Sign In Sign-Up

Welcome!

Close

Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...

Yes, Please make this my home page!

No Thanks

  Don't show this to me again.

Close

Character Generation

Page 1 of 2

Species And Characteristics

   The first step in creating a character is to determine the character’s species and sex. At the moment, all characters in Imperium are of human ancestry, since alien characters would require entirely new careers and armouries, plus lots more background material. However, for the sake of variety, it is possible to play abhumans in an Imperial setting, but players of abhuman PCs should be aware that their character will be subjected to scorn, disgust, and possibly even violence from the bigoted majority that makes up the population of most Imperial planets.

   Abhumans are those mutant strains that have taken environmental mutations to an extreme far beyond that of hair colour or skin tone, yet are stable enough not to pose a threat to the human gene pool. Offspring of abhuman parents will always be of the same sub-species.

   A character’s sex is up to the player.

   Once the species has been determined, it is time to work out the character’s statline characteristics. If time is limited, or a GM is using the PC generation process to create an NPC character, a selection of (almost) average characteristics has been included for each of the character types. It is recommended, however, that PCs always be generated using the Random Characteristics Table, below, since the ‘average’ characteristics are actually rounded down to provide nice easy numbers, and are therefore marginally underpowered. They are, however, suitable for producing generic examples of that species for NPCs, rather than the unique individuals that a PC represents. They also form the starting point for the optional points-based generation rules given at the end of this chapter.

   Although it may initially appear that mutant abhuman characters have it easy in regard to stats and abilities, bear in mind that such characters can expect to not only face prejudice right across the Imperium, but are also restricted in certain careers. For example, only humans can join most Imperial agencies, such as the Ministorum or the Adeptus Astartes (Space Marines).

   GMs who are more realistic in their portrayal of Imperial culture may go so far as to subject mutant or abhuman PCs to ordeals that they wouldn’t think of putting their pure human characters through. And good for them.

   Homo Sapiens is the dominant species within the Imperium. Indeed, they are the only species with a right to exist within the Imperium. After tens of thousands of years of evolution on a million different worlds, countless strains of human exist, each evolved to a greater or lesser degree away from the Earth norm. For example, Homo Sapiens Mordia, evolved on a night-world, are characterised by their pale skin, grey eyes and silver-blonde hair, while Homo Sapiens Catachan, who originate on a jungle deathworld, are exceptionally heavily muscled, as well as being resistant to most common diseases and poisons. Nevertheless, most Homo Sapiens species are classifiable as ‘Human’ in the Imperium’s eyes, and it is they who have most of the rights and privileges (such as they are) of Imperial rule.

Language: Low Imperial Gothic (usually in a local dialect).

Alignment: Most humans are Imperial, so this is the recommended default for PCs. Some non-Imperial enclaves exist beyond the Imperium’s borders, and it is known that several human groups exist within the Tau Empire. However, the largest non-Imperial human grouping is in the Eye of Terror, where the inhabitants are Chaotic.

Height:     Male 5’ 6" + D10"

       Female 5’ 2" + D10"

Special Rules: Additional abilities peculiar to the character’s home planet may be allowed at the GM’s discretion.

 

   Ever since man first reached an industrial level of technology, the human genome has been subjected to hostile factors, whether pollution, radiation, alien environments or the taint of Chaos. The results can be horrific – twisted creatures, barely human, with grossly malformed limbs or unnatural abilities.

   Imperial policy towards mutants varies. Some mutants form stable sub-species and are classed as ‘abhuman’, which is far better than the fate awaiting the genetically unstable majority, who are officially ‘subhuman’.

   The implications of subhumanity vary from world to world. On many planets, mutants are used as cheap labour or slaves, and live in work camps or ghettoes. On a few worlds, mutants may be allowed to live side-by-side with their untainted companions, and may even be allowed citizenship, but will never be given the same rights as the average Imperial citizen. A significant number of worlds kill mutants at birth. Occasionally this punishment is extended to apply to the parents, or even members of the extended family, as a preventative cure for further mutations.

