In the Lore Explainer we look at the lore behind some of our favorite media, diving deep into its history. In this article we’re looking at the Leagues of Votann, who returned to Warhammer 40k as a full faction in 9th edition after a short debut as the Squats back in the game’s earliest editions.
When Codex: Leagues of Votann was released back in late ninth edition, it was something of an astonishing moment for longtime 40k players. The Squats, an army from the game’s earliest days, had been gone for the better part of 30 years – to the point where their return had become a long-running joke. But sure enough, they were back, and with all-new lore, updated for the changing tone of the 41st millennium.
But wait a minute – “Squats? What are those?” I hear you asking. Well, Dear Reader, strap in, because this particular land train goes back a long way and this is a story worth telling from the beginning.
We’ve previously covered the evolution of the Squats into Kin/The Leagues of Votann here at Goonhammer – check out our article on the evolution of the faction’s models – but haven’t done a full dive into the lore yet. You can find our previous article here.
The Squats
First introduced in 1987 in the Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader rulebook as Abhumans, the Squats were a series of creatures evolved from human stock, mutated over time to take on new traits. They differed from mutants in that they had a different, recognizable physical standard, and they were tolerated and/or exploited by the authorities much like the rest of the population. The Rogue Trader rulebook listed four key classes of abhumans: Beastmen, Haflings, Ogryns, and Squats.
Squats, or “Homo Sapiens Rotundus” as they’re denoted in the rulebook, were the result of generations of life on high-gravity worlds, causing them to be short (1.4 meters tall, on average), but squat, bull-necked, and generally muscular. Along with their height, they’re extremely resilient, able to carry large amounts of weight, and also tended to be practical and skillful with weapons and technological equipment. They had a deep-seated hatred of Orks and Gretchin, though in the original book it’s not clear why.
The Squats saw regular updates to their range and rules in issues of White Dwarf between 1987 and 1989, but they’d get their first real update with the release of the Squats army box and army list in the spring of 1989. Advertised as “Space Dwarfs,” the issue gave a full background on Squats, revealing more of their origins on high-gravity worlds colonized during the Dark Age of Technology and later cut off by warp storms during the Age of Strife. Those worlds were rich in mineral deposits and after being settled were home to massive mining colonies which became independent strongholds when they were cut off from the rest of humanity.
This update changed Squat lore quite a bit, listing them has having had regular trade with Eldar and Orks, and largely attempting to stay out of those conflicts, during the three thousand years or so referred to as “The Age of Trade.” That ended when a massive Ork battle-fleet attacked the Squats, who then received no help from the Eldar with the problem and were on their own. The Orks wiped out a large number of Squat strongholds before being beaten, and relations between the Squats and Eldar cooled considerably.
These Squat worlds, despite having been on their own for millennia, were part of the Imperium, although allowed a certain amount of autonomy to be run by their strongholds and leagues as they saw fit. In exchange for that freedom, they supplied the Imperium with troops, minerals, and gave the Adeptus Mechanicus unrestricted access to their technology, which included more working STC equipment from the Dark Age of Technology. These worlds are based around strongholds, mining communities that organize into larger bodies called Leagues. Strongholds were ruled by hereditary lords.
Outside of the Leagues was the Engineers Guild, a guild of the most gifted offspring of each stronghold, trained in technology, engineering, and machine maintenance. These engineers dressed light – typically seen in bandannas and leather and looking like dwarf American biker gangs – and wander abroad, hiring themselves out on a mercenary basis. The Engineers guild are typically seen on motorbikes and trikes and would eventually become the basis for the Yeagirs in the modern lore.
Although primarily fixated on ancestor worship, Squat soldiers joining the Imperial Guard would often adopt aspects of the Imperial cult. They could also fall to Chaos from time to time, though the Squats who had done so were more or less banished to the Eye of Terror. Squats tended to live around 300 years but could live as long as 800 and would be revered in their old age, called Living Ancestors. In battle, Squat armies would be lead by a Warlord who would in turn be joined by four Hearthguard, a retinue of renowned warriors charged with his defense.
Second Edition Update
With the release of Warhammer 40,000 second edition, the game transitioned from something more like a roleplaying game to a wargame proper, and the pack-in army index for the edition – Codex Imperialis –Â laid out the basic rules for every faction to build around until their army books released. The Squats feature prominently in this book, between the Eldar and Chaos, with an updated summary of their lore up to that point.
In this version the Squats were still the descendants of human colonists, but their worlds were specifically near the galactic core, rich in mineral wealth and exotic materials smelted in the furnaces of dying suns. These core worlds are huge and rocky, rich in minerals but otherwise barren and lifeless, with gravity two to three times higher than Earth’s. The Squats were the descendants of the miners and explorers who first colonized these worlds, digging homes for themselves in the rocky landscapes and living off nutritive algae grown in hydroponic tanks deep below ground. Over the millennia isolated from the rest of humanity they evolved into a new strain of human, distinct in their cultural identity and physiology. They also developed their own technology base, re-inventing spacecraft and survival systems away from earth, and becoming technologically advanced. Following the end of their isolation the Squats enjoyed good relations with humans, and shared a common enemy in the Orks.
