Suffer Not ≡][≡ 40k Inquisition Quest

[open_sketch]

≡][≡ Inquisitor Joanyn Praxis ≡][≡
Imperial Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus

Spoiler: Portrait

Spoiler: Attributes

Attributes
Physical Attributes
Strength - 1
Agility - 2
Melee - 1
Endurance: 4

Mental Attributes
Intelligence - 3
Tactics - 2
Nerve - 1
Fortitude: 6

Social Attributes
Charm - 4
Presence - 3
Contacts - 3
Resolve: 10

Faith Attributes
Belief - 2
Scripture - 0
Fire - 1
Conviction: 3

Spoiler: Values & Temptation

(3) - The Imperium should be an alliance of solidarity for the weak, not an alliance of strength for the strong.
(2) - People are more than problems, weaknesses, corruption vectors to eradicate. Their feelings and dreams matter.
(1) - A Shot Fired is a Shot Wasted

<1> - Victory makes me feel alive.

Spoiler: Stat Summary

Strength is raw physical conditioning. Lifting stuff, swimming, running a long time, punching hard. It's added to many melee attack damage as well.

Agility is swiftness, reaction speed, and immediate awareness. It's used for dodging things, jumping, ducking, outrunning folks, and other twitchy reactions.

Melee is the general skill of up close combat with knives, swords, fists (power or otherwise), chainsaws, whatever else.

Intelligence is raw intellectual power, knowledge, and drive to learn and study stuff. It is also used for military logistics.

Tactics is your knowledge of battle tactics, from the strategy of leading armies to simply knowing when it is safe to rush across a hallway in a gunfight.

Nerve is the stat both for shooting firearms and for keeping your cool. Nerve checks are common in combat to prevent from panicking or fight through pain.

Charm is the social stat used for flattery, smoothtalking, lying, seduction, verbal sparring, deflection, and navigating high culture.

Presence is the social stat used for reasoning, explaining, teaching, intimidating, impressing, or public address.

Contacts is rolled to know people you need to know, and to have a good reputation with them.

Belief is your actual faith in... whatever you have faith in. The Emperor, hopefully. It is used to resist temptation and corruption.

Scripture is your knowledge of the intellectual side of your religious faith. If you can quote from the holy books and theologians. It's intelligence for matters of faith.

Fire is your ability to project your faith out and convince others of it. Want to convert somebody or whip a crowd into a fanatical fury? This stat.

Spoiler: Skills

Weapon: Laspistol
Weapon: Hellpistol
Trade: Manager
Trade: Spy
Trade: Political Operator
Talent: Verbal Sparring
Talent: Seduction
Talent: Dishonesty
Talent: Intimidation
Talent: Exfiltration
Talent: Logistics
Talent: Propaganda
Talent: Indirect Persuasion
People: Dahlia
People: The Corrupted
People: High Imperial Politicians
Knowledge: Imperial Political Theory

Spoiler: Weapons & Armour

Social Loadout
1 Compact Laspistol, 1 Laspistol Reload, Flash-Safe Glasses, 6 Concealed monoknives, 1 Show Knife, 1 Belt Buckle Gun, 1 Plastex Bodyglove/Flakweave Suit, Displacer Field

Combat Options
+1 Hellpistol, +1 Transonic Machete

Compact Laspistol
Small Handgun
Attack Dice: 1/d10 -or- 2/d10-1
Aim Bonus: +1
Damage Bonus: +2
Armour Reduction: 0
Magazine Size: 4
Special
Laser: Does not cause bleeding.
Blinding: If operated without flash protection, witnessing the impact of a las-weapon will blind for 3 rounds.

Concealed Monoknife
Small Knife
Attack Dice : 1/d10
Damage Bonus : Agility + 1
Armour Penetration : 2
Parry Bonus : -1
Disarm Bonus : +0

Show Knife
Medium Knife
Attack Dice : 1/d10+1
Damage Bonus : Agility + 1
Armour Penetration : 0
Parry Bonus : +0
Disarm Bonus : +0

Buckle Gun
Tiny Handgun
Attack Dice: 2/d10-2
Aim Bonus: +0
Damage Bonus: -2
Armour Reduction: 0
Magazine Size: 1
Special
Hidden: Will always escape searches.

