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I read on the wiki that Beastmen, while sometimes part of the Imperial Guard in former times, have been gradually been downgraded to the brink of loosing their abhuman Status. Amongst others they are forbidden to be conscripted to fulfill the Imperial tithe of a planet. They also seem to be forbidden from being shipped to ~ 300.000 imperial worlds

In part because I have an eye on some beastmen models from Victoria Miniatures and because I find their fluff as Abhumans kind of interesting I would ask if somebody has more sources on them in modern times or could make an educated guess if the following has any fundamental logic flaws within the current fluff:

I have a custom guard regiment that amongst others are characterized by having a really bad standing with the Adeptus Munitorum, so that they often have to make due with whatever vehicles, reinforcements and equipment they can get, often using outdated models, refitted milita or non-standard local vehicles. Furthermore they have a recruitment right for a couple of feral and feudal worlds within their vicinity who are too small to raise regiments on their own. Let's imagine one of those is populated by beastmen that are not chaos worshippers (but still pretty unruly). As long as the regiment fulflills their obligated tithe with baseline humans, would they run in trouble for adding beastmen on top? Especially when their argument comes down to "might as well use them as long as they are still loyal and regularly remove the best fighters on their planet"?

The way I figure it, they went the way of the Squat a while back, and any mention of them in the lore is simply a cursory nod - same as Squats get, or the Hrud, or so on.
From a lore standpoint, I could see losing abhuman status being due to their simply being just TOO mutated, or a reaction to the fact they were mostly found in roving Chaos warbands (2nd ed Codex Chaos had them as a fairly big part of their Lost And The Damned sub-list)

As to your own more recent fluff? Sure, why not! Go for it. Only thing I will say is that their inclusion as part of the tithe should well attract the attention of the Inquisition, buuuuuut maybe so far they've gotten lucky and amidst all the madness of the galaxy, nobody important enough has noticed yet...

Beastmen are still a thing, just look at the 50$ Forge World bounty hunter Gor Half-horn from - I think - 2018, who is speculated (in his official rule sheet) to be a former member of an Abhuman Militarum Auxilla and now is a sanctioned (sic!) bounty hunter on the Hive world Necromunda. If FW can imply there still are Abhuman Militarum Auxilla, so can you.

Generally, I'd say it's a big galaxy, add to your army, what you want and bend the fluff as you wish.

 Max Moray wrote:
Beastmen are still a thing, just look at the 50$ Forge World bounty hunter Gor Half-horn from - I think - 2018, who is speculated (in his official rule sheet) to be a former member of an Abhuman Militarum Auxilla and now is a sanctioned (sic!) bounty hunter on the Hive world Necromunda. If FW can imply there still are Abhuman Militarum Auxilla, so can you.

Generally, I'd say it's a big galaxy, add to your army, what you want and bend the fluff as you wish.

And there's Chaos Beastmen in Blackstone Fortress (who have 40k rules somewhere) -

The imperium would use 'em if they needed to. Generally ideology takes a backseat to necessity when survival is involved.

If there were a lot of 'em and you needed extra cannonfodder, they;d get promised the moon for helping the imperium, then the survivors would get shafted harder that the surviving civilian population of Armageddon after the chaos invasion.

Beastmen might be rarely used in standard regiments, but they'd be fine in penal legions. Dying in the name of the Emperor is a good way to absolve for their sin of being born mutants!

Technically they are abhumans. But with strong ties to chaos and mutation. They are persecuted, spit on, and subject to massive prejudice, so a lot turn to Chaos, and are easy recruits for cults. But the test for abhumans is they breed true. Mommy beastman + Daddy beastman = Baby beastman. Mutants don’t. Basline human mommy + baseline human daddy + CHAOS = tentacle baby. Average imperial citizen won’t know (or care) about your genealogy. They just see the horns and cloven feet and break out the torches and pitchforks.

The Imperium is both incredibly egalitarian and close minded at the same time. As long as you tick a few major boxes (Pay your tithes, don’t harbor unsanctioned psychers, worship no god but the Emperor) you can pretty much do what you want. But individually, it’s composed of a lot of closed minded bigots. You don’t look/act like us? Heretic/mutant=burn. But on the macro scale, if a planet follows the rules, it’s fine. Abhuman ones as well as baseline.

Now once beatman regiments are in the field, they are going to be subject to the prejudice of the officers in command. Squandering the lives of the Holy Emperor’s troops is a sin, but if there is a crap assignment that is going to have an acceptably high rate of martyrdom, we know who’s pulling that duty.

