Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Is it possible that a certain regiment slowly became mutated (or were created by the Imperium in genetic experiments) maybe on a crusade, and instead of being purged, the imperial officials kept them (note that the troops were still devoted loyally to the Imperial cult and the IOM) maybe as cannon fodder or a specialised regiment (say if they were brilliant at urban warfare), and were thus used as propaganda such as "Look at what these men have gone through at the hand of the heretic! they will fight for their emperor and keep their minds pure even if their bodies are corrupt!" etc etc, they could almost be seen as martyrs by Imperial society.

I was just asking this because it is the idea behind the fluff of my army, a Skaven IG regiment, who holds banners such as "Forgive us for our sins" or other such forms of morbid fatalistic things, they are told that they must serve the IoM until they are all wiped out so they can fully reach sainthood through martyrdom and become pure beings with the Emperor in the afterlife.

Thoughts?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wrong place so sorry!

Can anyone move this to 40k background?

;I

To give a simple answer, its a big galaxy. It's certainly not how its handled usually but it could certainly happen. A radical member of the Ordo Hereticus or Ministorum, certainly if up against great odds, might allow them to seek death in battle rather than execute them.

Whether chaos taint is deemed the fault of the victims or not would vary throughout the Imperium. The more Orthodox members of the Inquisition would undoubtedly blame their lack of faith and countless sins for their fate and exterminate them. A more Reform minded member of the orders would at least let them seek redemption especially if the circumstances made cleansing irresponsible.

There used to be Imperial Beastmen (stable strains of mutants rather than purely chaos warped) similar to what you described. Naturally they were little more than cannon fodder but their hearts were pure.

There's no such thing as "Imperial Society". What's acceptable on one world might be the vilest of heresies on another. The AdMech might perform genetic experimentation on humans (usually at the command of a Radical Inquisitor)... but such results will not be made public knowledge, simply because all it would take is one Puritan Inquisitor to order the deaths of such abominations (or one "friendly fire" incident from a nearby artillery detachment) for the whole sordid affair to escalate into an Inquisition War.

Now, older editions of 40K had Beastmen Regiments for the IG, and such things are, conceivably, still possible... but they'd operate almost entirely alone, with certain worlds banning them entirely (as these worlds also ban Ratlings and Ogryns)... and literally no one would like them (if they did, send the Arbites, 'cause that guy's a heretic).

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
To give a simple answer, its a big galaxy. It's certainly not how its handled usually but it could certainly happen. A radical member of the Ordo Hereticus or Ministorum, certainly if up against great odds, might allow them to seek death in battle rather than execute them.

Whether chaos taint is deemed the fault of the victims or not would vary throughout the Imperium. The more Orthodox members of the Inquisition would undoubtedly blame their lack of faith and countless sins for their fate and exterminate them. A more Reform minded member of the orders would at least let them seek redemption especially if the circumstances made cleansing irresponsible.

There used to be Imperial Beastmen (stable strains of mutants rather than purely chaos warped) similar to what you described. Naturally they were little more than cannon fodder but their hearts were pure.

Im still yet to decide if they are tainted by Chaos though, I'm thinking of some sort of element they found in a hive city or something.

And about the radical inquisitors, thats exactly what came to mind, one day I'm thinking of getting a SoB inquisitor army to ally with them so its more fluff wise, and even good on tabletop.

Any advice on ways they could be mutated though?

And about the radical inquisitors, thats exactly what came to mind, one day I'm thinking of getting a SoB inquisitor army to ally with them so its more fluff wise, and even good on tabletop.

Sisters purge mutants, they do not "ally" with them. On a world where the Sisters are present, they perform regular "genetic purity sweeps" through the civilian population, and purge (with fire) any found wanting.

 Psienesis wrote:
There's no such thing as "Imperial Society". What's acceptable on one world might be the vilest of heresies on another. The AdMech might perform genetic experimentation on humans (usually at the command of a Radical Inquisitor)... but such results will not be made public knowledge, simply because all it would take is one Puritan Inquisitor to order the deaths of such abominations (or one "friendly fire" incident from a nearby artillery detachment) for the whole sordid affair to escalate into an Inquisition War.

Now, older editions of 40K had Beastmen Regiments for the IG, and such things are, conceivably, still possible... but they'd operate almost entirely alone, with certain worlds banning them entirely (as these worlds also ban Ratlings and Ogryns)... and literally no one would like them (if they did, send the Arbites, 'cause that guy's a heretic).

I do admit i worded the society part wrong, i forgot the Imperium is almost like a medical kingdom with its vassals and fiefs.

These mutants are guarded on massive ships named "The floating cathedrals of Emerick" (Emerick the death planet in which the regiment came from) and they are also lead around the battlefield by masked men clad in black with masks (to keep their identity secret) so there cannot be fire from allies, they are also purely used as cannon fodder, like you said they are hated and used as slave labour, puritans are a little more tolerable because of this, but still largely hostile. The only area in which they are used as specialised troops is in urban and underground warfare.

I think ill call them The martyrs of Emerick.

EDIT:
Noted about SoB, ill probably just have a Inquisitor group instead

If i remember rightly, Beastmen are sometimes lead into war by Priests to throw themselves at the enemy, because the only way to redeem themselves from the sin of being a mutant is to die for the Emperor.

