Ok, so I don't know all that much about the criteria for space marine chapters picking up initiates. I know harsh conditions are usually a good start, hence death worlds. Not so sure about the additional examinations or trials to weed out weaker candidates though.
List some examples, if you can.
Or, tell me how you would set the criteria/tests for these young recruits.
>Not so sure about the additional examinations or trials to weed out weaker candidates though.
Generally its something like a battle to the death with the other recruits or a deadly trial of some sort, basically anything that serves as a proof of your killyness and survival skills.
Hunger Games
Salamander neophytes have to be forge apprentices for a while, to teach patience and toughness or something.
Also, a lot of Space Marines recruit from Hive World gangs as well.
Don't the space wolves make you go into the snow with only a knife and kill a wolf?
Hive world slums, somewhere on the chapters home world, people born on a Demon World and somehow escaped are guaranteed for either Inquisition, or Marine if young enough.
I could be wrong, but it seems like there are those chapters that want bodies and those that truly appreciate the traditions and rituals.
I thought there were no wolves on Fenris?
Then there are lunatics like the Carcharodons who just have all the tweens on an entire planet fight to the death and take whoever is left at the end of the day.
how would night lords train or test initiates?
Hunger Games, with more bats and flaying
how's this for initiate trials?
first part of the trial is teams of initiates stalking one another and hunting each other down
Second part happens in the middle, where Astartes go down to hunt all of them and see how well they adapt from being hunters to being hunted.
of course there's wolves on Fenris.
A fenrisian she wolf nursed and nurtured Leman Russ alongside her two pup.
Are you sure it wasn't just a Fenrisian?
what'chu talkin' 'bout, willis?
It's implied that all the Wolves on Fenris are actually Fenrisian citizens that have devolved. Everyone on Fenris is part wolf, a piece of genetic engineering from back when humans were first colonizing the planet, and some of them eventually devolve. Hence why the Space Wolves also have sharp teeth and some eventually turn into Wulfen.
I forget what books specifically hint at this stuff, but a couple different characters say "There are no wolves on Fenris" during the HH. Magnus is one of them iirc.
>"There are no wolves on Fenris" during the HH
>the HH
No one gives a shit.
>Hunger Games
>Hunger Games
Are you twelve?
Depends on the Chapter.
As far as I know there have never been any completely general criteria displayed.
In my own headcanon I imagine it varies extremely depending on the recruitment world.
For example the Blood Angels recruit from a radiation blasted hellscape inhabited by near-mutant cavemen ferals, so they hold mass battles to the death to figure out which of them are the best.
However I seriously doubt something like this would fly on a civilised world like Macragge. On civilised worlds they're probably recruited in much the same way as any modern elite organisation. They'll be monitored for genetics & placed into academies. The trials will be rigorous for sure, dangerous certainly, *maybe* even lethal on rare occasions, but nothing like the bloodsport you'd get from feral world recruitment.
Feudal worlds. Probably similar to feral worlds but less savage. Knightly-esque tournaments, jousting, tests of stamina like marathons. More advanced language means the marines can give more instructions other than "fight to see who's best".
Death Worlds. Low populations, scattered inhabitants and the fact that they're all tough-as-shit anyway means the marines probably just pick up whichever kids are designated by their tribe as the toughest of the tough.
Hive Worlds. Find any 13 year old underhivers that have capped a dozen gang rivals already.
Of course as I said before this is all just assumption based of general knowledge of related fluff, but it makes sense to me.
Yes, but that's after they select you.
Most recruits are drawn from the warbands of fenrisians, some young kid will kill 10 guys in a fit of berserker rage and then get healed back to health and taken to the far north to become a space marine.
it really depends on the chapter and there structure/beliefs. my homebrew chapter first must survive three days on a derelict space wreck. They then must duel until everyone has either died or been knocked out. Then they are dropped with nothing but the clothes on there backs into feral ork territory and have to make it to a LZ. Then survive for three days on a jungle planet followed by another week of various biome survival training. All of this culminates in a simulated boarding action on board a derelict vessel with real captive orks.
basically it must be the most extreme training mentally and physically they will ever ever endure. think navy seals level training times a thousand.
I honestly wonder how anyone would expect a prepubescent kid to be capable of all this.
I think it's a bit overstated by these anons here. It is vague though and it heavily varies from chapter to chapter. I know the alpha legion used to test a groups strengths as opposed to the other legions that focused on the individual.
