Why Does The Imperium Hate Mutants? | Warhammer 40K Lore

the Imperium hating people who are different that's new different okay all jokes aside I wouldn't call the Imperium a progressive place in the least but I think it is interesting to note there is a lot of leeway in regards to what someone can be and do like it doesn't matter what sexuality you are what gender you are as long as you can serve the emperor you're fine honestly but of course there are a few exceptions the most obvious of these exceptions being mutants no we're all familiar with the old Maxim burn the heretic kill the mutant Purge the unclean but why though they haven't really done anything wrong or proven themselves in the initial stages of the Imperium to be some malignant element or inherently hostile body and yet mutation is considered heresy not just promoting mutation or causing it but having it the act of being a mutant is heresy and is therefore often punishable by death the obvious answer as to why this is is obviously the warp you know the warp breeds mutation it causes these variations in people with Lake excite and ability but the real full answer is much more interesting and complicated than just the war before that though let's get into the history of mutants within the Imperium all the way dating back to its Inception now on a lot of planets there are exceptions on some of the more futile worlds you're just going to be burned alive or tossed into a ravine when you're born but on some Hive cities mutants actually have leeway that's the best it gets from mutant because many Hive cities will allow mutants to live and work in the most dangerous and demeaning jobs in the factoriums and only pay them in worker credit coins they form their own unders societies with their own businesses bars places to go that only they can properly frequent and no one else would ever want to go to where they accept these company money tokens as proper currency that's the really ironic thing Hive cities are often cited as a living hell and one of the worst things in the 41st Millennium but for a mutant that's really As Good As It Gets because if you just work and don't cause any trouble you have a decent enough chance of living at least a life that's not too much worse than the average manufacturem worker and getting to be left alone with your own kind in businesses of your own making that's interesting in a way but it does still stand to reason that's an exception and very conditional the fact is the Imperium hates mutants but again why is that where does this Hardline hatred of mutants come from the answer to that unsurprisingly lies with the great Crusade and more specifically the Horus heresy you see back during the Great Crusade mutants were granted a little bit of acceptance by the emperor namely even those underprivileged classes that had to live in isolated societies were reached out to by Imperial iterators who would share the Imperial truth with them and try to push back Superstition because Superstition is what caused a lot of these people suffering especially on the less enlightened and developed worlds they were allowed to you know not be killed and could even serve in the Imperial Army albeit in separate units that's one thing to be remembered while they were tolerated more by the emperor they were not openly accepted or given the same rights this especially was applicable to a group known as beastmen that being mutants who had a lot of animalistic features usually almost bovine-like heads or hoofs or horns whose sort of specific Visage invoked folk memories of demons and devils in a lot of more feudal planets and saw them even more cast out than regular mutants mutants would gang up on these guys to cast them out to the point where they were eventually reclassed as abh human or Homo Sapien variatos and the beginning of the end for them really did come around the heresy because they sided on mass with Horus and joined the legions of the Lost and the Damned that was a big part of horus's strategy to appeal to anyone who was even a little bit disenfranchised with the Imperium and bring them on his side to use as auxiliaries or support for whatever means necessary be it Pirates mutants or whoever this was in no way forgotten by the Imperium and mutants lives absolutely got worse after it furthermore we have to go back to chaos the power of chaos had played such a large role in the heresy and in the ensuing religious fervor that consumed the Imperium after the emperor was gone mutation was seen as so inherently abhorrent and wrong and the Imperium was just so much harder on them for it oh you're a mutant that's heresy you are in front to the god Emperor's design you must be destroyed that sort of thing and ironically in turn because of this increased persecution mutants are now far more likely to turn to chaos or Stark chaos Cults of their own because there's nowhere else for them to turn and in an interesting reversal beastmen are now doing a little better because of that status as abh human because of their Incredible strength much like ogren's they're more welcome in the Imperial Army and those that do worship the emperor view him as this sort of vengeful God who they must kill for in order to redeem themselves for the sin of being born this serves in stark contrast to what we hear in the book The Lost and the Damned by Guy Haley from the siege of Terror series wherein we get an entire chapter from the view of a beast man named asmedi and we hear about all the hurt and the awful things he had to go through in his life just because he was born the the way he is and because of those old folk beliefs where people saw him as like a demon and other mutants would shun him the person riling him and his fellow beastmen up to invade Terra explains you are shunned this way but the emperor also meddles with genetics but they call his monsters Heroes yet you are branded as beasts you are the true children of change you are the favorite of the Gods again mutants are very susceptible to The Lure of chaos because of how disenfranchised they are and this All Leads back to the fact that mutants are very susceptible to chaos now one thing we have to keep in mind is that the average Imperial citizen does know about the warp and about Chaos on some very cursory level in the same way we in our life know about quote hell or the devil or evil spirits or that