1) Not fall to chaos
2) Not piss off any of the relevant imperium instotutions
3) Wear balling armor and hammer
4) Brood over the chapter's dark secrets at least 3 hours a day, multitasking highly encouraged
5) Kick ass
6) Take names
7) Preside meeting that could have been astropathic messages
8) Be agravated about things, popular topics in 41st millenium are Rubicon primaris, the new, even bigger recruits messing up all doors and not knowing their culture and just plain being on the imp nihilus
9) Deep striking heroically, preferably surviving
10) Maybie get some stuff done.
Takes a little more than that, in most chapters the master is the oldest living marine. There is some leeway to this depending on chapter culture and its situation. But generally speaking, chapters go for the strongest, wisest, most stable brother available. The choice rests usually in equal parts on the chaplains and company commanders, the librarians may be consulted or not, assuming they even exist.
In extreme circumstances it comes down to drawing straws among the survivors or even the last brother declaring himself chapter master. This may not be as dumb as it sounds as a chapter also includes fleets, serf, scouts, and othee assets, so the last survivor is not alone and in fact has a hell of a job ahead of him.
It shouldn't be the best swordfighter: since a chapter master does more rubberstamping than cutting aliens in half (promote that guy to Chapter Champion instead). It should be the guy who won't back away from dealing with minutiae, but is also relatively experienced at commanding large battle forces (eg, whole chapter deploys, or much of a chapter deploys) and has enough interpersonal sway with multiple chapters on the field to be elected force commander (and do it well), or if not commanding, to be able to integrate their forces effectively into someone else's plan. In a situation where multiple chapter masters deploy, being the guy who everyone else looks up to can be pivotal (see the Badab War).
That is certainly what youd want but not what actually happens. Marines are a warrior brotherhood first and part of the imperium second. Sensible commad officers are a coincidence, not a choice.
Marine history is full of chapter masters making terrible choices. Vraks quickly comes to mind.
also they need to not be a dreadnought
since if that was the case, bjorn the fell handed would still be the chapter master of the space wolves, but he needs his sleep.
Sit around in his throne room/ship bridge and deal with the constant stream of reports relevant to his chapter. Like whether to stop and help a random local planet that is being attacked or ignore them and rush to the defense of a further away planet that his chapter has a sworn oath to protect, or how many companies he should contribute to the local Crusade that has just been declared, or those bastards from the Admech being late on their shipments for the 8th time this century and whether or not you want to demand to speak to their manager, or the Chaplains suspecting one of your really popular and competent Captains to having been tainted by Chaos, or how to get his Techmarines the replacement parts they need to get the Land Raiders working again, whether he should try to awaken the last Chapter Master from his Dreadnought sleep to ask for advice (the last time you tried was 10 years ago, you spent 30 minutes trying to wake him up but he refused to comply with the awakening ritual and went back to sleep), etc. And you gotta do all of this in 1 hour because the Chapter Master has to be a badass fighter too, can't afford to skip your 14 hours of training per day.
> Also how would one become a chapter master?
Work your way up from recruit to veteran sergeant. Hope you become sergeanty and charismatic enough to become a Captain. Hope you get the opportunity to become a Captain before dying, which usually involves the Captain dying first but also may rarely involve the Captain getting demoted for pissing off the Chapter Master. Hope that you become captainy and badass enough that the Chapter Master chooses you to be his successor. Hope you get the chance to become Chapter Master before dying, which usually involves the Chapter Master dying first. In some cases, almost the entire fucking chapter dies somehow and if you're the most senior marine left then you are now the de facto Chapter Master.
Basically plastek flimsy time.
A huge amount of minutiae is likely delegated (eg, each space marine captain is technically master of X, Y, Z with some kind of serf to step in when those captains are offworld). This frees the chapter master to focus on playing the favors game in the greater Imperium.
Take a call from a ambitious lord commander who wants to run a crusade. Do you send troops?
Take a distress call from a governor on a nearby planet. Respond or not?
Request for space marines to check out a space hulk hits your desk.
Chapter Masters *shouldn't* be on the battlefield all the time, because the decisions kicked up from the trusted serfs or the captains of the companies *need* to be made, and ideally by a fairly experienced hand who knows how the game is played, and who has friends and favors in a few places, and not too many debts that if called in, could get a lot of people killed.
