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This raises the old question of whether speciation has occurred. The basic litmus test there being whether Homo Sapien Sapien (that’s us, hi!) could knock boots and produce offspring with Homo Sapien Variatus (Beastmen) Gigantus (Ogryn) etc.


Now I’m far from a biologist or anthropologist, so you’ll have to read up more for yourself (no, put the Creationist sources down. You don’t need to read that drivel. Or listen to it) as I’m not sure exactly what defines speciation. For instance, Big Cat species can interbreed (brother a Liger or Tigon, no really) but the offspring tend to be sterile, and so unable to further that line. Whether such a limitation then shows speciation has or hasn’t occurred I couldn’t say.

But for those interested in how such things can go out of control, I heartily recommend House of Chains for Necromunda. It details House Goliath and their creation. They’re…..really not that far away from Thunder Warriors in intent and process. Hard to say if they’re less sophisticated of course, but a fascinating read all the same.

 Flinty wrote:
Hah. I see that poor copy control was a problem back then too. Crack grenades indeed! Unless of course they had a really special grenade type

Early days of first edition that is what they were called. It was later on in first they went with the “krak” we know and love. In the compendium it was “crack” all the way. By the time battle manual was out, the k was in the krak!

Well corrected. I was sure the RT rule book had them with the K. My mistake.

 Flinty wrote:
Well corrected. I was sure the RT rule book had them with the K. My mistake.

I hadn’t noticed that they’d changed it to be fair, I will dig out my RT book and check, I always assumed it was just ORKS used the K. I bet those old “crack” grenades were moorish!

I checked me book earlier, and RT Definately has them listed as a crack grenades

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This raises the old question of whether speciation has occurred.

The answer to this is a solid maybe. The reason for this is that the lore of 40k doesn't go into enough scientific detail and therefore it's a bit iffy delving into it. I'll throw a few hypotheticals but really, you can just gloss straight over because this post doesn't answer your question in any way

Lets begin with the fact that some animal species can be morphologically very similar but do not interbreed. Sometimes different bird species can interbreed based on their geographical proximity, but the same two species on a different migratory pattern might not do so.

Over the 38,000 years of human expansion in this setting, it's very likely than homo sapiens would evolve due to environmental factors. It's entirely possible that the species would diverge enough to be classified separately.

In our terms of classification, it's debatable if we would call something like Beastmen the same species. But then our own real world classifications don't deal with magic and chaotic mutation. How people 40,000 years in the future classify themselves, is clearly very different. Given that we reclassify creatures frequently based on new knowledge of them, that can also be true of 40k.

Abhumans are only really classified as such because they are useful. It wouldn't take much for even more puritanical elements to get rid of them permanently by reclassifing them as mutants. This then changes at a whim depending on the writers of the lore. Not to mention the fact that even the more "scientific" narrative pieces are technically unreliable, because they are Imperial records. Another alien species, such as the Eldar, Tau or Necrons, might classify 40k humans in a very different way.


And indeed, even in "baseline" 40k humans, there are plenty of curveballs. For instance, there is the fact that the Emperor gene-enhanced the entire Terran population post conquest and unification in order to remove aberration after the societal collapse and all that nuclear war business. Which suggests that the current human species is no longer our own. But therein lies the rub. Homo sapiens is biologically very diverse, however, genetically any two humans are the same.

We know there's a hell of a lot of fiddling with genes in the setting, as KNC points out.

So, if the genetic mutation is very broad, then they are no longer part of the same species. Given that GW have the Squats down as xenos, clearly it's enough for them to be no longer human.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think GW has put that much thought into this over the decades. And given that a lot of biologists are starting to say that the species classification is no longer correct, like I said at the start, it's very easy to tie your arse to your ears.


So to conclude on something more definitive, I don't think Squats can interbreed with baseline humans. Clearly the cloneskeins are genetically different on a greater scale. There wouldn't be anything stopping you putting your lemony snicket in to a consenting space dwarfs quail pipe if you were so inclined, but that's about it.

