I just started a new character in my group's Rouge Trader game and had a few questions.

1. Has anything been written on the Imperial creed? All I can find is random things like "Suffer not the Xenos, Heretic, Traitor etc, to live." Since I'm playing a missionary I was hoping for some more info for RP purposes.

2. Has it ever been mentiond anywhere how long an Imperial Guardsman serves? I seem to remember something along the lines of 20 years or death. Whichever comes first. But I could be thinking of colonial British armies.

3. Is there any information on the Unification Wars that were fought before the Great Crusade? Our group found something from that era and since I am the biggist fan of the stories in the group I got asked to create an apropriate history for a comindation signed by the Emporer himself.

Thanks

-Erich.

Check out Lexicanum

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

Its an unoffical Warhammer 40k wiki, but has a lot of great information about the W40k universe

Erich said:

I've been making a grab for chunks of information over the last... while, shall we say. Any particulars you want, or is it generalities?

2. Has it ever been mentiond anywhere how long an Imperial Guardsman serves? I seem to remember something along the lines of 20 years or death. Whichever comes first. But I could be thinking of colonial British armies.

At the Munitorium's pleasure. There have been mentions of both ten and twenty years, along with examples of shorter and longer times, so I'm assuming these to be internal guidelines for the bureaucrats.

3. Is there any information on the Unification Wars that were fought before the Great Crusade? Our group found something from that era and since I am the biggist fan of the stories in the group I got asked to create an apropriate history for a comindation signed by the Emporer himself.

There's very little on the Unification Wars, mostly name drops in the Horus Heresy series.. Lexicanum links may be of interest ( javascript:void(0);/*1288312965190*/ and javascript:void(0);/*1288313013131*/ ). Rogue Trader charters aren't going to date back to this time, though, what with the lack of an Imperium. Anyone in a prominent position at the end of the Unification Wars is going to be given a prime position in the Great Crusade. A fairly minor position in the Unification Wars leading to prominence in the early Crusade and a Rogue Trader appointment following in the wake of the Explorator Fleets is possible.

Gah! Code! And no decent way to edit the blasted thing!

Erich said:

I've been making a grab for chunks of information over the last... while, shall we say. Any particulars you want, or is it generalities?

Erich said:

At the Munitorium's pleasure. There have been mentions of both ten and twenty years, along with examples of shorter and longer times, so I'm assuming these to be internal guidelines for the bureaucrats.

Erich said:

There's very little on the Unification Wars, mostly name drops in the Horus Heresy series.. Lexicanum links may be of interest ( javascript:void(0);/*1288313525185*/ and javascript:void(0);/*1288313508232*/ ). Rogue Trader charters aren't going to date back to this time, though, what with the lack of an Imperium. Anyone in a prominent position at the end of the Unification Wars is going to be given a prime position in the Great Crusade. A fairly minor position in the Unification Wars leading to prominence in the early Crusade and a Rogue Trader appointment following in the wake of the Explorator Fleets is possible.

Erich said:

It's my understanding that an Imperial Guard is traditionally only mustered out of service for meritorious service (in which case they're usually snapped up by an Inquisitor before they get to enjoy civilian life once more) or having the Right of Settlement invoked for the entire Regiment. The latter requires a minimum of a decade's successful service. Given that a Guardsman's average life expectancy in combat is something like 7 seconds, retiring without dying is something of an exceptional circumstance.

The Traitor's Hand by sandy Mitchell features remnants of a retired Imperial Guard regiment, but doesn't mention how long they served for.

Erich said:

No. There are 'snippets' like you mention but as ever with GW that's pretty much it. FFG haven't to my knowledge grasped the nettle on these issues and generated anything useful to aid roleplaying (as you say).

I'd suggest checking out the Dark Reign forum. there are a few threads over there where the content of the Creed was discussed at length and some useful ideas developed.

Erich said:

Again, not really. There may be one or two references about specifics, but i think these would have to be suffixed with the rider 'for this Guard Regiment'. As ever with GW IP 'it depends'.

My assumption has always been that Guards serve in the regiment for life. This will typically end in their death on the field of battle. Some regiments may be 'disbanded' if broken beyond use and there aren't the resources to extract them from a warzone and redeploy them elsewhere. Perhaps the few survivors of a devastating battle might be 'retired' and left in a warzone.

Who knows.

It goes to your own interpretation of how the Imperium works. I did some work on the Adeptus Administratum over at Dark Reign, that touched on how the Munitorum/Munitorium raise regiment foundings etc.

