Genetic Engineering - Vat Grown - Tau AI - Men of Iron?

[Nemesis]

Trying to Find lore about Genetic Engineering in warhammer but all i find is Space marine? Are gland warrior genetic engineering ?

Is there any Lore on Vat Grown humans other then the Primarchs?

Men of Iron what do you think they look like what size are they, is a converted Dreadknight to big for 54mm?

Could a radical Inquisitor get his hands on Tau AI tech? and or use reprogrammed Tau droids?

[Koval]

Trying to Find lore about Genetic Engineering in warhammer but all i find is Space marine? Are gland warrior genetic engineering ?

To an extent, yes. Some Assassins are also suitably "modified" so you could count those, loosely speaking.

Is there any Lore on Vat Grown humans other then the Primarchs?

Some Storm Troopers, Skitarii and servitors are vat-grown. In fact, a lot of servitors are vat-grown. Debatable whether those guys really count as "human", though.

Men of Iron what do you think they look like what size are they, is a converted Dreadknight to big for 54mm?

We know too little about them to really judge. By and large, they're the stuff of legend.

Could a radical Inquisitor get his hands on Tau AI tech? and or use reprogrammed Tau droids?

Sure, if he's crazy/heretical enough, but he'd need to find an equally crazy heretek Magos (likely a very loopy Xenarite) to suitably "modify" the AI tech or drones (not droids, this isn't Star Wars). He's also likely to piss off both the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Tau by doing that (not that the relationship between the Imperium and the Tau Empire is especially cordial), to say nothing for how the rest of the Inquisition would react.
Keep in mind that this Inquisitor would need to be extremely resourceful in order to pull it off, and that he could arguably mind-cleanse and indoctrinate human beings with less risk and fewer available resources.

[Dolnikan]

Genetic engineering will have happened all over the place, most changes will however be very small. It seems likely that servitor hosts have been engineered to be more efficiently created and on lots of planets little things will have been added in in the dark age of technology, especially resistances to diseases and of course whatever it takes to make ogryn workers. In the present day genetic engineering will hardly ever be done on people because of the holyness of the species. There will however be plenty of magi whose work will border on, or be outright, heretical.

I have no idea what the men of iron would have looked like but I assume that instead of one general appearance they would have been a wide variety of robots.

Tau drone technology could fall into the hands of radicals but as Koval says, it would be much harder to do than to simply create a few more servitors, even when he or she wants something floating, there is anti-grav technology for that.

[Nemesis]

This inquisitor thought pattern is that he can use the AI of the drones in the Men of Iron seeing as the Men of Iron are not friendly if awoken thus gaining sum sort of control.

The main inquisitor has multiple project going Tau AI, Men of Iron search, genetic engineering to produce warriors for his group.

[Dolnikan]

That is a lot of different fields of research at once, one of them would be enough for several lifetimes of work when the inquisitor focusses on it specifically. The fields are not very closely linked making research even harder for a single person. The AI of the drones would be very hard to transport to the Men of Iron as they have been programmed for entirely different tasks and bodies, as well as the issue of them being engineered by two different species which would result in very serious problems with compatibility.

[Nemesis]

What are group sizes of inquisitors conclaves and stuff.

Maybe it could be a group.

But maybe the research into Tau AI could give insight into how the dark ages got it done.

[Dolnikan]

Group sizes can vary but it would be hard to find a group of inquisitors with the same interests in such esoteric subjects larger than half a dozen at the very most in an area with lots of inquisitors. The Tau are a relatively minor species, most inquisitors won't even have heard of them yet. And even if there are several inquisitors interested in the same thing, they will still have disagreements about the methods, especially when it involves xeno-tech and the Iron Men.

This kind of research would take people who take a very abnormal stance on technology, after all, it is not seen the way we do, in the Imperium technology is more like some sort of magic, and especially AI's are treated as an arcane subject, not as something that can just be transplanted. Technology works based on the correct rituals, prayers and ointments, not on any rational basis.

I you really want something robotic i your warband there are still the Imperial Robots, they are rare but an inquisitor could get one. It is also possible that an inquisitor found a damaged iron man and decided to try to repair it. It will not be nearly as capable as it once was but still a useful tool.

[Nemesis]

I was trying to re programme the men of iron because they are self aware AI unlike Tau AI. Could the psychic power machine empathy work on men of iron.

[Dolnikan]

I think that it could work, but it would not be the way I would try to control something like that, it would be very hard and the moment the psyker has a lapse of concentration...

It is not necessary to take Tau artificial intelligence, the Imperium still has its own artificial intelligence, the inquisitor could even try to get an organic brain in there to prevent too much tech-heresy from taking place. It is also possible that his tech priest is from the Legio Cybernetica and using his own programming on the thing.

[Nemesis]

I think I drop the Tau thing and go with organic brain.

With genetic engineering could it give the human stock nerves of steel an force of will in the sense that there brain configuration is just different or should I do mechanical brain augments eg removal of the fear part of there brain.

[Dolnikan]

I would try to stay away from the complete fearlesness you imply, the best way to achieve that would be by rendering them too stupid to be useful. Engineering someone to be fearless would be immensely hard, surgery would be an easier way. But for gameplay purposes I would not do it. Another complication with making people fearless is that they become very hard to control, you can't force them to do anything anymore while keeping them effective.

[Nemesis]

Instead of fearless could true grit be engineered

Is this just for fluff what about a lesser form of regeneration while it has no affect in the battle but wounds slowly heal but quicker then others but leaves no scaring. So meaning the character would need  postectics till the leg or arm grow back. 

[Dolnikan]

A slow kind of regeneration could be engineered in, this would have little to no influence on games but on the background it would have effects. While regenerating a lost limb a character would be outof the running, prosthetics are hard to fit on growing tissue and could disrupt the process. Something which allows or tissue growth like that would need specific triggers to reduce the risk of tumor formation. After all, that is one of the reasons why we don't regenerate, a large part of us is based on preventing unwanted cell growth, this would be harder when there is regeneration.

True grit could be engineered in, essentially all it takes is working on pain, but someone who feels less pain would suffer some serious consequences while growing up. One of the main problems with genetically engineered servants is that it will take a lot of time before they become useful, a human being takes quite a long time to grow up, mostly because of the complex brain structure and all the things they have to learn. Not that this would stop people doing this of course, but should be kept in mind.

[Nemesis]

Dolnikan going strong with the posts thanks for the input.

Yeah was thinking of vat grown but to what age does the vat grown get too. How would it be raised would females go to the chruch and male somewhere else but if it ment to be secret how would the they be raise by henchmen the trained incombat and everything that the inquisitor needs them to be?

Also regenerate could be stimulated with certain electrical pulse frequency ?

[Dolnikan]

I think that they can be grown to any age, that won't be the problem. The trouble would be in raising them. Servitors are grown to adulthood but the subsequent surgeries prevent such problems, but a child in an adult body could be very hard to contain. Raising them in secret should be doable, a few dedicated henchmen would be enough. The inquisitor could even raise them as normal children, as long as they look normal.

I think that a whole batch would be grown at once, probably being clones of eachother because engineering several different people would only further complicate things. All that needs to be done to create several clones would be to cut up the initial clumps of cells or taking their nuclei out and micro-injecting them into new egg cells where the nucleus has been removed. In the 41st milenium this will not be an exact science and quite a lot would go wrong, not nearly all the fertilized eggs would give a comple, useful servant, many would develop lots of failures, with the failure rate increasing the more changes are made.