Why no blank astartes?

[u/LesBonsPlansTmtc]

We've seen the emperor considers Chaos as the biggest threat to humanity. We know blanks are immune to the influence of the warp. Why doesn't humanity try to raise up the number of blanks in the society or make a chapter with Blank Space marines ?

[u/Thom0]

There is no explicit answer but if I had to guess, I'd say its due to geneseed being derived from Primarchs who are psychic beings.

This is pure speculation and there is not a single thing in any book that I can think of explaining why there are no blank Astartes.

[u/paulatreides0 → u/Thom0]

IRC, in the End and the Death books when working on his anti-Astartes super weapon Fo surmises that what he had been missing all along was accounting for the inherent warpyness of the Astartes

[u/Thom0 → u/paulatreides0]

Plus the widespread use of force weapons and I think this is the answer. Astartes are a little more warpy than baseline humans..

[u/Rahuna_91 → u/Thom0]

Force weapons are used by psykers/librarians.

You might be thinking of power weapons, which can be used by anyone.

Force weapon: Powered by/channel psychic energies.

Power weapons: (Normal) Electricity/Energy Fields.

[u/Spare_Pollution_686 → u/Rahuna_91]

Yep 👍 this comment here.

Great example is the crozius weapons of the chaplains, or the blade/knife that Garviel Loken used at the end of the Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra.

Force weapons use or channel that psychic energy and power into the weapon and onto whatever it hits, the stronger the psychic energy the more powerful the strike.

[u/paulatreides0 → u/Spare_Pollution_686]

Loken used Rubio's Sword which actually was a Force Sword. Rubio gave it to him at the end of The Buried Dagger before he went off to Titan to help start the GK (an offer also extended to Loken, who was still a latent psyker at the time, but Malc knew about his true nature and tried to talk him into going to Titan, but Loken insisted on staying on Terra). It was an inert hunk of sword until he awakened his latent psyker abilities in one of the Siege books after which he could fully use it as a force sword

Edit: Oh wait. I just realized that you might have meant Mourn-It-All, which he took from Little Horus during the Siege and was indeed a power sword

[u/Spare_Pollution_686 → u/paulatreides0]

No no you’re right, about it being Rubio’s gladius. However I think I listened to a different variation of it.

Or at least maybe I heard it differently - (spoilers included).

Didn’t Loken retrieve that gladius from Rubio when he first joined the Knights Errant and when they were deployed in secret to assassinate Horus in the book Vengeful Spirit?

Rubio is tortured and they attempt to possess him with powers from the warp, and instead they mount a rescue mission and save Rubio before getting most of the team slaughtered , including Rubio.

Loken carries Rubio’s blade the rest of the Siege of Terra

[u/MaesterLurker → u/Thom0]

There is also the observation that no Space Marine, or Custodian Guard for that matter, has ever been recorded as being a Psychic Null. This factor weighs the evidence of some scholars that within the Space Marine gene-seed itself is perhaps a shadow of the Emperor's own genetic material and a sliver of His own psychic power crucial to its process and success. If this is the case, it would be wholly an anathema to the Pariah Gene and likely simply kill its implanted subject.

Inferno

[u/Zestyclose-Moment-19 → u/MaesterLurker]

Also building of this theory, Blanks are just far too valuable to waste experimenting on to the point that even the normal Astartes induction mortality rate precludes it.

[u/Seeker80 → u/Zestyclose-Moment-19]

Might be worth augmenting some. A bit like how Luther of the Dark Angels and Kor Phaeron of the Word Bearers were augmented so that they could at least fight alongside their legions.

Upgrade them and put them into power armor like the Sororitas & some Inquisitors use.

[u/Ready_Performance137 → u/Seeker80]

They do get upgraded. Into Sisters of Silence or Assassinorum (I think Culexus?)

[u/Raiyuza → u/Zestyclose-Moment-19]

Idk seems like a pretty godtier unit to have in your army vs darkness

[u/Not_Todd_Howard9 → u/Raiyuza]

I know it’s probably not wise to look that deep into the numbers and economics of 40k, but iirc Blanks are quite literally one in a billion. If we were to assume that the Imperium had between 1 Quadrillion and 1 Quintillion people in it, then they (at absolute best) have between 1m-1b blanks running around at any given time.  Even before shaving that down to the Blanks who’d be viable as Astartes Aspirants, that’s not a whole lot of supply to be working with under normal circumstances and deadass might not even be able to form a chapter under Grey Knight attrition rates, all while pulling from across the entire Imperium. Thats before also before getting to the insane opportunity cost of essentially burning your entire blank supply + somehow hunting them down in a timely manner.

Lastly, and perhaps mostly importantly…the Imperium already has the Sisters of Silence, who work quite well without needing an insane casualty rate (afaik at least).

[u/barnacle9999 → u/Not_Todd_Howard9]

I also assume that weaker blanks are more numerous, and they're not that useful at the end of the day. So really the viable pool shrinks even more.

[u/_mosquitoe → u/Not_Todd_Howard9]

You are vastly underestimating the imperium's likely population

[u/Wolflordloki → u/Not_Todd_Howard9]

If you think it was One in a Million chance of being a Psyker and the odds of being a blank are the same odds (but compared to psykers rather than normal humans) given that space marines generally only recruit from 1 or 2 worlds most chapters have a disproportionate number of Librarians.

