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I've always been curious about the racial phenotypic composition of the citizens of the Imperium.

Do you think it is similar to the world today, or maybe 80% Caucasian?

It is made up of all races.

 guardpiper wrote:
It is made up of all races.

that's a little vague

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 guardpiper wrote:
It is made up of all races.

that's a little vague

and thats what it is, it is vague, GW tells us nothing of the racial makeup of their universe, but now me, I have 6 base skin colors I use when painting my figs, I roll a 6-sided die and what number pops up is the skin color of the fig. I'm painting at that moment. that way it is truly random.

I would suspect that there are even more than the existing races considering it only ten thousand or so years for new races to evolve
For example, Caucasians did not exist until about 10K years ago when climate was colder and European humans had to develop lighter skin and eyes to absorb more sunlight for seeing and processing vitamin D in cloudier conditions.

Having humanity spread over thousands of different planets would surely produce more races. Ogyrns and Rattlings being prime examples

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 Galef wrote:
I would suspect that there are even more than the existing races considering it only ten thousand or so years for new races to evolve
For example, Caucasians did not exist until about 10K years ago when climate was colder and European humans had to develop lighter skin and eyes to absorb more sunlight for seeing and processing vitamin D in cloudier conditions.

Having humanity spread over thousands of different planets would surely produce more races. Ogyrns and Rattlings being prime examples

-

Actually what is referred to as the Caucasian Race has been around a lot longer then 10K years, in fact they have discovered that caucasians were on the North American Continent 14K years ago, but then again they also discovered Aborigines(from Australia and not Africa, go figure) may have been here in South America much longer and so forth, but what it comes down to is racial skin variation is much much older then many realize.

but as to the evolution of skin color, that could be effected within a few generations based on certain conditions present.

Asterios wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 guardpiper wrote:
It is made up of all races.

that's a little vague

and thats what it is, it is vague, GW tells us nothing of the racial makeup of their universe

but the people they do feature aren't

Maximus Bitch wrote:

Asterios wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 guardpiper wrote:
It is made up of all races.

that's a little vague

and thats what it is, it is vague, GW tells us nothing of the racial makeup of their universe

but the people they do feature aren't

yeah like the Cadians, they even have their own skin color painting pot, but alas my Cadians are more then one skin tone.

This thread is going to get into some pretty interesting discussion.

The Imperium is made up of all races probably like the make-up of Earth, but probably due to the large majority of its U.S., U.K., other commonwealth country and European player base, the characters and composition featured is going to reflect the make-up of those nations, i.e., mostly Caucasian with a sprinkle of other races. Marvel comics is the same way.

The Salamanders are black, the White Scars are mongols, the Dark Angles had a strong native american theme, and if you look at some of the older models like the last chancers you see asian and native american guys. So there is a diversity of races/skin tones. Not to mention it being a galaxy wide empire, human skin tones would adjust to different planetary conditions, so you paint IG who have blue skin and come up with a decent reason for it.

It's the year 40,000 (ish) man. Those terms don't even exist anymore.

 guardpiper wrote:
The Salamanders are black, the White Scars are mongols, the Dark Angles had a strong native american theme, and if you look at some of the older models like the last chancers you see asian and native american guys. So there is a diversity of races/skin tones. Not to mention it being a galaxy wide empire, human skin tones would adjust to different planetary conditions, so you paint IG who have blue skin and come up with a decent reason for it.

the Salamanders aren't sub-Saharan though, they are jet-black. Dark Angels used to be, but aren't anymore


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 amazingturtles wrote:
It's the year 40,000 (ish) man. Those terms don't even exist anymore.

Do you think, realistically speaking, everyone would've blended into one big brown race 38,000 years from now?




Or how about this, what if GW featured more characters with a "universal-racial" appearance?

Nah, i mean the actual terms like caucasian and sub-saharan don't exist anymore. Nobody cares, not one soul.

