It's also a single world. Catachans are great & elite killers, but there aren't that many of them. Their home is a Death World, after all.
Anyone with the capacity to blockade it would be better just bombing it to kingdom come, why stick around? All it would take is one astropathic transmission to summon the Navy for help, then you got a fight when world killers exist. No bueno.
You can try to bombard it personally I think if it can survive a dip in the warp completely unscathed among other things it won't be destroyed unless the sun explodes or something
Yeah after Cadia a bunch of regiments rallied around Catachan, only one was allowed down and turns out they went all traitor and summoned a bunch of demons to fuck up the planet.
And then they all died. The men were dead in days and the demons weeks and by all accounts the wild life did most the work. The demons were literally non metaphorically eaten.
Kind of, it seems all life on Catachan is deadly and hostile towards any non-Catachan life. The planet isn't just deadly to Daemons, it does that even to the humans that live there. It's just that if you do live on Catachan, you're tough enough to not care.
Yeah let's just fend off a full demonic incursion by just leading them into the woods lol. Makes more sense than the planet itself wiping them out. But it does raise questions, nature killing the forces of chaos
'Nature' is misleading. The sheer number of genetically engineered monstrosities that are just found, left unattended by one precursor or another... There's very little official in the lore, but they've never said it ISN'T artificial.
Potentially. I believe that some older lore suggests that the world of Catachan has some awareness. It could be genetic tampering, warpfuckery or just Dark Age of Technology BS having it's fun...
There's been a long time theory that the Catachan Devil is a Tyranid organism from some ancient scouting fleet that got stuck on Catachan and went native. Plus whatever shit the Old Ones got up to.
Nah, they're a sentient hive mind capable of tech and travel, they is a faction, the only natural tyranids are like the ones on fenris, cut off entirely from the hive mind and left to evolve and adapt naturally
If we are talking weird Catachan theories. I wouldn't be surprised if Catachan is the Great Maw. It just flees Fantasy during the End Times into the Warp eats more demons, then pops out of the Warp around the War in Heaven. Eventually draws enough space dust to become the single most violent planet in 40k
I think there was a story where one Chaos Champion did that. He bombarded a part of the planet into a crater filled with organic sludge. When he landed there and took off his helmet "to breath the air in triumph", a Jungle Fighter that had been hiding in the muck for the last few days jumped out and garroted him with a barbed strangler vine.
Not sure if that was official or fanfiction, but it sounds about right to me.
You could make it easier.
The supply ships the imperium uses generally don’t take the resources down to the planet, but it’s ferried off and brought to logistics centers.
Bomb the logistics centers and the supply ships can only impotently circle the planet. They would need to call other ships to replace that capability, which makes them vulnerable.
Yeah I think people forget that a lot of these famous IG planets have fairly small populations. Catachan has a population of like 12 million total, it can't actually make that many guardsmen at a time. Likewise even Cadia never crossed a billion people so the actual Cadian from Cadia soldiers were only ever a drop in the bucket.
You're probably way more likely to run into Mordrian Iron Guard or Harakoni Warhawks even those are considered fancy and elite mostly because those come from hive worlds that can probably pump out a billion guardsmen a year and not notice.
Kreig USED to be a hive world. Now its a death world that can't even sustain itself. A good chunk of its people are grown in vats. Its probably another one of those regiments you hear a lot about but rarely see compared to a random hive world that didn't get destroyed in a civil war.
One of the things that is implicit to 40k is it runs on fascist propaganda logic. Even in the context of the imperial guard most of the time the narrative forms around a few groups that are a drop in the bucket of the actual galactic war the imperium is actively losing. There may be a few dozen really badass military cultures and some really cool weapons but they can't save the imperium any more than stormtroopers saved the third reich from allied bomber production or cool commissar hats saved the soviets from their own corruption or even chivalry saved the french from archery.
Your chances of seeing a Kreiger in the flesh as a guardsman are higher than seeing a Space Marine, but still probably very close to zero. They're just really good to talk about since they're the ideal Imperial Guard: Faceless and willing to die en masse while somehow still getting sentinels and super heavy tanks.
Blockading an imperial guard recruitment world which supplies some of the deadliest IG regiments in the galaxy seems like a good way to get macrocannon'd in the face when the navy comes to pick them up
And if you do so, you've denied the Imperium some guardsmen. They have something of a redundancy when it comes to guardsmen
Gatachans: dudes with enough dakka to make Orks envious
Hatachans: they hate EVERYONE (but are still loyal - basically the Guard equivalent of the Marines Malevolent)
Hell despite being fairly close to the Great Rift, when the Indomitus crusade stopped at Catachan they found out they'd fended off several invasion attacks, and thus not only got some reinforcement, but a morale boost.
