# WHAT!?!? Dante isn't the eldest!!?!



## High Marshall Mendark (Jan 25, 2009)

I was just reading one of my old white dwarfs (around 310-315ish) the other day, and i was reading about how Marshall Ludoldus was part of two seperate crusades, the vinculus crusade(833.M41-purging of heretics and deamon killing goodness) and the jerulas crusade(645.M39-yes, yes the one how WE made the lrc...cheap codex bastards...*grumble*...)

And anyways, it goes on to say that the two crusades were separated by a gap of 2288 years and that pictograms show astonishing similarities between the "two" marshalls.

So wait, isnt the oldest living marine dante?? and he is what 1-1.5 thousand years, (the blood angels will be soo pissed if it turns out that we have the eldest living marine, hehe!!)?

This begs the question, are the two marshalls really two? And if not why is he so old and not recorded...or...why has he shown up randomly after 2.25 thousand years!?!? What are your ideas on this? How and why has he returned if he did leave at all?


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

Dante I believe is 1200 years old, but there are probably a handful of Astartes older than him. 

If were counting Dreadnoughts, Bjorn has been 'alive' since the Great Crusade, so is much older than Dante. And many other Dreadnoughts are probably older than Dante.

But im sure I remember reading in a BL novel recently of an Imperial Astartes who is older than Dante, I'll get back to you on that one.


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

isnt the crazy space pup dread the oldest...uh semi living marine 

gorram it, ninja'ed!


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## dark angel (Jun 11, 2008)

Well, there is a few possabilites really. The one which strikes out too me the most is that they made a mess up, while the other one is that Ludoldus was a old bastard, perhaps he was placed within a Dreadnaught? It is not impossible for them to still lead after all when they are placed within. The younger one, or I shall say more recent could also be of the same blood line, I mean it is not that hard to believe that his brother's descendent or whatever still had the same name and got inducted. One a side note, isn't he the one that Helbrecht served under?


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

Maybe he's spent a lot of time in the warp? With the time dilation, he's actually "younger"?

Then again, I'm pretty sure they ignore time dilation, though, when determining age. But it's a thought.


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## Ultra111 (Jul 9, 2009)

Hmm warp seems the most plausible answer..

In salamander there was a marine who had sat imobile on a throne since the great crusade watching over some stuff...so he would have been around 11,000 years old


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

Or it could just be 2 Marines who have the same name and Dorn's geneseend restructured them to look very similar (like seems to happen extremely regularly to the HH marines i.e Luna Wolves, Alpha Legion etc).


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

Ultra111 said:


> Hmm warp seems the most plausible answer..
> 
> In salamander there was a marine who had sat imobile on a throne since the great crusade watching over some stuff...so he would have been around 11,000 years old


fantastic sum up there!

Are we excluding chaos marines aswell


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

The simple answer is GW fuck up the fluff all the time. Every time they get someone to write something they try to make them the biggest, badest, most terrifying thing ever. Dante was the oldest Astarte but that gets retconned all the time by random guys for no reason. Black Templars didn't exist when Dante was the oldest Astarte still living. Bjorn and the other Dreadnoughts don't count as living as they're put in statis when they're not fighting, Bjorn only gets out once every hundred years or so. 

That's why Space Wolfs are not the biggest badasses ever, new codex, they need to make them sounds hardcore so they ride roughshod over their own back story and make then sounds more awesome. Same with Nid's the new codex makes them out to be even bigger and badder than ever. I'm sure in April we will find out that Blood Angels are the biggest and best. 

Aramro


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## Broken (Dec 7, 2008)

Aramoro said:


> That's why Space Wolfs are not the biggest badasses ever, new codex, they need to make them sounds hardcore so they ride roughshod over their own back story and make then sounds more awesome. Same with Nid's the new codex makes them out to be even bigger and badder than ever. I'm sure in April we will find out that Blood Angels are the biggest and best.


And you wouldn't, at least, do something similar everytime you made a collection of new releases? It's to make them sound more appealing, which will increase their sales and convince people to start this particular army. Otherwise, they'd have wasted loads of money, and time too.

Fair enough though; they could maintain some consistency within their fluff. Of course, it doesn't help that they officialy ruled all Black Library fiction to not be canon. That just messed things up entirely. Clearly, this is one of the things that is no longer clear. Then again, when you think about the amount of authors working for Games Workshop it must be difficult to prevent some of their work coinciding.


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## Aramoro (Oct 7, 2009)

It didn't used to be so bad or so blatant. Back in 2nd ed they had a big world view and everyone sat inside that. It was all fairly consistent and each side had strengths and weaknesses. Seemingly Space Wolves only weakness now is how to they tell everyone else how awesome and unbeatable they are. 

