Road to Undead 40K

ManicMan

ManicMan

Lord
A bit modern but.. hell, just wondering and it goes back quite a bit..

I'll say more with 2ed then the RT but.. 40K very much used the same races as Fantasy.. Humans as Humans, Elves - Eldar, Dwarfs - Squats, Orcs - Orks, Slann.. erm.. - Slann.. Tyranids were slann related, Zoats - Zoats, Genestealers being.. not a part of the Tyranids or a race but just a creature.. Anyway.. Ogres -> ogryns? can't remember the spelling.. and there were attempts for the Skaven..

but Undead.. a Major Factor in Fantasy Battle (oh come on, if you wanna debate it, look.. Humans - Orcs - Undead were kinda the three biggies early on).. With Space Crusade, you had the Chaos Androids which were basically Sci-fi Skeletons.. They didn't seam to do too much with them.. I think Sci-fi Zombies were kinda done with some of the Chaos but.. that's about it.. near the end of 2ed, they introduced the Necrons.. which were trying to make a race of the Chaos Androids basically being the Undead force.. but as I remember, they flopped hard and I remember a statement, I'm sure it was on White dwarf, that one of the reasons was they were written for 3ed 40K but wanted to bring them out earlier for current players.. Can't remember when they then brought them back again but seams to then brought them back.. not sure if it was for 3ed or a bit later..

So.. wondering if I'm missing any information or anything.. I'm pretty sure about the flop point but can't remember where it was and to prove it with facts.. Also.. did they ever do much more with Undead in 40K? not much in the way of Zombies, Mummies, etc..
 
I think, they are Chaos Nurgle troops as 'Plague Zombies', going with how at times, Undead appeared to be a sub-set of chaos.. hell, I think GW kinda liked to have everything either be 'good guys' (Humans mostly, but Elves and Dwarfs too), and Chaos.. which is funny because early RT/40K Orks are clearly stated to NOT be chaos. Waaargh Da Orks (the RT Ork supplement) States this. There is no predilection for Chaos among the Orks mostly because there race is relatively stable and content being little psychic stress or angst among the orks. However as Orks are not by nature Evil, which chaos isn't either, well.. they say orks don't naturally or consistently affiliate with chaos however, they would work with them if paid or given some loot, where as Humans are very open to Chaos.

of course, 40K has gotten sooo stupid that even the Emperor is a nothing now.. Undying? well, SOO many ones like Ghazie have died and been reborn in a new body soo many times now that.. doesn't mean a thing. It's nothing for a 40K character to die and be brought back to life.. so what's so special about the Emperor that he needs this fancy machine now? nothing.. (of course, they did the same in WFB.. Boneripper died and came back as a undead Rat Orge, then back as a Biomechanical Boneripper.. I think they say the current one I like the 5th Boneripper ¬_¬ what place is there for the undead when the dead don't stay dead for long?
 
ManicMan said:
A bit modern but.. hell, just wondering and it goes back quite a bit..

I'll say more with 2ed then the RT but.. 40K very much used the same races as Fantasy.. Humans as Humans, Elves - Eldar, Dwarfs - Squats, Orcs - Orks, Slann.. erm.. - Slann.. Tyranids were slann related, Zoats - Zoats, Genestealers being.. not a part of the Tyranids or a race but just a creature.. Anyway.. Ogres -> ogryns? can't remember the spelling.. and there were attempts for the Skaven..

but Undead.. a Major Factor in Fantasy Battle (oh come on, if you wanna debate it, look.. Humans - Orcs - Undead were kinda the three biggies early on).. With Space Crusade, you had the Chaos Androids which were basically Sci-fi Skeletons.. They didn't seam to do too much with them.. I think Sci-fi Zombies were kinda done with some of the Chaos but.. that's about it.. near the end of 2ed, they introduced the Necrons.. which were trying to make a race of the Chaos Androids basically being the Undead force.. but as I remember, they flopped hard and I remember a statement, I'm sure it was on White dwarf, that one of the reasons was they were written for 3ed 40K but wanted to bring them out earlier for current players.. Can't remember when they then brought them back again but seams to then brought them back.. not sure if it was for 3ed or a bit later..

So.. wondering if I'm missing any information or anything.. I'm pretty sure about the flop point but can't remember where it was and to prove it with facts.. Also.. did they ever do much more with Undead in 40K? not much in the way of Zombies, Mummies, etc..
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I'm not sure undead were such a big faction at the time RT was being conceived and developed. Prior to the plastic injection moulding there was no handy skeleton sprue so undead skeletons were not cheap or easy to produce. Likewise to players they were then expensive to have an army as they were such low point cost each.

