Apothecary

You might feel a slight pinch...

An Apothecary is a Space Marine specialist in Warhammer 40,000, combining the roles of medic and geneticist. The senior Apothecary is known as the Master of the Apothecarion (the fortress-monastery's medical center) or Chief Apothecary. They are usually armed with standard Space Marine gear and a Narthecium.

Since Space Marines have undergone genetic augmentations to survive nearly anything, an Apothecary's real battlefield roles involve three jobs: stabilization, mercy killing, and extraction. While Space Marines can endure damn near anything except the most serious injuries, Apothecaries frequently need to stabilize them long enough for their gene-seed to start up and heal them. If a Marine has been too badly injured to be saved, then the Apothecary applies "the Emperor's Peace," a mercy kill by driving a Reductor (a sharpened needle) into the Marine's skull to quickly end his pain (although some Apothecaries use bolt pistols, for some reason). If a Marine has died, it is the Apothecary's duty to extract the progenoids from his dead brother. Off the battlefield, they also implant Space Marine Initiates with the extracted progenoids, and make sure Battle-Brothers don't have any nasty mutations.

That's not to suggest they don't actually know any medicine, by the way.

Fun fact: back in the days of Rogue Trader, they actually were called Medics for a while, but that quickly changed.

Sanguinary Priest

The Blood Angels are a little weird, so they call their Apothecaries "Sanguinary Priests." There's a lot of weird blood rituals they do.

Also, they LITERALLY carry the blood of Sanguinius, since they're injected with a sample of it when they become Sanguinary Priests. This means they are the prettiest Marines, as they look the most like Sanguinius.

Chaos Apothecaries

Chaos being what it is, their apothecaries range from nonexistant to derp to mad scientist. Between the lack of institutionalization and the high priority placed on Rip and Tear, Chaos apothecaries are rare to nonexistent within a single warband. That said, that's not to say they don't exist, but Chaos apothecaries are too rare to be represented on the tabletop, often being relegated to working on new recruits and playing fluffer to the Chaos Lord instead of the battlefield. Some warbands abandon the apothecary idea completely, using their Dark Mechanicum Biologis allies to harvest and process gene-seed from the dead marines (often including the corpses of loyalists and members of rival bands, if the Lord of the band isn't picky), or even inventing new, more... creative ways to breed new marines.

Few Chaos apothecaries really make a name for themselves. There's that Fabulous Bill guy who has fucked things up for the Imperium with his rampant megalomania and successful genetic experiments (which, by the way, has a huge untapped potential in the fluff). There are also mention of a Nurglite, quasizombified apothecary or two floating around somewhere, and the Red Corsairs having right and proper apothecarion, which have something to do with Huron Blackheart being the only sensible man in charge on the Chaos side. Template:Marines-Codex