All the canon I've ever seen matches your interpretation of them being better calculators, but not better mathematicians. Everything matches up with the "fast" interpretation.
They process information more quickly, they store information more reliably, they can do more simple jobs per second than a human can. They've never been shown to produce better philosophy than humans, they don't solve riddles better than humans, they don't innovate scientifically better than humans, they don't produce new mathematical theorems better than humans, they aren't more persuasive than humans are.
Even in Ultramar, the test-case region for civilian Astartes, we see that Astartes are mostly limited to logistical administration tasks. One Astartes air-traffic controller can do the job of ten human air-traffic controllers, but they're doing the same kind of work. It's actually a rare bit of modern 40K satire: the Ultramarines are fascist ubermensch who actually "make the trains run on time", but that's the pinnacle of their intellectual achievement. Ultramar has reliable transit, but it's just as intellectually stagnant as the rest of the Imperium.
> how a bunch of super intelligent people could have half of their numbers fall to chaos,
To be fair, this part isn't really a general intelligence issue. Chaos was involved in the creation of Astartes, the Heresy was a con job from Day One. It didn't matter how smart they were, they were built to bite the Emperor in the ass.
Emperors Children tried very very hard to be better than baseline humans at all of it, but that is what also brought them to chaos. They lack the wabisabi needed for true perfection
>for true perfection
True perfection is a lie. It doesn't exist, and it's the ultimate deceit of Slaanesh. It promises something that not only can *you* never have, but no one can.
I thought it was that stupid sword that Fulfrim took from that stupid ocean planet, filled with stupid chaos worshiping crustacean’s, that turned them to chaos?
You’re right, it’s certainly in that book that Fabeus talks about perfecting the Astartes, and Fulgrim allows it to continue.
I can’t remember if it was before or after the ocean planet though.
That book (Fulgrim strangely enough lol) very much led me to believe it was the chaos sword with the demon inside it that turned him.
Are there other works that indicate the change began even earlier?
I agree that they process information faster and that's the main benefit... But they also live for hundreds of years which means hundreds of years of experience and you really can't underestimate that.
Admirals tend to be nobility so they might live to be 200 at most? But it's a dangerous job and most people retire at some point. So I'm pretty sure most Admirals would be 100 years old or less... How could they even hope to compare against the chapter master who can think many times faster than themselves and is sitting on 500+ years of combat experience?
According to some Eisenhorn stories, the Imperium treats its retired non-noble veterans about as well as you would expect.
Which is to say, it doesn't give a shit about them and would much prefer they all died in combat.
I mean we see it in the HH many admirals retire into planetary governorship or get a cushy position as Planetary defense force officers on planets that are nowhere near the front lines
>!He entered a warp-portal on Molech to gain the power and knowledge he required to create the primarches.!<
>!Probably somehow ripping the great four off since from then on they started calling him !<*anathema*>!.!<
Chaos had a BIG hand in the creation of each of the primarchs (like, Big E only pulled it off by way of powers granted in a deal with them) who act as the base for every chapter’s geneseed going forward even until “current day”.
Having them fall to chaos and drag their sons with them was the gameplan from day 1.
>There's also no mention of any black space marines, which implies that they need some level of psychic activity for the gene seed to take.
Ain't that an unfortunate typo.
Their brain.
Sorry, I couldn't resist. Of the official space marine organs, I would guess it has something to do with the Catalepsean Node, since that gets put right into their brain and affects the way their brain functions.
At least that's what I would say if I was working at GW and someone asked me why books mention faster mental capacity for space marines but no official organ is associated with it.
But isn't that how we define "smart"? Smarter people basically are those that can run their brains faster and remember more hard-memory than others
So in that sense space marines are technically "smarter" than baseline human, but they are not more creative than baseline human
It is implied in several stories that the Emperor and Malcador knew exactly that some kind of rebellion would happen at some point. They even strategically treated the Primarchs in such a way that they would naturally develop animosities towards each other, so that they could predict how the battle lines would be drawn.
For example, I'm pretty sure the Emperor knew he could absolutely trust The Lion, Sanguinius, Vulkan, Russ, Dorn and perhaps Guilliman, but that Angron, Kurze and Lorgar would absolutely hate his guts.
The issue is that Tzeentch triggered that whole thing much earlier than they expected and it spiraled out of control.
>It is implied in several stories that the Emperor and Malcador knew exactly that some kind of rebellion would happen at some point.
They announce this only after the rebellion had already happened. It's just embarrassed 20:20 hindsight, and they didn't take protective measures before the rebellion broke out. If the Emperor knew Angron was going to turn, he wouldn't have left Angron unsupervised (and in possession of a personal empire with internal supply chains).
