Has anyone found good rules for cloning technology in 40k? So far a biologist pc in my campaign has circumvented the imperial ban on cloning by only experimenting with lobotimized servo-stock but he wants to make a full on clone of himself just in case his character doesn't make it back from the last battle of our campaign.

How would you transfer the players mind into the cloned body? Even the best Mechanicus Cortex Implaints used to restore a brain to functioning after severe damage are not used to ressurect the dead. As a matter of fact, I think ressurection of the dead is a bad thing, practiced by the Sarcosan Heretics I believe it was. That being said, perhaps you can find a Sarcosan Heretic who can do it? Perhaps a machine from the Dark Age exists that does it.

If I am not mistaken, and I very well could be, each being only has one soul. Once you die, that soul goes to the God Emperor or whatever ruinous power you worshipped. I am not sure the soul stays with the body, and that might actually be the issue with transfer of the mind in a dead body to a fresh body.

I never liked that "clone=soulless" argument. I don't believe that clones are necessarily soulless at all. It's bad science, even in the 40k universe. Identical twins are clones, yet no one argues they don't have souls.

"Soullessness" is a condition in my view that solely affects pariahs and untouchables due to ancient Necron tampering and subsequent Imperial breeding programs. All living things apart from Pariahs/Untouchables have a warp presence, no matter how they were created.

Cloning is expressly referenced a number of times in 40k. One of the major characters in "Nemesis" is a cloned Pariah. The Emperor's Children tried to clone Horus, until the Black Legion destroyed his body. The Afreili Strain are technically Chimerae, not clones, but the principles are similar.

The overall impression is that cloning is heavily frowned upon in the Imperium, perhaps even forbidden. This is probably for the same reason that human cloning is frowned upon in the modern world: the whole process has the hint of unpleasant possibilities about it. (Cloned Hitler, Immortal Hitler etc etc.)

That said, one would imagine that rules for the process would be fairly simple. Human cloning is probably JUST possible using modern 21st century technology, so it's probably do-able in the 41st Millenium. As it's frowned upon, if you wanted it done, you may have to go to Tech Heretics for the job. There are probably a number of clinics lurking outside or within the Imperium that offer human cloning. One would imagine that the Ordo Hereticus devotes a lot of time to hunting down such facilities.

In fact, maybe there could be another specialist Ordos for this type of activity? The Ordo Chimerae? Just a thought...

If you were a rich Rogue Trader, yes, you could probably arrange to have yourself cloned. You'd probably have to keep the process very quiet, though, or risk Inquisitorial action. And I can't imagine that a brain transplant into a younger cloned body is totally beyond the abilities of 40k tech, either.

Death Korps of Krieg technically use cloning techniques, relying on Vitae Wombs to account for the horrifyingly high mortality rates on their homeworld. There's also the Afrieli Strain of Guardsmen, which was basically an attempt at cloning Solar Macharius to make Captain Imperium, but they all seemed to be horrendously unlucky or prone to physical failures. Corax is rumoured to have used cloning techniques to bolster the ranks of his Raven Guard following the Istvaan Dropship Massacre. 90% of the clones from that incident had to be euthanised by Corax himself, given their horrible mutations and aberrations. Given the fluff sources we have to go off, we know three things about cloning in the Imperium. One, it's proscribed by the Adeptus Mechanicus Biologis, and you'd need a lot of clout to weasel the technology out of their hands. Two, it almost always results in something going wrong with the clones. Three, none of the cloning techniques used allow brain-swaps. They're all vat-born.

Roll 1d5 for number of mutations on the clone! :3

Actually, found rules for the Afrieli Guardsmen. Most of the custom rules would translate easily enough.

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Errant said:

That link doesn't seem to work. Here's a link to the specific Afrieli article within Dark Reign, if this was the one you were aiming for:-

http://darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/index.php/new-rules/new-packages/614-complete-advanced-character-package-afrieli-strain-guardsman

Be careful though, the guy who wrote it is unhinged.

EDIT: These are DH-level characters, though, not RT level. And I don't necessarily believe that the "cursed" trait for Afrielis should necessarily apply to all clones. Although Afrielis are a type of clone, technically (well in MY reading of it anyway, which Andy Hoare, (who wrote the original WD article) seemed to be broadly happy with) they're a patchwork of DNA from various different donors, making them either a chimera or mosaic. Afrieli aren't typical clones, and are different in a number of ways to "normal" humans.

