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So you have made it through the process of becoming a Space Marine, Brother, we are honored to have you, but not as honored as you should be to be amongst us!  You will now be assigned to a Scout Squad – what, you thought you would automatically get your armor and start blasting heretics and xenos, no, no Brother, you will serve decades in a Scout Squad, with minimal armor and only a las rifle.  You will be assigned a full Battle Brother as your mentor who will help you in learning the traditions, the tips and tricks on how to survive, but surviving, that is up to you and your abilities, battle armor is hard to make, expensive beyond belief, and takes years of practice to be able to use to its full might.  You will spend years in the Scout Squad, getting used to your new body and abilities, showing your loyalty to and faith in the Emperor.  If you survive, are not a craven coward or lack faith, show true mastery of your abilities, and your mentor decides you are ready, then and only then will you be allowed to don the sacred armor of a full Battle Brother.  Just know that we all started out as scouts (unless you are one of those Primaris assholes, those fuckers never had to be scouts, oh no, no scouting for Belisarious Cawl’s oversized test tube pretty boys).  Never mind, we all serve the Emperor’s Will in the Space Marines (sotto voce but do keep an eye on those bastards, no one really trusts them).  You will spend your years as a Scout in the very front, our eyes and ears on the enemies of the Empire, learning the tactics, abilities, and units of our many foes by observation and stealth.

Once it has been decided by your Battle Brothers that you are ready, then, then will you be promoted and become a full Battle Brother and will be gifted with a set of new armor, or if you have been particularly outstanding, you may receive a set of ancient and revered battle armor.  Why some of our power armor is over 10 thousand years old and created with techniques and technologies lost to the Empire over time (or those cog freaks on Mars are hording to maintain some sort of power over us).  You will serve many years as a Battle Brother before advancing to a particular role.  See these (pointing to head embedded with 1 silver and 2 gold studs), these embedded studs denote the years spent in service to the Emperor.  For our chapter, a silver stud is 50 years of service,  a gold stud 100 years of service, and if you see an ebony stud bow your head to the Chaplain before you get killed as a heretic, idiot.  You will be assigned to a squad, which in our Chapter is 4 Battle Brothers and a Sargent.  Always listen to your Sargent – even the lowest recruit in the Imperial Army understands this bit of wisdom.

First you have your Devastator Squads, which is the first squad you are assigned to after serving your time in the Scout Squad.  Mainly responsible for ranged attacks, every member has the basic loadout of a bolt pistol, chainsword, frag and krak grenades, however, they can also use a Heavy Bolter, Missile Launcher, Lascannon, Multi-melta, Plasma Cannon, a Grav-Cannon, or in the case of our Chapter a Dragon grenade which is a highly explosive large grenade shaped like two rounded cones with the bases joined and the tips slightly rounded, which can be highly inaccurate and upon reaching their target, explode upon contact resulting in massive damage and any female xenos observging become pregnant, but these heavier weapons are only given to Battle Brothers who have proven themselves steady and able to hold the line during furious combat.  Nobody wants to give a newb a multi-melta and let him run wild. If you show particular skill with ranged weaponry then you may be permanently assigned to the Devastator Squad and if you continue to survive you may eventually become a sergeant!

Once you have graduated from the Devastator Squad, the next stop on your career path are the Assault Squads, who just love brutal hand to hand fight using a bolt pistol, chainsword, frag and krak grenades, and equipped with jump packs.  Ah the jump packs, nothing like jumping from Thunderhawk Gunships, landing in the middle of a pack of xenos and opening a can of the Emperor’s Wrath upon the filthy things.  Whenever you need to drop in from a much higher height, Drop Pods will be your best friend, slamming down into the foe, crushing them beneath you as you charge forth to MDK your enemies, ah, the memories still make my two hearts beat faster.  One of the lucky Brothers in a squad may be issued a hand flamer or a plasma pistol – all xenos are heretics and must be well done to considered completely finished.  Since the focus of your squad is close combat, you will need to learn to maintain and ride Space Marine Bikes and Land Speeders to be able to get to the fight faster.

Once you have completed several campaigns after serving in both Devastator and Assault Squads, you have finally made it into the main forces of the Space Marines – the Tactical Squad, and only if you have the mental flexibility to be able to react fluidly to the changing nature of a battle.  Your squad will be made up of one Sergeant and 4 to 9 Space Marines.  Now you get to play with the best toys (list from wh40k.lexicanum) –

power armour, a bolt pistol, a boltgun, Combat Knife and frag and krak grenades. They may also be armed with a variety of Flamers, Meltaguns, Plasma Guns, Grav-Guns, Heavy Bolters, Heavy Flamers, Lascannons, Missile Launchers, Multi-meltas, Plasma Cannons and Grav-Cannons ^[1c].

The Space Marine Sergeant may also have melta bombs and teleport homer, and can exchange his boltgun and/or bolt pistol for a Chainsword, Combi-melta, Combi-flamer, Combi-plasma, Combi-grav, Storm Bolter, Plasma pistol, Grav-pistol, Power weapon, or Power fist. Allowing the Squad to adjust to the demands of the campaign and/or battle.

You may be assigned to specialty service, say you work well with the machine spirits of our equipment and they speak to you, you will be sent to Mars for 3 decades to become a TechMarine, just don’t let the cogboys pollute your thinking with their prattling about the Omnissiah, you will learn how to divine the Runes of Engineering and the Liturgy of Maintenance and keep the machine spirits happy and all of your brother’s equipment working in top shape.

Well, Brother, that is enough for today!  Next time I will explain the most powerful and important Specialists of our glorious Chapter – the Terminators, the Apothecaries, the Chaplains, and Dreadnoughts.