Primaris Space Marine Numbers

[Marshal Rohr]

I wanted to Follow up on a post I made on March 8 in another thread and post direct quotes from Dark Imperium with page references about the number of Primaris marines deployed during the Indomitus Crusade so that people can use this information as they see fit and we can definitively say how many primaris marines were created at first.

"Of the many tens of thousands of Primaris Space Marines created by Belisarius Cawl, only half were initially formed into new Chapters. The rest had been gathered into great armies, each of one gene-line."

Dark Imperium, Chapter 7, page 90.

"As the Indomitus Crusade progressed, the Unnumbered Sons had dwindled. Roboute Guillimsn took them from their companies and squads, and he assigned them to understrength Space Marine Chapters encountered on the way. Whole companies might be hived off, or only a few units. Sometimes the primarch took them by the hundred to create new Chapters where he saw the need."

Dark Imperium, Chapter 7, page 91.

 

"By the time the fleet reached Raukos, only 20,000 of the Unnumbered Sons' original strength remained in the Indomitus Crusade."

Dark Imperium, Chapter 7 Page 82

 

'Tens of thousands' maxes out after 90,000. The largest mention here is 'by the hundred' to create new chapters. Pretty cut and dry. Even the most generous allowances and misuse of the the English language would mean that there are less that two hundred thousand Primaris, or it stops being TENS of thousands and becomes HUNDREDS of Thousands at the 200K mark.

Edited May 11, 2019 by Marshal Rohr

[Race Bannon]

I'd buy that for a dollar!  Thank you for the references :tu:

 

Whatever works to make my army awesome on the table and in the mind ^_^

[ImperialTuba]

Finally some numbers that are fathomable. I know with things like 40k and other fiction we're talking about civilizations that span across the galaxy, but when writers start throwing out numbers that go to the billions and beyond, I just have to roll my eyes a little. 

 

Edit: I'd also like to say that I'm still new to 40K and its lore, so these are just my observations based on what I know so far.

Edited May 2, 2019 by ImperialTuba

[Shinespider]

The population of Earth is currently over 7.5 Billion. If we were pushed to the brink and planet Earth was forced to collectively produce the largest army possible, we could put more than a billion soldiers into service right now. 

 

There are ways to talk about numbers like this without breaking people's sense of scale, though. When writers talk about Imperial Guard forces, they never say "we sent a billion soldiers," they say "we sent a thousand regiments." 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Shinespider

[Servant of Dante]

All that aside, having numbers of space marines that could function as a galactic military only matters if you assume marines are the ones doing the majority of the heavy lifting. I appreciate Marshal Rohr’s conclusion, since I consider the Imperial Guard to do most of the fighting, so the marine numbers are what they are. Large or small it’s easy enough to assume the slack is picked up by the IG.

 

More to the point, it’s interesting to think that there are so few “first wave” primaris, considering that “a thousand chapters” gives us up to a million old marines (of course many chapters are understrength so there wouldn’t really be so many, I’d think). The next question is how many Primaris have been created by chapters that have been given the technology to create their own Primaris, and when these “second wave” Primaris will become more neumerous than the original batch of 90-190k.

[Robbienw]

Good stuff Rohr.

 

The 'by the hundred' to create new chapters also implies most of the new chapters started off at least under the base 1000 strength for a chapter.

 

There is a reference as well at some point in Dark Imperium that primaris chapters created numbered in the 'dozens', which puts a cap on numbers of primaris chapters there could be.

[Marshal Rohr]

https://wordcounter.net/blog/2016/09/21/102367_tens-of-thousands.html

 

Here is a handy link for the limits of tens of thousands and hundreds in writing, as well. Rules Guy Haley is aware of.

[Felix Antipodes]

It was also stated that the Primaris took heavy casualties in the early days of the Indomitus crusade, so that would also factor into how many of the 90,000 - 190,000 survived to join/form Chapters.

 

In the spirit of the thread, I will try and locate the quote and edit in the reference.

[Marshal Rohr]

It was also stated that the Primaris took heavy casualties in the early days of the Indomitus crusade, so that would also factor into how many of the 90,000 - 190,000 survived to join/form Chapters.

 

In the spirit of the thread, I will try and locate the quote and edit in the reference.

I’ll update the first post when you find it!

[Captain Idaho]

Something I'd like to pick up on:

 

It's a little confusing and contradictory (not the numbers but the use/state of the Primaris in the quotes and the source book in general) -

 

Half formed Chapters. The other half formed great formations of a single geneline akin to the Legions.

 

So how come the Indomintus Crusader had squads built from different Gene lines?