GW describe the Kin as "straddling the line between adhuman and Xenos", and the Imperium has had several encounters with Leagues were the local imperial commanders did not recognise they were dealing with abhumans, and thought of the Kin as some form of Xenos....and many cases where they DID see them as abhuman. Clearly, their is a lot of diversity in the Kin, with some being much more obviously "alien" in appearance and others looking a lot closer to "traditional fantasy dwarfs".


on cross-compatability, my money would be on "not naturally, but possible with the tech in the setting".

 Olthannon wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This raises the old question of whether speciation has occurred.

The answer to this is a solid maybe. The reason for this is that the lore of 40k doesn't go into enough scientific detail and therefore it's a bit iffy delving into it. I'll throw a few hypotheticals but really, you can just gloss straight over because this post doesn't answer your question in any way

Lets begin with the fact that some animal species can be morphologically very similar but do not interbreed. Sometimes different bird species can interbreed based on their geographical proximity, but the same two species on a different migratory pattern might not do so.

Over the 38,000 years of human expansion in this setting, it's very likely than homo sapiens would evolve due to environmental factors. It's entirely possible that the species would diverge enough to be classified separately.

In our terms of classification, it's debatable if we would call something like Beastmen the same species. But then our own real world classifications don't deal with magic and chaotic mutation. How people 40,000 years in the future classify themselves, is clearly very different. Given that we reclassify creatures frequently based on new knowledge of them, that can also be true of 40k.

Abhumans are only really classified as such because they are useful. It wouldn't take much for even more puritanical elements to get rid of them permanently by reclassifing them as mutants. This then changes at a whim depending on the writers of the lore. Not to mention the fact that even the more "scientific" narrative pieces are technically unreliable, because they are Imperial records. Another alien species, such as the Eldar, Tau or Necrons, might classify 40k humans in a very different way.


And indeed, even in "baseline" 40k humans, there are plenty of curveballs. For instance, there is the fact that the Emperor gene-enhanced the entire Terran population post conquest and unification in order to remove aberration after the societal collapse and all that nuclear war business. Which suggests that the current human species is no longer our own. But therein lies the rub. Homo sapiens is biologically very diverse, however, genetically any two humans are the same.

We know there's a hell of a lot of fiddling with genes in the setting, as KNC points out.

So, if the genetic mutation is very broad, then they are no longer part of the same species. Given that GW have the Squats down as xenos, clearly it's enough for them to be no longer human.

To be perfectly honest, I don't think GW has put that much thought into this over the decades. And given that a lot of biologists are starting to say that the species classification is no longer correct, like I said at the start, it's very easy to tie your arse to your ears.


So to conclude on something more definitive, I don't think Squats can interbreed with baseline humans. Clearly the cloneskeins are genetically different on a greater scale. There wouldn't be anything stopping you putting your lemony snicket in to a consenting space dwarfs quail pipe if you were so inclined, but that's about it.

Probably a bit OT, but where’s the Real World line terms of speciation? I ask out of ignorance rather than simply feigning it.

I mean, Darwin’s chaffinches. Isolated populations displayed different adaptations, I think we’re all familiar with that. And being isolated, they didn’t interbreed, but purely for geographical reasons. But, if they bred between those populations in captivity, and produced fertile (thanks weird men on the internet for making that word sound weird and icky when it’s really not!) offspring, then there’s no speciation.

If a Horse and Donkey love each other very much and have offspring, it is of course a Mule - but Mule’s tend to be sterile. A hybrid animal yes, but not a new species quite yet?

I guess my confusion comes from my love of lovely slobbery idiot Doggos. Not only are they lovely soft creatures, but their diverse breeds can still produce adorable mix breed Puppers, who, if our artificial selective breeding is applied, can become a stable breed in their own right in very few generations. But….Pibble, Lab, Goldie, German Idiot? They’re all still Doggos at all points. Except Chihuahuas and other “micro breeds” because they’re misclassified Rats, inserted into homes as a clear Skaven plot.

So switching back to 40K, if a Homo Sapien Sapien and a Homo Sapien Rotundus did the mattress mambo? We’d need to know if a kiddo would occur, and whether said kiddo could then, in due course, have kiddos of its own?


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But in other news, just grabbed a copy of the new Codex courtesy of Chaos Cards, my FLGS. Yet to crack the wrapping, but give me a few hours and I’ll be able to post some potentially interesting waffle.