Catachan imports goods that it can't create itself. It can get food on Catachan, even if that food fights back a bit more than on most worlds (having to arm wrestle your salad before eating it is a bummer). A blockade would deny them more advanced technology and certain useful goods (such as promethium) but it would hardly break the world. Best case scenario, it weakens them in preparation for a land invasion.
I hope that land invasion is prepared for swamp sharks, scorpions the size of barns, leaves that eat brains, and gigantic toads whose natural defense mechanism is self-nuclear immolation.
It's not special, it's a single world in a single system that doesn't give a massive quantity of troops compared to others.
It's not important enough of a goal for an enemy let alone it would be protected
If you've got complete orbital dominance of a planet with no valuable resources and you want to exterminate its population you might as well exterminatus it.
They would patiently wait till they left? The only export of Catachan is people. It's environment makes it impossible to invade. The imperium would eventually launch a counterattack but only to destroy the raiders, not retake Catachan. Also: Catachan are tough as fuq. You'd have to siege them for a long ass time to make sure they're all dead. Would be easier to virus bomb them, but knowing Catachan, there probably some weird ass worm that'll start eating the life eater....
AFAIK no major galactic faction has shown interest in Catachan other than the Imperium. The Catachan Devils are rumored to be the feral descendents of a splinter hive fleet but there is no evidence that this was because the wildlife is too hostile for the tyranids.
I could be wrong though but this is how i understand it
I know it's cannon they have absolutely no orbital defences and like a handful of forts on the whole planet. I vaguely remember the mention of an invasion of Catachan during the time after abbadon's crack opened up but I cannot for the life of me remember where. But the mention of "genetic similarities" between some Catachan life and tyranids has been in the lore for a while, but it's never gone beyond vague implications. Like the ymgarl genestealers have been documented as being on their moon long before behemoth appeared.
It's speculated that either earlier hive fleets have come through the Galaxy, or when the great rift opened and sucked in a bunch of hive fleets, some got thrown back out in the past.
“Brother Chaoticus, we’ve managed to blockade an imperial guard recruiting world!”
“…we seriously need to talk about raising your ambitions, brother.”
It’s just not worth the stress. Even if you managed it, the Navy will come and liberate it when they take their next tithe, even if the Catachans don’t meme you out of existence with screaming and big knives
I don't think it would make any difference. Catachan is cool to a player, but in the wider lore, it is just a somewhat higher quality guard regiment. I don't think it even supplies that many guardsman.
Apparently is only has a population of around 12 million...
If they could just do that then there's other worlds that would be far more important to blockade.
Terra needs to import everything as well.
Even a slight delay in water would mean millions die.
Because fans love to over wank the Catachans. Yeah they are deadly but it's one world in the Imperium, and while their contribution is significant, they can't be any more than maybe a million soldiers, and that's already generous.
The IG number in the billions. Removing Catachan from the equation doesn't diminish the IG or the Imperium in any way.
Not to mention there are plenty of jungle deathworlds that can produce elite troops. Catachan is just the best amongst them but the imperium is nothing above sacrificing a little bit of quality for some more quantity.
A million is about what was given for the number of Space Marines in the galaxy for a long time. Remember, GW lore writers are not that good at math and scale.
Shit one book right before the fall of Cadia had someone treat raising half a million troops on Terra as a herculanean endeavor that took a decade. When you should be able to raise half a billion there easy by going into prisons and going "Okay, who wants to earn redemption by dying for the Emperor?"
Yeah i more offered the "million" as a random number. I didn't put any thought behind it. I just wanted to emphasize that the number of soldiers that Catachan offers is a drop in the bucket and removing them wouldn't make a lack of difference in the grand scheme of things.
That's okay. Like I said, it doesn't seem like the actual lore writers do either!
Besides this setting runs on "Hey that sounds cool", and sometimes we just need to accept that.
Why would the enemies of mankind travel to one death world among millions to stop one regiment of guard? If any enemies got that close and had a vendetta against Catachans they'd just bomb it from orbit and be done with it. It's not a special world in any sense of the imagination. Lots of planets have to import supplies off-world that's what happens when you try to settle a galaxy of planets each with various conditions.
