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Hi everyone,

Pretty new to 40K here, and I just have a quick fluff question: do people have an actual soul in WH40K? If so, how does the afterlife work?

Thanks!

Yes. Usually. Untouchables don't have souls. Most Necrons don't, either (possibly none of them do.). No one knows with Tyranids.

The afterlife is... generally not pleasant, depending on who's story you want to read.

From the Imperium's point of view, those who are judged worthy by the God-Emperor are taken to feast at his table in the afterlife, until such time as the Last Battle is fought, where all of his saints and heroes and worthy souls will march in his Eternal Army (or whatever you want to call it).

If you weren't good, your soul goes into the Warp and is devoured by Daemons. This actually happens a lot.

If you served Chaos, your soul gets devoured by your patron Chaos God, though it might spit you back out at some point in space-time if it thinks you will be useful to it. This is very, very, very rare though.

If you are Eldar, and do not have a soulstone, it can take quite a long time for your soul to be devoured, during which you are fully aware of this going on. Hence, Eldar use these phylactery-like devices called Soulstones.

Dark Eldar clone themselves into new bodies. Or get eaten by Slaanesh.

Tau might be soulless.

Tyranids are just bugs. Bugs do not have souls. Probably.

Orks. Who the feth knows with Orks? They might go to Gork and Mork and fight one another for all eternity, which is Orky heaven. Or they might get devoured by daemons like many other species. No one really knows.

It seems like it. Well to varying extents. Necrons don't have souls, Tyranids if they have a soul is a gigantic hivemind conscious... The rest though, yeah they got a soul. It varies in levels. A psyker has a larger and more appealing one whilst a Tau has such a minor, insignificant, and petty soul that it is almost completely forgettable. Whether machines have a spirit.... that's honestly a really hard one. I'd like to say no but at the same time there is fluff talking about how obliterators actually get fused with the spirits of the weapons and become slaves to it.

All of this is IMO

To put it shortly...yes.

Thanks everyone!
Now I can continue writing the background of my Dark Heresy character

 StarTrotter wrote:
It seems like it. Well to varying extents. Necrons don't have souls, Tyranids if they have a soul is a gigantic hivemind conscious... The rest though, yeah they got a soul. It varies in levels. A psyker has a larger and more appealing one whilst a Tau has such a minor, insignificant, and petty soul that it is almost completely forgettable. Whether machines have a spirit.... that's honestly a really hard one. I'd like to say no but at the same time there is fluff talking about how obliterators actually get fused with the spirits of the weapons and become slaves to it.

All of this is IMO

Yes according to the believes of the AdMech, machines and in fact, every piece of technology made by humanity, does have a spirit and is semi-sentient. (The largest Titans might even be fully sentient.)

Orks are just plants that get recycled like compost.

Well, first we need to ask what a soul is.

In 40K living things (or living things with minds, or living things with sentience) appear to have a 'reflection' or 'shadow' in the warp (also sometimes called a 'warp signature'), that can be broadly considered analogous to a 'soul', and indeed is often referred to as such. It is apparently it is anchored to your body while alive, but does not dissipate on death (unless perhaps it is particularly 'weak'), the 'strength' of it is directly proportional to psychic might of the individual. I also remember reading somewhere that if it is 'week' it is unconscious after death, but if it is strong it continues to think or at least be aware. Some things are notable as they lack this presence (like untouchables), which is deeply unsettling to those around them who, even if they lack psychic powers, are innately aware of the absence.

The waters are of-course muddied by religious doctrine of different factions that add to the above with what may or may not be hard facts about the 'soul' and the afterlife, so there is certainly some flexibility.

 Psienesis wrote:
. . . Most Necrons don't, either (possibly none of them do.).

Back in the old codex I had a theory that it was just the opposite, that Necron's were explicitly 'Robots with Souls', just unconscious (or mangled) ones. The idea being that the Ctan devoured the 'life essence' (different to the soul) and then (rather than letting the soul drift off into the warp, used the soul of the necrontyr as a power-source for their eternal, mindless killer robot.

 Psienesis wrote:
. . . Tau might be soulless.

They just have a particularly weak 'warp signature'. So their souls are just, you know, not particular strong.

 Psienesis wrote:
. . . Tyranids are just bugs. Bugs do not have souls. Probably.

Tyranids totally have souls . . . well, ok, they have ONE soul, the're kinda sharing it, but it's pretty big so there's plenty to go around. :p

Well, we cannot say, for sure, whether the SitW is the negative-soul of the Tyranid, or whether the Hivemind is its unified soul (as opposed to simply its unified consciousness, as the two are not the same things).

I note that individual Tyranid creatures are not immune to psychic powers, which implies they might have souls, but then there is that whole SitW thing...

... Tyranids are actually not very well-thought-out as creatures go.


There's also mention that the Necron consciousness is directly related to the body its in, as re-installing a Noble's personality into a Warrior shell is used as a punishment, since it's apparently terrible to be a thinking being in that body, but it gets into complicated things about the Bio-Transference machines, the personality engrams that are the default programming modules for 99.9% of the Necron models and similar aspects.

I thought the SitW was caused by the tyrannids having too MUCH soul (amongst their huge numbers/hive mind) and thus drowning out the warp, not too little soul.

While I think George Clinton and Parliament might argue that you can even have too much soul, I'm not sure that really works in-universe. If the Warp is the dimension of souls and soul-energy, how would having too much of that energy be a bad thing for it?

