Could a SM chapter secretly or accidentally have more than a thousand of battle brothers?
Could a SM chapter secretly or accidentally have more than a thousand of battle brothers?
Yes, it happens surprisingly often.
Black templars have around 6,000 marines , Wolves have quite a few. Also the Astral Claws had alot more.
The Astral Claws did (Imperial Armour 9 and 10) and the Space Wolves and Black Templars do - and in both cases, there's nothing secret or accidental about it, they're overtly over that number.
The "1,000 Marines in a Chapter" topic has come up many, many times...
Originally Posted by Bestaltan
I tend to regard the 1,000 limit as referring to the Marines within each company - so the rank-and-file and the sergeants (or equivalent).
Officers (so Captains up to the Chapter Master), honour guards (or equivalent), the Chaplaincy, the Apothecarium, the Librarium, the Forge and the Fleet (if present) have extra Marine personnel that stand outside of the Codex limit of 1,000 brothers under arms.
At least that's how I see it.
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The Black Templars aren't exactly open about it, they just don't have a command structure that could enforce it and don't have a homeworld for anything close to an audit to take place. They're more a case of recruitment being independent within each Crusade and getting out of hand, rather than the Astral Claws doing it on purpose.
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They're not hiding the fact that they're way over the number, and it's not a case of recruitment getting out of hand. That's the chapter policy. They're in a continuous Crusade ever since their founding ten thousand years ago, and one of the main reasons for this is so they can keep going over the 1000 marines limitation. Apparently, whatever treaties and documents established this limit also allowed the provision for Chapters to recruit indefinitely above it during a Crusade. This is something they're well aware of, and it's certainly a powerful argument to make when they're being questioned on the matter. It probably helps that they have no interest in politics whatsoever, never build up large amounts of Marines in a single area of space, and are generally more than eager to assist the people who could actually take an interest in their deviancies (if only for the simple reason that those people are a good indication that the enemies of the Emperor are close by).
as has already been pointed out the limit seem to refer to "men under arms" even a normal chapter can have a lot of hidden extra in there command/ armory(tec priests) and librause as well of those training or waiting to be assigned. There also the question of where those stationed on ships are exempt from the count. If a chapter dose go over it has options to second out men to the deathwatch and other inq forces.
That's pretty much exactly how I've always seen it too. If I recall, adding up the numbers on the chart of Company organisation for the troops in the Companies, assuming each squad consists of 10 man does add up to 1000
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The one thousand battle brothers is mostly a symbolic numbers, noting a hundred squads at full strenght, not counting officers and other personel, yes.
One thing that has bothered me, and never been touched in canon (other than sligthly with the Astral Claws/Tiger Claws thing, giving an in-universe explaination for an old real-world mistake in naming...) is "What about temporary losses?", the "accidentially" thing in the OP's question.
There was a small fluff-text box on an Imperial guard regiment getting delayed in the Warp, finding out a century had passed during what should have been a months transit, how do Space Marine chapters deal with that?
Say an Imperial Crusade is called for purging a few Ork held worlds, and a call for support goes out, answered by a chapter like the Ultramarines... they send their entire 3rd company to join up with the Guard and Navy forces going in, but dissapears... how long do they wait before they recruit a new company to replace them, and what happens when the original company pops out of the warp realising they have been lost for some time?
The Space Wolves should be especially suscepcible to this kind of happenings, with their chapter culture of aloowing whole great companies to go out on their own as they please, but sooner or later there must come a time when they decide that Rudgar Moonwails gang is not coming back, and they have had a particularily good year with succesful recruits, and a Wolf Guard having shown good skills in leadership and valour, enough to warrant a promotion to leading a fresh new company... pry out the stone of the great annulus with Rudgars sign, and replace it with the new guys emblem, and then a year later the previous company calls back saying "Hi guys, missed us? We're done a lot of cool stuff, but now we're bored and coming back to Fenris... nobody better not have touched any of our stuff while we were out!"
It's been a while since I read the BT Codex, but if this is in a BL novel, it seems very weak.
One of the blown up reasons for the Badab War was because Huron's Chapter got to a larger than acceptable size and he really did have a solid reason for it - He was dealing with the Maelstrom. Pirates, Dark Eldar, Chaos, the lot of it. If he could have waved his hand and said "Nope, Crusade," and kept the trade disagreement a local affair, don't you think he would have?
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The ~1000 marine limit is taken quite fairly seriously as it was one of the major changes made after the heresy to prevent another one occurring, it's not symbolic - it's enforced.
The Templars are operating under Dorn's instructions (he believed that there was a place for larger legions but had to back down to prevent civil war). They use a crusade structure and operate over a wide area to prevent the administratum from being able to definitively say that they are breaking the rules - it's not a secret as such, just politics, and the Templars have good relations with other areas of the Imperium (stupid allies chart not withstanding).
The Astral Claws were increasing their numbers in secret, hiding the extra battle brothers amongst the human forces in the form of the Tyrant's Legion. The legion was seriously under equipped for it's size as Huron could not requisition enough support vehicles - it would have raised suspicion - so he had to build up slowly over time.
The Space Wolves are the only chapter that get away with being openly over 1000 marines, though not hugely over. It's not a hard limit as such, many chapters will be a little over at full strength due to scouts and unassigned support personnel (extra vehicle crew). Tyrant Legion-style expansion is a clear cut reason for the administratum/inquisition to send in other marine chapters to maul the offender.
