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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
Yeah, about that: in a life-or-death survival situation, women are too important to be bullet-stops. That's the job of (surplus) males.

Depends on how desperate things are. In a sufficiently desperate situation you send all of the women into the meat grinder and worry about the future later. If you fail to stop a Tyranid invasion all of the women and children are going to be eaten anyway and at least if they die on the battlefield they might contribute to stopping the invasion.

Not that it really matters for the guard, since they're the elite of the elite and a negligible percentage of a planet's population. Recruiting women for the guard/PDF has no impact on population.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

That was what I suggested. The old veterans mind the families of those abroad, and a larger kinship network sustains the families at home.

My point was more that they probably don't have the same concepts of "loved ones" and "families" that we do. Their loved ones might be the people they were assigned to train with or under. Biological parents do not need to stick around to "raise families" because no such thing exists in Catachan culture.

 Altruizine wrote:

My point was more that they probably don't have the same concepts of "loved ones" and "families" that we do. Their loved ones might be the people they were assigned to train with or under. Biological parents do not need to stick around to "raise families" because no such thing exists in Catachan culture.

Now we're into the territory of speculative science fiction. How malleable is human nature?

A heavy topic for such a limited thread.

A more germane question would be: are Catachan units kept up to strength with new drafts, or are new units created with each recruiting class - to wither away without replacements?

Isn't it standard operating procedure for Guard that depleted regiments are merged into the closest equivalent (if possible).

Regiments are lucky to get reinforced from their homeworld. Either it gets worn down and eventually disbanded or merged with another unit (preferably one from the same world but not always).
As for Catachan families, it's so far from even the concept of a "traditional" family where the mother raises kids and does household jobs and the father goes out to work because they simply cannot do that. For what time the couple spends together with their children every day is about avoiding very likely death. Infant mortality is high and most children don't make it to ten years of age. There are no industry jobs to take or fields to farm so eventually a Catachan either joins the Guard or gets killed. Platoons of Catachans often contain siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, parents or even grandparents but that has little to no negative effect on the unit cohesion or morale because Catachan society isn't too picky about family ties. Parents will flat out not acknowledge their children if they serve alongside them and will treat them no differently to any other soldier. Nepotism just doesn't exist in their social makeup.

 Overread wrote:
At a galactic scale you'd need billions to spread out over millions of worlds to have a viable impact. GW are not alone though, once you get to the galactic scale numbers are almost meaningless because to have meaningful numbers you start counting in values so large most people start to lose any sense of relativity - it all just becomes big insane numbers.

Catachan's aren't famous for being numerous. They're famous for being some of the best jungle fighters the Imperium has.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Sperm Banks and IVF would also help combat inbreeding.

This is actually how I see Krieg operating. Basically working on a generational cycle. Basically you have 18 generations being processed at anyone time.

- 18th generation get all their sperm and eggs scooped out for the next generation. Tech-priest Biologis would supervise the combination of DNA and then put them into the Vitae Wombs.
- 6th to 17th generation are basically all in training.
- 2nd to 5th generation are nurtured and indoctrinated.
- 1st generation is the one that was just born.

Depending on the scale of the operation you could have hundreds of millions of soldiers deploying every year. All of this doesn't even impact the regular population as it's essentially self sustaining.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
A more germane question would be: are Catachan units kept up to strength with new drafts, or are new units created with each recruiting class - to wither away without replacements?

There is also the possibility that they re-stock on-site, aka have families (probably people they pick up on the worlds they fight for) with them and breed like rabbits between warzones. This would allow the Catachan regiment to keep on going almost infinitely after the first off-world generation grows up and gets inducted into the Guard.

Tygre wrote:
Isn't it standard operating procedure for Guard that depleted regiments are merged into the closest equivalent (if possible).

No faction in 40k is as gloriously chaotic in their processes than the Imperial Guard, so even when there is an SOP, it's likley to be ignored a lot.

That said, a lot of the IG regimental organization lore is based on a simple reality: 40k regiments are raised on one world, and then sent via not super reliable means to another world, get to a warzone that may or may not be the one they were intended for, and then fight. And then, if they win, they get sent to another, completely different warzone.

So, at least in 3rd edition (when I started playing), guard regiments were roughly 3000 men, simply because that's what one transport could hold. And regiments were rarely, if ever, reinforced, because that's like one needle finding it's needle buddy in the haystack. Sometimes cut down regiments would be merged, either with another regiment from their home world or whoever was standing close by, and sometimes you just move two or three cut down regiments into a "brigade" that you use basically just like a regiment.

Historically, in the American Civil War, the confederates tried hard to reinforce their regiments with new recuirts, while the Union let them whittle down. there are famous stories of Union regiments of barely 150 men fighting in major battles.