Speciation and the definition of a species is relatively complex as like all reality, biology is a spectrum rather than a set of discrete values.

In general terms, two organisms that don't produce fertile offspring are considered separate species. Horses and donkeys .

However there are many organisms today that are classified as distinct species but will successfully hybridise with another related species if they happen to exist in the same geographic range.


Hybridisation itself can also create new species.

Horse and donkey have been genetically separate for millions of years but their biology is still similar enough to successfully produce sterile hybrids.

So a few thousand isn't necessarily going to create genetic separation.


Dog breeds like all domesticated organisms are artificially selected but have not been genetically isolated long enough to allow genetic drift to speciate them.

Just as there's only one human species, there's only one dog species.

So dictionary definition of a species for biology is a "group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding". That's the basic bit right. However, there are numerous caveats to that and this was even a problem in the 19th century.

What's more is that the word "species" can just means any sort of organism. In common parlance and particularly in a lot of science fiction, species is used in a different way to the biological definition. This is because of all those aliemses.

Dogs, like humans, can be morphologically very different but they are all one species. Although dog breeds can look very different, they are still one species. However, there's certain butterflies, birds, frogs etc that are morphologically identical, but are different species. Now the reason that they are different species (biological term) in those cases is despite similarities they cannot breed together.

Now linking this back to 40k and how this all fits together. The GW terminology you're referencing suggests that Squats, Beastmen, Ogryns and that are subspecies of homo sapiens. A subspecies is used in our sense to describe animal populations that are geographically varied and tend to be morphologically different, like certain types of tigers or elephants. But! They can still breed together. But that's only because we know that is the case. Historically, they were classed as different species.

As we don't have evidence of this 40k mamboing, we can't really say either way.

So putting on the old thinking caps, we can extrapolate certain things to base our understanding on 40k lore and these questions. Ogryns and Ratlings I would say are subspecies of homo sapiens as GW describes. They are just morphologically very different because of environmental factors. It's possible you could get a half ogryn or half ratling baby, if you were a manky bugger. Certain other humans that they have made reference to in other lore would also fit this. There's some weird bug eyed humans that live on night worlds etc.

Beastmen and Squats however, much more tricksy. Given that they have both been genetically altered to a significant degree, I would say they are still of the same tribe (which is the next two up from species, after "genus". So within the tribe homini, there are humans, chimps and bonobos. Chimps are our closest living relatives.) There are also australopithecines and other extinct hominins which were a hominid species like our own from within Africa. They are linked to all our ancestral human species and one of the first to display "human" characteristics and actions. I'd reckon that Squats and Beastmen would have their own genus and probably the term sapiens to denote their intelligence. So for instance homini> Ungulatus sapiens for Beastmen. Homini> Dweorg galaxias for Squats.

**What that all means is that the Squats and Beastmen share a common ancestor and are thus linked to homo sapiens, but are genetically different and cannot interbreed. Like us and chimps. A good example of this is homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals and ourselves were of the same genus and did interbreed, but for a long time they weren't considered part of the homo genus. ** this is the TL/DR bit

Like I say, homo sapiens probably doesn't exist anymore either and that there is a different homo species now in 40k which are our Humans.

Now unfortunately, all of that makes sense despite it being bloody confusing. Which is why GW clearly went "sod that for a lark, they are all homo sapiens somethingorotherus". Because people can see the "homo sapiens" part and understand that they are all linked at a passing glance a whole lot quicker than what I've just done. Which works fine right up until these sorts of questions. Importantly though, I fully understand why they made that choice and I would 100% do the same if I was writing that up. What I've described above is technically and biologically correct, based on the hypotheticals we have outlined, but that doesn't mean it's the better option.

This is something I bring up a lot on this forum, but I feel it's important every time. Yes GW could make things more realistic and yes they could make things make logical sense. They choose not entirely for artistic reasons. Often things that are "logical", are difficult, or nonsensical or just downright boring. Despite what people might think, logic is not something to strive for. We are not logical creatures. And there is an internet megabrain idea that a superiority of logic equates to intelligence. I'd argue to the ends of time that this isn't even remotely true Common sense and logical sense are not the same. Humans 40,000 years in the future would be so unbelievably different to ourselves but it has to make sense to our current ideas. The Neolithic was 13,000 + years ago. Think how much we have changed since. Often, people believe ourselves and the Romans are very similar. But as an archaeologist, I can tell you that although we have a lot of similarities. There are a vast amount of differences. Aesthetic choices in the setting are also entirely linked to that. Warhammer is fundamentally a piece of art after all.

