Chapter Serfs

[Thornblood]

Hey all.

I've been thinking about Chapter Serf's- i.e. the normal human guys that support a marine chapter. Not the failed recruits. I've read plenty of there being thousands of them to support a chapter, doing menial and non-heroic jobs or even being 'squires' or personal aides to marines. In some sources I have heard of thousands-strong fighting forces and armies of regular humans to support marines in combat zones or forming defences on marine ships. Id this right?

I was wondering firstly if anyone had anything more official and canon towards this subject.


Secondly I have also been thinking about the Raven Guard. With Deliverance and the planet it orbits Klavahr (a hive world) to recruit from i figured there would be a pretty large support serf's army behind them.

So now i continue speculating; If Marines are the elite spear-head strike forces that make lightning attacks on specific locations- I recon the serf army then holds the objectives/locations etc etc and does the slow hard grind of peacekeeping and being a military presence leaving the marines to go on and take location after location in the same day. Also, certain marines are often granted titles like 'regent of planet blah-blah' - or in Sicarius' case 'Grand Duke of Talassar'. Whilst the marines are off conquering the galaxy i would also assume that said marine hero would leave some trusted political/beurocratic serf's to govern in his stead.

I Speculate again about serf military- that if Marine Chapters are organized like a Roman legion that serf armies are organized like Roman Auxiliaries. Roman Auxiliaries were given armour like, but not quite as good as legionnaires so maybe the serf army has carapace armour not unlike a scouts. But Bolters are holy so im thinking a variety of worser weapons. Armament and armour could vary greatly though (even within a single chapter).

And finally I would like to suggest that the Raven Guard are not so adverse to using mutants/abhumans as serfs. (Because Corax bred a bunch of mutant Raven Guard and they were used in battle, and because there home- system has a high number of mutants and it is tolerated for some reason by the Inquisition). So maybe, with a love of the stealth and night-time Raven guard use Nightsiders aboard there vessels as troops and the whole ship (or select ships) spend there entire service life in pitch black, never having light on board save the ambient light from distance stars through port-holes.

So these are my current thoughts. I have enjoyed the early Horus Heresy books and the contrast between marines and the regular humans and their interaction. So this is where my mind has wandered, what do other people think/ know/ speculate/ dream/ can quote (from Canon or otherwise)

[sangrail777]

Out of what I understood, ALL chapter serfs are failed recruits. Not just a portion.
I know in the BFG rule book for Space Marines it comments on the Serfs defending Space Marine vessels.
In the Badab War the Astral Claws had the Badab PDF. The Battle for Macragge had the Macragge PDF.
Course there is a diffrence about PDF and Chapter serf formations.
In Deus Encarmine they talk about the Codex Astartes forbidding Space Marine Chapters from raising support Auxiliaries. Ya know cuz of that whole lil Horus Heresy thing where whole armies fought at the whim of a Space Marines command.
The military formations in 40k are are very restrictive in there roles due to HH. This is to make ALL forces depend on support from other factions so as not to create a power base from which another civil war can come from.
I don't think Space Marines take and hold for this reason. They fight and move on, maybe they build a small fortress of reclusium and leave a small garrison (5-10 marines) which there are plenty of books to back that up, including the Dawn of War series. And they only seem to do that on worlds they want to recruit from or use as staging/mustering locations.

[Nabterayl]

Hey all.

I've been thinking about Chapter Serf's- i.e. the normal human guys that support a marine chapter. Not the failed recruits. I've read plenty of there being thousands of them to support a chapter, doing menial and non-heroic jobs or even being 'squires' or personal aides to marines. In some sources I have heard of thousands-strong fighting forces and armies of regular humans to support marines in combat zones or forming defences on marine ships. Id this right?
Yes, that's right. As with most things marine, practices vary from chapter to chapter, but there appear to be plenty of chapters who have serfs that are not failed recruits. And we know that serfs fight, at least in a naval context. Given the performance of marine ships in BFG and the fact that a marine vessel has only several hundred serfs aboard, we can infer that these serfs are actually quite capable in combat. In fact, the stats for the serf bookkeepers given in the Deathwatch RPG are comparable to those for an Imperial Guardsman.