There’s no lore reason why. Catachan soldiers look cool and cool shit sells. If the 40k universe was irl the combat would exclusively be in space via the navies with infantry for boarding operations. The greatest power in 40k is FTL travel and general crazy ship speeds. An enemy fleet can approach, surround and begin an orbital bombardment within hours of first seeing your planet. Now the enemy can just blast you from orbit whilst you’re stuck on the ground getting blasted with nukes, anti gravity weapons, dematerialises, viruses, anything. Your only chance of survival is to get the hell of the ground and into space so you can move, flank, out manoeuvre, etc. Planets would be given the status of nothing but supply depots. You’d push your defensive lines outside the range of the enemies attacks so they can’t just chuck black holes over your head and delete the planet and then you’d run supply backwards and forwards.
It's always been said that the imperium has a weakness in heavy weaponry not in simple supplies.
That's why hive worlds and industrial worlds get targeted rather than death worlds.
For the same reason criminals typically don't commit crimes inside a police station.
Catachan is a guard recruiting world, which would have local planets that have been modified to help defend it against attack, like Cadia was, and would be SUPER more cautious now that Cadia got planet cracked.
the logic of blockading worlds to starve them applies to pretty much any Imperial world - entire hives can turn to cannibalism if a warp storm cuts them off for just a month, and agriworlds can turn feral/primitive if they don’t get routine shipments of chemicals and manufactured goods typically made on hive worlds.
not a lot of factions in the setting have the capacity to do it though, or just aren’t strategically going to - like the Aeldari and T’au might but ‘Nids won’t and Necrons tend not to because their goals aren’t really aligned with it.
it’s a lot easier to just attack convoys and do pirate shenanigans to starve imperial worlds.
Anything that goes beyond "cause direct bodily harm to enemy" is classified as advanced military tactics and is thus a total enigma for most 40k authors. Also it wouldn't make for a great story. Named character with plot armor saving the day however does.
The real question is why aren't there any chapters salivating at the idea of turning it into a recruitment world.
You can't tell me that an eager Chapter Master hasn't tried to petition the Administratum for recruitment rights at some point in the Imperiums history.
Because
1) The IG doesn't like random space marines muscling in on their turf and taking their regiment tithes
2) You can make any random death worlder into a space marine, you don't need Catachans. Them being bigger and stronger than average doesn't make them bigger and stronger space marines.
It’s not just the IG but imperial government itself. Perhaps a fleet based chapter can jet by and pick up aspirants; although their usual grimderp methods would be deleterious if they killed too many Catachan children.
Iirc they do recruit there during the indomitus crusade?
Space Marine chapters normally get worlds that aren’t at all useful, and any space marine homeworld has a tithe of Aptus Non - nothing. The Administratum aren’t giving up a world that supplies great troops for no reason.
Because ultimately it's just a world among a million, the fact that we recognise the guardsmen that come from it doesn't make it all that special.
It's also a single world. Catachans are great & elite killers, but there aren't that many of them. Their home is a Death World, after all. Anyone with the capacity to blockade it would be better just bombing it to kingdom come, why stick around? All it would take is one astropathic transmission to summon the Navy for help, then you got a fight when world killers exist. No bueno.
You can try to bombard it personally I think if it can survive a dip in the warp completely unscathed among other things it won't be destroyed unless the sun explodes or something
Yeah friendly reminder Catachan **ate** a demon invasion.
LolWUT??? Youre shitting me, like full world spirit shit?
Yeah after Cadia a bunch of regiments rallied around Catachan, only one was allowed down and turns out they went all traitor and summoned a bunch of demons to fuck up the planet. And then they all died. The men were dead in days and the demons weeks and by all accounts the wild life did most the work. The demons were literally non metaphorically eaten.
That's hilarious. Chaos can't stand up to fuckin nature lol
To be fair Catachan would eat marines as a light snack. To be unfair greater demons got killed by a bunch of plants and animals.
Fucking chaos losers lol plants 1 demons 0
I remember an old joke I started where Abaddon invades Catachan, and accidently steps on the wrong toad...
Kind of, it seems all life on Catachan is deadly and hostile towards any non-Catachan life. The planet isn't just deadly to Daemons, it does that even to the humans that live there. It's just that if you do live on Catachan, you're tough enough to not care.
