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If you had the magic powers to pluck any 41at millennium character from Warhammer 40k and drop him/her in say... Liverpool.

Could they survive, adapt, and thrive or would they be defeated by Britian's finest?

I think most human 40k characters are so ruthless and focussed, that they would probably be able to embed themselves quite effectively. The concept of setting up into a new and unknown culture is something that happens quite a lot, even just in the human sphere, while we have no real experience of it. Would we be able to even notice it?

Genestealers for example would probably just outright take over. We have no defences against psychic effects and no experience of combatting a multi-cultural infiltration event.

Would we pick up on orkoid physiology and reproduction before they reach critical mass? maybe.

For chaos characters, we're just another target host to plunder, similar to genestealers.

Other tyranids - there are a lot of places in the world where we have no real observation where they could start digging in. Tropical and arboreal forests. Deep ocean. Could we nuke them into oblivion if they don't have orbital assets? maybe.

Other xenos might have more difficulty just because they look different. Eldar could probably make a go of hiding in plain sight, but ther is a cultural issue there. I think if anyone was going to get a solid shoeing in Liverpool it would be Craftworld Eldar. I think Dark Eldar would probably have an easier job in infiltrating the local underworld and staying out of sight.

The Emperor is already here, biding his time...

If we're talking human characters I guess a lot of them could adapt quite easily. The biggest risk would be them using extreme violence and getting arrested for it.

A lot of characters would stand out though. Space Marines are giants. Someone from the Adeptus Mechanicus would certainly turn a few heads too.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
If you had the magic powers to pluck any 41at millennium character from Warhammer 40k and drop him/her in say... Liverpool.

Could they survive, adapt, and thrive or would they be defeated by Britian's finest?

I think most non-augmented humans would be fine. Any post-humans would stick out like a sore thumb; they'd almost certainly be killed (eventually) during the inevitable attempt to capture for study/dissection. The same for Chaos-aligned individuals, just with a much higher body count.

A single Genestealer? We're screwed. Any other single bug would die eventually.

Dark Eldar are murder hobos and would attract WAY too much attention. Craftworlders could probably adapt just fine, if they can keep their ears hidden.

Ratlings and Squats would likely be okay; Ogryns, not so much.

For T'au, it would depend on the caste and disposition. Blending in isn't happening - it's about whether or not they can talk their way out of NOT ending up in a black site lab.

A Necron is so far beyond us that they could probably just do whatever they want - eventually we'd learn to either stay out of their way or go extinct.

An Ork is going down fighting.

With the number of people getting plastic surgery to give themselves elf ears, eldar could hide in plain sight if they wanted to. Or they could use their natural psychic gifts to influence the perceptions of everyone to avoid questioning them too closely.

I actually think an Imperial human would have a very hard time staying hidden on a heretical planet that worships false gods. Their baseline level of religious fervour puts the average evangelical mega preacher to shame. They'd either become a preacher themselves to try and get people to convert to the true faith, or end up in a mass shooting trying to kill heretics...

The tau have the most 'modern' outlook on life compared to other factions (even the eldar would have a hard time with how their society functions), and if they could hide their appearance, they'd do the best IMO.

I don’t agree a majority of Imperial Citizens are zealots.

Believers? Sure. The state religion is pervasive and drummed into you. But from the books I’ve read? Most Guardsmen (with some exceptions, such as Tallarns) are more CoE than Westboro in their faith.

Sure. They'd probably align themselves with criminals though, Earthly laws would probably be terribly lenient to their sensibilities.

As for xenos, not sure how it would all turn out. Humanity is at its best when their existence is at risk, at least in the short term. But for long terms threats? They dont seem to faze us..

The vast majority of Imperial citizens are browbeaten and submissive. Religiousity has nothing to do with one's gumption, ambition or endurance. They would probably adapt.

 Hellebore wrote:
With the number of people getting plastic surgery to give themselves elf ears, eldar could hide in plain sight if they wanted to. Or they could use their natural psychic gifts to influence the perceptions of everyone to avoid questioning them too closely.

Aren't Eldar 7 feet tall, with inhuman facial features and an alien gait?

 Hellebore wrote:
With the number of people getting plastic surgery to give themselves elf ears, eldar could hide in plain sight if they wanted to. Or they could use their natural psychic gifts to influence the perceptions of everyone to avoid questioning them too closely.

Aren't Eldar 7 feet tall, with inhuman facial features and an alien gait?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I don’t agree a majority of Imperial Citizens are zealots.

Believers? Sure. The state religion is pervasive and drummed into you. But from the books I’ve read? Most Guardsmen (with some exceptions, such as Tallarns) are more CoE than Westboro in their faith.

But we don't live in the oppressive regime of the imperium, so a CoE type in the Imperium doesn't necessarily calibrate to the same behaviour of a real CoE type. The most mild imperial citizen is indoctrinated to be xenophobic in the extreme, to consider mutants as heresy required of purging (one of the few Lex demands of all imperial worlds) and to treat any religion that doesn't place the emperor at its centre as the most heretical of teachings.

