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I've have a visualisation of an entire company/raising of Albino guardsmen. You know, white skin red eyes etc. (probably post my pics later of the starter 2 squads being painted).

My question is, would albinos be executed for mutants? Or would they be tolerated. After all, the 13th penal legion has 2 whiteskinned penal troopers in there. Also, what homeworld would you visualise a unit like that coming from. I saw either a nightworld, OR an artificial world...Or Even a world without a sun (rogue trader has one).

Your thoughts on this would be appreciated.

Nothing wrong with them - just a racial trait evolved to cope with their world. I would probably have them living somewhere with little to no sunshine - perhaps inside a really thick nebula (could also work with a world with no sun - the heat of the nebula hitting the atmosphere heats the air, making it liveable? )? Or living on a world which is damaged, meaning they have to live underground?

Perhaps even in a semi-derelict space hulk/artificial world floating through space?

I agree with the idea of an artificial world with no natural light. AFAIK most forms of albinism are genetically recessive so having them come from a population long isolated from outsiders would make sense. Perhaps they are descendants of albinos exiled from some other society now lost to history. As for their acceptance in the Imperium I think they would get away with it but would perhaps not be trusted. Maybe they are under close official scrutiny so have lots of Commissars or perhaps they're just really good at what they do so the authorities turn a blind eye therefore lots of veterans. After all if the fluff has Cadians running around with purple eyes and let's not even start on the Salamanders why shouldn't you get to have an army of albinos.

Most ice worlders are very pale skinned.

A population will generally express the genes that work best. Over time they wil ladapt to their environment. Lack of light generally will make them lighter skinned and haired, until they are albino.

Similarly, there could be something (or a lack of something) in their diet which leaves them unable to produce pigmentation of their skin, hair and eyes.

Lack of light wouldn't make them lighter skinned and haired though unless it provided some advantage to survival. How would you work that in? I believe albinism is caused by the failure of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Maybe there's something in the local flora that contains an enzyme inhibitor. Might make for interesting painting if the effect was reversible. Really white conscripts to nearly normally pigmented veterans.

Animals trapped in caves gradually adapted by loosing the ability to create pigmentation.

As it is, I believe whiter skin allows for the better use of lower levels of sunlight to produce vitimins, which could be one driving factor behind people with lighter skin/etc thriving more than others on this world/space hulk/etc.

Though I did mention the diet having something which either stops the ability to produce pigmentation (such as your suggested enzyme inhibitor), or something in their diet being missing (a key vitimin, mineral, or something else).

Leromides wrote:Lack of light wouldn't make them lighter skinned and haired though unless it provided some advantage to survival. How would you work that in? I believe albinism is caused by the failure of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin. Maybe there's something in the local flora that contains an enzyme inhibitor. Might make for interesting painting if the effect was reversible. Really white conscripts to nearly normally pigmented veterans.

Natural evolution is a "use it or lose it" situation. Pigmentation provides protection from the sun. No sun, no need for pigmentation. That's why you see cave animals and deep-sea fish with pale or transparent skin.

That said, it'd take thousands, if not millions, of years. We (humans) still have appendices, gall bladders, tonsils, spleens, and the remainder of a tail, which have been useless for thousands of years.

So while a lightless planet of albino Guardsman isn't completely out of the question, but it'd be difficult to justify over only forty thousand years.

That is a good point, time scale is a problem. You would either then have to start with albinos that have been dumped together, have something in the enviroment that causes albinism or have some very nasty enviroment that only allows the palest skinned to survive to breed.

I suppose they could hail from some planet, only "recently" brought back into the Imperium, that had extreme ideas of eugenics and racial purity but that would involve getting into some very unpleasant areas best avoided.

You could always just start with fair skinned, pale haired colonists, who just get paler until they LOOK like albinos.

Could be a small scout ship crew which crashed and repopulated the planet over 1000's of years?

Leromides wrote:That is a good point, time scale is a problem. You would either then have to start with albinos that have been dumped together, have something in the enviroment that causes albinism or have some very nasty enviroment that only allows the palest skinned to survive to breed.

I suppose they could hail from some planet, only "recently" brought back into the Imperium, that had extreme ideas of eugenics and racial purity but that would involve getting into some very unpleasant areas best avoided.

I like your first idea more, but both carry unfortunate implications that you may want to avoid.

SilverMK2 wrote:You could always just start with fair skinned, pale haired colonists, who just get paler until they LOOK like albinos.

Could be a small scout ship crew which crashed and repopulated the planet over 1000's of years?

Woohoo, incest?

That'd probably work, but it'd still be hard to justify red eyes, which are markedly an albino trait. Fair-skinned colonists wouldn't have'em, and over thousands of years it'd be likely that their skin would get darker, not lighter, depending on the environment.

Unless you combine your idea with a darkened planet and go for all of the elements of this equation all in one, but that's so statistically unlikely that it's beginning to sound contrived.

I don't think there would be a problem having an albino guardsman or two in your army. They'd explode if they ever saw combat on any planet with a sun though.

I agree that both of my ideas have their problems. Personally though I would be more comfortable playing an army whose fluff had them as the descendents of survivors of persecution than the offspring of persecutors who had seen (or been shown) the error of their ways. Can't really explain why, I'm just strange that way I suppose.

Could be a tech-guard division. Or their regiment was "adapted" by Bio-Magos to fight on toxic worlds. Its pretty common, I remember reading some where one regiment had all their hearts replaced with several organic pressure valves scattered over there bodies because shifts in the atmospheric pressure caused spontaneus heart explosions...