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So i'm reading through The Chapters Due (Graham McNeill) and i noticed that on p.28 it states the following

“Ach, these lads? They aren’t first generation,” said Pasanius kicking a dismembered
corpse at Uriel’s feet, a warrior he didn’t remember killing. “They’re a founding from
way down the line. Copies of copies of copies. You don’t dilute Astartes blood for
thousands of years without seeing it become thin and weak.”

Uriel wanted to say that Pasanius was wrong, that the dead didn’t care whether they
were killed by inferior copies of the first Astartes or the genuine article.

And then in I am Slaughter it states...

Bloodlines and gene-seeds were gradually failing over time. The vigour had waned

So basically the question is, is there supposed to be a marked quality difference between ..... say, a generic Space Marine from a 1st Founding Chapter, or a generic Space Marine from, for example, the 24th founding.

The second part is more a reference to how the genetic markers of each Primarch aren't as strong after they dissappear and geneseed can't be created directly using their DNA.

A lot of Astartes in the Legions would end up looking almost exactly like their Primarchs as the potency of the geneseed re-wrote large portions of their genetic code. We see it in Abbadon, "Little Horus" Aximand, and Luc Sedirae in the XVIth Legion as all three warriors were almost identical, albeit smaller, copies of their father Horus.

Some Chapters also don't have certain organs due to the Heresy which made them "lesser" on a technical level to their previous Legion brothers. The Imperial Fists for example are missing certain organs because they were deemed excessive when the Inductii process was introduced to rapidly increase the Legion's numbers for the latter parts of the Heresy.

There’s also the legacy of the Inductii. Fresh recruits from during the Heresy era, who whilst absolutely Astartes, were recruited, converted and trained much more rapidly. So you still got a super soldier, but one ultimately inferior to the losses they were replacing.

I think they originated with the World Eaters, but desperation saw pretty much all Legions adopt the practice.

The next bit is speculation. But essentially, with all that was lost during the Heresy, and the need to rebuild and rearm as quickly and efficiently as possible? The remaining Loyalist Legions continued to make use of Inductii.

If so? There may be more to it than “in my day, a Marine was a Marine, not these namby pamby long haired flower arrangers. I carried an M-16 and you carry that…that…that….guitar” incredibly ancient warrior yells at high tech cloud type stuff.

Because who knows? It might be Pasanius not fully appreciating how much of an edge his long service has given him over others etc.

The overriding theme of 40k is entropy. Technology, genetics, even whole civilisations, with very few exceptions everything gets worse over time.

Part of the purpose of the Geneseed tithe is to monitor for degradation and genetic drift in the geneseed, so not only is geneseed known to mutate, on some level it's expected to.

So with the exception of the First and Ultima foundings, every other founding is derived from a geneseed grown within another Space Marine, a copy of a copy of a copy, introducing more variables and taking the marines further from their pure geneseed, so there are certainly good reasons to assume that later foundings = inferior marines (and this is without factoring in the Inductii)

the-gentleman-ranker wrote:

So basically the question is, is there supposed to be a marked quality difference between ..... say, a generic Space Marine from a 1st Founding Chapter, or a generic Space Marine from, for example, the 24th founding.

No, if you compare them during the same era. Yes, the geneseed will develop flaws over time, and in that sense becomes "weaker" but this has really nothing to do with chapter foundings, as that is merely about organisation of the forces. The same "diluting" will happen regardless of the marine is from Ultramarines or from a brand new successor chapter.

The primaris project was about fixing this, and it seems to have worked. Though of course that new geneseed will similarly develop flaws over time.

I agree with Crimson.

I don't think the first founding chapters have some kind of central store of original gene seed that is the source of all new marines. As with all other chapters, they harvest the gene seed for the newbies from fallen marines.

Therefore, its not about the number of foundings, its about the quality control that is applied to the gene seed through all those generations of marines.

One might be able to make the case that first founding chapters have access to better kit for managing that process, and may have a more stringent QA procedure for what seed gets retained and what is discarded as flawed, but I think on the whole and across the whole piece, the quality of the seed for a brand new chapter founded just prior to the Ultima Founding is likely to be on a par with first founding chapters that are using a similar generation of gene seed.

