Writing Interesting Space Marine Characters

A brainwashed fearless uber-warrior is not, in general, a promising starting point for a compelling character. Anyone trying to come up with their own Space Marine characters is therefore immediately confronted with pitfalls, and it's all to easy to end up with quite bland or samey characters. Even official characters like Marneus Calgar don't have a personality to speak of (winning is not a personality). In today's post, then, I'm going to talk about some of the things I consider when adding a new character to my Cobalt Scions, a task that grows harder as I add more and more while trying to keep each one distinct. I'll leave you to judge how successful I've been.

How Fearless is a Space Marine?

Let's start with the titular claim about Space Marines: that they Know No Fear. This is a good line, of course, and we know that they're indoctrinated to endure horrors far beyond that which a baseline human could handle, but it's easy to take an overly rigid interpretation. Official content reminds us in multiple places that this is not to be taken as an absolute, despite the binary nature of the (propagandistic) phrase "no fear."

For one, in the tentpole Secret Level animation And They Shall Know No Fear, the crux of the episode is [spoilers for the rest of this paragraph] all about how a daemon exploits the Marines' fears. The fact that Titus is genuinely fearless is the thing that haunts Metaurus, and makes him doubt his decision to recruit the frightening child that Titus once was. For an animation designed to be many people's first experience of the setting, we are being taught not to trust everything the Imperium says about itself.

Credit: Warhammer Community, Amazon

In Guy Hayley's The Great Work, we meet the Chapter Master of the last remaining Scythes of the Emperor, a man who has seen his whole brotherhood wiped out by the Tyranids, and he even says "I am not ashamed to say that I have known fear." When Haley gives us a flashback to his experiences, we see why. The scene, and the character, show that even Astartes can experience fear, it just requires extreme conditions.

In the main, I take this indoctrination to mean that Space Marines are not nearly as easily traumatised as normal humans. This is of course partially to enable the power fantasy of violence as being fun rather than horrifying, and frees us from having to constantly explain why our characters aren't a trauma-ridden mess after the average Astartes mission.

But at the very least, even if Space Marines do not experience a lot of fear, they can still experience its siblings concern, doubt, and worry. This in turn could make some marines more paranoid, or protective, more awkward, and any number of other things. Certainly both doubt and paranoia, as well as dogma, result in Leandros' betrayal of Titus at the end of the original Space Marine game.

Do you need fear to have a personality?

Even without fear, the rest of the full spectrum of human emotion is waiting to be deployed. Grief, optimism, fatalism, joy, kindness, and everything else remains available. One has to include them in a way that feels contextually appropriate for the setting, just as you also have to consider how different, or not, you want Astartes to feel compared to humans. At one extreme, you have Aaron Dembski-Bowden's portrayal of them. He strives to make them feel very set apart from humans, almost unable to relate to their mother-species and often unable to follow their social cues. They are quite unsympathetic characters, and yet he gets readers to root for them nonetheless.

On the other hand, this does rather limit the emotional palette. Dan Abnett tends to try and make his Astartes feel Homeric; these are ancient mythical heroes more than living, breathing humans. This is an obvious theme to reach for in Brothers of the Snake, which is essentially Greek myths in space, it's just as evident in the tone he uses in the Horus Heresy, particularly when portraying the Primarchs.

Whilst I would say that all the writers I've mentioned succeed in their own ways, I do still find myself struggling to pick many  Astartes characters out of an emotional line-up (the Primarchs all feel enjoyably distinct, but have had a huge amount of work put into them).

So while this means fearlessness doesn't prevent the creation of an interesting character, it does not then follow that lots of interesting characters have been created.

How stoic is too stoic?

Ironically I don't think it's fearlessness that most frequently makes Astartes characters bland; I think it's stoicism. Marines have to be stoic to a degree, of course. You can't have them losing the ability to function when one of their buddies takes an ork cleaver to the face. At the same time, the power fantasy of being unphased by loss is understandable, but toxic to an engaging story. If the characters don't care, why should we?

While a lot of the dialogue in Space Marine 2 is quite clunky, I do like that the story essentially revolves around the titular big heroes having big feelings. Titus feels abandoned by his Chapter and takes it out on his underlings. They in turn are eventually driven to losing their shit, and the narrative progresses via characters trying and failing to be stoic.

To summarise so far: I think it's good to understand what vestige of fear a Space Marine still has, and it's good to avoid making them too stoic. If anything, I would try and make my marines as un-stoic as I think I can get away with.

Further guidance on making characters

I've previously written more generalised advice on making your own characters for Goonhammer. Almost everything that I said there applies here, so I won't rehash old ground, and you don't need to read it before reading ahead here.

The difference between backstory and personality

Often when describing a character, there is an instinct to explain the events in that person's life, and get so distracted doing so that their personality doesn't come across.

Events can elicit sympathy or aversion, of course. If we hear a character murdered someone, they sound like an antagonist. If we hear a man murdered his wife's killer, they sound more like an antihero. If we hear a man murdered his wife's would-be killer during a home invasion, they sound like a hero. But what if this heroic husband is actually abusive himself? What if this stems from the abuse he received as a child? Events like this absolutely start to shape our perception of the character, and how much we hate or sympathise with them. But in any of the above scenarios, the husband could be charming, jealous, or paranoid. He could be an alcoholic, seeking redemption, but denied it by his wife's death. Maybe he's a religious fanatic. Depending on the his personality, the same story about a man seeking revenge will have a very different tone, and therefore make the reader feel something completely different.

How do they fit into the army, the faction, and your other characters?

