Cifer said:

Ghostbus... I mean, DEATHWATCH!

A full scale Hive Fleet would certainly be possible from about 995 onwards, since the climax of Leviathan was 999.M41. Just saying

While there may/may not be any hard evidence placing Tyranids within the Calixis Sector (and I have reason to believe that there are Lictors scouting it out, as others have suggested), page 320 of the DH source book gives a hint that Inquistor Van Vuygens is concerned that the Tyranids have been testing Imperial defenses and that they will strike from an unexpected quarter.

He also has reason to believe that the Tyrant Star is of xenos origin and that it may in fact be of Tyranid design.

This may or may not be a lead in to Deathwatch.

Atheosis said:

I think you are underestimating the amount of warp travel Space Marines perform and overestimating the risks of warp travel. While WT can be dangerous, it's less of a factor for forces with access to navigators. It's mostly a limit for standard merchant traffic.

The big problem with traveling from one side of the Imperium to another is time - a trip across the galaxy will probably take months of perceived time and anywhere from days to years of real time. So for the most part it isn't really practical. However for those extremely rare and powerful individuals whose presence at a given location can change the fate of a sector - such as Inquisitors and space marines - the effort is usually worth it.

The space marines are so rare that you can't just whistle up a new squad of DW whenever you want. Odds are any given team is going to be formed from marines from across the galaxy. It's not convenient, but it's simply the only reliable option. The chapters don't have the numbers to allow them to regularly tithe marines to the DW. So if at a given time the DW have enough new marines to form a new squad, they aren't going to complain that one of them is from the Eastern Fringe, one if from Terra and two are from the Segmentum Obscuras. They'll gather all 5 together and probably send them off somewhere completely different - 'cause there's no one else to do the job.

macd21 said:

So you admit that warp travel from one side of the galaxy to the other would likely take years, and yet you tell me it happens on special occasions.  That's just silly.  If you have a problem that needs the intervention of the Deathwatch, you likely don't have years to sit around waiting for a guy in blue armor to show up when any of a hundred plus Chapters in the Segmentum Obscurus could get a battle brother there in much less time. 

I am not underestimating the amount of warp travel Space Marines perform.  They make warp jumps on a regular basis, but most those jumps are either relatively short or along established warp lanes.  I am also not overestimating the danger of warp travel when talking about going as fast as possible from one side if the galaxy to the other.  If you're making 5000 light year jumps (basically the maximum without being suicidal) then your risks are much much higher than under normal circumstances (those listed above), especially if you're going to do it twenty or so times.  First of all to do such a thing you have to bypass established warp lanes (which are never going to be anywhere near that long), and second you're going to be putting your Navigator under enormous strain.  All of this to deliver a single Marine to his Deathwatch assignment, and a couple years too late no less?  I don't think so.

Here's the thing: if you read the fluff on warp travel and combine it with with the fact that non-crusading Chapters generally only operate in a certain, relatively small, region of the Imperium, it really just doesn't make sense.  You can try to make it make sense, as I'm sure FFG will attempt to do, but ultimately it really comes down to shoehorning a Chapter into a situation it really shouldn't be involved in just because you really want to.

The Deathwatch doesn't operate out of a single stronghold/planet/ship/point in space.

Atheosis said:

No. I don't believe that the Deathwatch whip up a new squad whenever a problem arises. I believe they form squads from the marines that have been made available to them, then assign them to the next crisis that crops up. You're right - they can't afford to wait years for new battle brothers to arrive. But neither can they just turn to the nearest chapters and demand a couple of marines. The chapters in question will tell them "sorry, we're busy putting down the chaos incursion on Threellis IV", or "sure, have brother Optimus. No we can't spare you a full squad." If they want to field a full deathwatch squad they have to recruit from across the galaxy.

Atheosis said:

I do. In the fluff groups like the Inquisition and the Marines make long-range warp jumps like that quite often. And yes, a single marine is worth it. A single marine is one of the most valuable military commodities in the Imperium. He won't be 'late' - he'll be just in time to deal with whatever the latest crisis is.

