[Ventriss]

Morning all,

Right  i have been thinking, Is it true that if guard fight alongside the grey knights any surviving guard are killed to protect the grey knights?

Does anyone think that maybe if all but the space marines and guard were left that the marines would kill off all the guard as the are not worthy???

[Tullio]

Well. Think about it in context - if the Grey Knights have turned, things are looking pretty grim already. In that situation, most Guardsmen fighting in such a situation might well be executed or sent to a penal colony just to make things easier. Armageddon was depopulated in this way after Angron trashed it in the First War for Armageddon

Astartes, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish. For a start they are semi-autonomous from the Imperium so an Inquisitor can't just decide to execute them. Each Chapter will have thier own method of dealing with warp-corruption, after all, since Astartes can and will fight wars against the daemonic by themselves without any other troops in support. I think it's more likely that there's a tactit agreement between the Astartes and the Inquisition to have the good grace to keep thier mouths shut about these kinds of wars in return for no ugly confrontations over what to do with Astartes that have gone toe to toe with the diabolic

Tullio

[Robert_the_damned]

I seem to remeber that IG units who have fought chaos troops are sometimes killed to stop them going mad/spreading chaos taint. So if IG are fighting with the grey knights that'll be what's happening.

[Ventriss]

Tullio - I did not mean the astartes becoming tainted i mean if there was no more threat to the astartes would they wipe out all the IG as they are seen to be un-pure lets say and not worthy of the god like astartes?

Robert - I thought it was common practice that if IG units were involved in a war senario that also called for the help of GK's then after the battle was won the IG units were killed to protect the sercrecy of the GK's. Is this not correct?

[Simeon Blackstar]

Space Marines can't reproduce, so killing all the humans would be pretty foolish.  Oh, and the whole "created and charged by the Emperor to lead humanity to victory over the galaxy" thing. 

[Kallidor]

I don't know about protecting the secrecy of the Grey Knights but the older background used to be that any Imperial Guard unit that fought the forces of Chaos (daemonic or otherwise) was exterminated by the Inquisition/Administratum to ensure that none of the tainted went free, the mad did not go free or simple gossip did not get about. Marines in the same situation were mind-wiped, reducing them to an infantile state and they would then have to be looked after by their Chapter; Chapter commanders were not wind-wiped. This preserved the marine for future use but eradicated all memory of Chaos.

[Ventriss]

Would not making a 7 and a half foot tall killing machine with the mind of an infant be very dangerous?

So the IG units were not killed to protect secrecy but infact to stop the spread of taint. Very cleaver.

What about peoples views on If there was just marines and IG left does anybody think they could become civil war between chapters as one may think they are more loyal than the others?

Does anyone know of any books that goes into the "design" and the mind set of the astartes in detail?

[Kallidor]

Would not making a 7 and a half foot tall killing machine with the mind of an infant be very dangerous

Do you know any dangerous infants? There's the risk of a flailing fist perhaps but I would imagine that those who are looking after such Marines can take care of them properly.

So the IG units were not killed to protect secrecy but infact to stop the spread of taint. Very cleaver.

Well the Imperial Guard are killed for secrecy, to keep Chaos secret not particularly the Grey Knights, it's unlikely anyone not in the know would tell any difference between them and any other Astartes.

What about peoples views on If there was just marines and IG left does anybody think they could become civil war between chapters as one may think they are more loyal than the others?

Only the Inquisition/Administratum deal with eradicating the threat of Chaos in this manner and no Chapter would be able to say anything about it. Look at Logan Grimnar, he has deep resentment for what was done on Armageddon but nothing came of it. The Space Marines are completely seperate to all other Imperial bodies and have no jurisdiction to determine their fates in what is really a civil matter.

If a Chapter had good reason to suspect their allies of corruption before they were dealt with by the Imperial authorities then they would probably butcher them but that's pretty standard.

Does anyone know of any books that goes into the "design" and the mind set of the astartes in detail?

There aren't any specific books I can think of that discuss the Marines in this way but most of the literature that covers Marines can tell you how they think but a lot of authors give a very two-dimensional view. The Ultramarines and Soul Drinkers novels are pretty good for a start.

[Tullio]

Does anyone know of any books that goes into the "design" and the mind set of the astartes in detail?

No, is the short answer. Black Library authors tend to be very bad at this, usually forgetting what makes Astartes tick and treating them like cheerful knights. But if I was really pressed, I'd say that Flight of the Eisenstien and Fulgrim both deal with the Astartes mindset head on, and in a reasonably convincing way. On no account should Horus Rising be used as source material for Astartes psychology

Tullio

[precinctomega]

The best I've read so far on the 41st Millennium's Astartes pscyhology was in Assault on Black Reach.  I imagine a similar peek might be found in Nick's subsequent space marine novel, "Salamander".

As to the OP, the answer is "yes, they might".  If a Grey Knight commander felt that there was a chance that the loyal forces alongside which they were fighting might have been corrupted by their exposure, then they would annihilate them without a second thought.  That doesn't mean that it would be done as a matter of course.  Humans who not only survive a daemonic incursion but who are victorious in the face of such horrors, and retain their fragile sanity are rare and valuable resources, likely to be of interest to the Inquisition.  As a result, they are more likely to be inducted into the Inquisitorial Storm Troopers and sent into battle against more such hordes.

Note, however, that this isn't to "protect the Grey Knights".  It's to protect the Imperium and the souls of those they kill.

Does anyone think that maybe if all but the space marines and guard were left that the marines would kill off all the guard as the are not worthy???

You're going to have to work on this sentence before it will make sense and I can answer it.

R.

[Koval]

The best I've read so far on the 41st Millennium's Astartes pscyhology was in Assault on Black Reach.  I imagine a similar peek might be found in Nick's subsequent space marine novel, "Salamander".

I found the characters a little too 2-D to be a good representation of Marine psychology, myself, but YMMV.

[Ventriss]

You're going to have to work on this sentence before it will make sense and I can answer it.

Sorry that is very bad of me.

What is was ment to mean/say was If all the existed in the universe was marines and IG could there be a possibility that a marine chapters may enter into a civil war as one may say they are more loyal than the other?

Hope that makes more sense.

[DapperAnarchist]

The Space Marines depend on the Imperial Guard - only the most arrogant of Marines would deny their vital importance, and those marines should never ascend beyond Sergeant, if that. Anyway, if there is "only the IG and Space Marines left" - then there is Humanity left. IG have a lot of women - Cadian armies should be 50/50, the Catachan's might be lower, and some would consist entirely of women. And do you think Necromundan Regiments go "Ah, Hive Primus... I think we'll only recruit from 5/6ths of the gangs there, leave out the Eschers..."?

But would Space Marines and IG come to blows over loyalty? Perhaps. Seems possible to me.

[Tullio]

I suspect they'd both have very different ideas about what constitutes "loyalty", for a start. The Imperial Guard tend to be taught that loyalty equals doing as you're told, whereas the Astartes mandate lets them do as they see fit. As a whole, the Astartes hold that they are loyal to the Emperor, not the Adeptus Terra, regardless of what the Ecclesiarchy might pontificate.

Another question to raise is whether there's any point to the Astartes in a galaxy that didn't have any xenos or daemons to squash. I think they might well end up having a crisis of purpose, unsure on what they're supposed to do and why they're supposed to do it

Tullio

[Necris]

There was old fluff about marines being euthanaised after certain encounters to protect the chapter, this included whole companies at times, as is recorded as being carried out by both chapter, grey knights and inquisition.

there is also fluff about mind wiping and mind scrubbing