ThenDoctor said:

True, that could happen, but why? After all, this is a whole entire PLANET we're talking about. It would take a LOT of bodies to fill every nook and cranny of it and every available acreage. Cadia has that ritual because it's not a cemetery world, it has to support an active life and culture. Cemetery worlds don't. All they have to do is house the dead and the dead take up a hell of a lot less space and resources then the living. If a planet could have billions living on it, it can easily have trillions and zillions buried on it. Just think if every bit of land on earth were turned over to housing the dead, if every city were a mausoleum complex, if every field a grave yard, how many dead could Terra hold and would one little city dedicated to one family be all that obtrusive in the grander scheme? After all, is Atkins, Akansas, USA really that obtrusive to you and have you ever even noticed it's existence in the first place?

i guess your right graver, ill just call the mass mausoleums and not cities it just puts an image to large in my head to make it ok

Dalnor Surloc said:

The Human body is holy to the empire and would never be used by the administratum as food. You read to much judge dredd.

Who do you think puts the corpse into corpse startch rations?

Anonymus said:

Humanity is the single most abundant and readily expendable resource available to the Imperium. More people are born in any given moment in the Imperium than die from all the wars and cataclysms assailing the Imperium in that same moment.

Human lives are all but worthless to the Imperium, just numbers to crunch and 'acceptable losses' to endure. It's the human ideal, the notion of humanity, that they choose to perpetuate and hold as sacred. Human life is to the Imperium as salt water is to a man on a boat in the ocean - everywhere and in essentially limitless supply.

Anonymus said:

What do you think Corpse Starch rations are made from?

Also, how much livestock do you think it's even feasible to be able to hold and keep on some of the worst hiveworlds? (most forms of livestock need to eat something, and considering that food is a premium on any hive world, there wouldn't be much you could feed pigs with, and also there's not much grass either for grazing livestock to eat)

Now you might want to argue that Corpse Starch rations is a Dark Heresy invention, but it's not. In fact billions of citizens on Necromunda's staple diet consists of recycled biological matter, and considering that the recycling facilities aren't in the least bit picky about exactly what biomatter people bring, and that people are asked to bring dead corpses to these facilities, you can bet that in the average chunk of "bloc" or "re-cyc" as they are also called, there will be a hefty proportion of human corpse in it.

Of course, the body has been "processed" through a series of enzyme and acid baths and been broken down to it's constituent components and then having been re-assembled into vile, almost acetone tasting blocks with some protein and vitamin additives, but it is still a form of cannibalism nontheless. And it's an important sort of cannibalism as well, because if they didn't do it, billions of people on Necromunda and many other hive worlds like it would starve to death.

The human body isn't a "holy empire", it is the human SOUL that is important in the eyes of the Ministorum.

What is Necromunda?

ThenDoctor said:

Originally it was a skirmish battle game belonging to Games Workshop's line of Specialist Games taking place in the underhive of the hive world called Necromunda. It's kind of what Mordheim is for Warhammer fantasy. Instead of having a huge army of miniatures you play with a small warband or "gang", and you battle with other gangs in the underhive for turf supremacy.

Necromunda (and Mordheim as well) is heavily campaign motivated in the way that after each battle models earn experience points and can increase in level, learn new skills and such, as well as gaining resources and be able to buy new weapons, armour and equipment. In addition to that, models suffer the risk of getting permanently injured or even killed in a battle, and if that happens they either suffer severe permanent penalties due to the injuries or are stricken from the gang roster because they died, and the player will either have to do without that gang member or buy a new, unexperienced gang member to replace the old one.

Anyway, the game is situated on the hive world of Necromunda, and the world itself has been included in the WH40K fluff ever since the game came out. It is located in Segmentum Solar and it's primary export is munitions for the Imperial Guard (basically the whole hive world is a enormous weapons factory, explaining why most underhive gangs tend to pack some serious heat). Necromunda started out as a mining and manufacturing colony 15.000 years ago (so it's quite old), and these fifteen millenia of industry have laid waste to the planet's enviroment. The outside air is so toxic that a normal person would die without the aid of any sort of air-purifying systems of some kind, and the planet is also wracked by acid rainstorms able to melt through clothing and flesh with ease. That's why the extensive hive clusters are completely sealed off from the outside enviroment (like most of the older hive worlds).

If you'd like to know more, check over at Lexicanum and search for "Necromunda". Apart from that, you can find all published rulebooks and additional fluff on Games Workshop's site under the Specialist Games section.

How about this for an idea: a cemetary MOON?

Imagine a planetary system with more than one inhabitable planet. These aren't that common, but they're far from unknown. There are a few in the Calixis Sector but only two spring to mind, Tephaine and Gelmiro. There could be more, but I don't have Dark Heresy on me, I'm backpacking around Vietnam at the moment.