I think that in the 40 universe, if you follow the callous dictum that survivors are going to be the best soldiers, having two 1000 man veteran regiments might be just as useful as one 3000 man regiment of raw recruits. (Oh, and BTW, not every planet has a proud martial history. in the 3rd edition codex, there's a letter from a recruit to his brother, talking about how he'll be trained on the ship ride to the warzone.)

 Polonius wrote:
he'll be trained on the ship ride to the warzone.

This sounds reasonable. Travel between warzones takes months, and legit training from a proper Imperial Guard instructor is most likely leagues above anything some crappy PDF on a random dirtball world can provide. Not to mention that it opens up creative training methods like using the dropouts as target practice - they can't go home anyway, so they might as well make themselves useful!

 AtoMaki wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
he'll be trained on the ship ride to the warzone.

This sounds reasonable. Travel between warzones takes months, and legit training from a proper Imperial Guard instructor is most likely leagues above anything some crappy PDF on a random dirtball world can provide. Not to mention that it opens up creative training methods like using the dropouts as target practice - they can't go home anyway, so they might as well make themselves useful!

Yeah, one of the flaws in the way that the IG work is that since people, once inducted, rarely get home, you don't have combat veterans teaching the new inductees. Again, historically one of the advantages that the Allies had in WWII was that they rotated top pilots, infantry NCOs, and naval officers back from combat zones to train new people. This raised the competency "floor" for raw recruits well above what the axis powers could provide.

Still, plenty of PDFs have expert training. Cadia, of course, is the gold standard, but many PDFs get combat experience against orks, pirates, rebels, etc. Again, as always, if you can imagine it, it probably exists in 40k. So yes, there are some IG regiments that are literally farm boys trained on the ride there, and other regiments that are razor honed combat veterans.

Done some digging.

So, the lore on Catachan's population being 12 million is from a White Dwarf (April 2012 for those who want to look it up on Warhammer Vault). It mentions 4 deathworlds incl. Catachan in the displayed datascreen, but no timestamp is given. This is consistent with typical deathworld populations, which are apparently usually below 15 million (3rd edition rulebook, I think?).

Meanwhile, the 5th edition 40k rulebook describes Catachan as tithing >50,000,000 guardsmen in a single year, with a timestamp close to the end of M41. These are obviously incompatible on the face of it. There are very high Catachan regimental numbers in the lore, consistent with some very high tithes- regimental numbers >1000. That would suggest a tithe of at least ~5 million over a sufficiently short period of time for the previously raised regiments to have not been destroyed yet (so not annual, but probably measured in decades at most).

There are several ways this could make sense. Firstly, an Administratum error has documented one of these incorrectly- canonically this is quite likely.

Secondly, Catachan may have had periods where its population was much larger. It is a world totally reliant on external Imperial supplies, so it may be able to support considerably larger populations than you would expect for a deathworld due to not being reliant on local resources. The 12 million figure could have either been in the distant past, or actually after huge numbers of Catachan troops were unsustainably drafted for the wars against the Orks plaguing the region of space around Catachan.

This is all speculation obviously, but interesting to think about.

TBF the 12 million population could be accurate if the Guard tithe is excluded. As soon as a Catachan signs on to the Guard they're excluded from the census perhaps. Or 40k is just silly with numbers.

I'm trying to work out what kind of surplus a population of 12 million could produce annually.

We know that only approximately a quarter of Catachans reach their 10th birthday, but the majority that do survive to aldulthood. We also know older Catachans exist (at least old enough to be grandparents before joining the Guard) and I suspect adult Catachans probably reach ages around 70 fairly frequently as you can remain fit and active to this age easily. I assume that the menopause is likely to be a trivial issue for Imperial medicine to overcome.

Catachan regiments are mixed gender, but appear to be majority men. I suspect that women more commonly remain on Catachan producing the planet's primary export of more Catachans. Therefore the adult population of Catachan would be mostly women. A lot of the population will also be children with a very high breeding rate.

Assuming a broadly even distribution of ages (which is not going to be accurate- there will be more very young than very old) suggests around 9 million of breeding age. If three quarters are female, that could be ~6.75 million babies per year, or one and a half a million people reaching adulthood each year. A lot of that will be needed just to replace population losses due to Catachan itself, but even a quarter of a million is ~50 typically-sized regiments raised per annum (and Catachan regiments tend to be on the small size). Obviously very rough numbers, would have to do much more maths and fiddling to get a population pyramid that actually fit 12 million with a good surplus of Guard regiments.

Perhaps the > 50,000,000 tithed in a year figure was a scribe accidentally adding a couple of zeros to 500,000, or misplacing a decimal point...

 Gert wrote:
TBF the 12 million population could be accurate if the Guard tithe is excluded. As soon as a Catachan signs on to the Guard they're excluded from the census perhaps. Or 40k is just silly with numbers.

