Do guardsmen get paid to do what they do?

They do, the problem is that there's no legal tender that work across the Imperium as a whole so it's mostly paid in the local sector currency if applicable or store credit.

Only if they survive the week, so no.

What about Thrones?

Has anyone got any actual sources to provide? I find it really hard to believe that guardsmen get paid, surely serving the emperor is payment enough.

Those are a Calixis specific currency, and even there it's only Scintillas main currency, IIRC.

Yes, they're paid in Thrones. It's a pretty 'meh' amount in regards to what other "castes" in the Imperium earn, but it's a lot more than what most civilians earn.

No. Asking for any kind of reward for serving space Jesus is treason and collaboration with xeno scum.

this right here is all the payment a true loyal guardsman needs.

Not only do they get paid, but surviving a conquest/reconquest of a planet might net the surviving guardsmen ownership of land on said planet, making them nobility.

the amprah takes out life insurance on them like Wall-Mart.

Don't forget that (sometimes) you get to colonize the planet you just cleansed of heathen, heretic or xeno filth

Yes

Pretty sure that in the Ciaphas Cain series guardsmen are said to be paid. They are certainly explicitly said to go to brothels, gambling dens etc, although maybe they do that on credit and the hookers are later paid for by the administratum.

Cash seems more likely.

Cain specifically mentions gambling wages off the poor guardsmen.

>Gambling against a charismatic leader type who has full legal authority to shoot you at any time in the name of morale
If the Guardsmen are dumb enough to try that shit, they deserve everything that happens to them.

The infantryman' uplifting primmer specifically states BLAMMING guardsmen for participating in wagers.

Yes, I guess...

That's not just sometime. Assuming whatever campaign you are participating in has ended, and you are too old to continue to serve, it's safe to assume that you're allowed to settle down.

Cain considered that such BLAMing might result in a lasbolt rebounding in a strange angle and hitting him in the back of the head 200 miles away from the frontlines.

Cain always pretends to go easy on the men so they'll give a shit if he's in danger.

He never actually does, outside the fact that he almost never shoots anyone, but he's got them fooled into thinking he does.

For all the shit he receives, he does manage to keep morale pretty high, so I guess we could consider him good at his job.

Cain's whole shtick is that he's really self-deprecating and insistent that he's nothing but a self-serving coward only doing what's in his own best interest but he repeatedly demonstrates that he's actually a fantastically competent fighter, incredibly brave in the moment and he probably does care a lot about the people under his command.

Gaint's ghost often mention the soldiers using their pay. It's Abnett though, so take that as you will. I do remember that in Cain's books soldiers and Commisars get payed as well.

But as said, they're probably paid by the deployment basically. Get sent to a planet, fight, the whole campaign, if you survive, here's your pay, if you don't well shit, no need to pay you. That leads to soldiers often playing an upcoming pay, basically using money they don't have yet, making tabs in short.

Now, I do note that in Gaunt Ghosts, there was also a mention of a widows payment scheme, but that would definitely not be possible in the Imperium, or people would just recieve payment for the death of the great great great uncle.

Not likely, this is the Imperium we're talking about. They're often separated by thousands of light years from their home planet, of which a trip through a literal hellscape is the only way to go back. Their family would get their portion of the wages anywhere from months to centuries later. And well, they I imagine they just accept that they're likely gone for good and move on. Writing home probably isn't a big thing in the imperium.

By the end of his career, it's not hyperbole to say that he's among the most effective commissars who ever lived.

In terms of keeping up morale and offering advice outside the chain of command, he absolutely nails it.

dunno how much information there is about the astropath system, but isn't it possible a choir can facilitate some kind of mass communication, like sending an entire reginment's messages at once?

The vast majority of Guardsmen don't enter the profession by choice. Remember that part of the tithe that the Imperium demands from every planet is soldiers for the army - these are often conscripts, prisoners, and units of the local planetary defence forces or militias that get no say in what happens to them. That's if the local society is even advanced enough for that; on a feral world they've either got no idea what they're signing up for when they follow the shiny men onto their god's sky chariots or they're straight-up abducted.

Guardsmen aren't requested of every planet though. The tithes are different for every planet based on their description and the existence of nearby conflicts along with other arbitrary modifiers and administratum booking mistakes.

I personally doubt they would.

It's not a lot, but yes.

Of course it varies, but the requirement for soldiers to the IG from every planet that has a reasonable population is almost universal.

Rumors of horrible bureaucratic fuckups that result in soldiers not getting their backpay recorded, or only getting a fraction of what they're owed, or one soldier getting the backpay of his entire regiment, are similarly specious. Such scuttlebutt undermines morale and must be curtailed.

Why would the Imperium need to pay the guardsman? He is cut off from all those who might be sympathetic to him and under military discipline until the day he dies.

What about when a guardsman wants to retire and they do that thing where they get so many acres of land per year served? I've only seen it Ghosts and Abnett's 'new and improved' Trooper Persson

There's a lot of contradicting fluff. Some of it says stuff like super grim dark, no R&R fight till you die.

Other stuff has stories about ex-guardsmen getting returned to civilian life after the campaign/a period of time ends. They usually get used to colonize/recolonize worlds, instead of getting shipped home.

Theirs an Eisenhorn short story about a group cult that keeps murdering people. It turns out they're all ex-guardsmen who after decades fighting chaos, see mutation and corruption everywhere and have been taking it upon themselves to kill random people they mistakenly are tainted. So like Super ptsd, in space.

