Warhammer 40K fans: which of the novels has the best depiction of the Space Marines’ recruiting and training methods?
Haven’t read all of 'em yet, but “Brotherhood of the Snake” was pretty good for that sort of stuff.
- avoid * avoid * avoid * “Descent of Angels”, which covers that ground, but which is a wretched book.
how so?
Recruiting? Granted, it’s been 6 or 7 years since I’ve played 40k, but weren’t the Space Marines genetically engineered?
Average citizens joined the Imperial Guard.
Nope. Each chapter has its own assigned planet(s), the general population of which they draw recruits from, each chapter having its own tradition for the recruiting process. Some hold tournaments, other have gladiatorial pits, some require a tribute of young men per year under threat of arms, and IIRC the Space Wolves basically let their people fight a constant low-tech civil war and pick the best warriors at the end of big battles, Valkyrie-style.
Said recruits then go through gruelling, murderous training to weed out most of them, the few survivors get basic implants and serve the chapter as scouts/cannon fodder for a while, and the survivors of *that *get the final implants and become full-fledged Marines, essentially on a “dead man’s shoes” basis (whenever a marine dies, his core implants are farmed off his corpse to be handed out to a, hum, “lucky” candidate, so that the total number of Marines in the chapter remains 1.000, no more no less, as such is the will of the EMPRAH! following the original Heresy).
While Marines are so heavily body-modded that they’re not really humans anymore, they’re not grown in vats. The Imperial Guard are the lucky (or unlucky, depending on your point of view 
) bastards who don’t hail from Astarte planets, and thus don’t get implants, but snazzy high-powered flashlights to fight with 
At least, that was the canon back in 2nd edition, it may have changed since.
IIRC, the apothecaries could create more implants over time (as would be necessary to allow for future foundings, and to make up for casualties of more destructive weapons like anti-tank lasers, spools of mono-filament and go-directly-to-hell-do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-$200 guns).
And the 1,000 marines per chapter is Gulliman’s doing, not the Emperor’s.
The implants grow naturally in the bodies of the marine candidates, including a pair of ‘geneseeds’ that can then be implanted in two other candidates to grow all the fancy organs.
The power armor that the marines wear, on the other hand, is rare, and gets passed on from generation to generation of marines.
Fuck. Why do I know this?
HERESY ! Everything is the EMPRAH’s doing ! Purge that xeno-lover !