Yes, it could be the case that Catachan had a population of > 62 million, and 50 million+ were tithed off just prior to the Administratum census showing 12 million on Catachan. Obviously unsustainable, but a massive local Waaagh threatening one of the most important forge worlds in the entire galaxy could warrant that.

One thing I would like to point out. Being a grandparent doesn't require the individual to be of advanced age. If Catachans are having kids from 18 (because we're keeping it clean folks) then reasonably speaking a Catachan family can have three generations by the time the first generation reaches 40ish.

 Gert wrote:
One thing I would like to point out. Being a grandparent doesn't require the individual to be of advanced age. If Catachans are having kids from 18 (because we're keeping it clean folks) then reasonably speaking a Catachan family can have three generations by the time the first generation reaches 40ish.

Very true. I don't think 70 is unreasonable as a rough upper limit though, modern humans tolerate heavy labour into their 60's if they maintain good health in other regards. We know Catachan has very skilled medical staff from their lore- they have to be to patch up all the injuries and diseases of Catachan.

By the time a Catachan reaches 70, we're 4 generations in and that's a heck of a lot of Guardsmen. Sort of like how the Jem'Hadar live really short lives and anyone that survives past 20 is considered an honoured elder.

 Gert wrote:
By the time a Catachan reaches 70, we're 4 generations in and that's a heck of a lot of Guardsmen. Sort of like how the Jem'Hadar live really short lives and anyone that survives past 20 is considered an honoured elder.

Well, I don't think every Catachan gets recruited, it is likely there are elders on the planet teaching the young 'uns how to survive.

Obviously not but if we assume the dark age adage of "Make enough kids, beat the odds" is present in Catachan society, and the majority of Catachans enlist, then its still a lot.

We also can’t assume The Imperium doesn’t ship in families and folk from elsewhere.

Catachan is a helluva training world. And the Imperium can literally never have enough super tough turbo nutters.

Heck, ship in Problem Families from other worlds. They’ll be far too busy just trying to survive to be any trouble. Or y’know, too murdered to deth for their own stupidity.

The only thing I'd say to counter that is that the Catachan people are massively disdainful of people not from Catachan. Their "Survival of the Fittest" attitude lends them a huge superiority complex, and while it is semi-justified, they barely tolerate outsiders as allies on the battlefield. Having thousands, if not millions of people shipped onto Catachan doesn't really seem like it would work at all. There'd be no mingling of the local and foreign groups on a personal or cultural level, and even if they did mix, the traits found in all Catachans would take years to surface in those of non-Catachan lineage.

That's it, I'm gonna spend the holiday's writing fan fic about the Weird Al Yankovic of Catachan. He just wants to make people laugh and have a good time.

 Haighus wrote:

Meanwhile, the 5th edition 40k rulebook describes Catachan as tithing >50,000,000 guardsmen in a single year, with a timestamp close to the end of M41. These are obviously incompatible on the face of it. There are very high Catachan regimental numbers in the lore, consistent with some very high tithes- regimental numbers >1000. That would suggest a tithe of at least ~5 million over a sufficiently short period of time for the previously raised regiments to have not been destroyed yet (so not annual, but probably measured in decades at most).

Maybe we could take the 50 million guardsmen as a soft retcon for their population? If that number could be seen as an emergency tithe and not a regular one. Seeing as it says in a single year, implying this was only done once. Again, if we look to history you could use a manpower percentage to population of say Germany by the end of WW2. From memory this was roughly 30%.

Applying that to Catachan could imply that Catachan's population managed to reach roughly 150 million.

Do we even know how big Catachan is as a planet? As I suspect that might inform its potential population.

Though this https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Catachan

Claims a population of just 12,000,000.

Jarms48 wrote:

 Haighus wrote:

Meanwhile, the 5th edition 40k rulebook describes Catachan as tithing >50,000,000 guardsmen in a single year, with a timestamp close to the end of M41. These are obviously incompatible on the face of it. There are very high Catachan regimental numbers in the lore, consistent with some very high tithes- regimental numbers >1000. That would suggest a tithe of at least ~5 million over a sufficiently short period of time for the previously raised regiments to have not been destroyed yet (so not annual, but probably measured in decades at most).

Maybe we could take the 50 million guardsmen as a soft retcon for their population? If that number could be seen as an emergency tithe and not a regular one. Seeing as it says in a single year, implying this was only done once. Again, if we look to history you could use a manpower percentage to population of say Germany by the end of WW2. From memory this was roughly 30%.

Applying that to Catachan could imply that Catachan's population managed to reach roughly 150 million.

Well, it would be the other way around. The > 50 million figure is earlier, from the 5th edition rulebook in 2008. Note the timestamp to 998.M41:


However, this was still the current edition at the time of the other source in White Dwarf 388, April 2012 (just prior to 6th edition). There is no timestamp, so it could be from any point within the Imperium's history:


So go figure. Due to the lack of timestamp on the latter, these are entirely reconcilable within a 10000 year window, or even a single year if the 12 million number is after the > 50 million number (suggesting a huge emergency tithe gutting the population), but still quite a discrepancy at face value.

