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In other words, why the hell is everyone in the future white? Do they explain this in the fluff anywhere?

I would imagine after tens of thousands of years the human race would look a bit more... tan from generation after generation mixing and stirring the pot.

There is plenty of racial diversity in the Imperium. There are around a million imperial worlds. That means, at minimum, you have a million different ethnicities. Probably 10-12 million because many planets will have multiple ethnicities.

But nobody cares about the color of your skin or the shape of your face in the 41st millennium. They only care if you are human or not.

It is just a result of white, British artists painting/drawing what they are familiar with. The Imperium is a very diverse Empire with a wide variety of environments within a wide variety of planets. There are people of every skin tone.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
It is just a result of white, British artists painting/drawing what they are familiar with. The Imperium is a very diverse Empire with a wide variety of environments within a wide variety of planets. There are people of every skin tone.

I had figured this for the most part. Are their racially diverse SM's as well?

Of course. The Marine's genes do get altered, but he'll still have some vestiges of his original ethnicity. Although this will be minor, he'll bear more resemblance to the Chapter's unique physical characteristics. Which will be a mix of their primarch as well as the natural genetic drift and the influence of the previous marines who had that geneseed.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
It is just a result of white, British artists painting/drawing what they are familiar with. The Imperium is a very diverse Empire with a wide variety of environments within a wide variety of planets. There are people of every skin tone.

This is the laziest, please don't bypass the language filter like this. reds8n excuse for GW's weird reluctance to paint black people. As if there aren't any black folk in Nottingham and no one at GW has ever seen someone who isn't white. Yes, it's the UK but its the Uk in 2015 not 1910.

I suspect it may be more of an issue of getting dark skin to look realistic from a painting standpoint.
That said, I do wonder if the majority of Imperial citizens are pale skinned anyway - from living far away from natural light in massive hive cities or polluted forge worlds. Is 40 thousand years of melanoma deficiency long enough to overcome natural skin colouring, do we think?

Thats exactly it.

People paint what they are familiar with. Plus as someone who has painted various skin tones, its tough to paint realistic skin thats anything but some shade of light skin without it looking like Black Face.

GW just doesn't want to bother painting dark skin. There is a ton of diversity in the Imperium, just read through some of the novels and you'll see that there is, the game just doesn't properly represent this


Automatically Appended Next Post:
GW just doesn't want to bother painting dark skin. There is a ton of diversity in the Imperium, just read through some of the novels and you'll see that there is, the game just doesn't properly represent this

Ive seen some colored Imperial Guardsmen before, usually Catachan, and i agree that its hard to do darker skin tones well, but once you figure it out it gets easy. Also isnt there a Imp Guard regiment that is basically in Samurai Flak armor?

Well, when you live in a white majority town with whites being the majority in practically all mediums in the place you live white skin tones become the "default" with darker skin tones being an "exception". This is hardly unique to GW at all. It plagues fantasy as well. All Elves/Dwarves are white while humans are predominately white except for some minor factions. Fantasy fiction with a ethnically diverse set of characters are rare.

If you read enough BL books you'll quickly realize that for the most part the human characters aren't exactly what we would consider white...

Just forge dem narrative and if you like paint ur guys with darken colors saying their planet environment requires more melanine to be produced solved look at salamanders 99% of them have obsidian skin tone cause of it, white scars are on the otherside quite asian. No1 forces you to paint stuff how you see on the boxes, interwebs or white dwarf.

Oh, please.

Are there many tyranids in Nottingham then? Orks? Evil space daemons?

.... you can just give them a dark skin tone.....

 Aben Zin wrote:
I suspect it may be more of an issue of getting dark skin to look realistic from a painting standpoint.
That said, I do wonder if the majority of Imperial citizens are pale skinned anyway - from living far away from natural light in massive hive cities or polluted forge worlds. Is 40 thousand years of melanoma deficiency long enough to overcome natural skin colouring, do we think?

Most Imperial worlds aren't Hive Worlds, or even heavily-industrialized worlds. The people on them will have whatever skin-pigmentation is a result of the exposure to whatever kind of star it is their planet circles. Who knows? Maybe people who live on a world in a binary star-system with a red sun and a blue sun will have mauve skin.

Also worth adding that there ARE some examples, even if some aren't done brilliantly.
Moreover, nothing stopping you from painting a different skin tone if you want to.

*Cough Cough Inquisitor Toth Cough Cough*

Its not a matter of me painting my models different skin tones, its just I've never seen any examples in art or from the little fluff I have read seen anything but white males who typically even have the same face.

Certain depictions of IG artwork would lead one to believe regular guardsmen are all cloned from the same John Doe.

More like all the artwork you see is of Cadians. Who are indeed lighter skinned. Although they have purple eyes

As far as the Imperium is concerned, they might be.

That said, there's nothing stopping you from painting your models any way you like. God knows I introduce all kinds of strange and unusual human cultures in my DH games as the Retinue travels from planet to planet.

 Resin Glazed Guardsman wrote:
In other words, why the hell is everyone in the future white?
Eugenics.
Do they explain this in the fluff anywhere?
"Suffer Not The Mutant To Live"
I would imagine after tens of thousands of years the human race would look a bit more... tan...
Bunkers and Tech Heresy.

Look through some of the Catachan box art.

Because slaanesh stole most of everyone else including the evil Glen quagmire

 Resin Glazed Guardsman wrote:
Its not a matter of me painting my models different skin tones, its just I've never seen any examples in art or from the little fluff I have read seen anything but white males who typically even have the same face.

Read more?

From what I see all you want us to say is "Bad bad imperialist British toy company being fascist" We all give you lots of arguments. It's toys play it how you want it and paint how you want it in fluff there's plenty of big names which aren't Caucasian. Just stop trying to play race card bs when it's bout toys.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Aben Zin wrote:
I suspect it may be more of an issue of getting dark skin to look realistic from a painting standpoint.
That said, I do wonder if the majority of Imperial citizens are pale skinned anyway - from living far away from natural light in massive hive cities or polluted forge worlds. Is 40 thousand years of melanoma deficiency long enough to overcome natural skin colouring, do we think?

Most Imperial worlds aren't Hive Worlds, or even heavily-industrialized worlds. The people on them will have whatever skin-pigmentation is a result of the exposure to whatever kind of star it is their planet circles. Who knows? Maybe people who live on a world in a binary star-system with a red sun and a blue sun will have mauve skin.

Most worlds might not be hive worlds, but given the relative population densities I'd say the majority of imperial citizens tend to live on them. Agri-worlds would be sparsely populated, to allow more room for agriculture, Forge worlds always appear in the fluff to be so heavily polluted that the citizens probably ought to remain indoors anyway and death worlds... well it's in the name really. Of course there are other world, feudal worlds, garden worlds and so on, but the hive worlds are where the bulk of the population live.
It is a good point about other types of stars though. Would people's skin tan differently under other stars than ours?

No idea, we can't exactly test it... and 40K and Real Science would not recognize one another if they passed in the street anyway.

Just paint people of different ethnicities. And I have no idea where the "dark skin tone is harder to paint!" argument comes from. I actually started with painting dark skinned folks for my Space Marines because I found it easier.

the imperium is as diverse as you paint it.