 Tiennos wrote:
Beastmen might be rarely used in standard regiments, but they'd be fine in penal legions. Dying in the name of the Emperor is a good way to absolve for their sin of being born mutants!

Yes, those need to return, perhaps as "Redemption" rather than penal legions, along with human bombs.

So, if you're gonna make a beastman army....would it just need extra priests and commissars and call it good? I could see a beastman army being good for harsh terrain or very wild terrain where being a bit beastly might be an asset.

Figure some very disliked officer gets the duty to take company X beastman regiment and take all these super uptight commissars and those super zealous priests and go die on some long recon mission over there at the end of the world.

Would that work as far as fluff?

-STS

slade the sniper wrote:
So, if you're gonna make a beastman army....would it just need extra priests and commissars and call it good? I could see a beastman army being good for harsh terrain or very wild terrain where being a bit beastly might be an asset.

Figure some very disliked officer gets the duty to take company X beastman regiment and take all these super uptight commissars and those super zealous priests and go die on some long recon mission over there at the end of the world.

Would that work as far as fluff?

-STS

I think it would work fine.

Can’t get to my old RT compendium right now, but IIRC there was a little fluff blurb about a beastman, feeling that he was born bad, but needed to redeem himself in the eyes of the Emperor. Really feeds into the martyrdom theme of the imperial creed. And while I think it was Ogryn, one of those units viewed commissars as almost literal manifestations of the Emperor’s will, and their words straight from his. (You are going to have minotaurs as ogryns, yes? I think it’s required for a beastman army )

From a narritive POV, I could see it starting as a crap detail for all the baseline humans. But as they fight together, the priests discover the pure faith and love of the Emperor burning in the beastly breast, the commissars the loyalty to pack and Imperium, and the officers rugged troops that can take any objective.

And then they all get eaten by tyranids. Roll credits.

“Blessed is the mind too small for doubt"

Homo Sapiens Variatus (stable beastmen) even had rules in 4th edition for Imperial Guard.

I lean heavily towards "do whatever you dang please" when it comes to this kind of thing, but i do think it works well with the background too. The imperium is huge and no one really completely controls it, and half of it is in such desperate situations that they'd probably be recruiting everyone who can hold a gun.

I could see beastmen literally used as suicide troops to clear minefields and waste enemy ammo.

Drugs, indoctrination, brainwashing, preachers make them believe they're tainted but can redeem themselves and be accepted into the emperor's heaven if they serve and die for the emperor.

Do it right and they'll rush into minefields, machine gun nests, drying lines hung with ogryn underwear, etc.

Thanks for all the input. I guess I have now put something together that works for my custom regiment even a bit better than the initial idea.

While they have a bad standing with the Adeptus Munitorum and rarely get the material and reinforcements they ordered, the clerk in charge repeatedly let it slip that they "adsorb" left over squads of destroyed/dispersed regiments, especially when those are from obscure or "problematic" units to begin with. So not the usual "put two half regiments together to form a new one" but really "there are 6 Attillans left on the planet, who wants to take them?" Most regiments don't want to because of morale reasons, but the Askaris - consisting of a wild mix of tribes themselves - take what they get.
=> that's mostly my convenient excuse for including any tribal looking mini I like, like mongols, native americans, aztecs etc.

So here they found a squad of Beastmen that were leftover of a penal legion. Not knowing that beastmen are that problematic or what a penal legion is meant to be (they come from a backwater planet themselves) they just saw that those were technically imperial soldiers, so proposed them to join. The Beastmen themselve realized that on paper they would change from a penal legion into a normal regiment so were cool with it and the Administrativum just don't know that they are abhumans since the transfer application send from my regiment just stated "a squad of leftover imperial soldiers from a penal legion" and just assumed that it must be humans and just forgot about them.

I like it. A perfect mixture of ignorance, bureaucracy and desparate pragmitism

And you end up with what you want to do. I love 40k

 amazingturtles wrote:
I lean heavily towards "do whatever you dang please" when it comes to this kind of thing, but i do think it works well with the background too. The imperium is huge and no one really completely controls it, and half of it is in such desperate situations that they'd probably be recruiting everyone who can hold a gun.

This. And, if you do an army or squads of these guys I'm you will get nothing but appreciative interest from anyone you play against with them (just because the concept is so cool!)

They are definitely a relic of an earlier background to an extent but I think there is probably still enough wiggle room, and as others have mentioned things have been relaxed a bit more recently with special characters of beastmen (and even Squats) appearing in Necromunda, which would never have happened even 10 years ago (obviously the abhuman-hating design person has left GW in the meantime! )

The imperium is based on survival and pragmatism. Nothing more.

