I’m not sure if you are serious, considering that I’m pretty sure we have official artwork that shows them as basically normal humans, but larger and with slightly off proportions. The picture is a joke regarding terminator proportions.
Eh, GW doesn’t lean into how weird and inhuman space marines are enough because they’ve become a shallow mockery of what they used to be and are now having decisions made by the horrifying union of businessmen and nerds that grew up being way too into space marines. Canonically they’re creepy as hell and eat their enemies’ brains to gain their knowledge (that’s actual original canon btw, and I’m not sure when or if it got retconned away by some spoilsport). The only author I’ve ever seen do a good job writing space marines is Dan Abnett in one of the Gaunt’s Ghosts books that had a PoV space marine with a completely alien perspective relative to any of the human characters.
I’m pretty sure there’s also been official art that has space marines with heads roughly the size of their own ribcages before (when accounting for the bulk of their armor), which is the funniest version possible so just I’m going to canonize that right now.
They really could be doing anything with it and they insisted on writing 50+ books focusing on the fascist supersoldiers with daddy issues and bolter p*rn.
I’m going to use the opportunity and say that it bothers me how space marines do not make any sense in a setting that takes itself as seriously as post-2nd edition 40k. Space marines seem to be less numerous, less capable, and more expensive to make than conventional tanks. What’s the point in having 1-2 million of them running around? Just make a bunch of tanks instead.
In-universe I guess the argument would (or should) be that they’re this aging relic of the imperium’s golden age kept going through sheer momentum & essentially holding the feudal logistics of the imperium hostage through ancient treaties and vows of loyalty, just enough to shore up the crumbling imperium while never actually achieving any lasting victory. Their gear slowly goes downhill as knowledge is lost, their geneseed succumbs to the various flaws/mutations, their numbers whittled down through attrition.
Of course instead of doing something that could be interesting they decided to just lionize the brainwashed child soldiers into cool guys with big guns that shoot all the undesirables aliens, mutants, and heretics. After all, you gotta have an easy entry point posterboy (no feeeemales allowed in the space marine club) faction that you can use to sell overpriced plastic to impressionable kids
In-universe I guess the argument would (or should) be that they’re this aging relic of the imperium’s golden age kept going through sheer momentum & essentially holding the feudal logistics of the imperium hostage through ancient treaties and vows of loyalty, just enough to shore up the crumbling imperium while never actually achieving any lasting victory. Their gear slowly goes downhill as knowledge is lost, their geneseed succumbs to the various flaws/mutations, their numbers whittled down through attrition.
This justification doesn’t work with the pre-Heresy era.
For that I’d just say the emperor is a fascist egomaniac who wanted an ubermensch to build his empire and brutally put down anyone who opposed him. For all the talk of the imperium being for mankind the regular rank-and-file proles are constantly murdered without a second thought for little to no reason. Summary execution is the norm, you can get turned into a servitor because you failed to meet a quota, or just shipped off to one of the forever wars where you get killed in Space Afghanistan by some dude who just doesn’t want to be enslaved by this fascist theocratic state. At best the emperor views humanity as beings fit only to be enslaved and exploited until death (and beyond, hello corpse-starch) so it’s unsurprising he would want a separate warrior class that are loyal only to him and his handcrafted tools/sons (oops). He didn’t want to give humanity the tools of their liberation, he wanted to make tools to oppress them.
In short, the space marines fighting aliens real good is a secondary function, the primary function of space marines was having a force of unbreakably loyal psycho-indoctrinated child soldiers who will gun down striking workers and anyone else that has even the slightlest issue with the imperium.
it’s unsurprising he would want a separate warrior class that are loyal only to him and his handcrafted tools/sons (oops)
This contradicts the lore. The Emperor and Malcador knew that the Heresy would happen in advance and were preparing in advance. They knew that those soldiers would not be loyal to the Emperor. Unless your point is that he wanted to deliberately arm the other side, in which case I don’t see what sources you can back your claim with.
In-universe it’s a combination of A) who’s going to go tell the 9ft tall demigod that they’re not allowed to exist anymore, and B) Space Marines are uber spec-ops who excel in surgical strikes that cripple enemy armies’ leadership that a tank simply can’t do, and are therefore a massive force multiplier despite their small numbers.
Out of universe, GW can’t imagine advertising with anyone other than SpHeS mAhReEnS or generally acknowledging that xenos exist other than the occasional Necron novel that slaps unreasonably hard.
Lorewise they do “just make a bunch of tanks.” The Space Marines are basically their own autarkic mini-empires that collaborate with the Imperium and run around larping, while the other 99.99…% of the Imperium never sees them and just fights with tanks and guns instead. They’re rare enough that a single digit number of them showing up for a major fight is exciting and inspiring for the human soldiers, because Space Marines are more celebrity icons of their faith worshipped as literal angels by the public than they are an effective fighting force.