It doesn't matter how mild you are - mild is only relevant to the paradigm you're in - a mild serial killer only kills 5 people, but he's still a serial killer. The Imperial paradigm says no religions except the emperor and none of the earth religions have the emperor at their head. The Non abrahamic religions especially as they have pantheons or animism at their cores. No central 'counts as' Emperor to even squint at as a possibility. And putting aside whether the emperor actually was Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama historically, the actions ascribed to him in the Imperial church are about his 31st millennia achievements rather than anything else. So transferring a 40k character to modern times they'd find nothing to connect the emperor to in any of these religions. The Ecclesiarchy teaches you to purge the mutant and unclean. but Jesus literally made them his friends and fed them. That is a big no no, so clearly heretical.

 Hellebore wrote:

It doesn't matter how mild you are - mild is only relevant to the paradigm you're in - a mild serial killer only kills 5 people, but he's still a serial killer. The Imperial paradigm says no religions except the emperor and none of the earth religions have the emperor at their head. The Non abrahamic religions especially as they have pantheons or animism at their cores. No central 'counts as' Emperor to even squint at as a possibility. And putting aside whether the emperor actually was Jesus, Mohammed, Siddhartha Gautama historically, the actions ascribed to him in the Imperial church are about his 31st millennia achievements rather than anything else. So transferring a 40k character to modern times they'd find nothing to connect the emperor to in any of these religions. The Ecclesiarchy teaches you to purge the mutant and unclean. but Jesus literally made them his friends and fed them. That is a big no no, so clearly heretical.

They're still human*, and that means they're adaptable and social collectivists with innate (at worst vestigial) empathy. Imperial citizens do not freely come to their religious beliefs and/or duties through self-determination; they have no other option that is safe. If you take them out of their society most of them would mellow almost instantly. You can see this a thousand different ways in the actual world, from European colonizers who got stranded in New World locations to 20th century migrants who move from places soaked in religion to more secular states. The average Imperial citizen is a pushover and a bootlicker... the vast majority will NOT have the internal fortitude to cleave to their former belief system as a single node in a brand new world.

* with the caveat that yeah yeah there are officially subspecies of "human" in 40K lore, human enclaves have evolved over 40K years, etc. But I think for the purposes of this thread we're assuming most Imperials haven't evolved out of fitting our definition of human

I mean humanity will run the gamut of behaviours and responses sure. But the way the humans in the imperium are depicted on average and the amount of indoctrination they have gone through, it's not just going to turn off when they encounter new cultures that clash with their worldview.

We have a hard enough time with cult members and deprogramming them inside our own civilisation right now, taking someone from a theocratic cult state with oppressive thought policing and world view programming for their entire lives backed by and encouraging extreme superviolence and trying to integrate them into our current world is orders of magnitude harder than that.

I think we don't truly appreciate how alien to social mores and training an imperial citizen receives and how it shapes their mind.

 Hellebore wrote:
We have a hard enough time with cult members and deprogramming them inside our own civilisation right now

That's because they are parts of active, mutually-supportive cultural groups who continually reify their beliefs, not solitary individuals.

And if you took one of them from that situation and dropped them into the rest of the world with no support from their previous world, they don't just magically become rational people again. Look up cult deprogrammers working with people that have been taken from those situations and are no longer connected to the cults. It takes them ages of concerted deliberate effort to change their thinking. Just dumping them into the world without someone to deliberately change how they think is going take even longer, it at all.

 Hellebore wrote:
And if you took one of them from that situation and dropped them into the rest of the world with no support from their previous world, they don't just magically become rational people again.

That's why I think a Vindicare Assassin might do the best. He's not showy or flashy, can find work and isn't insane.

 Hellebore wrote:
I mean humanity will run the gamut of behaviours and responses sure. But the way the humans in the imperium are depicted on average and the amount of indoctrination they have gone through, it's not just going to turn off when they encounter new cultures that clash with their worldview.

We have a hard enough time with cult members and deprogramming them inside our own civilisation right now, taking someone from a theocratic cult state with oppressive thought policing and world view programming for their entire lives backed by and encouraging extreme superviolence and trying to integrate them into our current world is orders of magnitude harder than that.

I think we don't truly appreciate how alien to social mores and training an imperial citizen receives and how it shapes their mind.

A zealous believer of the Imperial Creed might have two responses. The first is that, upon realizing that the Emperor doesn't exist in this world (or is at least in hiding), they have a severe mental breakdown and end up dying in a confrontation with police or regular people whom they see as heretical. The other is, upon seeing the complete non-existence of the Emperor and Imperial Creed, they end up descending into complete despair and killing themselves.

There's a couple of characters who I believe could adapt to our world... and thrive in it.

The Sigilite would be at the top of the list.

The middle would be filled with any of Dan Abnett's perpetuals.

And finally, I believe UR-025 would be ecstatic that the Imperium isn't around... and then quickly take over.