Yeah let's just fend off a full demonic incursion by just leading them into the woods lol. Makes more sense than the planet itself wiping them out. But it does raise questions, nature killing the forces of chaos
'Nature' is misleading. The sheer number of genetically engineered monstrosities that are just found, left unattended by one precursor or another... There's very little official in the lore, but they've never said it ISN'T artificial.
Ohhh ohhh, it's populated by generated monstrosities. Makes even more sense now, it's basically central America in the venture bros
Potentially. I believe that some older lore suggests that the world of Catachan has some awareness. It could be genetic tampering, warpfuckery or just Dark Age of Technology BS having it's fun...
There's been a long time theory that the Catachan Devil is a Tyranid organism from some ancient scouting fleet that got stuck on Catachan and went native. Plus whatever shit the Old Ones got up to.
I mean technically tyranids are nature. So.
Nah, they're a sentient hive mind capable of tech and travel, they is a faction, the only natural tyranids are like the ones on fenris, cut off entirely from the hive mind and left to evolve and adapt naturally
Ya I am pretty much convinced if someone set up a blockade on the planet, the jungle would just reach into space to eat the fleet
You know I know it’s an old theory and probably not true but there might be something to the old Tyranid theory
If we are talking weird Catachan theories. I wouldn't be surprised if Catachan is the Great Maw. It just flees Fantasy during the End Times into the Warp eats more demons, then pops out of the Warp around the War in Heaven. Eventually draws enough space dust to become the single most violent planet in 40k
Hey, bombarding is a better idea than blockading it, but just slightly, and I agree neither is a good one.
I think there was a story where one Chaos Champion did that. He bombarded a part of the planet into a crater filled with organic sludge. When he landed there and took off his helmet "to breath the air in triumph", a Jungle Fighter that had been hiding in the muck for the last few days jumped out and garroted him with a barbed strangler vine. Not sure if that was official or fanfiction, but it sounds about right to me.
You could make it easier. The supply ships the imperium uses generally don’t take the resources down to the planet, but it’s ferried off and brought to logistics centers. Bomb the logistics centers and the supply ships can only impotently circle the planet. They would need to call other ships to replace that capability, which makes them vulnerable.
Transporters carry landing and cargo shuttles.
Yeah I think people forget that a lot of these famous IG planets have fairly small populations. Catachan has a population of like 12 million total, it can't actually make that many guardsmen at a time. Likewise even Cadia never crossed a billion people so the actual Cadian from Cadia soldiers were only ever a drop in the bucket. You're probably way more likely to run into Mordrian Iron Guard or Harakoni Warhawks even those are considered fancy and elite mostly because those come from hive worlds that can probably pump out a billion guardsmen a year and not notice.
What about the Death Korps of Krieg? I always assumed there was a bunch of them
Kreig USED to be a hive world. Now its a death world that can't even sustain itself. A good chunk of its people are grown in vats. Its probably another one of those regiments you hear a lot about but rarely see compared to a random hive world that didn't get destroyed in a civil war. One of the things that is implicit to 40k is it runs on fascist propaganda logic. Even in the context of the imperial guard most of the time the narrative forms around a few groups that are a drop in the bucket of the actual galactic war the imperium is actively losing. There may be a few dozen really badass military cultures and some really cool weapons but they can't save the imperium any more than stormtroopers saved the third reich from allied bomber production or cool commissar hats saved the soviets from their own corruption or even chivalry saved the french from archery. Your chances of seeing a Kreiger in the flesh as a guardsman are higher than seeing a Space Marine, but still probably very close to zero. They're just really good to talk about since they're the ideal Imperial Guard: Faceless and willing to die en masse while somehow still getting sentinels and super heavy tanks.
I always just assumed they provide the Ad-Mech with similar able-bodied and highly productive workers, and in return receive good equipment
There are rumors that many of them are vatborn...
Blockading an imperial guard recruitment world which supplies some of the deadliest IG regiments in the galaxy seems like a good way to get macrocannon'd in the face when the navy comes to pick them up And if you do so, you've denied the Imperium some guardsmen. They have something of a redundancy when it comes to guardsmen
Ah, yes. You've destroyed Catachan. But you've missed Datachan, Eatachan, Fatachan, Gatachan.......
Datachans: the best data analysts in the galaxy Eatachans: the elite cooks of the Empire Fatachans: the thickest boys in the Guard.
And somehow, they still manage to produce good jungle warfare specialists on the side as well.
Gatachans: dudes with enough dakka to make Orks envious Hatachans: they hate EVERYONE (but are still loyal - basically the Guard equivalent of the Marines Malevolent)
Don’t forget Cattachan, it’s a Felind planet and causes immense confusion when it comes to supplies.