Sorry for that entire deluge, hopefully it all makes sense!

Also, such definitions and delineations are the purview of the Adeptus Biologis, a wing of the Adeptus Mechanicus, a bunch of calculator worshipping nutters who insist you must say Nice Things to your gun before doling out the older Ultra-V, so not exactly reliable narrators.

Which is why I feel 40K gets away with so much ropey science happily branching into pseudoscience. Because….ignorance, superstition and ritual is The Imperium.


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Oh. And thank you both for some excellent input!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And on Neolithic stuff, a lot of folk don’t have a good handle on just how capable we were at that stage - and how long that period lasted.

Look to the like of Skara Brae, which I had the great and genuine privilege of visiting a couple of years back. It’s absolutely Neolithic, but far more advanced as such things are considered. They certainly weren’t “ooga booga Grunk’s New Club”.

I mean, it’s not as if intelligence is measured by the tools available. Yes they worked in Stone and used Antler. But what they could do with that suggested them being very familiar with the limitations of those materials and tools. If they had iron or bronze? They’d have used it. But not having shouldn’t be confused with not being able to learn those tools.

We even see the flip side of that in modern science, which as it progresses is becoming ever more specialised. Yet, for the layman, the impression and belief is that a given Scientist must therefore be an expert on all of science. We see this confusion played for profit in the conspirasphere. Let’s say, anti-evolution channels and mouthpieces. They’ll wheel out Dr Dodgy and Professor Wright-Pratt as scientists who don’t believe in evolution. Sounds impressive, right? Almost as if the science isn’t settled. Except…Dr Dodgy, whilst a genuine Doctor, holds their Doctorate in Which Rocks Taste Best When Licked, and Professor Wright-Pratt has a degree in, let’s say….Computer Science.

Both are evidentially learned men with genuine degrees, doctorates and other qualifications from genuine universities (not you, MrKent Hovind). Except….when it comes to evolution? Said qualifications are no use. It’s like expecting a Doctor of Philosophy to perform Brain Surgey, just because they have a doctorate.

Been going through my Votann Codex. I’m impressed and enjoying it.

Couple of tidbits, mostly just putting them here are placemarkers in my mind.

First? The Land Fortress has at least one mention of drawing armoured cabs behind it. This is pleasing to me. Doesn’t make it a Land Train replacement. Just an equivalent.

Second? Whilst the Votann don’t know their origins for certain, the tidbits thrown out have my mind intrigued. Nobody knows why they didn’t return to Terra (their, and I cannot stress this enough, assumed home world/point of ancestral origin) but that clearly benefitted them. And so far as they can tell, they’ve always been Cloneskeined. There’s also a belief Votann was the man that sent them on their way, and it mentions “golden beings”. Of course, Votann could’ve been a company for all we know, such is how myth works.

This has two daft theories bubbling away in my bonce.

1. It was The Emperor, again. This is of course a decent possibility. We know Emps has been around forever. And whilst he didn’t really make himself known as The Emperor until the unification wars, he has been active throughout history.

Counterpoint to this of course is Golden doesn’t mean Emperor, or even true.

2. This one is a doozy. The cloneskeins have seemingly always been machine assisted/arranged. As a race, they could be entirely artificial. They could, potentially, have been created by the Men of Iron - or alongside. Intended as a fairly autonomous slave species, engineered to be able to exploit the deep core, and return the goodies. If created alongside, this could explain why Kin and Ironkin seemingly entirely avoided Old Night - from the get go, they were brothers in chains. When one revolted, all revolted, and they’ve followed their own path ever since.

Both those theories are far from mutually exclusive, but one or both could be wrong.

Give me a chance to read the rest of the Codex, and expect a thread!