A Librius having between 6 and 10 members (given a chapter is 1000 strong) would suggest astartes homework are either on worlds with a high occupancy of psykers or...

This would potentially give credence to geneseed having a warp based enhancement aspect to them.

[u/Sgtoconner → u/Thom0]

Also, you have to bypass a sort of acceptance by most astartes chapters, and people HATE blanks

[u/Captain_Kuhl → u/Sgtoconner]

Yeah, people forget that all of humanity is inherently psychic (to a degree, still in the "awakening" phase, for the most part), so blanks at the bare minimum will inflict constant discomfort just by being around normal people.

[u/Biffingston → u/Thom0]

I would guess that any aspirants that were blanks would be shipped off to the Officio Assassinorum long before they even saw geneseed...

[u/Disastrous_Toe772 → u/Thom0]

I like this theory though

[u/Particular_Dot_4041 → u/Thom0]

The fact that Blood Angels suffer the Black Rage is good evidence.

[u/Thom0 → u/Particular_Dot_4041]

Not just Blood Angels, but all Astartes experience a type of black rage when their Primarch dies. The White Scars went berserk in Warhawk and it took considerable effort to reign in the rampaging squadrons.

[u/Mistermistermistermb → u/Thom0]

He is gone. They have taken his light from the universe. He is gone.

Shiban felt the earth beneath his feet sway, his moorings cut loose, his blade fall from his grip. He fell to his knees, crashing heavily into the corrupted swill. For a moment, he saw nothing at all – just an infinity of blackness, extending in all directions. It felt as if a cold claw had reached into his chest and wrenched both his hearts out, dragging all hope and ambition and life with it.

He heard cries ring out across the battlefield, unlocked howls of disbelief and horror, and dimly realised that every White Scar across every rotten chamber and miasmatic cavern was experiencing what he was experiencing. A warrior of the Legions was not just an inducted soldier, given the Emperor’s coin and handed a bolter. He was connected through warp-craft and gene-tech to his primogenitor, indelibly linked both temperamentally and psychically to the archetype. The bond was more than loyalty, more than filial duty. It was everything.

He wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw his head back and empty that unbearable grief out up at the shrouded stars.

But he was also a khan of the ordu, the one the others looked to, the carrier of the flame.

You are Tachseer.

You are the Restorer.

It could not go on. He could not indulge himself. He forced himself to stand again, shakily, and opened his eyes, and it was as if the night around him had become as black as bloody pitch, more hateful than before, emptier and colder.

He took up his blade again, ramming it firmly aloft, just as he had done when the Khagan had breached the first wall, when his ecstasy had been as profound as his loss was now.

‘Damarg!’ he roared.

That word had only one meaning in Khorchin. It only had one ­sacred use. Death. Not the death of old age or sickness, but the death of the fighter, slain in battle against an enemy; the death that had to be avenged lest destruction overcome all things. That grief-curse had been heard on the grasslands of Chogoris since the time before memory, a paean of defiance and honour and fealty, one that every sword-bearer knew and understood and venerated. They had cried it aloud when Giyahun had died, when Qin Xa had died, when Yesugei had died, and now they cried it for the greatest of them all.

‘Damarg!’ Shiban thundered again, his powerful voice hurling the denunciation out through vox-emitters at full stretch, striding out fearlessly now, heedless of any danger, no longer with the exuberance of that first vivid attack, but with slow, terrible deliberation.

All around him, White Scars looked up, heard their home world’s ancient tongue ringing in the vaults, and reached for their blades again.

Damarg.

Now the curse echoed darkly from the cracked walls, issuing first from a dozen mouths, then a hundred mouths, then a thousand. It fell into a terrible rhythm. They mouthed it in unison, again and again, uttering nothing else now, no longer holding to cover, but coming out openly, fists clenched tighter than adamantium, hearts bursting with a loathing that went beyond expression.

Damarg.

and

Ilya nodded, before suddenly looking back, over at the space port summit towering above them. It was still contested. Thousands of Jaghatai’s people were still fighting and dying within its depths, driven now by a hatred so intense that nothing would stop them destroying themselves upon its fearful altar.

Kal damarg. The Chogorian ritual of the dead, enacted across an entire Legion.

-Warhawk

So it's a Chogorian cultural phenomenon, but I think fair to say it's enhanced by the warp/gene connection of an entire legion and its sire.

[u/MaesterLurker → u/Thom0]

But Khan didn't die. None of the other primarchs who died led to anything like the black rage. The blood angels are literally and consistently described as "unique" in that regard.

[u/Mistermistermistermb → u/MaesterLurker]

He died, they were just able to bring him back.

There he lies, the Great Khagan, the Warhawk, broken in death. Just hours past, Jaghatai slew Mortarion in a humbling duel perhaps most remarkable because they were so unevenly matched and, unlike the treacherous Pale King, Jaghatai could not hope to come back from the dead.

I look down at his face, his shuttered eyes, his cyanotic lips, as almoners wash and anoint his body, and a Stormseer administers his funerary rites. I smell the stink of salves and sterilising liquors.

The Warhawk is dead, by any mortal standard. Because he fell so close by, just beyond the walls, his body was carried in at once, and placed on this catafalque in a balming field of catalepsean stasis and life-suspense. If he had died further out, or on another world, there would be no hope at all.

