topic, but that always struck me as odd.

I thought the Emperor obliterated Horus' soul and very existence from the warp. Shouldn't that have made it impossible to bring back (and the reason why Big E did it), given that primarchs are partially warp-born beings.

Seems it's not just us that can play around with mutable fiction

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

If the Emperor of Mankind couldn't do it, then no one else could, with the sole exception of Fabius Bile. It's a pretty straight forward argument.

Where does it state that he couldn't?

Astartes are genetic clones of the Primarch which are genetic clones of the EoM? Can't really make Male genes that compatible female genes.

The only actual thing apparent is that he didn't. He could just as easily decided not to do it even though he could for any number of potential reasons:

1. Slightly more complicated to work with women, so costs outweigh benefits of increased recruiting populace

The Emperor isn't one to say "hey that's slightly out of my comfort zone" and not do it.

2. Thought that women were better off staying at home breeding the next generation of soldiers
3. Had his own brand of mysogeny and thought that the superhuman protectors of mankind should be manly men and manly men alone

Yes, because the Sisters of Silence would exist if the Emperor was a frothing mysoginist.

4. Same as the above, but thought it was a man's duty to protect the innocent women of the universe

Unless you take into account that the Imperial Army, Navy, Admech and AdTitanicus are mixed sexes.

Any of those are as likely as a possibility that it is impossible, if not more.

Except that none have every been implied or asked by anyone in the 10,000 years the Emps has been a thing.

Somehow I feel if he were a patriarchal mysogonest it would be better. Cause you could actually say its apart of the religion and structure of the world. The one they went with is cheap and flimsy, sounds like an excuse..

"Quiet in metal gear solid has to be naked cause she breaths through her skin, so you cant criticize!"

GodDamUser wrote:
Well I mean I can buy the heretek storyline for female marines, while not actual Imperial Spacemarines, you just use the same rules

And if you want a fluffy reason for that.. the same Heretek raised them to a very strictly following the Codex Astarte

I have no issues with Chaos femarines because Chaos likes to say "I reject your logic and substitute my own."

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
Well I mean I can buy the heretek storyline for female marines, while not actual Imperial Spacemarines, you just use the same rules

And if you want a fluffy reason for that.. the same Heretek raised them to a very strictly following the Codex Astarte

I have no issues with Chaos femarines because Chaos likes to say "I reject your logic and substitute my own."

So you have no issues with Femarines then.

Because the only difference between Codex marines and Chaos marines are their ideological viewpoint. One fights to protect the Imperium the other rejects the imperium and/or worships the Chaos Gods

Now a this group of Femarines have being raised under the strict guidelines of the Codex, and generally loyal to the imperium (while not sanctioned, but who knows maybe there is an Inquisitor involved they are everywhere) I would have no issues with them using Codex Spacemarines

@Sgt Smudge I have to admit I feel I owe you an apology :S I've been quite vehement in my defence of the mutability of fluff, and if you find more enjoyment in interpreting the fluff as being immutable then I've got no right to tell you how you're supposed to view things in your own head! That's the beauty of 40k. It does a damn good job of catering for everyone.

I just don't want that to affect the experience of a new poster here on dakka having her genuinely pretty well thought out idea feel like it's belittled and end up going off either the game or dakka as a potential result.

Likewise, I don't want you to think that you're not welcome or valued here either (not sure if you do or not, but I wouldn't want you to!) just because we disagree on this particular thing, doesn't mean that I don't think the rest of your ideas are pretty damn neat you seem like someone who knows his stuff at the very least, and you've put a lot of effort into trying to make this idea work within your interpretation of the 40k universe which is better than many people I've discussed this with

GodDamUser wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

GodDamUser wrote:
Well I mean I can buy the heretek storyline for female marines, while not actual Imperial Spacemarines, you just use the same rules

And if you want a fluffy reason for that.. the same Heretek raised them to a very strictly following the Codex Astarte

I have no issues with Chaos femarines because Chaos likes to say "I reject your logic and substitute my own."

