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Been reading through Gordon Rennies Gothic War series which focuses on the naval aspect of 40k warfare and I had a few issues.


in the books, as in references I have seen elsewhere, the assertion is made that the crews of Imperial ships are largely lawless bands of criminals creating their own bands of crooks and regularly engaging in gang warfare with each other even in the midst of battles with the enemy.

Basically the ship is likened to a Hive complete with below decks sections where officers "|don't dare to go" for fear of being murdered by the crew and such nonsense.


I cant imagine such a thing is allowed to happen. Life on a ship may be hard, and discipline may be utterly brutal, but discipline would still be maintained and things like criminal empires would be utterly and quickly put down.

I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

I read in 40k about a captain shrugging off the fact that two gangs had an all out gunfight during a recent battle and cannot imagine how that would be allowed.


Take the Imperial Guard for example. Another organization made of large groups of unsavory men, but all in all kept in line by brutal discipline, fear of commissars and the realization that your life depended on shooting the enemy....not each other.

If the Guard can maintain discipline...why cant a naval ship? Even moreso...if some Elite Guard regiments exist where all members are actually skilled, motivated and completely gung-ho professionals, why cant there be similarly Naval ships with elite crews and professional bearings?


Just wondering yalls thoughts.

cj95 wrote:

I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

In the British navy of the period there were a few mutinies where the crew slaughtered their officers and either deserted or gave their ship to a foreign power, also offices and captains quite often had 'accidents' especially in bad weather or during engagements and lower deck feuds were frequent. There was a habit in the navy of 'shot rolling' at night when a crew was discontented, the crew took the cannon shot out of the garlands and literally rolled it around the deck this served the purpose of either catching someone and doing damage (even a six pound ball could break a leg) and the noise made it hard for others to sleep in what was essentially a giant drum.

If you scale the size of a warship of the time (about 300 crew for ships of 4th rate up) to the size of 40k ships (crew in tens of thousands) it would not seem implausible that their crew would form gangs and cause havoc when they could, especially when you consider that they wouldn't get pay, shoreleave and the discipline would be even more brutal.

cj95 wrote:
Been reading through Gordon Rennies Gothic War series which focuses on the naval aspect of 40k warfare and I had a few issues.


in the books, as in references I have seen elsewhere, the assertion is made that the crews of Imperial ships are largely lawless bands of criminals creating their own bands of crooks and regularly engaging in gang warfare with each other even in the midst of battles with the enemy.

Basically the ship is likened to a Hive complete with below decks sections where officers "|don't dare to go" for fear of being murdered by the crew and such nonsense.


I cant imagine such a thing is allowed to happen. Life on a ship may be hard, and discipline may be utterly brutal, but discipline would still be maintained and things like criminal empires would be utterly and quickly put down.

I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

I read in 40k about a captain shrugging off the fact that two gangs had an all out gunfight during a recent battle and cannot imagine how that would be allowed.


Take the Imperial Guard for example. Another organization made of large groups of unsavory men, but all in all kept in line by brutal discipline, fear of commissars and the realization that your life depended on shooting the enemy....not each other.

If the Guard can maintain discipline...why cant a naval ship? Even moreso...if some Elite Guard regiments exist where all members are actually skilled, motivated and completely gung-ho professionals, why cant there be similarly Naval ships with elite crews and professional bearings?


Just wondering yalls thoughts.

Large modern navy ships have problems with gangs and crime, and that's when you're only running a few thousand people. Its not like its anarchy, its just that there's an underworld that operates behind the scenes. And everyone knows that while you don't make too big of a wave, or there will be a crackdown, there's a level of mischief you can get away with. It would be far greater on a larger vessel.

I don't think that the guard actually are unable to maintain the discipline they talk about. They wouldn't need commissars if they could. Much of their codex and other fluff are full of propaganda. Even in the index it admits that the ratlings create quite a bit of mischief in whatever regiments they're supporting.

Exactly so. A navy ship is a hive city, to all intents and purposes - you're not just talking about battlefield discipline, but off-duty, across ttens of thousands of people who can't go on leave because they're on a ship in the void. Every off duty bar brawl that the commissariat has to deal with on a planet would be on the ship. Black marketa in supplies and drug problems are not uncommon in militaries of any kind, and both the guard and even (relatively recent) contemporary military forces have had times where officers darent go into the barracks without guards.

You will get professional crews. Its unfair to assume that most aren't, whatever petty larceny may occur, but if you find 2,000 disciplined, highly motivated individuals, you can put together a crack grenadier regiment.........or man about 5% of a light cruiser!

In the Gordon Rennie novel itself, one of the petty officers is in on the drug racket, and sees himself as a pressure release system for the stressed crew of the ship. The captain of the ship is aware there are some shady dealings of some form happening in the lower decks, but decides to turn a blind eye so long as things don't get out of hand.

The gang fight also occurred ultimately during a boarding action, when one side saw a plausible cover for eliminating the other side since they could say the others were killed by the enemy. I doubt a full fledged gang battle potentially impacting the running of the ship during peaceful times would be tolerated.

So the key point is: So long as things don't get excessive (the standard of which may vary from ship to ship), the officers and commissars may turn a blind eye, or satisfy themselves with a few example cases to keep the others from stepping over the line.

cj95 wrote:
I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

But just like the British Navy of that time quite a lot of the crew might not have wished to become crew at all, and keeping draconian order over 200 guys is a lot easier than keeping 10K, 15K or 20K unwilling crewmen in order. The Marine Soldiers supposed to do it were often the worst scum themself, all kinds of unpopular guys shipped off to naval service instead of prison. You know, unemployed drunks, petty thieves, not-too-violent robbers and homeless poets.