Every Chapter is different in how they recruit OP, even though it's not everything, the way a Chapter recruits usually defines the Chapter itself even though you're probably supposed to forget your past life which also depends on the Chapter, so if you pick a Chapter that's recruitment appeals to you and you'll probably like that Chapter too, being a man from northern Canada, I have an affinity the environmental trials of Inwit where the recruits have to make it across the Splintered Lands because I know how terrible cold is, but I also love Necromunda because since I have lived in almost complete isolation my entire life I dread the idea of Hive City life surrounded inescapably by people and their filth, therefore the thought of living in an Under Hive where Chapters recruit from both amazes and scares the shit out of me. But I wanted more than just these two worlds, as much variety in my men as possible, manly and deep characters from every type of world since I also enjoy drawing and writing their adventures and diversity adds complexity, an example of one of my favourite characters would be I have a depressed dreadnought who is originally from an Agri-World who is essentially me personality and history wise, during his between battle slumbers he dreams about forgotten memories he had in life before becoming a marine where he was raised on a farm, and fell in love with a neighbourhood girl who ultimately broke his heart, as the stories progresses and the older he gets, the more he learns about himself and who he was. Finally, I wanted to paint my marines eye lenses blue because said girl who broke my heart terribly had the most beautiful blue eyes in the world. Essentially, I took everything that I hate, fear, and that makes me most depressed in my life and poured it into the thing I love the most in the world. For these reasons, I am an Imperial Fists fan.
>I have an affinity for the environmenta trials of Inwit*
Sorry about the spelling errors lads, I typed quick, hardly revised, Emperor forgive me...
Night Lords do this weird ritual thing where the kids have to survive a night and get to this obelisk thingamajig.
I don't really remember that well, it was in a short story. The kids didn't know they were being recruited IIRC.
I think if the Astartes are going full tilt then there might not be any initiates left.
But with some tweaking this might be a very cool idea indeed.
blood angels recruitment is so fucking rad, crossing gorges and canyons with a shitty hang glider while fighting rad scorpions is bad fucking ass
Well, the trial as a whole determines how well the candidates work as a team, as part of a whole. The first part merely examines their abilities to track down and kill an 'enemy'. It could be other teams or particularly nasty creatures, so long as it provides a great challenge. The second part tests how well they work under severe pressure and fear, testing their bonds with one another, as well as to see how quickly they can adapt to surprising new turns in events.
Those who resist the fear or overcome it become worthy initiate, bonus points if they find a way to turn the tables on the Astartes hunting them.
Probably using a few Space Marines to do the trials per a certain number of initiate, like say, 1 or 2 for 5 teams of 5. Some trainers feel more generous and merely attempt to kidnap and rough up the initiates. Some are more brutal, and will outright kill them for the slightest flaws.
One path produces hardier students, the other at least opens up the number of potential serfs added to the chapter, as well as offering the candidates another chance at becoming space marines, and thus increasing their standing forces.
I feel like pitching them against each other and/or marines in a lethal manner would just cause resentment and distrust to form, increasing the chances of treachery later in life (a big part of why so many marines (proportionally) turn to chaos is because they're recruited from the most savage dregs of humanity).
Presenting them with a 3rd party enemy or challenge to overcome would help breed more camaraderie and trust.
Having them hunt something like a dangerous natural predator, then setting an even more dangerous natural predator on them, would be a better way to go imho.
It's important to remember that age of recruitment varies wildly. Some Chapters take baby boys offered to them as a tithe by the population and raise them in the Chapter without ever interacting in a human society. Others like the Black Templars recruit twenty-somethings from a mass mosh pit battle. A Space Marine recruit needn't be 12 or something, but even as old as 22. Which the Legions used to do too IIRC.
Black Templars are more famous for the trial where they make you fast and pray for as long as you can.
>Others like the Black Templars recruit twenty-somethings from a mass mosh pit battle.
That happens only once and since the chapter keeps are so spread out I'd assume that the trial is determined by whoever is the master of that particular chapter keep, if the planet is a feudal one then it might have a different trial then a hive world or a feral world.
I could've sworn that the oldest and initiate could be was 16 before they started adding in all the additional organs
Nah, that's just old fluff that doesn't really reflect Damnation Crusade at all. This guy ain't fucking sixteen, not by a longshot.
Yaaayyy more inconsistent lore
But then again that makes me think, what about all the Knights on Caliban that weren't able to become astartes? They were just heavily augmented to near astartes levels but weren't actual astartes.
Don't they also do a test where they shove you into a coffin while the implants are being put in and if you scream or go insane they drag you away to get servitorized? Or am I thinking of another chapter.
Satan pls, adults can become marines, it just makes more prone to failure. Russ mortal wolf guard became marines with most of them dying in the process.
You can put gene-seeds into adults, but it's much more dangerous and the end result will physically be inferior to a child based Marines. They usually make up for it in experience and skill.
I think during the Heresy they adopted such methods to bolster the ranks of the legions, since you didn't have a decade to wait for new recruits to become combat worthy.