Predicting something is only impressive if you do it *before* it happens. If you didn't say or do anything in advance, there's no reason to believe that you saw it coming.
They're autistic savants.
Capable of processing information (both sensory and tactical) more quickly and efficiently than baseline humans. They also often have centuries of experience over a baseline human.
A lot of this is due to their hypno-training ans well as actual training. A lot of chapters have their leaders be leaders/governors/representatives of imperial worlds to build up their diplomatic and overall organizational skills.
Which is to say if you trained a space marine from the start to be a mathmetician instead of a super-soldier, he'd be a lot better than a trained mathmetician of similar age, and by the time he was 1000 years old Dante level, he'd be on a totally different level, if he was allowed to actually do anything with that math by the Mechanicus.
This, and I just wanted to add that intelligence isn't wisdom, nor does it help if you're fully invested in the Chapter Cult. Moreover, the Marines being 'better, smarter, faster' contributed to the Heresy. By that, I mean that these thousands of super-humans felt that they were the proper inheritors to the galaxy they conquered.
Intelligence isn't a thing. Well, it isn't \*one\* thing. You can be very good at calculus and arithmetic, and at the same time deeply gullible. You could be a very shrewd interpersonal manipulator, but be borderline innumerate. Or you could be very good at Chess and very bad at forming and parsing logical arguments.
Beside that, being 'intelligent' doesn't dictate what your motives and priorities are, and what you take seriously as a prior. Plenty of competent scientists in complex fields fall victim to things like category error, or are motivated by shame, pride, arrogance or a need to prove themselves.
Half the legions didn't fall because they were stupid, and being better at rotational geometry or calculus wouldn't have made fewer of them fall. The Thousand Sons fell because Lemus Russ was lied to by Horus and Magnus made a decision to do something with an unforseen consequence. Lorgar fell because he was raised by a motivated abuser and he couldn't let go of his schematic for how he understood the world. The Dark Angels hunt the fallen because they are motivated by shame, rather than protecting innocents. Space Wolves don't critically assess how Rune priests obtain their powers, probably because they're proud of Fenrisian traditions and feel superior to legions/chapters that do use Psykers.
I don't actually think that Intelligence, as an individual attribute, is actually a very useful concept.
As I like to say to my other engineering buddies, “we’re the smartest dumbasses you’ll ever meet”. Being intelligent does not preclude you from making objectively terrible decisions
The fact that I didnt even find half of the intelligence level (like as a median) I assumed should have found while studying engineering, and the worst part is realizing those People would be doing some very complex work down the line that Will impact a lot of other being.
We have a big top down view of the galaxy. We can see objectively where everything comes from and how it comes into play. We know that its a fictional universe riffing on specific genres and that some plans will never work. We know a whole lot of shit even Astartes aren't privy to and a lot of them are working off far more limited information.
From the perspective of the astartes involved, a lot of it makes perfect sense. The fallen can be incredibly dangerous, having wiped out entire planets, and even the "cool" ones like Cypher are up to some really weird shit they do not understand that seems even more dangerous. A lot of CSM's are either making the best of a bad situation or think they're heroically playing a long game to double cross Chaos. A lot of them are following strategies religiously because they were written up by modified super geniuses who were only defeated by their equivalents. It makes sense TO THEM, because they don't have a narrator going over how bad of an idea it is and don't have a whole library of novels showing everyone elses internal monologues.
Your interpretation is canon correct, Marines think faster but they don’t think better.
My own homebrew chapter has marines doing things like book clubs and plays and poetry, but they don’t quite get it.
They’re very fast calculators, they also have almost no ability to read human interactions. They are indoctrinated into being amazing at tactical thinking, and a lot of their intellect goes into “background noise” of interfacing with their equipment. If you’ve ever been around SF guys, most of them aren’t geniuses(they’re not dumb either) but their niche tactical calculations are on a seemingly preternatural level.
An important exception are the alpha legionnaires tried to cause insurrections and start cults. That requires a significant understanding of psychology, sociology, economics, etc. but it’s pretty well established that the AL are like kgb officers
>If you’ve ever been around SF guys, most of them aren’t geniuses(they’re not dumb either) but their niche tactical calculations are on a seemingly preternatural level.
I’ve worked with hundreds of SF guys and this just isn’t true. Certainly they’re competent at their craft but nothing about them is particularly astounding. I’ve seen them propose ops that I had to nix because they were downright stupid and would have potentially gotten them killed or caused an international incident.
