40k Child Soldiers

Arent some Death Korps youth?

Breaking the kids up amongst adult regiments who can help keep them on task and are less likely to initiate a rout is clearly superior if, for whatever reason, you absolutely must deploy perfectly good human resources to the front while they're still at a tiny fraction of their peak effectiveness. Forming a child regiment wouldn't just be despicable, it would be completely fucking stupid.

So yeah, the Imperium probably does it all the time.

This has some good sections with child soldiers. Really gets into the mindset of how you turn a kid into a killing zombie.

Child soldiers are only for two situations:
- You can't get enough adult soldiers.
- You're not going to be taking the children away from the warzone. So you arm them instead.

The Imperium has no shortage of adults.

>but also shit like Space Marine initiates and the Schola Progenium

There is a difference between:
- Sending children into combat
- Training children to fight, but not sending them into combat until they are adults.

I thought that both those organisations took the second option.

Depends on where. Lots of places in the imperium aren't run as efficiently as possible and its easy enough to come up with scifi dystopia social reasons for child soldiers when the universe is being consumed by the hell dimension. Lots of places wouldn't though, trying to be shining light in the dark and such.

Clones, technically.

As a proud Dark Eldar. I DENOUNCE THIS SMEAR.

Commoragh is a wonderful place for all ages! Book your holiday today, free of charge.

Both of them are arguably worse than actually fighting, and Space Marine initiated at least are expected to do a bunch of fighting. An extreme example would be the Space Sharks forcing all the boys on a planet to kill each other then taking the survivors.

Well, not children in a physical sense. But in mental? 100%.
>Well, for starters, Space Marines are chosen as children, tortured by SCIENCE!, and then drafted into an eternity of being monastic murder machines whose sole purpose is to hold up the crumbling foundations of an omnicidal dystopia in the name of a rotting carcass that eats psykers like chiclets. They're emotionally stunted orphans who were brainwashed and weaponized before being unleashed on a galaxy where EVERYTHING is trying to kill them. They never even had a chance to be people before someone turned them into a gun instead.
Stormcast, on the other hand, are dead heroes, chosen for their valour and faith, resurrected and sent to free the Mortal Realms from the abominations currently running the show, on behalf of a benevolent god-king. They're traumatized heroes who had lives, personalities and histories prior to being crammed into primary colored hulkbuster armor and filled full of lightning so that they could go save their descendants from the eldritch horrors of a nightmare dimension. They endure death after death, losing a bit more of their soul each time, in order to prevent anyone else from suffering the fate which befell them.
One group are so far removed from humanity as to be utterly alien. The other group are so human it causes them pain. One group feels little in the way of emotion, the other group feels emotion as strongly as they did before death. One group hates and fears the alien. The other group allies regularly with space-lizards, skeletors and green monster-men. One group is the personification of the grim future in which they live. The other is a thing born of hope.

>but not sending them into combat until they are adults
Space Marine scouts are teenagers, and even before combat missions they do high fatality live fire exercises, death trap dungeons, gladiatorial contests, etc.

Whiteshields start at about 13-14.

When the Imperium comes to collect a planets soldiers/warriors to turn them into guardsmen, it usually grabs the best of the planets PDF. Sure, some PDFs will have child soldiers, but those aren't going to be the best soldiers in that PDF.

So when the Imperium comes "recruiting" guardsmen, they won't be taking the child soldiers.

Children and women are traditionally asigned to non-combat roles: Powder Monekys, Drum Boys...etc.

Firewarriors are likely younger than whiteshield.

Lots of reasons they wouldn't get the best every time. War world sends children, corrupt governor sends children to secretly build his own secessionist forces, acceptable mutations in the nobility of planet X mean their officers are all physically much younger, a crusade draws children recruits from shrine worlds they pass through to resupply, warp travel time distortion reverse the age of an entire flotilla in transit, etc. The imperium isn't a unified cohesive procedural entity. I'm not trying to say child soldiers always make sense or some shit, but the imperium doesn't always do the most effective thing. Often it does ineffective things with such number and zeal that it works anyway.

