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How do!

So first let me reassure you this isn’t some demented scammer hijacking my account. I am demented, but I’m not a scammer.

Rather, I’m talking about the origins of the term Prize Money, which are Naval in origin. A cursory Google suggests origins around 1403, but it really came into its own in the Napoleonic era. Certainty that’s the historical era I’m more familiar with, and first learned about this.

In short? It was recognised that refitting and refurbishing a warship was much more time and cost effective than building and arming one. And so Naval crews which captured, rather than sank or scuttled, enemy ships and got them back to Port were awarded Prize Money. As could Privateers with a legitimate Marque.

Suffice to say fortunes could be made from this. And as tends to happen with historical naval stuff, was surprisingly evenly shared down amongst the crew. Not proper evenly, but even the lowest crewmate got something - and that was still likely more money than they’d know what to do with, such things being relative.

Wiki article here for further reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money#:~:text=The%20following%20scheme%20for%20distribution,in%20political%20and%20financial%20circles.

And it’s got me thinking about 40K.

As we know, many races have some sort of Mend and Make Do policy. The Imperium for its many flaws is a dab hand at keeping things going well, well beyond their intended service life. And that extends to Chaos, who are almost certainly less sniffy about repurposing captured vessels. Orks will take anything, and let the Meks figure it out. Ad Mech? They’re perhaps less sniffy than the wider Imperium, seeing even a long corrupted Chaos Vessel as a potential source of new knowledge, maybe even an STC.

Tau? Well I guess they’d want to at least study any recovered or captured vessels, even if only for the sake of the Earth Caste’s scientific curiosity.

Votann? Possibly somewhere between Ad Mech and Orks. Ad Mech leaning is “let’s figure out what this ship cool”. Ork leaning “my what a lovely single big source of refined materials we can breakdown and make something better from”.

But other than the odd mention of Chaos and Imperial vessels occasionally changing hands and being purified or corrupted, I’m not aware of any particular background detailing the crew based reward for such service.

If you’re better read than me (and it’s some form of canon, including the RPG’s but excluding Fanon) and have encountered something detailing it? Do share. If not, feel free to speculate!

For the Astartes it's basically just prize ships. If a Heretic vessel is captured and sufficiently "not Chaos", it'll be purified by the Reclusiasm and the Mechanicus before being put into service.
However, that's pretty rare in the current age because, y'know, pretty hard to consecrate a ship that's 50% meaty bits.
The Scouring saw it happen a lot more often such as when the Ultramarines boarded and captured a Word Bearers Gloriana class before giving it to the newly founded Nemesis Chapter.

For everyone else? Boons from the Mechanicus if you capture a ship with fancy tech. Your Regiment/Priory/Squadron might just get some new tanks/ships/guns if you hand that fancy tech over to the Cogboys.

As you write of making a fortune, that leads me to thinking about piracy.

Orks - no comment. Chaos - great bargain when they lay their hands on a ship. I have got no idea what they could do with other species spaceships but since chaos can pretty much corrupt anything...

Obviously dark eldars when capturing ships of other kabals.

Eldar tech is so far beyond that of most other races' they wouldn't bother plus it's not made of wraithbone. Maybe capturing other Eldar ships? I have no insight into what repair capabilities eldar corsairs would have got at their disposal.

Human pirates are most probably never going to get the ressources to acutally repair them. Outfitting some civilian cargo ship as a raider vessel is hard enough for them I suppose already.

Just a few thoughts that popped into me head.

Oh, I was thinking that Corsairs, Chaos and Drukhari would all love to use Imperial ships, especially civilian vessels for all sorts of hush-hush infiltration and smuggling? Probably Kroot kinbands as well

You could even use captured Imperial vessels as ghetto missiles of sorts, as seen in the Angels Of Death animation

Well thought, completly skipped this

On Eldar ships?

I’m not 100%, but there’s something at the back of my mind that Wraithbone decays away if not actively, psychically, tended to.

Which may mean any fresh Prize may command a decent prize amongst Chaos Forces, if only for study/messing around with. Not to mention the very real possibility of a haul of inhabited Spirit Stones.