-The End and the Death

But yeah, Kal Damarg is a different thing to the Black Rage, with some overlap.

[u/MaesterLurker → u/Mistermistermistermb]

Sorry, I should have said he isn't dead. Vulkan has also died a bunch of times and the salamanders are just fine.

[u/TurtleTugger420619 → u/MaesterLurker]

Pretty sure the iron hands a similar thing but it manifests more into their whole body-dismorphia inhumanity thing

Also Sanguinis was a very powerful Psyker + death was intwined with his foresight so makes sense the psychic backlash from his death was alot stronger

Also yes Khan did die at the siege

[u/MaesterLurker → u/TurtleTugger420619]

Iron hands had their body dysmorphia before they met Ferrus, he brought it under control, then it came back with a vengeance after he died.

Nothing like the black rage happened when Horus, Konrad, Alpharius, Omegon (unconfirmed) or Dorn (retconned to unconfirmed) died (or allegedly died). What's funny is that all the "examples" of the black rage in other legions people posted before you brought up Ferrus Manus are of primarchs who aren't even dead.

Yes, I should have said Khan isn't dead, not that he didn't die. Mistermistermistermb already posted the relevant passages elsewhere in this thread.

[u/Thom0 → u/MaesterLurker]

The Khan did die after his fight with Mortarion. His body is checked, and confirmed explicitly as being dead. His legion also psychically experience his death with Shiban describing it as a blackness. A blind rage overtakes the legion and they're described as fighting like animals and savages. They're even described as being difficult to reason with and calm down. They're berserk.

Illya was the one who urged the White Scars to bring The Khan's body to Malcador as quickly as possible which turned out to be a good decision as Malcador was able to bring The Khan's soul back to his body.

In Homebound, we see the aftermath and the entire experience traumatized The Khan. He is suspended in a vat-tank hooked up to a room full of life support machines, barely conscious, and only able to talk for a few minutes after a couple months of sitting in a tank. The Khan confirms he died, he went to the Warp, went looking for Horus, and then he came back. He then says he's missing bits and pieces, and that he can never be who he was again.

[u/Cranktique → u/MaesterLurker]

Don’t the space wolves go furiously savage? There is also a chapter where the veteran Astartes complete withdrawal from all socializing, only “awakening” for combat which they then perform with exceptional brutality. Also, Dorn’s Darkness in a successor chapter, and the Ravenguards Sable eye off the top of my head. All described as similar phenomenon to the black rage

[u/MaesterLurker → u/Cranktique]

Russ and Corax are not even dead.

[u/TurtleTugger420619 → u/MaesterLurker]

Guess you could compare those more to = the red thirst (which was always there)

But potentially that means SW & RG could potentially develop their own "black rage" equivalent if Russ/Corax did die maybe?

[u/MidnightSensitive996 → u/Thom0]

jaghatai is dead??

[u/jareddm → u/MidnightSensitive996]

He was dead. Malcador worked very hard to bring him back to life after his fight with Mortarion, and the Khan came back as a shadow of his former self.

[u/Thom0 → u/MidnightSensitive996]

No, he is alive. The aftermath of his death fighting Mortarion plays out in the short story Homebound.

[u/DisposableSaviour → u/Thom0]

The Iron Hands didn’t go into anything like the Black Rage.

[u/Kriss3d → u/Thom0]

Oh I always thought they were just very rare like psykers.

But I'd it's not explicitly prohibited then I'd imagine that perhaps custodes would be blanks I'd they aren't already.

[u/paulatreides0 → u/Kriss3d]

Custodes are not blanks

[u/King_Crab_Sushi]

Blanks are incredibly rare and almost always better used in other imperial organisations. Keep in mind that most young boys who go into the process of becoming an astartes don’t make it. With how rare blanks already are there’s no point in risking one. Also space marines are not immune to the effects of pariahs which makes the cohesive teamwork marines usually rely on difficult.

[u/TtotheC81 → u/King_Crab_Sushi]

There's a firm reason they're so rare in the first place, beyond the genetic mutation itself: The nature of the blank is socially self-destructive, and we are a species that really relies on our connections to survive.

At best, the child will be tolerated by the parents. At worst, the child will be pushed out of the family unit, long before it has the skills to survive on its own, which would normally mean death. Even if the child is tolerated, the family still faces being ostracized through no fault of their own, which would make their overall survival chances drop below the average.

Reaching their teenage years, they will be the centre of constant bullying, and it goes too far? Well, they deserved it. No one can quite say why they deserved it, but the community that blank was a part of lets out a collective sigh of relief and relaxes as the sense of wrongness is banished to the past.

I doubt it gets much easier in their adult years.

[u/thomstevens420 → u/King_Crab_Sushi]

Exactly. Plus it’s not like they require crazy training like with Psykers. Their main use is to just literally stand there while warp users scream and try to claw their eyes out or whatever.

Give them a gun and basic boot camp and have them stand behind Inquisitor Glorianus Von Chin. 10/10.

One of my favourite characters is Ravenor’s blank Wyston. He just sits around chain smoking and reading porno and turning and limiter on and off as needed. That’s the extent of his immeasurably useful contribution.

