I remember reading the Inquisiton War trilogy a couple years ago, and thinking it was some of the best 40K material I ever read.There was a forward by the author saying it was early in the development of the line, and the fluff had not been particularly throughly fleshed out yet. There was alot of stuff in there, from the Black Library to Callidus assassins (semi)permanently disguised as a genestealer to a non space marine being interred into a dreadnaught and a space marine being called out by a slaneshi mutant witch. The coup de grace though, was the Star Children, the supposed immortal actual genetic children of the Emperor from the time of the Great Crusade. When and why was this fluff dropped? Was it swept under the rug, or completely disavowed? I don't know why this has been on my mind the last few weeks, but how much of the material from those books survive and how much is politely ignored and how much was just junked? Thanks!!

Well… The official answer is: There isn't one. In the third edition 40k rulebook there is a report from an Inquisitor saying that he has destroyed "the Cult of the Starchild", which is dismissed as an Tzeentchian cult. However, the cult he reported seems to be relatively limited (maybe operating over a single sector), and with the unreliable narrator that 40k fluff generally uses we don't know how true this report even is. We also don't know if there are other cults surrounding Sensei that are still around (we don't even know if the Cult described in the report was even a true Starchild Cult… it may have been a Tzeentchian cult posing as a Starchild cult).

All we do know is that GW hasn't mentioned the Starchild or the Sensei since. The report was basically a way for them to say "yeah, we won't be dealing with this anymore" without totally invalidating the previous fluff. It was open for interpretation. It could be that the Sensei and Starchild cults are all dead, or that it was always a Tzeentchian lie, or it could be that only one small group was eliminated and the Sensei and their followers are still out there.

Some of the same themes have turned up in the Inquisitor game, where one of the factions believes that if the Emperor truely dies, he will be "re-born". However, I don't think there is any mention of the Sensei.

Lionus said:

It's been a long time since I read Inquisitor , but as I recall the transformation caused by 'polymorphine' was temporary- and it didn't duplicate the genestealer's extra arms. I'm pretty sure polymorphine is still canon (I think it was used in the 3rd Ed. Codex: Assassins to justify the Culexus' Infiltration ability), its just rarely brought up nowadays because it seems like such a 'get-out-of-jail-free' gimick.

Best use of Polymorphene I have ever seen was a 2e game. IG vs Chaos. Turn 1 IG player pops their Callidus and runs over and smacks Kharn in the face. Kharn proceeds to maul the Callidus and then over the next turn or 2 work his way through several CSM squads. It was hilarious.

Adeptus-B said:

I remember having read about polymorphine in other places as well, so I think you're right. As an aside, I think tha'ts a really unfortunate name for a drug that has the effect it's described to have. Continuing on, the reason it was semi permanent was because the extra arms had to be surgically implanted and that's why she could never transform into something else, until they were surgically removed. But yes, it was also described as being temporary.

Ok, Thanks. The book itself was very dubious as to whether the starchild thing was real as well. There was a pretty epic battle scene with the Warlord Titan fighting on the side of the sensei though. It seemed to me that they probably got rid of it or ignore it because if it's true, that lends itself to an end to the story of Warhammer 40,000, If they collect together and retake the galaxy, then the universe as it's fleshed out will be no more, and it would be a different game. Has anyone used this, or even shades of it in games, and if so, how have your players reacted?

The Sensei and 'star child' concepts were introduced around the time of the Realms of Chaos books as i recall.

I think they were basically the star children being the Emperor incarnate, akin to the Chaos Gods being Chaos incarnate, and the sensei serving them in the way Chaos Champions serve the Chaos Gods.

Its a while though so i could be wrong.

The whole concept went the way of the Squats, Slann and Zoats though.

That said, i think that the whole Thorian faction, as followers of Sebastian Thor, could well be seen as sensei following a Star Child!

borithan said:

Interestingly, Dan Abnett seems to be sneaking in stuff that resemble bits of old-old fluff in some of his Horus Heresy novels. In the form of John Grammaticus and one other character.

As 'immortals' of a sort, they remind me of not just the Sensei, but the "Shaman" (a special type of human, from the distant past, possibly psykers, whose spirits would reincarnate upon death, allowing them to guide humanity through the eons. The rising power of Chaos started to worry them, so in a vast ritual, culminating with thousands of them taking their own lives, their disconnected spirits combined and were reborn in to a powerful new form. The Emperor).

Sadly, this is 40K, so the Starchild story isn't all wine and roses. There's a few details they don't mention in Inquisition Wars. Like how the (regular) Illuminati plan to sacrifice the Sensei to the Golden Throne at the very moment the Emperor's life starts to fade beyond its mechanisms ability to keep alive, under the impression that their life force will bring him back from the brink. While the Eldar have plans to somehow manipulate or control the Star Child, if it should ever come about, and through that turn humanity in their pawns (which is why they work with the Illuminati).