So let's imagine a system with two or three habitable worlds, each ruled by a strong noble class. And let's imagine that these nobles want grand tombs for their ancestors.

Given that Earth's moon still has the footprints of Neil Armstrong on it, perfectly preserved, I think it would be desireable for these guys to construct tombs, mausoleums etc on airless moons within their planetary system. Of course, it would have to be a relatively asteroid-free moon, but otherwise I think the idea would work well.

You could have regions on the moon devoted to the dead of each of the system's inhabited worlds. Perhaps planetary governors started doing it, and the nobility followed, then the merchant classes, and then perhaps the poor would create guilds that could transport the cremated remains of its members in their millions to the moon for burial within a massive "pauper" complex. Given the death-obsessed nature of 40k religion, all this seems a fairly natural progression.

This would also overcome the relative improbability of transporting remains on an interstellar basis: this could, in effect, be a "local" tradition withihn just a few systems. Transporting remains from a planet to it's local moon doesn;t require a Navigator, warp drive or anything like that.

Just imagine: an airless, low gravity moon covered in dull grey rock and fine dust...with rows of billions of mass-produced grave markers laid silently by automated machines that deposit the cremated remains of humans from nearby worlds. Emerging like mountains from this sea of graves rise taller, ostentatiously decorated tombs of the rich and powerful, filigreed in gold and bronze, boasting of the acheivements of the deceased; these boasts lost on the glittering stars and the uncaring dull eyes of the lifesuit-clad servitor gravediggers....

Lightbringer said:

beautiful.

Now to get my PC's to the Tephanie system...

Yup, as soon as you take Warp Travel out of the picture, it completely fits. And for a hive world old enough, you could have monuments on this moon visible from the planet.

Of course, it would have to be a relatively asteroid-free moon, but otherwise I think the idea would work well.

Pfft. Surely the nobles would shell out some extra credits for miniature planetary shielding or some orbital laser/ordnance platforms connected to some auspex scanners and cogitators that shoot every threatening piece of star stuff out of the sky.
To make this even more 40k-ish, do that in a meteor-rich system where the planet has no such defenses.

I don't know. I think there is a general lack of comprehension about the scale involved in having "Cemetary Worlds." We're not talking about quiet little parks where rich nobles have tasteful-to-gaudy monuments. We're talking about ENTIRE PLANETS that are devoted to the burial of the dead. No way that could be just nobles and some retainers and the occasional war hero. Cemetary Worlds would provide burial space not for thousands, or hundreds of thousand, or even millions. Any comparison to real world burial grounds and practices is inadequate to even begin to describe what a Cemetary World would be. There would be space available, and dedicated by official decree, to burial for billions, tens of billions, more probably HUNDREDS of billions. Whole deceased populations from multiple worlds over a span of centuriesor thousands of years.

There is talk of the expense of shipping dead bodies through space for offworld burial, but I don't think that's a valid obstacle. First, you have ships with crews of 100,000 or more to start with. There would be a huge amount of cargo space available. More importantly, people are inclined to spend irrationally immense amounts of money to give their deceased a "proper" burial, as defined by the social customs. Imperial social customs most likely call for rather elaborate preparations, transportation and ultimate enterrment. Ship captains could probably make a pretty, um, microthrone or whatever, carrying corpses as super-cargo. They don't need elaborate handling. They don't take up much space. Slip 'em in vacuum-sealed baggies and wedge 'em into any nook or cranny, or between crates, or in stacks in unused cabinsas needed. Right now, most airline flights and merchant ships carry a few corpses/cadavers on every trip. Extra money from a clientele that doesn't complain and is more valuable to carry, pound for pound, than regular passengers.

Hive World inhabitants would probably save most of their lives, or take part in various group schemes to be able to afford "proper" burial on a Cemetary World. Trade Unions and Guilds and Military Units etc. could all have space purchased and reserved for their members (creating those veritable cities of the deadmillions upon millions tucked away into niches in high rise "tombscrapers". The wealthier the family the more elaborate the tombs and trappings. But with a little foresight, even mid-Hive populations could afford some sort of Cemetery World enterment. Heck, Low/Under-Hive dwellers could conceivably raise funds necessary to transport cremated or freeze-dried remains to columbariums on the nearest Cemetary World. Bodies might transit from ship to ship over long stretches before a vessel carrying them finally makes a stop in a Cemetary World. Why not? The dead are in no hurry.

Anyway, keep in mind that the scale of the 40K universe is much vaster than anything we have to compare it to. It's huge. It's monumental. It's gargantuan. It's, I dare say, really, really, REALLY Big!

This gives me an idea for a game. A charist captain who been dumping bodies in the warp instead of ferrying them to their destination - which obviously is a really bad idea, as he realize when they return from the warp to haunt him...