Plastex Bodyglove/Flakweave Suit
Clothing
Armour Value : 3
Coverage : All but Head and Eyes
Resistances : Impact, Blunt

Displacer Field
Energy Screen
When hit with an attack, roll 1d10.
1: Displaced into worse danger.
2: Displacer field fails. Take the hit.
3-6: Displaced hard. Take 1 Sore from bumping into something.
7-9: Displaced. Attack avoided.
10: Nothing personal, kid.

Hellpistol (Voss Pattern)
Medium Handgun/Carbine
Attack Dice: 1/d10 -or- 2/d10-1 (One-Handed)
Aim Bonus: +1
Damage Bonus: +3
Armour Reduction: 2
Magazine Size: 12
Special
Laser: Does not cause bleeding.
Blinding: If operated without flash protection, witnessing the impact of a las-weapon will blind for 3 rounds.
Convertible: When converted to Carbine mode, gain +1 to Attack and Aim Bonus.

Transonic Machete
Medium Knife
Attack Dice : 1/d10+2
Damage Bonus : Strength + 3
Armour Penetration : 1 + Half of enemy Armour (Round Down)
Parry Bonus : +0
Disarm Bonus : +3
Special
Sickening Vibrations: Enemies with 3 meters of an active blade count as being at -1 to all stats.

Spoiler: Companions

Sister Charitina
A member of the Order Famulous who found her faith again thanks to the Inquisitor. Praxis' closest confidant, dearest friend, and irritating ex-girlfriend.
Attributes of Note: Nerve 3, Contacts 4, Charm 3, Scripture 2, Fire 2
Skills of Note: Career - Order Famulous, Weapon - Bolt Carbine, People - Inquisitor Praxis
Equipment: Half-Plate Power Armour, Bolt Carbine, Burning Blade
Known Values: (3) The nobility is a blight on the Imperium, (2) I trust the Inquisitor's vision for the future, (1) Galaxy grim and dark, tiddy soft and warm.

Dahlia Hussian
A 17 year old unsanctioned psyker, rescued by Praxis from the witch's pyre she volunteered for at age 12. Loves the Emperor, and hates herself for being unworthy and twisted.
Attributes of Note: Power 1, Control 2, Sight 2, Faith 5, Strength -1, Nerve 0
Skills of Note: Talent - Self Discipline, Talent - Self-Hatred
Equipment: Web Derringer
Known Values: [3] I am here because I was given a chance. I should extend the same chance to others, [2] The Emperor is all things, [1] I can atone for my existence by aiding the Inquisitor

Marvel Ann Alemanga-Zero
A Magos of the biology wing of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Marvel Ann is an exuberant, odd, and enthusiastic cyborg lady who is an expert in medicine and bionics. She's Joanyn's current sweetheart, and she autotunes her voice.
Attributes of Note: Intelligence 4, Charm 3, Strength 4
Skills of Note: Career - Cyberdoc, Talent - Surgery, Talent - Singing
Known Values: [2] Adventure is to be seized with both hands (and as many mechandrites as possible)

Fraser Bookter
A positively ancient scribe who served Praxis' teacher, Bookter has seen all manner of things. Despite that, he keeps good humour.
Attributes of Note: Intelligence 4, Scripture 2, Contacts 2, Strength -2
Skills of Note: Career - Archivist, Knowledge - Imperial History
Known Values: ???

Korey Kilimnik
Once a Lightning fighter pilot for the Navy, until he was caught fucking an admiral's son. Kilimnik professionally doesn't care unless it has jet engines.
Attributes of Note: Nerve 5, Agility 3
Skills of Note: Career - Fighter Pilot, Talent - Piloting, Talent - Causing Trouble
Known Values: [2] By death or rejuvenation, age will never slow my reflexes

Penalties​

≡][≡​	Sore​	Strain​	Stress​	Stain​	≡][≡​
◹☠◸​	0/4​	0/6​	0/10​	0/3​	◹☠◸​
◹⛉◸​	3 XP​	XP3​	33 XP​	9 XP​	◹⛉◸​

CURRENT RP
6

RULES SUMMARY
ROLZ ROOM​

 

[Simon_Jester]

As for Marines, my own take is more...All that blather about courage and honour rings thoroughly hollow as it's just...parrot talk drilled into them by the hypnoindoctrination. They're broken monsters ten thousand years past the best-by date, clinging to protocols and relics that're hollow mockeries of the Legions that butchered the surviving human civilizations in a forgotten age at the whims of unbalanced warlords- and that's just the loyalists!