The second edition lore established a couple of key things. The first was the use of Land Trains to cross the Squat Homeworlds. These huge, mobile fortresses ensured the Squats could cross the daunting continental shelves and seas of dust that marked their worlds. The second was the 700 Leagues, the Squats’ community structure. Each League was dominated by a single powerful stronghold, and there were approximately 700 Leagues in total, with the most powerful and influential being the League of Thor, home to more than 300 Strongholds.
Third was the Guilds: To preserve their engineering skills and knowledge, the Squats created a complex system of Guilds. Guilds were the repositories of Squat knowledge and information, producing their engineers, miners, and other specialists to keep Strongholds running. While Leagues may sometimes go to war, the Guilds make sure that knowledge and specialist skills are shared, ensuring the survival of the Homeworlds. Individual Guildsmen may be loyal to their own Stronghold, they also owe loyalty to their Guild and are responsible for disseminating knowledge.
This lore also re-establishes that the Squats are superior to the Adeptus Mechanicus in terms of technological know-how and understanding, employing a number of technologies that even the Technomagi on Mars don’t understand. This includes special “warp-core” technology, which the Mechanicus gave up on after “the infamous Contagion of Ganymede.” The Squats had mastered a number of technologies deemed too dangerous to use by the Adeptus Mechanicus.
If there’s an aspect shared by the Rogue Trader and second edition lore, it’s that the Squats are generally pretty goofy. There’s a lore excerpt in Codex Imperialis that has a Squat clamoring for more beer, and the aesthetic of bandanas and sunglasses just looks pretty comical next to the rest of the model range, even in the early second edition days.
The Long Night
For a faction given equal weight in the second edition Index as Orks, Eldar, and Tyranids, it was a surprise when Squats never received a Codex. And while they’d see mention in the Dark Millennium expansion (which added psychic powers exclusive to Squats), they’d see less and less mention as the edition went on, dropping out of the third edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook entirely. The Squats never received so much as a model in second edition, though some prototypes were shown off. These more or less were just fantasy dwarves with guns.
Although the rumor for many years was that they didn’t sell well, in a 2004 forum post, Jervis Johnson laid out that the creative team in the studio just didn’t like the way the army felt – that they hadn’t done the Dwarf “archetype” justice in its 40k incarnation (this included the unfortunate name of the race). The Squats felt like a joke race in 40k, and as a result there wasn’t much enthusiasm for them internally. So they decided to put them in second edition with just a “get you by” set of rules instead of dropping them completely, only to regret the decision later.
So the decision was made to write the Squats out of the background by saying the Homeworlds were devoured by a Tyranid Hive Fleet. They’d instead return to the idea of a Squat-like race later on with the introduction of the Demiurg in Battlefleet Gothic, but even those were a long shot to actually make the jump to 40k for many years.
The Demiurg
The Demiurg were introduced in Battlefleet Gothic in 2004 as part of the T’au Kor’Vattra Fleet list, and weren’t intended to be a Squats-like race and not so much the Squats themselves. Though as we’ll see, that’s changed a bit.
The Demiurg were introduced in this book as an alien race who were allies of the T’au Empire, and who were introduced to the T’au through the Kroot. They were technologically advanced traders who were relatively non-hostile, save for a burning hatred of the Orks (this is how they ended up allied to the T’au). Although they declined to join the empire, the Demiurg forged strong trade relationships with the T’au, and eventually the SrryTok brotherhood shared their Ion Cannon Technology after a successful Water Caste negotiation.
The Demiurg employed massive, mostly automated, Stronghold-class ships called Bastions for mining asteroids and processing materials. Rogue Trader reports suggested that Bastions were crewed by a “Brotherhood,” with Strongholds typically hosting two or three Brotherhoods. These vessels tended to be slow but well-defended, boasting considerable firepower at close ranges.
During this time, the Demiurg were referred to in some non-official materials as a “stunted, human-like race,” but as far as official materials go, we only have the ships. These would later be modeled and animated in the 2016 PC game, Battlefleet Gothic: Armada and its 2019 sequel (if you want to know more about that game, you can find our review of it here). The closest thing we have to an official visual on them is a photo of a grainy concept sketch drawn by Jes Goodwin. This sketch makes them appear a bit more alien than their prior incarnation, but they retain a lot of that “space dwarf” feel.
That said, this sketch has a lot in common design-wise with the faction’s next incarnation, The Leagues of Votann. And it’s finally time to talk about them.
