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No lore suggests this, but let's make a comparison.

The Ultramarines have about 1500 - 2000 available marines. While Macragge is their homeworld, they are recruited from multiple other planets across the realm of Ultramar. That's a lot of worlds just to sustain this few.

The Space Wolves have about 13,000 marines. They are still a Legion in their own right, and yet before the Great Rift they were recruiting exclusively from Fenris, which certainly has a much smaller population than Macragge.

We should also take into consideration that the Ultramarine geneseed is much more stable, which means they have a higher ratio of successful recruits being turned into full-fledged Space Marines.

So, it would make sense that dozens of Chapters can be raised from Macragge alone. If that's the case, it's just weird that Successor Chapters would still take more than half their recruits from Macragge, retain almost all traditions from the Ultramarines, but consider some uninteresting backwater world where barely anyone lives as their homeworld.

Firstly, the Space Wolves probably don't have 13000 Marines, it is probably more in the ballpark of 2000 to 4000 in the 41st millennium.

I cannot think of any examples. I don't think there is any hard and fast rule, but generally Marine chapters are assigned to protect a particular region and given a homeworld in a strategic location within that region. Recruits coming in from many sectors away isn't really conducive to maintaining strength independently. Sometimes Chapters are reinforced by recruits from other Chapters with the same geneseed though. It is really a question of independence and control over their own resources.

The only world that comes to mind that may have recruitment rights for multiple Chapters is Holy Terra itself, but I am not sure if anyone other than the Imperial Fists actually recruit there in the 41st millennium. Terra has a population in the quadrillions so could definitely support it though.

I think its extremely unlikely that a homeworld would be shared. I can see a recruiting world being shared maybe. However with the number of available worlds in the Imperium being 3 orders of magnitude greater than the number of chapters, I don't see it being particularly necessary.

Its one of the many things that you can point to being feasible, so you can use it in your personal force backstory, but is unlikely ever to be formally acknowledged in the lore.

The descendants of the Ultramarines may well all draw recruits from the 500 Worlds of Ultramar. But whether that means there’s a sort of centralised recruitment pool is hard to say, as I can’t find any specific information.

It may well be that the more densely populated planets do provide recruitment grounds for multiple Chapters. And there may be some form of rota or record keeping to ensure no one planet is subject to multiple recruitments (outside of emergency) one after the other.

Crusading, Fleet Based Chapters recruit as and when they can, from whichever populace is nearest and best suited to demand. This can again open up a world to recruitment from more than one Chapter, especially if it’s in a particularly high risk zone, with multiple assets deployed.

But, to the best of my knowledge, no one planet is Homeworld to more than one Chapter. Or, at least since the Ultima Founding and the establishment of entirely new Chapters, no more than one Chapter at a time. Because if Chapter A was wiped out 200 years ago whilst out and about their duties? It makes sense to give Chapter B the former assets.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The descendants of the Ultramarines may well all draw recruits from the 500 Worlds of Ultramar. But whether that means there’s a sort of centralised recruitment pool is hard to say, as I can’t find any specific information.

It may well be that the more densely populated planets do provide recruitment grounds for multiple Chapters. And there may be some form of rota or record keeping to ensure no one planet is subject to multiple recruitments (outside of emergency) one after the other.

I thought the Ultramarines simply didn't have (official) control over the entire 500 worlds anymore, with most worlds having been parcelled off to other Chapters like Sotha to the Scythes of the Emperor?

Crusading, Fleet Based Chapters recruit as and when they can, from whichever populace is nearest and best suited to demand. This can again open up a world to recruitment from more than one Chapter, especially if it’s in a particularly high risk zone, with multiple assets deployed.

I get the impression most fleet-based Chapters operate in the same manner as the Dark Angels, Black Templars, and Imperial Fists, with a series of recruitment keeps rather than ad hoc recruitment from random populations. The Carcharodons model seems to be rarer.

I seem to recall a couple instances where it was mentioned that there were two chapters calling a single world home - but in at least one of those instances it was because the planet was stripped from one chapter and given to the other as a fief, basically. I think I came across one that referenced two chapters sharing a world simultaneously but I don't recall specifics.

Its kind of irrelevant though, as chapter homeworld != recruitment world, and in most cases it seems that a worlds recruitment rights aren't necessarily exclusive to one chapter.

No reason they couldn't, at least from a logistics standpoint.

But I think the main reason Chapters don't share homeworlds is because Space Marines are supposed to be out there protecting the Imperium. Its harder to do that if a bunch of chapters are based out of the same location. And since a Marine chapter doesn't take a huge toll on the population of its homeworld or any of its recruitment worlds, it just makes sense to spread them out.

 Flinty wrote:
I think its extremely unlikely that a homeworld would be shared. I can see a recruiting world being shared maybe. However with the number of available worlds in the Imperium being 3 orders of magnitude greater than the number of chapters, I don't see it being particularly necessary.

Its one of the many things that you can point to being feasible, so you can use it in your personal force backstory, but is unlikely ever to be formally acknowledged in the lore.

This. It's viable if you want to do it for your own chapter lore. The only possible hiccup is that most chapters seem to (at least prefer to) be so selective with their recruits that a given world can only produce a handful of viable candidates every generation. There's that short story where we see the wine drinking chapter holding their recruitment ritual right before 'nids attack. IIRC, the implication is that they started with dozens or possibly hundreds of ganger kids fighting each other as they travel up-hive. By the end, they had like, 5 viable recruits. And that's before surgeries/genseed/marine training whittle their numbers down even more.