So, by the precedence, yes, you can have a Mutant Regiment. Gamewise, it would look something like this:

Guard + Sisters of Battle allies.

Jacobus (The leader of the Crusade)
A heck lotta priests.
Your obligatory Sisters Of Battle troops could be modeled as the body guard of your Crusade Leader.
Add in some Repentia, modeled as Mutants with Power Drills or other manual labour stuff.
As many Big squads of guys/mutants as you'd like. Maybe add in some Commissars modeled as ''Overseers''.

There is a lot you can do with this. Just because Sisters usually burn Mutants, doesn't mean that all Priests do. And Power Armoured humans seem rare enough to act as the bodyguard of a particularly successful priest.

Could work as an ironic or tongue-in-cheek reference... can't see the Ecclesiarchy liking these freaks trying to steal the glory from all the good, proper, genetically-acceptable martyrs of the Imperial Guard, however.

ETA: You could use the SoB rules as a "counts as" for a Mutant army, as mentioned above... but actual Sisters are a pretty hard-line faction. They don't like mutants or witches. Priests that lead such rabble as Beastmen tend to be pretty fringe-dwelling madmen, so tend not to get the "special treatment" of an SoB squad to accompany him around (way, way more priests in the Ecclesiarchy than there are Sisters to guard them, after all).

 Psienesis wrote:

And about the radical inquisitors, thats exactly what came to mind, one day I'm thinking of getting a SoB inquisitor army to ally with them so its more fluff wise, and even good on tabletop.

Sisters purge mutants, they do not "ally" with them. On a world where the Sisters are present, they perform regular "genetic purity sweeps" through the civilian population, and purge (with fire) any found wanting.

An alternative is SOB's as allies, with this being an entire army of penitents. In a previous campaign the penitentiary regiment was hit with rad bombs or fixed a chemical leak or something. These formations are the mutants of the regiment.

I think Mutants can work.

I mean orgyns and ratlings FFS

If anything chuck them into conscript type blobs with priests and chuck them into the enemy to die

fer da empra!

Yes.

In the older codex there is a classified regiment of scaly mutant humans. Nothing is known of them as its classified but they have both lizard cav and infantry depicted.

So yes they can and they can be treated however you want them to be. Since its all classified as far as I can tell in the fluff.

Very easily yes. The term you are looking for is Abhuman Auxilia. More often then not, they are not full regiments. What you would look for would most likely take the form of squads of Abhumans with specific skills being given out to standard human IG regiments. Ogryn are a prime example of this practice.

 Desubot wrote:
I think Mutants can work.

I mean orgyns and ratlings FFS

If anything chuck them into conscript type blobs with priests and chuck them into the enemy to die

fer da empra!

I am, the army is primarily horde.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Very easily yes. The term you are looking for is Abhuman Auxilia. More often then not, they are not full regiments. What you would look for would most likely take the form of squads of Abhumans with specific skills being given out to standard human IG regiments. Ogryn are a prime example of this practice.

Im not sure if they can do that, they are REALLY hated by all those they work with and like i said they essentially act as isolated cannon fodder.

Abhumans such as ratlings and Ogryns are tolerated by Guardsmen, these guys are not

I think you might be interested in the D-99 Elysians which are heavily modified to fight Tyranids.

Another interesting use of slightly "alternative" humans are Death Korps of Krieg who while definitely NOT mutants (they kill even mutants that are relatively normal) they do appear to have a significant vat grown humans in their ranks.

The Renegades and Heretics army list also has a bit of information about mutant units of infantry.

People pretty much nailed it previously. The IoM is a lot like the British Empire around 1700 AD. It takes so long to communicate and send resources or personal between systems that each system needs to be essentially self sufficient. This means as long as they fulfill their duties and obligations to the IoM each system or world can pretty much do as they please. They can even do some really heretical stuff if some SoB or inquisition don't visit (which most worlds will never see a single IoM representative in a given human life). There is also the fact that the worlds that are now part of the IoM were alone to develop their own cultures for thousands of years previous to the emperor. This means that actual natural selection had time to work and the cultures on many of these worlds are more different than we could imagine. When the emperor brought all of these worlds and systems back together he usually only changed enough for them ti fit in and consider themselves part of the IoM. Some of these worlds already used their own versions of super human soldiers and had a level of tech comparable or even somewhat better than the IoM. It wouldn't be unusual for these worlds to use mutant or engineered humans as soldiers though there should probably be some explanation why the more radical inquisition or even mechanicum elements don't deem them heretical, even if it just nobody even bothers visiting that world (very possible considering how small these organizations are versus the sheer size of the imperium).

Some of the black library books 13th penal legion had the remains of an experimental regiment folded into it gene enhanced albinos that had been used as cannon fodder as they were'nt trusted by high command

The 'gene-enhanced albinos' were from the Afriel Strain project, which was an attempt to create a new wave of Imperial Heroes by cloning Macharius, Lord Solar.

The clones were found to be excellent soldiers, but no better than any other well-trained group of Guard. The project was a failure because the cloning process did not capture Macharius' greatness or charisma.