Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= Squats (Hubworld League) =

They were a survivor enclave of humanity in the mineral rich and often high gravity worlds near the galactic hub.

They were not assimilated into the Imperium like the regressed Mad Max/Fallout/Metro/Medieval worlds but given the same offer as the Interex, Ultramar and Colchis which basically meant free trade and mutual protection and no Chaos and beyond that we don't give a shit unless you try to leave, this is a permanent deal.

Because the Steward was the ruler of Old Earth and therefore the Imperium was the nearest that there was to a continuation to the DAoT Empire, came to them with an olive branch rather than a bayonet and didn't look down on them (metaphorically) they took the offered hand of friendship.

Also they were drowning in orks at the time and the Imperium was like a drink of water to a man dying of thirst.

Turns out they weren't actually deviated enough to be abhumans to the surprise of everybody. Their short, broad and sturdy build is just the sort of thing that happens if you spend your formative years in high gravity. Two Earth-born humans have a child on a Hub World and it grows up short. All the old Hub-worlder navy families tended to be of normal height.

They had a deal with the some of the nearby Eldar worlds in happier times. They would make for them trinkets of great intricacy and beauty that the Eldar greatly prized, it being one of the few things that they were willing to admit someone could do better than they.

In exchange should they need help keeping marauders from their door they had only to ask.

Age of Strife rolls in and the orks come. Hubworlders hold out for a long time, their pride making them refuse to ask for aid. Eventually they do have to send a signal for help.

Eldar are too busy drowning in cocaine and flesh crafting new orifices and appendages to fuck with. They don't care about prior agreements.

Hubworlders eventually fall back to their strongest fortresses and prepare to hold out for as long as possible. It's an eternal siege with no relief in sight. The might last thousands of years but eventually they would fall and they knew it.

Then one day The Steward of Earth turns up with a fuck hueg fleet and the Imperial Army and tear the orks into chunks so small the worms don't have to chew.

Just as they saw The Steward and his Imperium as the heir and continuation of the old DAoT Empire they see the Craftworlders as the heirs to their old empire with all the sins that they have inherited.

Possibly they would drop the grudge against the craftworlders if the Eldar either apologized or stopped pretending that the craftworlds were the remnants of the only good parts of the old empire.

But both sides are too proud to back down. The Book of Grudges will always hold their names.

Had longevity treatments but they would only implement them if they could be shared by all. The result was everyone got to live to be 220 and maybe a bit more. Contrast to the Imperium where almost everybody has a basic human lifespan but the exceptional can live to be a thousand.

Also the longevity treatments keep you healthy but they don't keep you young. Most of your time you send as a spry and quite well preserved old person, but still old. Consequently birth rate was slower than the population numbers would suggest at first glance.

Result is that their armies are lacking in brute man power but supplemented with hand crafted Legio Cybernetica. They argue that they have not broken the First Commandment because they are not true A.I. becasue they lack sufficient intelligence and are usually somewhere between a well train dog and cuttlefish in terms of brains.

Mechanicus still REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE at them because degrees of blasphemy is still blasphemy. Sadly for the Mars Mechanicus the Hub Worlds are a Survivor Civilization and so joined the Imperium on the exact same style of deal that Mars did so they can go fuck themselves.

The Martian Priesthood got some level of revenge by erroneously classifying them as abhuman. They aren't. They look like that due to the gravity on their home worlds. If they raise their kids on a world with weak pussy gravity they grow up to look like regular humans.

One of the biggest manufacturers of stuff outside the AdMech along with people like the Demiurg, the Kinebrach, and the manufacturing sectors of semi-autonomous member states. More artisinal, prefer quality over quantity.

This is just my two cents, but since it was mentioned that the squats don't make changes to their rejuvenants unless everyone can have them, I'd say this suggests the squats are communitarian. You do your job to help the community and the community does it's job to help you. This is primarily because of the types of worlds they live on, you have to be cooperative and altruistic to survive. Or does this seem too similar to the Tau/Prometheans?

Their leaders tend to be called administrators because they originally started out as mining colonies and although they're all about equality someone has to be in charge. They tend to make sure they have a way to remove anyone in charge that goes mad with power. Also despite this they tend to be very very good at appreciating the value of something, due to being miners, though they aren't merchants in the same way as the Demiurge or Void Born. Squats get insulted if you try and cheat them, but not to "Ev'ryone's getting grudged" levels.

As opposed to the stereotypically dwarfy way of speaking, squats sound more American Wild West (particularly mining prospector) than Scottish, though there are a bit of Scottish aspects to their personality. They're also known for being brash and no-nonsense, why beat around the bush when you can just tell things as they are and get stuff done. In cultural terms, this makes the squats seem like a bunch of cowboys and yokels but then you look at them and realize the stuff they build is on par with the Ad-Mech. The Ad-Mech have a slight edge because they collect DaoT relics as a hobby and so have a lot of lost technology as well as a huge resource base, but in terms of stuff they actually build the two are pretty close.

Building on what we said in previous threads, the squats tend to look down on those who live in "pussy" gravity. Not derogatorily, but more of "Ooh, look at the wee baby men who can't handle the gravity" kind of way. Growing up on high-gravity worlds means squats are about three-hundred pounds of muscle despite being four to five feet tall (numbers subject to change). Squats are no more different from an average human than a Cadian, but the few differences they do have are an increase in muscle building compounds and a heart like a V8 engine to compensate for the constant pull of gravity. You don't throw a squat. A squat throws you.

It was also mentioned that the vast majority of these changes are not genetic. It's just what happens if you spend all your formative years in high gravity. If two squats move offworld to start a family on a world with "pussy" gravity the children turn out more or less normal. The AdMech classifying them as abhuman was an intentional mistake to annoy them because the Mechanicus of Mars can be petty bastards sometimes.

Although the details of fashion are constantly ephemeral (especially in an Imperium that spans over 10,000 years of history), female Hubworlders tend to wear their hair in masculine, short-cut styles. In-universe this keeps long hair out of moving machine parts and hardsuit seals, though it's also a reference to the common idea in fantasy of male and female dwarves looking similar.

The main source of crime in the Hubworld League comes from what has been tongue-in-cheek called the "squat mafia", though in reality they have more common with the yakuza than the mafia (and needs an actual name in the Hubworlder dialect the name Pyrite Order was suggested for the mineral connotations). They think they're upholders of traditional values such as keeping society organized, orderly and happy when they're really a bunch of protection racket runners, drug dealers, smugglers and pimps. That said, they've been doing this so long they've actually started to believe and try to live up to their own hype. So whilst they still do a lot of shady shit they also do a lot of non-shady shit that ingratiate themselves to the population in general.. This tends to cause problems as it means their members tend to be "good citizens" and "such upstanding members of the community" that local law enforcement and the Arbites can't nail them on things, and those that do typically don't squeal.

The squat mafia run a wretched den of scum and villainy. Imperial law varies enough from planet to planet and there are so few global Imperial laws that you can get almost anything you want for the right price. This infuriates the Arbites to no end, as it's technically part of Survivor Civilization territory and they can't go riding in without really clear evidence of them breaking either local (Hubworlder) or general Imperial law. Making matters worse, the crime syndicates that run the place have a habit of collectively turning on people that do things that could bring the wrath of the Imperium down on them like make deals with the Dark or Croneworld Eldar or trade in Chaotic artifacts, keeping their own nose squeaky clean by legal standards and making it impossible for the Arbites to just shut the place down.