So you have no issues with Femarines then.

Because the only difference between Codex marines and Chaos marines are their ideological viewpoint. One fights to protect the Imperium the other rejects the imperium and/or worships the Chaos Gods

CSM and SM are the same?

Now a this group of Femarines have being raised under the strict guidelines of the Codex, and generally loyal to the imperium (while not sanctioned, but who knows maybe there is an Inquisitor involved they are everywhere) I would have no issues with them using Codex Spacemarines

You want to have lady super soldiers rolling around? Cool. You want to have lady Astartes? Get outta here with that. Just call them super soldiers or genetically augmented or whatever but don't call them Astartes. Use the codex: Space Marines all you want, but lore wise, they are Astartes.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


I just don't want that to affect the experience of a new poster here on dakka having her genuinely pretty well thought out idea feel like it's belittled and end up going off either the game or dakka as a potential result.

We went over this, it wasn't.

Make a case for Chaos Grey Knights. See how that goes.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

CSM and SM are the same?

yes fundamentally they are, they have different ideology but are one in the same in fact the vast majority were Loyalist at the start (now rules wise Codex CSM got the short end of the stick)

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

You want to have lady super soldiers rolling around? Cool. You want to have lady Astartes? Get outta here with that. Just call them super soldiers or genetically augmented or whatever but don't call them Astartes. Use the codex: Space Marines all you want, but lore wise, they are Astartes.

I don't get your repulsion to calling them Astartes. A rose by any other name is still a rose

 Quickjager wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:


I just don't want that to affect the experience of a new poster here on dakka having her genuinely pretty well thought out idea feel like it's belittled and end up going off either the game or dakka as a potential result.

We went over this, it wasn't.

Make a case for Chaos Grey Knights. See how that goes.

It was a pretty well thought out idea I thought. It's more than 'I just want SM with boobs', she actually went into the detail of coming up with the idea of a rogue tech-magos that in his hubris made a planet full of women with astartes modifications. Seemed pretty reasonable and non-fluff-breaking to me.

As for Chaos Grey Knights, isn't there something in the Chaos Daemons codex about someone that sounds suspiciously like a particular Grey Knight Mary Sue that was seduced by Slaanesh...

GodDamUser wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

You want to have lady super soldiers rolling around? Cool. You want to have lady Astartes? Get outta here with that. Just call them super soldiers or genetically augmented or whatever but don't call them Astartes. Use the codex: Space Marines all you want, but lore wise, they are Astartes.

I don't get your repulsion to calling them Astartes. A rose by any other name is still a rose

Agreed. I don't get it either. There's so much importance placed on that one particular sentence, utterly disproportionate to its relevance to any other part of the fluff.

I mean if you really want to bring that up go ahead. Now build an entire chapter of them. I'm waiting.

 Quickjager wrote:
I mean if you really want to bring that up go ahead. Now build an entire chapter of them. I'm waiting.

Well Chaos marines generally don't have Chapters, They generally have Warbands and groups of renegades.. So it could be generally easy to have a isolated Group of Grey Knights seduced by the powers of Chaos.

And yet it ignores every bit of fluff out there about Grey Knights and destroys a large part of their identity to do so. GK fans, whats left of them, would declare the faction dead.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:
CSM and SM are the same?

Apart from loyalty and some minor difference (marks, a bit of equipment, and combat doctrine), they're very, very similar. They're all marines in the end. Next you're going to be telling me that space wolves aren't really marines because they have mark of the wulfen and are equipped with wolf-claws and wolf-pelt armor riding their wolf-wolves utilizing their wolf-spirits to cast wolf-spells so that they can fight in preparation for the wolf-time.

 Quickjager wrote:
I mean if you really want to bring that up go ahead. Now build an entire chapter of them. I'm waiting.

