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It is a well know fact that a lot of guardsmen leave behind loved ones on the planets they were recruited from.

My question is this: Do you think that guardsmen get messages from home? Like some sort of Munitorum mail service? Do you think that would be feasible in the grimdark future of 40k?

Facts from fluff, opinions, arguments?

They probably do, of course if their planet they are protecting is not under siege. But I think that it is very difficult to deliver that mail. Simply because they are just to many man and woman in the single regiment ( witch can number from 10.000 to 3.000.000 Guardsman). And since it is Grimdark - I don't see why it cant have a little sympathy and love. I can imagine one letter:

" Dear son,

We hope that this letter bring you some comfort in your glorious crusade. We hope that you will die well in the Emperor's name, and that your sacrifice will make him proud.

Mom and Dad.

P.S. Do not retreat, it is both cowardly and dishonorable."

Considering some crusades get reinforcements centuries late, I can't imagine the IoM being able to deliver one letter.

No, not grimdark enough

but the really high up commanders might

If the guardsman is part of a crusade in some distant corner of the galaxy, he probably won't be able to send letters back to his family. But I read in several occasions that some guardsmen (usually officers) actually bring their wife and children along with them when they start a new operation or crusade; leaving them in the spaceship that brought them to their new battlefield, and seeing them back once the operation is done.

I remember that in one of those novels, an Cadian officer gets lamed by orks, marries the nurse that took care of him, founsd a family, and personally oversees the training and the inclusion of his two sons into another cadian regiment once they grow up. All this without going back to Cadia a single time.

Brother Coa wrote:They probably do, of course if their planet they are protecting is not under siege. But I think that it is very difficult to deliver that mail. Simply because they are just to many man and woman in the single regiment ( witch can number from 10.000 to 3.000.000 Guardsman). And since it is Grimdark - I don't see why it cant have a little sympathy and love. I can imagine one letter:

" Dear son,

We hope that this letter bring you some comfort in your glorious crusade. We hope that you will die well in the Emperor's name, and that your sacrifice will make him proud.

Mom and Dad.

P.S. Do not retreat, it is both cowardly and dishonorable."

That's kind of what I was thinking they'd be

"dear gertrek alsunar,

Good luck fighting those tyranids. Hopefully they don't completely absorb your biomass and leave _____ (planet) a desolate rock. Oh, and I put your copies of "xenos gone wild" in storage. Good stuff in there. Kay bye XOXO

-mom and dad"

Laodamia wrote:I remember that in one of those novels, an Cadian officer gets lamed by orks, marries the nurse that took care of him, founsd a family, and personally oversees the training and the inclusion of his two sons into another cadian regiment once they grow up. All this without going back to Cadia a single time.

I think that was Gunheads, good book

asimo77 wrote:Considering some crusades get reinforcements centuries late, I can't imagine the IoM being able to deliver one letter.

eh, I imagine this info's from one of the Codex's which I really don't take seriously, all things considered objectively.

Anyway, something just came to mind, apparently the munitorum/administratum sends out letters to loved ones when their son/husbands/daughters/wives die. Sometimes the commanding officer even writes out personal letters for all the dead under his command.

I imagine if they can do that then they can handle receiving letters for all the guardsmen, though I imagine as you get farther away from that world the longer it takes the mail to get to the trooper in question. Take into account the fact that a lot of it gets lost to pirate raids/fluctuations in the warp etc. then you get the fact that even if a trooper sends or gets messages/packages often they may only get a few.

Considering it is relatively little effort for a massive increase in morale i'd say it is worth it and that the IoM or at least some parts do have a method of sending letters and packages.

Right, you either get your letters out via astropath, or if there's a ship going back to a planet to resupply from the planet you happen to come from.

In the case of my guardsmen's fluff, their army gets a degree of autonomy (not needing to follow the regimental system, for example) at the price of having their planet's merchant fleet being required to resupply their own forces (and bring some other supplies while you're out). Its why being in the Foleran Army isn't a life sentence.

I would say astropath is too valuable... maybe through the supply chain as ships need to drop out of warp every now and again so they could stop and check for mail. It wouldn't be quick but it would work.

Good point with the troops' morale purplefood. But I think that sometimes, organizing a working mail system in the IoM is not that simple. As Ailaros said, communication can only be done using an astropath (far too valuable to be just a mail box) or a warp capable ship.