If an inquisitor needs a daemonhost to stop a major criris, he makes one and uses it.

If blood angles must parley with necrons to stop tyranids, they parley.

If ultramarines must make a deal to let tau live to get their aid to stop a far greater enemy, they made the deal and keep it.

In human forces must stop shooting at orks or armageddon to fight off daemons, they stop shoring at orks, who generally reciprocate.

I'd say go for it, there's enough cases in the fluff where beastmen auxilia have proven their worth, even if these stories are a bit old its precident. I don't think anyone would take issue with them and they'd make great conscript blob/penal contingent fluff wise. I don't think the administratum would care too much, they are numbers and words on a sheet, being read by someone who has never seen them portrayed let alone in the flesh and they're probably easily confused/interchangeable to the administratum with ratlings or ogryns. I can imagine that if a unit of 1200 bloodletters turned up on the books that anyone would bat an eyelid.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
I might as well float the idea out there for a seraphon abhuman contingent. I mean skinks and saurians with guns primarily, it's not really weirder than goat people with guns. Right?

There's also a beastman in the third Warhammer Adventures book, who gets hired by an Inquisitor in the fourth, so they were still around as of last year.

Damn it, why didn't I see this post before I built 10 Bulgryns!

Very cool stuff, I would love to see these conversions on the other side of the table (once Covid is over of course)

Bullgors might make for a good visual substitute for bullgryns.

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I read on the wiki that Beastmen, while sometimes part of the Imperial Guard in former times, have been gradually been downgraded to the brink of loosing their abhuman Status. Amongst others they are forbidden to be conscripted to fulfill the Imperial tithe of a planet. They also seem to be forbidden from being shipped to ~ 300.000 imperial worlds

In part because I have an eye on some beastmen models from Victoria Miniatures and because I find their fluff as Abhumans kind of interesting I would ask if somebody has more sources on them in modern times or could make an educated guess if the following has any fundamental logic flaws within the current fluff:

I have a custom guard regiment that amongst others are characterized by having a really bad standing with the Adeptus Munitorum, so that they often have to make due with whatever vehicles, reinforcements and equipment they can get, often using outdated models, refitted milita or non-standard local vehicles. Furthermore they have a recruitment right for a couple of feral and feudal worlds within their vicinity who are too small to raise regiments on their own. Let's imagine one of those is populated by beastmen that are not chaos worshippers (but still pretty unruly). As long as the regiment fulflills their obligated tithe with baseline humans, would they run in trouble for adding beastmen on top? Especially when their argument comes down to "might as well use them as long as they are still loyal and regularly remove the best fighters on their planet"?

The Imperium doesn't want you offloading your mutants as a way of cheaping out on the Guard tithe, they'd much prefer trained PDF troops and love the worlds that consider this an honour, having competitions in order to be selected.
However if you meet the tithe with some great, high quality guard - you could probably offload a few mutants at the same time, as long as this is over and above the tithe required.

Veteran warmasters in the area might know that there is a huge difference between the even and odd numbered regiments from MacDonald I, but less experienced or disinterested logisticians might just look at the regimental honours earned from for this planet and grade them all on an average.

So if a few MacDonald regiments find them assigned to a world, it might be a few abhuman regiments of mostly chaff and an incredibly well equipped elite mechanised infantry regiment with the full complement of special weapons.

I'd think the imperium would take the tithe in quality or quantity at a set value per world's level of significance. That's how I figure it.

Offloading millions of mutants and criminals would be perfectly acceptable if they could be kitted out. Not going to be real great for your own prestige, which is something that is not really mentioned, but would certainly be a thing, as sending elite troops.

Aside from if you are only sending penal troops, while you keep you elite units nice and tight they might get suspicious(this is different and would likely not be looked into by the guys collecting the tithe).

But the imperium doesn't care for the quality of the tithe, as long as it meets the balance and price, becasue when you need meat for the mincer, you're not going to be discerning.

Or, in the case described by me, if you as a regiment replenish losses by recruiting what is at hand without interacting with the Tithe at all. It would be more of a situation where they message the Adeptus Munitorum "We suffered 50% casualties but could replenish 10% by conscripting local fighters. Therefore Regiment stays at 60% readiness." The planets Tithe is still payed as usual in humans, they just slow down the grinding of their regiments by filling up with whatever they have at hand. I think that might slip without negative consequences as long as they don't recruit away in other regiments recruitment grounds.