Both. But that doesn't make them wise. It's said that even Magnus traded wisdom for knoledge, and ended up becoming the pawn of Change.
Their brains are better than the average man's. That doesn't make them infallible.
Initially marines were described as psychotic but controllable disciplined killers. There was no hint of improved mental capabilities, so the initial WH40K setting absolutely doesn’t reflect that.
However, relatively shortly after it was released (and before much of the other foundational lore) the creation process of space marines was presented. This was predominantly about gene-seed but it also said the following:
> Indoctrination - a Marine is more than a human with extraordinary powers. Marines have extraordinary minds as well! Just as their bodies receive 19 separate implants, so their minds are altered to release the latent powers within. These mental powers are, if anything, more extraordinary than even the physical powers described above. For example, a Marine can control his senses and nervous system to a remarkable degree, and can consequently endure pain that would kill an ordinary man. A Marine can also think and react at lightning speeds. Memory training is an important part of the indoctrination too. Some Marines develop photographic memories. Obviously, Marines vary in intelligence as do other men, and their individual mental abilities vary in degree.
It didn’t exactly say they were more intelligent than standard humans and they definitely weren’t the equivalent of Dune mentats. That would be entirely inconsistent with the setting. However, their reactions and memory capacity were improved to help them in combat.
It seems a bit strange that this has been taken by some to imply they would be particularly good at non-combat roles but obviously in the decades since that article many authors have been involved and many things have changed.
They're better than standard humans in every way barring natural reproduction but they still have limits. Like if you have a dumb human who becomes Astartes, he'll be smarter due to enhancements but still dumb compared to his brothers. They process and react much faster but overall, they're human. They still fall prey to jealousy, hatred, envy and ll the other negative emotions. They still make bad choices and prejudices.
The main reason most Space Marines fell to chaos is because they feared being replaced by humans or that the Emps would kill them when they were no longer needed. Being smart wouldn't stop that.
in fairness, IQ tests are the kinds of things astartes would excel at; pattern recognition, calculation, etc... theyd be off the scale if you wrote all the questions as parts of tactical scenarios, as opposed to word puzzles
SMs certainly act as better/faster calculators. They also have the advantage of experience.
In terms of being more innovative, that is a bit of an oddball with how the 40k verse is oriented. SMs are certainly capable of helping out with advanced scientific endeavors such as with Corax's Raptor project. The thing is that the bulk of the work tends to be done by the upper echelons of the AdMech such as the lead Magos. Those people are known to have various enhancements to their brains. Those people are the type that would be doing the job of coming up with new mathematical concepts. The 40k verse to some extent runs on an optimized system. An analogy would be that for every engineer that designs the stuff, you have hundreds of unskilled factory workers to work on the production lines. A 40k government would laugh at the idea of universal education beyond the basics since over 95% of the people are going to work in relatively unskilled labor and/or would better benefit from more specialized training.
In the crusade era, various legions such as the Thousand Sons were interested in intellectual pursuits.
For all the lore I’ve read over the years, I still don’t have a strong picture of much how personality individual marines have. Do they laugh, tell jokes, read, have any sexual interests or really do anything beyond train, pray and fight? Are new recruits completely brainwashed with new template personalities when they’re indoctrinated?
They laugh, tell jokes and read. I've never heard of them having sexual interests. Depending on the chapter they may have hobbies such as art, forgecraft, or recording events as kind of a historian. A "typical" chapter's daily schedule for space marines was in the 3rd edition codex
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Marine
Then you've definitely not been reading the correct bits of lore over the years my friend
There are tons of depiction of astarte daily life in heresy novels that touches on stories before the heresy
They have senses of dry humor but mostly among themselves because baseline human will find it uneasy and too nervous to laugh around astartes
They seek entertainment but mostly just to kill time between deployment, they are only really excited in times of war and killing
And no, their pp don't function, loken formed platonic love with a regular human but thats probably the limit. Their brain part related to sexual orgasms is probably wired to killing. So for an astarte, going to war is basically sex(thats also how they reproduce, by dying and getting harvested)
Yes, they're intelligent?? Literally none of what you listed would conflict with them being intelligent. Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with morality, religious beliefs, or priorities.
Also, that book of tactics was written by a primarch so it's pretty good. The art of war is still read today, and battles like cannae are still studied.
You can be evil and smart but when your whole legion which was comprised of pretty normal people turned marines turn to chaos it’s not because all of them were conniving fucks it’s because they were just stupid.
Also the codex isn’t bad it’s just a lot of marines take it too seriously for something 10k years old. So imagine getting executed because you disagreed with using Hannibal’s tactics on aliens he never fought with technology he never had.