And even then, you'd get (both in real ife and stories set then) brawling, bullying and general bad apples - think that for every guy in a napoleonic naval story who's a piece of work (say the bully midshipman in hornblower), you'd have, to the same scale, somewhere between 100 and 1000 such individuals - enough for a proper criminal community that covers for one another...

Imperial Navy warships aren't just warships, they are entire cities floating in space. An Imperial starship is simply too large to keep entirely under control.

The quick answer of course is... it depends.

The ...Of Mars Books (strong start, loses things by the 3rd book) similarly had people kidnapped and press ganged into the Adeptus Mech's Ark Mechanicus and they were kept under tight control. Until a Mary Sue character led a servitor mutiny that is...

First off, the crew in an Imperial navy ship are (most of the time) about as vital as fleas on a dog. They maintain the massive equipment that keeps the ship flying and the weapons firing. Plus a lot of busy work.

In a battle they're a lot more important, emergency maintenance, even fighting borders.

And in my head canon, during warp jumps they provide a bit of spiritual ballast, thousands of souls praying for safe travel provide a measure of protection against the forces of the warp.

So with that understanding the resources to keep complete control might outweigh the benefits. Easier to seal off bulkhead 234 and let them starve than keep everyone in chains. A few years later unseal it, throw in the next batch of poor suckers. Of course they'll have to deal with the cannibal savage survivors of the last group but hey, keeps them sharp.

Besides, at the end of the day it makes for a better story if some ships have lawless lower decks.

Actually, it's totally realistic that a gang war would start in the midst of a boarding action. It all depends if they hate eachother more than the enemy

Speaking as a Rogue Trader GM, this comes up a lot.

First we have to put the scale of these things in perspective --- the Nimitz class carrier, largest warship now is 317 metres long. The smallest mass produced ship in the 40k Universe is 950m long (Viper-Class scout sloop) and that's almost 400 metres smaller than 40k escorts which are considered tadpoles.

Then you have to understand that these ships (or 99.9% of them if you want to be technical) aren't new. They'll have had refits, hastily repaired damage, worked around sections, addons, custom jobs, upgrades, side-grades etc.... it won't even resemble the original layout. There's a billion places where illicit goods could be stored or criminals to hide out; the older the ship and the more storied its history, the more nooks, crannies and hidden areas there'll be.

Add onto the fact that the crews are usually generations upon generations of families with their own customs and tweaks/ improvements in their areas that only they know about etc.

There is almost no way to have an up to date map of a 40k starship. Officers entrust operations to the families that have done it for generations and IF they need to travel into lower deck levels/ areas, they would have to hire local guides etc (especially if it's an older/larger vessel).

-----------------------------

For a final example, for Rogue Trader we had a Universe Class Mass Conveyor (12km long) with 60,000 crew. To go anywhere except the major components you would need to hire guides (different ones for different sections), there were multiple shanty towns throughout the lower decks and they have their own languages/culture.

Establishing order/discipline as you suggest would require a military campaign in its own right --- entering 'enemy' territory in an extreme urban environment against a local populace who are armed (armsmen come from the local populace) and have home field advantage.

When you consider how big these ships are and how they have populations that live their whole lives on them, they're as comparable to small countries as they are to modern ships.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
The quick answer of course is... it depends.

The ...Of Mars Books (strong start, loses things by the 3rd book) similarly had people kidnapped and press ganged into the Adeptus Mech's Ark Mechanicus and they were kept under tight control. Until a Mary Sue character led a servitor mutiny that is...

First off, the crew in an Imperial navy ship are (most of the time) about as vital as fleas on a dog. They maintain the massive equipment that keeps the ship flying and the weapons firing. Plus a lot of busy work.

In a battle they're a lot more important, emergency maintenance, even fighting borders.

And in my head canon, during warp jumps they provide a bit of spiritual ballast, thousands of souls praying for safe travel provide a measure of protection against the forces of the warp.

So with that understanding the resources to keep complete control might outweigh the benefits. Easier to seal off bulkhead 234 and let them starve than keep everyone in chains. A few years later unseal it, throw in the next batch of poor suckers. Of course they'll have to deal with the cannibal savage survivors of the last group but hey, keeps them sharp.

Besides, at the end of the day it makes for a better story if some ships have lawless lower decks.

Just to say that I absolutely love your headcanon of the crew providing a bit of spiritual ballast when travelling through the warp by praying for its safe travel added to my headcanon!

 Otto Weston wrote:
Speaking as a Rogue Trader GM, this comes up a lot.

First we have to put the scale of these things in perspective --- the Nimitz class carrier, largest warship now is 317 metres long. The smallest mass produced ship in the 40k Universe is 950m long (Viper-Class scout sloop) and that's almost 400 metres smaller than 40k escorts which are considered tadpoles.

Then you have to understand that these ships (or 99.9% of them if you want to be technical) aren't new. They'll have had refits, hastily repaired damage, worked around sections, addons, custom jobs, upgrades, side-grades etc.... it won't even resemble the original layout. There's a billion places where illicit goods could be stored or criminals to hide out; the older the ship and the more storied its history, the more nooks, crannies and hidden areas there'll be.

Add onto the fact that the crews are usually generations upon generations of families with their own customs and tweaks/ improvements in their areas that only they know about etc.

There is almost no way to have an up to date map of a 40k starship. Officers entrust operations to the families that have done it for generations and IF they need to travel into lower deck levels/ areas, they would have to hire local guides etc (especially if it's an older/larger vessel).

-----------------------------

For a final example, for Rogue Trader we had a Universe Class Mass Conveyor (12km long) with 60,000 crew. To go anywhere except the major components you would need to hire guides (different ones for different sections), there were multiple shanty towns throughout the lower decks and they have their own languages/culture.

Establishing order/discipline as you suggest would require a military campaign in its own right --- entering 'enemy' territory in an extreme urban environment against a local populace who are armed (armsmen come from the local populace) and have home field advantage.