Click to shrink...

The thing is, that breaking and mockery can cut both ways.

Under the Emperor and the Primarchs, maybe the Space Marine legions were just ruthless goons who smashed a thousand civilizations and exterminated a thousand innocent species, no more and no less.

But after ten thousand years... the only thing left from that time is the propaganda. A typical Marine chapter has had at least forty or fifty successive Chapter Masters, forty or fifty successive 'generations' of Marines, since the days when almost all personal memory of the Heresy was already lost. And that's with a typical Marine 'service life' of 200-250 years; it's not necessarily that high in practice (in theory a Marine chapter could biologically double its numbers in like 20 years; the fact that they generally don't suggests their turnover is pretty significant).

It's entirely possible that many Chapters don't really have the same culture of brutality and cruelty that their Great Crusade forbears did, any more than ethnic-Assyrian militias fighting ISIS in the modern day resemble the brutal city-crushing Assyrian armies of 2800 years ago.

The Assyrians back then are the ones that invented the act of smashing diverse cities and nations under the iron-shod boots of your grim-faced armies, not least because they are literally the ones that invented the iron-shod army boot.

Nowadays? They're... not that.

...

The Space Marines may be indoctrinated, but they've had dozens of generations to believe the hype is sacred. Maybe some of them simply take it seriously, until they really DO try very hard to live up to courage, honor, and the chivalrous spirit, genuinely thinking of themselves as protectors.

There's no shortage of external threats for them to protect humanity from, after all.

 

[Ugolino]

The thing is, that breaking and mockery can cut both ways.

Under the Emperor and the Primarchs, maybe the Space Marine legions were just ruthless goons who smashed a thousand civilizations and exterminated a thousand innocent species, no more and no less.

But after ten thousand years... the only thing left from that time is the propaganda. A typical Marine chapter has had at least forty or fifty successive Chapter Masters, forty or fifty successive 'generations' of Marines, since the days when almost all personal memory of the Heresy was already lost. And that's with a typical Marine 'service life' of 200-250 years; it's not necessarily that high in practice (in theory a Marine chapter could biologically double its numbers in like 20 years; the fact that they generally don't suggests their turnover is pretty significant).

It's entirely possible that many Chapters don't really have the same culture of brutality and cruelty that their Great Crusade forbears did, any more than ethnic-Assyrian militias fighting ISIS in the modern day resemble the brutal city-crushing Assyrian armies of 2800 years ago.

The Assyrians back then are the ones that invented the act of smashing diverse cities and nations under the iron-shod boots of your grim-faced armies, not least because they are literally the ones that invented the iron-shod army boot.

Nowadays? They're... not that.

The Space Marines may be indoctrinated, but they've had dozens of generations to believe the hype is sacred. Maybe some of them simply take it seriously.

Click to shrink...

Thing is...I find it hard to believe anything good might come of canon Marines given the default state is still based on "programming", the Imperium intentionally clinging to its worst aspects as state-mandated ideology, and that Imperial culture went from "pretty horrid" to "somehow even worse"? Crushing unlucky space peasants and attempted revolutions instead of full-on civilizations isn't the sort of thing that seems like it'd lead to particularly enlightened individuals, especially not when the butchers get to wear the fancy hats and call the shots for centuries at a time.

It's telling that all it takes to get Marines to start shooting each other and wipe out an entire Chapter- in canon- is to dial down the brainwashing and to introduce them to new ideas.

Honestly, if we're talking less scummy Marines, they probably get swept under the rug as "And lo, in M37.675, the faithless Chapter Master of the Knights of Temperance did commit vile perfidy, leading two parts of his Astartes host into rebellion against the agents of the Golden Throne, and spitting upon his sacred oaths of service and obedience in the name of the twin heresies of 'tolerance' and 'equality', slaying those of his brothers and the revered Chaplains who would not follow him into damnation..."

 

[ShyPerson]

Out of curiosity, what does the cat rating generally mean?

Also, if I may bug you with a question @open_sketch, how do you interpret Astartes Chapter founding to be conducted? It's a subject that is very vaguely discribed in official sources whenever it comes up, and so lends itself to interpretation by fans. I am curious how you would interpret the procedures, like where the first recruits are sourced from and how the initial leadership is selected and how the ships of the chapter fleets get handed out. It's something of a personal interest to which answers I have seen elsewhere have never felt satisfactory.