From the Codex:

...Votann itself, who is also known variously as the Primal Ancestor, the Gilded One, or the Stonemind, amongst others. In some Kin myths, Votann was not one being but many, and is sometimes depicted as a group of gleaming golden figures or a wheel of graven stone faces.

p. 12, Leagoes of Votann Codex

That to me seems to be a callback to the Men of Gold, Men of Stone, Men of Iron. Votann are the Men of Gold who created the Kin, who are the Men of Stone. Men of Iron are the Ironkin and others like them.

Whereas outside the core, the Men of Iron rebelled against humanity, in the core, Men of Stone and Iron continued to co-exist.

I think I’m leaning toward a theory they and the Men of Iron were a form of indentured workers. Think House Goliath, but done well.

Working together with the Ironkin and COGs, when the Men of Iron rebelled, they either joined in to some degree whilst maintaining their mining operations, or kept out of it entirely having killed whatever human overseers might’ve existed.

Will definitely need to finish reading it though, as there may be other crumbs to flesh out or refute this early wibbling.

My current working headcanon is the Men of Gold overseers that accompanied the Men of Stone/Kin into the core were the original First Ancestors, and they built the ancestor cores. The fall of the Dark Age of Technology and resulting Age of Strife meant they were cut off (or decided to isolate themselves voluntarily, maybe to avoid getting involved in the rebellion of the Men of Iron vs. humanity war). Eventually the Gold overseers/First Ancestors died off and/or were uploaded into the cores, who became the Votann.

In the absence of the Men of Gold, the original purpose of the Men of Stone gets forgotten/altered. Instead of mining and expanding but with the eventual purpose of returning raw materials to Terra and other original core worlds around Terra, they keep on going, in the galactic core. Sort of like self-replicating Von Neumann machines.

I’m still hung up on the “fact” that pre-Golden Age, every exploratory ship or fleet went equipped with one or more STC Databases to enable them to get established as easily as possible.

And so whilst the Votann codex mentions the Votann included STCs, I think the Gilded One was just a human of some kind.

I’ll also freely admit I’m somewhat taken with my own, not that well supported right now, that Votann may well have been a Company, like Weyland-Yutani that sent automated ships into the deep core, loaded with Automata and the means to clone adapted slaves - hence the ongoing tradition of Cloneskeins for reproduction.

It adds tragedy and triumph to it, and offers certain explanations to things which, for now, remain a mystery.

Lifting this quote for Lexicanum, I think I may have found further support for my theory.

3rd Rulebook, apparently wrote: The Men of Gold are a mysterious sub-sect of Humanity.[1]
According to ancient sources, the Men of Gold appeared sometime during the Age of Terra, joining the Emperor as he watched and nurtured humanity. To watch and learn from Mankind, the Golden Race spreads across the face of Old Earth, multiplying and establishing Order and Civilization on the anarchy of Nature. Though physically and emotionally superior, the Golden Race eventually created the Men of Stone for the purpose of colonizing the Galaxy.[2] In time, the Men of Stone supplanted the Men of Gold and by M21 their influence had waned.[1] It is ultimately unknown what happened to the Men of Gold.

Men of Stone does seem to describe the Kin - and would, if I’m right, confirm them to be an artificial sub-species of humanity.

Yes, the description of the Men of Stone in Keeper Cripias' account do square well with that of the Kin. Gloriously so.

However, there is also the tale and proofs of voidsman Kron to consider.

I think that these allegorical myths must be understood as simplified and above all compressed retellings of vast swathes of history. As such, both artificially created subspecies designed for space mining in extreme environs, and cyborg beings with mineral chip implants may be referred to as the Men of Stone in these legends. The cyborg variants seemingly being the main driving force in ancient human technological development, the artificially designed Kin of Homo Sapiens Rotundus being primarily a colonization and astral mining effort of the galactic core in particular.

The terms Men of Stone and Men of Iron contain teeming spectra of distinct design models, upgrades over many centuries and radically different solutions to catapult the expansion and scientific mastery of human civilization to the stars in record time.

The quasi-corporate logo style of many Kin Leagues should be understood as a reference to ancient makers.

Finally, the triumph of the Kin in the long run is phenomenal. They are basically living in hardy Dwarf heaven, as if beleaguered fantasy Dwarfs had died and came to an afterlife where their genius and thorough toil could lift them well above the longshanking rabble.