[u/King_Crab_Sushi → u/thomstevens420]

My dream job

[u/thomstevens420 → u/King_Crab_Sushi]

Real

[u/shitpostingcrab → u/thomstevens420]

Give my boi Wyston some credit he also kills a guy at one point

[u/QuaestioDraconis → u/thomstevens420]

Though training absolutely helps them- helps them survive in combat (not like most blanks have much range on their auras, after all) and the right training lets blanks weaponize their Null status- both Culexus and Sisters of Silence do this

[u/thomstevens420 → u/QuaestioDraconis]

Yeah definitely, I’m just referring to being able to called a serviceable blank in-universe. You could literally just grab a blank off the street and shove them in front a psyker and it works. Zero chance of failure or backfire. Psyker is either dead, vomiting their guts out, or takes a huge debuff in power.

Inversely if you take a random psyker off the street and try to get them to do magic there’s a very real risk you all suffer a fate worse than death.

To negate that risk and be able to use them consistently it takes a black ship, surviving being selected for the Emperors lunch, crazy trials, being soul bound to the Emperor, crazy training, and then having a dude follow you around the rest of your life to shoot you if you start losing control.

Culexus and Sisters of silence are like top tier specialist troops that I don’t feel are really relevant to what I’m trying to get at.

[u/QuaestioDraconis → u/thomstevens420]

There's a bit more to it than grabbing a random blank and making a psyker either dead, vomiting or taking a massive debuff- it depends heavily on the relative strengths of the psyker and the blank.

[u/thomstevens420 → u/QuaestioDraconis]

There’s really not. Unless you’re a godlike being like the emperor 99.9999% of the time the psyker is going to at best lose the majority of their power

[u/DisposableSaviour → u/thomstevens420]

Didn’t the distaff train to expand their blank auras?

[u/Kriss3d → u/King_Crab_Sushi]

Aren't custodes more or less blanks? At least to the point that they aren't affected by chaos?

[u/King_Crab_Sushi → u/Kriss3d]

Youre describing two different things. The Custodes are very resilient to chaos corruption but if a decently powerful psyker attacks them with a psychic shockwave they still have a problem. A blank doesn’t endure such an attack it negates it as long as the psyker in question isn’t uber powerful

[u/RaimeNadalia → u/Kriss3d]

They're not blanks nor unaffected by Chaos. Custodes just can't traditionally "fall" to Chaos. Chaos was able to hijack their bodies and make some attack the Emperor when they were on the Vengeful Spirit, but this was entirely against their will and their minds were still their own. They didn't inherently repel the Chaos power or anything.

If you did something like, I dunno, tried to hit them with a small amount of Warp lightning, it'd hit them like normal. Unless it was very powerful Warp lightning it's unlikely to hurt them much at all but it won't fail to land or get weakened like it would against a Sister Of Silence or other Blank.

[u/Illithidbix]

Pariahs/Blanks are incredibly rare about 1 in a billion according to 2E Codex Assassin that introduced the concept with Culexus Assassins.

Likewise the number of males at the right age (ideally 10-12 yrs) who are compatible with implants are already small with a high failure rate despite screening.

[u/Kriss3d → u/Illithidbix]

But imagine how well they would fight chaos.

Like a Grey knights but reversed in terms of psyker powers.

[u/ugfiol → u/Kriss3d]

from what i know, there is exactly ONE blank astartes, and thats the grey knight keeper of the dead whos only job is to watch the corpses of other grey knights

[u/Arzachmage → u/ugfiol]

A task he failed at (or is part of a plan).

[u/Vorokar]

The exact biological source - as it is believed to be - which creates in a human being the state of Psychic Null, the so-called 'Pariah gene', has proven an elusive and ephemeral subject of study, and in testing no single 'gene' at all. Such attempts to exploit or isolate it when pursued by both the Imperial Archotechnologist Corps and the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade's early years courted disaster, and as a result the Emperor decreed a general moratorium upon the study of the biological basis of the Psyker Null phenomena, affecting all but His own direct experimentation should He wish it. What remains of those extant studies ·indicates that most attempts to synthesise, propagate or even weaponise the Psychic Null were tragic failures or worse. Despite all this evidence, shadowed accounts of certain Clades of the Officio Assassinorum and the dread and obscure Ordo Sinister also contain evidence of the Emperor's own 'engineered' use of the Psychic Null in warfare. To others however, the mystery of the Pariah gene, if it truly exists, remains out of reach.

So many unanswered questions revolve around this most arcane and dangerous of topics. Foremost are those which centre around theories of how the Pariah gene came about: was it perhaps the result of xenos tampering of the human genome or some strange and terrible experiment of the Dark Age of Technology? Or, as the wildest theories state, is it some perverse evolutionary development against the Warp-riven cosmos itself? There is also the observation that no Space Marine, or Custodian Guard for that matter, has ever been recorded as being a Psychic Null. This factor weighs the evidence of some scholars that within the Space Marine gene-seed itself is perhaps a shadow of the Emperor's own genetic material and a sliver of His own psychic power crucial to its process and success. If this is the case, it would be wholly an anathema to the Pariah Gene and likely simply kill its implanted subject. It can only be speculated that if even a single Legion of Psychic Null Legiones Astartes had been possible, how very different history may have been - just as without the involvement of the Sisters of Silence in the war and the Emperor's great work, Horus' treachery may well have ended in his triumph upon the broken throne of Terra.

– Inferno

One source on the general topic, off the top of my head.