Let's take the example of a random cadian guardsman. When he was a whiteshield, I bet he did not have any problem with receiving some letters and packages from his family. When he joined the Imperial Guard, I bet he was first stationed as a garrison force nearby, maybe in a close-by star system. Again, receiving letters would have not really be a problem either. If the garrison is close enough to Cadia, civil ships would be doing warp jumps between the two planets quite frequently, thus bringing the courrier to the troopers.
But if this guardsman is suddenly drafted in a crusade in another sector, or sent to a very important combat theater (Armaggedon, Sabbat Worlds, etc), receiving mail would become much more difficult. In fact, if the battlefield is situated far from Cadia, supplies will probably be coming from another, closer planet, which means that very few ships would ever have to go from Cadia to this new, far battlefield.

IMHO, crusade=no letters.

I think that imperial troopers fully accept that fact when they sign in. This is why they're guardsmen.

WARORK93 wrote:

asimo77 wrote:Considering some crusades get reinforcements centuries late, I can't imagine the IoM being able to deliver one letter.

eh, I imagine this info's from one of the Codex's which I really don't take seriously, all things considered objectively.

Anyway, something just came to mind, apparently the munitorum/administratum sends out letters to loved ones when their son/husbands/daughters/wives die. Sometimes the commanding officer even writes out personal letters for all the dead under his command.

I imagine if they can do that then they can handle receiving letters for all the guardsmen, though I imagine as you get farther away from that world the longer it takes the mail to get to the trooper in question. Take into account the fact that a lot of it gets lost to pirate raids/fluctuations in the warp etc. then you get the fact that even if a trooper sends or gets messages/packages often they may only get a few.

I though the official word was that codexes and rulebooks are indisputable fluff (though a lot of it uses the unreliable narrator trick) and BL stuff isn't necessarily canon.

Anyway sending a letter for every dead man seems crazy! Don't IG lose like millions of men like it was nothing?

Imagine if there was only one Astropath for a regiment of 100,000 guard or bigger and his connection to home got blocked by a warp storm.

After he taps his send/receive nose he gets all 100,000 letters in one hit and his noggin' asplodes

asimo77 wrote:

WARORK93 wrote:

asimo77 wrote:Considering some crusades get reinforcements centuries late, I can't imagine the IoM being able to deliver one letter.

eh, I imagine this info's from one of the Codex's which I really don't take seriously, all things considered objectively.

Anyway, something just came to mind, apparently the munitorum/administratum sends out letters to loved ones when their son/husbands/daughters/wives die. Sometimes the commanding officer even writes out personal letters for all the dead under his command.

I imagine if they can do that then they can handle receiving letters for all the guardsmen, though I imagine as you get farther away from that world the longer it takes the mail to get to the trooper in question. Take into account the fact that a lot of it gets lost to pirate raids/fluctuations in the warp etc. then you get the fact that even if a trooper sends or gets messages/packages often they may only get a few.

I though the official word was that codexes and rulebooks are indisputable fluff (though a lot of it uses the unreliable narrator trick) and BL stuff isn't necessarily canon.

Anyway sending a letter for every dead man seems crazy! Don't IG lose like millions of men like it was nothing?

The number of guard actually lost is exaggerated.

Some officers or privately wealthy soldiers will have their bodies or ashes shipped to shrine worlds or even back to their home worlds. Some regiments may also practice this as a matter of course (think it was established in one of the Gaunt's Ghosts novels when they are on garison duty).

It would not be impossible to include a data chip with letters home etc along with the remains.

Edit: and has been mentioned, some regiments will also send death notes and so on.

Wouldn't it be kinda weird to receive a letter after 30 years or something?
With warp storms and such it can be a huge delay?

"Hey! I just got a letter! I said that the brother of my grandfather died at planet X at the age of 21!"

loner wrote:Wouldn't it be kinda weird to receive a letter after 30 years or something?
With warp storms and such it can be a huge delay?

"Hey! I just got a letter! I said that the brother of my grandfather died at planet X at the age of 21!"

You could even get the letter before they have even left. The warp is a strange place.