Secondly I have also been thinking about the Raven Guard. With Deliverance and the planet it orbits Klavahr (a hive world) to recruit from i figured there would be a pretty large support serf's army behind them.
I've never heard of a marine chapter having a land army of serfs. The idea of a serf land army strikes me as distinctly anti-marine. Pretty much all space marines, and certainly the Raven Guard, are essentially just commandos on crack. They don't conquer planets. They don't even fight battles; a full tactical marine ammunition loadout is only 120 rounds. Which brings us to ...


So now i continue speculating; If Marines are the elite spear-head strike forces that make lightning attacks on specific locations- I recon the serf army then holds the objectives/locations etc etc and does the slow hard grind of peacekeeping and being a military presence leaving the marines to go on and take location after location in the same day. Also, certain marines are often granted titles like 'regent of planet blah-blah' - or in Sicarius' case 'Grand Duke of Talassar'. Whilst the marines are off conquering the galaxy i would also assume that said marine hero would leave some trusted political/beurocratic serf's to govern in his stead.
Talassar is part of Ultramar. It's true that space marines are often granted titles within their chapter territory, because it's the chapter's responsibility to govern those worlds. But they don't engage in wars of conquest, adding territory (and thus governmental responsibilities) to their holdings.

You're quite right that space marines support wars of conquest (or re-conquest, from the Imperium's point of view), and quite right that you need somebody to hold a conquered location. That responsibility falls first to the Imperial Guard, and once a location has been sufficiently pacified, to the local PDF.


I Speculate again about serf military- that if Marine Chapters are organized like a Roman legion that serf armies are organized like Roman Auxiliaries. Roman Auxiliaries were given armour like, but not quite as good as legionnaires so maybe the serf army has carapace armour not unlike a scouts. But Bolters are holy so im thinking a variety of worser weapons. Armament and armour could vary greatly though (even within a single chapter).
Marine chapters aren't organized like a Roman legion, or at least no chapter that I'm aware of, including the Ultramarines. You're almost undoubtedly right that serfs' weaponry is generally high quality but sub-marine, though.


And finally I would like to suggest that the Raven Guard are not so adverse to using mutants/abhumans as serfs. (Because Corax bred a bunch of mutant Raven Guard and they were used in battle, and because there home- system has a high number of mutants and it is tolerated for some reason by the Inquisition). So maybe, with a love of the stealth and night-time Raven guard use Nightsiders aboard there vessels as troops and the whole ship (or select ships) spend there entire service life in pitch black, never having light on board save the ambient light from distance stars through port-holes.
Absent any information to the contrary I can see that.

The key to understand space marine operations, in my mind, is that the absolute most important thing to all space marines, whether they are consciously aware of it or not, is the continuation of the chapter. If something threatens the continuation of the chapter, space marines really only have two responses: bring as much force to bear as they can muster to exterminate the threat, or run away.

Leading offensive operations of the type you seem to contemplate distinctly falls under the heading of "threatens the continuation of the chapter," and since the threat would only exist if the marines chose to undertake the operation, the response is most definitely "run away." You can even see that response at work when they do decide to do something. Space marines are ridiculously stingy about conserving resources. Tyranid splinter fleets warrant a single company even to the Ultramarines, who of all space marine chapters know just how much devastation the Great Devourer can wreak. Casualties in the double digits are considered catastrophic. Force commanders can't even requisition armored support; they have to ask (and ask again if they want their armored support to be outfitted in a particular way. I'm sorry, Brother Captain, you think that Vindicator needs a siege shield? I'll tell you when your Vindicator needs a siege shield. You're lucky to have a Vindicator at all; we've only got nine of the damn things).