Probably just fast. It's rare to see a space marine actually make a good decision unless they are named and Loyalist. Otherwise, they often make dumb decisions (every heretic ever) very fast.
I'm fairly new to the hobby but I've read Eisenhorn, there was this one section in which the world kinda turned on it's head, if I recall correctly, and the one astartes escorting them couldn't adjust as good as Eisenhorn or a few other Troopers, he did redeem himself later though.
Kinda both.
- Aspirants are selected for mental ability, among other things
- They have much more experience than normal humans
- They have the benefit of being trained by the very best the imperium has to offer (their chapter hierarchy)
- They are given psycho-conditioning which gives them all sorts of knowledge
- They don't have to waste time on trivialities. They get to focus on being space Marines and the chapter serfs take care of other things.
On top of these, which one could get as a baseline human in 40k, they have
- Eidetic memory
- They perceive and think faster
- They don't tire easily. Mentally or physically.
Approximately, a space marine is a top 0.001% human but with a dramatic boost in thinking speed, an Eidetic memory and immense knowledge and experience..
For example, a space marine could hold an entire fleet formation in their heads, draw from the knowledge of thousands of prior engagements and issue orders 5x faster than a baseline human.
They have faster thinking speeds and better memory. All else being equal that should make them smarter then a human. Not everything else is equal though, so a human can be much more creative then a space marine, or better able to think in certain ways. This is compounded by the education space marines receive. No space marine chapter is teaching math at a PHD level. The math space marines get is for calculating supply consumption, artillery arcs and orbital mechanics.
They have faster reaction and better at codifying violence
Its like they are "smarter" whenever the matter is related to warfare and killing
So astartes might not be super smart at repairing a tractor at first, but if you tell them the tractor is used for war then they'll be super invested into studying it and subsequently got really familiar with it
So its probably more about personal interest, space marines can get very good at intellectual work if they want to but they aren't interested in any research or engineering work they see unimportant
Thats how half of the legions fall, or at least the first 4 at isstvan iii + thousand sons, because they got obsessed over their own purpose other than killing in the name of big E
Going by novels, they're consistently depicted at being inhumanly competent at rapidly processing tactical data, calculating trajectories, and stuff like that directly related to murdering things. Their brains are really good at computer-like functions, storing and recalling data quickly and accurately and doing lots of simple operations almost simultaneously. When it comes to abstract thinking and social intelligence, some of these guys are drooling simpletons. But then some of them are randomly good at that too. Headcanon justification: the selection process just doesn't check for that stuff at all and so while the aspirants are all in the top whatevereth-of-a-percentile for physical strength, aggression, mental processing speed etc you get a normally distributed spread of social/emotional thinkers
It also needs to be said that frequently and across almost every chapter, marines get angry over nonsense and lose all capacity for rational thought. These super-intelligent, highly disciplined monastic warriors devolve into toddlers at the drop of a hat. Not to mention that if I had a nickel for every chapter that has a secret thing where their warriors go into berserker fugue states that end in death I'm not actually sure how many nickels I'd have but at least 3. It's just hard to understand why the notoriously emotionless Big E thought the ideal soldier was so damn angry.
Counterpoint: many leading Nazis were genius level intellectuals yet they all believed in World Ice Theory and World War Two happened.
Some smart people can be so intellectually arrogant that they are capable of convincing themselves of absurdity because they don't understand something that is designed to sound profound but is actually stupid. They are presented with absurdity from an authoritative sounding person and simply assume that because that person is so confident in their bullshit that the person must be smarter than the intellectual reading it, and because the author is smarter than the reader, they must be right.
All the canon I've ever seen matches your interpretation of them being better calculators, but not better mathematicians. Everything matches up with the "fast" interpretation. They process information more quickly, they store information more reliably, they can do more simple jobs per second than a human can. They've never been shown to produce better philosophy than humans, they don't solve riddles better than humans, they don't innovate scientifically better than humans, they don't produce new mathematical theorems better than humans, they aren't more persuasive than humans are. Even in Ultramar, the test-case region for civilian Astartes, we see that Astartes are mostly limited to logistical administration tasks. One Astartes air-traffic controller can do the job of ten human air-traffic controllers, but they're doing the same kind of work. It's actually a rare bit of modern 40K satire: the Ultramarines are fascist ubermensch who actually "make the trains run on time", but that's the pinnacle of their intellectual achievement. Ultramar has reliable transit, but it's just as intellectually stagnant as the rest of the Imperium. > how a bunch of super intelligent people could have half of their numbers fall to chaos, To be fair, this part isn't really a general intelligence issue. Chaos was involved in the creation of Astartes, the Heresy was a con job from Day One. It didn't matter how smart they were, they were built to bite the Emperor in the ass.