So if a second chapter were to recruit from that same population while having similar standards/methods of choosing candidates, they'd either have to split up those recruits between them, or they'd have "lower their standards" by making the initial recruitment process less murdery. Which, tbf, is probably a good idea. A lot of the grimdark for grimdark's sake recruiting methods the marines use seem unnecessarily lethal. Maybe chapters wouldn't be understrength so often if they didn't kill 99% of their candidates by making them play Hunger Games before offering them any training or checking for their genetic viability as candidates.

 Grey Templar wrote:
No reason they couldn't, at least from a logistics standpoint.

But I think the main reason Chapters don't share homeworlds is because Space Marines are supposed to be out there protecting the Imperium. Its harder to do that if a bunch of chapters are based out of the same location. And since a Marine chapter doesn't take a huge toll on the population of its homeworld or any of its recruitment worlds, it just makes sense to spread them out.

Theres multiple instances in the fluff of groupings of chapters - IIRC in some cases entire foundings - being formed with the explicit purpose of guarding/serving within a specific region. Ex - The Astartes Praeses. 20 Chapters founded for and dedicated to service in the Eye of Terror region and guarding the Cadian Gate. So the idea that they won't share chapter homeworlds because they want to be spread out is a bit off. Hell, how many ultramarines successors had their homeworlds in the Realm of Ultramar?

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
No reason they couldn't, at least from a logistics standpoint.

But I think the main reason Chapters don't share homeworlds is because Space Marines are supposed to be out there protecting the Imperium. Its harder to do that if a bunch of chapters are based out of the same location. And since a Marine chapter doesn't take a huge toll on the population of its homeworld or any of its recruitment worlds, it just makes sense to spread them out.

Theres multiple instances in the fluff of groupings of chapters - IIRC in some cases entire foundings - being formed with the explicit purpose of guarding/serving within a specific region. Ex - The Astartes Praeses. 20 Chapters founded for and dedicated to service in the Eye of Terror region and guarding the Cadian Gate. So the idea that they won't share chapter homeworlds because they want to be spread out is a bit off. Hell, how many ultramarines successors had their homeworlds in the Realm of Ultramar?

Whilst true, those are not exactly small regions. The Eye, for example, is surrounded by multiple Imperial sectors. These are regions many, many lightyears across. Even if the Chapter-density is higher in these regions, the Chapters are unlikely to be right on top of each other.

Well, one of the key conceits of the setting is that the eye of terror only presents a risk to the Imperium via the cadian gate, and the rest of the region is essentially impenetrable to both the forces of the imperium and also the forces of chaos. So that being the case, despite the size of the eye of terror, you're really only talking about needing to fortify and guard a very narrow sliver of space, rather than the entirety of its perimeter.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Well, one of the key conceits of the setting is that the eye of terror only presents a risk to the Imperium via the cadian gate, and the rest of the region is essentially impenetrable to both the forces of the imperium and also the forces of chaos. So that being the case, despite the size of the eye of terror, you're really only talking about needing to fortify and guard a very narrow sliver of space, rather than the entirety of its perimeter.

I thought that was only true for large Chaos forces, and small Chaos raiding forces slip in and out via other routes all the time. Which would necessitate a more distributed deployment- Space Marine Chapters would be well suited for hunting down and intercepting such forces. Larger incursions via the Cadian Gate typically have more warning and would allow greater time to redeploy.

That said, they are probably clustered more towards the Cadian Gate than other parts of the Eye. Without knowing the actual locations of the 20 Chapter homeworlds, it is hard to say how they are distributed though.

Yeah, the Eye was a problem because it destabilised the entire region with constant raids while the Cadian Gate was an exit point for huge fleets of Chaos forces.

A chapter's fief-world is just that: an exclusive fief.

bibotot wrote:
No lore suggests this, but let's make a comparison.

The Ultramarines have about 1500 - 2000 available marines. While Macragge is their homeworld, they are recruited from multiple other planets across the realm of Ultramar. That's a lot of worlds just to sustain this few.

The Space Wolves have about 13,000 marines. They are still a Legion in their own right, and yet before the Great Rift they were recruiting exclusively from Fenris, which certainly has a much smaller population than Macragge.

We should also take into consideration that the Ultramarine geneseed is much more stable, which means they have a higher ratio of successful recruits being turned into full-fledged Space Marines.

So, it would make sense that dozens of Chapters can be raised from Macragge alone. If that's the case, it's just weird that Successor Chapters would still take more than half their recruits from Macragge, retain almost all traditions from the Ultramarines, but consider some uninteresting backwater world where barely anyone lives as their homeworld.

You have to consider administrative issues. Space Marine Chapters are basically states in their own rights. Having multiple chapters set up shop on Macragge would mean dividing the planet into multiple "states", and Imperium by an large generally seems to operate on planetary level and above. So it is much simpler to give each Ultramarine successor chapter have their own space rock and have recruits shipped from Macragge as needed than to have them all share the same piece of real estate.

Plus, having chapters more spread out means that you have better coverage to account for widespread brush wars that Imperium is pretty much constantly fighting.

So administratively AND strategically, it is better choice to provide each chapter with its own homeworld.