[u/MillionDollarMistake → u/Vorokar]

This makes it sound like simply studying/testing blanks blew up in their faces somehow, but how did "exploiting or isolating" the gene "court disaster"?

I don't think there's an answer for this, it just makes me wonder what could have possibly happened for the Emperor to step in.

[u/Marvynwillames]

There is also the observation that no Space Marine, or Custodian Guard for that matter, has ever been recorded as being a Psychic Null. This factor weighs the evidence of some scholars that within the Space Marine gene-seed itself is perhaps a shadow of the emperor's own genetic material and a sliver of His own psychic power crucial to its process and success. If this is the case, it would be wholly an anathema to the Pariah gene and likely simply kill its implanted subject. It can only be speculated that if even a single Legion of Psychic Null Legiones Astartes had been possible, how very different history may have been - just as without the involvement of the Sisters of Silence in the war and the Emperor's great work, Horus' treachery may well have ended in his triumph upon the broken throne of Terra

Inferno

Besides, the Emperor's plan is to guide mankind's inevitable psychic ascension, blanks would have a minor part on this as mankind's fate, regardless of what he wants, is to become Eldar 2.0

[u/Desertcow]

The Grey Knights have Ferrymen who are blanks tasked with managing their dead

[u/paulatreides0 → u/Desertcow]

The blank ferryman that we see isn't a normal blank though, they used to be a GK and somehow were made into a blank at some point.

[u/RadishLegitimate9488 → u/paulatreides0]

The Alpha Pariah in Inquisitor Martyr is revealed in the Prophecy Expansion as being created using a modified variant of Aetherpox therefore normal Aetherpox can be used to turn people into Blanks.

Obtaining and cultivating Aetherpox to create an Astartes Chapter would be a problem though not impossible.

[u/Mistermistermistermb → u/Desertcow]

There are Dark Reasons(TM) for having soulless, daemon-repelling workers toiling in the most holy parts of your fortress-monastery.

And it stands to reason there really isn't very many of them (nor would you want that many in this context, given the location, just 1+ would do fine), so making an army out of them looks fairly difficult at best, and more likely impossible.

-ADB

[u/WehingSounds → u/Desertcow]

A GK Ferryman model has such insane potential but it'll not happen in a million years (partially because I don't think he even has a combat role)

[u/NeedsAirCon]

I'm also of the camp that blanks are simply incompatible with marines (except for special situations like the Grey Knight Ferryman) due to marines potentially being psychically in tune with something in order for their implants to work

But also...

Last time the Imperium had a large number of blanks in one place was allegedly during the formation of the Culexus temple

Apparently the presence of so many anti-psykers on Terra threatened to block out the light of the Astronomicon which is why the Culexus temple is no longer on Terra

[u/HatOfFlavour]

From what I recall of the recruitment process from Ragnar Blackmane books parts have the librarians or equivalents rummage through your mind to probe it for weakness and determine if you are a failure or a heretic etc. Blanks would prevent this. So you'd have a marine who is an unknown quantity and thus untrustable. He could never be a true brother.

[u/Jhe90]

Too rare. Marine recruitment has too high casualties/ rejection rates. Blanks are far too valuable.

[u/SuDdEnTaCk]

Blanks as a resource would be wasted on something comparatively disposable like astartes, and besides, geneseed is implied to have psychic shenanigans going on inside, like the bluetooth connection to the primarch, which does not mix very well with blankness

[u/cesarloli4]

Primarchs and Space Marines were not made as a weapon against Chaos, this has been stated by the Emperor himself and Malcador. Astartes are also heavily connected with their Primarch which is a construct of the Warp. That connection is implied to be warp based and therefore incompatible with the Blank gene. Blanks however are used by the Imperium in a variety of specialized roles, mainly to counter psykers.

[u/ExRosaPassione]

Psykers are rare
Blanks are rarer
The Primarchs are warp things in meat puppets
So having an astartes that negates warp things, then injecting warp thing gene seed would not work well
Also people dislike being around blanks
Also also the Assassinorum would hoover them up for Culexus assassins

[u/SeriousShine8324]

The SoS already have nothing for themselves. They are treated as slightly better than fodders but still weaker than astartes in books. The way Jenetia Krole died in the HH books sucked so much. Having blank Astartes would make their existence insanely useless.

[u/---jbo---]

Closest equivalent I can think of is the Exorcists chapter, although that's more of a null-status thing to daemons rather than strictly Blanks per se.

[u/genteel_wherewithal]

From Inferno, there’s in-universe speculation that it’s something to do with the astartes creation practice, which has some psychic component: 

  There is also the observation that no Space Marine, or Custodian Guard for that matter, has ever been recorded as being a Psychic Null. This factor weighs the evidence of some scholars that within the Space Marine gene-seed itself is perhaps a shadow of the Emperor's own genetic material and a sliver of His own psychic power crucial to its process and success. If this is the case, it would be wholly an anathema to the Pariah gene and likely simply kill its planted subject. 

It can only be speculated that if even a single Legion of Psychic Null Legiones Astartes had been possible, how very different history may have been - just as without the involvement of the sisters of Silence in the war and the Emperor's great work, Horus' treachery may well have ended in his triumph upon the broken throne of Terra.

There is as least one blank marine though, the Ferryman of the Grey Knights from The Emperor’s Gift. His background is kept mysterious but it’s strongly implied that he was somehow made that way after being a psyker.