Actually I have one. I am bad at writing though

Brother (insert name) brothers laid dead around him as he battled the Daemon Prince, he was bleeding but determined to banish this fell beast. He saw an opening and took it and stabbed the beast through the chest and he incited the rites of banishment. The daemon lashed out as it faded back into the warp and left Brother (insert name) a deep wound in his shoulder.

Brother (insert name) was never an ambitious member, but after that encounter he quickly rose up the ranks, and was assigned command on a (remote outpost/generic location).
He took to command well and was well liked by his brothers under him. He encouraged comradely, which over the years ever so slightly more and more involed(not the right word really)...

basically he starts to do blood Brother rituals but the process is so slow no one really takes notice, Turns out the deamon he had Vanquished has incerted a part of himself in to this duder, who slowly becomes corrupted and then 'infects' the other around him through blood brother packs ritual drinks and such.

BAM CHAOS GREY KNIGHTS


Its kinda like radical Inquisitors, will be a slow process but they will turn.. and at the same time believe they are still true to the Emperor

Lame Knights more like, if that was all it would take to corrupt one.

 Quickjager wrote:
And yet it ignores every bit of fluff out there about Grey Knights and destroys a large part of their identity to do so. GK fans, whats left of them, would declare the faction dead.

If anyone's able to come up with a reasonable fluff reason for a warband of Chaotic Grey Knights then I'm all ears. If Slaanesh can corrupt one of them, I see no reason she shouldn't be able to corrupt enough for a warband in the 40,000 years she's had to do it in. It's not as if someone's saying 'Oh yeah, all Grey Knights are as easy to corrupt as normal Marines'. One warband's worth isn't going to destroy a large part of their fluff and result in the declaration that their faction is dead. That strikes me as a very, very extreme reaction to something that is also not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Is 'no female can become a Marine' even that integral to the identity of a Space Marine? I genuinely don't believe it is. It only is by the artificial inflation of a single sentence in the fluff to gospel.

You could have 'the absolute vast majority of Space Marines are male, due to compatibility issues with their biological enhancements. Only a handful of insane and borderline heretical Tech Magi in the history of the Imperium have been both intelligent, experienced, and hubristically insane enough to modify the process to function on women'.

The universe wouldn't implode. People wouldn't start burning their SM armies in Youtube. Literally nothing would happen.

Or, at least, nothing should happen. What would likely happen is that you'd get a massive community backlash of people stating 'but they can't be women and proper Astartes' and then not quite being able to explain why that's the case when other breaks in the fluff are perfectly fine.

And yet it was never stated to be a Grey Knight. I'm ignoring the female marines, I don't give a fig about that. But when you say EVERY bit off fluff is pointless then I have a problem.

 Quickjager wrote:
And yet it was never stated to be a Grey Knight. I'm ignoring the female marines, I don't give a fig about that. But when you say EVERY bit off fluff is pointless then I have a problem.

At which point did I say that any bit of fluff, let alone every bit of fluff, is pointless?

I said it's all subject to mutability provided you have a half-decent in-universe reason for it. Why does that make it pointless?

You page 5

I've also heard the concept that 'if theres no canon, how do we debate it?' before. It's not a prerequisite to debate or discussion. The whole thing's made up and we still discuss it fine. Whether some bits are more made up than others makes no difference.

 Quickjager wrote:
I mean if you really want to bring that up go ahead. Now build an entire chapter of them. I'm waiting.

Didn't I just did that on this very thread? What's your opinion on it?

 Quickjager wrote:
Lame Knights more like, if that was all it would take to corrupt one.

Well my lame story writing more than anything. Kida have a epic struggle within his head while they bounce around and keep kicking arse..

The idea is that the entire process would take a couple hundred years.

And the fact that there is now a Grey Knights Character who gets summon daemon powers, makes their ability to be corrupted even higher possibility, As with Inquisitors their willingness to use Chaos to fight Chaos is quite often the first step on becoming corrupted beyond redemption

 Quickjager wrote:
You page 5

I've also heard the concept that 'if theres no canon, how do we debate it?' before. It's not a prerequisite to debate or discussion. The whole thing's made up and we still discuss it fine. Whether some bits are more made up than others makes no difference.