So I suspect that undead weren't included specifically because they didn't fit the RT world building (yes there is Chaos, yes there is psychic powers but raising the dead is a bit beyond that) and weren't particularly popular in their sales at the time.

For Skaven I think they were being developed as a WH faction at around the same time as RT was in development so there was no existing figures (phyiscal or sales) to go from.

Remember early doors GW never imagined 40K would be the absolute behemoth it went on to become. So once it is overtaking fantasy the whole concept of transferring popular stuff from fantasy to 40K was moot. The popular stuff was 40K and the trend became to remove unpopular stuff from it not add existing races from fantasy (bye bye squats) even if they were relatively popular within fantasy.
 
Rouge Trader was released October 1987, announced 1986. The Skeleton Horde set, one of the first cheap plastic sets they released, was September 1986. There was already a fairly large skeleton and undead range at the time since the early 80s. You also need to think Terror of the Lichemaster and Vengeance of the lichemaster were very popular. Terror was 86, and Vengeance was also 86 and was used to introduce the Skaven.

Just like any other figure, Skeletons were, prior to the plastics, metal cast figures.

I always felt they never quite knew what to do with the squats.. the style of them would vary a bit like they had no fixed them idea
 
Exactly - they were developing the undead and skaven at the same time as developing RT. Don't underestimate how long these things took to develop from concept to release. So the decision to include an undead faction or skaven faction would have been required well before the popularity or not of the skaven and new skeletons had been determined.

Whilst there was a reasonably large metal skeleton range how popular were they? I presume not popular enough to have management demand that RT include a range of space undead, and why would they? No one knew 40K would become a monster. My point was that skeletons didn't become big sellers until the plastic kit was released. Plastic was perfect for the boney guys where lead was actually very limiting.

You also have the fact that much of 40K RT was written by Rick Priestly so maybe he just didn't see them fitting within the setting he was creating. Absent a compelling reason to include them they weren't included.

So you then have a lore sort of already established that didn't feature skeletons or skaven. It wasn't impossible to introduce new things but alien races were easier to put in (ie Tau and Necrons) than insert something like the power to raise the dead.
 
I see what you mean (and Necron's are, as my point is, a new alien race.. they are made from the Space Crusade 'Chaos Android' (1990) which was a Sci-if Skeleton.
Sleepysod's GG2023 entry is either the original LE09 'Space Skeleton' or... an amazingly close 'homage' (https://forum.oldhammer.org/threads/golden-gobbo-2023.37072/post-118700)

I was just flipping through a copy of some rogue trader info and... they did have undead in Rogue trader.. Under 'warp creatures' (as a way to more sci-fi them) there are Ghosts (Astral Spectre) which work as and even say they act like Poltergeists, Vampires which can drain the blood of the victim and turn them into.. Zombies.

The original Rogue trader book only had the basics for many of the races, mostly focused on humans, with the sub-sets of Mutants, Rogue traders, etc, then Eldar, Orks, Slann (and there 'inheritance' Tyranids and Zoats (which are classed as part of Tyranids). Squats weren't even part of it till a bit later. As they have said about a number of produces, they 'split' up releases so you had the core book, and later some supplements within a short time. They did try to put a bit of everything in Rogue trader (as some people have stated) which is why they reused figures from other lines.. Some of there Doctor Who and Judge Dredd lines even appear.
 
ManicMan said:
I see what you mean (and Necron's are, as my point is, a new alien race.. they are made from the Space Crusade 'Chaos Android' (1990) which was a Sci-if Skeleton.
Sleepysod's GG2023 entry is either the original LE09 'Space Skeleton' or... an amazingly close 'homage' (https://forum.oldhammer.org/threads/golden-gobbo-2023.37072/post-118700)

I was just flipping through a copy of some rogue trader info and... they did have undead in Rogue trader.. Under 'warp creatures' (as a way to more sci-fi them) there are Ghosts (Astral Spectre) which work as and even say they act like Poltergeists, Vampires which can drain the blood of the victim and turn them into.. Zombies.

The original Rogue trader book only had the basics for many of the races, mostly focused on humans, with the sub-sets of Mutants, Rogue traders, etc, then Eldar, Orks, Slann (and there 'inheritance' Tyranids and Zoats (which are classed as part of Tyranids). Squats weren't even part of it till a bit later. As they have said about a number of produces, they 'split' up releases so you had the core book, and later some supplements within a short time. They did try to put a bit of everything in Rogue trader (as some people have stated) which is why they reused figures from other lines.. Some of there Doctor Who and Judge Dredd lines even appear.
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Squats are under Abhumans.
 
ah yes.. thanks. Before they were .. well, even defined as much as their own race.. even before the Dink tosser, I'm not sure that would fly these days.

interesting.. as I remembered, they are more shown as being noticeably intolerant of aliens compared to other humans
 
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