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felixthecat345 wrote:For some reason theres no worlds in fluff that have naturaly black inhabitants. But since theres not many color fluff pictures so its hard to tell. For the purposes of realism, I paint my cadians a mix of different skin tones, because unless you live on an ice world a planet will have black & white people, but, like many sci-fi unis, it makes all people have color depending on species or planet, rather then based on whether there part of a planet is hot or cold. I mean, Earth's not like that now. But you do see black commies and very few planets have all black people. But none have a mix of skin tones. But star wars made that mistake, so who can blame gw.

There are worlds in the fluff, like Vitria, just not in the models. It's not really a mistake in Star Wars its more of a tradition: "All Worlds shall only have one type of terrain!" Its kinda stupid but its part of their Universe.

There's black guys on the cover of Codex: Catachans and Cityfight, FWIW...

As far as fluff goes, the Vitrians and Glavians were already mentioned, but it's also fair to point out that it's not as if Imperial hive cities are full of white folks: they're more an unhealthy gray pallor.

And for painting, I've been slowly painting an IG army for a friend of mine, and I mix in various skin tones to keep things interesting. Early on I painted a black Kasrkin sergeant for his command squad, and his girlfriend (my friend's, not the sergeant's) thought it was really neat that I'd thought to do so.

Ya they's some grey folk in Traitor General and Galaxy in Flames too.

The more racial diverse it gets.

ironlord wrote:
Also I think that Catachans seem to be rather mediteranean, with their dark hair, dark eyes and tanned skin.

They're based off John Rambo, a character played by Sylvester Stallone (who is of Italian ancestry) in some movies made a few decades back. It's where Sly Marbo gets his name: Marbo=Rambo and Sly was a nickname for Sylvester.

And the tanith seem to be something all together different with pale skin, blue and black hair...

They're celts, mostly Scottish and Irish inspired which is why they have dark hair and pale skin. They don't have blue hair they have blue tattoos.

Tallarn raiders were obviously designed with a middle eastern/african theme in mind, but that was before the recent wars and it wasn't exactly a popular look. Which is a shame because they look like the most realistic form of the imperial guard.

They're a Bedouin type people based on the arabs that helped the British during WWI, the time of Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence was a British officer who helped the arabs rebel against the Turks.


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KamikazeCanuck wrote:

felixthecat345 wrote:For some reason theres no worlds in fluff that have naturaly black inhabitants. But since theres not many color fluff pictures so its hard to tell. For the purposes of realism, I paint my cadians a mix of different skin tones, because unless you live on an ice world a planet will have black & white people, but, like many sci-fi unis, it makes all people have color depending on species or planet, rather then based on whether there part of a planet is hot or cold. I mean, Earth's not like that now. But you do see black commies and very few planets have all black people. But none have a mix of skin tones. But star wars made that mistake, so who can blame gw.

There are worlds in the fluff, like Vitria, just not in the models. It's not really a mistake in Star Wars its more of a tradition: "All Worlds shall only have one type of terrain!" Its kinda stupid but its part of their Universe.

Something that has been copied by other sci-fi franchises now unfortunately including 40K.


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felixthecat345 wrote:For some reason theres no worlds in fluff that have naturaly black inhabitants.

The inhabitants of such worlds tend to represent stereotypes of known cultures or blends of related cultures such as with the Tanith. What would a black planet be like if we were to base it on known black cultural stereotypes? We already have Zulu guardsmen with grass skirts and shields, we'd get more of the same and maybe some Harlem circa 1970s complete with afros and boom boxes to round it off. Best leave that sort of thing to those who are actually interesting in it to write about instead of demanding that the core writing staff come up with something that is about a cultural and racial group they have little understanding of and doesn't actually exist anyway.

For interest, what do you imagine one such black inhabited planet would be like?

A jungle. In fact everyone from Catachan should be black.

Remember, "race" takes on a different connotation in the 40k world. Instead of reffering to skin tone, it refers to if you're a human or a xeno.

And you could make the argument that all races have blended out, but I'd actually imagine they'd only become more distinct. I mean, few people leave their home planets, and so you get a lot of interbreeding that came from an original pool of colonists. I mean, Ogryn and ratlings are great examples of racial diversity being more extreme.

That said, given that just the planet earth can house so many ethnicities, it would make sense that other planets would as well.

