Pneumonica actually the number of inhabital worlds is very small compared to the number of uninhabital worlds (even with the level of technology available).

It is just that you never hear anything about them because they have no real importance. Often they are just barren balls of rock, gas giants, or balls of frozen methan, etc. As such they simply don't get mentioned much.

I'm not talking about inhabitable/uninhabitable. I'm talking about "earthlike/not", and only counting the inhabitable worlds in the count. In other words, the number of habitable worlds that are like earth are high, despite the fact that probably no more than one in a hundred living worlds, if that many, should be anything like earth beyond spherical shape and orbit around the sun.

Pneumonica said:

Bear in mind that most all of the worlds within the Imperium were originally colonized during the Dark Age of Technology and simply rediscovered and conquered by the Inmperium thousands of years later. These worlds that were colonized during the dark age were more then likely terraformed over hundreds to thousands of years to be more like Terra.

As for the whole evolution of humanity, there are two major reasons why it seems so uniform. The biggest is the Imperium has a real bad habit of eradicating anything that doesn't match a predetermined template for what human is. After all, mutations are the only way to evolve and what dose the Imperium do with mutants? ;-) Granted, some abhumans fell through the cracks and are allowed to exist and breed, but the ones that are allowed to live and breed are more of an exception as opposed to a rule.

The second big kick in the crotch to evolution is technology. Where mutations that were advantageous would get spread more readily due the individuals displaying said mutation having an easier time with surviving, when you toss the ability to simply make a device that would enable someone without the mutation to survive just as well, you kick traditional evolution out of the picture. 2,000 years ago, folks with bad eye sight wouldn't live too long to pass the bad eyes on to their kids... then we invented stable safe communities and eye glasses. Now it's really not a problem. Technology's taken the place of natural selection for us. Environmental factors will still shape us, but we can change and shape that environment in turn.

I can sort of see your point, but I disagree due to the fact that for at least 10,000 years, humanity hasn't given a grox' turd for the life of any individual human being, and if someone has a particular disadvantage that impairs them they make excellent servitor material. In another example, the children that are (alleged to be) killed to perform immortality treatments are probably children with those self-same disadvantages. "Corpse rations" are called that for a reason, I would also point out. 40K is highly recognizable for its "human resources" cliche.

On the subject of planetology, terraforming wouldn't fix it. Most living planets should be enormous but not dense (lacking an iron core), with flora and fauna that is equally enormous. How many planets with mile-high trees are there in 40K? How many monstrously huge creatures (the height of our own modern skyscrapers)? These kinds of worlds would have oxygen, water (probably subterranean, but still plenty of water), they'd be tectonically stable (no activity), they might actually be Eden worlds, but they wouldn't be built the way ours are. It's not a "breathable air" problem, but a simple "mass/volume" problem. These kinds of planets should be more common, but they're not. Terraforming simply wouldn't alter these characteristics. Even if the Imperium were so inclined, I sincerely doubt they'd go around injecting planets with massive iron cores, molten or otherwise.

I'm not pointing these out as intrinsic flaws to the game, but really just to underscore that planetology, biology, physics, etc., as we understand it, has no place in the setting. This, to me, isn't a major issue.

Pneumonica said:

On evolution, I can see where you're coming from however, I don't think the Imperium not doing a damned thing to help out the disadvantaged would really effect human evolution all that much. The disadvantaged are usually able to live long enough to pass on their genetic material and, in evolution, that's really all that's required. beyond that, deviating too far from the accepted norm (for 10,000 years and counting) is probably the greatest disadvantage one could have. In such an environment, evolution, like everything else in the Imperium, would come to a grinding halt and promptly begin to stagnate.

On terraforming, ya, I would have to completely agree, having other terrain like planets is a stretch, especially in the numbers that there are. However, I still stand by my "it's because of the dark Ages" cop-out answer. Although some planets might have had cores of heavier elements that never even made it into Sol's system and, as such, we know nothing of them today, but let me tell you, they are some seriously dense elements.

Today we have rich oil barons with nothing better to do then shape islands to look like a portrait of themselves. That being the case, in 15,000 years why couldn't some high tech society with nothing better to do go around reforming planets to match earth a bit more including altering their mass to get a gravity that's close to earth's gravitational force? Heck, they made rays that could send mater into another dimension and were fully capable of altering gravitational fields. I'm fairly certain they had to make a density altering ray... every supper scientist has to have one after all. Maybe they decided that the only kinds of planets they could live on were ones that were like earth and set out to make as many as possible... then the robots went all crazy and yada yada yada.