Edit - This might give the Space Wolves in particular a bonus, as they still have Bjorn from the Great Crusade, who could presumably be used as a baseline for checking genetic drift. Any other first founding chapters with someone that goes that far back?

Storage could be another issue.

Presumably, if anyone has The Original Fridge, it’s the first founding Chapters, and likely the Second Founding. But from there? Who knows.

Likewise the preservation of knowledge. Typically not the wider Imperium’s strong suit, no. But within the original Legions? Their Apothecarion would, by necessity, be well trained in all the necessaries. So again, First and Second Founding likely preserved that knowledge quite nicely.

But from there? The forces that donated Officers and Specialists to subsequent Foundings were doing so from an inherently smaller pool. And I can’t see many, if any, willingly giving away their Best Minds. People trained by those Best Minds? Yes. But you can still a gradual degradation of full understanding.

Marry that to perhaps lesser equipment? And there’s plenty room for pre-Primaris later foundlings to be lesser Astartes than contemporaries from earlier Foundings.

To a truly noticable degree? Maybe, maybe not. Because whether Veteran of the Long War or just general Veteran? That experience is easy to discount when you’ve just trounced a relatively green Astartes in a bout of fisticuffs.

That’s also a consideration, but the first founding chapters have also been around the longest and most likely to have needed a new fridge. The Crimson Fists for example. The likelihood that the Rynns World disaster also took their specialised storage stuff is pretty high.

I would also say that i don’t think anything I’ve said above invalidates any of the fluff or novels. It’s all super complicated, and marines are just as likely to be subject to arrogance and prejudice as any other population, if not more given original legion exceptionalism that must be rife. It kind of doesn’t matter if the authors have out any thought into it or not, as any of the outcomes are valid to roll into a story given normal human Psychological ranges. Rule of cool, and pick whatever position best suits the story being told

I guess my argument is that having had the opportunity, and I guess the authority, to hold on to the best minds and equipment, the Chapters that retained the names of the original Legions are best placed to have retained the knowledge and tech.

Sure, that won’t be universal. Crimson Fist style losses are going to massively impact such considerations.

But it’s still the First Founding that are most likely to have not just the original toys, but the original manuals for said original toys, and to have passed down as much of the original knowledge as possible to its modern Tech Marines and Apothecaries and that.

And I doubt the differences are anywhere near a 15th Founding being given the technological equivalent of two ice cubes and best wishes, with how to do it passed on via interpretive dance.

I think we can also fairly confidently argue that Chapters that maintain strong links to the Primogenitor Chapter/Legion are, at times, able to borrow said Primogenitor’s expertise and tech where their own perhaps can’t overcome an emergent problem.

So, just because your Chapter is a later founding, it doesn’t automatically mean your lads are at the poopy end of the stick,

I don't buy "the best fridges argument," as the geneseed that is used to create new chapters is held by Adeptus Mechanicus, so they probably have even better storage equipment.

Except that may have been setup post-Heresy, when the tithe became a formal thing.

Prior to that, when everyone had their Primarch alive and kicking? Yes keeping at least a portion of your harvested Geneseed centrally for safe keeping makes sense? It wasn’t as essential as it is the modern era. There was also more demand when the size of your Legion was restricted to “as many as you can, mate”, and so quite possibly fewer reserves

Though I do need to re-read the Ravenguard one, where they try drastic measures to recoup losses following Istvaan. I can’t remember if they accessed existing Geneseed stock or not?

 Crimson wrote:
I don't buy "the best fridges argument," as the geneseed that is used to create new chapters is held by Adeptus Mechanicus, so they probably have even better storage equipment.

Agreed, but the AM gets it through regular tithes, which will be subject to potential degradation due to the equipment maintained by each chapter.

There are a lot of moving parts in this whole process, all of which will tend to be affected by entropy as Charax pointed out

I still think it points to later foundings as not necessarily having any worse quality gene seed as earlier foundings, on average. There will be outliers in all directions.

