Corpse-starch, what the lore says part III: How it relates to other practices in the Imperium

Following my two previous posts about corpse-starch (and Soylens Viridians and Slab), I wanted to make a post to contextualize the presence of corpse-starch in the setting in relation to the Imperium’s wider use of people as resources, both while alive and after death.

I want to start with something from the classic intro text to the game, from 1st ed. Rogue Trader (as an aside, the intro text to 8th edition also included something very similar):

He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium to whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, and for whom blood is drunk and flesh is eaten. Human blood and human flesh – the stuff of which the Imperium is made.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable.

Now, this was very likely meant metaphorically (though who can be truly sure, with the insanity of Rogue Trader?), to signify that the Imperium uncaringly uses its subjects as a resource, eating them up, taking their lives. The Imperium expects humanity to give themselves fully in service of the Emperor. They are grist for the Imperium’s war machine.

And while the intro text has changed over the decades and the editions, this aspect of the Imperium has remained consistent. The Imperium is wildly diverse, made up of a multitude of planets and systems and institutions and organizations, all with their own cultures. But this notion of human lives being a resource to be used in service of the Emperor – and thus the Imperium – is widespread and deeply entrenched across much of the Imperium, even if how it is implemented in practice can take different forms.

And one of those forms is, somewhat ironically, that human flesh can literally be eaten by other humans. Though, in most cases, after having been highly-processed into corpse-starch. Even in death, imperial subjects may be expected to serve the Imperium – or, perhaps, be served to the Imperium. As we will see, human bodies are not only used to produce food, however.

There are also cases where humans can be sacrificed to the Emperor, not to feed the Golden Throne, but in rituals related to local cultures, and traditions:

There are worlds where priests cast living human sacrifices into the throats of volcanoes, believing the Emperor dwells in the fiery depths and the victims will become his favoured servants.

Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs, p. 6.

Now, hopefully is widely accepted that humans are often dehumanized and used as a resource while alive in the Imperium, whether as slaves, hereditary slaves, indentured workers, when press ganged into the Imperial Navy, or being forced to serve in a PDF or the Guard, or toiling away undertaking gruelling and/or mind-numbing labour in manufactora. Not everybody in the Imperium experiences this: the elite can usually escape such a fate, and worlds can be wildly different as regards living conditions and cultures. But an innumerable number of people, the majority, do. We also have orphans being raised in the Schola Progenium, to be intensely indoctrinated and trained to serve as Commissars, Scions, Sororitas, Assassins, and in a range of other imperial institutions. We have children being taken to be made into Astartes, whereupon they are then psycho-conditioned. We have babies being taken and made into Custodes, becoming the closest companions of the Emperor, but nearly totally stripped of free will. We have psykers being corralled onto the Black Ships, to be fed to the Golden Throne, or soulbound and made to serve as Astropaths, or Primaris Psykers, or in other roles.

This is all nicely summarised thusly:

The vast majority of the faithful exist amidst unending toil and oppression, where the only alternative to a life of abject servitude is to be shipped out to a far away war to be slain at the hands of some bloodthirsty alien monstrosity.

Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs, p. 18.

Note, here, that “the faithful” being referred to here is explained in this section of the book to be the vast majority of those who dwell under imperial rule.

And the use of servitors is well known, whether they are vat-grown, made from criminals – or, in some instances, just made from those unlucky enough to fall into the hands of certain Tech Priests (more on this in a subsequent series of posts about Servitors).

But human corpses are actually used for a variety of purposes, aside from corpse-starch and servitors. One obvious example, from surveying the artwork and models, is the Imperium’s love of using skulls and bones as decorations and relics, which can adorn buildings, or armour, or flagpoles, or books. Another famous example are servo-skulls, which are often made from loyal servants or honoured (but often low-level) Adepts and scribes.

And bodies are not just rendered down into corpse-starch. They can also be used to make tallow for the candles the Imperium so loves to use. We see this, for example, in White Dwarf 472 in its 'Flashpoint: Nachmund' section, where the planet Scorpa is designated as a “Tallow World”. Below the planet’s surface there are under-habs which service immense tallow manufactoriums. Corpses from across the system are rendered down, and their fat used to produce trillions of candles for export to to Ministorum Shrine Worlds. The fact that there is even a designation of "Tallow World" suggests that Scorpa is not unique – though we have no idea how many other such worlds might exist.

We do encounter human-origin candles elsewhere as well:

The way to the Octagonal Tower ran along the Walk of Martyrs. A sense of dread grew within Sister Lizbet as she made her way along the sacred passage lit by candle flames of rendered tallow from those who had died on pilgrimage.

Pilgrims of Fire.

And we have another mention of human corpses being used to produce candles, in a passage describing various manufactorums which commonly exist in hivecities:

Others create items from start to finish, such as the manufactorum lucernus, a forge-plant which processes human corpses and renders them into candles...

Urban Conquest, p. 11.

So, it turns out that when we are told:

No two hives are identical, but most are sealed environments where everything from the air citizens breathe, to their very bodies, are perpetually recycled

Imperium Maledictum Rulebook, p. 53.

...that hiveworlds can use human corpses for other ends besides producing corpse-starch.

And we get a nice view from the planet Daedalon of how corpses can be used for a variety of purposes:

A gargantuan annex of Barastyr Cathedral, the Priory of the Sacred Form, is a corpse starch processing facility. It is equal parts church and factory, and one of the largest employers of labour in the city.