   There is an approximate 5% risk of any human child being born a mutant (although this can vary according to local environmental factors), with this probability increasing to 90% if both parents are mutants.

Language: Low Imperial Gothic (usually in a local dialect, possibly with mutant slang).

Alignment: Most human mutants are Imperial (even if they are Radical rebels), although some have turned to Chaos (or had their mutations caused by it) and are therefore Chaotic.

Height:     Male 5’ 6" + D10"

                 Female 5’ 4" + D10"

Special Rules: Additional abilities peculiar to the character’s home planet may be allowed at the GM’s discretion.

A Mutant PC has a number of mutations (roll a D6: 1-3 = D3, 4-5 = D6, 6 = D3+3), which are rolled randomly on the mutations table (see the GM’s Section).

Most mutant characters are human, although occasionally abhumans present signs of stigmata. Should an abhuman mutant PC be required, merely adjust the character’s height accordingly, use an abhuman’s characteristics and apply special rules as appropriate.

Mutants are never permitted to join the Imperial armed forces, and any that try will be spotted during the recruitment medical. Therefore, they may never take any Military careers. The exceptions are mutant Navigators, who can join the Imperial Navy.

 

   Ratlings are an abhuman sub-species noted for their extremely small size (approximately 4 feet in height) and their disproportionately large appetites. The ratling metabolism works at a far greater rate than a normal human’s, so they must eat as many as five or six meals a day in order to stay healthy. Their thirsts for alcohol and sexual gratification are entirely cultural.

   Most ratling worlds are agricultural, often with a medieval or low-tech background. Culturally, ratlings tend to be extremely prolific in their reproductive practices, and ratling family trees are often extremely large and, well, complex. Intermarriage is not frowned upon. Indeed, other than their reduced stature, inbreeding does not seem to produce the same negative qualities in ratling society as it does in normal humans.

   The ratling obsession with food has led to them being expert foragers and hunters, as well as renowned chefs. Their almost perfect hand/eye co-ordination has led them to form one of the Imperial Guard’s most famous auxiliary troop classes – Ratling Snipers. Although ratling-only Imperial Guard regiments do exist, most of the ratling soldiers in the Imperium work in small platoon-size units attached to larger formations, acting as scouts and marksmen.

Speak: Low Imperial Gothic

Alignment: Imperial

Height:     Male 3’ 2" + D10"

                 Female 3’ + D10"

   If ogryns are unintelligent and crude, beastmen are worse. The Emperor only knows what evolutionary path these abhumans were pushed down. Barely even recognisable as being of human descent, some beastman strains are under extermination decrees, while most others are barely tolerated, generally being given the same level of rights as subhuman mutants.

   Although classed under one label, beastman is actually a catch-all term for hundreds of ‘devolved’ human sub-species. Often these are merely evolutionary regressions to creatures similar in appearance and culture to Homo Erectus or even earlier, but some species seem to combine the appearance of men and animals, often the result of now-forbidden genetic modification during the Dark Age of Technology. The bodies of most such breeds are covered in shaggy-hair, removing any necessity for clothing (although when appearing in cultures where clothing is required, they can normally be persuaded to do so). Some have horns, or heads similar to cattle or goats. Hooves are not uncommon, nor are tails.

   It is these more bestial features that lead the superstitious to suggest that beastmen are actually Chaos mutants, albeit stable ones, rather than the products of natural evolution. It is certainly true that many beastmen fight in Chaos armies. Some anthropologists have suggested that this is merely because many beastman worlds were situated close to or within the area now occupied by the Eye of Terror, or even that it is the Imperium’s persecution of beastmen that has driven so many into the more welcoming arms of Chaos. However, daemonologists have noted that Chaos worshippers often bear physical changes similar to those displayed by certain beastman breeds.

   Whatever their origins, beastmen are, with few exceptions, animalistic in their drives and some seem to act almost entirely on instinct. Their grasp of technology is low, although they can be trained to use firearms and las-weapons (even if they don’t understand the physics behind them). Language does not come easy to many breeds of beastman, either because their brains lack the capacity to comprehend it or their vocal tracts are too far evolved/devolved to produce recognisably human speech.