>test
You survived Nostramo. Apply, if you survive the gene seed you're in.
Would also make sense.
Wasn't it literally just the worst and nastiest and killiest criminals of Nostromo? That's why Curze hated his own legion so much
This is hinted at and stuff but then theres also talk of native wolves and how fenrisian wolves have been around since before human colonisation, its all speculation
>must pass rigorous trials and preform great feats to be selected for ascension into a Space Marine chapter
Why don't they just recruit from Cadia and Catachan then? Making it to double digit age is a fuckin accomplishment in those places.
You're right.
It's more of a Battle Royale.
Now we know that really happened to Fallout's characters after the game ended.
HH is canon. The highest rank of canon because the IP manager and GW's management edit and manage it themselves. So you better give a shit or fuck off out of the setting.
>HH is canon
Stopped reading the baith ere.
Yeah, but that's where the hypnoconditioning comes in to make them loyal to one another, to the chapter, and the imperium.
I mean, iirc, Blood trials of the blood ravens was essentially a free for all gladiator match to see who was the toughest son of a bitch, and I'm pretty sure the Blood Angels had something similar for their recruits once they climbed to the top of a mountain or something.
anyone want to list the various chapter methods for testing their initiates?
>Ultramarines
>pick whoever can praise the loudest
>Iron Hands
>pick whoever can rebuild a bolter
>Angry Marines
>make all candidates play Battletoads, if one of them go apeshit and break the nintendium console with hsi bare hands, he's enrolled
>Lamenters
>pick the unluckiest bastard on the planet
>death guard
>pick whoever doesn't die when exposed to the sweaty stank aftermath of a space wolves hazing party
>Blood Ravens
>go to feodal world, engage the successful thiefs
I read it this way
Aliums on fenris - it gets hit by turban scout fleet
Messes up orbit and so on but tyranids end up as part of the fauna - like Catachan
Aliums use genetics to make themselves super adaptable to cope
However this ends up turning them into a level just above chaos spawn
Human settlers arrive
They imprint the idea of wolves since it's a cold Viking type world and they named it fenris for a reason
At some point humans incorporate allium dna to make it possible to survive without thermal suits etc
The canis helix is meant to interact with this special dna - as a result space wolves can turn into wulfen and become immune or resistant at least to chaos corruption since the 13th company have survived all that time with no chaos stuff
Because they provide the best of the guard which needs its elites
Also Cadia and Catachan are both likely genetically too impure
Well 8th edition will bring the primarchs back so it will be cannon
really? like, the daemon primarchs are actually gonna fight? or do you mean the loyalist non fucked up ones who aren't dead yet.
Trials for weeding out weaker candidates are different for every single chapter.
What matters as the end result, is that they get the absolute best of the best from their recruiting planet. You have to already be the pinnacle of human fitness and willpower BEFORE you get your geneseed. They don't want to waste their time and resources on weaklings who will die from taking geneseed(already a problem lots of times anyway), or who would be afraid to go rambo on aliens while outnumber them 100 to 1, or on someone who would crack and get possessed the first time he saw a daemon.
Another theory is that the wolves on Fenris were created by mutant humans giving birth to animals, devolving because of a Canis Helix side effect before the population genetically adapted to having it.
The no wolves on Fenris thing, they were genetically engineered fauna when the planet was first settled. The whole no wolves is just poking fun at the fact they were engineered on Terra for the purposes of having things that can survive on the planet. Aside from the weird nid influence. I think that was in Thousand Sons.
Yeah I think I saw this some where, I don't have any proof so take this as you will. It was something like the Lion (obviously), girlyman, khan and Russ for the loyal primarchs and then , mortarion, angron, strawberry and... last one is escaping me.
Again don't take my word for it since I just recently saw it somewhere with no immediate reputable sources.
This is pretty accurate. I recall reading from the BA books that they have a mass battle after wandering the radioactive wasteland of the moon.
Ultras... eh, there's Agiselus for the standard training, or they also have that funky challenge to beat a marine in one thing. I think there was a piece of lore where an aspirant beat the Chapter Master in a game of chess and later became a librarian.
well, that does sound cool, though i won't get my hopes up. obviously if they are released mortarion is absolutely going in my army.
Would there be any problems in trying to make Astartes out of void-born children? (above and beyond the regular problems, that is). I occasionally scribble some fluff for a chapter I made up for that Chapter Master game that came out a couple years back, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't shooting any sacred cows by that factoid; they mostly recruit from their own fleet crews, because they try to be as self-sufficient as possible.
That would fuck up their PR.
What would? Recruiting from their crews as PR vis a vis the crews, or trying to be self-sufficient and thier PR vis a vis the rest of the imperium?