The Heresy was an event that crippled the Imperium and it revolved primarily around the SM.
They’re rare enough that a single digit number of them showing up for a major fight is exciting and inspiring for the human soldiers, because Space Marines are more celebrity icons of their faith worshipped as literal angels by the public than they are an effective fighting force
Before the Heresy they were fielded as full standing armies, which was extremely wasteful and clearly ended poorly. Afterwards they basically become a footnote, being fragmented into tiny fiefs barred from ever having more than 1,000 members each. Basically all of the post-Heresy expansion and maintenance of the Imperium was done by mundane humans fielding shittons of tanks.
Do you have a source to back that claim?
That’s just a collective commentary on the lore, there’s no one place to find it. The rarity of Space Marines is brought up pretty regularly but also it’s just crunching out the numbers between the ~1,000,000 Space Marines vs the ~20,000,000,000,000+ Imperial Guard, and the commentary on their effectiveness is just commentary on how frequently they eat absolute shit and prove less effective as a fighting force than humans. For example, the Battle of Macragge seeing the Ultramarines present run off and corner themselves and get completely wiped out, while the Imperial Navy won the war in space and the Planetary Defense Force won the war on the ground without the Ultramarines.
Before the Heresy they were fielded as full standing armies, which was extremely wasteful and clearly ended poorly
Apparently, not because of a lack of effectiveness, which is what doesn’t make sense.
Afterwards they basically become a footnote
Do you have a source to back this claim?
being fragmented into tiny fiefs barred from ever having more than 1,000 members each
IIRC there are as many of them post-Heresy as pre-Heresy. About 2 million, including all of the renegades and Chaos-aligned ones…
That’s just a collective commentary on the lore, there’s no one place to find it
I’m sorry, but it sounds like this is just your headcanon that is not supported by the official material. With these standards, I can make up my own setting and present it as 40k ‘as it should be’.
The rarity of Space Marines is brought up pretty regularly
They did not become rarer post-Heresy. They got more fragmented.
and the commentary on their effectiveness is just commentary on how frequently they eat absolute shit and prove less effective as a fighting force than humans
Are you claiming that there are no examples of the opposite?
Sure, but I’m yet to stumble on anything weird. Furthermore, marines in standard armours very clearly have differently-placed shoulders, compared to terminators.
That’s the dreadnoughts, which are sometimes portrayed with the occupant’s head literally sticking out the front like the mech “suits” from Kill la Kill. The terminators are supposed to just be particularly heavy suits of power armor, but the art gets kind of silly because they originated with model kits that were kind of silly and had wacky proportions because GW’s original sculptors favored extreme stylization over accurate details because of the limitations of the old mold production processes before they made it big and started being able to have plastic injection molds made in the early 2000s.
I’m not sure if you are serious, considering that I’m pretty sure we have official artwork that shows them as basically normal humans, but larger and with slightly off proportions. The picture is a joke regarding terminator proportions.
Eh, GW doesn’t lean into how weird and inhuman space marines are enough because they’ve become a shallow mockery of what they used to be and are now having decisions made by the horrifying union of businessmen and nerds that grew up being way too into space marines. Canonically they’re creepy as hell and eat their enemies’ brains to gain their knowledge (that’s actual original canon btw, and I’m not sure when or if it got retconned away by some spoilsport). The only author I’ve ever seen do a good job writing space marines is Dan Abnett in one of the Gaunt’s Ghosts books that had a PoV space marine with a completely alien perspective relative to any of the human characters.
I’m pretty sure there’s also been official art that has space marines with heads roughly the size of their own ribcages before (when accounting for the bulk of their armor), which is the funniest version possible so just I’m going to canonize that right now.
WH in general is a waste of a setting.
They really could be doing anything with it and they insisted on writing 50+ books focusing on the fascist supersoldiers with daddy issues and bolter p*rn.
I’m going to use the opportunity and say that it bothers me how space marines do not make any sense in a setting that takes itself as seriously as post-2nd edition 40k. Space marines seem to be less numerous, less capable, and more expensive to make than conventional tanks. What’s the point in having 1-2 million of them running around? Just make a bunch of tanks instead.
In-universe I guess the argument would (or should) be that they’re this aging relic of the imperium’s golden age kept going through sheer momentum & essentially holding the feudal logistics of the imperium hostage through ancient treaties and vows of loyalty, just enough to shore up the crumbling imperium while never actually achieving any lasting victory. Their gear slowly goes downhill as knowledge is lost, their geneseed succumbs to the various flaws/mutations, their numbers whittled down through attrition.