The priests of the Cathedral are duty bound to bless all of the corpses brought to Barastyr. Those that can afford burial are delivered to their tombs. Those that can’t are declared no longer Human; their souls departed to be with the Emperor, their bodies now meat to feed His people.

The remainder of the vast facility is more akin to a production line where thousands work tirelessly to transmute dead bodies into mealy, tasteless food. The bones are extracted for building supplies, or fenced as ‘holy relics’ on the Memento Square with the belongings of the departed. The skulls are sent to the Servo-Skull Manufactorum.

Wrath & Glory: The Graveyard Shift, p. 6.

Note how, like with how corpse-starch is sourced and doled out, social class plays a key role here with whose bones and skulls get repurposed, and whose corpses are given the dignity of being laid to rest.

Now, it is important to note that we are told that according to the Imperial Faith, cannibalism is forbidden:

Practices dubbed benighted or barbaric may be supplanted with more suitable ones, though often some symbolism is allowed to remain to lend a sense of continuity. For example, necrophagia – the eating of the dead – is a practise proscribed by the Imperial Creed, but when it is encountered in savage cultures it may be replaced with the symbolic consumption of a particular totem animal.

Dark Heresy: Blood of Martyrs, p. 17.

So, it is very convenient then that on some worlds, including Necromunda, eating unprocessed human flesh is seen as cannibalism. But eating it when processed into corpse-starch is not. As ever, the Imperium is full of rank hypocrisy and contradictions. If you are powerful enough, or it is convenient enough, you can get away with a lot - even if you might have to keep it as secret as possible.

Cannibalism which doesn’t benefit from this loophole is still also of course to be found throughout the Imperium in various places. It is used out of desperation during famines, or by groups who are perennially lacking enough food, such as Scavvies in Underhives – though they are reviled for it.

It is practised on some feral worlds. And some of these worlds serve as recruiting grounds for Space Marine Chapters, who themselves were designed to have an Omophagea, to allow them to gain the memories of other creature, including humans, by eating them. And many Chapters go beyond this more practical aspect, and engage in ritual flesh eating and blood drinking – most notable those of the Blood Angels lineage, but not only them. Of course, most Chapters are not part of the Imperial Faith and are therefore not bound by its strictures, instead having their own Chapter Cults. I wonder, do the Black Templars refuse to make use of their Omophageas, to adhere to tenets the Imperial Faith?

And then, of course, there are the many Death Cults which are evident across large parts of the Imperium:

The Blood of Martyrs is the Seed of the Imperium…” say the holy scriptures of the Ecclesiarchy. The Imperium is founded upon death and bloodshed, and maintained only by the further sacrifices of Humanity. In the Imperium, as in any society, there are those for whom death is a way of life, and death cults of many types can be found on human worlds across the Imperium. Some are undoubtedly Chaos-influenced, unwitting pawns of men who would bargain with Khorne the Blood God. Others revel in holy slaughter, dedicating their victims’ souls to Him, offering up blood sacrifices to the Emperor so that he might answer their prayers. Then there are the Death Cults that specialise in ritual murder and assassination. The art of the blade is paramount to many Death Cultists; different types of incisions, lacerations and punctures, the weapon they are inflicted with, and the body location on which they are made, all have special significance to dedicating the soul to the Emperor.

Death Cultists  are quite frequently cannibals and haemovores (blood drinkers). They feel purified by eating the corpses of those they’ve slain, stealing their enemy’s prowess and soul for themselves. Often blood is siphoned off from the dead as offerings to the Emperor, and Death Cultists will make pilgrimages to a great Cathedral of the Ecclesiarchy to present their gifts to the Emperor.

Inquisitor Rulebook, p. 140.

Now, Death Cultists do generally have to keep such practices hidden from outsiders, but their skills:

...can make Death Cultists highly desirable companions for an Inquisitor, particularly those who’ll turn a blind eye to their somewhat exotic eating habits.

Inquisitor Rulebook, p. 141.

So, it seems that cannibalism can persist, or even be tolerated in the Imperium, if you are powerful enough, or useful enough to those with power – or, if you are just overlooked and neglected. Of course, the Ad Mech have their own religion and are not bound by the tenets of the Imperial Faith, so they likely have free licence to process bodies for food, loophole or no. They certainly use human bodies for plenty of other macabre purposes.

This is all presented to show that the Imperium’s use of corpse-starch is very much in keeping with how the Imperium functions more generally, with its ideologies and cultures, and with other ways in which human bodies are treated, both while alive, and in death. The Imperium is, in many ways, a death cult (which contains lots of smaller Death Cults, I guess) which is all about sacrifice to the Emperor and the regime, and it's use of corpse-starch is relfective of that fact. That unscrupulous elites can benefit from the system is also on-brand for the Imperium. Corpse-starch is in-keeping in an in-universe sense, based on the nature of the Imperium.

It is also perfectly apt thematically, reinforcing the notion that the Imperium is the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable, which will use people up in life and in death – even if the ways in which does so may vary. Corpse-starch is a great symbol of this broader theme.

So, of course it makes sense that corpse-starch is a thing in the Imperium. Because it is the Imperium.

Anyway, I hope you liked this series on everything you ever wanted to known and more about corpse-starch. These infotainment posts have been brought to you by the Corpse Guild, to accompany the launch of our new slogan:

Don’t Eat Fresh. Eat Recycled Flesh!