Brilliant explanation

The way I see it, the officers are more like aristocracy who rule an ancient city. One that has developed numerous subcultures throughout the years, and has places that the aristocracy will only tread with a significant armed guard (despite the fact that they technically 'rule' the area).

A ship in 40k is less a ship and more a whole setting in itself. I've always thought it would be a kickass thing to model. A huge ship where each of the areas has developed a distinctive culture from the combination of the people having been there for a very long time and the fact that the crew is a bit of a mishmash of people they've picked up from planets they've used to replenish their crew. It's a really interesting environment.

If you really wanted to, you could see them as a completely different human culture that forms another part of the patchwork Imperium. You've got your terrestrial humans who live on a billion worlds throughout the galaxy, you've got your ad mech who operate as a sister-empire on their Forge Worlds, and then you have the Navy who operate a floating voidborn cities throughout the Imperium.

The other thought I had was that this must be the case with Craftworlds too. A lot of the fluff has painted them as pretty harmonious and idyllic, but that's primarily Gav Thorpe's interpretation of what they're like. It's a good one, but I feel there's scope to get a lot grittier with them, and make them into places that are settings all of their own. They're vast and ancient vessels with what essentially amounts to a skeleton crew (no matter how large that crew might in fact be). There's going to be huge swathes of the ship that's in states of disrepair. Places where Eldar fear to tread. Things like areas of the ship where the massive weight of souls contained within the Infinity Circuit has bled through into the physical structure and started warping these areas into ghostly forests of twisted wraithbone.

Also, the populations within them are colossal, have been there for a fantastically long time, and are comprised of a mishmash of the original crew and anyone they were able to grab from any planet not yet consumed by the Fall. There's going to be massive variations in culture from one part of the ship to the next, and the space inbetween them to forge them into their own separate polities with their own convoluted politics between them. Having them be completely uniform is about as realistic as ascribing one culture to an entire solar system.

The warships of the Imperium while big, and with big crews, are not indefinitely self sustaining. The longest patrol recorded in at least the Gothic sector until 657.M41 was 1,741 days by the cruiser Marquis Lex. (BFG supplement Warp Storm, p.75). I highly doubt there are enough facilities or supplies to allow for the gestation, birth, raising, and training of children to the point where they would be useful crew members, at least not enough for self-sustaining populations.

Certainly there would be sub-cultures within different areas of a ship as shown by the following untitled short story by Andy Chambers (BFG creator), which was originally posted to the BFG mailing list many years ago:

Nathan woke to the sound of screaming.
He lurched up with a half-strangled yelp, almost braining himself on the bottom of Kron's bunk. He stared wildly about him, gulping for breath. The oppressive redlight of the bunkroom still surrounded him, the cloying odour of sour sweat and grease still fought the sharp tang of coolant in the air down here. The room was quiet save for the drip of the condensers and the sussurance of night noises made by forty sleeping men.

Nathan wiped a shaky hand across across his eyes and peered over towards Hendriks. If anyone had screamed it would have been Hendriks, he had nightmares nearly every sleep-shift. They all did, but Hendriks just couldn't take it. Perhaps he had a guilty conscience, or perhaps he was just some dumb farmer who was completely terrified by being shut up in one of the Emperor's warships.The scream came again, but it was tinny and distant, carried along by the conduits from another bunkroom. Pity the poor devils in there, thought Nathan, every one of them wide awake and praying the screamer didn't go berserk and start clawing and biting at them. Didn't turn into a wild beast like Fetchin had.

Nathan lay back in the narrow bunk and tried to recapture sleep. He tried to imagine all the other shipmen doing the same. Start with this gundeck. Forty guns with forty(ish) crews each, thats sixteen hundred, another gundeck on the port side for three thousand two hundred. Then there were the lance turrets, port and starboard, nobody seemed to know just how big the crews for those beasts were, call it another sixteen hundred a piece. This was working well, his eyelids were drooping. That was six and a half thousand souls (give or take). The torps probably had a crew bigger than a single gun but less than a whole deck - maybe a thousand. That made seven and a half... engines must be at least two or three thousand more... - Andy Chambers

The character Nathan has no idea how many crew are in the lance turrets. Andy Chambers again on the BFG mailing list described lance turrets thusly:

The lance weapons themselves would be enormous energy projectors - each one the size of a factory chimney. They work by combining focussed coherent light (ie lasers) and electromagnetic pulses as a propellant for highly energised particles (ie plasma). The closest naturally occurring equivalent would be a solar flare but foccussed into a narrow beam. This means that lances would consist of a central particle/plasma chamber surounded by a series of enormous electromagnetic coils forming the barrel and muzzle, behind this would be a cluster of laser rods in the place of the breech/shell.

Other things in a lance turret would include;
bunk rooms, mess decks and a chapel for its crew (they would live eat, work and probably die inside their turret, never seeing the rest of the ship) - estimate around 200-500 gunners, officers etc. Probably a tech-priest shrine (ie workshop/computer mainframe), the turret winding gear and gun laying sections, plus engines and backups. Stores of coolant to keep the turret efficient as it starts to heat up after a few shots.

Lance turrets then seem to be self-contained miniature societies with limited contact with the rest of the ship. I could see the same happening with other systems around the ship. However they would still have to take in new members to replace any casualties, so there would have to be limits to how insular they get. If they killed off every new press-ganged recruit, eventually at some point their turret or system's performance would suffer, and that would be the point when the ship's commissars and officers would intervene.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

The other thought I had was that this must be the case with Craftworlds too. A lot of the fluff has painted them as pretty harmonious and idyllic, but that's primarily Gav Thorpe's interpretation of what they're like. It's a good one, but I feel there's scope to get a lot grittier with them, and make them into places that are settings all of their own. They're vast and ancient vessels with what essentially amounts to a skeleton crew (no matter how large that crew might in fact be). There's going to be huge swathes of the ship that's in states of disrepair. Places where Eldar fear to tread. Things like areas of the ship where the massive weight of souls contained within the Infinity Circuit has bled through into the physical structure and started warping these areas into ghostly forests of twisted wraithbone.

