Editing Squat (section)

===When suddenly...===
They were eaten by [[Tyranid]]s. It is popularly believed that [[Games Workshop]] sends out teams to assassinate, kidnap, or otherwise inconvenience anyone who dares mention them. One possibility is that [[Dwarf Fortress|the Squat nobles demanded that some impossible-to-acquire item be put in each of their rooms, and thus locked up the entire working class of Squats, and the whole race starved.]] Another theory is that [[Creed]] is [[Just as planned|using his tactical genius to hide them until the final showdown with Chaos.]] It's kinda likely that, what with their "We haz teknologeez!", being Dwarves, drinking, not being assholes, and generally not being depressing, [[Games Workshop]] decided they weren't [[grimdark]] enuff, and subsequently fed them to the Tyranids (who exist to eat Games Workshop's mistakes, obviously), and at the same time branding the mention of <censored for heresy> as [[heresy]]. Heresy - the perfect excuse to [[retcon]]!

Squats are now /tg/'s version of the Candleja [[meme]] I'll end that right there. Anyway since mentioning them gets [[Inquisition|GW to send death squads after you]] the two memes cancel one another out.

==== A rare case of GW being completely honest ====
[http://web.archive.org/web/20060129002420/http://forums.specialist-games.com/epic/forum_b/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=2532&whichpage=3 This] is from 2004, back when honesty was A Thing, it seems:

''I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist''

''Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.''

''First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantities that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.''

''No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realized what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regretted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.''

''Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.''

''Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendency to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.''

''In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their [[Squat Homeworlds|Homeworlds]] had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based on the Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more likely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain prejudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...''

''I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with existing army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.''

''Best regards,''

''Jervis Johnson''<br>''Head Fanatic ''

==== Some Context ====
[[File:Warhammer 40k squats DRW40k 04 by DaRealWurld40k.jpg|thumb|right|SILENCE, HERETIC! There is no tiny, little bearded man there! Nope! No Squats or tiny little bearded man here at all!]]

Note that all of the Squat material from the Rogue Trader era was written by [[Bryan Ansell|Bryan]], [[Nigel Stillman|Nigel]], and [[Graeme Davis]]. [[Jervis Johnson|Jervis]], [[Rick Priestley|Rick]], [[Andy Chambers|Andy]], et. al. never wrote anything new for the Squats in Warhammer 40,000. So their lack of enthusiasms wasn't because the fluff was objectively ''bad'' - it just wasn't ''theirs''.

The Squats Codex was explicitly mentioned in Codex Imperial Guard (1995), and implicitly mentioned from the first codex ever (Codex Space Wolves, 1993) and every Imperial codex up to and including Codex Angels of Death (1996), plus Codex Eldar (1994). The only Imperial codexes which did not mention Codex Squats were Codex Sisters of Battle and Codex Assassins - both from 1997, the last year of 2nd Edition and the point at which 3rd Edition would already have been well into development. So the decision to eliminate the Squats didn't actually happen until they had already decided to move to a whole new edition.

As this was the transition to the infamous Black Period of total and constant [[Grimdark]], perhaps it's for the best that the writers of the day didn't like them (or simply had no idea where to go so decided to nip it in the bud while fluff what [[TVTropes]] would term Early Installment Weirdness was being sorted out), so they didn't feel obligated to [[C.S. Goto|fuck them over in suspiciously extreme detail or fluffrape them into total irrelevance]].

Also, Jervis's comment on the Specialist Games forum is actually the only place where it says that the Squats were eaten by Tyranids - in all official sources, they simply stopped mentioning them. But in fact, Jervis and others did continue to mention them after they were removed, in various semi-official places, such as the Citadel Journal (where he simply said that the [[Squat Homeworlds]] were "taken over" by the Imperium).

Following Jervis's statement on the Specialist Games forum, Games Workshop began auto-banning anyone who even mentioned Squats on their forums. But not long after that they closed all of their forums anyway.

====Then what ever happened to the Demiurg?====
Essentially? Nothing. They were given all of two mentions in recent memory: first as a footnote on a list of [[Tau]] auxiliaries, then as a small enclave of asteroid miners that [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka]] killed by accident while fighting some Bad Moonz. Their latest appearance is in the Battlefleet Gothic: Armada video games, where two Demiurg vessels appear as auxiliaries to the Tau fleet. While how canon the games are is of some dispute: Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II, where they also appear, takes place during the "Gathering Storm". So presumably them (or at least some factions/mercenaries) working with the Tau is their 'official' canon as of right now.

In fact, the Demiurg are mentioned as getting along with the Squats, trading Energy Drills to them. This is most likely due to the Squats being not-quite part of the Imperium and sharing similar stature and interest in mining.

Since the reintroduction of Squats as the Leagues of Votann, the Demiurg have been retconned into being one and the same with the Squats. It turns out that it was a Votann League known as the Seran-Tok Mercantile Leagues that were the ones who sold ion tech to the Tau (which appears to be an updated name from obscure fluff in official magazines which said the "SrryTok" Demiurg brotherhood traded heavily with the Tau), and some of the previewed Votann art and models have them with skin exactly like the old Demiurg concept art.

====What Happened According to /tg/====
Space [[Boatmurdered]]. Attempts to thwart the Tyranids with "fuck the world" levers failed. Casualties.... Too many.

[[Squat Crusade: The Musical|Or are trying to rebuild]].