   Most humans find beastmen distasteful and unpleasant. They rarely clean themselves, and fur or hair is often matted with clods of dirt and dung. Nevertheless, they do seem resistant to infection and disease, possibly thanks to natural selection weeding out the weak at an early age.

   As a result of the distaste felt by humans and other abhumans, beastmen who have become exposed to Imperial culture (often through Ministorum missionaries on their feral homeworlds) tend to have a sense of inferiority felt by no other abhuman sub-species. Where Squat, ratlings and even ogryns have a strong sense of nationalistic independence, beastmen come to learn and accept that they are the lowest breed of human.

   Sometimes they even believe that the Emperor transfigured their ancestors into beasts, as punishment for some heinous sin, and spend their lives trying to atone themselves in the eyes of the Emperor. Many beastman breeds base their entire culture around atonement, something the Imperium is keen to perpetuate: it gives the Imperial Guard an unlimited force of willing cannon fodder.

Speak: Various tribal languages, but most PCs will have learnt a basic form of Low Imperial Gothic. Beastmen have an exceptionally simplistic vocabulary, syntax and grammar. Their speech generally consists of concrete nouns and verbs, and pronouns are non-existent, e.g. "Gresh kill Orks," where a human would say, "I have killed some Orks." This structuring of language comes from the grunt/bark/growl makeup of their own language, where each tone of utterance stands for a particular object, person or concept.

Alignment: Imperial. Chaos beastmen are, of course, Chaotic.

Height:     Male 5’ 8" + D10"

                 Female 5’ 6" + D10"

Special Rules: All beastmen have the Immunity to Disease, Specialist Weapon – Archery and Specialist Weapon – Thrown abilities.

 

   The product of hostile, high-gravity worlds, where great strength and toughness are a requirement to survive, natural selection has created the ogryn, an abhuman of towering proportions and massive build. Intelligence is never an ogryn’s particular strongpoint, and their entire culture revolves around physical and practical solutions to a problem, rather than thinking around it. This has led several non-Imperial ogryn worlds to associate with orks in pacts of mutual respect.

   When ogryns enter wider Imperial society, it is their obvious strength that gets them work, either as soldiers, hired criminal muscle or physical labourers.

   Ogryns are rarely affected by anti-mutant activity, since they are too unintelligent to be offended by most subtle abuse, and few humans dare to hurl insults at a ten-foot tall slab of muscle.

Speak: Low Imperial Gothic. This is usually a simplified dialect, mainly comprising of concrete nouns, verbs and pronouns, with only the occasional abstract concept involved. Even religion and the Emperor are presented in a concrete form, with missionaries and other Ministorum personnel presented as being a direct servant of the Emperor.

Alignment: Imperial. A minority of ogryns are of Orkoid alignment, but these will probably not be PCs.

Height:     Male 9’ 8" + D10"

                 Female 9’ 6" + D10"

Special Rules: All ogryns have the Fearsome and True Grit abilities.

Most ranged weapons that involve a trigger are beyond manipulation by an Ogryn’s thick, muscular fingers. Therefore, the GM may rule that weapons manufactured by humanoids are impossible for ogryns to use (except as clubs, of course), unless specially modified.

 

In appearance, squats are short, bull-necked, muscular creatures, on average approximately five feet in height. This forced evolution came about thanks to the high-gravity of the worlds that they settled on. Like ratlings, squats are more-or-less devoid of facial hair, and the ignorant or inexperienced outsider often mistakes squats for larger, uglier ratlings. They generally only make this mistake once – squats are immensely nationalistic and proud of their race. Whereas most abhuman units in the Imperial Guard are auxiliary forces raised and deployed as specialists, squats generally insist on fighting in exclusive regiments with their own command structure. When this is not possible, they often serve in the same units as standard Imperial Guard soldiers, eager to show that they are at least equal to the human troopers in ability, if not better.