 

It's possible that Guilliman's force was made differently to the rest but there's no explanation of that and not even A hint of Guilliman's force being non-standard?

[Marshal Rohr]

Maybe towards the end as numbers dwindled they mixed up the genelines to make full strength units.

[Emicus]

If 'hundreds' are sent to make new chapters, a chapters typically being ~1000 full strenght, how many new primaris have been recruited after Cawl "opened the vaults"?

 

Could 5x the numbers from subsequent recruiting alone!

[Marshal Rohr]

If 'hundreds' are sent to make new chapters, a chapters typically being ~1000 full strenght, how many new primaris have been recruited after Cawl "opened the vaults"?

 

Could 5x the numbers from subsequent recruiting alone!

 

Whatever the typical recruiting capacity over 100ish years would be, assuming the chapters are not effected by the time dilation due to the rift to have experienced less time passage than the main body of the Indomitus Crusade. The baseline 'One Hundred Years Later' hand wave would mean somewhere between 5 and 6 generations of new recruits would be taken in going by the traditional recruitment process that wasn't contradicated

Edited May 3, 2019 by Marshal Rohr

[Stoic Raptor]

So how come the Indomintus Crusader had squads built from different Gene lines?

 

If I recall from Dark Imperium, the idea was to expose these soldiers to the traits and tactics of other bloodlines - sort of how the Deathwatch does it.  It's easier to get your various soldiers to learn to "play nice with others" if they're doing it from the start.  You get friendly rivalries without the ingrained hatred that some Chapters have for others.

[Felix Antipodes]

After a (admittedly quick) reread through Dark Imperium and the BRB the actual quote of major losses amongst the Primaris forces remains unfound. It may have been a throwaway single line in one of the conquest series of books.

 

The following quote seems to support it though:

"By the time the fleet reached Raukos, only 20,000 of the Unnumbered Sons' original strength remained in the Indomitus Crusade."

Dark Imperium, Chapter 7 Page 82

 

Taken with the quotes that Guilliman formed half the original Primaris into new Chapters at the start of the Crusade (page 81) and using the numbers logic supplied by Brother Rohr (90,000 - 190,000) that would mean between 30,000 & 75,000 (approx) casualties. Numbers are not my thing ;-) so feel free to correct me. Those are high numbers for Astartes, even taken over 112 years.

[Emicus]

Bear in mind some of those 'casualties' was taking handfulls of primaris and reinforcing belagured chapters along the way + establishing even more chapters and garrisons

[chapter master 454]

Something I want to also add not so much from the angle of the primaris numbers at start but rather their numbers going forward.

 

For a start, making even a single marine is an intense process and many many many neophytes don't make it all the way because of various reasons (some just die, some have complications of implants while some will be turned into servitors due to crimes against the chapter (sons of dorn novel I believe alludes to this)) and so already just making normal marines is a costly process in terms of gene-seed.

Not to mention a good majority of current gene-seeds lack 1 or more implants within their code due to degeneration over the time. By all accounts there are famous examples among many of the famous chapters (Imperial Fists lack the sleeping implant I believe, I think one of the base chapters lack the spit implant) however despite this marines can still be made as arguably of the 19 implants there are a core of them that make the marine a marine with a lot of the others being a bonus however, of the 19 I would consider a large portion (about 14-16 implants needed) to make a true marine.

 

So now, for primaris they now have many factors against them in recruiting new neophytes into their ranks due to many factors as even implant requires the neophyte to get used to along with many doses of chems and psycho-indoctrination to make full use of them (well, some of them). So a big question I have just to slide it in: Due to the Black Carapace (the most famous implant of marines imo) being the last implant to go in, when does a chapter determine who becomes a primaris or if they just make them a normal marine? After all, there are 3 more implants to go and all 3 could be considered EXTREMELY potent and dangerous and every failed neophyte is not just a loss of a recruit but gene-seed too. I mean, we are talking surgical implantation of steel cables into the body and then two further organs that push the neophytes other organs into overdrive which already they may not be too capable of handling.

Further to that, while Primaris have new fresh geneseed the big issue is how long until implants fail in them AND if they do fail, if any of the 3 that attribute to Primaris status (of which I would consider 2 of the 3 essential) that would thus mean the new 3 organs are effectively useless except for enhancing a normal marine beyond their normal limits but not being a primaris but some odd hybrid between the two.

 

This to me seems like that Primaris numbers will in time decline heavily. I am wondering what will happen to Primaris in time because by lore, I feel they can't maintain numbers to sustain a full "chapter" and are even more vulnerable to being "killed" by having their gene-seed stolen/destroyed (the former would breed terrible monsters for many factions such as Tyranids and Chaos).