I don't think the Deathwatch have a choice. The level of recruitment they can perform in a given region isn't enough for them to create a full squad. If they don't recruit from across the galaxy they'll end up sending out marines individually. "Ok Maximus, we're sending you to Ganob 4 to put down the Ork Waaagh. We'll probably be able to recruit another marine from your chapter in about a decade, we'll send him to join you then." Not an effective use of their forces. Instead I think they send them to a central gathering point. Whatever marines arrive in a given year (say) are grouped together in a squad and then given an assignment.

macd21 said:

Of course they recruit from acrosee the galaxy...because they have crisis' that are constantly cropping up across the galaxy!  This is another problem with you're saying.  They aren't going to recruit Marines in the Ultima Segmentum and ship them to the Segmentum Obscurus or vice versa because each of those regions has a constant need for Deathwatch kill teams.  Seriously dude what you're saying makes no sense.  It's like saying that we send police from L.A. to New York all the time because there aren't enough cops in New York or on the east coast in general.  Meanwhile there's a riot breaking out in L.A..  Of all the Segmentums the Ultima Segmentum probably has a greatest need for Deathwatch kill-teams, but you're saying they just ship'em out to Obscurus...yeah that makes sense. 

Oh and by the way, where on Terra are you getting the idea that Space Marines make 5000 light year jumps quite often (much less twenty of them sequentially)?  No one makes jumps like that quite often.  Even Inquisitors and freakin Rogue Traders don't make those kinds of jumps on a regular basis.  Seriously where are you getting this stuff? 

Atheosis said:

Sure, you'd recruit cops from LA to go to NY... if there were only a handful of cops in NY and they were all busy. An equivalent example would be if NY only had ten cops and they were all busy dealing with organised crime. The feds ask for some volunteers to put down a riot in Albany. The NYPD says "sure, we can spare Ted". Feds don't think Ted will be enough. Fortunately they've been recruiting a crack squad of cops from across the country, gathered in Washington. There's a guy from LA, another from Chicago, two guys from Miami (those guys are crazy) and now there's Ted. So they send their new team to put down the riot and start looking for new volunteers, gathering them together to have them ready to face the next crisis.

Atheosis said:

The fluff. Now, 'quite often' is relative, but the forces of the Imperium do undergo long journeys. Yes, it takes months or years. But the Ultramarines fought at the 2nd war for armageddon. They crossed the galaxy to relieve Terra from Horus (too late). Forces gathered from across the Imperium marshalled in response to the 3rd war for Armageddon. In the novels Inquisitors have crossed Segmentums in response to threats.

To the above posters, please read before you continue your discussion:

It's a made up galaxy, they can do whatever they want. Just FYI. If the Made up Deathwatch wants to bring the made up Ultramarine Tybor or whoever across the galaxy then they can do that and guess what he'll be just in time because it's all fake. It's not real, the warp doesn't really exist. And when they tell you, you can go into the warp and come out the other side before you even left I'm almost certain that means time and distance become non-issues in this made up realm. And his argument makes since, there are only a few thousand, at best, Deathwatch Marines, what he's saying is that the Deathwatch can't pick and choose. If squad #18, which has Brother Tybor in it is in the Segmentum Sol and they need more Deathwatch in Obscure they can't just raise another Deathwatch team, if he and his team are unoccupied they are called on, that's his point, you are assuming if you play Deathwatch you have to be newly recruited. And lets not forget the Ultra boys fight all over, they even fought on Armageddon, so don't tell me one of them couldn't get picked up on Armageddon because of his skills at fighting orks and be sent to Obscure Segmentum. Just my two-cents, cause it's annoying reading this argument, lol. It's all for love... And it's made up so you can't win cause you'll never be right or wrong. Also, I as a GM may decide to set a campaign in Ultramar, what then? I need freakin Ultra-boys... A good GM never limits him/herself to the rule book.