The IG is basically raised as a tithe, sent to a warzone to be expended in defence or attack. Soldiers once conscripted are pretty much just an expendable resource so i'd suggest the concept of 'mustering out' of Imperial service simply isn't a consideration. This of course may be at odds with the DH/RT concept of a 'Guardsman' player character, who presumably has 'mustered out' to go into other service.

I think its worth considering too position of the Imperial Guard as a part of the Adeptus Terra and the social prestige and practical security this will offer a Guardsman. In a galaxy where from birth the citizens are indoctrinated to beleive in a 'god emperor', the chance to enter his service directly (as partof the Adeptus Terra) and to die in that service (thereby possibly gaining and exalted status int he afterlife (which is where the creed pops up again), makes a lifetime of service very appealing to the believer.

Its an interesting question you raise, because i've consistently all these things need to be sorted out to actually ROLEPLAY in the Imperium.

Erich said:

I'd say the first port of call is a trawl through the books of the Horus Heresy series. There are loads though so hopefully you're a fast reader!

You'll find some basic details here though warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind

All i can say is 'good luck'! You'll have to answer many of this crucial roleplaying questions for yourself and the only way to do that really is to immerse yourself in as many sources as possible and then try and make sense of the contradictions, half-truths, canon-that-isn't-canon, and other information to come up with YOUR view of the Imperium.

My fingers and toes are firmly crossed in the hope that FFG eventually produce an 'Imperium Encyclopaedia' that might give AN answer to these questions (if not THE answer). I suspect GW won't let that happen though...

Luddite said:

Give it a few weeks, and I'd hope the Dark Heresy book "Blood of the Martyr" would be out, which might help a lot for a missionary in Rogue Trader

Erich said:

Signed by the Emperor himself?!! Do you know the trouble that could get you into??? Of course for a GM this is a perfect tool for all sorts of fun

Take a look at the book Legacy, a Shira Calpurnia novel, and see the plans that the Church comes up with to get hold of a RT warrant that has the Emperor's signature, and the problems that causes (Sisters of Battle blockading a Arbites fortress for example!)

DW

Traveller61 said:

A Warrant signed by the Emperor himself? (whistle) very rare, and dangerous to possess, every other rabid ministorum fanatic and power obessessed Peer of the Imperium would be keen to prise it from your cold fingers...

Excerpt from Legacy by Matt Farrer, which gives us as little insight into the nature of Rogue Trdaers before our RPG came out:

"'Go on.' Calpurnia had leaned forward, and the light made the scar-lines in her face look livid.

'It's a quality of those charters, the grand old charters you mentioned, ma'am. No two of them are alike. We police the way governors issue charters far more strictly now, so they never contain anything too outrageous, and the wildcat warrants the Administratum gives out are churned out by a hundred servo-scribes at a time accord¬ing to templates laid down by the Adeptus, with a space for a name at the top and a stamped-on seal at the bot¬tom. But the old ones, well, they were tailor-made for whatever circumstances led to a rogue trader being neces¬sary at the time. So there were some that gave the traders power to raise troops and make pacts with the Astartes-'

'Well observed. There are at least two famous families who have parted with Astartes Chapters.'

'-and some that appointed them as de facto officers of the Ecclesiarchy, like the missionary you described.'

'Not entirely the same thing, but parallel, I suppose.' Calpurnia said. 'I keep interrupting. Go on.'

'And there were some that bound the charters, their bearers I should say, to particular areas of space.' Culann went on, feeling a little more sure of himself.

'Possibly to make sure the new rogue trader remained in the area where his influence and skills were needed, or so one might think. And those clauses in the charters have never been amended or repealed, or at least not in most cases, because the charters were originally drawn up by the war-masters, or sometimes by primarchs or members of the Emperor's court or His crusades. So there's no one senior enough to repeal or amend them, and they don't expire on the bearer's death like most of the new ones do.'

'Hence all the rather disreputable folklore on the sub¬ject.' Calpurnia said, 'stories of rogue trader charters being stolen, or sold, or forged, or gambled with, which is a dis¬gusting thought. When a charter can be... but I'm interrupting you again.'

'All I was going to add was that the intent of the suc¬cession clause was that this charter can only ever be legally transferred in a ceremony conducted within the boundaries of the Hydraphur system. So no matter where else in the Imperium their interests take them, every gen¬eration, the Phrax family have to come back to Hydraphur so that a new rogue trader can be appointed.'

