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In The Grimdark of Fanfiction -40k

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for all we like to rag on them about stagnation, Imperial tech is, uh, pretty damn awesome. I'd assume a trans person on pretty much any Imperial world with significant infrastructure (IE, not a feudal world) could get SRT that'd make our current sort look like something done with bone knives and animal skins in comparison.

one thing you notice about the Imperium, especially its military, is it's actually pretty damn egalitarian- presumably, what with the horrible space gribbles that want to eat everyone, evil cultists and associated daemons that want to kill/convert everyone, horrific killer robot zombies, crazy sadomasochist space elf pirates, warmongering sentient fungi, and those dang dirty commies, the Imperium doesn't really have sufficient fucks to give about what your sexual orientation or gender identity or whatever is, as long is it isn't 'Heretic.'
especially if you can hold a lasgun and pray really hard.
 
comradepitrovsky said:
Would the Sororitas accept a trans-woman, you think?
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Probably depends on the Soroitas. The Imperial Creed has massive variation due to local syncretism and the vagaries of warp travel and communication making it impossible to impose more than broad-strokes ideas from the top down.

I can't see the Red Redemption end being like this (they'd say something about the denial of the flesh), but on the other end there are probably variants where this would be seen as the penultimate act of devotion, second only to dying a martyr.
 
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Mechanis said:
for all we like to rag on them about stagnation, Imperial tech is, uh, pretty damn awesome. I'd assume a trans person on pretty much any Imperial world with significant infrastructure (IE, not a feudal world) could get SRT that'd make our current sort look like something done with bone knives and animal skins in comparison.

one thing you notice about the Imperium, especially its military, is it's actually pretty damn egalitarian- presumably, what with the horrible space gribbles that want to eat everyone, evil cultists and associated daemons that want to kill/convert everyone, horrific killer robot zombies, crazy sadomasochist space elf pirates, warmongering sentient fungi, and those dang dirty commies, the Imperium doesn't really have sufficient fucks to give about what your sexual orientation or gender identity or whatever is, as long is it isn't 'Heretic.'
especially if you can hold a lasgun and pray really hard.
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They have working cybernetics and gene mods.

Working augmentation. Their top of the line imperial guard makes our NAVY SEALS look like pussies.
 
Space Penguin said:
Indeed. They also claim to have beaten the Necrons during the war in heaven which we know is BS. So who knows really what the truth is.
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yeah, generally speaking you pretty much have to take anything the 'modern' Eldar- either faction of them- say with an Emperor-sized grain of salt.
though to be fair, I suspect that the pre-fall Eldar Empire may have engaged in no small amount of historical revisionism, since they seem to have forgotten about the Krork and a lot of the War In Heaven stuff, so.
Night said:
Probably depends on the Soroitas. The Imperial Creed has massive variation due to local syncretism and the vagaries of warp travel and communication making it impossible to impose more than broad-strokes ideas from the top down.

I can't see the Red Redemption end being like this, but on the other end there are probably variants where this would be seen as the penultimate act of devotion, second only to dying a martyr.
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yeah, that'd also be a factor I suppose. the Imperium isn't nearly as monolithic as it presents itself- it simply can't be, with the limitations it has on travel and communications.
Accelerator said:
They have working cybernetics and gene mods.

Working augmentation. Their top of the line imperial guard makes our NAVY SEALS look like pussies.
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not to mention life extension, cloned replacements all the way up to limbs, and heavens knows what else.
hell, a decent Biologis could probably sample your DNA, and your parent's too if they're still around, whip up an XX (or XY) clone of you, then play musical brains, no problem.
a really good Biologis could likely whip up a designer retrovirus that can switch out X/Y chromosomes in situ and force-grow appropriate sexual characteristics in a few days as a hobby project.
 
Mechanis said:
not to mention life extension, cloned replacements all the way up to limbs, and heavens knows what else.
hell, a decent Biologis could probably sample your DNA, and your parent's too if they're still around, whip up an XX (or XY) clone of you, then play musical brains, no problem.
a really good Biologis could likely whip up a designer retrovirus that can switch out X/Y chromosomes in situ and force-grow appropriate sexual characteristics in a few days as a hobby project.
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Or just because they want to help; Magi Biologis, along with the Princeps of the Adeptus Titanicus, tend to be among the most human and empathetic of senior Mechanicus adepts (for separate reasons; Magi Biologis are a lot more used to the flaws and variety of humans, rather than expecting mathematically neat conformity, and Titan Princeps because if they want to survive, they need to maintain balance between machine and human).
 
