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I just finished reading 'Chapter's Due'.

With Tarentus wiped out except for a couple hundred survivors, Talassar possibly wiped out too (certainly it's ability to produce food is gone), Espandor suffering major losses and minor losses elsewhere, how much of the population of Ultramar has survived?
I assume Macragge and Calth both have huge populations, though the 500 million mentioned on Lexicanum for Macragge seems a bit small.
One quarter to one third of the chapter have also been killed.

Basically I was wondering where most of the people in Ultramar live as Ultramar seems to be shrinking thanks to actions like Behemoth and Honsou.

If my dream came true it be 0

Does anyone have an opinion on this?

cadbren wrote:
though the 500 million mentioned on Lexicanum for Macragge seems a bit small.

I don't know for most of the sector, but - Macragge is the largely uninhabitable ice-and-mountains planet, it's not Ultramar's main population centre. If anything that makes Lexicanum's figure much HIGHER than I'd expect.

How many worlds are even in Ultramar now? I know in Betrayer it says there's 500, but how many are left?

I believe Ultramar as we knew it 30K (500 worlds) no longer exists, I think it was broken up between the Ultras successor chapters. As for as how many are left in what is now called Ultramar I don't think you will be able to find a solid answer

Dunno if this helps ..

"The home worlds of the Ultramarines are situated deep in the galactic south-east in the Ultima Segmentum. Whereas most Chapters have their fortress monastery on a single world, the Ultramarines control no fewer than eight nearby systems. Collectively these are known as Ultramar and, while each has its own government, armed forces and individual cultures, all look to the Ultramarines and Macragge for leadership.

The worlds surrounding Macragge are largely industrial in nature, and under Roboute Guilliman's guidance these worlds were revolutionised into prosperous, productive planets where honest toil and virtue are rewarded. The inhabitants of these worlds are industrious, disciplined and intensely loyal to the Ultramarines.

When looking to their defence, each world maintains its own dedicated armies, but can also call upon the protection of the Ultramarines. They are not required to levy troops for the Imperial Guard, but such is the prosperity and disciplined nature of Ultramar that hundreds of regiments stand ready to fight throughout the galaxy. As well as their own defence, the worlds of Ultramar provide recruits for the Ultramarines and it is a source of fierce pride when a family can point to an ancestor who became a Space Marine.

In the glory days of the Great Crusade, the worlds surrounding Macragge provided the Ultramarines with hundreds of new recruits, raw materials and supplies. This tradition has continued to the present day and strong ties have been maintained between Macragge and its surrounding planets. Given the close-knit structure of Ultramar, it is not surprising that many of its worlds share a commonality of language, culture, architecture and governmental styles.

Macragge is a rocky world, protected by numerous orbital batteries and two vast polar defence grids. It is here, in the harsh and unforgiving mountains, that the Ultramarines built the Fortress of Hera, housing the shrine of the Primarch himself within the Temple of Correction. Here the Primarch's body is held within a stasis field and the Temple is a place of great pilgrimage for many loyal citizens of the Imperium.

Talassar is a turbulent planet of tempests and violent seas, with but a single continent named Glaudor. In contrast, the three worlds of Quintarn, Tarentus and Masali orbit a common centre of gravity and, outside the huge, enclosed agri-cities, the land is desolate and arid. Wind traps collect water for domed cities that protect verdant greenery and hundreds of square miles of agricultural land. Calth's populace lives underground, far from the deadly rays of its blue sun, long ago seeded with poisons by the Word Bearers Traitor Legion. Vast underground caverns honeycomb the planet's crust and, though the planet is self-sufficient, like all others in Ultramar, a great deal of food is shipped in from nearby lax. The planet's shipyards are justly famous and construct a sizeable proportion of the ships in the Ultramarines fleet as well as those used by other arms of the Imperium. Both lax and Espandor are sparsely populated worlds towards the edge of Ultramar, lax is an agri-world and one of the most productive worlds in the Imperium, while Espandor is primarily composed of forests and rumoured to have been settled when traders were blown off course by a warp storm during the Age of Strife. The crowning glory of Ultramar was once Prandium and its natural beauty was famed throughout the Imperium, but the planet is now a barren, lifeless rock, stripped bare two hundred and fifty years ago by the rapacious Tyranids of Hive Fleet Behemoth."
- WD #264, Index Astartes : Ultramarines : Homeworld

tl;dr: 9 star systems with 8 populated worlds (3 of whom are located in the same system)

MacCragge - capital and large population
Calth - heavily populated
Talassar - wiped out?
Quintarn - agri-world
Tarentus - wiped out
Masali - agri-world
Iax - sparsely populated
Espandor - major population loss and sparsely populated to begin with
Prandium - dead

It seems that Ultramar therefore only consists of one heavily populated planet which is Calth, one other populated planet of note which is MacCragge. The rest are either dead worlds or sparsely populated.
Not exactly what you'd call a major part of the Imperium which Ultramar is supposed to be.
Maybe sparsely populated means hive cities a long way from each other so while sparsely populated there are still billions of people on these planets.

Spartak wrote:
I believe Ultramar as we knew it 30K (500 worlds) no longer exists, I think it was broken up between the Ultras successor chapters. As for as how many are left in what is now called Ultramar I don't think you will be able to find a solid answer

Right. The 500 Worlds of Ultramar just eventually became a part of the Ultima Segmentum, and were likely divvied up between the Ultramarines' successors. We don't really have a solid number of Chapters created at the 2nd Founding, but based on the TBL Legion sizes, and the fluff in Codex: Grey Knights, it is suggesting around 400 2nd Founding Chapters (amusingly enough the 6th Edition rulebook copy/pasted the previous Edition's fluff, but that's probably a lazy editor at work rather than a retcon of a retcon. We'll see what the new C:SM says I guess).

Based on that 400 number, and the idea that at the end of the Scouring the Ultramarines accounted for "more than half" of all the Space Marines, and the modern distribution of between 60 and 65% of all Space Marines, we can assume that there were slightly more than 250 2nd Founding Ultramarines Successors. Given that TBL decided to give the Word Bearers and World Eaters more to do in Betrayer so they could sell more books, there were probably somewhat less than 500 worlds in Ultramar at the end of the Scouring. But even at 500, that gets chewed up pretty quick if you're divvying them up between 250 brand new Chapters.