Actually, cloning is used as part of a "full rejuve" process in early canon (the Inquisition War trilogy): subject is cloned, his mind/personality/soul psychically cut+pasted into the new body as a child, then they spend ~20 years teaching it to be the person it used to be. Given the effectiveness of other juvenat treatments and augmetics when it comes to extending lifespan, taking two decades to start again isn't that bad, although it does take things rather out of the scope of most games, and it guarantees the death of the original (it is expressly a cut and paste job, not copy and paste, and you can't afford a soulless body running around).

This link between soullessness and cloning, (at the risk of boring everyone to tears on the topic) seems to be based on the assumption that Afrielis are both clones and pariahs. This is (in MY interpretation) not correct.

This misapprehension (well I think it's a misapprehension) seems to have come about because the Afrielis are described as freaking out other troops and being prevented from operating with the Inquisition.

Firstly, a regiment of albino killers raised from birth to be fanatically devoted to the Emperor would freak anyone out. Secondly, the Inquisition (or the puritan mainstream) would likely be leery of asociation with clonetech or abhumans.

Thirdly, when I wrote up my rules for Afrielis, I commented on the forum at the time that I didn't necessarily want to link Pariahs with Afrielis as they seemed to me to be different things. Andy Hoare, who wrote the original White Dwarf article on Afrielis, popped up and commented that he approved of this approach.

Now of course YMMV, but I think it's incorrect to describe clones as "soulless." Humans have been naturally cloning themselves for millions of years (identical twins) and to suggest that the process of artifical cloning creates soulless monstrosities flies in the face of how charming Dolly the sheep was in person.

Lightbringer said:

Indeed! I swear, both this site and DarkReign seem designed to frustrate me.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

He wouldn't be transfering the soul necessarily. High end imperial organisations have access to neuromancy - the same tech they use to imprint false memories in mind cleansed throne agents or new knowledge into tech priests. The idea would be that the biologists creates a clone (probably somehow imperfect knowing 40k tech) and his subordinates use neuromancy to imprint as much of his previous life onto the clone as possible.

Thanks, BTW - very useful info from you all. The article on the Afrieli Strain Guardsman is pretty awesome.

I would have thought someone who knew the actual canon (lol) would pop up and give a better answer by now. Do the various books explain why there clones are prone to mutations? And mutations stem from warp corruption, or corruption in general? If cloning is possible, why have they not cloned the Emperor and transferred his mind into the new body? Would he not be the perfect candidate? Then again, maybe it has happened already and is a well kept secret!

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Replicae

I read the info Errant gave the link to. It is very interesting, but it does point to how difficult it is.

I think if you can perform the tranplant soon after death, like not an extended time period, it would work. However, due to the bizaare nature of what happened to the Ravens, maybe you should be required to roll a d10 and divide the result by 3 for the number of times which the player must roll on the mutation table. You can let a natural "0" require no roll, and the procedure went well.

@Cheddah

He wouldn't be transfering the soul necessarily. High end imperial organisations have access to neuromancy - the same tech they use to imprint false memories in mind cleansed throne agents or new knowledge into tech priests. The idea would be that the biologists creates a clone (probably somehow imperfect knowing 40k tech) and his subordinates use neuromancy to imprint as much of his previous life onto the clone as possible.

There's an obvious problem with this: Cloning doesn't prolong the life span of the character any more than buying a replacement for a broken jug makes the original jug somehow whole again. From the perspective of the people around the new jug, yes, there's still a jug around - but from the perspective of the broken jug, the existence of another unbroken jug changes nothing. AKA: You're still dead.

Cloning is not "Game Over. Reload Y/N?"

@Fulminarex

I would have thought someone who knew the actual canon (lol) would pop up and give a better answer by now. Do the various books explain why there clones are prone to mutations? And mutations stem from warp corruption, or corruption in general? If cloning is possible, why have they not cloned the Emperor and transferred his mind into the new body? Would he not be the perfect candidate? Then again, maybe it has happened already and is a well kept secret!

So... considering the Emperor Of Mankind is not exactly an average human, how would you test whether your method of cloning works on Him? After all, if the whole thing fails, it's likely to kill Him, which would spell doom for the Imperium as a whole. And that's already assuming there are any people who are both in a position to conduct such experiments and willing to experiment on their god.

I thought the Emperor could not be killed? That he is truly a God now? Cloning would not require killing the cell donor, so how would trying to clone the Emperor kill him? How did the Emperor create the Primarchs? Weren't they from his genetic stock?

I thought the Emperor could not be killed? That he is truly a God now?

Which would be why he's in need of the Golden Throne as a life support measure?

Cloning would not require killing the cell donor, so how would trying to clone the Emperor kill him?