Also, the populations within them are colossal, have been there for a fantastically long time, and are comprised of a mishmash of the original crew and anyone they were able to grab from any planet not yet consumed by the Fall. There's going to be massive variations in culture from one part of the ship to the next, and the space inbetween them to forge them into their own separate polities with their own convoluted politics between them. Having them be completely uniform is about as realistic as ascribing one culture to an entire solar system.

Actually it isn't purely Gav Thorpe's interpretation. As far back as the 2nd edition Codex Imperialis and the 1st Codex Eldar, the short stories were portraying Craftworlds as peaceful and serene...So peaceful in fact, that one character Karhedron wondered whether the Craftworlders were so quick to heed the Farseers' predictions and call to war because it would relieve them of their ennui. I would imagine what conflict there does exist to be social and diplomatic conflict rather than physical violence. Outcasts in their Codex entries are described as leaving Craftworlds either on their own or as exile for some misdeed. While there might be physical violence or physical intimidation aboard human ships, I see the Craftworlds as a place of enforced serenity, where some Eldar live lives of quiet desperation under stifling etiquette and social pressure. In a society where everyone, including the dead spirits inhabiting the walls around you, is psychically empathic, the idea of thought crime can exist. While maybe not literally reading thoughts, the empathic environment means individuals have to at least try to keep their discontent from being emotionally broadcast around them. In the novel Valedor, there is mention of Paths of Solitude, Wandering, Mourning, Lament, Eulogy, Forgetting, Remembrance, Dreaming (some of which were also mentioned in Gav Thorpe's novels). Rather than physical violence or death, the conflicts and stresses of Craftworld society seem to result in self imposed (or peer pressure imposed) introversion or exile.

Iyanden is described in the Iyanden supplement (and the novel Valedor) as having wraithbone growing uncontrollably after the Kraken attack because there were so many newly dead spirits, with still fresh memories of the fighting and their own deaths, that the Bonesingers were overwhelmed in their usual task of keeping the wraithbone in check. Entire halls were given up to the dead, particularly those households that had lost all their living members. So it would have been like living in a haunted house. Even though the spirits were not overtly malevolent towards the living Eldar, their numbers and the intensity of their emotional distress threatened the sanity of any living that entered. Then on Iyanden a new sub-path of the Path of Service was created, the Tenders of the Dead: living Eldar specifically tending to the wraithkind that still remained awake instead of returning to the Infinity Circuits.

The warships of the Imperium while big, and with big crews, are not indefinitely self sustaining. The longest patrol recorded in at least the Gothic sector until 657.M41 was 1,741 days by the cruiser Marquis Lex. (BFG supplement Warp Storm, p.75). I highly doubt there are enough facilities or supplies to allow for the gestation, birth, raising, and training of children to the point where they would be useful crew members, at least not enough for self-sustaining populations.

While I acknowledge that there isn't precedent in the fluff for it, I see very little reason why large Imperial vessels couldn't be self-sustaining to at least some degree in terms of crew and supplies. They're certainly large enough, have populations large enough for internal sustainability and enough disused space to support enough of an ecosystem to maintain them (perhaps with periodic restocking) either through hydroponics or an actual genuine biome. The ships are certainly old enough.

Actually, even if the ships themselves are not self-sustaining that doesn't mean they couldn't be seen as a completely different civilisation of humans to the land-based Imperium and the Ad Mech if you so wanted to. They could be viewed as somewhat of a parasitic civilisation drawing away resources from the Imperium in exchange for naval protection and transport between worlds.

Certainly there would be sub-cultures within different areas of a ship as shown by the following untitled short story by Andy Chambers (BFG creator), which was originally posted to the BFG mailing list many years ago:

(snip)

Lance turrets then seem to be self-contained miniature societies with limited contact with the rest of the ship. I could see the same happening with other systems around the ship. However they would still have to take in new members to replace any casualties, so there would have to be limits to how insular they get. If they killed off every new press-ganged recruit, eventually at some point their turret or system's performance would suffer, and that would be the point when the ship's commissars and officers would intervene.

Neat! I really like that short story and the implications it has good work Andy Chambers!

Actually it isn't purely Gav Thorpe's interpretation. As far back as the 2nd edition Codex Imperialis and the 1st Codex Eldar, the short stories were portraying Craftworlds as peaceful and serene...So peaceful in fact, that one character Karhedron wondered whether the Craftworlders were so quick to heed the Farseers' predictions and call to war because it would relieve them of their ennui. I would imagine what conflict there does exist to be social and diplomatic conflict rather than physical violence. Outcasts in their Codex entries are described as leaving Craftworlds either on their own or as exile for some misdeed. While there might be physical violence or physical intimidation aboard human ships, I see the Craftworlds as a place of enforced serenity, where some Eldar live lives of quiet desperation under stifling etiquette and social pressure. In a society where everyone, including the dead spirits inhabiting the walls around you, is psychically empathic, the idea of thought crime can exist. While maybe not literally reading thoughts, the empathic environment means individuals have to at least try to keep their discontent from being emotionally broadcast around them. In the novel Valedor, there is mention of Paths of Solitude, Wandering, Mourning, Lament, Eulogy, Forgetting, Remembrance, Dreaming (some of which were also mentioned in Gav Thorpe's novels). Rather than physical violence or death, the conflicts and stresses of Craftworld society seem to result in self imposed (or peer pressure imposed) introversion or exile.