The Space Wolves are also a first founding chapter and have over 10,000 years of loyal service, whilst the BT are second founding, have a couple of hundred years less loyal service history, and are split up in smaller groups, so no one person can corrupt the entire chapter. In both cases, they're not that much of a potential threat (although I'd bet a lot of people are keeping very close eyes on them just in case, ranging from the Inquisition, through other Marine chapters, to the Ecclesiarchy).
But 1,000 can't be totally enforced because even in terms of the Codex because it doesn't allow for all the 'legitimate' Marine personnel that a Chapter has. This even applies to Codex fetishists like the Ultramarines.
10 companies of 100 Marines is all well and good, but this still doesn't allow for Techmarines, Chaplains, Chapter Masters and Honour Guards, even if we say that one unit in each company has one man down in order to incorporate their Captain and that at least one Marine in each Company is also an apothecary with no extra Apothecaries running the Apothecarium (which seems ludicrous to me).
I agree that the number limit is very important to the Adeptus Terra in relation to the Astartes, but there's definitely some room for flexibility. Obviously there's a limit though, and the Templars and Astral Claws are/were over it.
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Absolutely agreed - however, Gulliman probably took that into account when he wrote the Codex Astartes, so you get your 1,000 R&F Marines, plus limited numbers of officers and their retinues, specialists, drivers, pilots and so on, and if a Chapter needs to be brought to book, then you still send five chapters (or however many you need) to do it, as they'll scale in numbers with their target.
About the only places where a chapter could potentially go wild with the numbers is servitors, armsmen aboard their vessels, and the household guard who defend their fortress-monastary and other holdings.
Plus 100 of those Rank and File are scouts, should those fit into the 1000 as full marines?Absolutely agreed - however, Gulliman probably took that into account when he wrote the Codex Astartes, so you get your 1,000 R&F Marines, plus limited numbers of officers and their retinues, specialists, drivers, pilots and so on, and if a Chapter needs to be brought to book, then you still send five chapters (or however many you need) to do it, as they'll scale in numbers with their target.
About the only places where a chapter could potentially go wild with the numbers is servitors, armsmen aboard their vessels, and the household guard who defend their fortress-monastary and other holdings.
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If you count out the number of men in Ultramarines Chapter organization as given in the most recent Codex: Space Marines the number is higher than 1000.
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Yes, I'm thinking anything between 1,100 - 1,300 might be just about acceptable all told, when all specialists and HQ are taken into account. Also the Scouts are those trainees who are already Marines in every physiological sense, but who are undergoing final training. There could be any number of other trainees who are still in the induction, gene alteration, organ implantation and and pre formal Scout-induction training phases, anywhere between 100 to maybe 1000, depending upon the wealth, reach and political power of the Chapter in question.
Numbers need to be replaced as quickly as possible but without dropping standards. That means more neophites need to be going through the harsh induction process, not less. I would imagine a reasonable amount of Chapter resources goes towards the finding, testing and 'forging' of new Marines on a constant basis. There is probably personnel in most Chapters who do this 24/7, perhaps on a rotational system with other experienced mentors.
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I'd say yes, others might say no. But considering that 10-20 would be Marines who're tutoring the scouts, and anyway the "missing 100" would be mostly taken by the company officers and their retinues, without even getting into the specialists, armour, transports, starship crews, dropship pilots and everyone else, I don't think it really matters that much anyway.
Depends on the KIA/WIA rates, IMO, it's likely that the vast majority of Marines "killed" in the average game are merely rendered non-combatant for the duration, and are able to return to their squads after some time in the Apothecaries care to heal up, likely not even needing augmetics. Remember, a lot of a Marines enhancements aren't just for combat, they're also so they can survive traumatic injuries and either fight on long enough to extract themselves or survive until they can receive medical attention (secondary heart, third lung, sus-an membrane for the non-IF chapters if it really goes to pot).
A particularly hard campaign could see a Marine force getting withdrawn after dropping to under 10% combat active, but they may only have dead in the single figures, the rest are just too badly wounded to fight at that time.
This is true, however Astartes Chapters are supposed to be in near constant combat. Where other armed forces take leave or have at least some sort of downtime, Marines are supposed to actively seek out the most dangerous enemies imaginable and fight and fight and fight where others simply wouldn't or couldn't.
So yes, I take your point about their increased ability to recover and the medical technology available to them, but still, they must still have a relatively high attrition rate if they are operating on the scale that they are depicted as doing. Better organised Chapters would have to have at least some redundancy built into their replacement requirements, just in case the crapola really hits the fan with another Tyranid invasion or Black Crusade (or whatever else).
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i am a firm believer that each chapter stands above 1k the majority of time and that many chapters have slown over the years broken the suposed "standards set down by guillimen" especially when you look at it this way.. half the primarchs didnt want the codex or thoes that did accepted it in teh hopes of avoiding a second civil war. i would say taht a chapters number rise and fall based on combat performance. look at it this way if they have a crop of scouts who are ready to be given their armour do they stop and go im sorry we cannot allow you to become full battle brothers as no one has died for you to replace.... no they give thoes guys armour and they get filled in where ever they are needed or are given support roles. the whole 1,000 battle brothers in a chapters was always a stupid idea.. seriously 100 of them are scouts.. so thats 900 if your following the codex not 1k its just a stupid arbitraty number. heck my own home brew chapters has a home world but send out fleets constantly to answer calls for aid and to patrol and their well above 1,000 they need to be.
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