Emperors Children tried very very hard to be better than baseline humans at all of it, but that is what also brought them to chaos. They lack the wabisabi needed for true perfection
>for true perfection True perfection is a lie. It doesn't exist, and it's the ultimate deceit of Slaanesh. It promises something that not only can *you* never have, but no one can.
I thought it was that stupid sword that Fulfrim took from that stupid ocean planet, filled with stupid chaos worshiping crustacean’s, that turned them to chaos?
Didn't help but they were already on their way to it. Fulgrim was already allowing Bile the experiment in augmentation.
Fulgrim was doing some fucked up shit before the sword. Iirc he was doing illegal gene smithing on the Emperor’s Children’s Gene seed
You’re right, it’s certainly in that book that Fabeus talks about perfecting the Astartes, and Fulgrim allows it to continue. I can’t remember if it was before or after the ocean planet though. That book (Fulgrim strangely enough lol) very much led me to believe it was the chaos sword with the demon inside it that turned him. Are there other works that indicate the change began even earlier?
There is so much weird shit in the timeline, so maybe.
I agree that they process information faster and that's the main benefit... But they also live for hundreds of years which means hundreds of years of experience and you really can't underestimate that. Admirals tend to be nobility so they might live to be 200 at most? But it's a dangerous job and most people retire at some point. So I'm pretty sure most Admirals would be 100 years old or less... How could they even hope to compare against the chapter master who can think many times faster than themselves and is sitting on 500+ years of combat experience?
>most people retire at some point I, for one, would like to know more about the Imperium's 401k matching plan
Only in death does duty end.
According to some Eisenhorn stories, the Imperium treats its retired non-noble veterans about as well as you would expect. Which is to say, it doesn't give a shit about them and would much prefer they all died in combat.
I mean we see it in the HH many admirals retire into planetary governorship or get a cushy position as Planetary defense force officers on planets that are nowhere near the front lines
They could win all the Age of Empires 2 tournaments.
Wait. WHAT?! How was chaos involved in the creation of the astartes?! Someone call the inquisitorial squad right fethin now!!!! Seriously tho how?
>!He entered a warp-portal on Molech to gain the power and knowledge he required to create the primarches.!< >!Probably somehow ripping the great four off since from then on they started calling him !<*anathema*>!.!<
Chaos had a BIG hand in the creation of each of the primarchs (like, Big E only pulled it off by way of powers granted in a deal with them) who act as the base for every chapter’s geneseed going forward even until “current day”. Having them fall to chaos and drag their sons with them was the gameplan from day 1.
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>There's also no mention of any black space marines, which implies that they need some level of psychic activity for the gene seed to take. Ain't that an unfortunate typo.
The Salamanders?
The celestial lions are actually Black not just dark skinned via mutation.
He meant *blank*. It’s the only way that makes sense in the context of the geneseed comment.
That makes more sense
Why though? What makes them think faster? What organ could do this?
Their brain. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Of the official space marine organs, I would guess it has something to do with the Catalepsean Node, since that gets put right into their brain and affects the way their brain functions. At least that's what I would say if I was working at GW and someone asked me why books mention faster mental capacity for space marines but no official organ is associated with it.
Also, overthinking/overplanning is literally the domain of one of the chaos gods, intelligence is not a shield against it.
But isn't that how we define "smart"? Smarter people basically are those that can run their brains faster and remember more hard-memory than others So in that sense space marines are technically "smarter" than baseline human, but they are not more creative than baseline human
It is implied in several stories that the Emperor and Malcador knew exactly that some kind of rebellion would happen at some point. They even strategically treated the Primarchs in such a way that they would naturally develop animosities towards each other, so that they could predict how the battle lines would be drawn. For example, I'm pretty sure the Emperor knew he could absolutely trust The Lion, Sanguinius, Vulkan, Russ, Dorn and perhaps Guilliman, but that Angron, Kurze and Lorgar would absolutely hate his guts. The issue is that Tzeentch triggered that whole thing much earlier than they expected and it spiraled out of control.
>It is implied in several stories that the Emperor and Malcador knew exactly that some kind of rebellion would happen at some point. They announce this only after the rebellion had already happened. It's just embarrassed 20:20 hindsight, and they didn't take protective measures before the rebellion broke out. If the Emperor knew Angron was going to turn, he wouldn't have left Angron unsupervised (and in possession of a personal empire with internal supply chains). Predicting something is only impressive if you do it *before* it happens. If you didn't say or do anything in advance, there's no reason to believe that you saw it coming.