Good points, and thanks for giving me a genuinely evocative and grimdark explanation for peaceful Craftworlds. So basically, one of the best places you could hope to live in the 40k universe is an expy of 1984 except the citizens are psychic so are able to directly influence the way you think rather than just physically enforcing it. Hell yeah that's grimdark enough for me loads of potential for narratives where that goes bad as well. Imagine being in a place where you have to work out whether the thoughts you're thinking are actually your own or are planted there by the people around you.

Also, definitely like the suggestion that the Craftworlders are sort of closet-warlike because it's one of the few opportunities they get to actually let loose a little (even though it's a hell of a lot less loose than the DEldar).

Still, my point was less that Craftworlds are lawless places and more that the populations within are infinitely more varied than the surface look we get in 40k. There's more to Iyanden than 'they wear yellow and raise the dead'. There's potentially billions of Eldar living in Iyanden, with every bit as much variety as the inhabitants of an Imperial world.

It's part of the agenda I'm pushing with my Eldar conversion projects. For INQ28, people take the 40k idea of say 'Imperial Cardinal World, everyone are priests or pilgrims' and really going to town with showcasing the sheer amount of variety that one Cardinal World contains. My idea was to apply that brilliant sort of close-up lens to xenos factions as well. Because Eldar are my favourite xenos, I picked them to start with

Part of that is turning relatively static and uninteresting settings like 'X craftworld' into dynamic and living communities where people have differing agendas and conflict/interesting things can abound without necessarily having any internal influence causing them

Iyanden is described in the Iyanden supplement (and the novel Valedor) as having wraithbone growing uncontrollably after the Kraken attack because there were so many newly dead spirits, with still fresh memories of the fighting and their own deaths, that the Bonesingers were overwhelmed in their usual task of keeping the wraithbone in check. Entire halls were given up to the dead, particularly those households that had lost all their living members. So it would have been like living in a haunted house. Even though the spirits were not overtly malevolent towards the living Eldar, their numbers and the intensity of their emotional distress threatened the sanity of any living that entered. Then on Iyanden a new sub-path of the Path of Service was created, the Tenders of the Dead: living Eldar specifically tending to the wraithkind that still remained awake instead of returning to the Infinity Circuits.

Hell yeah this I like too I like the idea that there are places on these vast and often partially derelict ships that living eldar fear to tread.

Agreed that while I doubt you'd get many genuinely malevolent eldar spirits (although I expect eldar probably have their own versions of psychopaths and other dangerous types), they'd probably have a confused and befuddled view of reality that could unintentionally prove harmful. Perhaps if there's a weight of souls around you who are all reliving their final moments of being consumed by Tyranids you'd end up involuntarily living through the same emotions as they are until someone comes to snap you out of it (provided you haven't been driven mad by the process).

Lots of neat potential

While I acknowledge that there isn't precedent in the fluff for it, I see very little reason why large Imperial vessels couldn't be self-sustaining to at least some degree in terms of crew and supplies. They're certainly large enough, have populations large enough for internal sustainability and enough disused space to support enough of an ecosystem to maintain them (perhaps with periodic restocking) either through hydroponics or an actual genuine biome. The ships are certainly old enough.

Actually, even if the ships themselves are not self-sustaining that doesn't mean they couldn't be seen as a completely different civilisation of humans to the land-based Imperium and the Ad Mech if you so wanted to. They could be viewed as somewhat of a parasitic civilisation drawing away resources from the Imperium in exchange for naval protection and transport between worlds.

The problem I see is that a military vessel isn't going to want to be self sustaining. Non-combat crew are a net negative on your resources. Especially with much of the crew force being conscripted brute labor, the Imperial Fleet isn't going to waste its time with families. These ships aren't the USS Enterprise D, they're little better than Roman Galleys (whose crews generally weren't slaves, but probably weren't enthusiastic either). Imperial Navy ships are setup in operational fleet commands, with home bases and anchorages. In a more progressive area you'll see navy families on those stations or planets, but they're not going to be on board ship. They're detriment to operations. Now, on a Rogue Trader? Sure. Even general merchant vessels I could see being family run operations. But not a military vessel.

And an imperial navy vessel is still going to be organized. You're not going to get little societies setup in the lance turret that don't talk to anyone. . . who would feed them? Whats to keep them firing the gun when the captain says to do so? I don't buy it. These vessels are enormous, but so is any army you might find in the real world. You'll see crime, undercover gang activity, corruption. . . all the same things you see in large modern militaries where discipline is hard to maintain. But you're still going to be military. And that means a certain level of organization and structure. Or else they wouldn't last a single battle, and the Navy wouldn't put up with that nonsense.

Finnally, self sustaining fleet assets goes against Imperial military philosophy, which is based around making it hard for individual units to go rogue. If your Starship can just fly away and do whatever it wants forever, that makes it a little too easy for Captain Chaospants to just decide he wants to go play pirate.

 argonak wrote:

While I acknowledge that there isn't precedent in the fluff for it, I see very little reason why large Imperial vessels couldn't be self-sustaining to at least some degree in terms of crew and supplies. They're certainly large enough, have populations large enough for internal sustainability and enough disused space to support enough of an ecosystem to maintain them (perhaps with periodic restocking) either through hydroponics or an actual genuine biome. The ships are certainly old enough.

Actually, even if the ships themselves are not self-sustaining that doesn't mean they couldn't be seen as a completely different civilisation of humans to the land-based Imperium and the Ad Mech if you so wanted to. They could be viewed as somewhat of a parasitic civilisation drawing away resources from the Imperium in exchange for naval protection and transport between worlds.