You were suggesting a transfer of the soul - which has a certain potential to Go Horribly Wrong . Otherwise... well, it really depends what parts of the Emperor are pure genetics. Considering he was most likely created magically, a mere clone might not have the traits you'd like him to have.

How did the Emperor create the Primarchs? Weren't they from his genetic stock?

The important point of that question would be "the Emperor". The guy who lived for several dozen millenia and was the most powerful more-or-less human psyker in existance. I think "the Emperor was able do it!" is not a good justification of why something should work with the tools of mere mortals.

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

Grand Inquisitor Fulminarex said:

As I mentioned: cloning for rejuve is in canon. The biggest problem with the process is that (as Cifer quite rightly pointed out) it falls afoul of the continuity problem. Yes, at the end of it, there is (in theory) a perfect copy of Mr A walking around, but from the point of view of the original Mr A, it is a only a copy, and more to the point, Mr A is now either a soulless husk (by virtue of the copying process), or dead.

The second big problem with rejuve cloning is it takes so long- sure , you could force-grow the clone to physical maturity in a pretty short time, but that means screwing around with DNA (so not a perfect clone), or artificially increasing the growth and metabolic rates with various drug and hormone regimens, but that brings up all sorts of other potential complications, not least of which (in both cases) is the problem of returning the growth/metabolic rates down to normal levels once it reaches the ideal physical age. Even assuming you are capable of solving those problems, there's still the problem that the freshly-printed clone is not immediately and automatically Mr A. It will wake up almost childlike/infantile, and will have to be carefully guided into forming the same personality that Mr A had, and unlocking Mr A's memories. Ever had to go through serious physiotherapy after an accident? You have to relearn a load of the little skills and knacks you once had. Mr A's clone is going to have to do that and develop his own personality (much like any growing child) and go through months, if not years of counselling sessions to unlock the hidden memories emplaced a part of the imprinting/soul transplant process.

The third problem is that it is a slow process, swapping souls between bodies; too slow to be done in the field (as a "life saving" treatment). It took over 20 hours of work by a choir of skilled psykers to transplant Inquisitorial Proctor Baal Firenze to his new, younger body. Assuming you could get a dying or dead-just-now Mr A to the med-lab where the clone body is standing by, with a major choir of psyker/surgeons ready and waiting, I think the record for keeping the soul from departing/collapsing was less than 8 hrs (in Xenos). So it can't be an operation undertaken in extremis. And since it's not a "We'll back you up to this point before a mission, Mr A, so your clone can have all your knowledge up to now if you die", it's "We're going to rip your soul and memories out of this body, Mr A, and shove them into the clone, overwriting whatever soul and mind is already there. Are you sure you want to lose this body now?", you need to be **** sure you're prepared to go through with it, especially since your original body is about to become a drooling, soulless, mindless husk.
Also, the whole husk thing means you can't use it as a backup before going on a mission.

The fourth problem is the mutation/corruption issue, mentioned briefly as part of point 2 above. It's not necessarily a problem of warp taint (although that is a potential problem, and has been since, well, the Primarch project, at least), so much as errors in the clone's copy of the donor's DNA.
At this point, I'd like to apologise for pulling out the same tired old cliche about cloning being like photocopying a person- no matter how good the equipment, materials and process, some error always creeps in. It is, however, a valid analogy, especially if you aren't planning on waiting 15-20 years for the clone to be physically mature before imprinting it, or plan on making loads of copies.
Indeed, the major problems with the Ravens and other replicae came from the fact that they were force-grown clones, which also had to deal with the incredibly dangerous astartes post-human induced mutations (and given how many rejects, deaths and mutants they cause without the complications of force-grown/altered metabolic rates...).
As for the notion of trying this with the Emperor: consider this, He was formed by the deliberate self-sacrifice and mass suicide of every shaman, psyker and witch doctor on the planet, so they could all fuse and reincarnate in the same body. Quite aside from the fact that His body is almost certainly post-human, and even more so than the astartes (so likely no-one will know quite what they were doing if they were to try it), and the fact that His death (which is effectively what would happen, at least temporarily) would cause the collapse of the Imperium (see the thread elsewhere on the forums: " No Astronomican = Bad or Really Bad? "), do you really think that any psyker, alone or in a choir, has sufficient strength to handle the transfer of His mind?

