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Just a quick question for lore enthusiasts out there: How much do space marines know about the histories and cultures of other space marine chapters? Like for instance, would what happened to the astral claws be common knowledge even to chapters that did not participate in the badab war? Also as an extension, how much would say, an ultramarines successor chapter be aware of the histories of the legions during the heresy? Any insight would be appreciated.

Depends a lot each chapter's knowledge of each other would be based on individual relationships usually relatively close between chapters descended from the same legion but diluted by time and space from each other. There is no one good answer for this.

 brushcommando wrote:
Just a quick question for lore enthusiasts out there: How much do space marines know about the histories and cultures of other space marine chapters? Like for instance, would what happened to the astral claws be common knowledge even to chapters that did not participate in the badab war? Also as an extension, how much would say, an ultramarines successor chapter be aware of the histories of the legions during the heresy? Any insight would be appreciated.

It varies. And it varies a lot. Blood Angels seemed to have a very deep knowledge of the state of their successors in Devastation of Baal, but in Manflayer Fabius and his ragtag (multi-legion) crew visited an Imperial planet without issue by keeping their mutated friends on the ship and just draping fabric over their shoulder pads. Granted, the planet was heavily compromised, but the crowds who turned out to cheer the arrival of the Angels of Death noticed nothing amiss.

For individual chapters (and even within individual chapters) its going to depend. If Brother Bob did a tour with the Deathwatch, he'll likely have knowledge of other chapters. If the 3rd company has been on crusade in the fringes for the last relative century or two, they may know very little. Also some chapters are inherently more secretive- a good non-DA example is the Scythes of the Emperor, since they were posted to watch over Pharos. Even their new primaris replacements didn't know the chapter secrets, and the surviving modern members of the Chapter didn't know why they were stationed there in the first place, so arguably they weren't well informed about their OWN history.

Depends on the Chapter, really.

Some Chapters are incredibly thoughtful when it comes to their learning of other Imperial organisations, and others are incredibly insular. It's also far more likely that a Chapter will learn the history and culture of their closest neighbours and direct ancestors (although, depending on Founding, their link back home will be stronger or weaker - Second Founding and Ultima Founding Chapters will have stronger connections than 23rd Founding Chapters).

Similarly, depending on how often a Chapter interacts with other Chapters will be a factor - if they never really work alongside anyone else, they'll be more ignorant than a constantly active and diplomatic Chapter. And that's not even factoring how Chapters may deliberately hide their own history from external members (and in some cases, their own!)

And, probably the biggest factor in not recognising many Chapters - there's well over a thousand of them, many you'll never ever met, many you're not even sure are still alive any more, many who may have had massive cultural shifts (homeworlds being destroyed, gene-seed degradations, new glory and honours, Chapter Masters instating new traditions and cultures etc etc).

Basically, ask yourself how well connected you are to countries in the real world - then slash that Internet accessibility into pieces, realise that a lot of what you find might not be in date by several thousand years, and multiply the amount of places by like 5 or 10. Do you think you'd be well equipped to know the history of the Marines Genericus, on the other side of the Great Rift, with that knowledge?

EDIT: Regarding the Astral Claws, I imagine if you lived anywhere near the Badab Sector, you'd have heard about it - if you lived anywhere near a major transport hub, you'd know about it - if you had any sort of connection to the Astral Claws in the first place, you'd probably know about it.

Thanks for the replies!

Agreed it depends on which chapters. Some are also pretty forthright about there own history.

There's a brilliant exchange in one of the Deathwatch short stories (It might be from Xenos Hunters?) between two veterans; an Executioner and a Dark Angel (who is an Inner Circle member), discussing the Badab War.

The Executioners are a very oaths-and-honour chapter, and the Executioner is pretty open about what happened: they owed Huron a debt of honour and he tricked them into fighting against what they later realised were the loyalists. When they figured this out, they surrendered, openly confessed to the inquisition, went on a penitent crusade and were subsequently forgiven and had their homeworld restored to them.

The conversation after this is essentially:
"...Wait, what? That's a thing?"
"Of course. Why?"
"...No reason..."

"So, asking for a friend..."