The problem I see is that a military vessel isn't going to want to be self sustaining. Non-combat crew are a net negative on your resources. Especially with much of the crew force being conscripted brute labor, the Imperial Fleet isn't going to waste its time with families. These ships aren't the USS Enterprise D, they're little better than Roman Galleys (whose crews generally weren't slaves, but probably weren't enthusiastic either). Imperial Navy ships are setup in operational fleet commands, with home bases and anchorages. In a more progressive area you'll see navy families on those stations or planets, but they're not going to be on board ship. They're detriment to operations. Now, on a Rogue Trader? Sure. Even general merchant vessels I could see being family run operations. But not a military vessel.

And an imperial navy vessel is still going to be organized. You're not going to get little societies setup in the lance turret that don't talk to anyone. . . who would feed them? Whats to keep them firing the gun when the captain says to do so? I don't buy it. These vessels are enormous, but so is any army you might find in the real world. You'll see crime, undercover gang activity, corruption. . . all the same things you see in large modern militaries where discipline is hard to maintain. But you're still going to be military. And that means a certain level of organization and structure. Or else they wouldn't last a single battle, and the Navy wouldn't put up with that nonsense.

Finnally, self sustaining fleet assets goes against Imperial military philosophy, which is based around making it hard for individual units to go rogue. If your Starship can just fly away and do whatever it wants forever, that makes it a little too easy for Captain Chaospants to just decide he wants to go play pirate.

Perhaps. It depends on how much genuine organisation and structure you like your Imperial military to have. From a large part of the fluff, it doesn't suggest there's a fantastic amount of all that. The Imperium's not exactly known for its gender discrimination when it comes to putting people through the meat-grinder. These 200,000+ crew ships are going to be mixed gender. As far as I see it it's probably inevitable that genuine bonafide communities and societies will emerge on these vessels. It's one of the things you can pretty much count on people doing whatever situation they end up in. The fact that 'voidborn' is a thing supports that.

I do get the logic behind it not being an efficient use of resources, especially when you have nearly free-reign to hoover up land-born populations to replenish your crews. Perhaps it's not exactly encouraged by military captains in that case.

You're absolutely right that it runs counter to the Imperium's military philosophy though. That's a very solid point. I just don't believe that philosophy has actually survived into the 41st millennium in any form greater than lip-service. You see that particular rule being broken so frequently in the 40k fluff that I can only believe that the Imperium has lost pretty much all interest in enforcing it. I expect it would have been enforced very strictly in the immediate aftermath of the Heresy and after Guilliman's reforms, but it's been a long long time since then.

The big example of sanctions brought against that is Huron in the Badab War...except that it wasn't the military structure that got him into trouble. The only thing that actually tipped things over into 'right, this guy's causing trouble' was when he stopped paying his taxes (tithe). As far as I see it there are only really two rules the Imperium actually enforces with any regularity: 1. Worship the Emperor 2. Pay your taxes.

I've just re-read Ship of the Damned , and although it deals with a civilian pilgrim ship rather than Imperial Navy it has some good bits.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"The Herald had been plying the subwarp pilgrim routes of the Imperium for thousands of years and, though its structure was as strong as the day it left some long forgotten orbital shipyard, its systems – those that remained operational at least – were held together by repair tape and blind faith. ‘Is it being broadcast on a distress channel?’
Brynla looked to his grandfather, who returned the look with equal bemusement. ‘I… I don’t know, my lady.’ Just as the ship’s electronic arrays and sensors had degraded down the centuries, so too had the knowledge of the crew to operate them. Essential systems like the air and water purification filters and the engines were maintained along similar dynastic lines to the ship’s bridge; knowledge passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, so that the Herald"could traverse the stars for all eternity if need be. Less vital systems, such as the vox and heating, had not been properly looked after for years, only enthusiastic amateurs attempted to keep them operational in the absence of a skilled crew"

beast_gts wrote:
I've just re-read Ship of the Damned , and although it deals with a civilian pilgrim ship rather than Imperial Navy it has some good bits.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"The Herald had been plying the subwarp pilgrim routes of the Imperium for thousands of years and, though its structure was as strong as the day it left some long forgotten orbital shipyard, its systems – those that remained operational at least – were held together by repair tape and blind faith. ‘Is it being broadcast on a distress channel?’
Brynla looked to his grandfather, who returned the look with equal bemusement. ‘I… I don’t know, my lady.’ Just as the ship’s electronic arrays and sensors had degraded down the centuries, so too had the knowledge of the crew to operate them. Essential systems like the air and water purification filters and the engines were maintained along similar dynastic lines to the ship’s bridge; knowledge passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, so that the Herald"could traverse the stars for all eternity if need be. Less vital systems, such as the vox and heating, had not been properly looked after for years, only enthusiastic amateurs attempted to keep them operational in the absence of a skilled crew"

Yeah that's the picture I had in my head of what Imperial vessels are like.

I would anticipate more order and stricture on a military vessel, but more in the vein of a military dictatorship overseeing a city under the guise of a military organisation than anything our present-day military would recognise.

A thin veneer of military organisation covering a core of convoluted feudal politics. Could use that description for most of the Imperium if you so desired

I would say there's space for both interpretations though. I'm sure there are many, many vessels that are run far more efficiently than the trading vessel above. Much like there are Guard regiments that are run with comparable efficiency to modern military forces, I'd expect there are ships that are the same. So basically, whichever sort you wanted to set your narrative in there's space for it

beast_gts wrote:
I've just re-read Ship of the Damned , and although it deals with a civilian pilgrim ship rather than Imperial Navy it has some good bits.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"The Herald had been plying the subwarp pilgrim routes of the Imperium for thousands of years and, though its structure was as strong as the day it left some long forgotten orbital shipyard, its systems – those that remained operational at least – were held together by repair tape and blind faith. ‘Is it being broadcast on a distress channel?’
Brynla looked to his grandfather, who returned the look with equal bemusement. ‘I… I don’t know, my lady.’ Just as the ship’s electronic arrays and sensors had degraded down the centuries, so too had the knowledge of the crew to operate them. Essential systems like the air and water purification filters and the engines were maintained along similar dynastic lines to the ship’s bridge; knowledge passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, so that the Herald"could traverse the stars for all eternity if need be. Less vital systems, such as the vox and heating, had not been properly looked after for years, only enthusiastic amateurs attempted to keep them operational in the absence of a skilled crew"

I get that's in line with the grim dark stuff, but I just find that sort of fluff so hard to stomach.

