Games Workshop Warhammer 40k - Codex V.9 Space Marines (En)

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Space Marines are Warhammer 40k’s widest and deepest army, yet they remain among its most accessible, and, with a wider variety of possible paths to victory than almost any other faction, they always have the potential to surge once again to victories at Warhammer 40k’s top competitive tables.

Armoured Assault (282.M36) - The massed armoured spearheads of the Aurora Chapter break the Ork invasion of the world of Grylos. Horus Heresy (ca. 005-014.M31) - The Imperium is torn apart by the Horus Heresy, the great interstellar civil war fought between the Loyalist and Traitor Space Marine Legions. The rebel Warmaster Horus, despite pledging himself and his followers to the service of Chaos is defeated in single combat aboard his flagship Vengeful Spirit by the Emperor of Mankind at the conclusion of the Siege of Terra. Though Horus is slain, the Emperor is mortally wounded and must be placed within the arcane mechanisms of the device known as the Golden Throne. No longer able to interact directly on a day-to-day basis with Mankind, the Imperium is reorganised and reformed under the direction of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman as the Lord Commander of the Imperium and the other great lords of the Senatorum Imperialis. Such accelerated gene-seed techniques, along with absent, inadequate or over-forceful psycho-indoctrination techniques, were later found to have unseen fundamental flaws.

Speaking of First Company task forces, all those new Terminators probably need some power-armoured pals to play with… Company Heroes Many of the subsequent Foundings of Space Marine Chapters belong to these troubled times, making it almost impossible to ascertain when some Chapters have been created. Many Imperial savants since have come to believe that the drive to create larger Space Marine Legions at accelerated speed played a prime role in the degradation of the sanity and psychological make-up of certain Legions and paved the way for the horror that was to come. Thecommonly heardin-universe answer(usually made up on the spot by sexually insecure male Warhammer fans, for whom the existence of powerful, dominant, and especially combatant female characters in any fiction is inexplicably enraging) normally involves a lot of waffle about howthe Emperor’s gene-crafting processes ‘just weren’t designed’ for female bodies. As if it made any kind of sense for the nigh-omnipotent Emperor of Mankind to rule out halfhissubject human population as potential recruits.

As time went on, the Space Marine regiments became Legions as the Emperor recruited young men from amongst the newly conquered tribes of Old Earth and the hundreds of Astartes in service to the Imperium swiftly became tens of thousands. But in other Legions such as the Luna Wolves and the Emperor's Children, a subtle divide would grow between those veterans born on Terra who had been recruited into the ranks of the Astartes by the Emperor and those who had come into the Legion from their primarch's homeworld. Each Space Marine begins life as a human adolescent, and is selected to enter a chapter through a series of gruelling trials.Those who survive receive a series of genetically-engineered implants, or “geneseed”. Some are additional organs, like the third lung and second heart, while others alter their metabolism and enable the other implants to function. In addition to a name and heraldry of their own, each of these new Chapters would take for itself a homeworld or fortress-monastery, and use it as a bastion from which to defend the Imperium from all threats. Primarch Roboute Guilliman is asuper-sized commander and force multiplier. He has substantial melee prowess with the Emperor’s Sword and Hand of Dominion, which will reap through infantry and enemy armor respectively, but his main capability is as a leader.

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From the outset of his retaking of Terra, the Emperor employed genetically modified warriors within His forces and in these early enhanced troops lay the origins of what would later become the Space Marine Legions. During the Age of Strife, known as " Old Night" on Terra, the cradle of Mankind had seen more than its fair share of augments and "super" soldiers created both from the bio-alchemy of genetic engineering and cybernetic augmentation. During the Horus Heresy half of the Legions turned Traitor to the Imperium and swore themselves to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, becoming the 9 Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines. It is not known exactly how many Chapters were created in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, as many of the Imperium's records are undertsandably incomplete or lost entirely, and whole Chapters have been created and destroyed in the millennia that have followed. It can be said that there are three main categories of Space Marine Chapters. The first and largest group are the scions of Guilliman –- those Chapters descended from the Ultramarines and their Primogenitors.

Hellabore Assault (867.M41) - Captain Alessio Cortez and the Crimson Fists 4th Company battle the Eldar of Craftworld Iyanden on the world of Hellabore. Despite suffering grievous wounds, including a stab wound to one of his hearts, Cortez leads the final assault that routs the Eldar from Hellabore. This often manifested its influence in subtle and unexpected ways, not least of all in influencing the psychological character of the genetically enhanced warriors. Namely, the diminishing stability of the gene-seed itself through over-use and the increasing need for ever greater numbers of Space Marines in the field.

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The Space Marines or Adeptus Astartes are foremost amongst the defenders of Humanity, the greatest of the Emperor of Mankind's warriors. They are barely Human at all, but superhuman; having been made superior in all respects to a normal man by a harsh regime of genetic modification, psycho-conditioning and rigorous training. The Iron Hands are devotees of the Cult of the Machine of the Adeptus Mechanicus. There is an unusually high incidence of voluntary cybernetic modifications to the bodies of Iron Hands Astartes as a result of their devotion to the Omnissiah. All neophytes of the Chapter have their left hand removed and replaced with a cybernetic model. Space Marines are untouched by plague or any natural disease and can suffer wounds that would kill a lesser being several times over, and live to fight again. Clad in ancient power armour and wielding the most potent weapons known to man, the Space Marines are terrifying foes and their devotion to the Emperor and the Imperium of Man is unyielding. They are the God-Emperor's Angels of Death, and they know no fear. Defence of Orask (940-997.M41) - The Red Talons successfully hold the Fortress World of Orask at the edge of the Ghoul Stars from invasion by a splinter of Hive Fleet Pythos. In recognition of their hardfought victory, the Senatorium Ultima of Ultramar honour the Chapter with the gift of the famed relic known as the Bloody Crown of Hycani. The new Chapters created from the Ultramarines are often referred to as the "Primogenitors," or the "first born." All of the Primogenitor Chapters venerate Roboute Guilliman as their founding father and patron.