Because of this, squats are generally stereotyped as being gruff and difficult to befriend, but this can be misleading – they are as trusting and trustworthy as any human, provided they do not detect prejudice against their abhumanity. They generally have an introspective view on the galaxy, only getting involved in matters not directly affecting them when it impinges on their strongly held sense of right and wrong.

The squats used to have their own autonomous league of worlds to the galactic east, until it was annihilated by the tyranids. The few survivors now live on human-dominated worlds, sometimes side-by-side with their human cousins, but more often in their own city quarters or isolated settlements. Attitudes towards them vary from acceptance, through intolerance and discrimination, to outright racial hostility.

Speak: Low Imperial Gothic (either a local or squat dialect)

Alignment: Imperial. Some squats, who mainly exist within the Eye of Terror, have fallen from grace and are aligned with Chaos. These Dawaz Dum, as the Squat refer to them, still follow the culture of the Devoured Worlds, albeit a debased version revelling in Daemon worship and mutation. This causes the squats to despise them.

Height:     Male 4’ 6" + D10"

                 Female 4’ 4" + D10"

Special Rules: Squats are, as a rule, rarely psychic in young age (the proportion is so small as to be negligible). However, the most ancient squats, the Living Ancestors, often develop psychic powers. When a squat character completes his fifth career, or reaches 200 years old, there is a 25% chance that he develops psychic powers. (If this does not occur, then the test must be taken at the end of each successive career, until the test has been failed three times, whereupon it is assumed the squat has no latent psychic abilities. A squat that develops psychic powers must take Living Ancestor as his next career.

Squats will not normally allow a Dawaz Dum to live, whether it is taken as a prisoner or is fleeing the battlefield. They may even disobey direct orders if it allows them to kill a Dawaz Dum.

 

Height: 6’                 Speaks: Low Imperial Gothic                 Alignment: Imperial Conservative

   So far, this is all that exists of Velspere Colsen – he is a row of numbers and a few descriptive categories. We’ll come back to him later.

   Characters need some way of earning a living before they head out into the world to become adventurers. Often this career is abandoned early on (a monotonous job is often a motive for dropping out of normal society), but occasionally an adventurer will continue in his line of work even while on the road. Maybe adventures are reserved for the evenings, and he has to hold down a day job in order to feed his family. Some careers lend themselves ideally to adventuring – Inquisitor or Mercenary, for example.

   Careers are divided into four classes – Military, Freelancer, Scholar and Citizen. A PC’s starting career comes from one of these classes, although it is possible to choose Career Exits that lead into other classes.

   Each character generates a career from one of these classes. Once the player has chosen which career class he wishes his character to be from, roll on the appropriate column for the character’s species on that Careers Table.

   A character gains all the abilities and equipment associated with their career. Note that some equipment or abilities are not automatically gained, and there is a percentage chance of the PC starting out with it. The GM has the right to veto certain pieces of equipment (and, more cautiously, abilities) if they clash with the style of campaign or scenario he intends to run. For example, an adventure set on a planet with strict weapons prohibition may require the PCs to start out unarmed, or technological equipment may be vetoed if the scenario is set on a feral or medieval world.

   Military careers are those related to serving the Imperium in a military sense, whether as a common rank-and-file soldier, an Imperial agent of some kind, a templar of the Adeptus Sororitas or even one of the legendary supermen of the Adeptus Astartes. Military careers can be immensely rewarding, since the very best troopers can, eventually, become senior officers with almost unlimited power and influence. Even if a PC never makes it that far, the equipment and training available to an Imperial soldier is second-to-none.

   Most military forces maintain a uniform, whether it is the simple grey vest and fatigues of the Imperial Navy’s ratings, up to the spotless dress uniform and expertly artificed power armour of the Adeptus Astartes. Most military units are dressed in a local style, although these normally emphasise functionality over decoration, i.e. camouflage with no unnecessary decoration. There are exceptions – the Mordian Iron Guard, a planetary defence force that submits many regiments to the Imperial Guard, wear brightly coloured tunics, gleaming boots and stiff peaked caps, even on the battlefield.

