Undead And Loving It - by Redscope Minis
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For this journey into mystery, we join Redscopeminis from the Fluffenhammer Discord…..
For what is packaged and sold as a Sci-Fi setting, the Undead appear a lot in 40k. There’s a strong streak of halloween level supernatural that appears in ways that we may not consider at first (and I don't just mean as in Games Workshop killing off the Squats only to bring them back from the dead as the Leagues of Votann three decades later). Models, factions and lore that can trace a pretty direct route from the fantasy tropes that exist for the Undead, that does cement 40K as being Space Fantasy
Necrons
The necrons may have started life as the mindless chaos robots but have been transformed into a more direct undead theme over the years. A far cry from the T-100 terminator machines of the 1980s the lore and design of the models changed to take on a more skeleton appearance. The faction as a whole took on theme based on Egyptian style with tombs and curved blades. 9th edition took this undead theme further still with models no longer being perfect machines but half broken skeleton robots looking like they just came out of the ground.
The Thousand Sons
It is easy to forget when looking at the Thousands Sons that they are not just "normal" Space Marines / Chaos Space Marines. Because inside those armoured suits lies little more than dust. The original marines in those suit technically died (or rather became a dusty spirit which exists within the armour.) It has been suggested around the lore of the chapter that resurrection rites are held to bring them back from the dead.
Nurgle
Seems like an obvious choice for a link to the udead but it is more complex than the faction being just zombies. It is a faction like the Necrons that have moved more in the direction with the lore and new models. Nurgle at the heart of it is more about life and transforming to extended it rather than die. In later years the lore talks more virus such as the Walking Pox one which brings the dead back to life as the pox walkers. It is difficult not to draw a direct line between zombies in fantasy and the poxwalkers in 40k
And all that is is before we start looking closely at the Spaces Marines themselves. Given the sheer number of permutations of chapters that exist, it’snot a shock that some of them fall into the supernatural, but it’s surprising how many direct tropes exist in the Astartes.
Blood Angels
I never been sure quite why the Dark angels are the faction known for holding secrets and why they are so worried about traitors when we have a chapter of Space Vampires running around the galaxy barely able to control themselves from snacking on the general population. It is not like the Blood Angels trying hard to hide the fact either with the Mephiston and Astorath looking like they just stepped out of Hammer Horror film.
Space Wolves
Following on from the Blood Angels we also have the Space Wolfs because when you have vampires you also need werewolves it seems. Again nobody seems care you have a chapter which contains the Wulfen which are little more than transformed werewolves charging into combat. The idea that Space Marines can turn into massive werewolves is pretty cool but again this is suppose to be a SCI FI based game.
This is of course, only the tip of the iceberg of supernatural themes in the setting. Psykers, Chaos generally drawing on the powers of the Warp, The Eldar with the unique bonecrafting and capture of spirits drawing from concepts in fantasy and the supernatural. I’d like to hear what springs to your mind.
However of course the biggest example of course is
Emperor of Mankind.
Debate will be had if he is alive or not. However he is often in lore referenced as a "once living man" If you no longer a living man then it stands to reason that you are infact…. dead. So yes the Emperor of Mankind is little more than a large undead zombie, (a Liche prehaps) sitting on the throne. Not only that but he has to be feed the souls of psykers in a vamparic nature (see also the film Lifeforce. for no other reason that it’s ace)
In summary: the Undead feature a lot in 40k in few different flavours, as 40k draws on layers upon layers of history and fiction to build it’s bedrock. It’s always fun to mine into it and see what we can find.