I think you've misunderstood me there. I never stated that I thought any of it was pointless at all. What I actually said was:

Whether some bits are more made up than others makes no difference.

How does that suggest I think it's pointless? Just because something is 'made up' does that mean it's pointless? I don't think so, especially seeing as it is 'made up', being fantasy and all.

And besides, the original question I've been asking this whole thread through still remains unanswered: why is it that this one particular sentence in the fluff is accorded gospel-like importance when other pieces of fluff that have similarly little effect on anything else in the universe, aren't?

Yea and I told you I don't CARE about the female marines, no one does at this point, rather I'm addressing the idea of canon in 40k. There is a series of solid 100% factual things in 40k, things that are immutable.

- A Bolter is a gun in use by Space Marines variants and the Imperium as a whole. That is 100% immutable.
- A thing called the Horus Heresy happened and it fethed up a great deal of stuff.
- There are races called Orks, Necrons, etc.

Things that never CAN happen in 40k include obvious things like

- A 40k setting that Necrons don't exist. Period.
- A 40k without Space Marines.

If you just handwave everything as fantasy and that it can be made up as you go then it isn't 40k. Its something else.

EDIT: If Chaos Grey Knights ever exist then the entire point of Grey Knights, as Paladins in Space is ruined. It's something else that is immutable. And if you say I'm ruining people's fun by saying they can't exist, then I can say the same by pointing out Chaos GK existence would ruin MY fun with them and many others.

 Melissia wrote:
But good and evil are beyond Orks. They simply are, IMO. That said, if someone wanted to play their Orks as more heroic than most Orks would even try to be, I'm not gonna stop them.

I 100% agree with your view of Orks .. well, it really isn't your view - it's actually how Orks are in this IP. And sure what could either of us do to stop someone from having some kind of headcanon about Orks being altruistic heroes or whatever? Nothing, is what. But I think you and I can agree that such a vision of Orks is boring and frankly dumb. Or would that make us racists?

 DizzyStorey wrote:

The emperor could do it, it was just impractical and had an extraordinarily high instability rate. Only 1 in a trillion woman are compatible.

Is that accurate?
If that's the case, female Marines would work because:
1: It would be nice for people such as yourself to see the gender represented
2: It's grimdark enough to discover 1 in a trillion actually make it so for most chapters that do accept a woman, it's usually a death sentence for them but if one survives the process maybe she gets a special title or something? If that's not accurate and they need the Y chromo, well I refer to the intersexual stuff or some kind of genetic abnormality that allows it, making women extremely rare.

It would have to be cultural within the Imperium for this to work, families sending daughters with the hope one will be chosen by the Emperor to survive, and perhaps it only happens every few years because the Chapters prefer not to bother with it but are more understanding as it is a religious kind of thing so they tolerate it on some worlds, other Chapters may not.

These "Battle Sisters" would be indistinguishable from other Marines however, to make them stand out, they should have a special kind of helm to indicate that they were *chosen* by the Emperor to survive the process, and bring the wrath of his judgement to the enemies of the Imperium.

Perhaps a specific MK.VII torso with the imaginary of a woman on it, some kind of knock off to the woman of justice with a blindfold around her eyes or something idk.

So a new torso and helmet, add in a colour stripe or marking somewhere, and there you go, female Marines.
But I can't see an entire Chapter of them. and as I said before the aesthetics keeping in line with Marines don't really make the changes too significant but it fits in my mind.

I think this kind of stuff has more to do with an in fluff justification rather than an actual miniature.. if the text said females were in there, we would just imagine a Marine with his helmet on might actually be a woman and move on. But if you want specific kind of Mk. created just for females, that's ridiculous because their bodies are no longer normal anyway. they would look like apes as the men do.

But that's the best justification I can come up with to allow 1 or even 2 women in a battle company running around that shouldn't be too hard for people to swallow.