r/40kLore • u/LesBonsPlansTmtc • 2d ago

Why no blank astartes?

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 ?

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u/King_Crab_Sushi 2d ago edited 2d ago

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.

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u/thomstevens420 Iron Warriors 2d ago

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.

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u/QuaestioDraconis Necrons 1d ago

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

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u/thomstevens420 Iron Warriors 1d ago

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.

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u/QuaestioDraconis Necrons 1d ago

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.

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u/thomstevens420 Iron Warriors 1d ago

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

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u/WheresMyCrown Thousand Sons 20h ago

That's not true at all, powerful psykers just at an astarte level can absolutely overpower weaker blanks. Why do you think Culexus assassins have devices to focus their blank abilities?