Syncretism between an Adepta Sororitas order and a space marine chapter as they are stranded behind enemy lines near the Eye of Terror for a very long time
To make it a lil' funky, they use exotic materials to bypass any hard rule about geneseeds. This throws fuel on the fire for anyone calling them heretics. But they are much less susceptible to Chaos corruption, interestingly
The emperor forbade female space marines to ensure that space marines couldn't form populations independent of regular humanity. Didn't want a legion disappearing and returning as space Mongols. So they were always possible.
The Adeptus Mechanicus uncover evidence that, given enough eons, geneseeds are corrupted to the point that they produce abominations that only Chaos could love. Presented with this horrific finding, the Emperor tasks them with undertaking a secret program to corruption-proof geneseeds...
...By any means that might prove necessary. In the course of this program, they discover a means of creating female space marines, along with promising, albeit inconclusive, evidence that this could be the solution to the problem
Real talk: eh, why not. It’s far less ridiculous than Dark Eldar/Dark Elves or “Orks are part fungus”.
Fun talk: The emperor thought Fulgrim’s narcissism and Lorgar’s “Jerry Falwell in the 30th Millenia” act needed to be tempered. Men weren’t capable of it
They were either: sent on a secret mission by E somewhere before the Heresy/ foresaw the Heresy & fucked off when E refused to heed their warnings/ had some geneseed flaw that Cawl can now fix & were under the Palace the whole time
Starting with the Thunder Warriors, Big E went with an all male fighting force because he needed them meek and docile. Unbeknownst to him, Malcador created female gene seeds, as a “break glass in emergency” type deal. After the Great Rift opened up, Rowboat found these gene libraries and…
Caull has been a tech priest for so long kinda just forgets women aren’t just slightly abhuman dudes and gives it a shot for primaris II and they turn out even taller and betterer at fighting.
They've always been there (why would surgery be sex linked?) you just don't really notice because geneseeds are like mainlining space!testosterone, and marines have always been sorta-canon asexual
Why did the Codex Astrates say they were all men? Guilliman had some pretty regressive views
i’ll start: gulliman finds a document written by the emperor about how to do it and was told that it was never implemented because “y’all can’t be trusted around superhuman eight foot tall women.” however this warning backfires and motivates the g-man to actually do it to tweak everyone
he unveils the first class of fsm at a meeting devoted to some boring topic (“imperial agricultural policy conference”), says that he wants to show everyone “something i’ve been working on lately” and then quickly exits the room before it causes a scene. “the emperor wills us to live for the drama”
Interesting. I'd have to think about this. I pretty much stopped reading when they brought in the Primaris Marines as a deus ex machina. My final point on this though would be "I am Alpharius".
One of the founding principles of a thousands of Golden Age of Technology human colonies was complete gender equality: therefore both men and women were genetically engineered to be peak specimens of humanity with the absolute minimum of sexual dimorphism.
They've always been there, and are largely indistinguishable from male space marines after the geneseed is implanted.
Or, they weren't there before, but Primaris marines can be female because Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl didn't spend 10,000 years on this to be stopped by a damn chromosome.
Its not that they chose not to, it's that they can't. Not because there's anything special about the process that only works with boys, but because the process is shit and barely works with a very set parameters of base material in the first place.
Custodes? They can he male or female, because they're high-end, top shelf post humans. Cateigis? They can be either because it was a rough and ready experimental time.
Astartes? You can have the t-shirt in any colour as long as it's black. If it gets stained, throw it away and buy a new one.
Astartes aren't special. They're not particularly refined. You can grow the things that make an astartes into an astartes in a brain dead lump of vat grown meat. They weren't designed to do much more than beat a galaxy into submission before being discarded as no longer needed.
The reason they only use boys is because the process is so basic, cookie cutter shit that if they don't follow the basic recipe to the letter it doesn't work, because the materials they use are so shoddy and rudimentary.
cawl calculates that the average guardsman will fight 9.83(repeating)% harder if they think any space marine might be female, tweaks primaris accordingly
one of the two lost legions were actually female space marines and bellisarius did not read the document saying that it was ilegall to let woman be superman soldiers again
Cawl realizes there is exactly nothing in the Astartes creation process that *requires* the presence of a Y chromosome, or that it does not discriminate based on a Marine's gender identity.
Comments
Fun talk: The emperor thought Fulgrim’s narcissism and Lorgar’s “Jerry Falwell in the 30th Millenia” act needed to be tempered. Men weren’t capable of it
They were either: sent on a secret mission by E somewhere before the Heresy/ foresaw the Heresy & fucked off when E refused to heed their warnings/ had some geneseed flaw that Cawl can now fix & were under the Palace the whole time
Caull has been a tech priest for so long kinda just forgets women aren’t just slightly abhuman dudes and gives it a shot for primaris II and they turn out even taller and betterer at fighting.
Why did the Codex Astrates say they were all men? Guilliman had some pretty regressive views
TL;DR: 7ft musclewomen make good SMs
Or, they weren't there before, but Primaris marines can be female because Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl didn't spend 10,000 years on this to be stopped by a damn chromosome.
Astartes are sweatshop made bioweapons.
Astartes? You can have the t-shirt in any colour as long as it's black. If it gets stained, throw it away and buy a new one.
"but how do they return" it's 40k, warpnanigans alone can cover it, apart from "all our history is malleable legend told by insane liars"