Do Astartes ever die of old age? What is their "not killed by someone else" lifespan?

Blood Angels are known for their longevity. They wouldn't be if all Astartes ware immortal.

When Abaddon killed Sigismund, he said that it was only possible bedause the Black Templar was old and thus slower then when they last met before the Heresy. Also, Iacton Qruze.

Nobody knows how old is old though. And there is no mention of an Astartes warrior actually dying of old age, but that is probably because they serve until they die.

Think about it, real life regural soldiers wouldn't die of old either if they ware never to be removed from the front line.

Dante is the oldest and looks and feels old as shit but at the same time drinking fresh blood rejuvenates Blood Angels and he stopped drinking centuries ago.

And started again before the hive fleet invasion.

>Custodes
I believe it was implied somewhere (Master of mankind, I think) that Custodes are as close to immortal as it gets among the emperor's creations, save the primarchs.
Then again, apparently it says in the new custodes codex that they give up their armor and weapons and becomes spies when they are too old to serve.

>When Abaddon killed Sigismund, he said that it was only possible bedause the Black Templar was old and thus slower
Fuck I knew it was coming but it still got me, Sigismund deserve far better.

>Falling to the greatest chaos warrior who ever lived.
Why is this bad?

Luthers not an Astartes. The DA very likely have had him in stasis of one sort or another for extended periods of time also.

Worn out Custodes Put there armors in the Hall of Remembering, don a heavy dark cloak and wander off into the vastness of space never to be spoken of again. Primarchs are fond of pretending to disappear. How old is Cypher? I'm sure stories will surface of haggard old fuck space marines.

>Do Astartes ever die of old age? What is their "not killed by someone else" lifespan?
I strongly assume it's millenia.

Chaos is extremely self destructive yet those guys are still around. I HEAVILY doubt all of them had their aging alted without êventually mutating away into nothing.

Wasn't Iacton an enhanced human like Luther and Kor phareon?

he is also around the same age (if not younger) than Kharn and Ahriman both of whom are some of the strongest in their legion

in short: space marine aging is inconsistent as fuck

>Chaos is extremely self destructive yet those guys are still around.
I think there's a certain amount of chaos warp resurrection fuckery going on here, where the average chaos space marine will be forgiven and resurrected by their patrons if they been a gud boi.
I mean how many times has Eliphas been brought back from the dead, and he's not particularly special in any way.

>Dante looks old at 1500, where Blood Angels don't usually age much.
Dante looks old because he doesn't drink blood like the others, in his novel once he has a bite of his serf his features get visibly younger again

highly doubt it, since the dante book covers him as a child going through selection and training etc, and he was born on baal secundus

No. He was bona fide real astartes.
I think both him and Garro being super old is a little bit of a fuckup by BL authors. They were both only a few hundred years old by the time of the heresy.
I think their main thing was they were far older than most of the legionaries at the time, because they joined when the legions were still just forming, and thus represented the old guard.

There's a Red Talon contemptor that was apparently involved in the Dropsite massacre, though it's unclear if that's referencing the Dread itself or the guy interred in it.

Because he age so much before he could face Abbadon, because the High Lords ignore him, because he couldn’t finish it, because his death should have been in triumph for the Emperor and redemption in the eyes of his father. Because Sigismund deserved better.

I believe that Astartes do age but between the modifications slowing the aging process and their natural toughness, it's unlikely any Marine has died of old age.

but he was bio enhanced

Almost all of the Primarchs were in the Warp, bar Roboute who was in stasis (and dead).

The Warp has no consistent sense of time.

Chaos marine forces are dependent on geneseed recovery as much as pure Astartes forces. Chaos champions never die though, never get the glory of death at the hands of their finest adversary. They get brought back because they are the finest tools of Chaos.

He takes some blood for the first time in centuries if not the millennia during Devastation of Bhal. Seth is uneasy at this because he realizes how conforming the idea that Dante was better and didn’t need to take blood was.

It would have been better if Abaddon had intentionally hobbled himself for the confrontation. Likely equals in their, one heavy with age, the other heavy with the gifts and boons of Chaos Undivided, even the heir of Horus would have shown a little honor to such a great foe. Or, utter mercilessness. That's more the Astartes way.

equals in their prime

Abaddon did show Sigismund honor.

Fuck no! By his own admission Sigismund had been slowed by his age and this only brought him down to Abbadon level. In his prime he was faster and better.