Well they literally do with those schools for orphans, where they make under 18 year old kids kill each other for punishment and to see if they'd be worthy to be commissars.

No one asked for your Age of Shitmar wank.

Like picture related.

Did you guys never wonde why there are so many mixed regiments? Well the reason why is the kind of wars the Imperium fights. You can send 20 million guardsmen to a warzone after 20 years they are all dead. And very often there are no reinforcements.
But if you send 10 million guardswomen and 10 million guardsmen after 20 years there you can have more soldiers than with whom you started the war.
So LOTS of child soldiers who have known nothing but war. There a reasons why warworlds are a planetary classification.

It's one of Black Library's thing, not mine.

Not always. Sometimes they grab the best PDF, sometimes they grab specific PDF (Regardless of whether its the best), sometimes they grab random PDF, sometimes they grab a volunteer force that was raised specifically for the Guard, sometimes they empty the prisons, sometimes they send the private army of some noble or other, sometimes they make the entire population draw lots and take all the short straws. The Imperium is not unified, and it's up to the planetary governor to get a regiment up when the Guard comes knocking. It's in his best interest to make sure the unit is actually capable of being Guard, but depending on local politics, sending your best is not always a safer bet than sending whatever is available and keeping the best for putting down rebellions.

Child soldiers do also have one other advantage.
Professional soldiers, especially ones from developed countries) are often unwilling to fight them and have on many occasions retreated or surrendered rather than kill kids.

If you don't mind gambling with the lives of your child soldiers (and what decent warlord would) you can potentially take a highly trained force out of action without firing a shot.

You realize that this is basically what Space Marines are, right?

They're inducted at a young age into a military organization fanatically devoted to a far off figurehead. They never really grow beyond that limited worldview.

If anime has taught me something is "do not send a veteran trained soldier to do the job of a magic little girl with a mech"

Given that it's been a practice in most of the empires of history and in most eras, and only considered immoral in this civilization in this era, I'd say yeah the Imperium uses child soldiers. Or at least "child" (13-17 yr old) soldiers, which most cultures consider adult anyway.

Yeah they suck in terms of combat effectiveness, but that's been the rule and we've been the exception.

>Lots of reasons they wouldn't get the best every time.
True. But when a world sends anything other than their best, they at least pretend that they are sending their best.

If they send children, someone is going to start asking questions. They won't like the answers they find, even if they do stumble across the truth.

>A lengthy war against Chaos has just concluded on a planet
>A new schoolyear begins
>The teacher asks "So kids, what did you do during the war against chaos"
>"I baked pies for the troops with my mom" says Katy
>"Very good. And you Jane?"
>"I sowed uniforms for the soldiers"
>"That's wonderful. What about you Max?"
>"I was a machinegunners assistant"
>"Wow, Max, you are a real hero! What did the soldiers say to you?"
>"Good job, Maxmillian the Blooddrinker, keep going"

I thought translating IRL jokes to 40k would give more entertaining results. Children are only worth using as service hands to free up adults for the front.

Yes. Per cannon there is good odds that most death korps ship off of Krieg as teenagers. 14 to 16 ish maybe.

We dot know what the votae womb does, and we know they have a breedING program, so at the very least they aren't all clones, and even the ones who come out of the womb may not be clones. Clones is speculation not confirmed cannon.

-absolute krieg autist.

>Children are only worth using as service hands to free up adults for the front.
Well, I expect the civilians to aid in the war effort. Why not kids in light jobs that they can end up enjoying?

Be afraid you Knife-eared Fucks, your day of Reckoning will soon be upon you.

This is untapped potential. I swa one idea on 40k lore that a grimdark idea is to stick children with invasive surgery to make them pilot imperial dreadnaughts(glorified sentinels) Destroy all sense of hope and personal value of the batch of pilots and train them to be beasts of war and unleash them on the enemy like the human debris from Gundam IBO.

What can possibly go wrong?