Personally, I don't run a white army - I run a more caucasian army proper (as in, they have "white" facial features, but not white skin). You could say my army looks Uzbek or Arab or, in a pinch, Italian, but they're definitely not white.

cadbren wrote:For interest, what do you imagine one such black inhabited planet would be like?

Like you said, a Savannah world with Zulu tribes on it... Is there really one in the fluff?

Ailaros wrote:
And you could make the argument that all races have blended out, but I'd actually imagine they'd only become more distinct. I mean, few people leave their home planets, and so you get a lot of interbreeding that came from an original pool of colonists.

This makes complete sense for worlds that have been colonised by the Imperium. With that first wave of colonists (whatever colour or ethnicity they may have been comprised of) there is very little to encourage racial diversity or a multicultural society, unless there were further waves of colonists from other areas. This is a valid reason as to why Catachan fighters are mainly, if not always, portrayed as white. Obviously, GW was going for the US in Vietnam look, but it also makes sense becuase the Catachan are descendants of the survivors of a colonial ship that was stranded there. Assuming that the colony ship wasn't all that mixed, there's no real reason to find a dark-skinned Catachan at all.

Then there is the arguement of how the human race would react if aliens were ever to invade or whatever. Would you really care whether your mate was a differenct race or colour? Are you even going to compare him to the angry alien with 6 limbs and a lasergun? This would provide a good arguement as to why racism probably isn't much of a deal in the Imperium as a whole. They've got bigger fish to fry.

Some people seem to have issues understanding that the Salamanders skin color is caused by the way the geneseed reacts to the radiation on Nocturne, and it has nothing to do with ethnicity.

I am sure that throughout the millions of worlds in the 40K universe there are countless different human races, and there should be marines around who were recruited from those worlds.

Also, there should be ethnicity out there that doesn't compare to any of that known to us in our reality. Some chapters recruit exclusively from the same world/system, and some get recruits from everywhere they find worthy souls. Basically, in theory there could be a purple skinned Black Templar around who happens to have been recruited off some distant planet.

GW doesn't bother with all of this because it would probably complicate things unnecessarily.

@ Emperors Faithful: It is a fact that gets over looked pretty often in history but a disproportionate number of soldiers drafted for the Vietnam War on the American side where black. Over all the majority of the soldiers were white but black people in the US were still a minority at that time and the ratio of percentage of people in the US to percentage of people drafted was noticably different between black and white people. This was mostly due to economic factors, if you couldn't afford to go to college and had no where to run away to then there was no way to avoid the draft. I would agree that GW thought this would be a good way to represent Americans in the IG but making them almost all white was a swing and a miss.

There once was a zulu themed chapter, they were "taller than your average marine. Salamanders used to be black. There fluff has John Hengry all over it. Mixed with the big black guy blacksmith, swinging a even bigger hammer. I haven't figured out what the connection is with black guys and being blacksmiths, but it is normal fantasy fare. Speaking of that. There is a pic and nice story about an black inquisitor swing a big hammer in the daemonhunter's codex. also there is an black inquisitor in Dawn of war with a big ole deamonhammer. there is a pic of a black sister of battle in thier old codex.

Also lets use Black instead of negroid please

Xyptc wrote:It's a big galaxy and the human race has spread out like a wave of vermin. Current ethic "groups" (caucasian, asian, afro-carribean etc etc) have no relevance at all. 38,000 years of breeding and new environments is plenty of time for untold new "groups" to spring up, fall, mix etc.

If anything, I'd find a regiment of <insert current ethnicity> IG to be distinctly out of place. Invent one that befits the setting.

^This. The original reasons for skin variations is long long gone. I think it would be more likely to see odd things crop up like people with large ears or bigger eyes or whatever weirdness was caused by a particular planet's peculiarities. But even 2nd generation white/black offspring lose a lot of their darkness in my experience. You'd have to stay racially pure over 1900 generations to maintain the same tone. Though I'm not sure what the baseline would be. On terra and other very poluted planets, it probably would be a fairly arian white so they could absorb as much sunlight for vitamin d processing -- assuming there wasn't some hi-tech alternative. But across a million worlds? Who's to say we wouldn't all be bright pink?

If I recall, no one has ever seen a Death Korps of Kriegsman out of gasmaks; maybe they are all black?

tigonesskay wrote:Because of all of the issues humanity has 41 thousand years in the future issues like race, sexuality, and so on aren't even a drop in the bucket when you have chaos, orks, the dark eldar, necrons and so on...

