If you select Noble Birth as your home world option, what type of world are you actually from? Are you Imperial nobility or just planetary nobility?

Either, and you choose your planet.

It could be anything from a minor noble from a backwater planet to being a member of one of the most powerful families on Terra. You just need to explain why your character is on a Rogue Trader ship out wherever the game is set.

The correct answer is: any kind!

The birth world selection just defines white kind of enviroment you grew up in more than what the world looked like. A hive worlder dealt with teaming populations and enclosed spaces, a death worlder dealt with constant threats, a noble born lived in the lap of luxery, was well educated, and was trained in high society.

But you could have been a noble on the same teeming metropolis as a hive worlder, the child of a Rogue Trader living on the same starship as a void born, or the child of the ruler of an imperial shrine world. The important thing is that you had a different set of experiences. On a hive you lived on the uncrowded top levels, on a ship you got proper medical care, genetic treatments, and were exposed to high society. Even if you were "from" a death world you most likely spent you childhood in a fortress/citadel and were never exposed to the dangers of the planet. Your families wealth has isolated you from most of the world specific experiences that other characters have to deal with.

So run with it. You can be from any world you can imagine.

Generaly, a civilized World, but it could be any type of world really. Nobles don't really have the same lifestyle as those under them, hence why they are considered their own 'homeworld'.

the r.t in my group is styled after the metabaron comics so he a prince from a planet that the empire bought from his father for a fabolous amount of money that his father amongst other things used to build a state of the art capital ship as a present for the player... now run along sonny boy.. anywho, playing nobles from planets that have evolved independantly of the empire can be great fun,, such as nobles from tribal, pharonic or medieval times...

! : ?

Waaaay back in the early days of DH, I did a complete basic career for an Imperial Noble. I think it might still be floating around on Dark Reign. This was before the publication of the Inquisitor's Handbook, which replaced the need for such a career.

Here's a link (not that it's hugely relevant):-

http://www.darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/index.php/new-rules/careers/624-complete-basic-career-imperial-noble

I spent a lot of time trying to build enough flexibility into the career to allow the noble to come from any Imperial World, whether feudal, frontier, hive or whatever. This was actually extremely difficult! A lot of people on the old BI forums didn't like the idea of feudal world nobles, as it didn't gel with their ideas of an "Imperial Noble."

The point is that Nobles can, of course, come from any kind of world. The phrase "Imperial Noble" just means part of a ruling elite within the Imperium, ie not necessarily a formal part of the centralised Adeptus Terra bureaucracy, (though this works too).

In an Empire as vast as the Imperium that can mean any one of millions of different things. If you look at the underlying game mechanics of what counts as a "Noble" character, they're broad enough to encompass (in our own world) people as diverse as Paris Hilton, Barack Obama, the Queen of England, JFK etc etc. Even real-world societies that ostensibly deride the concept of aristocracy produce a ruling elite: look at communist states like North Korea or Cuba: these produce aristocratic families who rule autocratically.

"Nobles" are kings, politicians, spoiled brats, ruthless manipulators, con men, tragic inheritors of dark legacies...any one of dozens of archtetypes feeds the concept, and any Imperial world is capable of producing them.

Could be any world really. A point of note though. I think when they mean noble birth it kind of implies that your character carries himself in such a manner than other people see that he is of Imperial nobility and other Imperial nobility 'more or less' recognise him as such. A chieftain from a feral world or a king from a Feudal world who has the barest inkiling of the imperiums existance and had next to no contact with the imperiums power structure, would be hard to qualify as a noble when it comes to the power and influence game mechanics.

Its kind of a question of class. There are certain social settings in the Imperium involving the great and the good where normal people have trouble influencing or understanding the turn of events, because they need to understand intrigue flattery,the flow of favours and requests that requites a great deal of charm to oil the wheels and a good understanding of where exactly in the pecking order you are and what strings you have to pull to rise.. A Noble from a backwater frontier world may not have the clout of a Imperial noble from a spire world, but somewhere in the formation of the individual he would have learnt what to say what to do and how to act in certain settings giving him distinct advantage over someone who was not born in nobility.

This is important because I think its a question of class and social education rather than status or power. A rogue trader who as grubbily rose up from being stubback and managed to get himself a starship, countless men and women and a lot of profit factor influence probably has a lot of power and status, but in settings involving nobilty for good or ill he will be recognised as being a "grubby oik who got good", while his barely human Mechanicum explorator who gave up his title to pursue his thirst for knowledge, probably would be able to still cut it in a nobles circle because he probably knows their ways and manners and what to say and how to act,

Just my two pennys worth.