Sure, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It seems like you're saying 'the imperium has perfect systems of checks and balances' which has never been the case. It has a galaxy sprawling bureaucratic religious nightmare barely holding together over 10 000 years. They have inquisitors, crusades, space marines, witch hunts, etc. because they're human and fallible. Those mechanisms are composed of humans too. Primarchs, marines, high lords, inquisitors, everyone can be corrupted and fail. That's the point. Its a setting designed to make scenarios of whatever you want, over 10 000 years of dark future in over a dozen games. There have been child soldiers. Deal with it.

For whatever reasons they often don't evacuate many of the cities and planets that are going to become battlefields, why wouldn't you throw anyone capable of pulling a trigger a lasgun in those situations, well provided you had some lasguns space.

spare*

>What can possibly go wrong?
Finally snapping.

Hoping you installed a switch to switch it off.

>Destroy all personal value

They will all gloriously charge out for the Emperor and be cut down by anti tank fire.

Survival insincts are a blessing, not a curse.

Nice quads btw

That's basically a penitent engine, but with children instead of sinners. What's the point of using children when there's never a shortage of sinners?

Human debris never snapped in the series they are in against their masters. One notorious example was when a pilot tried to save his brother from slavery only to see him snap and tried to get them both killed. Another incident is when a human debris pilot despite the cockpit being broken made one last mad charge only to die

That is the perfect candidate for expendability in armored coffins

Not to the Commissars it isnt. Guardsmen expect their officers to send them to meatgrinders on pain of death.

Not really, the regiments are raised as a form of tribute, a planet may even raise a children's regiment, but I doubt very much that the Administratum will accept this, not because children, but because it would be a practically useless regiment, would be the equivalent of Give rotten food as a tribute, it works until the administratum notices it

I don't play 40k so I had to read this a couple of times before I got the joke.

Then I laffed.

In dire need, sure.
But usually a kid that can operate a gun and mostly follow simple orders doesn't need much more time and resources invested into it to turn it into a proper Guardsman.

I'd think it totally in keeping with the theme of the universe.

Especially if a world had a massive famine killing off most of the adult population, so a lot of children got recruited in the last tithe. Or on a really fertile world where they have too many kids to feed so they ship a load out.

Might make a strange Only War game though.

You just made stormcasts seem like a good thing, i'm pretty sure that goes against the Geneva convention.

What kind of man doesn't use child soldiers?

Mongolian throat singing in the background.

>despicable
*tips*
When you are fighting a war where the alternative is the extinction of your species everyone needs to do their part.

How did we wind up with a whole thread of nonsense replies when this was as much of a FPBP as there ever was.

The imperium uses child soldiers. The imperium does stuff so terrible that it makes the use of child soldiers morally insignificant.

/thread.

Source book and page number pleas.

See

Which can be confirmed in the 3.5 ed imperial guard codex.

Why are all of the child soldiers black?

Shouldn't some of them be white, or Asian?

Now I want to see a short story about some Administratum official trying desperately to convince his boss that this "regiment" of 10 year olds really is some sort of elite super-soldier force that the planet has to tithe after some sort of screwup and is called on the carpet for it.

because Africa is the one place with the constant warfare that would allow for child soldiers

>"They're, uh... innocent and so completely untainted by the touch of Chaos?"
>"... Perfect. We'll send them to invade that Daemonworld we've been besieging."

Yeah, all the time.

Ehh some places in the pacific and south china seas are just as bad, but yeah, generally speaking most battles with child soldiers are nowadays fought in Africa

There is nothing that is too horrible for the Imperium. They are the bad guys.

Now this has got me thinking of something. What would life be like for children on a chaos world? Obviously not one conquered by a warband who just kills everything and feeds it to Daemons, but more like a world taken over by the Thousand Sons, or Emperor's Children, or hell, even the World Eaters? What are the differences between how the traitor legions deal with kids?

Angron is friend to ALL CHILDREN

Child soldiers are too dark a topic for GW to address basically. But in a more realistic setting the Imperium would very much be needing and using them

This is literally called the Nablus method because this is how Palestinians use child soldiers

>Child soldiers are too dark a topic for GW to address basically

They already addressed this when they described whiteshields and while they do not explicitly state it they do imply that thousands of children every time a marine chapter does recruiting.