I think it's safe to assume that the story of the Gate Wardens founding is not the literal truth how it came to be, is it?

 

[10ebbor10]

Out of curiosity, what does the cat rating generally mean?

Click to shrink...

It means that someone pays the website money. It's a subscriber perk.

 

[ShyPerson]

It means that someone pays the website money. It's a subscriber perk.

Click to shrink...

I know that. I wonder what exactly it means when you rate someone's post with it?

 

[KhazintheDark]

I know that. I wonder what exactly it means when you rate someone's post with it?

Click to shrink...

Meow.

 

[query]

So in the case of Ann and other Adeptus Mechanicus members is the quirky voice modulation deliberate or actually glitching from improper maintenance/poor quality?

 

[ShyPerson]

Meow.

Click to shrink...

I don't generally meme. You're going to have to taylor the response for someone with poor social skills, and translate to English.

 

[FrangibleCover]

So in the case of Ann and other Adeptus Mechanicus members is the quirky voice modulation deliberate or actually glitching from improper maintenance/poor quality?

Click to shrink...

She's doing that on purpose for vocal effect. It's the combination between tone of voice and all of the tricks we use to create tone of voice in text on the internet.

I don't generally meme. You're going to have to taylor the response for someone with poor social skills, and translate to English.

Click to shrink...

My interpretation of it is that it indicates general approval, but I'll let someone who actually has access to it explain their thoughts when using it.

 

[Always Late]

But after ten thousand years... the only thing left from that time is the propaganda.

Click to shrink...

That and the relic equipment like Contemptors incapable of memory loss or super-heavy tanks like the Fellblade.

Out of curiosity, what does the cat rating generally mean?

Click to shrink...

I don't generally meme. You're going to have to taylor the response for someone with poor social skills, and translate to English.

Click to shrink...

He's not meming. It's a "Meow". And that Meow can mean alot of different things, and the explanation I'm giving you can very well be only accurate from my perspective. Each person who has it may have different views of it. But by my reckoning, it's a bit of a cross between an insightful and a like. Since it's often given out by people who've been around the site for a very long time, they're liking what you're saying quite alot. And with the posts that get a deep impact often being thought-provoking or providing answers they've never thought about before, it's also sorta worth an insightful.

 

[open_sketch]

I use it to mean :3, which is a wonderful emoji that means "i am amused, and possibly evil"

When a chapter is founded, it starts with a request to the Adeptus Terra, the central bureaucracy. If approved, a member of their officers and a portion of their strength is broken off to form the basis of the chapter, and they usually spend a few decades gathering strength, building a gene seed reserve, and getting equipment from whatever forge worlds or workshops they source from. I imagine there are shipyard worlds that are always making space marine ships, and the new Chapters get placed at the top of the queue for the news ones.

Marvel Ann is one hundred percent doing that with her voice on purpose. Well, I mean, more like she purposefully set it up so her voice would do that on its own. One of the first things a lot of Magos install is a voice synthesizer that will let them talk the machine language, and many are quick to just replace their regular voices with them: after all, if you have a machine that does it, why do you need a terrible biological version?

While Marvel Ann very much agreed her biological voice was terrible, she also always loved to sing, so it wasn't long until she started messing with it.

 

[Night_stalker]

So, how dangerous is the average purestrain 'stealer?

Click to shrink...

Insanely. They're fast, have claws that'll go through Terminator armor like paper, and are smart. Think something like a Xenomorph.

I am not an expert on 'stealers. How viable is it to have a giant metal-cleaving claw hidden under an apparent-human's clothes? Hidden under their skin? What about horking-up/bursting-into a wash of extremely corrosive toxins? Can one contain enough acid to eat through the hull of a boarding ram? Can they act as a psychic relay to an effect that could rip their immediate terrain apart like wet paper? I would really like to calibrate my worst-case scenario...

Click to shrink...

Depends. These guys are probably 4th generation hybrids, so no mutations, which is all the scarier. These guys hide in plain sight, act totally normal, sometimes get sent off into the Guard.