This is likely to be true. For example, Grifen and Magot, the lesbian couple in the Cain series, were basically discretely ignored as long as they performed as troopers.

Do your job and the Imperium doesn't give a damn about your race, sexuality, or gender. The Imperium is an equal opportunity oppressor. Unless you're a xeno or for some reason declared a mutant, in which case you're probably going to die and/or be oppressed even harder.

We're also forgetting the dark age of technology, who knows what kinds of genetic engineering was carried out during that time - genes to produce blue hair, red eyes, striped skin, extra fingers, whatever.

cadbren wrote:We're also forgetting the dark age of technology, who knows what kinds of genetic engineering was carried out during that time - genes to produce blue hair, red eyes, striped skin, extra fingers, whatever.

In the Barrington J. Bailey short story, Children of the Emperor, the human population had been genetically altered into a hardy centaur people to survive on a high gravity death world; the Guardsmen that ends up there is almost crushed by the atmosphere and can barely breath until one of the locals gives him an ancient anti-grav harness to wear.

I didn't see them mentioned in this thread, but there's also the Atillans who, as you can see, are clearly Asian.

In my very very old WD Some Guardsmen (Catachans) are displayed with brown skin

Also, it was noted in one of the Ciaphas Cain books (I think the first one) that one of the Valhallan troopers stood out because of her darker skin (Her parents presumably being immigrants to Valhalla for whatever reason).

Wait, why would soldiers that live on a ice world be dark skinned?

Read what Melissia said.

"Immigrants".

The Imperium has vastly differing worlds. And immigration isn't exactly strictly controlled.

Actually, something everyone has forgotten about: Thousand Sons are Egyptian!

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Actually, something everyone has forgotten about: Thousand Sons are Egyptian!

As an egyptian (seriously) I've always found that aspect of them cool Still not as cool as the Black Legion
Btw

-Atillans
-Harlon Nyl (Black guy)
-Death world (Black guy)
-Salamanders (Black guys..though due to radiation. Cept from Dak'ir. He's half'n half )

I've always liked to think of the Crimson Fists as mexican, since two of their characters are named Pedro and Cortez.

That's a very American outlook. I would figure they're Spanish.

Both Dorn and Kantor are German names I just found out. Dorn means 'thorn' and referred to someone who lived near a thorn bush. Kantor comes from the name for a type of singer from mediaeval times.


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Shadowbrand wrote:Wait, why would soldiers that live on a ice world be dark skinned?

Because they're tanned from the sun beating down on them and reflecting up from the ground. I think light skin is an adaption to living in cloudy environments, not cold ones.

You have mentioned the salamanders and tallarens, but also there are Valhallans who are based on russians and Attilans who are based on the Mongolians....these are the only named IG armies i can think of..the rest are caucasian...dont forget though the other thousands of forces of the imperium...if even 1/4 of the named armies are ethnic then there must be 1000's of others not named out there

Tanith Are Typical Celts As People Hae Already Mentioned,,

I Wouldn't Be Surprised If There Were People With Bright Orange Skin Due To Exposure To Too Much Sun

Foeburner wrote:You have mentioned the salamanders and tallarens, but also there are Valhallans who are based on russians and Attilans who are based on the Mongolians....these are the only named IG armies i can think of..the rest are caucasian...dont forget though the other thousands of forces of the imperium...if even 1/4 of the named armies are ethnic then there must be 1000's of others not named out there

Eh? Russians are caucasians, they look like europeans. Soviet era armies also included lots of asians in them because places like Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and so on have lots of people with asian and mixed asian/caucasian heritage. Some of these people live in Russia today sure but your average Russian is white. Think of the name too, Valhallans, as in Valhalla, the Norse underworld where warriors killed in battle went and await the coming of Ragnarok for the final battle at the world's end when the endless winter comes. The Russians are supposedly named for the Rus, a group of Vikings who set up a number of towns such as Kiev and united the local slavic tribes into the Russian people.


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MenOfTanith wrote:
Tanith Are Typical Celts As People Hae Already Mentioned,,

I Wouldn't Be Surprised If There Were People With Bright Orange Skin Due To Exposure To Too Much Sun

I forget where they were from but a 13 year old and his father recently climbed Mt Everest, the images of them when they came down showed very orange skin from the sun and the wind.