Also, you're forgetting the second reason for Deathwatch's existence: It's basically a Marine-exchange-programme. The marines returning to their chapters are supposed to have learnt all kinds of new and interesting ways to hurt people and break stuff to teach their brethren. How do you do that when all Marines you have in a squad are from chapters that are in close proximity anyway? Importing the most famous bug-hunter to disseminate tactics gained from combat experience to the local chapters makes sense in that regard, especially if he's from far away because there's not exactly a big chance of the Ultramarines as a whole moving to Obscuros.

Cifer said:

Actually, the Space Marines who comes back from their tour in Deathwatch take oaths to never discuss what they have done or seen while during that time.

They can’t discuses specifics but it’d be foolish to think that having learned a better way to fight, say, Tyranids, they’d just not tell their battle brothers the next time they faced a Hive Fleet. They can share practical knowledge just not secrets like the inner workings of the Inquisition. In fact they’d be duty bound to share better ways to kill the enemies of the Imperium so as to better persecute the foe.

Atheosis said:

That assumes that a new Killteam is built to combat a given threat when that threat has made itself apparent...  which is, IMO, a silly concept.

It's far easier to assume a more ad-hoc 'term of service' form of recruitment, where a given Marine is selected for service, released by his Chapter and spends the next decade or so moving across the galaxy as part of one or more disctinct Killteams (because they'd change, as Marines reach the end of their term and return home), with the Killteam moving around as required by missions (operating from a starship, moving to where their skills are needed at the time, whether for a short period of time to perform a specific task, or for several months or years to aid an ongoing effort).

Atheosis said:

To deliver a single Marine? No... but that doesn't mean you won't find Ultramarines near the Eye of Terror or Space Wolves battling the Tau. Space Marine Chapters operate over vast distances, with individual strike forces having incredible autonomy in the field for what may be long periods of time.

Short-distance jumps along established routes are the norm for Warp Travel, yes... but the overwhelming majority of Warp Travel is not military in nature, has Navigators of dubious quality at best, and is routine in nature... as opposed to the movement of an Astartes Strike Cruiser, a Rogue Trader or an Imperial Navy Battlegroup, for whom restricting movement to established routes is counter-productive.

Beyond this, the relative times taken to cross a region of space through the Warp are not fixed, and do vary considerably. One of the major plot points of the novel Dark Creed is a star system near the Eye of Terror which is connected to a large number of extremely stable, extremely fast routes through the Warp, making it into a sort of transit hub for high-priority traffic moving to and from Segmentum Obscuras (because of its importance, it's also heavily fortified). At one point, when the system is threatened by Chaos forces, reinforcements are called for, and these reinforcements calculate their time to arrival based on the beneficial nature of the routes leading to the system... these voyages, from an external perspective, take hours not weeks or months (though from inside the ship, weeks have passed), which is noted as being very unusual for warp travel in general and acknowledged as the reason why that system (and potentially those like it) are so crucial to the defence of the Imperium.

Atheosis said:

Except that the notion that chapters operate only in a single small region isn't a standard assumption - the Ultramarines, for example, have engaged in conflicts all over the Imperium, as have most other Chapters (consider the Grey Knights; they're based on Titan... yet they turn up all over the galaxy). Many Fleet-based Chapters still operate from a single central base, even if it happens to be mobile. Given their role in the Imperium, the most skilled Navigators and the most sophisticated warp drives seem extremely likely, allowing the Astartes to respond to situations far more quickly than almost anyone else in the Imperium.

The point I'm trying to make which no one seems to understand is not that an Ultramarine could never, would never be encountered on the far side of the Segmentum Obscurus.  The point I'm trying to make is that there are many other Chapters that would be much, much more likely.  It isn't that it's impossible.  It's simply improbable.  But whatever.  If people want their Ultramarines all over the freakin galaxy on a regular basis so be it.  Not sure who's protecting Ultramar in the meantime, but if nothing else there's always the Novamarines and Genesis Chapter.