Editing Gene-seed (section)

== Origins ==

Gene-seed is a vital part of the [[Space Marine]] program, and is as old as the Astartes themselves. When the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] was still conquering [[Terra]], many of the techno-barbarians' armies had augmented human warriors. The Emperor then realized that he would need vast armies of super-soldiers for his coming [[Great Crusade]], so he embarked on a project to create a mass-producible means of enhancing humans. This project resulted in the twenty [[Primarchs]], and from their genes, he created the gene-seed organs to be implanted into each Space Marine. These organs are usually produced in vats from extracted progenoids but [[Daemonculaba|other methods]] can be used in a pinch, and, of course, the Sinew Coils aren't an actual organ, so they can be produced much more readily, like any other cybernetic implant.

The traditional loyalist method of implanting gene-seed into recruits until it grows into new organs, then retrieving fresh gene-seed from them happens to loosely resemble the real-life concept of adult stem cells, invaluable for life-saving surgeries and keeping your liver from shriveling up when you get too drunk.

The process was originally available on a nearly industrial scale for the Great Crusade - both Terra and each legion recruitment worlds could make up the numbers for thousands of recruits. Occasionally they could be inducted as adults, although the limitations of this varied and usually an adult recruit was worthy but couldn't take a gene seed. In this case various surgeries and augmentations could turn them into a 'demi-marine', although the difference in performance was notable. A notable exception was Magnus the Red's teacher Amon, who would have been far too old for geneseed implantation but was altered by Magnus' powers to accept the implants.

During the Horus Heresy the Traitor Legions came up with a quick and dirty method for boosting their ranks by taking hundreds of thousands of aspirants (any sufficiently tough psychopath among their millions of followers) and forcing them through the implantation process much more rapidly than normal, along with substituting the years long training process with constant hypnotherapy training. The success rate was small but they had so many potential recruits it still resulted in a boost in their numbers. These Newborn, as they came to be known, were equipped with the same gear as regular marines but utterly lacked the skills and prowess of a traditional legionary. Their forced creation also led them to being seen as second-class citizens amongst their legions, and thus they created their own subcultures and traditions. As a result, they ended up being used as disposable shock troops whilst regular Astartes were saved for more important duties.

The Loyalists guarding Terra also sped up their training processes before the Siege, although they were more discerning with their recruits and still provided hands-on training. Notably, these recruits frequently did not come from Terra or their Legion home worlds, but from the worlds bordering the Sol System. As such they occupied an odd place in the legions social structure.

After the Heresy, the loyalist legions and then chapters scaled back the process, relocating all the materiel to their homeworlds or fleet apothecarions. As a preventative measure learned from the Heresy, subsequent recruits were taken at a younger age, both to screen out weakness as soon as possible, and to more readily indoctrinate the prospective marine to being loyal (YMMV). Most chapters also introduced far more stringent levels of hypnotherapy and indoctrination than any Heresy-era Marine would ever have had, and their standards for general recruits were also much higher, since now they recruited fewer aspirants from a smaller population (relatively) instead of a lot from a massive group, which could even be from several different worlds in cases of emergency recruitment.