Seriously you got an immense future setting literally 40000 years away and your trying to apply 19th century terms to it, that's silly.

 amazingturtles wrote:
Nah, i mean the actual terms like caucasian and sub-saharan don't exist anymore. Nobody cares, not one soul.

Seriously you got an immense future setting literally 40000 years away and your trying to apply 19th century terms to it, that's silly.

But most of the characters featured obviously look Caucasian. Even the xenos Eldar look Caucasian.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
Nah, i mean the actual terms like caucasian and sub-saharan don't exist anymore. Nobody cares, not one soul.

Seriously you got an immense future setting literally 40000 years away and your trying to apply 19th century terms to it, that's silly.

But most of the characters featured obviously look Caucasian. Even the xenos Eldar look Caucasian.

The player base is mostly Caucasian so the characters featured are going to reflect this point of view.

A lot of the HH books talk about the Emperor coming from the Ural region I think. One of the Scars books deals with an non-Chogorian initiate with blond hair/blue eyes feeling different because he is in a largely Chogorian (Asian) group.

Racially, you can expect every phenotype that exists and every variation thereupon.

With 10,000 years settlement on the oldest imperial worlds, thats long enough for unique 'races' to appear to match a given world's environment.

The 'average' inhabitant of the imperium is a hive citizen (simply because hive worlds hold so many billions that whilst the average world isn't a hive world, if even 1% of worlds are hive worlds, their combined population far outweighs any other world type). Whilst things like facial physiognomy might be anything, the fact that sunlight is going to be rare means pale, even sallow, skin will be the norm.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
Nah, i mean the actual terms like caucasian and sub-saharan don't exist anymore. Nobody cares, not one soul.

Seriously you got an immense future setting literally 40000 years away and your trying to apply 19th century terms to it, that's silly.

But most of the characters featured obviously look Caucasian. Even the xenos Eldar look Caucasian.

your surprised that a mostly causasian company that sells to mostly caucasian customers would paint a majority of the models to reflect the people buying it? GW has never taken a hard stance on racial make up and your free to paint your models anyway you want. There are clear examples in the fluff that the imperium is made up of a wide range of skin tones.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
Nah, i mean the actual terms like caucasian and sub-saharan don't exist anymore. Nobody cares, not one soul.

Seriously you got an immense future setting literally 40000 years away and your trying to apply 19th century terms to it, that's silly.

But most of the characters featured obviously look Caucasian. Even the xenos Eldar look Caucasian.

your surprised that a mostly causasian company that sells to mostly caucasian customers would paint a majority of the models to reflect the people buying it? GW has never taken a hard stance on racial make up and your free to paint your models anyway you want. There are clear examples in the fluff that the imperium is made up of a wide range of skin tones.

Totally agree with HoundsofDemos here. What I've been saying above! GW gives you freedom to paint and come up with your own chapters, IG units, etc.

thing is GW borrows heavily from our own history and cultures, you have mongolian characters, african characters and so on and so on, and if you looked closely at famous battles and such you can most likely find a correlation to our own history, look at Lord Solar Macharius as he rushed in and took a 1,000 worlds, his story is the spitting image of Alexander the Great. in other words GW has no imagination, it is up to builders and painters to supply such.

People are saying it better than i did: the open nature of the setting means that people can look like whatever you want. gw might not get creative, but you can.

 amazingturtles wrote:
People are saying it better than i did: the open nature of the setting means that people can look like whatever you want. gw might not get creative, but you can.

Guys, guys, I know that GW is appealing to a largely Caucasian base. I'm just saying that amazingturtles opinion that racial terms no longer matter might not be so valid. People could still classify each other by race.

The racial make up of the Imperium is 100% Australians. Its the reason the Imperium has survived for so long.