I think it is more the older marines wanting to feel superior. The biggest change would be training. I get the impression the heresy era guys had far greater ability to think for themselves and their training was about learning skills. The chapter today condition their marines with everything including behaviours and mind sets for better control.

Certainly Crusade and Heresy era held more responsibility.

If you were the nominated Commander for a battle? All Imperial forces were under your command. Astartes, Militia, Auxilia, Titans, Mechanicum.

In the modern day? Yes it’s definitely advisable to Listen To The Demi-God With Centuries Of Battle Experience, but not compulsory. And so time is spent negotiating and that. Plus, unlike a Crusade Fleet? You’re unlikely to know exactly what resources will be available to you once you get to the theatre. And those forces, unlike your attached Crusade Host of Yore won’t be used to fighting alongside Astartes.

One could even argue the smaller size of a Chapter necessarily reduces the experience you can gain from sparring and training bouts.

A Crusade Fleet would number thousands of Astartes of varying rank and sometimes Legion if you were lucky. That’s a wider range of training partners to hone your skills against. A modern Chapter? Aboard ship may be but a mere handful. So you’re just not going to get the same workout and benefit.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I think it is more the older marines wanting to feel superior. The biggest change would be training. I get the impression the heresy era guys had far greater ability to think for themselves and their training was about learning skills. The chapter today condition their marines with everything including behaviours and mind sets for better control.

This is depicted directly onscreen in the Ashes of Imperium book.

Archamus, one of the surviving IF commanders, visits a new group of IF initiates in training being overseen by an Admech representative. She explains to him that due to the Heresy, they have revised the Astartes training and indoctrination programs, going for much more intensive hypno-indoctrination to dull all emotional responses except for hatred, and to train them to respond with automatic rage and disgust when seeing anything traitorous.

Essentially, it explains how the more "human" 30k Marines became the mentally maimed monsters of 40k.

But this has also been hinted at for a long while, both through subtext in the novels, as well as in the game stats themselves (where 40k Marines have usually had some kind of morale immunity special rule, like ATSKNF, which 30k Marines do not).

The hypno-indoctrination, as Ashiraya said, makes the 40k Marines far less human and gives much more credence to "AND THEY SHALL KNOW NO FEAR".

I think it’s a legacy of the Inductii programmes? A nice, if not necessarily advisable, shortcut.

It is not explicitly said to be a link of design, but yes, Inductii also resorted to hypno-indoctrination to speed up training.

Some legions such as the World Eaters used this training strategy since well before Inductii as a concept took root however. It was always known to exist, just not favoured during the Great Crusade (which makes sense, as the Imperium had a more optimistic approach during this time).

I am also reading Luther: First of the Fallen right now, and it's interesting to see Luther's perspective (who is kept in stasis between interrogations, sometimes for centuries). He notices how each successive Supreme Grand Master coming to question him gets more and more fanatical and unhinged, causing him to completely lose respect for what the Dark Angels has become, and making him refuse to repent to any of them, deciding to wait for the Lion instead.

So to the first quote - Pasanius is himself "a copy of a copy of a copy" diluted for thousands of years, yes? He is not an OG "first generation" Legionary that survived into the 41st Millennium? But he doesn't hold himself to that same standard? Im guessing that the corpse hes kicking around is probably a chaos marine?

My interpretation is that hes either referring to some sort of production practice used by the traitors that may have resulted in deficient or inferior marine stock, or hes being a hypocrite/first founding supremacist. If its the former, then theres your answer, if its the latter then unreliable narrator applies.

To the second quote - thats actually pretty widely accepted as true. Marines in M41 are generally understood to be inferior to the marines of M30 as a result of 10k years of genetic drift and decay, but thats true regardless of founding and is true of the OG chapters too.

It's the difference between an Ultramarine and a Renegade Chapter is what Pasanius is referring to.