   Covert units do not have a uniform, although most intelligence services have a smart dress code when not actively undercover. The Officio Assassinorum has no particular uniform outside of its Temples, but most Assassins on missions prefer black syn-skin.

Freelancer (Requires WS or BS of 50+)

   Many citizens are unable (or unwilling) to join the armed forces, yet still have skills leaning towards the physical. This may be legal or illegal, but can often prove very lucrative. It is not unknown for Imperial authorities to occasionally hire freelance operatives for activities where it would be legally, morally or politically difficult to use Imperial personnel, or where a freelancer’s abilities far outstrip those of a common soldier.

   The main advantage of remaining a freelancer in any field is that they have the freedom to apply their own code of ethics to their work. This is a luxury seldom enjoyed by soldiers acting under orders. The disadvantage of choosing the private sector over the military is that equipment and training is hard to come by, and a private operative is rarely on a par with his government-controlled counterpart, unless he has previously served in a military profession.

   Freelancers wear a variety of styles of clothing, although the emphasis is usually on the inconspicuous. Usually, they try and adopt the local style of the planet they are on, although some (most obviously security guards) wear uniforms, which vary according to the whim of the employer. Gangs and paramilitary units often enforce a dress code or uniform (for example, gang colours, tattoos or ritual scarring), within which much variation is allowed.

   A traditional accessory for bounty hunters, mercenaries and other guns for hire is the wearing of white patches on clothes, or a white bandanna, when between jobs. This signifies that the freelancer is not here to cause trouble, but is open to employment offers.

   Whether they are librarians, scribes, lawyers, doctors or even mighty Inquisitors, there exists a class within Imperial society that makes it possible for humanity to conquer and maintain the vast realm that is the Imperium. Without the scholars, mankind would collapse into ignorance and stagnation, and the future of the entire species would look exceedingly bleak.

   Of course, not many in the Imperium realise this, so fixated are they on the heroic tales of great warriors or religious figures. In fact, many Imperial citizens, even those in authority, distrust those better educated than them. As in most totalitarian states, it can be dangerous to be too intelligent.

   Nevertheless, there are worlds within the Imperium where education is a virtue, and scholars are valued members of society. It is these liberal societies that are watched most closely by the Inquisition for taint of heresy or lack of faith.

   Most scholarly groups wear a variety of clothing styles, depending on local tastes, and the extent to which their people tolerate intellectuals. Most liberal academics veer between tasteful to unfashionable clothing, usually emphasising their individuality and (perceived) freedom to make choices. More conservative academics will wear suits, or at least smart clothes.

   Members of Imperially backed professions (Apothecaries, Astropaths, Tech-Priests etc.) usually have robes of office, which they wear at virtually all times. These are generally more elaborate among the higher ranks. This is especially the case in the Ministorum, where the ideals of clerical poverty are given less importance the higher up the ladder a priest climbs.

   Nobles always wear the latest high society fashions, ensuring that their clothing bills are high and their wardrobes constantly changing.

   Inquisitors wear sinister robes of office on formal or public occasions, or when openly flaunting their position of authority. Usually, however, they dress in whatever style suits their purposes, even if this is in rags or high levels of discomfort. Their Inquisitorial rosette is usually concealed, but within easy reach for when its authority is needed.

Citizen (No special requirements):

And then there are the rest. The common herd. The cattle. The citizenry. Where most of humanity’s great civilisations have extolled the power of the masses, the Imperium suppresses it.

As such, life for a typical citizen of the Imperium is without much in the way of freedom. It is simple enough to stamp on a people’s face for all eternity, but a harder trick is to make a people think they are free when, ultimately, they are slaves. The Imperium is expert at both strategies, tailoring planetary political systems to suit the cultures they apply to. Although many worlds may be liberal, unoppressive places to live, and may even practise local democracy, ultimately all worlds come under the harsh dictatorship of the Administratum.

   Citizens wear an almost infinite variety of clothing styles, depending on their career, social class and planetary (and even regional) background. Most civilised Imperial worlds tend towards simple styles, a result of the Ministorum’s teachings of humility and the grace of poverty.

Forward To Page 2