sort of thing as sort of an embodiment of sin like humans know about the quote-unquote great enemy and just believe that if you're faithful enough in the emperor it'll go away they don't really know about the intricacies of the warp or demons or the gods of the warp or that sort of thing but there is an inclination that mutation is connected to the warp and therefore should be abhorred and snuffed out wherever possible they don't know why it's bad but they do know that it's bad and that's enough for them this obviously contrasted with the astartes who are more of the Kilda mutant Purge the unclean persuasion who have more of that knowledge of mutants being connected directly to the influence of the war there's also the fact that mutants are inherently prone to Rebellion even now because of their poor conditions so keeping them down ensures keeping the Imperial worlds a little bit safer in this sort of cruel self-fulfilling cycle now this is all very easy to understand but it's also all very surface level you see the emperor had greater designs involving mutants and it involved the nature of the great Crusade itself he explains this to sanguineous in the end in the Death volume 1. before boarding the vengeful Spirit sanguinius asks the emperor why exactly he left the primarks with human emotion wouldn't it just be redundant or a possible liability and then the emperor shows him how emotions are a very important part of humanity an integral part not a vestigial one and in doing so he ends up showing him part of the designs for the great Crusade that being the purification of the human genome I am the end product of centuries of a great work he comprehends marveling me my brothers are sons all of our kind we are the culmination of a great work and that work is nothing less than the salvation of human biology I see the beautiful young World below has grown older and darker now stained with damage and woe the void around me has grown blacker suffocating the age of strife and long night have come and gone woefully damaging the human genome it has fallen prey To Grim genetic drift and degenerative mutation rates the great work is not just to unify Terra and rebuild the infrastructure of Empire it is to rebuild the human vessel itself to repair molecular codes to arrest mutation and where necessary select for positive trait alterations pinprick specks of light flicker from the surface of the world increasing in number like the first shoots of spring from hard winter ground they multiply they flicker Out Among the Stars too they are mines psychos proliferating unchecked are a deeply destructive flaw but the emergent Navigators are essential sanctioned genetic reconstitution is crucial for human growth and in pursuing it my father reaches Beyond a profound understanding of human biological structure and function this passage back when I read it was what inspired this video because think about it that passage on genetic drift is really poignant because what happens if Humanity stays apart and keeps evolving and keeps drifting away from itself genetically eventually there won't be any more quote-unquote humans human would just be some distant long forgotten ancestor on some world people don't remember and everyone will just be their own separate species imagine if every planet was abh human is Humanity even a thing anymore no it's just some ancient common ancestor I feel like the emperor knew that and that's why he was so stiff about this sort of thing similarly in the book The First Terra Tech by Aaron demsky Bowden the word Bears encounter a planet where the human population had introduced some sort of Xeno fish-like genetics into their Gene code which altered their appearance ever so slightly but is believed to have been done so to combat some sort of disease these people had encountered however many centuries ago even though it's just a slight thing the word Bears view this as a reason enough to wipe them all out because if that sort of thing keeps up or becomes accepted eventually Humanity won't be a thing it'll just be some common ancestor sanguinius In this passage also mentions The Navigators and that's its own very interesting can of worms Navigators have this Noble and almost exalted part in society and this really overreaching sanction that gives them a lot of power their lives are probably better than most normal humans in the Imperium even though they're mutants with third eyes they were actually created back during the Dark Age of Technology as a way to properly Traverse the warp and the emperor has brought them on board but does not plan to keep them on board you see that was the point of the Imperial web boy project to free the the need for warped travel at all thereby making Navigators redundant that would have been a side effect thing it wasn't the main purpose it was to stop the influence of warp storms or the demons in the warp but the emperor was so careful to never tell anyone because if any of The Navigators found out and the secret became known to them they could just boycott the Imperium and then it would collapse because there would be no reliable method of warp travel the Imperium would be finished if they found out and decided no you're not getting rid of a screw you again mutants only accepted very tentatively because ultimately they couldn't be trusted so between the influence of the warp that downtrodden way of living brought on by a lot of human Superstition that religious fervor which was the result of the emperor's own pragmatic policy being codified as religious Doctrine and ultimately the emperor's desire to see Humanity purified so that Humanity would endure and not become separate species is the reason the Imperial just despises mutants so much and feels the need to purge them at every turn but what do you guys think is there something I'm not seeing here is there some other Grand Design what do you guys think about the treatment of mutants do you think it should be better or do you think the emperor was right do you think the now religious Imperium is right in how they view mutants I'd love to hear how you guys feel in the comments below and until then I will see you in the next video

Channel: Live! From The Black Library

Views: 10,324

Keywords: warhammer40k, 40klore, imperiumofman, mutants, horusheresy

Id: BEfIdjYa0tE

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023