Progenoid Glands

[atreides]

Alright, we know that they develop and mature into geneseed and represent the future of a Chapter and all that.

My question is this: does a Marine's geneseed get harvested at regular intervals and regrow to be harvested again? Or does a Marine carry the same two mature geneseeds until his death, when it is harvested?

The things I've read seem to be be a little sketchy about this. I've seen that they take 5 or 10 years to mature, but little more is said about extraction other than Apothecaries do it when it is mature. Surely it's done at regular intervals. If not, there's no way a Chapter can ever grow if it takes 9 Marines to die to get the geneseed for one new Marine. And it's got to be more than that because you never know when a body cannot be retrieved or has been burned or consumed or whatever so that geneseed cannot be recovered at all.

Can someone who knows the background better than I tell me what's up? And, even better, where it's cited?

[inquisitorsog]

Search for "progenoid" in the forums. We've beat this horse pretty hard many times in the past.

[Nabterayl]

We've been over this before in some detail, and come to the conclusion that there is no explicit mention of this in the background. The sources are consistent with progenoids taking 5 and 10 years to mature (different maturity rates for the neck and thorax glands), and only being harvested once. However, they are also consistent with progenoids taking 5 and 10 years to mature, and being harvested both upon maturity and at death (with the death harvest being, presumably, less likely to be viable - but perhaps considered of greater importance, like a gifttake).

The sources are also quite consistent that each progenoid gland can produce, at most, 1 marine's worth of geneseed, and that neophytes die (i) from the implantation process itself, and (ii) during training. We may add from common sense that (iii) at least some scouts must die after their first progenoid is implanted but prior to the first maturity at 5 years (age 21 at the earliest, except for chapters with non-standard implantation procedures), and (iv) not all progenoids can be recovered from fallen marines (e.g., in the case of a marine's entire body being vaporized, a direct hit to the progenoid gland itself, the body not being recovered, etc.).

It is thus possible that progenoids could sustain a chapter if harvested only once. If each marine produces two sets of geneseed, the chapter can sustain itself so long as the loss rate from all sources ((i), (ii), (iii), and (iv) above) is less than 50%. With a loss rate of 50% or less, each dead marine produces, on average over time, more than 1 and less than 2 new marines. That is enough for each casualty to produce his own replacement, and have a little left over for storage and the tithe to Mars.

If the loss rate is over 50%, then each marine must produce more than 2 marines' worth of geneseed for the chapter to remain sustainable, which in turn must mean that progenoids are harvested more than once per marine's lifetime.

The key thing we don't know is what the overall loss rate is. Personally I think 50% is implausibly low. SEAL training has about a 50% pass rate (Green Team, that is - counting those applicants who are accepted to attempt the training itself), OTC about 60-70%, I understand, and I imagine other similar programs are comparable.

If real-world commando training has a completion rate like that - and that by "students" who are already soldiers, not elementary school kids who show promise - I have a hard time imagining a scout sergeant looking at his latest crop of 10 year olds and saying, "All right, maggots, look around. One in two of you is still going to be around in 16 years!" Real-world commando schools rarely have actual fatalities from live-fire training or implant rejection, and ... well, they aren't set in the grim darkness of the far future. They're also undertaken by adult volunteers. All of those factors would, I think, significantly reduce the graduation rate of "space marine commando school" compared to real-world commandos. And that's even before you get to the progenoids that are lost by asking teenagers to act as SF operators, or because a full-fledged space marine's body couldn't be recovered.

But perhaps I have an overly pessimistic idea of just how brutal the implantation process and scout training and service really is.

[plasticaddict]

There is mention of Chapters being able to receive new geenseed from the Gene banks on Terra if there is need. Part of their tithe is used to verify no taint of chaos or mutation has contaminated the Chapter and the rest id used to build up a stockpile in the event the chapter suffers major losses and needs to rebuild.

[Nabterayl]

By "build up a stockpile" do you mean that the tithe deposits are used to actively grow new geneseed, or just stored against future need?

I know there's references in older sources to actively growing new geneseed during a Founding, which implies to me that the existing stocks can't be all that great relative to the failure rate. The only reason I can see to grow new sets during a Founding is if the stock required to get a full chapter's worth of marines is a material portion of your existing stock.

[inquisitorsog]

pg 8 of Codex Space Marines (oh Emperor, I'm citing Ward) .

"On Earth, the Adeptus Terra set up genetic banks to produce and store Space Marine gene-seed"

Granted, this was talking about early M30s, prior to the Age of Apostasy, but at least at some point, seed was being created other than in Marines.

[Nabterayl]

It does seem that chapters take a long time to rebuild, though. The Crimson Fists, despite being a very old chapter, apparently were not able to just write to Terra for a bunch of replacements. If that were the problem, the chapter would be at or near full strength with a bunch of green marines - but instead, they are still significantly understrength.

So whatever a chapter's stockpile back on Terra, it apparently is not enough to just make up hundreds of new marines on demand. Whether that's because the failure rate is very high, and thus the number of geneseed sets you need to make hundreds of new marines is also very high; or because the failure rate is very low, but the stockpiles are very small, is still unknown to my knowledge.

[Gotthammer]

Old articles make remarks about implanting in slaves to grow more gene seed, but they tend to gloss over that part of it nowadays.

[Psychosplodge]

Old articles make remarks about implanting in slaves to grow more gene seed, but they tend to gloss over that part of it nowadays.
I thought it was vat grown clones?

[magickbk]

Old articles make remarks about implanting in slaves to grow more gene seed, but they tend to gloss over that part of it nowadays.

This is what I remember from the olden days. Think people plugged into Mechanicus machinery like in the Matrix, just to grow gene-seed. Currently, I don't think there is a definitive explanation, but it would seem like they want the tithe method to be the official stance, which is why Chapter Foundings are staged at various time intervals whenever there is both need and sufficient resource available. Individual chapters may also have their own secret methods, which could explain why some are frequently above or below standard chapter strength.

[inquisitorsog]

This is what I remember from the olden days. Think people plugged into Mechanicus machinery like in the Matrix, just to grow gene-seed. Currently, I don't think there is a definitive explanation, but it would seem like they want the tithe method to be the official stance, which is why Chapter Foundings are staged at various time intervals whenever there is both need and sufficient resource available. Individual chapters may also have their own secret methods, which could explain why some are frequently above or below standard chapter strength.

The Adeptus Terra also has a strong smurfs bias*, this may actually play into some chapters difficulty of rebuilding. Per Codex, more than half of current chapters are direct or indirectly founded from Ultramarine geneseed.

I think most cases of persistently below strength chapters are a function of either bad luck, too aggressive, having too harsh a training program, or having a hard time recruiting sufficient numbers. I don't tend to think of it as a gene-seed issue. We also see some BL novels where traitors target gene-seed repositories for their own ends. The traitors often are trying to get their hands on geneseed, that also plays into the idea that loyalists may actually lean on other sources than harvesting "heroic" gene seed from brothers.


*EDIT- notice the smurfs didn't seem to lament too long about rebuilding after the nids invaded.

[mjasghar]

One recent novel put it that the neck ones were harvested in life and the chest ones in death as the later one could only be accessed thus
I think the reference was in Fear to Tread as the main character is an apothecary - certainly all the refs we see to harvesting are chest
But you are right , many times we hear about ships lost to the warp or imperial defeats where an entire company is slaughtered. It doesn't make sense when you actually think about it but then nor does that crap about 20hr shifts where you then sleep at yiur workstation