First of all, anything tech related should belong to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Any starship is going to have an engineering crew of AM techseers, its not going to be a bunch of randhom hillbillys, they'd have killed themselves with incompetence already. Space is an extremely unforgiving environment. Ships need Navigators, who come from specific houses and organizations. No Navigator is going to waste his time flying on a rustbucket held together with "repair tape and blind faith." They're an entire level of imperial nobility!

I don't buy the idea of military warships having self-sustaining crews. Family run merchant/civilian ships maybe, but not the Imperial Navy warships. The fact that ships need to replenish supplies and press gang new crew means they are still not closed systems. If a warship has to take on supplies, that also means the crew size has to be known. Feral children or non-combatants are so much dead weight stowaways, consuming air and supplies while contributing nothing. I don't see the Imperium standing for that, not on any large scale anyway. Lord Admiral Ravensburg, in command of Battlefleet Gothic during the Gothic War, was rumored to have a harem of 50 concubines in a set of palatial staterooms aboard his flagship, the Emperor class battleship Divine Right, but then rank has its privileges.

I accept the idea of insular subcultures however. A lance turret's crew is largely isolated from the rest of the ship. Food might arrive by dumbwaiter or via a few select members with security clearance to leave the turret. During combat, a disembodied voice might blare over the speakers giving instructions or targets. So long as the turret fires at what it's told to, at a rate and accuracy acceptable to the officers of the ship, the crew of the turret might be largely left to their own devices. If there are casualties, they might get new press ganged recruits joining and they might be subjected to initiation rituals, though these cannot be too onerous or lethal, else the turret's performance will start to suffer due to be short of crew. Similar subcultures can exist elsewhere in the ship. The links between them would be the various petty officers, ship security, and the ship's internal communications systems.

IIRC the imperial navy uses press gangs when short on manpower, so the idea of having areas on the ship that are a danger to officers makes sense. Plus I bet that to an extent the under-deck-gang leaders also hold higher ranks, like bo'sun (kind of like a commissar in universe). As for self sustaining, depending on filtration systems and power supply, you could go a long time without refilling air and water. And i bet they have a soilent green thing going on in the lower decks.

 argonak wrote:

First of all, anything tech related should belong to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Any starship is going to have an engineering crew of AM techseers, its not going to be a bunch of randhom hillbillys, they'd have killed themselves with incompetence already. Space is an extremely unforgiving environment. Ships need Navigators, who come from specific houses and organizations. No Navigator is going to waste his time flying on a rustbucket held together with "repair tape and blind faith." They're an entire level of imperial nobility!

Firstly, it's a subwarp ship so doesn't need a Navigator. Secondly, being a civilian pilgrim ship - how do they pay for the services of the AdMech?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of Course, both the Imperial Navy & Rouge Traders will have contracts/treaties with with AdMech for services, and I'm sure the Navy will have Academies & training camps for skilled & semi-skilled recruits.

There's a civilian cargo ship in one of the Caine novels which gets drafted by the munitorium to ferry guardsmen around precisely on the agreement that it gets overhauled in a navy dockyard afterwards...

beast_gts wrote:

 argonak wrote:

First of all, anything tech related should belong to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Any starship is going to have an engineering crew of AM techseers, its not going to be a bunch of randhom hillbillys, they'd have killed themselves with incompetence already. Space is an extremely unforgiving environment. Ships need Navigators, who come from specific houses and organizations. No Navigator is going to waste his time flying on a rustbucket held together with "repair tape and blind faith." They're an entire level of imperial nobility!

Firstly, it's a subwarp ship so doesn't need a Navigator. Secondly, being a civilian pilgrim ship - how do they pay for the services of the AdMech?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Of Course, both the Imperial Navy & Rouge Traders will have contracts/treaties with with AdMech for services, and I'm sure the Navy will have Academies & training camps for skilled & semi-skilled recruits.

its not so much having to pay, as it being heretical to let non admech do the work! What if they desecrate the holy machinery! By the Omnissiah man! Think of the poor machine spirit!

Iracundus wrote:
I don't buy the idea of military warships having self-sustaining crews. Family run merchant/civilian ships maybe, but not the Imperial Navy warships. The fact that ships need to replenish supplies and press gang new crew means they are still not closed systems. If a warship has to take on supplies, that also means the crew size has to be known. Feral children or non-combatants are so much dead weight stowaways, consuming air and supplies while contributing nothing. I don't see the Imperium standing for that, not on any large scale anyway. Lord Admiral Ravensburg, in command of Battlefleet Gothic during the Gothic War, was rumored to have a harem of 50 concubines in a set of palatial staterooms aboard his flagship, the Emperor class battleship Divine Right, but then rank has its privileges.

I accept the idea of insular subcultures however. A lance turret's crew is largely isolated from the rest of the ship. Food might arrive by dumbwaiter or via a few select members with security clearance to leave the turret. During combat, a disembodied voice might blare over the speakers giving instructions or targets. So long as the turret fires at what it's told to, at a rate and accuracy acceptable to the officers of the ship, the crew of the turret might be largely left to their own devices. If there are casualties, they might get new press ganged recruits joining and they might be subjected to initiation rituals, though these cannot be too onerous or lethal, else the turret's performance will start to suffer due to be short of crew. Similar subcultures can exist elsewhere in the ship. The links between them would be the various petty officers, ship security, and the ship's internal communications systems.

