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I never seen this topic covered in any book or article.

What happens to the bodies after a battle? Sure, it depends on who and where it was.
Humans get buried or burned, same as Tau or Eldar, Orks get burned to destroy spores, but what about the others?
What happens to, let's say, bodies of Chaos Marines or cultists, daemons or Tyranids? In the jungle, they might let them be, so something feeds on them, but what about cities? Who and how cleans the dead Plaguebearers or destroyed Helbrutes, or Carnifexes off the street?

Any info on this?

Eldar recover their bodies and spirit stones if they can whether by just picking them up post battle or just sneaking back later. I think they just leave the lesser races they killed where they died except Orks who get burned.

Humans would burn most of the non-human bodies, cleanse and purify ...
Necrons would use their tech, gauss-weapons are great body removers... or scarabs.. ?
Chaos would use the bodies to decorate their homes..
Tyranids collect the biomass and recycle..
Orks ... leave it to the grots to deal with this...
Tau... good question. Maybe if they win, the newly added "members of the greater good" get to earn their membership cards by dealing with their own dead?

Depends on the situation I would wager.

Necrons appear to mostly care about destroying life, so when its gone they are more likely to just leave the battlefield a wasteland. Burning whatever they could so that micro organisms couldn't even feed off the decaying dead.

They'd likely be more interested in salvage of their own. Except for Flayed ones who would likely be out there tearing bits off the flesh of the dead and nearly dead to decorate themselves.


Tyranids are easy - they break it down and eat it up. The only times they deviate from this are when they are pressed to leave in a hurry or if they are predigesting to leave a soup behind for another fleet to feed.


Orks likely loot everything. The bodies would be ground and worked down to provide food whilst the materials would be taken to the mekboys for breaking up and looting into new orky technology (mostly weapons).
They imght take survivors for slaves or otherwise execute them. If they've got particularly valuable captors they might even ransom them back (with full intention to break the agreement and use it as a trap).


Eldar have few worlds that they hold onto, so they likely are more focused on removing the spirit stones and technology/armour of their fallen and will then leave the rest of the battlefield. Again, like orks, they might take surviving captives.

Dark Eldar would certainly harvest the captives from the battlefield for sport.

The Imperium likely has a whole administrative wing dedicated to the burning of xenos; the destruction of xenotech and the saving of holy relics and prize Imperial weapons from the battlefield. They'd likely conscript locals to aid in the clearing of the battlefield whilst commissars and guard likely kept an eye on the proceedings to ensure no xenos filth or theft were to escape the battlefield.



Eldar, Tau and Space Marines are likely the only ones that would be greatly in the religious disposal of bodies of their dead. Tau might also give a nod to their opponents if they were after winning a war of winning over the peoples of the world they were attacking.

Otherwise I suspect mass burials, burning, incinerating and melting down happens a lot to the remains of a battlefield.

Thank you for replies, but it was meant what humans would do with bodies of their dead enemies. Especially with those imbued with chaotic energies, like demonic engines and chaos marines. Sorry if that wasn't apparent from my first post.

I wouldn't expect Tau to have religious anything when it comes to the dead. Recovery for psychological closure if its practical, but if its dangerous to do so, the greater good says no.


Daemon remains on battlefields seem to be self cleaning for the most part. Even to the point of associated plagues and filth vanishing (or lessening in virulence), and reanimated bodies going still without warp presence. This came up in the 'Dark Imperium' novel, once plague marines and daemons were defeated a lot (not all) of the problems went away.

 Hawky wrote:
Thank you for replies, but it was meant what humans would do with bodies of their dead enemies. Especially with those imbued with chaotic energies, like demonic engines and chaos marines. Sorry if that wasn't apparent from my first post.

Ah, well. Fire cleans all.
Except things snaffled by the Inquisition or the stupid. Which aren't mutually exclusive, really.

In Celestine.
They burn the bodies of the loyalists.
Khaos followers go into a pit.
But really just depends on the faction i guess.

Corpse starch.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Corpse starch.

the cynic in me suspects this applies to the Tau too

BrianDavion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Corpse starch.

the cynic in me suspects this applies to the Tau too

No, there it is called, additional provisions provided thanks to glorious Performance in the battle, and only shows up 1 month later.

Caution: May contain traces of Tyranids, Imperial body armor, synthetic oil, bionic augments, or your father. Eat at your own risk. For wasting time by reading this label, your work score has been lowered by 1500 points. For the greater good, comrade!

 Hawky wrote:

Caution: May contain traces of Tyranids, Imperial body armor, synthetic oil, bionic augments, or your father. Eat at your own risk. For wasting time by reading this label, your work score has been lowered by 1500 points. For the greater good, comrade!

BrianDavion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Corpse starch.

the cynic in me suspects this applies to the Tau too

The Tau Fire Warriors were unsettled by Kroot eating enemy corpses and forbade them from eating fallen Tau. I suspect the feeling would be universal among all the castes, and corpse processing equipment (on that scale) isn't easy to hide or disguise. Mass graves/pyres are probably the rule.

Soylent green is orks?

I do remember in 15 hours that they after the guard had won a battle against orks, they went through with shovels decapitating the corpses (make sure they're dead) and then burning them (to negate ork spores) while conscripted parts of the population buried the guardsmen.

I suspect with some daemons there would be no corpses. And other Chaos things (cultists/marines) they would likely burn them; then kill anyone that saw the bodies and burn them too!

Though for something like a daemon engine, with a large amount of potentially tainted remnants, I suspect some serious cleansing rituals with psykers (assuming they got there before some crazy admech guys) then destruction and break down for scrap/recycling. And then burn the psykers!

I recall in the Gaunts Ghosts novel Necropolis (I think) civilians were collecting the bodies. And they weren't killed some latter even joined the regiment.

Also in Guants Ghosts it’s discovered that some deceased were being turned into rations by a regiment that had gotten used to it fighting a civil war on their home planet.