"Hey Jack! Look what I found! A message that says you die over two years on the planet X."
-"But I haven't joined the Guard yet!"
"Then you'd better join, son."

well in the 4th (I think) GG book Piet Gutes (again i think) notes at the irony that he watched his daughter and her husband and child die instead of them getting a vellum envelope with the detainls of his death, whereas all Gaunt himself got until he became a full blown Commissar and searched the data banks was classified.

Anyway the Tanith can't get letters and there is no record of the Vervunhivers or Belladons getting any, probaly cause they had no family left or they were too far away to recieve any respective;ly.

In the last book Gaunt also got heartbroken about how the 'historians' got the battle of Balhut so very wrong, they even thought that GAunt died there........

Anyway when they probaly sign up thats when they send the letters cause you know its going to happen.

Letters would be pretty hard to deliver actually. It could take years just to get the administrative work done. Think, letters to X regiment of XX unit of XXXXX, XXX crusade. It would be tough to manage a million or more regiments. Anyways, citizens on Y planet probably would be forgotten, 99.99% of the citizens in the IoM are expendable and are forgotten as soon as they are born (probably). Think about it, in our world now, the mail can easily get mixed up, in the IoM, mail has to travel many light years to constantly moving regiments. It could easily take a century if the idea of mailing is implemented at all.

I doubt it is acutally possible. I mean what if the letter goes to the wrong planet or due another mistake.
It would be easier to burn the letter then trying to send it to the right planet...

There was a letter from a guardsman to his family, I think specifically his little brother if memory serves, way back in the first 3rd edition guard codex in 1999. The letter was about how difficult his training was but how proud he was to serve the Emperor etc. Interestingly, parts of the note had been blacked out as classified. This implies that not only is the delivery of mail possible, but so is the reading, and censoring, of each and every one of them. This seems almost ludicrous when you actually think about the amount of effort this would take, and the fluff has moved on quite a bit in the last ten years, but there is some precedent for the idea.

Well, they used to do it in WW2, and if you think there could be servitors tasked to it 24/7.

Not too improbable.

Conservationist wrote:Letters would be pretty hard to deliver actually. It could take years just to get the administrative work done. Think, letters to X regiment of XX unit of XXXXX, XXX crusade. It would be tough to manage a million or more regiments. Anyways, citizens on Y planet probably would be forgotten, 99.99% of the citizens in the IoM are expendable and are forgotten as soon as they are born (probably). Think about it, in our world now, the mail can easily get mixed up, in the IoM, mail has to travel many light years to constantly moving regiments. It could easily take a century if the idea of mailing is implemented at all.

While all this is true, think about the size and complexity of the Administratum and the Munitorum, they are both organizations that can organize and supply a galaxy spanning empire, surely they can also handle simply getting letters from one place to another?

FM Ninja 048 wrote:

Laodamia wrote:I remember that in one of those novels, an Cadian officer gets lamed by orks, marries the nurse that took care of him, founsd a family, and personally oversees the training and the inclusion of his two sons into another cadian regiment once they grow up. All this without going back to Cadia a single time.

I think that was Gunheads, good book

Yeah, I think you're right. I knew it sounded familiar too, haha. I liked it also.

I imagine if the Imperium does have mail for their soldiers then it may have a bureaucracy of censors and such too.

Dear John,

glory, to the Emperor .

Love,
[AUTHOR DELETED FROM IMPERIAL RECORDS].

... Perhaps it's more grimdark to actually get your mail!

purplefood wrote:Considering it is relatively little effort for a massive increase in morale i'd say it is worth it and that the IoM or at least some parts do have a method of sending letters and packages.

Morale is what commissars are for.

Kilkrazy wrote:

purplefood wrote:Considering it is relatively little effort for a massive increase in morale i'd say it is worth it and that the IoM or at least some parts do have a method of sending letters and packages.

Morale is what commissars are for.

Kilkrazy wrote:

purplefood wrote:Considering it is relatively little effort for a massive increase in morale i'd say it is worth it and that the IoM or at least some parts do have a method of sending letters and packages.

Morale is what commissars are for.

Commissars enforce military law it makes their job easier if the men are happy and one way to do that is letter from home. It would be too difficult as the regiments home world would be fairly close or at least on the way to the crusade.

Commissars shoot men to prevent units from routing.

That is their function in the game, and their function in the fluff.