DonBosco said:
We're talking about the same 40K where democracy is heresy,
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Democracy being heresy is something the setting is a bit iffy about. We have mentions of worlds being democratic and being part of the Imperium and we have mention of worlds trying for democracy before xenos ruined their day. we also have mention of worlds doing the heresy of democracy and yet the reason the Imperium is really beating them up aside from their secession is the no tithes being paid anymore. So yeah....who knows. The lore is like that. lol
 
This "egalitarian" thing may simple be up to the standard humongous losses the troops take. Think about it. Anyone who survives a battle is then good enough to be promoted not because he learned something in that battle and is actually eligible for a promotion but simply because he is still alive and able to fill the position that was just vacated by the predecessor dying. The former cause may help the Imperial Guard actually even abit, although it is achived by loosing troops at a rate that is in almost no relation to the probable effect.

Similar things happened in WWI where ranks were filled back up in field by those that were simply there to fill them up again. The grueling battlefields of WWI may even be the only real life scenario were we could even imagine what it means to be an Imperial Guard soldier in WH40k.
 
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pretty much. the fact of the matter is, the Imperium fights on so many fronts they really can't afford to turn away able bodies- and there's just as many female Inquisitors, Rouge Traders, and ship captains out there.

hell, the only reason there aren't girl Space Marines is because Malcador didn't have enough time to nag the big E into making some. lord knows it's not like he couldn't have done so.
the Mechanicus recruits equally as well- in fact, the only two major organizations in the IoM I'm aware of that care about sex are the Space Marines (because the augmentations only work on guys) and the Sisters, who are rules-lawyering around a law forbidding Men under arms to the Ecclesiarchy. Everyone else pretty much only cares about whether you can actually do the job and if you're a heretic or not.
 
Mechanis said:
pretty much. the fact of the matter is, the Imperium fights on so many fronts they really can't afford to turn away able bodies- and there's just as many female Inquisitors, Rouge Traders, and ship captains out there.

hell, the only reason there aren't girl Space Marines is because Malcador didn't have enough time to nag the big E into making some. lord knows it's not like he couldn't have done so.
the Mechanicus recruits equally as well- in fact, the only two major organizations in the IoM I'm aware of that care about sex are the Space Marines (because the augmentations only work on guys) and the Sisters, who are rules-lawyering around a law forbidding Men under arms to the Ecclesiarchy. Everyone else pretty much only cares about whether you can actually do the job and if you're a heretic or not.
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The imperium has plenty of women in the ranks. From ecclesiarchs to priests, to nuns, to battle maids, to soldiers, to generals, to ship captains, to arbites, etc.

There are only 2 sex specific organizations in the Imperium. 1 is the Space marines and the other are the Sisters. Thats it.

There are segregated regiments but thats more for practical purposes then anything else. babies anyone? At any rate, mixed regiments exist.
 
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Okay, I just have an odd idea for either a fic or a game, and I just want to see how well this would go over on everybody.

The general idea is that the creation of the Primaris was not just studying the Primarch DNA for 10k years. The fact is that there is something wrong with it that over engineered to a ridiculous degree that makes trying to implant it with anything close to a natural genetic structure impossible, almost by design to keep more primarchs from being made. Thankfully there is already something out there that does successfully mesh primarch and baseline human DNA: the Sensei which is not just the children of the Emperor. The issue is that save for some odd mutations, which might explain how post Imperial humanity is so susceptible to them, they are all primarily human genetically. Over the millennia, the trace amounts of demigod DNA has stabilized in certain individuals, transitioning from junk DNA to actually expressing a few things, which is where the psychic resistance and better control that the Sensei are known for.

As you would expect, those particular individuals that have these traits that Cawl would find useful are far and few between, so there were set up various Magos Biolgis across the Imperium to look out for them. With the Imperial gene purity tests and the Order Famulous records helped find them, hopefully before the Inquisition, then they would be recruited into a specialized Imperial Guard regiment. There they'd be subject to various experiments trying to bring these traits out to produce something akin to to a space marine, though a little less fearless. They would give them some military training, mainly to see how well they could deal with their new bodies can deal in a fight, then take samples to implement into the next generation Primaris gene seed. To keep them in line, some subtle mind effecting drugs and cryogenic hybernation are used to unmoor them from reality save for the one the Mechanicus give them.

The general idea would be that there was an assault on one of the major training centers, the proto-marines are roused from their cryogenic sleep and escape on some transport who's captain is as clueless as they are on what's going on in there. They are willing to give them a ride to the nearest Hive City and give them a hab they can crash in for a month.

