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Well, I've been wondering something about Imperial punishement. Does the Imperium rape? Slaanesh heretics do(and very much enjoy it), so is it viewed as something unholy and anyone who does so will be shot? I know of course because of how decentraziled the Imperium is there is about a million answers, but generally, do they, or is it viewed as heresy?

OH so you gonna love this one!

So they basically have a judge dread system, commit a crime, they pretty much just kill you, OR even better! They lobotomize you, and turn you into a servitor.

Crime and Punishment is generally left to individual worlds. So it depends on each world, there are also a large number of penal worlds to dump criminals on. An out of sight, out of mind policy. As to what constitutes a crime, that depends on the world. A civilized world might have a similar justice system to us. Another world might have a more wild west lynche mob sheriff shoot out justice, a feudal world mind consider only crimes against nobles as criminal acts and trial by justice used.

Here have a good read.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Adeptus_Arbites

In Gaunt's Ghosts (Guns of Tanith), a general mentions having several rapers, thieves and murdurers shot, however this also is about keeping discipline than just anti-rape.
I think it would be frowned on at an imperial level (different worlds/regiments might think otherwise) because anyone you can rape (obviously a loyal guardsman would never think of engaging in coitus with a heretic or xeno) is a member of the imperium. A renegade planet might see exceptions, but in those cases some might say its the leaders who need to be punished, not the common folk.
Here's my Grimdark Commissar perspective: Murder is worse than Rape. Someone who is raped than still serve the Emperor, someone who is murdered cannot (life is currency, destroying it is worse than despoiling it).

Its an interesting topic, so can we please keep it reasonably mature?

There are many acts that will get you punished in the imperium. These are both criminal (Arbites) and doctrinal (ministorum) and many of the criminal acts and punishments will vary from world to world, even inside the same segmentum.

It's up to the arbites to enforce the Imperial law on their worlds. Sometimes they will clash with the ministorum, too.

Quite a few will just have you executed outright.
Some will have you shipped off to a penal regiment (and certain offences there will see you shot outright).
Some will have you made into an arco-flagellant or servitor.

Some will have you gibbeted until you have served penance and others will be let off with a financial penalty.

The Shira Calpurnia novels (Arbites, but clashes with the ministorum and the machinations of a rogue-trader charter are also delved into) are good for these insights.

The new GSC book hints heavily at rape themes.

So good chance, just execution.

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
So good chance, just execution.

Can't go wrong with a good execution. The only question is the number of executions.

It really depends on just whom you choose to defile/murder/eat/ sell as slave I think, if you did any of said things with a low hive dreg or mutant I dare say none would lift a eyelid. Now however If you violently choose to murder everyone in a Imperial Cathedral filled with nobels or such.... Well then you would be lucky to to just loose your head

And ofc, just because Arbites aren't normally investigating local crimes you can't bet on them letting you get away with it in front of them. A swift bullet to the head for making a mess in front of an Imperial servant is more likely then them just laughing and leaving it to local enforcers.

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
Well, I've been wondering something about Imperial punishement. Does the Imperium rape? Slaanesh heretics do(and very much enjoy it), so is it viewed as something unholy and anyone who does so will be shot? I know of course because of how decentraziled the Imperium is there is about a million answers, but generally, do they, or is it viewed as heresy?

Investigating and punishing rapists would be a matter left to local authorities. Unless said rape involved a violation of Imperial law (which is HERESY).


Rape the village milk maid? Local matter. Rape a xenos and get caught? Expect a visit from the Adeptus Arbites and/or an Inquisitor from the Ordo Xenos for defiling your "Holy Human Form" by copulating with a vile alien.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Here have a good read.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Adeptus_Arbites

Qualification on the Arbites: There is a jurisdiction issue where they deal with crimes that affect the broader Imperium, not with just anything that happens nearby. Punch a random local in a bar, the sheriff might shove you in the drunk tank and levy a fine. Punch a tax collector, and you'll have riot police loaded with kit on par with the Imperial Guard and fully authorized to shoot you if you annoy them busting down your door to drag you away to a dungeon where you will die in excruciating agony while they make sure you're not connected with any broader insurrection.

(In practice both of those examples are exaggerated; there are harsher local authorities, Arbites garrisons stretched too thin to bother with petty assaults, and plenty of variability depending on where you are, but generally assume that crime is treated much more severely when it interferes with the functioning of the government. Or annoys the government. Plenty of corruption in the Imperium.)

Imperial punishment is very sever and that's just for minor offences.

In the novel 'Titanicus' a man is shot and killed by an Arbite for breaking a curfew
Ciaphas Cain once had a man flogged for getting into an argument with a 'working' girl

One of the Last Chancers was thrown into the penal unit for stealing a wave serpent [or something] and going for a joyride in it. I think that's probably the only time a guardsmen was punished for inconveniencing an Eldar

^ He stole an "Ambassador's personal transport".

So was more like a diplo limousine than a combat vehicle. It was more the audacity of it - and the purely being able to actually PILOT the thing, given that everything eldar usually has some sort of "psychic" component.

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
Well, I've been wondering something about Imperial punishement. Does the Imperium rape? Slaanesh heretics do(and very much enjoy it), so is it viewed as something unholy and anyone who does so will be shot? I know of course because of how decentraziled the Imperium is there is about a million answers, but generally, do they, or is it viewed as heresy?

