Marine Organs???!?!? WTF?

[Col. Tartleton]

Col. Tarleton, you've got your comments mixed up with MajorWesJanson's post. Regarding the progenoids, the fluff also states that progenoids can be harvested from testbed slaves - implant a set of zygotes, wait 10 years, harvest the progenoids. That's how they get enough geneseed to create new Chapters. The Chapters themselves could use similar methods to build up stocks for their own use.

No I just made it terribly hard to read by not color coding it... I'll edit.

[Imperialis_Dominatus]

Imagine a Marine who for whatever reason has lost his armour and weapons. He's stuck on an enemy planet after the rest of his tactical squad was destroyed.
He's now wearing nothing but a loin cloth and he's armed with a sharp rock. The planet he is on is a death world.
He can eat rocks, dirt, rotting animal carcasses and he can drink the foulest liquid substances he can find. He won't starve to death or dehydrate while he stalks you in the name of revenge.
The sun is beating down for 18 hours a day, the Marine doesn't care. His skin turned black within a day of being on the planet.
He can breathe poison gas and even water with no ill effects.
He's stalking you for days on end and when he finally decides to burst out of the undergrowth and kill you he spits acid on your face and your face melts.
Then he goes into suspended animation, in the vague hope his Chapter will come and find him.

QFT.

This is the same universe where Commisar Yarrick, upon hearing that Orks believed he could kill you by looking at you, had his eye replaced with a laser, so he could kill you by looking at you.

Also, this.

[Lothlanathorian]

I will take my Space Opera with an extra helping of Awesometanium and Win, thank you. Marines have everything except a kitchen sink and I am willing to bet that was due to time constraints. Although, the ceramics on their bones could count....

[marv335]

For all those complaining that some organs are not required because of power armour, I have one small point to offer...

Marines came first, power armour came second.
Many of these organs would have been very useful while wearing Mk 1 Thunder armour.
No enclosed helmet or auto senses means that spitting acid in close combat becomes viable, and those enhanced senses are far more useful.

[Sai-Lauren]

For all those complaining that some organs are not required because of power armour, I have one small point to offer...

Marines came first, power armour came second.
Many of these organs would have been very useful while wearing Mk 1 Thunder armour.

Many of these organs would be useful whilst the Marine is out of his armour, or in case of system damage/failure in his suit.

A Marine's experience and knowledge is too valuable to lose.

[Lothlanathorian]

You don't think you need a gland that allows you to spit acid until you need a gland that allows you to spit acid. Better to have and not need than need and not have.

[Burnthem]

Must give 'em awful indigestion...

[MajorWesJanson]

Must give 'em awful indigestion...

They are immune to their own acid. Just like venomous critters are immune to their own venom, and gila monsters don't infect themselves with their own bacteria.

The various anti-poison organs probably help too.

[nazrag]

Also remember that these loonies seem to walk around without helmets a lot of the time..Being able to breathe poisonous air doesnt seem so stupid then does it?

[Chaos Undecided]

Its probably real handy if your lock your keys inside the Rhino

[Burnthem]

They are immune to their own acid.

Sarcasm Fa1L.

[Lothlanathorian]

Also remember that these loonies seem to walk around without helmets a lot of the time..Being able to breathe poisonous air doesnt seem so stupid then does it?

Until a bullet hits them in the face. Of all the gripes to have with 40K, this is still just about my only one lol. I mean, there are plenty of reasons I can see for them to keep their helmets off, anything from 'facing their opponents without it to show how brave they are' to wanting to smell breath the air of the battlefield to having better sense (canis helix) than their armour provides. Still, getting shot in the face without a helmet is bad.

[Col. Tartleton]

Many of these organs would be useful whilst the Marine is out of his armour, or in case of system damage/failure in his suit.

A Marine's experience and knowledge is too valuable to lose.

Tell that to Black Library where marines get killed left and right like they're redshirts.


Space Marine: "Sir, I was trained since childhood under the watchful eyes of humanity's finest instructors for decades in the most elite military training program in the history of mankind. I was one of a few dozen men who completed the program of tens of thousands of the best applicants on the planet. I am qualified with several dozen weapons with a Crux of Expertise in each. I know how to operate a dozen different military vehicles in all conditions.