'So they do. Don't feel slighted by this, Culann, but 1 had Praetor Minoris Zbela search some of the oldest records we have in the Wall as well as your own briefings, tracing the Phrax Charter as far back as it would go. That's a long way, too. This charter is for all intents and pur¬poses an Imperial decree and the Arbites oversaw the actual drafting of it, from what sense I've been able to make of the records. Hydraphur was on the very edge of Imperial space back then, and apparently the intention was to use rogue traders to push forward towards the Rim so that the Crusade itself could travel on to Caliban. That was when the line of Phrax was granted its eternal rogue trader charter, bound to Hydraphur. 1 suppose that the plan was for a few generations of Phraxes - Phraxae? - to have civilised the fringe domains through trade by the
time the Crusade returned ready to take them into the Imperium itself.'

'A Crusade-era document.' Culann said. 'I had seen accounts that mentioned its age, but 1 didn't think about what that meant until now. Ten thousand years. Imagine what the document will be like to look at! Imagine what it would have been like to be there when it was signed! To see, who? Ma'am, do we have a record of whose hand the charter is signed in? One of the Crusading Saints, or the original Lords Militant? Maybe Lord Marshal Wier-talla, they say he was one of the very founders of the whole order of Arbites!'

'Guess again.'

'Ma'am, I'm not sure 1 know of too many other names. The stories that survive of those times are so broken up anyway, and I remember even at the schola halls they said there was so much myth mixed in that we can't, I mean, guess...'
This actually isn't a hard one. 1 doubted the first accounts I read, for exactly the same reasons you just described. But all the later references to the charter in all the old data-arks that Zbela dug up seemed to point to confirmation, so I'm taking it as true. And who are we to question the received word of our predecessors and bet¬ters?'

'I don't follow, ma'am.'

'As I said, Culann, it isn't a hard one. Come at it this way. Think back to all the legends and scriptures and gospels and sagas and paintings and pageants you've ever seen or heard about the Great Crusade. Who's the con¬stant, Culann? If the Crusade was resting in Hydraphur at the time that the very first Rogue Trader Phrax was appointed, then who is the one person we can say for absolute certain would have been there to put their hand out to sign it?'
It only took Culann a moment to think of the name, but that moment another dozen times over to realise that
she wasn't joking. He felt the colour drain from his face, and the skin on his shoulders and palms start to tingle.
The change on his face must have been visible.

That's right, Culann,' Shira Calpurnia said. 'Him.'

1. I've always just gone for heavy duty high church Roman Catholicism but played up to the point of near parody.

2. One interesting bit that someones already mentioned is a writ of Resettlement. Basically the Imp Guard to to a world, have a huge war and conquer or defend the world successfully, but now the original inhabitants are either dead or too few in number, so a writ of resettlement is granted and land granted to each guardsman from a regiment. Effectively, the imp guard go from soldiers to settlers, with the officer corp becoming large landowners and future nobility (and given that most guard officers are nobility anyway, it strengthens the newly held land with ties to established worlds and sectors). This therefore grants the planet a larger population, as well as a population well used to war, who no doubt keep their lasguns handy in case the foe return.

For other guard regiments, i can see odd groups of guardsman being sent home after 15-20 years if their regiment no longer has fighting strength and it would be impractical to merge them with another. Indeed, i see the imperium as having many imp guard veterans, all from regiments effectively destroyed in war and the survivors sent to the nearest appropriate world on the next bulk transport (i'd imagine that at this point they are probably made to pay for their passage home themselves).

3. We don't know much about the unification wars other than this

a) Earth was inhabited by many warring tribal groups led by warlords of various strength, of which the Emperor was just one.

b) The Emperor developed the Thunder Warriors, proto-space marines in proto-powered armour that allowed him to conquer the other tribes.

c) Up until the mechanicus allied themselves with the Emperor, they often raided earth for advanced tech

Just some notes on the Imperial Guard:

When it comes to the guard the answer is always "depends on the regimen".

Each regimen is, for all intents and purposes, a different army, with its own rules, regulations, and history.

In the Imperium most groups are allowed to run themselves as long as they pay the tithe and follow orders, and this is also true of the IG. Each regimen is, for all intents and purposes, a descrete organization. They have their own recruitment methods and their own 'retirement plan'.

Some guard regimens are very much like our modern military: volantary service, extensive training, moderate service lengths.

Others work like the roman legions: volentary service in exchange for citizenship, 25+ years terms of service.

Others are more spartan: Everyone serves, but trains their whole life for the privilege. You never leave service as EVERYTHING is service.

Voystrans send in their first born, Krieg raises solders in tubes, feral worlds gathers up solders like cattle, penal worlds drug them up and plop them down on the front lines.

There are very few 'rules' that apply to the entire IG. It just depends on the regimen. As long as they do their job and keep up the tithe, they are allowed to run things pretty much however they want.