Aramoro


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

and they are my main enemy  but we need to get back on topic! surely badbaddon is the oldest mofo kicking!


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## forkbanger (Jan 25, 2010)

World Eater XII said:


> Are we excluding chaos marines aswell


If you have a raging hardon for regular Marines, of course you'll ignore them.



World Eater XII said:


> and they are my main enemy  but we need to get back on topic! surely badbaddon is the oldest mofo kicking!


Abaddon may be a colossal fucking failure, but he's definitely one of the oldest Space Marines still alive.

Kharn was on the Great Crusade - that's where he picked up Gorechild.

Fabius Bile was around at that point too, ignoring that whole 'Siege of Terra' thing to cook up space-meth.

Ahriman was there too, but no-one cares about him.


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Asdrubael Vect looks down upon Dante, and indeed all Space Marines, as if they were children.

Oh yeah he's not a Space Marine...

But all Dark Eldar are at least 13 years old!

Midnight


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## Kale Hellas (Aug 26, 2009)

MidnightSun said:


> But all Dark Eldar are at least 13 years old!
> 
> Midnight


:laugh:


as for the original post, it also states
"there is some doubt as to how this could be, given that these same histories recall that this same high marshal fought in the vinculus crusade, over two thousand years after the jerulas crusade" pg 25, WD 312


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## Amra_the_lion (May 26, 2008)

doesn't the newest SM codex place Lysander at 2000 years old? from being kept in the eye of terror or warp (cant remember)

Dante isn't the oldest living marine, though he seems to be the oldest chapter master. Angels of Death places Serg Cleutin as the commander of the scout squad Dante joined after recruitment. Though if he is still kicking....


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## Chaosrider (Feb 3, 2010)

how about some of those fallen guys? like cypher. hes been running round for quite some time, and he isn't said to be chaos, just in the warp


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

cypher is old but i dont think hes as old as some of the other legion members!


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## KhainiteAssassin (Mar 18, 2009)

yeah you cant count anything from chaos, because if you go look at any of the "legions" they are ALL techniquly from the crusade, since the dont have any real way of gaining new recruits, new armor, and live in the warp which distorts time.

Also: I would LOVE to know the actual age on Ulrik from the space wolves, he is the oldest 'living' space wolf without a doubt (not counting the dreads once again) so where does he fit in is the question to be asking.


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

But the fluff surrounding Ulrik is contradictory (as always with GW), some accounts he was a Blood Claw during the 1st War of Armageddon, others a Wolf Guard, and in the rare few he was Grimnar's mentor! Pick one :grin:


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

consistency is not gw's strong points in any case


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## Broken (Dec 7, 2008)

World Eater XII said:


> consistency is not gw's strong points in any case


I disagree: their prices go up every year. A consistency I don't expect to change.


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## Da Joka (Feb 20, 2009)

Baron Spikey said:


> But the fluff surrounding Ulrik is contradictory (as always with GW), some accounts he was a Blood Claw during the 1st War of Armageddon, others a Wolf Guard, and in the rare few he was Grimnar's mentor! Pick one :grin:


speaking of Armageddon... does anyone know how old Ghazghkull is?


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## hailene (Aug 28, 2009)

The earliest record of Ghazghull is 932.M41. He was just a Boyz then. Guessing by how short-lived the average boy is, he was probably no older than 5 years at that time. That'd put him around 73 or so if the "current" time is 000.M42 or so.

And I just realized the easiest explanation. It's been about 133 years since 877.M41. Ludoldus could have died in between then and now.

So, yes, Ludoldus could have been well over 2000 years, but that doesn't mean a damn if he's dead.


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## World Eater XII (Dec 12, 2008)

im still sticking with badbaddon or kharn


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## Baron Spikey (Mar 26, 2008)

If we take into account the Warp time dilation phenomena then Abaddon might not even be as old as Dante- I use Soul Hunter as an example here, Talos was around during the Heresy and 10,000 years have passed in real space but to him and the rest of 10th Company it's as if only a century has occured because of their time spent in the warp.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

Baron Spikey said:


> If we take into account the Warp time dilation phenomena then Abaddon might not even be as old as Dante- I use Soul Hunter as an example here, Talos was around during the Heresy and 10,000 years have passed in real space but to him and the rest of 10th Company it's as if only a century has occured because of their time spent in the warp.


Indeed, but that might not be the same for all of the Traitor Legions/Seperate Warbands.

As you said Soul Hunter and the Warband of the Exalted may have only experianced a century out of the one hundred that had passed in Real Space - But others would have had different experiances.

So Abaddon may have experianced less, or considerably more, or the same, or just about anything really! But regardless, in terms of age - chronologically from a Real Space perspective, he has endured for over one hundred centuries.


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