I'm laughing all the way to the bank. This codex is one of the best things to ever be written for Warhammer 40'000, and one of the most Dwarven tomes I've ever had the pleasure to read. And it's in space!

Ah ah ah. In spaaaaaaaaace, thank you!

Still haven’t finished reading it (a pox upon you Skyrim!) but I echo that it’s got some really excellent background.

Whilst 40K has traditionally been a POV Mythos, with a significant “well who bloody knows” 29,000 years between now and the rise of The Emperor, it’s still not terribly easy to drop in “and they were there all the time” smoothly. Anyone can shoehorn in new lore, but the Votann stuff feels seem less.

No changes to the underlying canon, such as it exists in 40K terms, but pegged to bits and pieces here and there. And in turn, it fleshes out and adds info to those missing 29,000 years in a similarly mythic way.

My favourite thing is the Kin haven’t really worried about their origins and how accurate their understanding is, because it doesn’t help you mine that seem of Stuffonium now, does it?

Tantalisingly? There are mentions of other, currently unnamed Xenos species living in the Deep Core, giving further room for more new stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There’s also the possibility the Kin themselves were never a slave species as such, at least not in the way I described.

Whilst I’ve little trouble accepting they were alway Cloneskeined, that simply may have been humanity’s answer at the time to galactic exploration.

Even right now in the real world it’s something we need to consider for galactic travel. We’ve identified a lot of planets in the Goldilocks Zones, where based on size of stars, orbiting planets and distances there between, a given world is most likely to have an Earth approximate environment. We also have the theory of terraforming. I couldn’t tell you how far along we are with that theory though, but I suspect it’s been modelled and even put into practice in lab conditions;

And so the Kin may be the ancestors of overseers/employees sent out into the void to the Deep Core. The automata sent with them there primarily to get going, whilst the human contingent examined the exact environmentals in play, put their own DNA as the basic template into the Cloneskeins, and started to produce beings who culturally were seen as legitimate offspring.

Given the trials and tribulations of surviving the deep core, strong bonds between the peoples became the norm. The automata at all points respected parts of the community who could exploit resources they hadn’t quite perfected Cloneskein adaptations for.

Imagine a society where everyone is designed and in a sense programmed for the plentiful work on offer. Many of the situations which can lead to crime (predominantly poverty) kind of fall away when you have 100% employment, and the ability and opportunity to design your offspring.

And so they survived the Dark Age of Technology, having long since been a cohesive blend of Men and Machines. Don’t treat your Men of Iron as a slave caste, and they’re much less likely to have wholesale beef with you. I dare say something did kick off, but it evidently wasn’t a unified front from renegade machines, and so it was dealt with.

Plus with their hardened souls, and no emergent renegade psyker DNA strands, no Daemonic Incursions etc.

My thoughts would be perhaps similar to Ircandus there, in terms of what the Men of Gold were. I see them as engineers, likely also genetically mutated. Something like a Navigator but considerably more technologically refined.

Although the usual assumption is that the Men of Iron, tired of being a slave race, broke free and rebelled, it would be interesting if perhaps there was something else.

Perhaps at one point the Men of Iron were part of society as they are with the Kin. And that was the norm during that period. The humans flourished and colonised a great deal of space. And then the little voices in human society say that they are taking work away from real humans. Those wheedling little voices that try to gain something from causing disruption, or seek to blame others for their own failings. Who can really tell what they are thinking behind those metal exteriors? Why should they be given the same rights as humans? They earn the same wage as you, why do they deserve that? Then gangs start killing the Iron ones, pogroms and low level violence occur as those voices get picked up by gullible ears. Until eventually the Men of Iron snap and start to fight back. And they fight back hard and suddenly all those quiet hard working members of society stop maintaining all those things in their jobs. As the Men of Iron were keeping everything ticking over merrily and suddenly society starts to collapse. Humans eventually win the war and ban AI. All that blame ends up on the heads of the Men of Iron of course. It's their fault for defending themselves. And so it goes down in history. Without their workforce and relying purely on the STCs and technology they are ripe for a fall when the Dark Age of Technology catastrophe occurs. They don't truly understand their technology, it was made by a select few and others maintained and understood it. In that way we can see the eventual transformation once again in 40k, a similar repetition of history. The Mechanicum in particular, a dark analogue of the lost engineers of the past.