This is roughly the life cycle of hybrids. You start out like the guy on the left, getting up to the icon bearer (4th Gen, what we're dealing with), and then paradoxically, you get Purestrains in the 5th generation.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is...I find it hard to believe anything good might come of canon Marines given the default state is still based on "programming", the Imperium intentionally clinging to its worst aspects as state-mandated ideology, and that Imperial culture went from "pretty horrid" to "somehow even worse"? Crushing unlucky space peasants and attempted revolutions instead of full-on civilizations isn't the sort of thing that seems like it'd lead to particularly enlightened individuals, especially not when the butchers get to wear the fancy hats and call the shots for centuries at a time.

Click to shrink...

OK but stop and think about some of this for a minute.

1) The Marine chapter setup means that Space Marines have more political independence than almost anyone else in the Imperium. They rule their own fiefdoms that are not part of the overall Imperial bureaucracy- which would be very bad if the Imperial bureaucracy itself were good, but by your own argument, it's not. But Marine chapters get broad tolerance as long as they fight; if they're out fighting the enemies of the Imperium nobody's going to ask too many questions about the suspiciously permissive planetary government the Marines set up. It doesn't even have to pay the usual tithes. So there's going to be a huge range of possible outcomes for Marine monastery-worlds, some good and some bad, but importantly, there is range for diversity of outcomes. The external forces of the Imperium do not enforce as much political conformity on the Astartes.

2) There is no turnover between the regular Imperium aristocracy and the Marines. The Marines may be child soldiers, but they're generally drawn widely from a planetary population- they have to be, since so few people are genetically suitable to become a Marine. And once they become Space Marines they stay that way. There is no path for promotion into the glittering ranks of the nobility, and there is no reliable way for social privilege to get you the captaincy of a Marine company or chapter.

3) The guys wearing the big shiny hats who get them by committing atrocities have only limited authority over the Marines- again, it takes a lot, usually an open declaration of independence or willfully pissing off the Adeptus Mechanicus, for a chapter to get put on the shit list and purged. Short of that, they have broad latitude to do what they want. This gives them the option, the special privilege if you will, of to some extent ignoring the "culture at the top" of Imperium society.

4) Importantly, the Imperium has a lot going on, and Space Marines tend to be called in for the worst and wildest situations the Imperial military has to deal with. Putting down a peasant revolt is a routine task; if asked to assist, any given Marine chapter master is likely to say: "sorry, I'm busy fighting a running campaign across four sectors of Imperial space against an ork WAAAGH!, three Dark Eldar warlords who are all basically the twisted love children of Ted Bundy and Cruella de Vil, oh and a couple of planets where literal demons keep popping out of the woodwork. I do not have time for your bullshit problem caused by your idiot nephew fucking up the tax registers. Goodbye."

Take something like the Iron Snakes chapter; the closest they come to fighting humans in the book is fighting a chaos demon summoned up by an insurrection that turned into a demon-summoning cult. And you can fight demon-summoning cultists who happen to be insurrectionists, while still being, y'know, not SS-level human trash.

This is true even if the chapter master has absolutely no problem with slaughtering peasants- that's a task that the Imperial Guard or PDF troops or Sisters of Battle would be far more effective at, because they are more numerous and can afford to hang around occupying territory for an extended period where the Marines will always, always have somewhere else to be and something else bigger and nastier to fight.

...

So basically, "they were all always super-fash and they always will be, and the only decent Marines are the ones who rebel against the system" is a take, and can be part of a self-consistent view of the Imperium. It even works rather well with the "invert the figure and ground, the Imperium is evil and fascist and Chaos is actually fine and just the victim of propaganda, DEATH TO THE CORPSE EMPEROR" approach.

But it's not the only take, and it's not the take @open_sketch seems to be using here.

It's telling that all it takes to get Marines to start shooting each other and wipe out an entire Chapter- in canon- is to dial down the brainwashing and to introduce them to new ideas.

Click to shrink...

Could you please be specific about what incident you're talking about? I can't address it without knowing what you mean.

Honestly, if we're talking less scummy Marines, they probably get swept under the rug as "And lo, in M37.675, the faithless Chapter Master of the Knights of Temperance did commit vile perfidy, leading two parts of his Astartes host into rebellion against the agents of the Golden Throne, and spitting upon his sacred oaths of service and obedience in the name of the twin heresies of 'tolerance' and 'equality', slaying those of his brothers and the revered Chaplains who would not follow him into damnation..."

Click to shrink...