The Imperium, no matter where you are, is a society of orders not classes. Thus, any crime is judged differently depending on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. A noble man rapes a women of the common pleb for his own personnal pleasure? He is not raping, he has prima nocta. A noble women is rape by a commoner, that commoner is cut into pieces and fed to grox. A member of the Ecclesiarchy touches little chorus singer? He is mentoring them. A man forces his way into that same priest? He is burn to the stake. You get the picture. It's very unfair because people aren't equal before the law.

@Chromedog
Now that I think about it, I wonder if the officers 'punished' him by transferring him to that unit so that he could continue to fight, rather then handing him over to the Eldar for punishment

In the Master of Mankind, I think some woman who threw a rock during a food riot got dragged off to become a servitor in front of her screaming kids.

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
Does the Imperium rape?

Oh you better believe it man. You got grease balls raping random broads in broad daylight in the alley ways left right and center from here all the way to bangalore city! Of course, they usually get caught pretty soon. And then, instead of the guillotine? They get raped. And the whole time Slaanesh is around the corner, waiting to rape everyone in the room, after the rapers finish getting raped.

Warhammer 40K is basically a giant rape fest. Also, when a space marine gets corrupted by Slaanesh? The first thing he does it get his genitals working good and proper. Those daemonettes ain't gonna rape themselves!

But you have to understand... it ain't rape if its willing... subconsciously, or perhaps sub-subconsciously, or even super subconsciously - they were all asking for it. Their warp prints do not lie

Kind of surprising that Guard don't have a "Meat Shield" division - death row convicts controlled by a shock collar and led (from the back) by a Kommissar. Aarmed with...nothing really and purchased as bubble wrap upgrade for a vehicle.

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Kind of surprising that Guard don't have a "Meat Shield" division - death row convicts controlled by a shock collar and led (from the back) by a Kommissar. Aarmed with...nothing really and purchased as bubble wrap upgrade for a vehicle.

They used to have those things - drug controlled shock troops and suicide bombers. But maybe it looked a bit too suspect with the rise of Islamic terrorist groups using the same stuff...

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
Kind of surprising that Guard don't have a "Meat Shield" division - death row convicts controlled by a shock collar and led (from the back) by a Kommissar. Aarmed with...nothing really and purchased as bubble wrap upgrade for a vehicle.

Guard has (or use to have) Penal Legions which basically do just that. Highly expendable infantry that are used to throw bodies at a problem or screen for more important units.

Learn something new every day.

Yeah, the penal legions are a thing (The Last chancers are the most "famous" ones, having had a codex entry for an old Guard codex).

I've still got some of the old Penitent legion army guys from RT (AND the human bombs, too).

The former had demo collars controlled by their officer to keep them in line. Should the officer die, the collars detonated, but sometimes, one wouldn't and that soldier simply cut and ran from the battlefield, ne'er to be seen again.

The latter WORE bomb harnesses and basically ran at the enemy and exploded.

 chromedog wrote:
Yeah, the penal legions are a thing (The Last chancers are the most "famous" ones, having had a codex entry for an old Guard codex).

I've still got some of the old Penitent legion army guys from RT (AND the human bombs, too).

The former had demo collars controlled by their officer to keep them in line. Should the officer die, the collars detonated, but sometimes, one wouldn't and that soldier simply cut and ran from the battlefield, ne'er to be seen again.

The latter WORE bomb harnesses and basically ran at the enemy and exploded.

If that was still a thing I might not have taken up Space Wolves...bloody terrorists, only thing they accomplish is ruining the fun.

I've sometimes wondered about the purpose of Penal Worlds, given the Imperium's tendency to react to everything with lethal violence and the relative difficulty of interstellar travel, compared to other settings, it seemed odd that they would spend the resources to keep criminals alive AND ship them all the way to another planet. I wonder, are there any other sources about convicts being used as slaves for other organisations? Working in the mines or as ratings on a starship or something? Because if that's the case then penal worlds might effectively be like giant slave markets/depots where other organisations can come if they need a lot of cheap human meat.

Also offers the possibility that maybe planetary governors could offer convicts as part of their tithe, so if it's been a tough year and they can't pay their taxes in full they can just make it illegal to wear red after the Feast of St Thor and ship all offenders off to a penal world where they will wait for someone to turn them into mine workers or servitors.

Anything to support these ideas? To me it just seems like the sort of thing the Imperium might do.

The penal legions were convicted guardsman that were still worth more than a bolter shell or a lobotomy. Bar fights, equipment theft, tardiness...

I always wanted to start a penal legion, with Sentinels as walking guard towers and such... but then they were dropped from the codex.

Well now, this made me think a long time back to when I first started the hobby. When I was at the local GW store and asking questions of the store employee, I asked "If the only thing in the future is war and that's all that the average person has to look forward to, then where do the new soldiers to fill the ranks of the guard come from?" *Her* response was something along the lines of "Well, there are spoils of war for the soldiers, 9 months later they have a new guardsman." So, there's that.

There is only one crime in the Imperium: heresy! And there's a single punishment for that: death.

Or being turned into a servitor drone. Dosen't really matter in the end anyway.

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
The penal legions were convicted guardsman that were still worth more than a bolter shell or a lobotomy. Bar fights, equipment theft, tardiness...

I always wanted to start a penal legion, with Sentinels as walking guard towers and such... but then they were dropped from the codex.

Oh, thats such a cool idea, damn wish I could. Really would work with th 227th and their whole sopviet themes.