Arguments on specific points aside (I just like arguing, sorry) I completely agree, the physics of 40k are.... not our own. Unlike our physics, the "cool factor" actually effects them. However, the planets weren't my first clue to this. The fact that giants come from high-g worlds and chainsaws are acceptable military side arms were, in my opinion, a bit more telling ;-)

Dude, chainswords make PERFECT sense. I have no idea what you're talking about!

*sigh* I think some people are getting definitions mixed up

There are a couple types of mutation, warp, genetic, and psychic

warp is the mutants, the chaos cultists, the oozing sores etc

Now lets go into genetic. this is either natural or intended, theye meaning we have in our world, like ogryns and space marines, this is not warp related at all, just shares the same name

finally, thetre are pschic ones, which i believe is a special gene, I think, that allows using pschic powers, once again, not daemon related, just harnessing natural warp energy, sometimes things go wrong and chaos f*cks it up, but normally not

In a practical social sense, though, the difference between a warp mutant and a mutant who mutated from living in the bad parts of a hive city is irrelevant, though, especially to the discussion. Socially, the two mutant types are identical. Indeed, as a mechanical issue in the game, Corruption can be caused by environmental pollution that in turn leads to mutation. Although the biophysics might be totally different, for all practical purposes they're functionally identical, and perhaps most importantly (since this is a discussion of sociology, and not of biology), they are treated identically in the society of the Imperium.

Where is it written that pollution can cause Corruption? (Is this in one of those mysterious non-core rulebooks that I don't yet have?)

Also, 40,000 years is NOTHING in the evolutionary scheme of things. It's an eye-blink; It's only 8 times as long as since the erection of Stone Henge.

bogi_khaosa said:

But then again selection by man, of the most useful can generate alot of difference, look at dogs or horse they have have with human preferance evovled more difference than ratlings and ogryn see for an eksample the chihuahua and the great dane and thitypes og polutions was breeding preferences, if we add the mutagenic effekt of many types of polution and the effect of an plantary alteration of oxygen and the like.

Yeah, but AFAIK Ralings and Ogryns are supposed to have evolved naturally, without being bred (right?).

That's something that's always bugged me a little about 40K. (That and "why does adapting to high-gravity environments make you stupid?")

because they dont need to be smart and the body then "saves " energy by reducing the brain, since it is a very energy hungery organ, and if what they needed was strength in order to secure food then, all those who were "wasting" energy maintaining a high yeild brain would be they ones less favoured by the clan/tribe because they were not eating more and not making up for it, and females in such tribe would prefer them those mates who could produce the most food ( more gathered than eaten) to feed the childern allowing the biggest spred in genes.

Even with amazing techno-magic (some of it is defensible with real world physics some of it is just Flash Gordon science) the society of the Impirium has a tendency to lean towards the medieval in terms of social interaction and heretical detection (ie if it weighs as much as a duck, floats on water, then it must be a witch).

What I am getting at is that even if a techno-mage was able to scan an individual with aberant mutations to determine if it were warp or natural/chemical... a bullet is cheaper . Just because you can argue that squats, ogryns and ratlings are USUALLY not chaos mutants doesn't mean that they still won't wind up conflagrated by a pryo-psyker or crushed under the treads of an arbites tank.

In the Impirium of Man the only way to have a fair chance for day-to-day survival is to blend in and get in line. Having vestigial wings and eye stalks is a great way to draw attention from a heavily armed and fearful regime even if you haven't the foggiest clue who Tzeench is and have a shrine to the god-emperor in your living room.

Innocence Proves Nothing

If you live in an inhospitable environment, you need to be more smart, not less. It's not like Arctic animals are stupider than tropical ones.

Ah, 40k biology!

bogi_khaosa said:

Intelligence is one of those awkward, difficult-to-quantify things. Ogryns are intellectually lacking, certainly... but they're very capable survivors. That's not necessarily a lack of intellect, merely a difference in focus. Abstract, subtle concepts are of no concern to the average Ogryn - their concerns are what predators there are, how dangerous those predators are, and where their next meal is coming from, those being the issues most crucial to the environments within which Homo sapiens giganticus evolved.

bogi_khaosa said:

Actually, I believe that a chimpanzee has higher cognitive abilities then a polar bear. So, yes, apparently tropical animals are more intelligent then arctic animals.

This, however, has little to do with a hostile environment making one stupid. It is actually do to temperature. You see, colder temperatures slow the flow of liquid eventually halting it all together and turning the liquid into a solid known as ice (except for the ocean because its to large to ever freeze). When an animal is subjected to freezing temperatures, it's blood will slow and sometimes freeze. This makes it difficult for the blood to get much needed oxygen to the brain resulting in parts of the brain dying. As parts of the brain die, the creatures cognitive ability begins to suffer. This process is not only why polar bears are not as bright as chimpanzees but also similar to the reason why Ogrins are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

You see, an Ogrin is also suffering from advanced brain necrosis caused by a lack of blood to the head. However, this is not due to frozen blood as, like the ocean, an Ogrin has too much blood for it to ever freeze. Instead, the Ogrin's incredible mass as well as the increased gravity they customarily live under prevents their blood from reaching the highest points on their body, such as the head. Their heart, as massive as it is, is simply incapable of ever growing large enough to functionally pump all the blood completely through their body as they have a LOT of body and a LOT of gravity to fight shooting the blood up through all that body.