Kind of feel odd...in the real world old marines feel like they are getting phased out yet in lore I can only find evidence that primaris will phase out and only be "elite" units are some point with their gear being retro-fitted to old marines.

[Panzer]

I don't think so. Cawl has the means to restore geneseed to its default state so even if the Primaris geneseed degenerates faster than the classic Marines geneseed (keep in mind that it took thousands of years until some of the organs started to fail) he could just do what he already did before and provide the chapters with fresh supplies.

[Lord_Caerolion]

If there is going to be degradation of the ability to create Primaris Marines, like with the standard Astartes, it's going to occur over an amazingly long period of time, to the point that it won't ever affect the game. Maybe if they ever changed it to Warhammer 50k you might see things like "the Dark Angels have lost the ability to create the Magnificat and Belisarian Furnace organs, so Dark Angels may not take Primaris units", but for 40k, for the foreseeable future? No chance of any such thing happening.

[Marshal Rohr]

I’ve updated the OP to include Felix’s quote. Thank you, Felix!

[MegaVolt87]

I don't think so. Cawl has the means to restore geneseed to its default state so even if the Primaris geneseed degenerates faster than the classic Marines geneseed (keep in mind that it took thousands of years until some of the organs started to fail) he could just do what he already did before and provide the chapters with fresh supplies.

 

This is actually a big deal, as far as I can tell, primarchs had to use the source DNA every so often to keep up their Legions genetic purity in GC/ HH. Then again, if its possible, why has no one fixed the BA or SW? I think you would still need the actual primarch to do it. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

I don't think so. Cawl has the means to restore geneseed to its default state so even if the Primaris geneseed degenerates faster than the classic Marines geneseed (keep in mind that it took thousands of years until some of the organs started to fail) he could just do what he already did before and provide the chapters with fresh supplies.

 

This is actually a big deal, as far as I can tell, primarchs had to use the source DNA every so often to keep up their Legions genetic purity in GC/ HH. Then again, if its possible, why has no one fixed the BA or SW? I think you would still need the actual primarch to do it. 

 

 

They tried. It resulted in the Lamenters and Wolf Brothers. Cawl, on the other hand, has access to the Emperors original, untainted research, based on the other organs. However, it's also worth keeping in mind that the Canis Helix appears to have been an intentional feature of the Space Wolves, and the Blood Angels Thirst was similarly intended (or at least a side effect of an intentional modification), with the Black Rage being a psychic thing, not caused by geneseed.

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

 

They tried. It resulted in the Lamenters and Wolf Brothers. Cawl, on the other hand, has access to the Emperors original, untainted research, based on the other organs. However, it's also worth keeping in mind that the Canis Helix appears to have been an intentional feature of the Space Wolves, and the Blood Angels Thirst was similarly intended (or at least a side effect of an intentional modification), with the Black Rage being a psychic thing, not caused by geneseed.

 

 

That isn't true of the Wolf Brothers. They were just the only named 2nd Founding Chapter to split off from the SW, who subsequently failed for undetermined reasons (the whole Fenris-only recruitment thing being a mix of fanon and in-universe superstition), they weren't an attempt to 'fix' the Canis Helix. An attempt was made, but by the Wolf Priest Wyrmblade in Battle of the Fang.

Which seemed to be going in the right direction. As the Tempering was the actual reason (in a retcon I don't really like) Magnus attacked Fenris, he didn't want the Tempering to succeed, which somewhat implies Wyrmblade was on the right track.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

 

 

They tried. It resulted in the Lamenters and Wolf Brothers. Cawl, on the other hand, has access to the Emperors original, untainted research, based on the other organs. However, it's also worth keeping in mind that the Canis Helix appears to have been an intentional feature of the Space Wolves, and the Blood Angels Thirst was similarly intended (or at least a side effect of an intentional modification), with the Black Rage being a psychic thing, not caused by geneseed.

 

 

That isn't true of the Wolf Brothers. They were just the only named 2nd Founding Chapter to split off from the SW, who subsequently failed for undetermined reasons (the whole Fenris-only recruitment thing being a mix of fanon and in-universe superstition), they weren't an attempt to 'fix' the Canis Helix. An attempt was made, but by the Wolf Priest Wyrmblade in Battle of the Fang.

Which seemed to be going in the right direction. As the Tempering was the actual reason (in a retcon I don't really like) Magnus attacked Fenris, he didn't want the Tempering to succeed, which somewhat implies Wyrmblade was on the right track.

 

 

Ah, that's right. This is what I get for posting from work.

[MegaVolt87]

So- Cawl managed to get the same info if not more than Corax got in the HH, BEFORE Corax went to fetch it? I am confused with the timing now of all this.