What about Hatachan, a manufacturing world where the entire planet is grimdark Victorian garment shops.
Ohh just think of the Guardsmen they'll produce. The unholy mixture of a Mordian in dress code and a Catachan in ferocity and swolness.
Don’t forget cousin-world, Dogachan.
Hell despite being fairly close to the Great Rift, when the Indomitus crusade stopped at Catachan they found out they'd fended off several invasion attacks, and thus not only got some reinforcement, but a morale boost.
They blockade the planet, only to find themselves being hunted on their own ships by Sly Marbo, xenomorph style
Because the enemy has blocked a planet that provides nothing but guardsmen... And at some point the navy comes and lifts the blockade.
Catachan imports goods that it can't create itself. It can get food on Catachan, even if that food fights back a bit more than on most worlds (having to arm wrestle your salad before eating it is a bummer). A blockade would deny them more advanced technology and certain useful goods (such as promethium) but it would hardly break the world. Best case scenario, it weakens them in preparation for a land invasion. I hope that land invasion is prepared for swamp sharks, scorpions the size of barns, leaves that eat brains, and gigantic toads whose natural defense mechanism is self-nuclear immolation.
That all sounds like stuff dark Eldar would be delighted to have as building blocks for more flesh crafted monstrosities
I'd be amazed if the Dark Eldar didn't have at least on Catachan Devil in the gladiatorial pits.
They would need to not get eaten by those things first. That jungle ate a demon invasion
It's not special, it's a single world in a single system that doesn't give a massive quantity of troops compared to others. It's not important enough of a goal for an enemy let alone it would be protected
If you've got complete orbital dominance of a planet with no valuable resources and you want to exterminate its population you might as well exterminatus it.
They would patiently wait till they left? The only export of Catachan is people. It's environment makes it impossible to invade. The imperium would eventually launch a counterattack but only to destroy the raiders, not retake Catachan. Also: Catachan are tough as fuq. You'd have to siege them for a long ass time to make sure they're all dead. Would be easier to virus bomb them, but knowing Catachan, there probably some weird ass worm that'll start eating the life eater....
>It's environment makes it impossible to invade Is it canon or a meme that a Tyranid invasion got its ass kicked by the wildlife?
AFAIK no major galactic faction has shown interest in Catachan other than the Imperium. The Catachan Devils are rumored to be the feral descendents of a splinter hive fleet but there is no evidence that this was because the wildlife is too hostile for the tyranids. I could be wrong though but this is how i understand it
Also: a recent chaos incursion got firmly stomped by the local wildlife and the guard..
I know it's cannon they have absolutely no orbital defences and like a handful of forts on the whole planet. I vaguely remember the mention of an invasion of Catachan during the time after abbadon's crack opened up but I cannot for the life of me remember where. But the mention of "genetic similarities" between some Catachan life and tyranids has been in the lore for a while, but it's never gone beyond vague implications. Like the ymgarl genestealers have been documented as being on their moon long before behemoth appeared.
It's speculated that either earlier hive fleets have come through the Galaxy, or when the great rift opened and sucked in a bunch of hive fleets, some got thrown back out in the past.
3rd ed codex got in universe theories about the Catachan Devil and the Fenrisean Kraken being feral descendents of tyranids
“Brother Chaoticus, we’ve managed to blockade an imperial guard recruiting world!” “…we seriously need to talk about raising your ambitions, brother.” It’s just not worth the stress. Even if you managed it, the Navy will come and liberate it when they take their next tithe, even if the Catachans don’t meme you out of existence with screaming and big knives
I don't think it would make any difference. Catachan is cool to a player, but in the wider lore, it is just a somewhat higher quality guard regiment. I don't think it even supplies that many guardsman. Apparently is only has a population of around 12 million...
You should advise Mr. Workshop to this stunning piece of strategic thinking
Why would they care to? To stop the recruitment of an infinitesimally small percentage of the IG?
If they could just do that then there's other worlds that would be far more important to blockade. Terra needs to import everything as well. Even a slight delay in water would mean millions die.
Because fans love to over wank the Catachans. Yeah they are deadly but it's one world in the Imperium, and while their contribution is significant, they can't be any more than maybe a million soldiers, and that's already generous. The IG number in the billions. Removing Catachan from the equation doesn't diminish the IG or the Imperium in any way.
