Are there any records of space marines coming in contact with their family while on a mission? I'm thinking about running a campaign where a space marine, newly in training, is sent into battle on his home planet (his superiors don't know he is from there) and after the battle they finding him burying his parents. He had found them after the city was saved from orcs/whatever.
How would the rest of his squad/chapter master respond seeing him do that?
They wouldn't remember their family/care. Theres some instances of marines remembering snippets iirc but no real full out memories/attachments. They're psycho indoctrinated transhuman murder machines. They come in kill the enemy then leave the clean up to the guard. Anything that would drive them to care is pushed out of their heads intraining. Neophytes aren't sent on missions until the become scouts at that point they aren't even human anymore. Your campaign would work better as a guard campain.
Depends on chater and marine, actually. Dante remembered his family and tribe after 1500 years for example. There are multiple examples of marines remembering the trials to become one at least.
It's okay, Sallies have their families to remember them at any time.
I'm pretty sure this happens to the Ultramarines all the time, since their initiates sometimes come from highly trained noble children looking to ascend in the Chapter.
Routine mission can easily have them come back home, but they'd most likely put the mission before any sort of social interactions.
In one of the Night Lords books, a marine is briefly confronted by his mother in a mob. He doesn't recognise her, but feels extremely uncomfortable without knowing why. He's relieved when soldiers running crowd control shoot her. It's fricked up.
Kek I was gonna post this. Really helps you realize how nuts they are.
which one? extremely grimdark
It's from the first book in the Night Lords trilogy, book is called Soul Hunter
>In one of the Night Lords books
what is the book title?
And apparently everyone has forgotten about the Salamanders again...
depends on the chapter, most space marines are psycho indoctrinated, most marines don't remember their past life although some do
Probably only if his family is important nobility and his chapter values that enough to allow him to remember that.
>his superiors don't know he is from there
His superiors have superhuman intelligence and only 1000 or so people to keep track of.
In all fairness; 1000 or so in terms of Marines, many multiple times that in terms of auxillia, political allies, rivals serfs and whatever else. Between that and the awful information network of the Imperium it's not the most far fetched thing to happen.
The marines are among the most important, and the ones dealt with the most. It's also assuming the chapter master never delegates anything, otherwise it's down to 100.
And the chapter will know where they picked him up, which is almost certainly where he's from. Never mind the fact that he can presumably talk. They don't need an information network to know where he's form.
It's not impossible, but it looks idiotic if anyone then makes an issue of it, and if they don't then the whole thing falls kind of flat anyway.
Don't space marines live much longer than your average 40K human? Like hundreds of years longer? I doubt a space marine's family would live long enough for a meeting to take place given how long the training takes.
Particularly important humans also get life extensions, which was actually the case for much of the earliest humans attached to their legions, like Luther; it's entirely seemly for some chapter serfs to be around for multiple centuries if they're deemed particularly important, though unlike SM I suspect there's a limited amount of life extension you can do before you start partially mechanizing them, and the aforementioned Luther is kept in stasis for centuries at a time to be questioned.
As a result, there's a slight chance some Space Marines of noble heritage might not only have living direct relatives, but might even be outlived by them.
It's troublesome when your bioweapons have emotions, specially in a Chaos-filled setting. It's one of the reasons they are brainwashed and indoctrinated.
His superiors would send him to the chaplain, and then to the mind-scrambling chamber.
I figure they would want to avoid using any kind of memory altering/removing device given how much vital info a solider like that would have.
Yes it happens but rarely, mainly with salamanders, ultramarines and space wolves. Space wolves are more likely to have actually had children before becoming marines so its possible to actually meet the offspring of their offspring.
In Devastation of Baal, Dante hallucinates his old family during his last charge through Tyranid lines.
Dante falls after killing the Swarmlord, and in his death throes, sees the Spirit of Sanguinius himself. Dante asks for death, for rest for his long years of service, only for Sanguinius to sorrowfully tell him that he still must suffer more, as his service is not yet done. Dante can only beg to die as he's dragged back to life by an apothecary.
And at the end of all this, when the Indomitus Crusade arrives, and Dante is rescued and being carried to see Guilliman, his already hazy mind hallucinates, just for a moment, that his father, not Sanguinius, his actual father, is carrying him. Even a millennium later, Dante remembers his father, and his typically stoic façade gives way, just for a moment, to tell his father that he became a space marine. And then he's gone.
>Are there any records of space marines coming in contact with their family while on a mission?
unless that mission is "Supervising and/or training new recruits"
Probably no.
Yes, the Dawn of War novels. Gabriel Angelos kills his entire family.
minor note, Marines are like, generally pretty old. most of their families will have died, unless it's something like hanging out with their great-great neice or something.
or you could just put your little sister in a tube naked and have her control the fleet flagship
they have to be young before they get old anon
it doesn't take them a hundred years before they go on their first mission or anything
I imagine this is more common among Ultramarines seeing as they draw almost exclusivly from Ultramar so their families would know their kids became Space marines.
Same could probably be said for Salamanders and Space Wolves as well considering they recruit on the planets they live on
I'm probably wrong, but don't Salamanders routinely go back home to Nocturne, and usually end up hanging out with relatives
They would be too old. Space Marines live forever, and centuries would pass. It's unlikely their families would still be alive.
Great thing about the setting is depends on the chapter, just make an OC chapter and it should avoid any doubt it could be possible