You statement is 50% wrong. And thats the sad truth of the 40k universe.

Wrong. Their Cadian and called White Shields.

There are HH characters that are marine scouts aged between 13 to 14.

Also there are the Necron Warriors. plenty of them must have been child Necrontyr forcefully converted to undead killing machines. Perhaps even infants too.

Sorry but the Imperium is the bloodiest and cruellest regime in human history. So there is nothing worst than the Imperium.

When your opponents are literal daemons who devour and torture you're the good guys. It doesn't matter how oppressive and totalitarian your government is.

>devour and torture *souls

Not while some nobility and compassion remains in the galaxy, gue'la.

whiteshields are teen and marine recruit are like medieval squire.

SM recruit children, they begin their implants after passing any sort of deadly trial and ideally the implants should begin at the age of 10 which means that by the first year theres already a bunch of dead children.

Besides, whiteshields are just youths which could mean anything from 8 to 18 years.

Bloodiest and cruellest regime in human history, sure.

But many of their foes ain't human.

The Tau are the heroes of this story. Humans are the faceless horde of evil.

I cant hear you over the sound of all the forced sterilization and ethereal backstabbing.

I'd imagine that using child soldiers is just a fantastic way to get Khorne Cults, I mean if the child only knows blood, he'd be perfect for the Blood God.

They're not supposed to be good, they're supposed to be cannon fodder who'll maybe take a few dudes down, make the other guys hesitate to kill them because kids, and catch a few bullets destined for adults.

>they're just 16~18

So they are basically adults.
Thats a normal recruitment age.

>tau
all tau soldiers start off as child soldiers, though

Yfw developed nations have elite units comprised entirely of hardcore racists who don't see a problem pulling the trigger on child soldiers because of their skin colour.

To be fair, in 40K, child soldiers would be going up against Chaos, Orks and other stuff.

All enemy factions except maybe the Tau would consider murdering children to be a delight. I mean, Chaos Space Marines would be like:

> "Child soldiers? For me? Man, it's like a party now! Normally I have to LOOK for children to murder, but you're just giving them away!"

considering the imperium has no difficulty giving the ole exterminatus treatment to entire worlds that have billions of people all the time, its not a stretch to say the would employ children into the ig

>they do imply that thousands of children every time a marine chapter does recruiting.

They don't just imply it, in one of the Gav Thorpe Dark Angels book a SM straight snaps a kids neck because the kid won't make it as a marine and tosses him in a room full of kid-sized corpses.

Can confirm, nicely written tough

Am I out of the loop? I vaguely recall something about kids who don't make it as marines becoming chapter serfs.

It seems kinda wasteful to do it the other way unless you expect marines to sweep their own halls and run their own cafeteria.

For the kid in the book it had to do with his attitude, he wouldn't have made a decent member of the Chapter or something, and Grimdark had to do it's thing.

As for the rest? the decade of surgery has a pretty high attrition rate.

Later in that same Dark Angels trilogy though, they reference Serf's numerous times and the Marines even meet a few, so it's not standard or anything.

>Not to the Commissars it isnt. Guardsmen expect their officers to send them to meatgrinders on pain of death.
Survival instinct is at work here as well. Certain death from the Commissariat, or nearly certain death from Orks. Your choice.

>translating IRL jokes
What's the pre-translation joke?

Probably a ww2 joke where the kid reveals that the soldiers were German.

It's what I figured, like the kid was Ukrainian or Polish fighting the Soviets. That or a Hall of Cost joke along the lines of "Grandpa fell out of a guard tower"

well you have the whiteshields its also worth mentioning that space marines are trained from childhood.

I want to say no. From the codex there are dire consequences for not providing a complete company of fighting fit troops. Now I suppose children could qualify as fighting fit, but I'd expect something like 16 to be the minimum age pure for the reason that anything younger would likely be considered too feeble for the requirements.

But there's not a whole lot of internal consistency when it comes to fluff

Human Debris do have survival instincts under orders it isnjust unlike a hardened Guardsman piloting a Russ who knows when to fall back these glorified pentinent engine pilots will fight to the death

you mean like this?