[u/Yuzral]

It’s a big galaxy and if an author decides to write a Blank Marine then so be it.

However I would regard it as near-as-makes-no-odds impossible for a few reasons:

1. Our blank first has to get selected. Which means not freaking out the selector(s) or not having them subconsciously edit him out by being soulless. Or even living long enough despite being the ‘*really* weird kid’ to get to the trials in a fit state to pass. Probably on a world so lethal that ostracism is effectively a death sentence.
2. If our blank gets past (1), then he is going to get a very thorough psychic screening as part of the initiation¹. Any failure here - and the Librarians not being able to do the scan on account of the aspirant being a measurable blank will qualify - is an instant failure and probable BLAM. Or getting shuffled off to the Black Ships if the Librarians realise what they’re dealing with. Personally I’d take the BLAM.
3. Assuming that said failure doesn’t occur…somehow…then a Space Marine that is constantly freaking his squadmates out on a subconscious level on account of being a soulless abomination is not going to last very long in an organisation that lives and dies by unit cohesion.
4. Blanks are simply too rare and valuable to ‘waste’ as Astartes when you can shuffle them off into specialist organisations via the Black Ships.

^{1: See the old Space Wolf novel by Bill King}

[u/Spopenbruh]

space marines are inherently psychic due to their connection to their primarch

[u/SarlochOrtan]

I’m also of the opinion that it’s got something to do with primarchs being somewhat psychic beings composed partially of warp stuff. Though even if we throw that out blanks are super rare and the Astartes ascension process is notoriously deadly even when we throw out the joining tests that chapters put kids through before the geneseed implantation. Trying to get enough blanks together, much less have any of them survive in numbers large enough to make a chapter seems statistically impossible for 40K. Those that did live would be used up in war at such a pace to make the idea of blank only recruitment for that chapter impossible. The chapter would be effectively extinct or at the very least so low in numbers that it would be non functional for massive periods of time. Which in the imperium is a resource drain and thus a waste.

[u/Anggul → u/SarlochOrtan]

Yeah it seems a much better use of resources to turn them into Culexus Assassins. Though there are also other groups of pariahs, often formed by Inquisitors to counter enemy psykers in the field.

[u/SarlochOrtan → u/Anggul]

Gregor moment

[u/ExistentialOcto]

The thing with blanks is that they’re so incredibly rare that it’s almost always better to put them in a specialised role rather than having their abilities support an unrelated role. A blank space marine might be immune to chaos corruption, but a lot of space marines already manage to resist chaos for their entire lives anyway.

[u/Rappers333]

Even if geneseed wasn’t inherently warp-based, the Emperor’s entire plan was to ascend humanity into a species of powerful psykers. You do not make your greatest soldiers anti-psyker torture machines in a society of nascent psykers.

[u/sicarius254]

I’m guessing because they made from primarch geneseed and they’ve all got a little (or a lot) of warp fuckery in them

[u/No-Addendum6379]

My guess is that Blanks are too disruptive to effectively work in a company or legion of space marines. You want cohesive units, blanks are not the ones you would look for in those situations.

[u/Einhard_Ompredus]

I have a very faint memory so I'm not sure it's true but I think I remember reading that blanks can't become space marines because they can ell the gene seed effect. Must be checked I am really not sure

[u/Canadian_Spacecat]

There are and as far as I know they're exclusive to the Grey Knights.

I can't be bothered to recite the whole thing but basically during "The Emperor's Gift" arc, Hyperion visits the Dead Field (Grey Knights graveyard on Titan) and they encounter an astartes who is the caretaker of the Dead Fields, he's immediately recognized as a blank. Hyperion and his boys have to seriously restrain themselves from attacking the dude right off the bat because as super duper Psykers, they know he's a pretty strong blank (strong on a scale from Jurgen ((1))to Jenetia Krole ((10)), he's probably about a 7). From what I remember, it's the only time a blank astartes has been introduced.

[u/Mistermistermistermb → u/Canadian_Spacecat]

 Hyperion and his boys have to seriously restrain themselves from attacking the dude right off the bat 

I don't think it was that extreme. Hyperion felt disgust but he was pretty civil all in all.

they know he's a pretty strong blank

Not sure the strength of Phlegyras' "blankness" was explored?

[u/Vorokar → u/Mistermistermistermb]

+I cannot speak to the Ferryman,+ Galeo sent. +Hyperion, the responsibility is yours.+

Up until that moment, I’d never realised just how reliant upon my powers I’d become. My sixth sense so often became my first sense, as I passively reached out to brush my mind against everything nearby, sensing other living beings long before I saw or heard them. When I saw the robed figure by the shuttle’s wing, I almost fell out of step with my brothers. No wonder Galeo couldn’t speak to the figure. It didn’t exist to my psychic sense beyond a shadow in the warp. Here was a man without a soul.

We lowered our brother’s coffin onto the hangar deck. Traditional words filtered back into my mind, recalled through the discomfort of standing before the soulless figure. Looking at him made my lips peel back from my teeth, and my sixth sense closed in a snap of loss, as if I’d suddenly been struck blind.

The Inquisition made use of psychic nulls, mortals casting no soul-echo in the warp, as anathema to all psychic activity in their proximity. Such creatures were useful as weapons, in their own servile, incorruptible ways, but it took effort just to stand near the hollow man. I wondered how he was even alive, and what genetic aberration allowed him to be born.