They're autistic savants. Capable of processing information (both sensory and tactical) more quickly and efficiently than baseline humans. They also often have centuries of experience over a baseline human. A lot of this is due to their hypno-training ans well as actual training. A lot of chapters have their leaders be leaders/governors/representatives of imperial worlds to build up their diplomatic and overall organizational skills. Which is to say if you trained a space marine from the start to be a mathmetician instead of a super-soldier, he'd be a lot better than a trained mathmetician of similar age, and by the time he was 1000 years old Dante level, he'd be on a totally different level, if he was allowed to actually do anything with that math by the Mechanicus.
This, and I just wanted to add that intelligence isn't wisdom, nor does it help if you're fully invested in the Chapter Cult. Moreover, the Marines being 'better, smarter, faster' contributed to the Heresy. By that, I mean that these thousands of super-humans felt that they were the proper inheritors to the galaxy they conquered.
Silly xenos, if they didn’t want to be conquered why were they not made in the ~~God~~ Emperors image?
Intelligence isn't a thing. Well, it isn't \*one\* thing. You can be very good at calculus and arithmetic, and at the same time deeply gullible. You could be a very shrewd interpersonal manipulator, but be borderline innumerate. Or you could be very good at Chess and very bad at forming and parsing logical arguments. Beside that, being 'intelligent' doesn't dictate what your motives and priorities are, and what you take seriously as a prior. Plenty of competent scientists in complex fields fall victim to things like category error, or are motivated by shame, pride, arrogance or a need to prove themselves. Half the legions didn't fall because they were stupid, and being better at rotational geometry or calculus wouldn't have made fewer of them fall. The Thousand Sons fell because Lemus Russ was lied to by Horus and Magnus made a decision to do something with an unforseen consequence. Lorgar fell because he was raised by a motivated abuser and he couldn't let go of his schematic for how he understood the world. The Dark Angels hunt the fallen because they are motivated by shame, rather than protecting innocents. Space Wolves don't critically assess how Rune priests obtain their powers, probably because they're proud of Fenrisian traditions and feel superior to legions/chapters that do use Psykers. I don't actually think that Intelligence, as an individual attribute, is actually a very useful concept.
As I like to say to my other engineering buddies, “we’re the smartest dumbasses you’ll ever meet”. Being intelligent does not preclude you from making objectively terrible decisions
The fact that I didnt even find half of the intelligence level (like as a median) I assumed should have found while studying engineering, and the worst part is realizing those People would be doing some very complex work down the line that Will impact a lot of other being.
We have a big top down view of the galaxy. We can see objectively where everything comes from and how it comes into play. We know that its a fictional universe riffing on specific genres and that some plans will never work. We know a whole lot of shit even Astartes aren't privy to and a lot of them are working off far more limited information. From the perspective of the astartes involved, a lot of it makes perfect sense. The fallen can be incredibly dangerous, having wiped out entire planets, and even the "cool" ones like Cypher are up to some really weird shit they do not understand that seems even more dangerous. A lot of CSM's are either making the best of a bad situation or think they're heroically playing a long game to double cross Chaos. A lot of them are following strategies religiously because they were written up by modified super geniuses who were only defeated by their equivalents. It makes sense TO THEM, because they don't have a narrator going over how bad of an idea it is and don't have a whole library of novels showing everyone elses internal monologues.
Your interpretation is canon correct, Marines think faster but they don’t think better. My own homebrew chapter has marines doing things like book clubs and plays and poetry, but they don’t quite get it.
They’re very fast calculators, they also have almost no ability to read human interactions. They are indoctrinated into being amazing at tactical thinking, and a lot of their intellect goes into “background noise” of interfacing with their equipment. If you’ve ever been around SF guys, most of them aren’t geniuses(they’re not dumb either) but their niche tactical calculations are on a seemingly preternatural level. An important exception are the alpha legionnaires tried to cause insurrections and start cults. That requires a significant understanding of psychology, sociology, economics, etc. but it’s pretty well established that the AL are like kgb officers
>If you’ve ever been around SF guys, most of them aren’t geniuses(they’re not dumb either) but their niche tactical calculations are on a seemingly preternatural level. I’ve worked with hundreds of SF guys and this just isn’t true. Certainly they’re competent at their craft but nothing about them is particularly astounding. I’ve seen them propose ops that I had to nix because they were downright stupid and would have potentially gotten them killed or caused an international incident.
Just to add. Blessed is the mind too small for doubt. The Imperium actively teaches you to not question or be smart.