There is a tremendous gap within Imperial ideology between being the extra double plus murder fanatics who are constantly slaughtering human innocents... and having to openly rebel against the Imperium as a whole. A gap easily big enough to fit whole Space Marine chapters and Guard regiments into.

 

[ShyPerson]

I use it to mean :3, which is a wonderful emoji that means "i am amused, and possibly evil"

When a chapter is founded, it starts with a request to the Adeptus Terra, the central bureaucracy. If approved, a member of their officers and a portion of their strength is broken off to form the basis of the chapter, and they usually spend a few decades gathering strength, building a gene seed reserve, and getting equipment from whatever forge worlds or workshops they source from. I imagine there are shipyard worlds that are always making space marine ships, and the new Chapters get placed at the top of the queue for the news ones.

Marvel Ann is one hundred percent doing that with her voice on purpose. Well, I mean, more like she purposefully set it up so her voice would do that on its own. One of the first things a lot of Magos install is a voice synthesizer that will let them talk the machine language, and many are quick to just replace their regular voices with them: after all, if you have a machine that does it, why do you need a terrible biological version?

While Marvel Ann very much agreed her biological voice was terrible, but she also always loved to sing, so it wasn't long until she started messing with it.

Click to shrink...

Thanks. Also, you are EVIL!!!!!!? Well, I am out here! I shall not have my posts tainted by your wickedness!



In all seriousness, that's quite the departure from the official material. So should we assume that the big numbered founding are more like a fancy historical flourish, and that the actual "foundings" were more spread out events over a similar timeframe instead of singular big events?

 

[Simon_Jester]

In all seriousness, that's quite the departure from the official material. So should we assume that the big numbered founding are more like a fancy historical flourish, and that the actual "foundings" were more spread out events over a similar timeframe instead of singular big events?

Click to shrink...

Option Three:

There are about a thousand chapters, total. At any given time, a certain fraction of them have been smashed down into military uselessness or outright destroyed, and the rest are constantly taking casualties, and there are never, never enough Marines to be everywhere the Imperium needs them to be.

In this environment, new chapters are being founded all the time (well, regularly, perhaps no more than one every few decades, but regularly), in the way @open_sketch describes.

In addition, sometimes, every several centuries, the Administratum and the Adeptus Mechanicus and the High Lords of Terra get together and go "golly gee willikers, we're starting to run alarmingly low on Space Marines" and systematically make an effort to found a bunch of new chapters, often with gene-seed derived primarily from the stocks of the original founding chapters descended from the original legions (like the Imperial Fists, Salamanders, and Ultramarines). Those are called "Foundings" and you see, like, potentially up to a few dozen new chapters being founded all at once. Maybe even a hundred.

 

[Swedish15]

(in theory a Marine chapter could biologically double its numbers in like 20 years; the fact that they generally don't suggests their turnover is pretty significant).

Click to shrink...

I think I remember that post-Heresy chapters are limited to a thousand marines. That could be a factor as well.

 

[Ugolino]

OK but stop and think about some of this for a minute.

1) The Marine chapter setup means that Space Marines have more political independence than almost anyone else in the Imperium. They rule their own fiefdoms that are not part of the overall Imperial bureaucracy- which would be very bad if the Imperial bureaucracy itself were good, but by your own argument, it's not. But Marine chapters get broad tolerance as long as they fight; if they're out fighting the enemies of the Imperium nobody's going to ask too many questions about the suspiciously permissive planetary government the Marines set up. It doesn't even have to pay the usual tithes. So there's going to be a huge range of possible outcomes for Marine monastery-worlds, some good and some bad, but importantly, there is range for diversity of outcomes. The external forces of the Imperium do not enforce as much political conformity on the Astartes.

2) There is no turnover between the regular Imperium aristocracy and the Marines. The Marines may be child soldiers, but they're generally drawn widely from a planetary population- they have to be, since so few people are genetically suitable to become a Marine. And once they become Space Marines they stay that way. There is no path for promotion into the glittering ranks of the nobility, and there is no reliable way for social privilege to get you the captaincy of a Marine company or chapter.

3) The guys wearing the big shiny hats who get them by committing atrocities have only limited authority over the Marines- again, it takes a lot, usually an open declaration of independence or willfully pissing off the Adeptus Mechanicus, for a chapter to get put on the shit list and purged. Short of that, they have broad latitude to do what they want. This gives them the option, the special privilege if you will, of to some extent ignoring the "culture at the top" of Imperium society.