If you buy Ogrins evolving into bigger dumber creatures due to a high-g environment and little in the way of food, then you should have no trouble buying into the reasoning and logic of the above three paragraphs ;-)

If anything, a high-g environment which has scarce food stuffs would evolve smaller creatures who require less nourishment and who's decreased mass would be affected by the higher gravity less then a massive creature, but reason and logic are sins in 40k, so Ogrins were probably unaware of that when they were evolving.

Size is one thing, but environments which have a lack of food will tend to produce less intelligent creatures, for reasons already given. Intelligence is an evolutionary disadvantage for anybody who isn't in an Eden-like environment. Ogryns being dumb probably means they don't need as much food as their body mass would make it appear.

As for thier size, once upon a time the reason given is that they are big for the same reason that the really huge dinosaurs got big - to evade predators by being bigger than they could handle (and, in their case, to have a leg up on weaker prey). It also allows them to process food more carefully - having a larger stomach means being able to process considerably more goodness out of the food you eat. These days, the "official" reason has changed, but bear in mind that this probably isn't the "true" reason but rather the reason that the Imperium holds to. It's not as though the Imperium is really big on fact checking.

bogi_khaosa said:

I found some actual scientific evidence to support the 'high-gravity makes you stupid' argument. HERE is an article that studied the affects of 1.5g on the developing brain of rats. High gravity affects thyroid hormones that govern the development of the forebrain and cerebellum which causes Cretenism . One paper isn't absolute proof but I think at least we can bet that a few generations of individuals born under high gravity situations would be a tad on the dopey side.

Graver said:

Apples and oranges, they're not even the same family of animal. You want to compare, brown bear and polar bear or somesuch would be a better example.

Letrii said:

You defeat your argument with your first three words. Apples and Oranges are, in fact, very similar and apt things to compare. Did you know that not only are they both fruit, but they both grow on trees? Did you now that they even grow in the same bag as one another in the supper market? If they weren't the same fruit, then how can they grow in the same bag? I'm sorry, but no amount of fruity talk will change the fact that chimpanzees are, indeed, smarter then polar bears thus proving beyond any doubt that arctic animals are dumber then tropical ones. ;-p

@Pneumonica, you put forth good arguments to support the Ogrins developing on high-g worlds when looked at as individual adaptations, but, in the end, wouldn't all their various adaptations simply cancel one another out?

Being bigger then the other predators as well as aiding in digestion, great. Having less brain matter to eat nutrients, still on track. But is the increase in digestive capabilities due to size and the decrease in the amount of nutrients required for the brain enough to offset the increased amount of nutrients that the body would need in order to support its far greater muscle mass (and all around greatrer mass) as well as the extra energy it would take to move that much more mass in a high-g environment?

They may be similar, but it's an expression.

What are you talking about them growing in the same bag?

No, they wouldn't, becuase they didn't, and they currently don't. The hippo is supported by the same process, and in prehistoric times brachiosaurids were supported by the same method. Reduced neurological activity and increased stomach capacity have historically optimized survival in times of minimal food resource.

Pneumonica said:

I'm definitely not arguing that a reduction of neurological activity and grater stomach capacity plus longer digestive times wont increase the amount of nutrients available to the rest of the body. I'm just wondering if it would be enough for something as large and heavily muscled as an Ogryn while said creature was in a high gravity environment. The examples of a brachiosauus and hippo show that, yes, large animals can exist, and can exist on less food stuffs then one would think (though the average hippo still consumes about 16-20 kg of mater a day). However, is it just enough for them to live and function in earth's gravity or can such changes in a creatures system allow such large creatures to efficiently exist in a high gravity environment where they would need to exert far more energy just to move and pump their blood?

^--- That is not a rhetorical question either. I honestly have no clue :-X

I can see where their size, density, and what-not would make them a natural evolutionary off shoot on various death worlds, but High-G still seems a bit too far fetched. Now if someone said squats came from a high-g world, that I could get behind as they seem like they would be better physically built for surviving in such an environment.

Well, not specifically high-g, but low-resource. The high-G is what makes them so danged small. And yes, I said "small". Compared to similar evolutionary niches developed on earth, they are quite small.