All of them. All normal are disgusted by voids.
You did well man, you did well.
I really hope that they get good writers for some novels if this is true. I'd love to see the reaction of the Lion when he sees what his legion has become, let alone the entirety of the imperium. Or if there will be a civil war within the imperium between these returned primarchs and the inquisition. Perhaps a loose alliance
>good writers
That would mean spending money, and there earn less. No way they'll do it.
It's actually much worse, they trigger your mutations and you have to go out and hunt a gigantic wolf creature barehanded while suffering the effects of the active mutations (reshaping body masse and bones, etc). Then you have to come back alive and with the skin of the prey you've killed, and only then you're accepted into the chapter after being stabilized.
Wolves are nuts.
This comic.
>Hey I've totally planned that they would be fighting here so I've manned a pitfall trap hidden on the ground and put a gigantic man-eating beast in it just in case we find a suitable candidate!
oh god what if this is why ward is back. sweet fucking lord no, not mortarion, please no leave him alone.
With Ward's blessing Draigo will write his name on all of the chaos primarchs!
i hope he tries to atone for his mistakes. i hope Mortarion tattoos "Nurgle was here" on Draigo's forehead. and "Slaanesh was here" around his butthole
>Hey I've totally planned that they would be fighting here
Well yeah, they're fighting in a Black Templar chapter keep.
I once posted a piece of my homebrew Knights Twilight. In short they are bunch of Dusk Raiders lost in warp during Great Crusade. When they popped out from warp they specialized in naval actions and boarding actions.
They recruit from three sources. First is their base station in their home system. The problem with that is voidborn. They are physically more frail so initiate numbers are low.
Second is people taken from planets they have campaigns. Basically they just ask the planetary governor permission to take several thousand potential candidates with them.
Third is people captured from prices. Basically they shanghai the old crews, purge heretics and mutants and take potentials again.
Trials are quite standard, but they last one year. Failed candidates are either made into guards, sailors or servitors. As the chapter doesn't follow codex astares to heart they have quite big need for non-astares armsmen.
You know, someone should totally make a blood raven character based on Garrett.
that one brother you call in to steal the most secured shit in the galaxy, the one who makes Raven Guard shed tears in shame at the shear hax of his stealth skills.
You're such a fucking fag holy shit
>Imperial Fists fan.
Good taste though
T-thanks, I may be a sad-moral-fag, but I'm not half the fag as those namefags Drunk Interrogator Chaplain, Nice Daemonette, and That Curzefag Who Fucks Shit Up.
read ian watsons space marine
balls to the wall necromunda hive ganger kids becoming imperial fists
>Dawn of War 3 is a better Thief game than the reboot.
It would be hilarious, but kind of sad.
Garr'Ret, Feudal worlder who proved his excellent stealth skills to Cyrus and became his star pupil.
Tasked with the most impossible of missions, usually nicking stuff from xenos, traitors, and loyalists alike.
Everything that's not nailed down and on fire is fair game. And everything that's on fire and nailed down is also fair game, because fuck you, that's why.
An entire planet's yearly requisition? gone.
ancient artefacts of great and terrible power? all in the vault on their fortress monastery. Including the Raven Guard's Primarch.
Some ships go missing from the Navy's registry? Magpies have them now.
Who stole them all? this asshole.
Well, Nostromo is no-more-stro, so how are they gonna recruit for their scattered warbands now?
NaH don't listen to him bruvie, he's just some land skum. Us void born are just if not more genetically pure than the humans on the ground.
>mfw I always wanted ot reinstall the Thief games and try all the fanmissions, but too afraid of having grow used to beauty and being unable to disregard that
did you line of thinking turn to word salad near the end?
You gotta be kidding me. If anyone has been as far even to go want to be more like, it's gotta be even do world pancake salad cranberry.
clearly, you've been infected with the disease Verbis vegitata.
A quick trip to the commissar's office should set you straight.
I'm already too straight for the Commissar's tastes.
I heard he only does the thing with an imperial effigy.
You should check again. Garr'Ret has recently stolen his manhood.
Because the jean stealers weren't enough?
He stole those genes/jeans back.
You'd have to be pretty badass to steal from tyranids.
it's motherfucking Garr'Ret
Also, what I meant is that I want to reinstall the old Thief games, but I'm afraid of spoiling myself because of how accustomed I am to Phantom Pain.
I'm afraid of finding Thief ugly and too easy compared to MGS.
give it shot, see how it goes. it'd be interesting to see some older games compare to newer ones.
Can I really do that and stay objective? There's no doubt I'll be biased because of my really, really fond memories of Thief.
maybe.
then again, people do come back to old games they've played and found them not quite as appealing