A key consideration is the character's context, and for wargaming, that's your army and its faction. There's no point having five snarky, self-absorbed poets in the same force unless you're committing to a weird bit. So it's good to ask to what extent your character is an exemplar of their faction, and how they are different to the other characters you've already made. Overlap is fine, of course, but given the sheer variety of human traits, there's no need for any one character to be exactly the same as another. On the other hand, character tropes are a useful emotional shorthand, so it's entirely fine to fall back on those where it's fun and/or helpful.

Write your characters ahead of time, or find them in the moment?

There's no one right answer here. Some people like the spontaneity of finding new character elements in the moment, others prefer to write it all down in peace. However, I think it's important to at leave have a basic idea, or all one's characters can start to feel the same. When roleplaying, I am forever fighting my own personal reflex to deploy irreverent puns and overly elaborate sentences. If I have a sense of a character's vibe, I can at least try to make them sound unique, rather than like me in a conceptual costume.

Sharing my homework with the class

I've shared plenty of my characters on this blog in the past, but bearing the points above in mind, I'm going to go through some of the characters in my Space Marines and look at how much I've followed/ignored my own advice (bearing in mind that most of these are written off the cuff, I'm not trying to write a novel in which they're the main character, yadda yadda).

Captain Martellus Lucullus is a man of principle. He is a patient man, but nothing makes him angrier than people putting their personal ambition ahead of the needs the public and the broader Imperium, and of course a great many rulers fall foul of this. But for all Lucullus tries to be a paragon of virtue, always standing up for what he thinks his right, he's also keen on getting recognition for it, and is desperate to get his name into the history books. Consequently he has both fans and detractors. In summary he's virtuous but egotistical. Since he's a Cobalt Scion, I wouldn't normally bother explaining how he's a fan of adaptive strategies, or how good he is at wielding a sword; these things will be assumed by any reader familiar with the setting, and on what is meant by the phrase "Ultramarines Successor Chapter."

Note: Lucullus' personality makes it easy for him to wind up butting heads with other leaders, whilst also having a foible that can be exploited, all of which can be used to generate narrative.

Apothecary Galenus Eudemus is a firm believer in the Scions' mission to purify and consolidate the Eridani Sector. He is a humble, gregarious man who is slow to trust outsiders, and in particular takes a cynical view of the decadence of Imperial noble houses, generally making quips at their expense in the privacy of the squad vox while standing behind Lucullus during diplomatic efforts. Unlike most Scions, he has little patience for ceremony or honour, having seen both things been made foolish by the realities of battlefield triage.

Note: Eudemus provides me with the opportunity to be a snarky little princess, allowing me to voice the subtext during otherwise stolid scenes in which Lucullus has to be very polite to local dignitaries.

First Sergeant Xantho Tyvus is a man of big, loud feelings. Where Lucullus can be cautious, Tyvus is decisive and aggressive. He is unembarrassed to show his grief when his brothers are slain, just as he is unabashed about declaring his fraternal love for his fellow Scions, even the ones he's recently had a loud argument with.

Third Sergeant Hairan Syras would, all things being equal, be happiest wearing a suit of gravis armour standing next to a shipping container full of ammunition. Others in the Company often joke about his obsession with being prepared for any given situation, but to Syras' chagrin, his preparedness makes him particularly useful when assigned to infiltration missions. Indeed it was one such mission, early in the Indomitus Crusade, that gave Syras his supply-based paranoia; running out of ammo deep behind enemy lines, he spent a week moving under cover of darkness and living and dying by his combat knife. Ever since, he can almost always be found festooned with ammo and chastising anyone he deems under-equipped. His most frequently used phrase is probably, "That'll do, so long as nothing goes wrong. And something always goes wrong."

Note: this character is not inspired by fellow Bunker dweller Tom in any way whatsoever. Any similarities, real or imagined, are purely coincidental.

Fifth Sergeant Oreas Cassander is the sort of Space Marine that jumps in front of a bullet to save a random Imperial citizen. Fortunately, he wears power armour. He's everything the public would hope a Space Marine would be, even if some of his brothers consider him a rash fool ruled by virtue rather than practical considerations.

Note: Cassander is the subject of a short story on this very website. Arguably he's pretty one-dimensional, in that being intrepid (yay) but rash (boo) are just two sides of the same coin. This characterisation could definitely benefit from a think about how else he might be flawed.

Seventh Sergeant Valius Agarion: A keen proponent of victory before honour, Valius enthusiastically volunteers his squad for duties others might consider inglorious or even distasteful. Despite his dark sense of humour, Valius is something of a humanitarian, advocating for surgical strikes over shock and awe to better preserve civilian lives and infrastructure.

Note: Valius is your classic "ends justify the means" trope, and while that's not a new concept by any means - none of these characters are - it's fun to have this kind of character in a Chapter where that's not the standard way of thinking.

Other brothers

This was just a selection. You can read about all the officers of the Third Company over on the Cetus wiki.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk

I make no claim to saying anything original in this post, but hopefully it's useful food for thought should you, dead reader, be coming up with little plastic space men of your very own. Not all forms of wargaming require character names and personalities, but as a big narrative wargamer I like having them to hand when the need arises. Crucially, I hope this demonstrates the way marines from the same Chapter don't have to have homogenous outlooks. Every Chapter would have members who are underhanded, brash, optimistic, jovial, or cruel. I think for me, if the army has a "protagonist" - which here, I take to be Captain Lucullus - then having a cast of characters both helps to suggest plot hooks, and gives him something to react to.

When January comes, and Tom and Harvey and I sit down to play the next campaign, I guess we'll see how successfully I express these characters.