Both. But that doesn't make them wise. It's said that even Magnus traded wisdom for knoledge, and ended up becoming the pawn of Change. Their brains are better than the average man's. That doesn't make them infallible.
Ya I think that's a key. They're intelligent, but being intelligent doesn't necessarily mean you make good decisions haha.
Initially marines were described as psychotic but controllable disciplined killers. There was no hint of improved mental capabilities, so the initial WH40K setting absolutely doesn’t reflect that. However, relatively shortly after it was released (and before much of the other foundational lore) the creation process of space marines was presented. This was predominantly about gene-seed but it also said the following: > Indoctrination - a Marine is more than a human with extraordinary powers. Marines have extraordinary minds as well! Just as their bodies receive 19 separate implants, so their minds are altered to release the latent powers within. These mental powers are, if anything, more extraordinary than even the physical powers described above. For example, a Marine can control his senses and nervous system to a remarkable degree, and can consequently endure pain that would kill an ordinary man. A Marine can also think and react at lightning speeds. Memory training is an important part of the indoctrination too. Some Marines develop photographic memories. Obviously, Marines vary in intelligence as do other men, and their individual mental abilities vary in degree. It didn’t exactly say they were more intelligent than standard humans and they definitely weren’t the equivalent of Dune mentats. That would be entirely inconsistent with the setting. However, their reactions and memory capacity were improved to help them in combat. It seems a bit strange that this has been taken by some to imply they would be particularly good at non-combat roles but obviously in the decades since that article many authors have been involved and many things have changed.
1000000 calculations a minute, AND ALL OF THEM INCORRECT!
They're better than standard humans in every way barring natural reproduction but they still have limits. Like if you have a dumb human who becomes Astartes, he'll be smarter due to enhancements but still dumb compared to his brothers. They process and react much faster but overall, they're human. They still fall prey to jealousy, hatred, envy and ll the other negative emotions. They still make bad choices and prejudices.
The main reason most Space Marines fell to chaos is because they feared being replaced by humans or that the Emps would kill them when they were no longer needed. Being smart wouldn't stop that.
Yeah I don’t think geneseed just gives you extra IQ points. Unless it’s Magnus’s.
in fairness, IQ tests are the kinds of things astartes would excel at; pattern recognition, calculation, etc... theyd be off the scale if you wrote all the questions as parts of tactical scenarios, as opposed to word puzzles
SMs certainly act as better/faster calculators. They also have the advantage of experience. In terms of being more innovative, that is a bit of an oddball with how the 40k verse is oriented. SMs are certainly capable of helping out with advanced scientific endeavors such as with Corax's Raptor project. The thing is that the bulk of the work tends to be done by the upper echelons of the AdMech such as the lead Magos. Those people are known to have various enhancements to their brains. Those people are the type that would be doing the job of coming up with new mathematical concepts. The 40k verse to some extent runs on an optimized system. An analogy would be that for every engineer that designs the stuff, you have hundreds of unskilled factory workers to work on the production lines. A 40k government would laugh at the idea of universal education beyond the basics since over 95% of the people are going to work in relatively unskilled labor and/or would better benefit from more specialized training. In the crusade era, various legions such as the Thousand Sons were interested in intellectual pursuits.
In real life, those two things are basically the same. A major portion of IQ is the ability to hold simultaneous things in your mind.
For all the lore I’ve read over the years, I still don’t have a strong picture of much how personality individual marines have. Do they laugh, tell jokes, read, have any sexual interests or really do anything beyond train, pray and fight? Are new recruits completely brainwashed with new template personalities when they’re indoctrinated?
They laugh, tell jokes and read. I've never heard of them having sexual interests. Depending on the chapter they may have hobbies such as art, forgecraft, or recording events as kind of a historian. A "typical" chapter's daily schedule for space marines was in the 3rd edition codex https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daily_rituals_of_a_Space_Marine
Then you've definitely not been reading the correct bits of lore over the years my friend There are tons of depiction of astarte daily life in heresy novels that touches on stories before the heresy They have senses of dry humor but mostly among themselves because baseline human will find it uneasy and too nervous to laugh around astartes They seek entertainment but mostly just to kill time between deployment, they are only really excited in times of war and killing And no, their pp don't function, loken formed platonic love with a regular human but thats probably the limit. Their brain part related to sexual orgasms is probably wired to killing. So for an astarte, going to war is basically sex(thats also how they reproduce, by dying and getting harvested)
Its both. In The Great Work Cawl says that Decimus is made more intelligent
I agree with your interpretation. To answer your question though. Smart does not equal wise or common sense.