My tactical acumen is that of a field commander and my strategic comprehension ranks alongside the regular military's High Command. I have cross trained in dozens of sports and martial arts and every part of my body is a weapon. I was genetically enhanced by a trained team of surgeons using top secret methods and procedures and bionically enhanced with dozens of augmetic devices that link me to Imperial hardware directly via my nervous system. My eyes can see through my gun sight using the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum to locate my targets and all of my senses are likewise heightened to superhuman levels.

I am armored with nuclear fusion powered armored exoskeleton as durable as a main battle tank that can run for years recycling my wastes into nutrients and refreshing my air and fluids and is vaccum sealed for space combat and biological warfare. My weapon of choice is a 20mm caseless rocket propelled armor piercing high explosive laden sub machine gun with an effective range over a kilometer. I can be delivered into battle directly from space, in an air assault, as jump infantry, or in an armored personnel carrier, let alone teleportation, and on foot I am tireless thanks to my exoskeleton's mechanical musculature and can move as fast as any horse. I have access to a vast network of other soldiers with various weaponry up to an not exceeding heavy ordinance and even orbit to surface super heavy support weapons."

GW Storywriters: "Ooh I can imagine it already, a hundred of you guys in a last stand lined up in a trench, firing pot shots as a million tyrannid assault organisms bare down on you, you're totally calm though, and decide to fix bayonets and storm forward at them. Through your brilliant tactics you manage to get to grips with them and you unleash inhuman carnage on them. With your excellent marksmanship and heightened fighting skills you beat them to death with the helmets you neglect to wear. How's that sound champ?"

Space Marine: "Errrr..."

[AndrewGPaul]

They don't seem to take their helmets off as much in the fluff as the miniatures would suggest. For instance, the story running through the 2nd edition Codex: Space Wolves has Ragnar putting his helmet on in the drop pod.

How he fits it over that topknot is not addressed.

[Lothlanathorian]

It provides the padding that Space Wolf helmets lack.


There are a few fluff examples where Marines remove their helmets and then put them back on. That example, one from the Ragnar novels where he removes it because his sense of smell is better without it. One in a HH novel, IIRC, where a Marine removes his upon making planetfall so he can 'smell the enemy's air' or some such.

[Burnthem]

Space Marine: "Sir, I was trained since childhood under the watchful eyes of humanity's finest instructors

Space Marine: "Errrr..."

^ Good post, except for -

...20mm CASELESS rocket propelled armor piercing high explosive laden sub machine gun...

*Beats head against wall repeatedly*

[Col. Tartleton]

^ Good post, except for -



*Beats head against wall repeatedly*

They used to be...

[NashTrickster]

I've only read diagonally through the thread so if anyone mentionned that already I'm sorry, but...

The fact that the Betcher's Gland allows them to spit acid can be (and probably is) a by-product of its original intent: to allow amarine to survive by being able to eat almost anything, even stuff that you'd need acid saliva to start to break down into its basic components.

Also: the first Space Marines wore Mk1 "Thunder" armour which didn't include a fully sealed helmet. So when the Betcher's Gland was included in the original design of the Emperor's geneticcaly engineered soldiers, it was a potentially useful add-on...
It then became secondary to the use of vaccum-sealed suit with the start of the Great Crusade...

[Sai-Lauren]

Tell that to Black Library where marines get killed left and right like they're redshirts.

Only if they're not the central characters, in which case they could cut through all the daemons in Khorne's own domain and b****-slap Khorne himself until he cries, without anyone getting anything worse than a broken fingernail.

The problem is that back in days of Rogue Trader, normal humans were the average, and everything else was compared to them.

Since 2nd edition, it's shifted to Marines being the average and being the comparison point, so killing 100 guardsmen is not as impressive as killing 10 Marines.

Even for Black Library, how many books are there that feature Marines as the central characters compared to non-Marines as central characters?

Or the audios - so far one Guard audio (Waiting Death) vs four Marine ones (Dark King/ Lightning Tower, Raven's Flight, Heart of Fury and Thunder from Fenris).

[Imperialis_Dominatus]

Tell that to Black Library where marines get killed left and right like they're redshirts.

Ahahaha... that's too long to sig but I found a way.