Let me rephrase that: how hard should it be for a heretic to set up the processes for making new space marines without it being made without skin, or having him turn out like Fieravius Carron?

Do you mean "make a new space marine" like "turn a human into a space marine using the geneseed of a Traitor Marine, or a captured Loyalist?

Hard, but not impossible. The Traitor Legions do, as far as I know, recruit.

If you mean "recreate the Primarch project from scratch" then *really really difficult*. Like entire-campaign-level difficult.

From what the core book explains, to make a CSM, you take a potential candidate, stuck a few Marine implants/organs in him, wait for a while, and if he doesn't die in horrible, horrible pain, he is now a CSM!

In truth, a Heretic on his own should be near on impossible, and entire campaign arc for the character could be centered on several things.

First off, there is only one, who out loud, proclaims he has unlocked the secrets of the Gene-seed essentailly.  And that is former Chief Apohtecary Fabious Bile of the Emperor's Children.  An arc could be derived in which the Heretic attempts to gain Fabious Bile's interest, this alone would finding out how to actually send him a message, delivering that message (which should take a VERY, VERY long time).  Arranging transport to wherever Fabious says to go (you as the DM can make it interesting in the regard of getting into the Eye of Terror, past the Cadian Gate, or perhaps somewhere else in the Galaxy, regardless it shouldn't be something quick and simple).  Once the heretic meets Fabious, he should attempt to impress him further, a series of Phsyical, Mental challenges designed to test the character's body and mind if he is a suitable candidate.  (You can make something like 20 Challenges, and only count 15 of them, but do not tell the Player how many actually count, or which ones do). 

Now, if the player Succeeds: Remove the player for several weeks while he undergoes the rapid transformation, do inform the player this has to be done as he is become a trans-human.  I would say to make it interesting, if the party does not already have a Gene-seed on hand to use in the implantation process, you as the DM should have the player roll a D5, 1-2 Loyalist, 3-4 Chaos, 5 DM's choice.  Then,  roll a D10 as to where this Gene-seed Fabious is implanting comes from, Is it from the Imperial Fists and it's successors?  Or is it his own from the Emperor's Children?  If on the intial D5, it became DM's choice, just pick where the Gene-seed is coming from.

The player should pay for some of the talents that come with the Chaos Space Marine character.  Also, it is entirely likely that the player is missing one of his organs, simply because Fabious did not have it.  (the more the Heretic Brings, the more he'll potentially receive).

There is an alternative…however, Lord Alpharius forbids me to touch upon the subject, perhaps if you prove your loyalty to the Alpha Legion, I may be persuaded to discuss such issues.

Chastity said:

That's what I've been contemplating. What all should go into the process of making new space marines as far as a PC or detailed NPC is concerned?

So I found that the standard method of chapter creation is that a Magos Biologis takes a single geneseed, sticks it into an immobilized test slave (hopefully one who is not kept conscious and in a constantly miserable state, though being 40k I'm sure that's the tradition!), waits for it to mature, puts 2 more into 2 more slaves, and so forth and so on, until after 55 years, 1 geneseed has become 1000.

Now this is interesting, because there are many references to people dying horribly in the process of creating new space marines; something like only a 1 in 1,000 (1 in 10k for a mention I recall of CSM recruitment) applicant success rate works. The fact that they wait 55 years to create 1000 geneseed from 1 sample suggests that either the highly skilled Magos is able to ensure a 100% success rate, or that failed applicants don't ruin the geneseed (At least, not when tended to be the highly skilled Magos Biologis)… as if it did, you'd want to wait a bit longer to get a million geneseed samples (for the 1 in 1000 success rate bit).

In addition, I can't imagine the actual multiplication of geneseed requiring a tremendous amount of resources (for the scale of 40k, anyway) -- just healthy slaves and healthy geneseed, the former an easy acquisitions test and the latter a matter of fighting some loyalists (if you don't want to find out what possibly hilarious effects jamming CSM geneseed into people will have) and perhaps corrupting or mind controlling an apothecary… given just a couple progenoids from a single dead marine, implanted into two test-slaves (lets call them Adam and Steve) to start could probably whip up a few legions worth of geneseed in under a hundred years, and you probably wouldn't need more resources to replicate all that geneseed other than an apothecary (hopefully one not driven too crazy in the process of making him sympathetic to the cause), or a magos-biologis (ditto).

So once you have arbitrary amounts of geneseed to whip up your new freak legions, what sort of task does it become to actually go from progenoid -> abundant hordes of new CSMs?

- Well, if space marines are the "best of the best of the best, with honors," presumably you'd want, best-quality warrior kids (how young do they gotta be, exactly?). Not sure what sort of resolution you'd want for this sort of thing.

- Presumably, implanting would require some sort of Medicine test… or Toughness test on part of the recipient… and facilities of some kind. Hopefully something more sophisticated than the usual implication of "take a rusty ice cream scoop and squish progenoid glands into their body."

- I'm not sure what kind of resources or expertise should be required to finish the astartification process. There are references to nutritional supplements or drugs and stuff that space marines need, I'm not sure to what extent these would be significant expenditures.