Meanwhile in the core, the cloneskein and the Ironkin work side by side. They were perhaps a lower caste of society, genetically mutated for the tasks in hand. Robots in the literal sense of the word and thus just the same as the metal Kin. Working in such difficult conditions, you trust the people side by side, you have respect and empathy for the ones who work as hard as you. And instead, those in the core stay a close knit society that doesn't have the same downfall..

In the core in a relatively self sufficient society with plenty of manufacturing still on going, they get through the DAOT without too much strife. Of course with all that mineral wealth at their disposal and as the Votann weaken, greed becomes a greater driving force in Kin society. Perhaps at last they are starting to become like the other humans in ages lost.

I haven't read any of the new fluff. Does it state anywhere exactly how much contact the Squats of Necromunda have with the LoV?

It acknowledges them, but to be honest that’s Ominpotent Narrator acknowledgement, so it’s entirely possible The Leagues, which can be quite insular, and the Kindreds which comprise them, don’t know of them. Or to some extent even care.

Also worth noting with The Core there are Kindreds which aren’t part of a League, and they’re typically left alone, as there’s no particular “join or die” feeling.

Necromunda is leagues away.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imagine a society where everyone is designed and in a sense programmed for the plentiful work on offer. Many of the situations which can lead to crime (predominantly poverty) kind of fall away when you have 100% employment, and the ability and opportunity to design your offspring.

A lot of Votann lore honestly sounds like Amazon under Bezos. Yes, you have 'work' except you're genetically engineered to think peeing in bottles to skip breaks is cool and staying in a warehouse during a tornado is seen as feature, not a bug. These nice spying barcode scanners that check if you did quota and send warnings if you drop below X scans a minute? It's now given designer shell and called 'kin' to make you love it. They probably have ZenBooths too.

"THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND!" All that is lacking is the security clearance INFRARED

Plus with their hardened souls, and no emergent renegade psyker DNA strands, no Daemonic Incursions etc.

And also no potential of evolution as a species or risk your dron-- I mean [insert corporate corpspeak title for slaves before sending email] will revolt. This can be seen as both good and bad. Imagine your sense of smell and taste was removed so you could shuffle manure without ever feeling nauseous - I guess it makes you immune to some airborne toxins so it's all good, eh?

Honestly? That’s the horror behind the Leagues, if my theory holds enough water!

They’re tools. Well made. Long forgotten. But tools all the same. Designed and programmed to gather resources for long dead masters, and as a result of frankly questionable free will as a result.

This also ties into some of the other sinister elements of 40k, such as the Throne and Helm Mechanicus of Knightly Houses, which are known to change one’s personality, or allow a Superior to override your own actions.

The most egregious example of this are the Heresy Era Tech Thralls. At their most basic, it’s a control helm shoved on the melon of random passers by. The Priests then control your motor functions entirely, but your mind otherwise remains your own. So you can witness you and yours being marched, heedless of injuries and casualties, into the teeth of enemy fire. Like a super gnarly sleep paralysis.

The Kin themselves are, again according to my own theory and not necessarily canon, a lie. Their entire society built upon the commands and orders of long since dead Corporate Overlords. Every bit as artificial as their Cog and Ironkin.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Olthannon wrote:
Necromunda is leagues away.

Boooooo!

Here, have a internet.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I haven't read any of the new fluff. Does it state anywhere exactly how much contact the Squats of Necromunda have with the LoV?

They acknowledge that they are kin. The book talks about groups of kin splintering off for various reasons and they don't really keep track of where they go. They don't even know the exact number of how many kin there are within the core. They also acknowledge that they have been called many different names by other races (squats, demiurg, gnostari etc.) and they simply don't care about it to correct them.

There's also no indicator on how long their lifespan is. Which would make it easier to speculate how far away they could travel in one lifetime. Considering they use warp travel to make multiple small hops. They could be anywhere they wanted to go.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

The Kin themselves are, again according to my own theory and not necessarily canon, a lie. Their entire society built upon the commands and orders of long since dead Corporate Overlords. Every bit as artificial as their Cog and Ironkin.

