Squat (Warhammer 40,000)
The Squats are a species that feature in Warhammer 40,000.
Contents |
History
Squat
The Squat Home Worlds were colonized during the Age of Founding (known to the Imperium as the Dark Age of Technology[clarification needed]). The planets were rich in minerals and ores human civilization desperately needed, and so millions of ships full of miners and explorers were sent out. The worlds were high gravity with brutal environments. The settlers dug deep into the bedrock of the planets to survive, and so the first strongholds[1] were born.
The Age of Trade, which lasted for almost three millennia, saw a decrease in the warp storms isolating the Home Worlds. The Squats traded with the Orks and Eldar during this period. The Age of Trade was ended in an enormous attack on the Home Worlds by the Ork Warlord Grunhag the Flayer. The Squats pleaded for assistance from their Eldar trading partners, but were rebuffed. This led to the Squats' enmity against Orks and Eldar that has lasted through the Age of Wars into the current Age of Rediscovery (or Age of the Imperium). The Forces of the Great Crusade launched wars against the Squats in the belief that they were aliens, but eventually the Squats were accepted, along with other abhumans, as being human in nature. The millions of Squat Strongholds spread across their homeworlds joined the Imperium, but continued to retain their autonomy as an independent but allied empire to the Imperium.
The Home Worlds maintained trade and mutual assistance with the Imperium, trading military hardware, allowing Commissar military advisors to join their armies, and sending recruits to the Adeptus Mechanicus. In the forty-first millennium, Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth (Citadel Journal 33; "Hundreds of years ago") threatened to sweep through the Home Worlds, capable of destroying the Squats as a power in the galaxy. The council of Ancients decided to unite with humanity to provide a unified front against the Tyranids, and the hundreds of thousands of Squat Homeworlds were integrated by the Imperium (almost tripling its official size) as DaoT protectorates over several centuries before facing off the Tyranids during the attack by Behemoth.
Although the vast majority of the Squat race joined the Imperium, a few Squats remained separated from the council and carried on independently. Some became pirates or mercenaries, others joined the Imperium.
The Squats carried grudges for millennia, and none so strongly as against the race of Orks, who betrayed the Squats on more than one occasion and inflicted many losses upon them in war.
Overview
Squats evolved from the human miners and explorers sent to reap the mineral wealth at the center of the galaxy. The high gravity environment, combined with the punishing mining conditions eventually changed their morphology. The subsequent generations became gradually shorter and stockier. The Squat Home Worlds were isolated from the rest of humanity during the Age of Isolation.[clarification needed] When they were reunited with the rest of the Imperium, wars were launched against them in the belief that they were aliens. Eventually, the Squats were accepted, along with other abhumans, as being human in nature. They are now considered a separate race, though they are fundamentally human.
The Squats do not worship the Emperor as a god, but instead (akin to most Space Marines) see him as an extremely talented and powerful mortal. The Squats have their own religion in place of the Imperium-prescribed religion: they worship their own ancestors. They believe their ancestors to be very powerful overseers of their actions, with all Squats having a chance to join them in eternal happiness and share their power to watch over still living Squats. Squats believe that the only way of being refused the chance to join the ancestors is to dishonour themselves by committing a horrible moral crime, such as murder. The souls that are turned away from the ancestors' realm are doomed to wander as ghosts, haunting the living, and urging them not to repeat their mistakes. The Imperium of Man has adopted this as a variant of the standard creed by teaching that the Squats' ancestors join with the Emperor in the celestial realm.
Squat technology is based upon the heavy mining equipment they brought with them to the Home Worlds. During their isolation from the rest of humanity, they adapted it for other uses, notably exo-armour which was engineered from heavy mining suits. Squats continued to innovate and invent while humanity sank into a Dark Age.
As a result, the Squats have developed technologies such as neo-plasma and warp cores far in advance of anything the Imperium owns. Some Squat technologies were absorbed into the Imperium, especially tunneling vehicles and weaponry such as the Termite.
Members
- Grendl Grendlsen :
Notes
- Squats were created by Games Workshop and featured in the Warhammer 40,000 setting.
- The race were seemingly removed from the setting in the 1990s with the final traces of them being removed from the game after the release of the third edition of Warhammer 40,000 leading to them eventually being discontinued though they were at times mentioned in novels or in characters from Forge World.
Appearances
- Warhammer 40,000:
External Links
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