Yes.
However, since they're almost never in a position to spend their earnings, on account of warzones being notoriously short on shopping outlets, it mostly just piles up in an Administrarium account in their name until they die/go MIA/ miss one too many role calls/get confused with another trooper with a similar name who did one of the above. Then the account is closed and the funds flushed back into the crusade's general fund.

The Imperium can pay the same Throne to a dozen soldiers before it actually loses any money, yet they STILL hemorrhage cash.

They do it for free. And you don't even need to ask them.

Yes. I remember that a regiment of Guardsmen ended up taking over a century in realspace to arrive at their destination and were owed that much back pay. They bought a planet.

>The Imperium can pay the same Throne to a dozen soldiers before it actually loses any money, yet they STILL hemorrhage cash.

Even if millions of soldiers die before the Imperium actually has to pay them anything there's still trillions of Guardsman who do live to see payday. The IG is a huge expense and the logistics of it must be absolutely mind-bendingly monstrous, it's a miracle more Munitorium clerks don't fall to Chaos or just plain go crazy.

I mean regardless of whether he is a coward or not it can't be denied that he is absolutely fantastic at his job. He took two regiments fresh from a warzone and at each others throats and turned them into a unified competent fighting force in like 2 months. He's also very good in his role as a political officer what with his ability to charm and manipulate the pants off of anyone up to and including an Inquisitor and a deamon. Even if he really is a coward Cain is definitely one of the best Commissars there is.

Three hots and a cot.

Yes, they all do.
>Life is the Emperor's currency, spend it well.

What are the odds that a guardsman will live to retirement, anyway?

You'd probably have to go above and beyond your service and survive a whole campaign to even have the opertunity to retire from he guard, which is not many. Even then you could be called back any time for any reason. I imagine that of the guardsmen who leave their planet, less than 1% percent would ever survive long enough to come back.

So if you are an absolutely astoundingly lucky and competent soldier who somehow avoided being maimed and/or killed in your decades of service on the other side of the Galaxy, you might be able to pull enough administratum strings to be granted temporary leave to come home, or if you're many light years away, to colonize the nearly conquered planet. Even then, you'd likely still be called back to train new recruits every once in awhile.

They are all to insane/mechanical to go crazy/chaos.

The Emperor's love is payment enough

1 in 1000. 100 if he's lucky to be deployed on a "small" skirmish.

If the planet in question offers subpar soldiers, they have a problem.
That's one of the few things the Imperium cares about from its planets.

>1000
Add some more digits

*Makes that face when you want to say yes but you're not really sure how to answer the question best*

I mean, how many planets out there do you think are called "New Cadia"

>guardsmen
>getting old

Not paying ones own armys in the real world has never gone particularly well for the non-payer.

Guardsmen are paid, they don't forfeit pay because they die.

Since we are making this up I'd have their pay structure like that of the British Army in the 19th century. Where soldiers are paid a pittance and looting is the only way for a real pay day. As it was for much of history.

There should be a pension for the disabled and the widow and orphan of a fallen guardsmen.

Maybe they have families to support back home.

so how are PDF armed? Do regular planets like agri and feudal have access to the same armament as Guardsmen or are they of lower quality?

Theoretically perhaps but there's no need to spend that much effort on cannon fodder and meat walls, especially considering how psykers, let alone astropaths, aren't just falling from the sky.

PDF has whatever the planet can get them, which invariably isn't much considering that Guard armies are basically big lumps of equipment from a thousand different directions clumped into a single mass, so that any individual rebellious unit will never be as well equipped as a guard task force.

>invariably
It WILDLY depends on the world and governor, user, and how much money and resources they're willing/able to dump into the PDF. Some worlds have PDF that is outright superior to the average Guard regiment in training, equipment, and morale. Most of those worlds also treat the PDF as the gateway to the Guard and send their very best to the wider Imperium as hyper-elite units. A Feudal World might equip its PDF with chainmail, breastplates, axes, and crossbows, which won't help much when a WAAAAGH! hits. It's all about the world in question.

Yeah they mention it in the books

> glorified pieces of meat wearing painted robes clumped together and armed with a piece of steel that emits a small light
> getting paid

>Since we are making this up I'd have their pay structure like that of the British Army in the 19th century. Where soldiers are paid a pittance and looting is the only way for a real pay day. As it was for much of history.

Next OW or RT game I run, I'm going to make the buying and selling of loot a thing.

>There should be a pension for the disabled and the widow and orphan of a fallen guardsmen.

There's the Schola Progenium but that's only for the children of heroes.

Do Space Marines get paid?

do they even know or care if they do.

Wasn't the Jopall regiment noted for being mercenaries back in the day

Who knows? Has anyone ever had the balls to try and charge them for something?

Im pretty sure guardsmen get paid though, given that some regiments end up on R&R (garrison duty) for years (or, knowing the administratum, centuries, with new generations recruited into the regiment over and over again until its nothing more than a glorified PDF force with a nice flag, until they get shipped off to another war at an hours notice. 90% of the regiment can't make the rendezvous, and are declared AWOL, men a hundred years dead are declared heretics as a result etc. etc.).

It would hardly be seen as a sought after cushy assignment if they were kept in barracks and couldnt spend their money on prostitutes and booze.