I find that hard to believe. Abaddon was the first captain of the best legion.

Believe whatever you want traitor. You will die as your weakling father died. Soulless. Honourless. Weeping. Ashamed.

I didn't read DoB yet, but it's a big thing in "Dante" when his serf sacrifices himself to allow Dante to drink his blood

I haven’t read “Dante” yet so it might be the same event as he only mentions this to Seth.

Where do I find this story? I played 2nd edition when it was new. I think I might even pick up one of the novels finally. I played Dark Angels. Flesh Tearers always seemed cool too.

The Black Legion book by ADB.
It's part of a series that chronicles the formation of the black legion after the defeat of the heresy seen through the eyes of a chaos sorcerer.

Sure, that's what the Remembrancers want you to think.

I can't imagine 8 foot tall spies being all that effective.

Is it a good read compared to others, is it a good place to jump in? How are the 40k novels in general? I recall hearing good things.

Game-spam aside (he got a lot of that when he was new and dreadnoughts were still scary), Bjorn is only alive after 10000 years because he spends a lot of time in stasis.

It's likely there are other dreadnoughts of similar vintages, locked away in forgotten, externally-maintained vaults. Game-wise you can write your own lore because it doesn't affect rules.

Most of their time has been spent hiding out in Warp-realspace crossovers, where time and physics are... not ideal.

Dante is estimated to be 1,547 years old, but might be older. Blood Angels have an abnormal longevity, and Dante was described as old and tired because he stopped drinking blood, but regained his strength after doing so recently.

Iacton Qruze, who was a veteran of the Unification Wars, was considered old by his fellow Luna Wolves. The First Founding was in 780.M30, and Istvaan III was in 005-006.M31. So he could of been as old as 226 years old or so by the start of the Great Crusade. Marines back then didn't last as long, and were fairly naiive in comparison to 40K.

Sigismund was very old too. He almost killed Abaddon during the 1st Black Crusade in In 781.M31, so he was easily 750+ years old. Abaddon admits he only won because the Templar had gotten old (though he didn;t have his demon sword yet)

There has likely never been an Astartes to die of old age, though. Once they get truly old, like Sigismund, they start to slow down and generally die in battle.

Yeah but it's still 8 foot tall super human who can crush your skull with his....No I won't go there...

Custodes to Emperor as Astartes to Primarch
Custodes were/are like a fine-tuned thunder warrior, perhaps just slightly less physically powerful but effectively immortal. A handful of thunder warriors cured their gene flaws and are still out there in the galaxy. There must be at least dozens of retired Custodes lurking through the cosmos.
Chaos Custodes and Chaos Thunder Warrior Command squads supported by Fallen Chaos Primaris with Dark Age plasma. Somehow. Now that would be one crazy stupid army.

Alpharius would like to disagree with you. And so do I, because I am Alpharius.

Likely fought and die during the siege of Terra.

Who's Negan?

They can get old and die, yes.

Bjorn is in a Dreadnought (but his mind is as sharp as ever).

Cassius is described as actively looking old and being old.

Dante looks like an old man, and Blood Angels are the longest-lived of all Astartes.

Even Primarchs can, Guilliman is described as greying at his temples in 40K, and he was over a thousand years old when he went into stasis.

Abaddon only beat Sigismund because Sig had gotten old, and he admits it. In other words, had it been prime-Sigismund, Abaddon would have had his ass reamed.

Abaddon has a habit of showing enemies he respects a good deal of respect.

He Openly admired Sigismund before they started their duel. Afterwards, they basically gave him full funeral rites, cleaned his body. armor, left his war gear alone, and sent him back to Terra. He also admitted he probably would of lost to Sigismund in his prime.

He did the same with Thalastian Jorus, a Blood Angel Reclusiarch during the 6th Black Crusade. After his Imperial allies got destroyed and he led a short guerilla war, he basically led a force of Death Company marines outnumbered 1000-1 on a suicide charge against Abaddon's honor guard, and rip and tore them to shreds. He 1v1'd Abaddon and beat the shit out of him, scarring him and forcing him to retreat before the rest of the Black Legion took him and his marines out.

When Imperial forces came to mop up the planet after the crusade was over, they found all the loyalist forces desecrated and all the Marines geneseed ruined, apart from Jorus and his Death Company, who were found sitting on makeshift thrones made from the bodies and armor of the Black Legion warriors they had killed.