For further reference, the highest-numbered Catachan regiment I am aware of in the lore is the Catachan MXIV (1014th). That suggests Catachan can raise an approximate force of at least 5 million guardsmen* before it has to refound a regiment and reuse the regimental number of the destroyed formation. This period is likely to be greater than a year when factoring in travel time to warzones, time to receive news of destroyed/disbanded regiments, and the fact that Catachan regiments seem to be pretty tough and tend to hang around in warzones for awhile as veteran guerilla forces.


*Assuming a regimental size of 5000 at founding. We don't know the size of Catachan regiments at full strength, only that they tend to be on the smaller side, so they may be more like 3000 men on the bottom end of muster strengths. 5000 is in the middle of the range for typical regiments, so seemed good enough for rough calculations.

Edit: spoiler'd the top image for size.

Also keep in mind Imperial Guard Soldiers are Catachan’s sole export. That’s all it’s tithed.

So no heavy or agricultural industry to avoid denuding of a workforce. Just….pop out the sprogs, raise them to their teen years, ship them off. That explains why such a comparatively small population can support 50,000,000 being shipped off world. Particularly if we assume (and I think it’s a safe bet) any retiring Catachans are shipped back to keep the population, well, populating. Plus we know there are various non-traditional baby making options within The Imperium.

Sort of? I mean there's the Vitae Wombs but they're borderline illegal and presumably take a massive energy base to use, something that Catachan absolutely won't have. Krieg is seemingly the only planet that is tolerated in their use of the technology because they are a vital source of troops and munitions.
Apart from that cloning is illegal and from what can be gleaned from the Catachan Devils novel, Catachan society is just very blunt, which is a necessity of their murderous planet. If a couple wants to get together and have kids then they just go for it. It just so happens that the Catachans seem to be a bit of a rowdy bunch anyway, which again if every day could be your last, why live it any other way?

Is cloning illegal in the Imperium? Not sure I’ve ever read anything saying that. Not that I’m claiming to have read all sources.

It happens regularly on Necromunda for certain.

I might be misremembering but I was sure that clones were considered a form of heresy, not being "real" humans and all that. It does seem that cloning tends to fall within the purview of largely deviant "medical practitioners" such as Fabius Bile or the Cognitae from the Bequin novels. Certainly, Bile would not have invested so much of his resources and effort into creating not just regular clones but Primarch clones if the practice was sanctioned by the Imperium. The two recorded instances of the Imperium trying cloning (or replicae) was with Astartes and it ended very badly as the process is barely understood.
As for Necromunda, it always seems to be the exception rather than the rule as a setting within a setting often has to be. Goliaths are vat born, the Escher might have some cloning capabilities, the Van Saar are all irradiated by an STC machine, the Delaque are weirdos and the only relatively "human" gangs seem to be the Orlocks and Cawdor. It's not really a good template for basing the Imperium on.

According to the 8th Edition Codex, Catachan tithes dozens of Regiments to the Astra Mililtarum each year. If we assume low dozens (30-50 Regiments) and that a Regiment in the lower size range (say 1-2K Soldiers), Catachan is tithing maybe 50K soldiers a year.

As others have noted, 50K out of 120M is really a drop in the bucket. You can double the tithe to 100K soldiers and still not reach 1% of the population. I'm sure Catachan has a high enough birth rate between give the demands caused by death/tithe rate. Remember, Astra Militarum soldiers almost never go home, so they might as well be considered dead as far as the homeworld population is concerned.

 Gert wrote:
I might be misremembering but I was sure that clones were considered a form of heresy, not being "real" humans and all that. It does seem that cloning tends to fall within the purview of largely deviant "medical practitioners" such as Fabius Bile or the Cognitae from the Bequin novels. Certainly, Bile would not have invested so much of his resources and effort into creating not just regular clones but Primarch clones if the practice was sanctioned by the Imperium. The two recorded instances of the Imperium trying cloning (or replicae) was with Astartes and it ended very badly as the process is barely understood.
As for Necromunda, it always seems to be the exception rather than the rule as a setting within a setting often has to be. Goliaths are vat born, the Escher might have some cloning capabilities, the Van Saar are all irradiated by an STC machine, the Delaque are weirdos and the only relatively "human" gangs seem to be the Orlocks and Cawdor. It's not really a good template for basing the Imperium on.

*Cloning* specifically seems not to be allowed, though whether that’s a formal rule or just standard practice due to a belief it tends to go wrong is unclear (cf the Afriel Strain)

But vat growing (of unique individuals) seems to be pretty common, albeit more often for various forms of servitors than for actual citizens a la House Goliath