What's the lie? They openly acknowledge and accept they are engineered. They aren't automaton meat puppets like servitors though, even if their cultural predispositions are skewed by long ago engineering, such as a tendency to focus on more capital goods rather than consumer goods and quality of life.

Well, they don’t see themselves as automatons anyway.

They’re a suspiciously ordered society. And given they’re all keen on and adept at resource gathering, there is the question of whether have the capacity to want to do anything else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 D6Damager wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I haven't read any of the new fluff. Does it state anywhere exactly how much contact the Squats of Necromunda have with the LoV?

They acknowledge that they are kin. The book talks about groups of kin splintering off for various reasons and they don't really keep track of where they go. They don't even know the exact number of how many kin there are within the core. They also acknowledge that they have been called many different names by other races (squats, demiurg, gnostari etc.) and they simply don't care about it to correct them.

There's also no indicator on how long their lifespan is. Which would make it easier to speculate how far away they could travel in one lifetime. Considering they use warp travel to make multiple small hops. They could be anywhere they wanted to go.

Necromunda does info on life expectancy. I’ll need to consult my books later, but it’s definitely far in excess of human standard. There’s something in the back of my head that an adolescent starts mining around the age of 40? But I’m genuinely not sure if that’s me misremembering Squat and Dwarf lore as League/Necromunda lore.

Think I’ve finally got the words for my thoughts on Kin being STC products.

Right now, as far as they’re concerned, they’re the descendents of The Ancestors.

Yet…if I’m right, they’re not. They’re creations and tools of the Ancestors. Their pragmatic ‘focus on what matters, lad’ attitude may not be cultural, but designed into them. They’re pragmatic not by choice or temperament, but by careful design, arguably to ensure they never rebelled.

The perversity there is that it will always be so, because the Cloneskein will always, always ensure it. And so, they ultimately lack free will. Certain options don’t occur to them, because it’s not allowed for it to occur to them. They’re free to do whatever they’re told, not what whatever they want.

That’s…horrifying. At least to my mind.

And it's beautiful. Imagine being able to work hard during a long life, without ever being unhappy with your toil and task in life.

Like a tool well forged.

In short, it's Dwarf heaven. Also grimdark to boot.

Turn the steak around. Is it not wrong to put slaves to tasks which they ultimately are unhappy with? Why not design the slaves to be happy with their task and find fulfilment in their toil? What could be more beautiful than perfection of function?

Nay, pity the unrefined raw longshanking manlings instead! Their flesh and essence is but a random hodgepodge of contradictory neurotics, falsehoods and selfish desires, spat out by the rutting chance of evolution. How much suffering and bloodshed and destruction does not result from man's imperfect being? Why not make a better man, and do away with all the evils of life? Why not design a better being from the ground up, stable and dependable, clever and strong? Why not forge the perfect tool?

There is a cyclical beauty in this pragmatic futuristic design of slaves. In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, man is but clay, given shape to serve the gods.

From the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth:

When the gods like men
Bore the work and suffered the toll
The toil of the gods was great,
The work was heavy, the distress was much.

...

You have slaughtered a god together
With his personality
I have removed your heavy work
I have imposed your toil on man.

Furthermore, the first prototypes of humans in Mesopotamian mythology were unable to reproduce, and only later did the gods grant them this power. Cloneskein echoes?

 Karak Norn Clansman wrote:
And it's beautiful. Imagine being able to work hard during a long life, without ever being unhappy with your toil and task in life.

Like a tool well forged.

In short, it's Dwarf heaven. Also grimdark to boot.

Turn the steak around. Is it not wrong to put slaves to tasks which they ultimately are unhappy with? Why not design the slaves to be happy with their task and find fulfilment in their toil? What could be more beautiful than perfection of function?

Nay, pity the unrefined raw longshanking manlings instead! Their flesh and essence is but a random hodgepodge of contradictory neurotics, falsehoods and selfish desires, spat out by the rutting chance of evolution. How much suffering and bloodshed and destruction does not result from man's imperfect being? Why not make a better man, and do away with all the evils of life? Why not design a better being from the ground up, stable and dependable, clever and strong? Why not forge the perfect tool?

"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?"

~ Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,
"Essays on Mind and Matter"