The last problem with it (offhand, at least), is the ethics of such a process. I know, this is 40k, grimdark, bleh. It's still a point that bears raising, if only for a character contemplating the option to consider. You're ripping the soul out of a person's body- even with their permission, that's got to be ethically dodgy in and of itself. More than that, though, you're then shoving that soul into another body, overwriting whatever mind and soul was there already (and I'm with Lightbringer here, I think "clones are soulless" is a misapprehension, although I'm fairly sure it comes not from the fluff on the Afrieli (and hence Gav Thorpe's work), but from Abnett- specifically the passage in Hereticus about using vat-grown bodies for creating daemonhosts, in order to salve his [Eisenhorn's] conscience). As has been pointed out by multiple authors/personae (most notably Lord Mark Vorkosigan, in Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga), this is murder.
If you are determined to go ahead with this even knowing that, the closest course of action to morally sound is to keep the clone as free from a personality as possible, as close to the tabula rasa, if you will. This is why Eisenhorn went with vat-bred clones: they had no stimulus, no interaction, nothing with which to build personality, so it was as little like murder as possible (I'll note at least part of creating a daemonhost is a specific transactional rune/sigil formula which flushes the soul of the host out, either to make room for the daemon or to deny it the fun of torturing/eating the host's soul), and even then he worried about the ethics of destroying the souls of the vat-bred Dolls.

There's a possible reason why colnes tends to have problems : there's a very real possibility that growing out of of mother's womb opens them to unhealthy warp influences. In a natural birth, odds are the mother's soul will be far more visible in the warp and as such will shiled the kid's one (sort of having a candle next to a torch - in the dark, you'll probably not see the torch).

Grwoing up in vat will mean the newborn's soul will be 'out in the open', making it easier for unpleasant things to notice it and interfere.

Manunancy said:

That argument doesn't work with the Death Korps of Krieg, who are all grown in Vitae-Wombs, yet seem to be highly resistant to the effects of chaos, hence their use in massive conflicts like the Siege of Vraks against Daemonic opponents.

Here's a useful little guide to some of the "tropes" regarding cloning:-

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CloningBlues

A lot of these, I would argue, are actually cliches. Key sci fi cloning cliches include:-

-Clones are evil (er...why?)

-Clones are monstrosities (er...but identical twins are clones...)

-Clones are soulless (no...Pariahs are soulless. Clones are just...er...Clones.)

-Clones are people too (The only cliche I agree with)

-Clones replicate the mind of the original (Well if you want to do all the psychic brain transfer handwavery yes (The rejuve cloning Alasseo discusses), but I prefer either raising the clone from birth or a good old fashioned surgical full brain transplant.)

I really do think there is much too much reading in of warp inferences on the topic of cloning. To say that a cloned human being is "unnatural"is to some extent an imposed value judgement . It's like saying that antiobiotic drugs are unnatural. Yes they're unnatural in the sense that only specialised advanced science can create them...but apart from that they just...exist.

I really don't see why the warp would pay any more attention to the clone of an original human being than the original. They're both living creatures, with a presence in the warp, and neither is going to be more inherently "evil" than the other.

There just seems to be an unwritten "thing" about creating human life. AI are all anathema, clones seem to generate mutations most of the time. Whatever force causes the AI to succumb to evil influences seems to be what corrupts the clones.

Not really. There's not even enough to imply a correlation (once one accounts for Reporter's Bias, at least; it's not interesting if it doesn't Go Horribly Wrong), let alone a common causation.

Consider- the majority of cherubim and similar specialised servitors are stated to be vat-grown clones before being cyborged. If there was some underlying cosmic force that would cause all, or even most clones to mutate, or otherwise Go Wrong, there'd be a corresponding massive amount of stories about rogue/crazy/mutated flying babies attacking people.

There isn't, QED, there isn't.

Servitors do not have minds. That is why they do not go berserk. Does a clone have a mind like identical to its "father"? Did the infamous Mechanical Men of the Dark Age have minds similar to humans, enough to make them targets for corruption? I want to know what made them such juicy targets for chaos, because I think whatever it is is the same reason their have been so many issues with clones and mutation.

Lightbringer said:

This is something I disagree with.

Fundamentally, the nature of a Null or Pariah is something more or other than soullessness, in order to influence the world as they do. Afterall, chairs and tables are soulless, but remain susceptible to the influence of psychic powers.

Thus, a living creature could conceivably be soulless without being a Null or Pariah (which essentially have a negative psychic presence, IMO) - they'd be 'hollow' instead, to use a term less prone to confusion. Now, false-men - humans of an artificial origin - may inherently lack souls: we don't know how souls are formed, afterall, but it seems far too convenient for them to coalesce spontaneously at some point during a false-man's development. By that reasoning, some degree of warp-craft would be required to create an ensouled clone, as someone would have to reach into the warp and gather together psychic energy to form the soul in the first place... and that strikes me as something that could very easily go wrong.