As everyone else has said, it depends on the chapter and their relationship with their parent legion. Ultramarines and their scions, for example, will generally know lots about the Ultramarines history and may or may not be in contact with each other.

Whereas a chapter like the Exorcists are super secretive and probably actively go out of their way to NOT know the histories of other chapters.

Something kind of tangential, but how do chapters not know who their primarch primogeniture was? A paternity test should be somewhat simple considering the genetic modification/procedures that the imperium seems capable of right?

Wisselander wrote:
Something kind of tangential, but how do chapters not know who their primarch primogeniture was? A paternity test should be somewhat simple considering the genetic modification/procedures that the imperium seems capable of right?

The Imperium in general isn't always the best at record keeping. Though to be fair, 10 000 years is a crazy long time and it only takes one mistake or one accident to destroy a bunch of records forever.

Anyways, it's easy to track lineage if a chapter is descended directly from one of the 2nd founding chapters, but if it's descended from some obscure chapter that was completely eliminated a few thousand years ago, that's another story. In the end, I guess it depends on how much importance the chapter places on their primarch. Some chapters may revere them. Some chapters may care more about their own traditions than a genitor that means nothing to them.

Also, a genetic test only works if there isn't too much mutation. After thousands of generations of marines, you might end up with some very different geneseed.

Wisselander wrote:
Something kind of tangential, but how do chapters not know who their primarch primogeniture was? A paternity test should be somewhat simple considering the genetic modification/procedures that the imperium seems capable of right?

At some points in their history the Magi Biologis have gotten so desperate with their modding and watering down of gene seed that it can come from multiple sources to make up the deficiencies in each batch. So the proverbial paternity test would give inconclusive results. Plus everything that Cawl might be up to with Traitor Legion seed. It would be in a chapter’s best interest they don’t know what their paternity is.

Wisselander wrote:
Something kind of tangential, but how do chapters not know who their primarch primogeniture was? A paternity test should be somewhat simple considering the genetic modification/procedures that the imperium seems capable of right?

Compatible geneseed is not the same thing as identical geneseed. The reason paternity tests work in real life is because we were able to identify 23 genetic markers that we know are both highly unique and highly conserved from parent to child. It's called geneseed but we really have no idea as to how the genetics of geneseed actually works. It's essentially a parasite that (maybe?) takes up some of the host DNA as the progenoids mature but this is all guesswork.

As for how chapters can forget, many chapters do regular purges of their records to keep failures or other secrets from possibly leaking to their enemies. These purges are hardly precise and plenty of secondary information, chapter lineage included, can be lost along the way. Additionally, depending on the specifics of their founding, the information simply might not have been provided. Especially if their founding training cadre wasn't from the same lineage.

To give a couple more specific examples - the Knights of Blood always kept very much to themselves, even amongst the other Blood Angel successors who are usually quite tightly-knit.
The Flesh Tearers have also gained a reputation wider than usual and despite wanting to steer clear of attention, considering their history of over-the-top violence.

On the other end of the spectrum - I'm sure there are many Chapters who have learned the hard way not to ask a Space Wolf about their background... or at least, make sure there's a chair nearby when they do.

 Super Ready wrote:
To give a couple more specific examples - the Knights of Blood always kept very much to themselves, even amongst the other Blood Angel successors who are usually quite tightly-knit.
The Flesh Tearers have also gained a reputation wider than usual and despite wanting to steer clear of attention, considering their history of over-the-top violence.

On the other end of the spectrum - I'm sure there are many Chapters who have learned the hard way not to ask a Space Wolf about their background... or at least, make sure there's a chair nearby when they do.

pfft you think space wolves wait to be ASKED before they start bragging about themselves?

Wisselander wrote:
Something kind of tangential, but how do chapters not know who their primarch primogeniture was? A paternity test should be somewhat simple considering the genetic modification/procedures that the imperium seems capable of right?

As a matter of fact, a newly baked-and-cooked Chapter may have the Ultramarines geneseed but the initial training cadre from Imperial Fists, or from any other Chapter of the 22 following Foundings. It is the training cadre which passes traditions, identity, rituals and so on, not the geneseed, with some notable exceptions (Space Wolves, Salamanders and Blood Angels).