Essentially because the Ultramarines are still Ultramarines, they're the OG lineage. Successors are often founded from other later Founding Chapters. A hypothetical example would be the Swords of Guilliman (12th Founding) being used to create the Ceruelen Stars (20th Founding). They're still the lineage of Guilliman but they're not Ultramarines, ergo copies of copies.

 Gert wrote:
It's the difference between an Ultramarine and a Renegade Chapter is what Pasanius is referring to.

Essentially because the Ultramarines are still Ultramarines, they're the OG lineage. Successors are often founded from other later Founding Chapters. A hypothetical example would be the Swords of Guilliman (12th Founding) being used to create the Ceruelen Stars (20th Founding). They're still the lineage of Guilliman but they're not Ultramarines, ergo copies of copies.

But that is obvious nonsense. The geneseed is copied over generations regardless, it does not matter how the marines are organised.

Of course it's nonsense, Astartes from the First Founding still fall to Chaos.

The context and follow up is important as I'm fairly certain Uriel Ventris politely reminds Pasanius about Ardaric Vaanes formerly of the Raven Guard.
Can't check the book as it's smack dab at the back of my shelf behind a double tower pile sitting in front.

The point is made in the heat of battle about Astartes that have betrayed the Imperium. Pasanius is basically just venting.

I don't know that founding is irrelevant. As a counter-example I'd cite the Mantis Warriors, who have a gene-seed mutation throughout their chapter that doesn't seem connected to the White Scars or Khan. There can at least be some sort of genetic drift that occurs at the chapter-level.

It’s definitely possible for oddities and mutations to occur at the Chapter Level.

We know stock Geneseed is screened for impurities and mutation. But given mutations and impurities continue to manifest? I think we can reasonably assume there’s a scale of acceptability. And that scale may be open to change over the years.

If a mutation manifests in the second generation of Marines within that Chapter, even if it’s from a single Brother? If the resulting Geneseed survives and is used across generations? It can proliferate.

If a given Chapter or Chapter Company is exposed to some mutating factor on mass - perhaps the warp, warzone weirdness - then a major proportion of its Geneseed could be tainted. Short of relying on stocks of untainted? That’s it for them.

Who knows what the attitudes to that are? If your choice after losses is Wonky Geneseed or Risk Of Extinction? How a given Chapter responds may vary wildly.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I don't know that founding is irrelevant. As a counter-example I'd cite the Mantis Warriors, who have a gene-seed mutation throughout their chapter that doesn't seem connected to the White Scars or Khan. There can at least be some sort of genetic drift that occurs at the chapter-level.

Yes, the geneseed can mutate. But that can happen just as easily on the geneseed of the parent chapter. The geneseed does not know what the chapter which holds it is called or what founding it is.

It depends on the nature of the founding

If it's just "We're gonna slice a bunch of marines out of this parent chapter" then no, the geneseed is going to be relatively unaltered.

If it's "We're going to take this geneseed and mass-replicate it in clone bodies until we have a thousand marines to found a chapter" then yes, the xerox method will introduce a significantly higher likelihood of mutation because you're fast-forwarding through several generations of replication at once

If it's "The Admech have decided they're gonna do some tweaking" then yes, something is going to go wrong because it always, always does

And if it's the Ultima Founding, those are taken directly from Cawl's geneseed reserves so they're going to be about as stable as you can get

I think folks have missed my point.

A new Founding will create a given number of new Chapters. Each is created from existing stocks of Geneseed.

I believe the intent is that such a new Chapter uses the same “shelf” of Geneseed. So all coming from the same existing Chapter. And where that’s not necessarily possible? At least the same original Legion.

So, my newly founded Chapter can, so far as such records can be trusted, trace its Geneseed lineage back to say, the Imperial Fists Legion.

That stock of Geneseed will have already been checked for unacceptable levels of mutation, and so can be considered “pure” for a given value of that word.

But once the Chapter is out and about? Things can change. Perhaps its first outing was to a Warzone where the system is noted for high levels of ionising radiation, or the same is a weapon favoured by the foe.