Makes you look delicious to Daemons

Yes, but I meant, being a bad thing for the Warp itself.

Mind you, I am just sort of thinking out loud here, not sure there are any actual answers to these questions.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadow_in_the_Warp#.UuLe7TMo6Uk

Well, "too much psychic activity" to be more precise, though apparently that's in-universe speculation.

Yeah, I know that... but it doesn't make any sense, given what else we've been told about the Warp and psychic effects.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 StarTrotter wrote:
It seems like it. Well to varying extents. Necrons don't have souls, Tyranids if they have a soul is a gigantic hivemind conscious... The rest though, yeah they got a soul. It varies in levels. A psyker has a larger and more appealing one whilst a Tau has such a minor, insignificant, and petty soul that it is almost completely forgettable. Whether machines have a spirit.... that's honestly a really hard one. I'd like to say no but at the same time there is fluff talking about how obliterators actually get fused with the spirits of the weapons and become slaves to it.

All of this is IMO

Yes according to the believes of the AdMech, machines and in fact, every piece of technology made by humanity, does have a spirit and is semi-sentient. (The largest Titans might even be fully sentient.)

This is probably just all Imperium tech having shattered AI's from the Dark Age of Technology.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Yes according to the believes of the AdMech, machines and in fact, every piece of technology made by humanity, does have a spirit and is semi-sentient. (The largest Titans might even be fully sentient.)

Machine spirits are not souls.

They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

Why? Souls are very specific thing in 40K; souls have warp presence. Computers do not have warp presence.

 Crimson wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

Why? Souls are very specific thing in 40K; souls have warp presence. Computers do not have warp presence.

They might have, we do not know.

I don't recall any branches of the AdMech claiming the machine spirit goes into the warp after the machine's "death", unlike a soul. Perhaps some sects of the Mechanicus might believe that, but for the most part there seem to be some a few key differences like that.

TiamatRoar wrote:
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Shadow_in_the_Warp#.UuLe7TMo6Uk

Well, "too much psychic activity" to be more precise, though apparently that's in-universe speculation.

It makes perfect sense. The constant psychic communication makes a form of static interference that prevents psykers from accessing their powers and causes them pain due to its disruption.

TiamatRoar wrote:
I don't recall any branches of the AdMech claiming the machine spirit goes into the warp after the machine's "death", unlike a soul. Perhaps some sects of the Mechanicus might believe that, but for the most part there seem to be some a few key differences like that.

But neither do they believe that a human soul goes to the warp after death. Only bad souls go to the warp.

 Crimson wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

Why? Souls are very specific thing in 40K; souls have warp presence. Computers do not have warp presence.

I thought that some big machine (Titans, ect) could actually be possessed by chaos (or was that just the controllers)?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

I thought that some big machine (Titans, ect) could actually be possessed by chaos (or was that just the controllers)?

Anything can be possessed by chaos, tanks, swords, toasters, no soul is required.

 Crimson wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

I thought that some big machine (Titans, ect) could actually be possessed by chaos (or was that just the controllers)?

Anything can be possessed by chaos, tanks, swords, toasters, no soul is required.

True, very true.

Also sigged (in a sec).

 Iron_Captain wrote:

TiamatRoar wrote:
I don't recall any branches of the AdMech claiming the machine spirit goes into the warp after the machine's "death", unlike a soul. Perhaps some sects of the Mechanicus might believe that, but for the most part there seem to be some a few key differences like that.

But neither do they believe that a human soul goes to the warp after death. Only bad souls go to the warp.

A bad soul is still a human soul (though a human soul is not necessarily a bad soul). And good souls go to the Emperor (or are believed to), which is something machine spirits haven't been mentioned to do to my knowledge (either the warp or the Emperor).

(Although... does the AdMech, or at least some of the AdMech, actually believe good souls go to the Emperor?)

Actually there's fluff that describes that the souls going to the emperor.... might not be so true as others expect. Some fluff even has fun toying with the faithfull eventually realizing that... in the end it was a lie... protection from the truth. That at death, all souls are tossed out into the warp... and then consumed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

Why? Souls are very specific thing in 40K; souls have warp presence. Computers do not have warp presence.

Forgive me if wrong but what does the Obliterator and its CC brother have in fluff? I think it mentions something.

 StarTrotter wrote:
Actually there's fluff that describes that the souls going to the emperor.... might not be so true as others expect. Some fluff even has fun toying with the faithfull eventually realizing that... in the end it was a lie... protection from the truth. That at death, all souls are tossed out into the warp... and then consumed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

 KamikazeCanuck wrote:
They are as far as the AdMecha are concerned.

Why? Souls are very specific thing in 40K; souls have warp presence. Computers do not have warp presence.

Forgive me if wrong but what does the Obliterator and its CC brother have in fluff? I think it mentions something.

Why would they not? Obliterators simply have been infected with a daemonic virus that turned them into bio-mechanical forms of life, although they still have brains.

MUTILATORS! That was it... this is cut from lexicanum but I remember it being in the book.

Now mutated by the powers of Chaos, they have since bound themselves to the bloodthristy spirits of ancient weapons and dedicated themselves to the art of close slaughter. These spirits have psychic reflections in the Warp which make even the smallest scalpel a hungry killing machine capable of growing stronger with each foe it kills. An ancient or relic weapon may even have a limited sentience with a lust for battle that surpasses that of the wielder. Mutilators seek not only to commune with such war-spirits in their weapons but also absorb them, assimilating the Warp-spawned power into their own souls.