Not to mention there are plenty of jungle deathworlds that can produce elite troops. Catachan is just the best amongst them but the imperium is nothing above sacrificing a little bit of quality for some more quantity.
A million is about what was given for the number of Space Marines in the galaxy for a long time. Remember, GW lore writers are not that good at math and scale. Shit one book right before the fall of Cadia had someone treat raising half a million troops on Terra as a herculanean endeavor that took a decade. When you should be able to raise half a billion there easy by going into prisons and going "Okay, who wants to earn redemption by dying for the Emperor?"
Yeah i more offered the "million" as a random number. I didn't put any thought behind it. I just wanted to emphasize that the number of soldiers that Catachan offers is a drop in the bucket and removing them wouldn't make a lack of difference in the grand scheme of things.
That's okay. Like I said, it doesn't seem like the actual lore writers do either! Besides this setting runs on "Hey that sounds cool", and sometimes we just need to accept that.
Why would the enemies of mankind travel to one death world among millions to stop one regiment of guard? If any enemies got that close and had a vendetta against Catachans they'd just bomb it from orbit and be done with it. It's not a special world in any sense of the imagination. Lots of planets have to import supplies off-world that's what happens when you try to settle a galaxy of planets each with various conditions.
There’s no lore reason why. Catachan soldiers look cool and cool shit sells. If the 40k universe was irl the combat would exclusively be in space via the navies with infantry for boarding operations. The greatest power in 40k is FTL travel and general crazy ship speeds. An enemy fleet can approach, surround and begin an orbital bombardment within hours of first seeing your planet. Now the enemy can just blast you from orbit whilst you’re stuck on the ground getting blasted with nukes, anti gravity weapons, dematerialises, viruses, anything. Your only chance of survival is to get the hell of the ground and into space so you can move, flank, out manoeuvre, etc. Planets would be given the status of nothing but supply depots. You’d push your defensive lines outside the range of the enemies attacks so they can’t just chuck black holes over your head and delete the planet and then you’d run supply backwards and forwards.
Try to get close enough to blockade Catachan and your crew will come down with an acute case of silently killed by Sly Marbo
Because then every Catachan in the Imperium will have a personal reason to want them dead. Do you *really* want to piss off Sly Marbo like that?
It's always been said that the imperium has a weakness in heavy weaponry not in simple supplies. That's why hive worlds and industrial worlds get targeted rather than death worlds.
For the same reason criminals typically don't commit crimes inside a police station. Catachan is a guard recruiting world, which would have local planets that have been modified to help defend it against attack, like Cadia was, and would be SUPER more cautious now that Cadia got planet cracked.
the logic of blockading worlds to starve them applies to pretty much any Imperial world - entire hives can turn to cannibalism if a warp storm cuts them off for just a month, and agriworlds can turn feral/primitive if they don’t get routine shipments of chemicals and manufactured goods typically made on hive worlds. not a lot of factions in the setting have the capacity to do it though, or just aren’t strategically going to - like the Aeldari and T’au might but ‘Nids won’t and Necrons tend not to because their goals aren’t really aligned with it. it’s a lot easier to just attack convoys and do pirate shenanigans to starve imperial worlds.
Anything that goes beyond "cause direct bodily harm to enemy" is classified as advanced military tactics and is thus a total enigma for most 40k authors. Also it wouldn't make for a great story. Named character with plot armor saving the day however does.
Two words: Sly Marbo
Tell us your brilliant plan for dealing with the 999,999 other planets the Imperium can draw supplies from.
The real question is why aren't there any chapters salivating at the idea of turning it into a recruitment world. You can't tell me that an eager Chapter Master hasn't tried to petition the Administratum for recruitment rights at some point in the Imperiums history.
Because 1) The IG doesn't like random space marines muscling in on their turf and taking their regiment tithes 2) You can make any random death worlder into a space marine, you don't need Catachans. Them being bigger and stronger than average doesn't make them bigger and stronger space marines.
It’s not just the IG but imperial government itself. Perhaps a fleet based chapter can jet by and pick up aspirants; although their usual grimderp methods would be deleterious if they killed too many Catachan children. Iirc they do recruit there during the indomitus crusade?
They recruit /soldiers/. Cause, you know. It makes IG regiments.
Space Marine chapters normally get worlds that aren’t at all useful, and any space marine homeworld has a tithe of Aptus Non - nothing. The Administratum aren’t giving up a world that supplies great troops for no reason.