Of course instead of doing something that could be interesting they decided to just lionize the brainwashed child soldiers into cool guys with big guns that shoot all the
undesirablesaliens, mutants, and heretics. After all, you gotta have an easy entry point posterboy (no feeeemales allowed in the space marine club) faction that you can use to sell overpriced plastic to impressionable kidsThis justification doesn’t work with the pre-Heresy era.
For that I’d just say the emperor is a fascist egomaniac who wanted an ubermensch to build his empire and brutally put down anyone who opposed him. For all the talk of the imperium being for mankind the regular rank-and-file proles are constantly murdered without a second thought for little to no reason. Summary execution is the norm, you can get turned into a servitor because you failed to meet a quota, or just shipped off to one of the forever wars where you get killed in Space Afghanistan by some dude who just doesn’t want to be enslaved by this fascist theocratic state. At best the emperor views humanity as beings fit only to be enslaved and exploited until death (and beyond, hello corpse-starch) so it’s unsurprising he would want a separate warrior class that are loyal only to him and his handcrafted tools/sons (oops). He didn’t want to give humanity the tools of their liberation, he wanted to make tools to oppress them.
In short, the space marines fighting aliens real good is a secondary function, the primary function of space marines was having a force of unbreakably loyal psycho-indoctrinated child soldiers who will gun down striking workers and anyone else that has even the slightlest issue with the imperium.
This contradicts the lore. The Emperor and Malcador knew that the Heresy would happen in advance and were preparing in advance. They knew that those soldiers would not be loyal to the Emperor. Unless your point is that he wanted to deliberately arm the other side, in which case I don’t see what sources you can back your claim with.
In-universe it’s a combination of A) who’s going to go tell the 9ft tall demigod that they’re not allowed to exist anymore, and B) Space Marines are uber spec-ops who excel in surgical strikes that cripple enemy armies’ leadership that a tank simply can’t do, and are therefore a massive force multiplier despite their small numbers.
Out of universe, GW can’t imagine advertising with anyone other than SpHeS mAhReEnS or generally acknowledging that xenos exist other than the occasional Necron novel that slaps unreasonably hard.
Lorewise they do “just make a bunch of tanks.” The Space Marines are basically their own autarkic mini-empires that collaborate with the Imperium and run around larping, while the other 99.99…% of the Imperium never sees them and just fights with tanks and guns instead. They’re rare enough that a single digit number of them showing up for a major fight is exciting and inspiring for the human soldiers, because Space Marines are more celebrity icons of their faith worshipped as literal angels by the public than they are an effective fighting force.
The Heresy was an event that crippled the Imperium and it revolved primarily around the SM.
Do you have a source to back that claim?
Before the Heresy they were fielded as full standing armies, which was extremely wasteful and clearly ended poorly. Afterwards they basically become a footnote, being fragmented into tiny fiefs barred from ever having more than 1,000 members each. Basically all of the post-Heresy expansion and maintenance of the Imperium was done by mundane humans fielding shittons of tanks.
That’s just a collective commentary on the lore, there’s no one place to find it. The rarity of Space Marines is brought up pretty regularly but also it’s just crunching out the numbers between the ~1,000,000 Space Marines vs the ~20,000,000,000,000+ Imperial Guard, and the commentary on their effectiveness is just commentary on how frequently they eat absolute shit and prove less effective as a fighting force than humans. For example, the Battle of Macragge seeing the Ultramarines present run off and corner themselves and get completely wiped out, while the Imperial Navy won the war in space and the Planetary Defense Force won the war on the ground without the Ultramarines.
Apparently, not because of a lack of effectiveness, which is what doesn’t make sense.
Do you have a source to back this claim?
IIRC there are as many of them post-Heresy as pre-Heresy. About 2 million, including all of the renegades and Chaos-aligned ones…
I’m sorry, but it sounds like this is just your headcanon that is not supported by the official material. With these standards, I can make up my own setting and present it as 40k ‘as it should be’.
They did not become rarer post-Heresy. They got more fragmented.
Are you claiming that there are no examples of the opposite?
everyone knows all officially licensed artwork is always 100% consistent with both lore and with other artwork
Sure, but I’m yet to stumble on anything weird. Furthermore, marines in standard armours very clearly have differently-placed shoulders, compared to terminators.
I always assumed the terminators were part machine. That they’re more like a torso and a head shoved into a machine body.
That’s the dreadnoughts, which are sometimes portrayed with the occupant’s head literally sticking out the front like the mech “suits” from Kill la Kill. The terminators are supposed to just be particularly heavy suits of power armor, but the art gets kind of silly because they originated with model kits that were kind of silly and had wacky proportions because GW’s original sculptors favored extreme stylization over accurate details because of the limitations of the old mold production processes before they made it big and started being able to have plastic injection molds made in the early 2000s.
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