4) Importantly, the Imperium has a lot going on, and Space Marines tend to be called in for the worst and wildest situations the Imperial military has to deal with. Putting down a peasant revolt is a routine task; if asked to assist, any given Marine chapter master is likely to say: "sorry, I'm busy fighting a running campaign across four sectors of Imperial space against an ork WAAAGH!, three Dark Eldar warlords who are all basically the twisted love children of Ted Bundy and Cruella de Vil, oh and a couple of planets where literal demons keep popping out of the woodwork. I do not have time for your bullshit problem caused by your idiot nephew fucking up the tax registers. Goodbye."

Take something like the Iron Snakes chapter; the closest they come to fighting humans in the book is fighting a chaos demon summoned up by an insurrection that turned into a demon-summoning cult. And you can fight demon-summoning cultists who happen to be insurrectionists, while still being, y'know, not SS-level human trash.

This is true even if the chapter master has absolutely no problem with slaughtering peasants- that's a task that the Imperial Guard or PDF troops or Sisters of Battle would be far more effective at, because they are more numerous and can afford to hang around occupying territory for an extended period where the Marines will always, always have somewhere else to be and something else bigger and nastier to fight.

...

So basically, "they were all always super-fash and they always will be, and the only decent Marines are the ones who rebel against the system" is a take, and can be part of a self-consistent view of the Imperium. It even works rather well with the "invert the figure and ground, the Imperium is evil and fascist and Chaos is actually fine and just the victim of propaganda, DEATH TO THE CORPSE EMPEROR" approach.

But it's not the only take, and it's not the take @open_sketch seems to be using here.

Could you please be specific about what incident you're talking about? I can't address it without knowing what you mean.

There is a tremendous gap within Imperial ideology between being the extra double plus murder fanatics who are constantly slaughtering human innocents... and having to openly rebel against the Imperium as a whole. A gap easily big enough to fit whole Space Marine chapters and Guard regiments into.

Click to shrink...

Naturally, I'm not disputing other takes.

1)Marines tend towards being unpleasant overlords due to being murderbots, but that's a valid take.
2)I'm talking about Imperial ideology as a whole.
3)The guys with hats within the Chapter are the problem, and there's selection pressure against "reasonable" individuals that somehow avoid being ruined by the brainwashing to the point even a "minor" divergence from the template like Huron was somehow considered a great failure of the system.
4)Thing is, are they? They certainly like to think that, but we know that gaggles of Marines or Companies often end up "suppressing revolts". They're certainly more quick about it than normal Imperial forces but let's be honest: most of what a Marine chapter does is probably rush around stomping rebels in a series of one-sided "battles". (It's even their "example" battle in the 3e Marine codex, as well as Constantius, the Marines in the Cain series, the starting premise of any story with surprise genestealer cultists or chaos etc etc)

Chaos doesn't have to always turn out fine (the Warp is not a a toy and all that) for it to have more to offer than the Imperial "system" and that's without getting into regular revolution.

I'm talking about the Emperor's Swords incident in which the Alpha Legion literally just gave individual Marines an understanding of "deviant philosophies" and the whole Chapter imploded because it turns out the Chapter-type organization is deathly allergic to Marines having ideas of their own that aren't part of indoctrination.

I think I remember that post-Heresy chapters are limited to a thousand marines. That could be a factor as well.

Click to shrink...

Guilliman canonically crippled Marine coordination and made them a bunch of isolationist gaggles, even while keeping his own Legion intact in all but name, yes.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

I use it to mean :3, which is a wonderful emoji that means "i am amused, and possibly evil"

When a chapter is founded, it starts with a request to the Adeptus Terra, the central bureaucracy. If approved, a member of their officers and a portion of their strength is broken off to form the basis of the chapter, and they usually spend a few decades gathering strength, building a gene seed reserve, and getting equipment from whatever forge worlds or workshops they source from. I imagine there are shipyard worlds that are always making space marine ships, and the new Chapters get placed at the top of the queue for the news ones.

Marvel Ann is one hundred percent doing that with her voice on purpose. Well, I mean, more like she purposefully set it up so her voice would do that on its own. One of the first things a lot of Magos install is a voice synthesizer that will let them talk the machine language, and many are quick to just replace their regular voices with them: after all, if you have a machine that does it, why do you need a terrible biological version?