However stable the parent Geneseed is? That Chapter is still prone to deviation. And so, as time passes, its Geneseed gathers and replicates novel mutations. Which are of course passed on down the centuries to new recruits.

Whereas, provided none of the other Chapters also claiming the same lineage never fought in the same conditions? Can happen entirely in isolation.

This is where Cawl’s works are so important to the future of the Astartes. He’s (they’ve?) not only had access to the purest possible Geneseed (actual samples from actual Primarchs), and whatever remains of both the Primarch and Astartes projects? But the benefit of thousands of years to gain as much of an understanding of what’s what as anyone might hope.

Originally we know Cawl believed the flaws (Red Thirst, Great Big Pointy Teeth Like That etc) had been ironed out and purified. But have since manifested again.

But even with said flaws? The Ultima Founding has seen About As Unflawed Geneseed As One Might Hope For.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if Cawl has reserves of said original Geneseed just in case something goes horribly wrong within a Chapter.

I mean…he’s had 10,000 years. At whichever point in that history he got it right? He’s still had test subjects which each produce two new Progenoid Glands each. I wouldn’t put it past Cawl, or General Imperial Ethics, to have created Astartes that were, ultimately, just incubators for said Geneseed.

Never seeing combat. Never being at risk to life and limb.

Even if he started with a single success per Geneseed Lineage? With it taking 5 years for the first, and 10 years for the second to become viable for implantation? Doubling and doubling and doubling for even a century can land you quite the haul. Like, just over 1,000 per original recipient.

Of course, he’d have saved even more bother if he’d figured out how to ensure the Progenoid Glands grow back! But he didn’t.

 Crimson wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I don't know that founding is irrelevant. As a counter-example I'd cite the Mantis Warriors, who have a gene-seed mutation throughout their chapter that doesn't seem connected to the White Scars or Khan. There can at least be some sort of genetic drift that occurs at the chapter-level.

Yes, the geneseed can mutate. But that can happen just as easily on the geneseed of the parent chapter. The geneseed does not know what the chapter which holds it is called or what founding it is.

Realistically this is correct, but oddly, geneseed seemingly does know. It's why the stuff Orkeosaurus mentioned about certain successors getting their own distinctive mutations that appear nowhere else seems to happen. Cases like Flame Falcons and Black Dragons are especially dramatic examples.

Most infamously, the Space Wolves seemingly could not produce any successor chapters until the addition of Primaris. Every time they tried, the resulting successor invariably became insane and/or corrupted, and any further attempts to create successors were abandoned.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
I don't know that founding is irrelevant. As a counter-example I'd cite the Mantis Warriors, who have a gene-seed mutation throughout their chapter that doesn't seem connected to the White Scars or Khan. There can at least be some sort of genetic drift that occurs at the chapter-level.

Yes, the geneseed can mutate. But that can happen just as easily on the geneseed of the parent chapter. The geneseed does not know what the chapter which holds it is called or what founding it is.

Realistically this is correct, but oddly, geneseed seemingly does know. It's why the stuff Orkeosaurus mentioned about certain successors getting their own distinctive mutations that appear nowhere else seems to happen. Cases like Flame Falcons and Black Dragons are especially dramatic examples.

But this does not show that mutation is any more likely on a successor chapter. It is just that those few peculiar cases are worth mentioning whilst the hundreds of chapters with perfectly functioning geneseed are not. Besides, the parent chapter geneseed has mutated as well. Before the Primaris project a lot of first founding chapters had malfunction in their geneseed. All the organs did not function, for example over the millennia Imperial Fists had lost the Betcher's Gland, and the Sus-an Membrane. And as these ceased to function sometime over the ten millennia, it is perfectly possible that there are IF successor that split before they were lost, which still had these organs.

Most infamously, the Space Wolves seemingly could not produce any successor chapters until the addition of Primaris. Every time they tried, the resulting successor invariably became insane and/or corrupted, and any further attempts to create successors were abandoned.

But that was because the geneseed was incompatible with non-Fenrisians. If they had made say, a fleet based successor chapter that returned to recruit from Fenris this issue could have been averted.