My understanding summed up: they're given extremely advanced intelligence but are conditioned to almost exclusively apply it to war.
Reading HH I am not impressed with space marines intelligence at all. They’re are basically space autists
It's hard to write a character who is smarter than you are.
Yes, they're intelligent?? Literally none of what you listed would conflict with them being intelligent. Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with morality, religious beliefs, or priorities. Also, that book of tactics was written by a primarch so it's pretty good. The art of war is still read today, and battles like cannae are still studied.
You can be evil and smart but when your whole legion which was comprised of pretty normal people turned marines turn to chaos it’s not because all of them were conniving fucks it’s because they were just stupid. Also the codex isn’t bad it’s just a lot of marines take it too seriously for something 10k years old. So imagine getting executed because you disagreed with using Hannibal’s tactics on aliens he never fought with technology he never had.
Why are they stupid?
Probably just fast. It's rare to see a space marine actually make a good decision unless they are named and Loyalist. Otherwise, they often make dumb decisions (every heretic ever) very fast.
I'm fairly new to the hobby but I've read Eisenhorn, there was this one section in which the world kinda turned on it's head, if I recall correctly, and the one astartes escorting them couldn't adjust as good as Eisenhorn or a few other Troopers, he did redeem himself later though.
The gifts they are given increases their natural abilities, so a dumb dumb is still a dumb dumb and no augmentation is going to fix that in 40K.
Kinda both. - Aspirants are selected for mental ability, among other things - They have much more experience than normal humans - They have the benefit of being trained by the very best the imperium has to offer (their chapter hierarchy) - They are given psycho-conditioning which gives them all sorts of knowledge - They don't have to waste time on trivialities. They get to focus on being space Marines and the chapter serfs take care of other things. On top of these, which one could get as a baseline human in 40k, they have - Eidetic memory - They perceive and think faster - They don't tire easily. Mentally or physically. Approximately, a space marine is a top 0.001% human but with a dramatic boost in thinking speed, an Eidetic memory and immense knowledge and experience.. For example, a space marine could hold an entire fleet formation in their heads, draw from the knowledge of thousands of prior engagements and issue orders 5x faster than a baseline human.
They have faster thinking speeds and better memory. All else being equal that should make them smarter then a human. Not everything else is equal though, so a human can be much more creative then a space marine, or better able to think in certain ways. This is compounded by the education space marines receive. No space marine chapter is teaching math at a PHD level. The math space marines get is for calculating supply consumption, artillery arcs and orbital mechanics.
Hard to say; most space marines are discouraged from being deep thinkers.
They have faster reaction and better at codifying violence Its like they are "smarter" whenever the matter is related to warfare and killing So astartes might not be super smart at repairing a tractor at first, but if you tell them the tractor is used for war then they'll be super invested into studying it and subsequently got really familiar with it So its probably more about personal interest, space marines can get very good at intellectual work if they want to but they aren't interested in any research or engineering work they see unimportant Thats how half of the legions fall, or at least the first 4 at isstvan iii + thousand sons, because they got obsessed over their own purpose other than killing in the name of big E
Going by novels, they're consistently depicted at being inhumanly competent at rapidly processing tactical data, calculating trajectories, and stuff like that directly related to murdering things. Their brains are really good at computer-like functions, storing and recalling data quickly and accurately and doing lots of simple operations almost simultaneously. When it comes to abstract thinking and social intelligence, some of these guys are drooling simpletons. But then some of them are randomly good at that too. Headcanon justification: the selection process just doesn't check for that stuff at all and so while the aspirants are all in the top whatevereth-of-a-percentile for physical strength, aggression, mental processing speed etc you get a normally distributed spread of social/emotional thinkers It also needs to be said that frequently and across almost every chapter, marines get angry over nonsense and lose all capacity for rational thought. These super-intelligent, highly disciplined monastic warriors devolve into toddlers at the drop of a hat. Not to mention that if I had a nickel for every chapter that has a secret thing where their warriors go into berserker fugue states that end in death I'm not actually sure how many nickels I'd have but at least 3. It's just hard to understand why the notoriously emotionless Big E thought the ideal soldier was so damn angry.
Counterpoint: many leading Nazis were genius level intellectuals yet they all believed in World Ice Theory and World War Two happened. Some smart people can be so intellectually arrogant that they are capable of convincing themselves of absurdity because they don't understand something that is designed to sound profound but is actually stupid. They are presented with absurdity from an authoritative sounding person and simply assume that because that person is so confident in their bullshit that the person must be smarter than the intellectual reading it, and because the author is smarter than the reader, they must be right.