Percentage is completely unquantifiable and will likely never be answered since it's easier and less poliitical. With races, you've already got abhumans, so you're able to find extreme variation as worlds were isolated. And since places need to be clearly defined/specialized, they go the star trek route and you get the jungle planet or the mongolian planet or the viking planet or gangster planet mad max planet or whatever. More realistically, most worlds would be along the lines of "Catachan was pretty much like all the other habitable planets in the Imperium, with industry, cities of varying sizes, commerce, a variety of climates, entertainment, the arts (mostly conservative), the imperial creed, a fairly large military, but had a disproportionate amount of tropical rainforest." But that doesn't make them xtreme(!) enough, so everywhere's a hyperbole.

Anything is justifiable, but since the game is made by some british guys, most people are white.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
People are saying it better than i did: the open nature of the setting means that people can look like whatever you want. gw might not get creative, but you can.

Guys, guys, I know that GW is appealing to a largely Caucasian base. I'm just saying that amazingturtles opinion that racial terms no longer matter might not be so valid. People could still classify each other by race.

They could but not really. Most race based categories are based on geography and skin color. Our modern terms wouldn't mean anything. For example, the term african american or pacific islander would be obsolete. I've never seen any category of racial resentment in any 40k novel or source. plenty of hate for mutants and xenos though.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
People are saying it better than i did: the open nature of the setting means that people can look like whatever you want. gw might not get creative, but you can.

Guys, guys, I know that GW is appealing to a largely Caucasian base. I'm just saying that amazingturtles opinion that racial terms no longer matter might not be so valid. People could still classify each other by race.

They could but not really. Most race based categories are based on geography and skin color. Our modern terms wouldn't mean anything. For example, the term african american or pacific islander would be obsolete. I've never seen any category of racial resentment in any 40k novel or source. plenty of hate for mutants and xenos though.

but they could just say black boy or white boy or yellow boy brown boy etc. no need geography. In an empire as vast as the IoM, it would be unrealistic not to expect some form of racism. Especially since the IoM is bred in fascist ways. Treat xenos and each other with disdain, There's also the issue of Chaos and heresy, but its unrealistic to assume that these wouldnt be compounded by racial differences (and the IoM is diverse) lol

Going by a some things I seen a lot depends on what group founded the world many seem to be Caucasian or Asian as they were the ones founding the most colonies but there are others out there

 guardpiper wrote:
The Salamanders are black, the White Scars are mongols, the Dark Angles had a strong native american theme, and if you look at some of the older models like the last chancers you see asian and native american guys. So there is a diversity of races/skin tones. Not to mention it being a galaxy wide empire, human skin tones would adjust to different planetary conditions, so you paint IG who have blue skin and come up with a decent reason for it.

Interesting, I've always thought of the Raven Guard as Native American due to the animal-totem theme, and the stealthiness and the such.

Maximus Bitch wrote:

 amazingturtles wrote:
People are saying it better than i did: the open nature of the setting means that people can look like whatever you want. gw might not get creative, but you can.

Guys, guys, I know that GW is appealing to a largely Caucasian base. I'm just saying that amazingturtles opinion that racial terms no longer matter might not be so valid. People could still classify each other by race.

There are still groups of people, which we today would call different races, in the 40k universe with minor physical differences. In fact there would not just be a half dozen or so "races" within humanity. At this point there would be thousands upon thousands. There are even sub-species of humans such as Ogrun, Ratlings, etc...

While there will still be some racial prejudices in some places, its inevitable, in the grand scheme of things and on most planets people will not care. When you're surrounded by hundreds of hostile alien races and beset by heretics you don't dwell on something as petty as skin color or the shape of someone's face. As long as they're human, they're cool.

Most humans in the Imperium don't travel and stay on their homeworld for their entire lives, so some genetic drift is bound to happen, in addition to normal adaptation to their world's environment. You could say that every world in the Imperium has it's own race of humans because of that. As long as it doesn't vary from the "perfect human form" too much, the Imperial authorities don't really care about that.

70% human. 15% Ogryns. 10% Ratlings, 5% Navigators and 100% Faith in the Emperor