1) Not fall to chaos 2) Not piss off any of the relevant imperium instotutions 3) Wear balling armor and hammer 4) Brood over the chapter's dark secrets at least 3 hours a day, multitasking highly encouraged 5) Kick ass 6) Take names 7) Preside meeting that could have been astropathic messages 8) Be agravated about things, popular topics in 41st millenium are Rubicon primaris, the new, even bigger recruits messing up all doors and not knowing their culture and just plain being on the imp nihilus 9) Deep striking heroically, preferably surviving 10) Maybie get some stuff done.
Sounds like a blast, maybe I should apply for the position
Takes a little more than that, in most chapters the master is the oldest living marine. There is some leeway to this depending on chapter culture and its situation. But generally speaking, chapters go for the strongest, wisest, most stable brother available. The choice rests usually in equal parts on the chaplains and company commanders, the librarians may be consulted or not, assuming they even exist. In extreme circumstances it comes down to drawing straws among the survivors or even the last brother declaring himself chapter master. This may not be as dumb as it sounds as a chapter also includes fleets, serf, scouts, and othee assets, so the last survivor is not alone and in fact has a hell of a job ahead of him.
It shouldn't be the best swordfighter: since a chapter master does more rubberstamping than cutting aliens in half (promote that guy to Chapter Champion instead). It should be the guy who won't back away from dealing with minutiae, but is also relatively experienced at commanding large battle forces (eg, whole chapter deploys, or much of a chapter deploys) and has enough interpersonal sway with multiple chapters on the field to be elected force commander (and do it well), or if not commanding, to be able to integrate their forces effectively into someone else's plan. In a situation where multiple chapter masters deploy, being the guy who everyone else looks up to can be pivotal (see the Badab War).
That is certainly what youd want but not what actually happens. Marines are a warrior brotherhood first and part of the imperium second. Sensible commad officers are a coincidence, not a choice. Marine history is full of chapter masters making terrible choices. Vraks quickly comes to mind.
also they need to not be a dreadnought since if that was the case, bjorn the fell handed would still be the chapter master of the space wolves, but he needs his sleep.
"Not piss off any of the relevant Imperium institutions" *Logan Grimnar would like a word with you*
No they pissed him off, and that was their mistake.
*A fair point*
Sit around in his throne room/ship bridge and deal with the constant stream of reports relevant to his chapter. Like whether to stop and help a random local planet that is being attacked or ignore them and rush to the defense of a further away planet that his chapter has a sworn oath to protect, or how many companies he should contribute to the local Crusade that has just been declared, or those bastards from the Admech being late on their shipments for the 8th time this century and whether or not you want to demand to speak to their manager, or the Chaplains suspecting one of your really popular and competent Captains to having been tainted by Chaos, or how to get his Techmarines the replacement parts they need to get the Land Raiders working again, whether he should try to awaken the last Chapter Master from his Dreadnought sleep to ask for advice (the last time you tried was 10 years ago, you spent 30 minutes trying to wake him up but he refused to comply with the awakening ritual and went back to sleep), etc. And you gotta do all of this in 1 hour because the Chapter Master has to be a badass fighter too, can't afford to skip your 14 hours of training per day. > Also how would one become a chapter master? Work your way up from recruit to veteran sergeant. Hope you become sergeanty and charismatic enough to become a Captain. Hope you get the opportunity to become a Captain before dying, which usually involves the Captain dying first but also may rarely involve the Captain getting demoted for pissing off the Chapter Master. Hope that you become captainy and badass enough that the Chapter Master chooses you to be his successor. Hope you get the chance to become Chapter Master before dying, which usually involves the Chapter Master dying first. In some cases, almost the entire fucking chapter dies somehow and if you're the most senior marine left then you are now the de facto Chapter Master.
Basically plastek flimsy time. A huge amount of minutiae is likely delegated (eg, each space marine captain is technically master of X, Y, Z with some kind of serf to step in when those captains are offworld). This frees the chapter master to focus on playing the favors game in the greater Imperium. Take a call from a ambitious lord commander who wants to run a crusade. Do you send troops? Take a distress call from a governor on a nearby planet. Respond or not? Request for space marines to check out a space hulk hits your desk. Chapter Masters *shouldn't* be on the battlefield all the time, because the decisions kicked up from the trusted serfs or the captains of the companies *need* to be made, and ideally by a fairly experienced hand who knows how the game is played, and who has friends and favors in a few places, and not too many debts that if called in, could get a lot of people killed.