- All things considered, should there be significant costs or difficulties past obtaining the geneseed, doing olympics type stuff among 1,000 young candidates (for loyalist-tier recruits) or 10,000 (for CSM-tier recruits), and the defending your base of operation and keeping it a secret, and such?

The part that consists of actually building, buying or stealing the legion gear is, of course, another matter altogether.

None of this is really on the topic of turning a human PC into a CSM -- all the players I know are already fully committed in terms of whether they want a human or CSM, and probably most PC heretics are going to be too old. I don't think anyone wants to be Anakin Skywalker of 40k.

Don't you have to be a young teenage male of appropriate build and stuff to become a space marine, chaos or no?

Gavinfoxx said:

To make an Astartes, you normally surgically implant certain organs. This process only works in young males.

However! Sorcery and vile surgeries could possibly create a 'tall, strong, fast, tough guy' that you could hand a Bolter to and stuff into a suit of Power Armour.

Hmm, if it's that easy, why haven't Chaos forces already overrun the loyalist, with supreme amounts of chaos space marines? 

Also from Lexicanum http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Chaos_Space_Marine#.UGFILGIoESU

Creation of new Chaos Marines

The Chaos Marines still maintain the process of gene-seeding - the transformation of humans into superhumans through organ implantation and associated psychological and chemical conditioning - in order to create new Chaos Marines. The children that are turned into new Chaos Marines are bred from slave stock and captives acquired from raids on Imperial worlds6 p. 243. The process is a brutal ordeal, differing from the carefully measured program of development used by Imperial Space Marines7.

In every Legion, Apothecaries, or their Chaos Marine equivalents, are still charged with the important task of retrieving the gene-seed organs from their fallen brethren

Deinos said:

Weirdly enough, there's precedent for this. Kor Phaeron (first captain - Word Bearers) was made astartes in old age (through genetic engineeringand augmetics), and Luther (DA) didn't quite end up to be astartes, but was definitely "improved". These, however, are special cases, and I would definitely forbid it for a PC to become a chaos marine at an older age.

Generally, the legions recruit quite vigorously. For example, in *BEWARE! HUGE STORM OF IRON SPOILER!* SoI, they steal geneseed and gift it to Abaddon to make new Legionnaires, and there's the whole Iron Warriors recruitment program in Dead Sky, Black Sun.

@PnPGamer

Hmm, if it's that easy, why haven't Chaos forces already overrun the loyalist, with supreme amounts of chaos space marines?

Because Chaos logistics suck. Having a Space Marine is one thing (and the implantation process will require massive ressources alone), equipping him is another. A Space Marine without his high-level equipment acting as a massive force multiplier is not much more than a regular chaos mutant - which you can produce rather easily by just pumping twenty random people full of warp energy and recruiting the two that don't devolve into spawn.

That being said, I fully believe there are more CSMs than Astartes because the CSMs are not bound by the 1000 marines per chapter, 1000 chapters rule.

So we could say that this is a matter of quantity over quality? 

Depends on what you're comparing. I'd assume there are CSMs both weaker (small warbands dabbling in creation rites and barely getting it right) and stronger (Fabius Bile's latest "1 in 100 survives? Not deadly enough yet…" creations) than the loyalists, with the upper echelons mostly being more powerful simply because they're older. Then again, chances are that small warbands won't encounter loyalist chapters all that often because they will mostly do hit&run attacks and hopefully be long gone before the Imperial Guard and Astartes ever get near the assaulted planet, meaning they will most often fight PDF forces and thus have the upper hand quality-wise.

I was comparing them to the Astartes, but that's a good point. 

CSM are, if something, individually supperior to their imperial counterparts. They tend to be more experienced in various theatres of war, and thwy are also empowered by the gods' gifts. Therefore, a starting BC CSM chara is much more powerful than a starting Deathwatch character.

The main thing that keeps them from storming the galaxy is, most likely, the billions upon billions of the imperial army and navy, as well as the mechanicum's troops. If Abaddon (or any other) tried to go straight for terra, they would simply lose due to attrition. Chaos has an abundance of elite warriors, but this is no match for the imperium's fleet and numbers.

Additionally, chaos has to be on the offensive. Which means that the imperium has the full benefits of fortifications, planetary defences etc. And it doesn't matter if it's a puny human or a supreme post-human warrior firing that heavy cannon on the citadel, you're dying all the same :P

PnPgamer said:

One is that unless you're in particular danger from the Imperium, its always going to be more beneficial to attack fellow heretics of the opposite alignment for the lucrative infamy and corruption rewards -- there are actually few specific incentives to go after the Imperium. I think its quite likely that any one Legion is potentially a standalone threat to the Imperium -- Angron and the World Eaters did, in fact, form a standalone threat to the Imperium for over a hundred years, like we're talking about "there's these dudes killing everyone and we can't actually dislodge them at all." But attacking other Chaos followers is often more tantalizing.

Two is that yes, you can totally make a million CSM (or so it appears, using Fabulous's technique, and you "only" need a billion slaves). All that will do, by itself, is make you Space China… a lot of troops, but how do you get them into position?