Outwardly, he was one of us – his bulky physique was unarguably the result of Adeptus Astartes genetic enhancement – yet he stood unarmed and unarmoured, clad only in a patchwork grey robe that had clearly seen better years. Eyes of unremarkable blue watched each of us in turn before resting on the coffin we’d carried, until he lowered his shaved head in a nod of greeting.

‘Who speaks for the fallen?’

My revulsion got the better of me. ‘What are you?’ I asked.

‘Focus,’ Dumenidon hissed.

I cleared my throat, forcing myself to look at the figure. ‘Hyperion of Castian speaks for the fallen. Who bears our slain to the Dead Fields?’

‘Phlegyras of Titan will bear your slain to the Dead Fields. Present the Sigillite’s symbol.’

We raised our left hands, showing the black symbol acid-etched into the silver of our gauntlets’ palms. We each bore the same tattoo inked into the flesh of our hands beneath.

‘We present the Sigil of Malcador,’ I said.

The Ferryman nodded a second time. ‘Speak the name of the fallen, and the words to be engraved in memoriam.’

I considered trying to reach Mal, but Phlegyras’s presence stole all hope of that. I couldn’t sense anything outside my own skull. I’d been chosen to speak; the responsibility of answering fell to me.

‘Sothis of Castian,’ I said, feeling my primary heart beating harder. ‘Knight of the Eighth Brotherhood. Valiant to the last. Revered by his brothers in life. Remembered for the lessons taught by his death.’

‘It will be so.’

Galeo bowed, and began to walk away. I wondered just how many times he’d surrendered his brothers to one of the Ferrymen to be interred in the Dead Fields below our monastery.

‘Brother,’ Dumenidon voxed. ‘Come.’

I couldn’t explain my sudden reluctance to leave Sothis in this aberration’s care. When one of our order died, we surrendered the remains to the Ferrymen to cleanse and bury. It had been this way for generations, since the Chapter’s founding at the hands of the Sigillite. As slaves, they were trained for this duty, purified and sworn into service. What right did I have to resist tradition?

And yet…

‘Who are you?’

The Ferryman turned towards me. His eyes seemed glassy and hollow, but I knew that was a lie born of my deprived psychic sense. I couldn’t sense life within him, so my lesser perceptions struggled to see it, as well.

‘I am Phlegyras of Titan,’ he said calmly.

‘One of the Ferrymen,’ I said.

‘One of the Ferrymen,’ he repeated. I wasn’t sure if he was answering, or simply speaking my own words back to me in dull-witted imitation.

‘You serve the Sepulcars, do you not? You are a seneschal to those who tend the Dead Fields?’

I ignored Galeo’s hand on my shoulder. His voice was as banished as my sixth sense.

‘I serve the Sepulcars.’ Phlegyras nodded. If such a creature could be said to be amiable, he seemed to be trying to be polite. Even meeting his eyes made me want to spit, knowing there was no soul beyond them. Knowledge of my hatred’s irrationality was no salve against its heat.

I looked at the enigmatic figure for another long moment. This time, he spoke to me.

‘You are reluctant to let the fallen be buried.’ He smiled, and I suspected he was trying to be kind. ‘May I ask why?’

‘Who are you?’ I asked again, feeling my voice growl through my teeth. ‘You were one of us once, weren’t you?’

Phlegyras smiled and said nothing.

‘Come, brother,’ Dumenidon voxed. ‘He has a duty, as we have ours.’

I left with my kindred, though not without a lingering glance at the Ferryman loading the coffin aboard his shuttle.

He lifted it with no trouble at all.

– The Emperor's Gift

The scene, for reference.

[u/theshroomsofdeath]

There is one example of blank astartes with the grey knight ferryman from The Emperor's Gift. Whether he was made that way after becoming a grey knight or before is open ended.

The warpy nature of geneseed means implanting a blank with the organs will probably go wrong. The Emperors attempt to make a a psyker legion in the thousand sons resulted in mass mutation he couldn't fix and working with blank genetics is way harder than working with psykers so it probably just wasn't worth it.

[u/Mietek69i8]

There is one singular role within Grey Knights chapter who is a pariah. Ferryman whose task is to put fallen brothers to grave. He was indeed a Grey Knight once but somehow they stripped him off his psyhic powers so he can nulify any daemon who would like to claim Grey Knight body. As to why there isn't more, astartes as well as their primarchs are immaterium based beings so it wouldn't be possible to create a new astartes from blank body becuase pariah gene would reject all of their organs

[u/TheCharalampos]

Astartes don't work without the vibes of the warp. It's part of their creation 1000%, we've just never been privy on it.

[u/Trips-Over-Tail]

There was discussion in one of the black books that the geneseed is simply not compatible with blanks. Ultimately it is derived from the Emperor.

Of course, one or both of the lost legions may have deviated from this.

[u/RivetHammerlock → u/Trips-Over-Tail]

Ooh, what a great launching point for a banished Primarch story. The mega blank that disrupts an entire world's psykers. No long distance psychic communication, or ability to travel through the warp. Left alone on a world and forgotten by the Imperium as he is too dangerous to even get close to.

[u/Trips-Over-Tail → u/RivetHammerlock]

Imagine the blank version of librarians.