So in the end you got a few 'marines' that aren't limited by sex, background, and have them not be completely beholden to the Primarch's legacy. The fact they don't have any of the fancy Astartes toys would make things interesting as well.
 
Mechanis said:
Correction: they went to sleep because Szarekh didn't want to hassle with the Eldar while trying to figure out how to get his soul back (and all the other Necrontyr too.)
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Necrons 8th edition said:
Yet even with the defeat of the Old Ones and the C'tan alike, the Silent King saw that the time of the Necrons was over – for the moment, at least. The mantle of galactic dominion would soon pass to the Aeldari, a race who had fought alongside the Old Ones throughout the War in Heaven and had thus come to hate the Necrons and all their works. The Aeldari had survived where the Old Ones had not, and the Necrons, weakened during the overthrow of the C'tan, could not stand against them. Yet the Silent King knew that the time of the Aeldari would pass, as did the time of all flesh.
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It was napping and waiting until they fell to avoid having to deal with them. There's similar quotes in 5th and 7th edition IIRC.
 
Aliexster said:
Okay, I just have an odd idea for either a fic or a game, and I just want to see how well this would go over on everybody.

The general idea is that the creation of the Primaris was not just studying the Primarch DNA for 10k years. The fact is that there is something wrong with it that over engineered to a ridiculous degree that makes trying to implant it with anything close to a natural genetic structure impossible, almost by design to keep more primarchs from being made. Thankfully there is already something out there that does successfully mesh primarch and baseline human DNA: the Sensei which is not just the children of the Emperor. The issue is that save for some odd mutations, which might explain how post Imperial humanity is so susceptible to them, they are all primarily human genetically. Over the millennia, the trace amounts of demigod DNA has stabilized in certain individuals, transitioning from junk DNA to actually expressing a few things, which is where the psychic resistance and better control that the Sensei are known for.

As you would expect, those particular individuals that have these traits that Cawl would find useful are far and few between, so there were set up various Magos Biolgis across the Imperium to look out for them. With the Imperial gene purity tests and the Order Famulous records helped find them, hopefully before the Inquisition, then they would be recruited into a specialized Imperial Guard regiment. There they'd be subject to various experiments trying to bring these traits out to produce something akin to to a space marine, though a little less fearless. They would give them some military training, mainly to see how well they could deal with their new bodies can deal in a fight, then take samples to implement into the next generation Primaris gene seed. To keep them in line, some subtle mind effecting drugs and cryogenic hybernation are used to unmoor them from reality save for the one the Mechanicus give them.

The general idea would be that there was an assault on one of the major training centers, the proto-marines are roused from their cryogenic sleep and escape on some transport who's captain is as clueless as they are on what's going on in there. They are willing to give them a ride to the nearest Hive City and give them a hab they can crash in for a month.

So in the end you got a few 'marines' that aren't limited by sex, background, and have them not be completely beholden to the Primarch's legacy. The fact they don't have any of the fancy Astartes toys would make things interesting as well.
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I don't even know where to begin to tear this whole thing apart...

Well, the first issue is that you expect genetic purity tests to not be presided over by an Inquisitor or their acolytes. Next, you expect the Order Famulous to not report these divergences to the Inquisition, when the Adepta Sororitas are themselves agents of both the Ecclesiarchy and the Ordo Hereticus.

Next comes 'specialized guard regiments'. These don't exist...at all. While some regiments lean towards certain areas of expertise when it comes to warfare (siege regiments, armored regiments, etc), the Imperium cannot afford to 'specialize' regiments. Regiments are created almost yearly and are more often than not shipped out to never return to their home planets again. Next, you expect the Inquisition to not crawl all over a regiment of near-astartes super soldiers? Inquisitors are almost always accompanied by an entourage of the best agents and warriors they can get their hands on, such as storm troopers and the like. Your 'specialized regiment' wouldn't make it past a decade without them being found out.

That's not even getting into the fact that you suppose these individuals would be 'far and few between', which would never give you the numbers to justify a regiment of any size that wouldn't be absorbed into a larger regiment in need of reinforcement.

The last issue I want to note is that you say that these soldiers would be released by a clueless ship captain...which is bullshit, considering the theoretical worth of these soldiers. No general or inquisitor would let these assets out of their sight, let alone be shipped out (in stasis) without every officer in charge being vetted and the untrustworthy executed.

So, to sum this all up, I think you might have some...deficiencies in the background and lore...as well as an overabundance of wishful thinking, for this idea to begin to be feasible.
 
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