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Ok, so in all the years ive followed and played Warhammer 40k, ive never been able to fully understand the imperium... mainly the looks of the current humans

In the rulebook and stuff, you see pictures of Terra and other places inhabited by the imperium, and you see the humans and everyone as being covered in all forms of tubes, pipes, and other technology, and then theres the ugly and disgusting mutants or other half cyborg humans..but then theres the imperial guard and space marines.

So what i wonder is, why do the Imperial guard/space marines look so normal and clean, where as the pictures of the Imperium and its citizens on terra and other planets are always so damned "deformed" and odd with all the apparatuses on them and such.

How much access a person(of any type) would have to mechadendrites and other bionics really depends on the world's tech level, their status, and their culture.

There's also the individual. Some may prefer a more natural look, where others would rather do away with the "imperfections" of flesh and bone.

Depends on planet,customs,personality,social status etc... You could see some normal human 100% flesh and blood or some Tech-priest half machine-man.

It is strange that they rarely portray a picture of a 'normal' imperial citizen. I think that those pics are of high-standing members of the society, and those 'plugs' or whatever are either a sign of rank or helps prolong thier life.

i saw pic somewhere (not a clue where) of a completely normal human carring a bag over his soldier
whils being watched by a marine

Those pictures are there to accentuate the grimdark. Normal citizens have only appeared so far in the novels.

Most imperial guardsmen conceal their wires, tubes and pipes beneath the skin of their enormous hands and biceps.

I thought of the same thing while looking at the BFG rulebook section where it profiles the crew of the "devine right" and without exeption, form the lowliest raitings to the Lord Admiral and even the navigator, every one had extensive bionics. Maybe its just the navy, but I find the difference in tech really confusing. Differnt artists I guess

sniperjolly wrote:I thought of the same thing while looking at the BFG rulebook section where it profiles the crew of the "devine right" and without exeption, form the lowliest raitings to the Lord Admiral and even the navigator, every one had extensive bionics. Maybe its just the navy, but I find the difference in tech really confusing. Differnt artists I guess

Most of them were probably servitors, since Imperial navy crew are sharply divided between academy-trained officers and press-ganged laborers.

You'd be surprised on how much bionics some peopel have. A Tech Magos in the books Dark Apostle and Dark Disciple weights over 1 tonne, and only has 42 pounds of human on him, which is part of his cheat, his arms and half his head.

My question is why, in the grim darkness of the far future, everyone is bald. Why? Even Sisters of Battle get in on the baldness sometimes.

Because its either baldness, or the Top-knot.

Good point, I hate the top-knot. I had to greenstuff hair on all my Rangers cause I'm NOT HAVING that 'do in my army.

I just stick helmets on my marines.

Soup and a roll wrote:Most imperial guardsmen conceal their wires, tubes and pipes beneath the skin of their enormous hands and biceps.

LOL . I almost thought you were being serious for a second.

Owain wrote:Those pictures are there to accentuate the grimdark. Normal citizens have only appeared so far in the novels.

That's your answer right there. Mostly it's just to make things more dark and alien. In the fiction most humans seem to be fairly "stock". It's really only the Adeptus Mechanicus that goes nuts with the bionics.

The answer is that the sculptors are lazy and/or unable to put that much level of detail onto every model due to casting restraints.

The models are just that models, not scale figurines so making it obvious that almost every human has some kind of bionic implant isn't always possible.

That said, most of the models, especially marines, do display this. Most marines have wires and tubes and whatnot somewhere on their heads and even the Imperial Guard do too although usually this level of detail is reserved for character models, Colonel Straken for example is pretty blatant.

I don't think that most people can afford extenive bionics.
Even a basic bionic eye would be only in the price range of nobles and officers.

Not to go OT but what I'd like to know is why every squad leader and commander feels the
need to take their helmet off and yell constantly...

I for one would keep my frackin' helmet on to protect myself from all the grimdark.

It would be fun to see an entire army of helmet-less, screaming clone head models. Just for laughs, and I'm sure someone has already done it.

Reading through most of the fluff, only a couple of the authors describe a great many "commoner" humans having bionics. With the exception of what I have read of the Horus Heresy novels (which I have not had an enjoyable time reading a single one yet), most humans have no bionics what-so-ever. While bionics are not always difficult to acquire, they seem to tend to be either expensive, or of low quality, and the owning individual almost always seems to have a good reason to have gotten them, rather than just to have better eye-sight, but for more practical, specific, reasons.

Such as in the Ravenor series there is a scene where trapeze-like beggars, poor performance artists, have afforded multi-jointed wrists so that they may safely more safely perform. It does not seem that normal citizens that have suffered injuries are entirely incapable of affording bionics as well, but ones greater than eyes, joint reconstruction, or the occasional finger, are less common.

Sgt. Salt wrote:
Not to go OT but what I'd like to know is why every squad leader and commander feels the
need to take their helmet off and yell constantly...

I for one would keep my frackin' helmet on to protect myself from all the grimdark.

It's the Rule that you do not question. its along the same lines as a red shirt in star trek... basically if you're important enough you CANNOT die, no matter if you break all the "normal" rules of being tactically sound in a warzone, ie. wearing a helmet.

I would think the closest thing GW has to a "normal" human is the Imperial Guard Crew they sell.

The tubes and things in the artwork are there for the "ooh, grimdarkness" effect. I don't think every Imperial Citizen wants a wire in their skull.

Sarcasm
I thought commanders wore no helmets because it's their "2 meter wide port hole". Kinda like how the Death Star is this impregnable station, but it has 1 pretty obvious weakness.
/Sarcasm