There are exceptions, of course, but they also fall under the category of "threatens the continuation of the chapter." For instance, while the potential loss of a sector is usually not considered serious enough to commit more than a company or two towards, the potential loss of their homeworld will generally cause a chapter to drop everything and circle the wagons. And while space marines will happily leave even inquisitors to die rather than risk the loss of a few squads, there are times when a marine's sense of honor means he feels he can't run away, even if it means losing (gasp) a dozen or so men (Imperial Fists, I'm looking at you).

So, in general, space marines don't go looking to start their own campaigns. Even the entire might of a chapter is distinctly inadequate to conquer any reasonably defended planet, so the marines would need to bring in support. Sure, they could train an army of serfs, but even if they did that, why would they risk them conquering some planet they don't own? Those men are precious chapter resources, after all; becoming a serf is pretty tough.

If you're looking for a marine-initiated action as an example, I'd suggest the Raven Guard's campaign against Waaagh! Garaghak in the 700s M41 (see Imperial Armour 8). Garaghak's burgeoning Waaagh! was in the neighborhood of Deliverance, which of course falls squarely under the heading of "threatens the continuation of the chapter." It wasn't a full Waaagh! yet, but it was heading that way, so the Raven Guard immediately recalled all of their strike forces, no matter what they were doing. A couple of things about this campaign are interesting.

First, is Garaghak's attack on Forsarr. It was expected that if Forsarr fell, the next system attacked could very well be Lycaeus, home of Deliverance. But the Raven Guard did not muster an army of serfs to defend Forsarr. That was left to the Imperial Guard.

Second, when the Raven Guard learned where Garaghak's chief mek was hiding, and that he was residing on the Waaagh!'s principal construction world, and that he was constructing the Waaagh's! very first gargant, what did they do? They decided to assassinate said mek boss, using only 20 squads (7 of which were scout squads) drawn from four companies, and a single regiment of Elysian drop troopers. Needless to say, the assassination attempt was an abject failure, but it's instructive to note that the Raven Guard chose the Imperial Guard, not their own serfs, to back them up on this critical mission.

Third is the fact that the Raven Guard chose an assassination mission at all. Even with their very homeworld under imminent threat, even with an extremely high priority target, the Raven Guard didn't try to smash their way onto Kastorel-Novem at the head of an army. That's not the space marine way, and it certainly isn't the Raven Guard way. When the chips were down and they absolutely had to give it their very best shot, they looked at all their options and discarded the idea of a full-scale attack. With that kind of attitude, I doubt very much that the Raven Guard has its own private army of serfs waiting in the wings.

[Wildeybeast]

By army of serfs, what is meant is a large number of people, rather than an actual army. They operate in non-combat support role, taking care of all the menial jobs that the marines don't have time to do. When it comes to holding positions, protracted engagments or meat grinder battles, they send in the Imperial Guard. SM are lightning fast strike force. Whislt they are capable of fighting a protracted battle, they simply don't have the numbers for long term engagments on a galaxy wide scale and to use them in this role is a waste of resources. Traditionally they will make the beachead assault that opens the way for the Guard to be deployed en masse, with the SM moving onto another warzone once the tide has swung in favour of the Imperium. Either way, the serfs take no part in the fighting (I guess the one exception to this would be in the last resort case of direct assault on a fortress monastery, where if they don't fight they die!)

As for the Raven Guard, they are very much adverse to using mutants/abhumans. Corax bred them by accident, out of a desperate attempt to speed up the SM creation process after his legion got massacred at Itsvaan (it should also be noted he was under a lot of pressure from the Emperor to get his forces back into active combat). His legion took far worse casualties than either the Iron Hands or Salamanders who were able to pull back a number of their forces back to the landing zone. Corax lands on Istvaan with around 80,000 warriors, almost his entire legion. He leaves with less than 3000.
Either way, he uses his insanse mutant SM's out of desperation (and they are quite effecive), but after the heresy he personally euthanises every last one of them, before locking himself away in a tower, going half mad and then flying off on his own towards the eye of terror. So no, I don't think the Raven Guard are going to use mutants.