It's pretty cool, if you Ignore that the main character is abit of gary stu with his Dark eldar waifu, giant wolf familiar and being a guy that forced fucking magnus to kneel with his psyker powers. It's pretty good besides that.

i will
he could crush you with his large meaty hands

It's one of the better, but it really depends on whether you like the horus heresy series in general. I do, but some people don't, because they feel it ruins what should been myth.

>How are the 40k novels in general?
As I said, it really depends on the person. I like it, some people don't. That said, the quality of the books varies a lot.

>is it a good place to jump in?
It's not the worst, but the best place to start on HH are at the first books, so Horus Rising -> False Gods -> Galaxy in Flames, in that order. These are good, "Flight of the Eisenstein" and "Fulgrim" are good too, but the quality starts varying from there on.

>Chaos Custodes
Never happened, nigger.

>getting too old for this shit
>almost die to genestealer
>"lolno" ~t. random dreadnought
>melts a swarm lords head with point blank inferno pistol while impaled on its bone sword
>succumb to impalement wounds
>"glorious death in battle at long last"
>"lolno" ~ t. random apothecary
>bobby g shows up and gives you a promotion
>back to work immediately
>mfw

>When you're so badass the man you tried to kill orders his forces to place your body on a throne made from the corpses of his forces you killed

He would've gone down if Sanguinius hadn't sent him back.

I hope Dante gets to meet him in some form while in reality.

>thousands of years experience in security
>spies
>not management, admin, or consulting
Empire really is fucked

Standard exercises for Custodes involve infiltrating the palace and trying to get all the way to the throne room of the Emperor.

Try and imagine a nine-foot superhuman successfully infiltrating Terra that way, and how difficult it would be for them to avoid notice, and realise that they're good enough to pull it off.

neat stuff

>would be
illiterate faggot

In the Tome of Fire books the Salamanders towards the end of M41 find a crashed ship from the Great Crusade expeditionary forces. On it, along with the descendants of the crew, they find a surviving Crusade era Salamander.

He was almost dead. His mind was failing, his body wasted until he couldn't stand up and the fire in his eyes was almost gone out but he was holding on to pass on a message.

>but he was holding on to pass on a message.
What was it?

If they ever hit the 500 year mark, Marines will start getting old and weaker

Can't remember.

Books were boring as fuck.

Fulgrim is terrible and reading it actively made me mad.

He has a little forehead heart.

I dont know who Sigismund is and honestly I dont care.
Having said that, he lost to Abaddon before the fight even began. Abaddon could take on Primarchs or maybe even the Emperor himself and succeed where Horus failed. So, there is nothing wrong to losing to a guy like this.

All Chaos Astartes get ressurected all the time. Not only the big boy champions.
Otherwise keeping their numbers stable or even increasing over thousands of years doesn't make any sense.

If you don't fuck up and get turned into a spawn, choosing Chaos is the way to immortality.

Why would Abaddon do that, tho?
Surely he was toying with this servant of the dead-emperor.

Cause Jorus basically managed to whip a bunch of madmen, concerned only with fighting into a guerrilla force. He was also one of the few people to actually wound Abaddon.

Incorrect. Sigismund was explicitly the most dangerous out of all Astartes in the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. He spent the Battle of Terra just walking around and soloing Chaos Champions. He would have killed Abaddon were he still young, and still almost managed to do it while ancient as a non-Blood Angel. Abaddon, who was both younger and enhanced from being in the Warp, straight up says he would of died if the Templar wasn't so old. That said, this was only during the 1st Black Crusade, and Abby didn't have Drach'nyen yet.
Because Abaddon respects the strong. And no, Jorus wounded him severely and forced him to retreat, in a honorable last stand. Afterwards he basically just said, "Huh, these guys were pretty badass for servants of the Corpse-God."

In the first salamnders book by Nick Kyme they find a salamnders cruiser from before the heresey and its captin is still alive. hes been his chair for so long that his armour fused to it but he is alive, he talks and such so hes not in that suspended state they can do.

>Drach'nyen
What are its stats in game? I doubt it is a 1 hit kill kind of thing

Back in 2nd Edition, it was basically a titan close combat weapon, auto-wounding with instant death, no armor saves, and auto-penetrating vehicles regardless of their armor.

Now, Drachnyen is S+1 AP -3 with the Daemon Weapon rule, Talon of Horus is Sx2 AP -3. Drachnyen, the Talon, and the Talon-mounted bolter all deal D3 damage.

>Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames
>good
They were awful. The first books had ONE JOB; they needed to justify Horus’s rebellion. The entire series is built around his motivation. What we got was
>I love the Emperor so much and I’m the nicest guy ever
>*has a spooky dream*
>wtf I hate the Imperium now let the galaxy burn
It was like flipping a light switch. It wasn’t even daemonic possession or anything which might excuse it.

I liked Loken and Tarik, but felt a lot of other stuff fell short. Specifically what you mentioned.
>I'm my dad's favorite kid! Though I'm a bit depressed because he doesn't really trust me...
>My old friend possessed by the Warp almost killed me and I had a scary dream about the future! And my brothers creepy bald priest told me things!
>Well, better shack up with the Warp then
Like, good god, Magnus is there going HORUS STAHP and the fucker still went full retard.

Without warp fuckery or stasis fields or being interred in a dreadnought it looks like a standard astartes lives about 10,000 years. Thats solely from the nick kyme Salamanders book (his message was about how to find a lost relic of the chapter, an arcane tome iirc).
Now there are exceptions, the blood angels can cannibalize genetic material by drinking blood (or eating flesh) and extend their lifespan. The fluid inside a dread' has a preserving quality, youre basically in cryo-sleep when not awake any way so their are iron hands and of course bjorn walking around at near 10,000+. And then there's the custodes. They seem to be pretty close to immortal but exit their prime at around 1,500 - 2,000. I'm basing this on the blood game or whatever that book was called, but that was pre-8th so.
And as for the primarchs? Who fucking knows.
>Almost all of the Primarchs were in the Warp, bar Roboute who was in stasis
>Roboute who was in stasis
>Roboute
user...

We don't have any numbers, as there currently is no lore of any marines who have just died of old age. Many space marines have been shown to age, Iacton Curze and Dante are prime examples, but they're never shown to be any less combat proficient than fresher veterans, and of course, a space marine can be kept around forever using warp magic, stasis, or a dread.
So, no. None have died of old age as far as we know.

Well, it is something at least.

Eh, they totally fucked up his timeline entirely. He is born on Cthonia yet joined the XVI legion at its founding, and participated in the unification wars on earth.

It says they're so old they're half a second slower. So they're not so much "old" and more "no longer peak of human engineering fit to guard God"

>He is born on Cthonia yet joined the XVI legion at its founding, and participated in the unification wars on earth.
They explained that away by having Cthonia right next to Terra with travel between them being relatively common. It also explains why the Emperor found him first.

>He 1v1'd Abaddon and beat the shit out of him

Simply not true. He left him scars but he's never said to have beaten Abaddon.

That still doesn't fit with the established timeline.
>Empy makes Thunder Warriors
>Unification Wars begin
>Empy begins Space Marine project
>Empy loses Primarchs
>Empy finishes Legions
>Unification Wars end
>Empy begins Great Crusade
>Empy finds Horus on Cthonia

He beat the shit out of him, but lost.
Abaddon has enough shit to go around.

I don't think any astartes has died of old age.

Sigismund was over 1,000 years old by the time of the First Black Crusade and was noticeably older and weaker, so they definitely age. However, it's difficult to imagine a Space Marine actually dying of old age. They would inevitably just die in battle, and would probably prefer it that way.

He wounded Abaddon enough to force him to quit the battlefield, before the Black Legion reorganized and butchered him and his Death Company. The Despoiler still wears the scars like an honorary badge. Sounds like he beat Abaddon but lost the battle to me.
The Salamanders book seems to be the outlier here. See for a pretty good rundown of ages. My guess is because he was completely inactive in the chair/fused to it he basically expended no energy and didn’t burn his lifeforxe out or some shit.

>abbadon tough
>gets beat up and forced to retreat cadia
>by a girl
>loses his shit and crashes a fortress into the planet to blow it up
>because he can't beat a girl

>He wounded Abaddon enough to force him to quit the battlefield

He didn't.

Fuck off Carnac Abby is a punk bitch and you know it

wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Gravius

CSM still make fresh astartes using stolen geneseed from loyalists. They also bolster their ranks with loyalist marines who have turned renegade during the 10 millenia since the heresy

according to the new BL book he did, apparently Abby almost died/had to be dragged off as sigismund fucked up his shit.

You can't really count Chaos marines age in the same way because of time-fuckery in the Eye of Terror and the favor of the dark gods keeping them young.