Armour colour for sm crew

[Idaeus]

For sm vehicles should the armour of crewmarines be chapter colours or mechanicum colours. They have mechanicum symbols but are the cremen a seperate organisation in the chapter like techmarines or just tactical marines. Any background on this or is it up to the player?

[Nabterayl]

As always, you're free to make up your own chapter traditions. However, Imperial Armour Volume 2 does address this question directly. The "codex" arrangement is that all vehicle crews are regular battle-brothers drawn from the chapter's regular company. Most crews are drawn from the Sixth and Seventh companies - the tactical reserve companies - but all battle-brothers are trained to operate all of the chapter's vehicles, and there is no special equipment involved - a space marine can jack directly into any chapter vehicle with nothing more than his black carapace (marine power armor, apparently, contains a jack to allow this interface to happen). A space marine temporarily assigned to a vehicle in this manner is referred to as a "Custodian."

Interestingly enough, this means that space marine companies are not really self-contained. A full-strength battle company consisting of one hundred and seven men (six ten-man tactical squads, two ten-man assault squads, two ten-man devastator squads, the company captain, his five-man command squad, and the company chaplain) in nine Rhinos would actually have to be accompanied by nearly a full squad of Custodians to provide drivers for the company transports. So when the entire Second Company goes to war, in reality, it's more likely the entire Second Company plus a squad of the Sixth or Seventh Company.

[david5th]

For my vehicle crews, i paint them in chapter colours except one shoulder pad which is painted same as my techmarines.
That is just my preference, i cannot remember reading anything about " codex " colours for vehicle crews.

[Idaeus]

thanks for this, so these custodians wear the mechanicum armour maybe with their original company shoulder pad. I'll paint my razorback up now

[Nabterayl]

It's not really clear to me what the basis is for the Mechanicus iconography that some people seem to think Custodians wear. IA2 certainly doesn't mention it, and makes it clear that a vehicle crew member could be any marine in the chapter..

[sicarius2424]

both mechanicum colors and chapter colors to honor both groups

[Nabterayl]

I get that, Sicarius, but the thing is, custodians aren't techmarines. There's nothing stopping a person from making a chapter where techmarines serve as vehicle crews (Emperor's Pointy Sticks! :D) but that's not the situation IA2 describes as the standard.

[Nabterayl]

Yeah, they totally could. I'm just wondering ... what are the roots of this idea that techmarines serve as vehicle crews? I mean it must have come from somewhere, right? I'd be interested to know where it got started, and whether IA2 overwrote that fluff, it's a parallel fluff thread, or what.

[Ole]

Maybe those marines scheduled to act as drivers or gunners - I don't think that would be decided ad-hoc but rather be planned in advance - repaint their armour before going on a mission in order to appease the machine spirit of their vehicles and to show their gratitude to the mechanicus?

[Just_Me]

I would surmise that the reason behind the Mechanicus insignia on vehicle crew has it's basis in the link that Nabterayl mentions. Such a link would be very similar to the MIU, which is considered one of the highest and most sacred examples of the Omnessiah's blessings because it so profoundly blurs the separation between man and machine. To this end, it is very possible that in a manner similar to the Deathwatch, those who are serving a tour as custodians ceremonially replace one of their shoulder plates with Mechanicus iconography in order to honor the machine they are going to be merging with. Given what we know about the reverence the Astartes show towards their combat vehicles and their machines spirits this practice would seem entirely reasonable. They would most likely restore their armor to normal after their tour was complete.

The fact that vehicle crews of battle company transports might be drawn from outside the company itself should hardly come as a surprise, we have been given ample evidence of this for a long time; for instance Predators when listed in an order of battle are nearly always referred to as "support." More definitively, a literal reading of the Codex Astartes dictates on Battle Company composition very strictly lists only infantry, and a strict by the numbers reading precludes the existence of dedicated crew for each company. Moreover, wherever battle company compositions are given along with some number of Rhinos, the crew for those vehicles are never mentioned, only the vehicles themselves. Thus we might suppose that while each company does have its own dedicated motorpool, the crews for these vehicles will be supplied from one of the reserve companies. By the same token, this would allow a single company to be flexible and arm retask some of its infantry to act as vehicle crews if/when they need to fight without additional chapter support. After all, does a unit of 106 marine infantry (including command personel) with Rhinos really differ that much from one with 96 infantry and Rhinos and a Predator or two?

Finally, while I cannot (off the top of my head) cite an example in the printed material that states anything about Techmarines serving as vehicle crew, I would imagine that this emerges from simple logic, it seems reasonable so why not? I can certainly imagine a Chapter with strong ties to Mars (e.g. the Iron Hands) doing something like this. I also think that it is likely that some of the more substantial vehicles in the Chapter armory (such as Land Raiders and Thunderhawks) having at least a single crew member who is an initiate into at least the lower orders of the Machine Cult (if not a full Techmarine). Again, I have no precedent for this in mind at the moment, but it seems a reasonable conclusion, and does not particularly disagree with anything we currently know.

[Madness]

In other words: some "genius" in the 'Eavy Metal or scuplting dept. decided that it would be cool to have the drivers be half techmarines of sort and went for it, with no written fluff justification for it (afaik).

So it's really hard to establish what's canon here.