While Marvel Ann very much agreed her biological voice was terrible, but she also always loved to sing, so it wasn't long until she started messing with it.

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My enjoyment of reading any scene she's in has tripled since you explained that she sounds like (a presumably feminised version of?) Bill Wurtz.

 

[veteranMortal]

Guilliman canonically crippled Marine coordination and made them a bunch of isolationist gaggles, even while keeping his own Legion intact in all but name, yes.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, the Ultramarines did largely shatter themselves.

(The Dark Angels didn't, because they're garbage traitor goblins and I love them)

 

[Ugolino]

To be fair, the Ultramarines did largely shatter themselves.

(The Dark Angels didn't, because they're garbage traitor goblins and I love them)

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The joke is the Ultramarines didn't either- they just kept a bunch of Chapters in close proximity with new paintjobs and kept giving orders and sending "advisors" from the parent Chapter to make sure everyone stays in line.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I think I remember that post-Heresy chapters are limited to a thousand marines. That could be a factor as well.

Click to shrink...

I mean yes- but the point is that you make new Marines by (among some other things) implanting them with a progenoid gland... and each Marine produces two, which 'ripen' and are ready for implantation into a new host at the five and ten year marks.

In theory, allowing for some slack in the 'production schedule' and so on, you should be able to take a population of 500 Space Marines and a large population of baseline humans suitable for recruitment, and have a population of, oh... 800-900 Space Marines within about, oh, 15-20 years. That already factors in things like some cases where the modifications doesn't take and either the implantee, the progenoid gland, or both, die.

So if Space Marines had a mean life expectancy in active service of, say, 200 years... you'd expect the Marine population to grow rather quickly if they were being remotely sensible about extracting gene-seed so that it could be used to make new Astartes. I don't think it's nearly that long in practice.

 

[open_sketch]

Yeah, foundings are large scale attempts to increase the number of chapters for whatever reason, usually just attrition but sometimes because the Imperium was gearing up for a Big War to take a bunch of systems or mess up an alien empire or whatever and having some marines dedicated to just that would be really helpful (and then afterward, you have a bunch of space marines!). But as time as gone on, mass foundings are growing rarer and rarer because of bureaucratic inertia and lack of resources, but small foundings still happen with some regularity. Usually the result of a space marines doing something wildly awesome, or because somebody checks in on a chapter that has grown too big and are like hmm nah you guys are two chapters now.

As an aside, basically every chapter master is cooking his books to try and fit extra Marines in the margins. Actual full-strength chapters are closer to 1300-1400 after every chaplain, librarian, rhino driver, tech-marine, scout instructor, officer, shipmaster etc is factored in.

 

[DocMatoi]

I think I remember that post-Heresy chapters are limited to a thousand marines. That could be a factor as well.

Click to shrink...

[laughs in Space Wolf]

 

[EternalStruggle]

As an aside, basically every chapter master is cooking his books to try and fit extra Marines in the margins. Actual full-strength chapters are closer to 1300-1400 after every chaplain, librarian, rhino driver, tech-marine, scout instructor, officer, shipmaster etc is factored in.

Click to shrink...

The Captains, Chapter Master, Company Champions, Chapter Champion, etc don't count towards it either, nor for that matter do extra Scouts above the 90 proscribed by the Codex. It only refers to the 10 x 10 formation of companies and squads, so by definition all the specialists and leadership above sergeant don't count towards it. The LT we saw, for example, is outside the 1000 of the Chapter.

 

[Ramble]

The Captains, Chapter Master, Company Champions, Chapter Champion, etc don't count towards it either, nor for that matter do extra Scouts above the 90 proscribed by the Codex. It only refers to the 10 x 10 formation of companies and squads, so by definition all the specialists and leadership above sergeant don't count towards it. The LT we saw, for example, is outside the 1000 of the Chapter.

Click to shrink...

IIRC, ship officers, administrative staff, and support personnel also don't necessarily count. Though while it's technically possible to just have a chapter headquarters of hundreds of marines, the inquisition is liable to come knocking.

Also the fact that if you just start arbitrarily, frivolously boosting the HQ company, there'd be a lot of marines who would be perfectly within their rights to deck you directly in the middle of the face for pulling them off the line to drive a desk.