So whether or not Chaos ever figures out how to make it go? The raw materials themselves may hold some value due to its esoteric nature?

Other Xenos ships (Tau, Ork, Other) would, presumably, still have systems and controls analogous enough that it could be worked out. What would then be done with such knowledge is gonna vary wildly. But I again think there’d be some inherent value in recovering and towing back such a wreck.

Not exactly Prize Money, but from Gaunt's Ghosts - First and Only:

Fereyd laughed. ‘Sixty years ago on Geyluss Auspix, a rat-water world a long way from nothing in Pleigo Sutarnus, a team of Imperial scouts found an intact STC in the ruins of a pyramid city in a jungle basin. Intact. You know what it made? It was the standard template constructor for a type of steel blade, an alloy of folded steel composite that was sharper and lighter and tougher than anything we’ve had before. Thirty whole Chapters of the great Astartes are now using blades of the new pattern. The scouts became heroes. I believe each was given a world of his own. It was regarded as the greatest technological advance of the century, the greatest discovery, the most perfect and valuable STC recovery in living memory.’

Also, in Death of Integrity Blood Drinkers & Novamarines want to destroy a space hulk to stop a genestealer infiltration but the AdMech want the hulk, so they offer each Chapter a new strike cruiser in exchange for helping them 'recover' the hulk.

That? Would definitely apply to capturing a Space Hulk, and is indeed precisely why The Imperium doesn’t just do whatever it can to obliterate them each time they translate into Realspace.

It may also apply to certain corrupted vessels. Certainly I can imagine one of the few Gloriana Class being crippled might very well attract a concerted effort to board, clear and recover. Quite possibly an insanely concerted effort - like calling in an Astartes Chapter for the boarding, to be sure it’s been cleansed.

Even if the craft itself is beyond redemption (literal and metaphorical) studying its systems and components could see whatever fragments of plans or uncorrupted examples back into service.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Even if the craft itself is beyond redemption (literal and metaphorical) studying its systems and components could see whatever fragments of plans or uncorrupted examples back into service.

Or compiled into some magos' overly selfish datacodex, never to be heard of ever again

I can’t see an imperial ship rewarding its lower ranked ratings with anything. They are meat for the grinder. The higher officer echelons might get a nice individual reward for bringing in a prize. Otherwise, as noted above, the reward that might have most impact across all ranks and files would be ship upgrades.

They get one more lash from the Overseer's whip because they did a good job.

As an aside? Those helots and ratings etc may not even be truly considered crew, so much as an integral part of the ship’s worky bitz.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As an aside? Those helots and ratings etc may not even be truly considered crew, so much as an integral part of the ship’s worky bitz.

I don’t think there are any sources that would suggest this. They are crew. They just have no rights and are used up with pure callousness.

That’s what my poor wording is getting to.

They’re not seen as individual humans. Just another part of the wider mechanism easy to replace more or less upon demand.

I don’t know about navy vessels but the 2 space marine scouts that found the STC for an improved combat knife were both made planetary governors

GW brought out some bad fluff saying Gullyman had forbade the taking of prizes and instead heretic gear has to be just destroyed. Clearly he supports no models no rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:
I can’t see an imperial ship rewarding its lower ranked ratings with anything. They are meat for the grinder. The higher officer echelons might get a nice individual reward for bringing in a prize. Otherwise, as noted above, the reward that might have most impact across all ranks and files would be ship upgrades.

For the serfs there is always promotion. You are still on the ship, but now you are skill zone 1 or a junior petty officer for the next wave of replacements.

There’s the story about 2 space marine scouts that found an STC for an improved combat knife and we’re both made planetary governors of the own planet

I think you're mixing up the story Gaunt is told in First and Only.
Those are Imperial Guard scouts, not Astartes.

No is specifically remember it being about space marines scouts but that’s not to say that the story hasn’t been tinkered with. I haven’t read that book so I deffo didn’t get it from there

The entire story you are describing is from First and Only.

Two Imperial Guard Scouts found a new type of Combat Knife from an STC that was adopted by 30 Chapters and each was given a planet as a reward.