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SM, Eldar, Orks ..aaand IG? I understand that SM puts marines in these dreadnaught coffers if they fell and bumped their knees, Eldar uses soul stones to live on, and puts senior citizens/veterans in these wraith lords and orks can hot swap 'eads, but what about IG? Can they reanimate 'dem puny 'umies!!?!?

Short answer is not really. Additionally Dreadnoughts aren't reviving a marine, it's basically life support in the form of a big tank.

Well, there are different types of reanimation.

"He's only mostly dead": The person wasn't killed, only mortally wounded. The "reanimation" repairs (some of) the damage and allows the person to serve again (albeit in a very different body). You've mentioned Marine Dreadnoughts and decapitated Orks - they fall into this category.
- Available to guard? Yes, but not in a good way. Soldiers with severe head injuries could be turned into servitors, while others could have their body "recycled" for use by the Mechanicus. Plus, there's always the chance of an dead officer being turned into a servo-skull. None of those options involve the preservation of the soldier's consciousness.

"Rise from your grave": The person did indeed die, yet is restored to full health. The soldier's consciousness is fully preserved.
- Available to guard? Nope. Perhaps that guard soldier gets up again as an Imperial Saint, but the chance of that happening is so tiny that it can be ignored. Ditto for being bought back to life by that freaky Eldar god of death.

Finally, both the T'au and (to a much lesser extent) the Imperium have displayed the ability to preserve minds. I know very little of the fluff behind this method, but I think that only the highest ranking people could have a chance of that option being available.

Example:

The Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius, Militarum Tempestus relic. wrote:Built into the gold-chased skull of Lord Commander Lucellin Tyberius himself, this device contains a web of psycho-circuitry containing Tyberius' memory engrams and tactical acumen - and with it, his curmudgeonly and overbearing personality. Borne aloft by its own gravitic motors, the device observes and evaluates an officer's decisions. The moment it considers an order poorly chosen, the skull cuts into the vox and loudly overrides its exasperated owner.

We'll, there is Nurgle, but you might not want to look in a mirror afterwards...

There's this one iron hands short story which I forget the name of, but one iron hand resurrects others using forbidden tech, not in a chaos-y way but basically replacing stuff with tech and making them controllable.

HexHammer wrote:
SM, Eldar, Orks ..aaand IG? I understand that SM puts marines in these dreadnaught coffers if they fell and bumped their knees, Eldar uses soul stones to live on, and puts senior citizens/veterans in these wraith lords and orks can hot swap 'eads, but what about IG? Can they reanimate 'dem puny 'umies!!?!?

If you're an Eldar soul in a soulstone, you're dead. Whether calling that soul out of an Infinity Circuit / World Spirit for use in constructs is considered "reanimation" gets...complicated.

 john27 wrote:
There's this one iron hands short story which I forget the name of, but one iron hand resurrects others using forbidden tech, not in a chaos-y way but basically replacing stuff with tech and making them controllable.

The Keys of Hel

Sterling191 wrote:
If you're an Eldar soul in a soulstone, you're dead. Whether calling that soul out of an Infinity Circuit / World Spirit for use in constructs is considered "reanimation" gets...complicated.

Reanimation =/= revive/resurrect.

Welcome to the Astra Militarum equivlant of the dreadnought:

HexHammer wrote:
]Reanimation =/= revive/resurrect.

Then why did you lead with:

HexHammer wrote:
], Eldar uses soul stones to live on, and puts senior citizens/veterans in these wraith lords

Serious question. You're equating being dead with being on life support, and so far as Eldar soulstones go, if you're alive you are not in a soulstone.

Wraithbone isn't inherently alive. That Eldar soul(s) can make it move, and that with the control of a powerful enough psyker it can be used for military purposes is a very different discussion from the kind of zombified life-support every other type of "reanimation" you're bringing up here.

Sterling191 wrote:

HexHammer wrote:
]Reanimation =/= revive/resurrect.

Then why did you lead with:

HexHammer wrote:
], Eldar uses soul stones to live on, and puts senior citizens/veterans in these wraith lords

Serious question. You're equating being dead with being on life support, and so far as Eldar soulstones go, if you're alive you are not in a soulstone.

Wraithbone isn't inherently alive. That Eldar soul(s) can make it move, and that with the control of a powerful enough psyker it can be used for military purposes is a very different discussion from the kind of zombified life-support every other type of "reanimation" you're bringing up here.

ARGH!!! ..I'M BEING MOLESTED BY THE GRAMMAR POLICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!