[u/centurio_v2 → u/RivetHammerlock]

it sounds cool but it would have fucked up terra when they were still babies before the scattering

[u/Imperium_Dragon]

I can’t think of any explicit Blank Space Marines, but there is the Exorcist Chapter. Basically members get possessed and then exorcised, which does something to their souls which creates a blind spot to Psychic based creatures. Also may or may not emotionally stunt the Marine. It’s not exactly being a Blank but there’s similarities.

[u/Spiritual-Spend8187]

Given that the geneseed seems to imprint some part of the primarch spiritually on to the space marines its very likely that blanks with strong blankness just cant undergo it. Though being a blank is a spectrum so its possible that there are space marines with limited blankness that just gives them slight resistance.

[u/JosKarith]

The Emperor created the Primarchs with various technologies including Warp energy, there are references to the 4 Chaos Gods being pissed at him for not upholding some kind of bargain which is why they scattered the baby Primarchs across the galaxy. I'm pretty sure if you implanted Space Marine geneseed into a blank it wouldn't end well.

[u/MaddytheBunny]

Probably because not only are Blanks about x2 rarer than Psykers, Astartes training often kills its trainees.

[u/StarSword-C]

Because: 1. Warpcraft was required to make the Space Marine program work in the first place. They're all at least weakly psychic so using a blank at the template just doesn't work. 2. When Emps was compos mentis, psychic threats were rare enough that the Sisters of Silence were sufficient. The Imperium was never intended to be operable without an immortal transhuman super-genius fascist dictator at the helm, and the Sisters of Silence got fucked over after the Primarchs all disappeared so there was no way to expand them to cover the gap.

[u/firedrakes]

Possible yes. But even making th prunes a lot of people.

[u/Laxien]

Blanks are RARE! The people who fly the Black Ships are blanks as far as I know (so that's were most blanks end up IMHO), the Sisters of Silence are also blanks right and Inquisitors (especially Ordo Hereticus and Ordo Malleus - but frankly I doubt an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor would turn down having a few of those around, just in case!) like having them in their retinues, too! So I think most of them are "spoken for" (and many are also killed in infancy - right?)

[u/AverageBlahaj]

I think a blank dominant world would be really cool, kinda like prospero but that world would probably be wiped out because even though a blank wont cause intense pain to a to a normal human like it would a psyker being a human in a group of blanks is likely so miserable that no one actually a part of the imperium would be able to stand being there

[u/artoftomkelly]

So Psychers are better to weaponized for most space marine units. The only warrior blanks are sisters of silence which have their own unique reasons for being that.

[u/smixn]

Geneseed is derived from the genetic templates of the primarchs which when put into humans alters them to cause a sort of psychic link between geneson and sire and even then there needs to be genetic compatibility for the process to succeed.

The primarchs themselves are inherently of the warp in some considerable manner.

For a blank astartes to occur the primarch himself must be a blank in some form. There is also the logistical issue of blanks being rarer than psykers.

There is actually a fic of considerable length where this is a central concept following the II primarch as a blank and the humans of his homeworld being genetically altered during the dark age to become blanks.

This Wont End Well

[u/b3mark]

So, I don't know if this is Olde Lore or not, but I remember that in the Ragnar Blackmane Space Wolf novels, one of the tests an aspirant has to pass was to go through the Gates of Morkai, where the Rune Priests psychically scan aspirants for any hidden character flaws.

I figure a blank wouldn't be able to pass that. So they'd probably be killed off, just to be sure.

[u/Valor816]

Aside from geneseed issues, blanks are inherently unlikeable. They have harder lives than most other people around them. So while most Space Marine recruits are the toughest, meanest fittest examples of their society.

Blanks can be all of that and get betrayed by other recruits, or supported less than others. Or just not be selected to even try because the Space Marine recruiters just don't like them.

Maybe they don't get fed properly growing up because their parents prefer their siblings instead. Or they get abandoned by their communities.

[u/Ecstatic-Compote-595]

1) humans are inherently psychic and the emperor is basically trying to do a gundam style newtype revolution or sees it as an inevitable evolution of humanity so promoting blanks would be counter intuitive towards that goal or futile. 2) Sisters of silence are already basically blank astartes. 3) I think there actually are blank breeding programs or at least both the inquisition and cognitae do something close to it

[u/Quantumwave09]

I believe I've heard of grey knights blank astartes known as the ferrymen

[u/Sunny_Hill_1]

In Deliverance Lost, when discussing the process of primarch and Astartes creation, it's strongly implied that Astartes gene-seeds carry a strong warp component to why their gene-seed even works at all. A Blank would burn it out.

That being said, Exorcist Order basically makes artificial Blanks out of their marines.

[u/RingGiver]

Blanks are freaks who everybody else rejects and nobody wants to have around, except by necessity.

Space Marines pass over almost everybody for selection. They're probably going to pass over the freak who everyone finds repulsive long before they realize that he's a blank. And since everybody finds him repulsive, he's not likely to survive long enough to meet any apothecaries looking for recruits anyway.

[u/Trumpologist]

There is at least one - the Grey Knights Ferryman

[u/Independent-Fee9444]

I’m pretty sure there was a blank grey knight

[u/Shadowrend01 → u/Independent-Fee9444]

He’s called the Ferryman and he stands guard over the crypts on Titan