You've persuaded me

I can see ships becoming floating cities with all that entails regarding self-sustaining crews on things like Rogue Trader ships, Ad Mech Explorator vessels, regular exploration ships and other vessels that would spend a prolonged amount of time away from planets. On military vessels you're right they'd be a liability that they could ill-afford.

Still, what would the captains do with all of the children born? It's still people we're talking about. Lots of them. Trapped together for extended periods of time. I suppose it depends on the captain how grimdark you want to get with that. Perhaps they simply dump them at the next planet they dock at. Some sort of 'we're taking 8000 of your population to crew out ship, but in exchange here's 8000 children to replace them. Thanks and see you later'.

However, speaking of said insular subculture within the lance-turret. If they number at least 200 (usually judged to be the minimum for a viable population), there's no reason there couldn't be a self-sustaining population within them that the naval officers don't know about. You could quite easily repeat that over and over again for numerous insular subcultures and have a ship that's majority self-sustaining without the brass ever knowing about it, basically being a collection of techno-tribal societies inhabiting and crewing a starship.

From the fluff we can gather that that's not the norm, but it's a definite possibility

 argonak wrote:


its not so much having to pay, as it being heretical to let non admech do the work! What if they desecrate the holy machinery! By the Omnissiah man! Think of the poor machine spirit!

Hmmm, perhaps there's some sort of Techmarine-like arrangement where members of naval crews are shipped off to Forge Worlds to receive training and gain the blessing of the Omnissiah for mucking about with tech that's more than just operation/basic maintenance. Basically like the naval college of engineers.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 argonak wrote:


its not so much having to pay, as it being heretical to let non admech do the work! What if they desecrate the holy machinery! By the Omnissiah man! Think of the poor machine spirit!

Hmmm, perhaps there's some sort of Techmarine-like arrangement where members of naval crews are shipped off to Forge Worlds to receive training and gain the blessing of the Omnissiah for mucking about with tech that's more than just operation/basic maintenance. Basically like the naval college of engineers.

The AdMech is aware it can't be everywhere and do everything - the Departmento Munitorum and Imperial Guard both run their own field workshops, for example. They'll also let locals assist them - in one of the Cain books a Tech-priest he rescues is a local who was so good with machines they either had to induct her into the AdMech or declare her a tech-heretic.

Spetulhu wrote:

cj95 wrote:
I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

But just like the British Navy of that time quite a lot of the crew might not have wished to become crew at all, and keeping draconian order over 200 guys is a lot easier than keeping 10K, 15K or 20K unwilling crewmen in order. The Marine Soldiers supposed to do it were often the worst scum themself, all kinds of unpopular guys shipped off to naval service instead of prison. You know, unemployed drunks, petty thieves, not-too-violent robbers and homeless poets.

That depends. It would actually be quite a lot easier to maintain order on a space ship vs a ocean ship. Even when you have more people to keep track of.

First off, it's a space ship. If you really need to, you can vent a compartment into space or turn off the air if there is a major problem. That alone would help keep things mostly in line. Especially when everybody who might want to mutiny would have none of the technical knowledge to override those systems that you'd use to put them down.

Sure, you have tens of thousands of people to keep in line. But you will also have a few thousand navel armsmen to help you. Armsmen are basically the navel equivalent of Stormtroopers. Carapace armor, best training, etc... The Imperial Navy isn't taking scum of a thousand worlds to keep the discipline on their vessels.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

cj95 wrote:
I liken this to the British navy of the 1700-1800s. The sailors life was not a happy life, and many of them were horrible murderous people and crooks, but naval discipline kept them rigidly in line at all times if for no other reason than the safety and efficiency of the ship depended on it.

But just like the British Navy of that time quite a lot of the crew might not have wished to become crew at all, and keeping draconian order over 200 guys is a lot easier than keeping 10K, 15K or 20K unwilling crewmen in order. The Marine Soldiers supposed to do it were often the worst scum themself, all kinds of unpopular guys shipped off to naval service instead of prison. You know, unemployed drunks, petty thieves, not-too-violent robbers and homeless poets.

That depends. It would actually be quite a lot easier to maintain order on a space ship vs a ocean ship. Even when you have more people to keep track of.

First off, it's a space ship. If you really need to, you can vent a compartment into space or turn off the air if there is a major problem. That alone would help keep things mostly in line. Especially when everybody who might want to mutiny would have none of the technical knowledge to override those systems that you'd use to put them down.

Sure, you have tens of thousands of people to keep in line. But you will also have a few thousand navel armsmen to help you. Armsmen are basically the navel equivalent of Stormtroopers. Carapace armor, best training, etc... The Imperial Navy isn't taking scum of a thousand worlds to keep the discipline on their vessels.

Source Rogue Trader RPG:

These ships are so vast that they've only set up mechanisms to vent key components to put out fires (there are specific modifications ships have to be given to fully automate venting, evacuation bays). The majority of the doors won't be connected to an automatic system AND even if they were, after thousands of years of damage and tweaks by local populace they probably wouldn't all work.

Naval Armsmen aren't that well equipped and come from the crew population (10% of crew pop = Armsmen). They're generally given Naval Shotguns and Flak Vests. Even if the captain has forked out the money to equip and train them, they're still part of the population and so will have reservations when dealing with their own families/friends/people.

You've gotta remember that as long as the crew does its job (Which they will (barring anything especially awful), they'll take a familial pride in doing it. This is family tradition after all), the officers don't care about anything else. Black Markets and everything spring up in crew populations but aren't dealt with unless they affect ship performance.