Hmmm.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I think, in general. people are overstating just how common Corpse Starch Rations really are. I'm pretty sure the Iron Stomach feral world trait mention Corpse Starch as one example where they don't have to make a Toughness test to stomach it.

If everyone else are going to get violently ill every time they have corpse starch rations... I don't really think it's common dining for anyone but the most desperate. Hive World foodstuff is low quality recycled biological matter, I'm sure, but I think corpse starch is supposed to be an example of the ultimate worst of the worst.

I imagine Corpse Starch Rations are a Hive World phenomena. I can't imagine the average frontier, agri or Imperial world needs to render humans down to edible foil-wrapped bars.

Plus I also recall a Dan Abnett Gaunt's Ghost novel where Gaunt uncovers and (I think) executes some Imperial Guard catering corpsmen for using casualties as sustenance. Clearly there are degrees of ambiguity to the Imperium's attitude towards recycling the dead as food. What may be acceptable on some worlds may not be on others.

On hyper resource drained hive worlds like Necromunda where everything needs to be recycled, I can imagine most of the meat available to the poor is in fact...er...the poor. The same probably goes for Voidborn.

But on the "average" Imperial world (say sub-10 billion population, mixed cityscape/agriscape/wasteland) the dead would probably be treated with a lot more respect, and the very concept of eating the dead may be regarded as abhorrent.

Slaunyeh said:

Have you ever read a module for Ravenloft entitled "Ship of Horror"?

A captain has been dumping bodies in the ocean that he was paid to take to a burial island and, as a result, his sip is all haunted and cursed. I guess it's just one of those old story archetypes tat stick with us. To be honest, I've ad tat old module in the back of my head in case a game session where to crop up finding me unprepared. Change island to cemetery world, ocean to warp, and the bad guy twist at the end to a slought and prest-o, instant haunted ship story... if only I hadn't done three haunted ship stories already....

Lightbringer said:

Heck, you can even look at a full blown hive world in the Calixis sector, that being Scintilla, to see that cannibalism (in what ever form it takes) is a rare and desperate thing. Scintilla is a hive world, yet all it's hives have very intricate burial and observation rights for the dead. In Sebillius, they love themselves some taxidermy, not cannibalism. On Ambulon, they keep the bones about as they do on Tarsus for the construction of ossuaries. Corps Starch rations, in relation to the Calixis Sector, seems to be more the food for when every thing's gone to hell and then went to that hell's hell. They are mentioned in relation to war worlds and also listed as the poor quality ration. Heck, underhivers make meals of rats and fungi. It would seem CS Rations are the last resort for the powers that be to feed a populace quickly before said population died themselves.

The idea of CS rations being common just always rubbed me the wrong way. Mostly due to the fact that I'm a big fan of the old pulp stand-by of cannibalism magically causing degeneration to a more twisted and privative form like those lovable Hull Ghasts (like not eating folks is what separates us from the animals after all X-D ).

Slaunyeh said:

Nope, they are described as a part of the staple diet for the majority of citizens on Necromunda. Think of it as pasta/rice/potatoes for the common and poor citizens on hive worlds. Of course rations being rations tend to be edible raw, and I can agree that it might be hard to chug one down in it's raw state. Normal people probably cook them or add some sort of spice to make them more appealing, but eating one in it's raw state is likely to make people's stomachs upset (unless they are feral worlders that is, who are used to consuming pretty nasty things, including raw and/or semi-rotten meat when they have to).

Graver said:

We can still have that. Mainly by eating non-processed and raw human flesh, hullghasts become what they are. CS is different, it's basically collected bio-matter dumped in a pit of acid and enzymes designed to separate th raw proteins and starch from the matter. Then they filtrate out the acids and enzymes, spun the starch and add necessary additives (like some form of vitamins and other nutrients that cannot be found in the starch), and then press them into these pale, blocky looking chunks that smell and taste a little like acetone.

It's like that food vending robot in Judge Dredd going: -"Eat recycled food. It's good for the enviroment and OKAY for you."

Varnias Tybalt said:

Err, sorry to be the pedant, but although they are called "corpse starch" rations, you would actually be providing very little in the way of starch. Cannabalism is a viable method of going on the Atkins diet as the majority of what you get is protein and fat nutritionally speaking. Pedantry aside, protein is what would be the most precious of the food groups as it is more energy intensive to produce compared to carbohydrate. I feel dirty...

Bad Birch said:

Well, yeah. If one were to be really pedantic one should call them "Corpse Glycogen rations". However Glycogen is also commonly called "animal starch" among non-academic circles, so the name "corpse starch" is most likely a spin on that.

It's just easier to say "corpse starch rations" for the common folk of the 41st millenium, than saying "protein and glycogen rations".

Well said. I do like this topic, especially in reference to how a void ship might run it's affairs in relation to food. How easy would it be for the food to be corrupted- and how ironic would it be that it was people in the first place! Good old Warhammer black humour!