[lattd]

Check the space marine codex i swear the ultramarines have their own army to protect their region, better equipped and trained than guard but under marine command.

[Nabterayl]

lattd, you're thinking of the PDF. The planets of Ultramar collectively maintain a very large and very capable PDF (it was this force that did the bulk of the fighting against Hive Fleet Behemoth). However, the PDF aren't chapter serfs. They're just subject to the chapter's government, in that they live on worlds ruled by the Ultramarines. Every other chapter world would also have a PDF, even if few (well, probably none) are as capable as Ultramar's (and in some cases the PDF probably only exists on paper - the warrior tribes of Fenris are probably that planet's PDF as far as Imperial records is concerned, but I doubt the Fenrisians know that, or care). And every other inhabitant of a chapter world would be subject to that chapter's rule. But being a serf is something special, in that you don't just live on a world ruled by a chapter but are directly engaged in the chapter's upkeep. It's like the difference between living in a kingdom and being a butler in the king's household.

[Absolon]

The Battle for the Fang clearly shows that the space wolves have human troops at there command. That the troops exist outside the general population of Fenris. Live with the marines and serve at the Space Wolves pleasure. So they are not any type of PDF force currently in the fluff but more like the human troops under Raven Guard command in the HH fluff

[Nabterayl]

Wait a minute ... before we go any farther, are we discussing Heresy-era marines, or Codex-era marines?

[Wildeybeast]

The Battle for the Fang clearly shows that the space wolves have human troops at there command. That the troops exist outside the general population of Fenris. Live with the marines and serve at the Space Wolves pleasure. So they are not any type of PDF force currently in the fluff but more like the human troops under Raven Guard command in the HH fluff

I've not read Battle for the Fang, so are these dedicated full time, chapter employees, or simply Imperial Guard units seconded to SW, as the RG human soldiers in the HH fluff are? I can't imagine for a second that a SM chapter has the time or inclination to train and equip a standing army of human soldiers when a SM captain can simply take command of any Imperial forces he likes (with perhaps the exception of Inquistion forces).

[Pendragon38]

you can all ways make you'er own chapter rules to uses culties or scout/IG units for this so called fighting force.It all depends on how you write the fluff you never know some marines chapter-masters can do what they want.

[madlib]

The Space Wolves have a standing mortal army of "Kaerls" that help protect the Fang. There is also mention of them being taken off planet with the Wolves. They are not Imperial Guards. They are recruited from Fenrisian tribes and many have spent generations living in the Fang and serving the Space Wolves. There is also a class of "Thralls" that are non combatants that help run the day to day operations of the Fang.

[Thornblood]

Thankyopu very much guys. Massive help. Quite a fun constructive thread.

Few things Im gonna pick up on; serfs seem to be like the Queen in australia. "You wanna Queen mate, then great! We gotta Queen! Ya don't want a Queen? No problem We don't got a queen." They are there in the fluff, but you can live your 40k life ignoring them quite happily.

In most cases they seem to be a set army designed for defense- be it ships, strategic locations (once marines have taken them) or fortresses and outposts. They are not failed recruits- which either become dead or servitors. They are not thralls (which I believe is simply the space wolf term for servitors). They are not PDF, Arbites or Guard, but they may fulfill those roles in a limited capacity. Again I stress, so far we have only seen them in a defensive capacity. Incidentally it seems to never have occurred to a marine that the serfs have any offensive military potential.

They fulfill other roles- personal aides and squires to marines. They work in the HQ as administrators. They do menial tasks. They are simply 'extras' providing a hubub of people in scenes where the protagonist marines are supposed to be in marine facilities yet the author needs some normal humans to contrast marine-awesomeness. They perform household duties that keep a location running (which may include being a liaison between servitors, mechanicus, slaves etc, cleaning, cooking, repairing basic things, acting as an apothecaries orderly or nurse-type person etc etc.

And as a side point the Space Marine Chapter system works almost exactly like a Cohort (Cohors miliaria) of Roman Legionnaires. However that is for another thread.