Necromunda Squats
Wait! Before we talk about the Leagues of Votann, we have to talk about one more appearance of the Squats – the actual Squats, or Kin as they’d come to be known. Games Workshop released a model and rules for Grendl Grendlsen in 2018 for Necromunda. Grendl is a Squat bounty hunter sporting the classic quilted flak armor and sunglasses helmet, and he was soon joined by the ammo-jack, Ragnir Gunnstein. These are Kin who choose to live deep in far-space, among humans. Necromunda was revealed to be one of several Imperial planets which could boast a population of so-called “Squats.”
Wait, Kin? Alright, now let’s get into it.
The Leagues of Votann
Finally we come to September 2022 and the release of Codex: Leagues of Votann and we need to immediately set the record straight on something important: The race aren’t called the Votann, they’re the Kin. The Votann are something else – and we’ll cover that in a bit. The Kin are a race of squat, powerfully-built humanoids who dwell in vast numbers within the galactic core. They’re not as numerous as humans, but better established than the T’au or Aeldari.
The Kin are a clone race, created in machines known as crucibles which use massive banks of genomic data to create a stable and varied populace. They’re among the most resilient races in the galaxy in both body and mind. They tend to be stubborn and conservative, which makes them implacable enemies. They see themselves as the ultimate spacefarers, hardy and exact – to the Kin, waste and laziness are great threats to their rugged survivalist culture. This drive for the survival of their people – and their families specifically – drives them to mine and plunder whatever they can, often with no heed for others or the consequences of their actions. Their natural acquisitiveness often causes other races to see them as selfish hoarders.
The Kin belong to groupings called Kindred, who tend to share among them a genetic bond thanks to being birthed from the same crucibles. Kindred are themselves part of larger groups called Leagues, enormous interstellar alliances that are part military coalition, part mercantile conglomerate. And at the heart of every League is one Votann, an ancient thinking machine also known as an Ancestor Core.
The Kin
The Kin are a compact, muscly people, physically hardy and resilient to the hazardous extremes that come from being a voidfaring race. The Kin believe they have always been a cloned species, with each generation created from cloning machines called crucibles that are governed by a League’s Votann. This means that the Kin emerge from clone-vats fully formed and matured, though the processes for creating more Kin have begun to slow down and become more erratic. The Kin hold the Votann responsible for the mutations they’ve been given, such as dense musculature, high blood cell counts, and resistance to radiation.
Like the Squats before them, the Kin are the “descendants” of human settlers who colonized the worlds near the galactic core, created by the Votann on generational ships sent out millennia ago along with the Ironkin. As they settled the harsh worlds of the galactic core, their cloneskeins – the traits that govern their physiology – were adjusted and adapted for those conditions. One important key trait of the Kin is that their souls shine far more dimly in the Warp than those of humans. The Kin experience no uncontrolled psychic mutation, and only those with specifically chosen psychoactive cloneskeins can even interact with the empyrean. Even when they do, it’s not as true psykers but rather through the use of carefully crafted devices used to produce psyker-like effects.
As noted above, Kin are organized into societies called Kindred, groups that vary in size from “your extended family” to “millions of people.” These Kindred tend to live and toil within their holds, which again vary in size and shape. Kindred are ruled by a council of guildmasters, senior officers, military leaders, and the Grimnyr. Most kindred are affiliated with a league, a collection of allied kindred who hold claim on the heraldic colors and logos of one of the long-march mining fleets. Because Kin are returned to their Votann on death, they are charged with going out and accumulating not just wealth and resources for their people, but also knowledge and experiences.
Kin weigh the costs of everything but on occasion, when their patience is tested beyond its limits, they will harbor a grudge. The Kin take their grudges seriously and will often lose perspective when it comes to them, spending countless lives and assets to destroy a begrudged foe without hesitation. To the Kin, their ancestors are always watching and will judge them harshly if they allow a nemesis to endure.
Hernkyn, Hearthkyn, and Cthonians
Remember the goofy guilds back in the Rogue Trader era? The ones who wore leather jackets, sunglasses, and bandanas, who rode around on motor trikes? Well those were replaced by the Hernkyn, the furthest traveled of the Kin. These pioneers uncover untold galactic secrets and scout ahead for the leagues, bringing back useful knowledge and experience. The Hernkyn range far out and away from their kindred and Leagues, and are forced to live with the notion that if they are wiped out far away from their Votann, they will never be returned to its core and their Ancestors. Anyways, these Kin wear fur coats and ride hover-trikes now. It’s a bit cooler and a bit less goofy.
The Hearthkyn are the warrior class of the Kin, trained to fight and armed with the finest weaponry they can forge. The most proficient and decorated of these warriors will ascend to the rank of Einhyr or Kâhl, with the former acting as elite strike troops and the latter acting as war leaders and generals.
If the Hernkyn embody the survivalist drive of the Kin, the Chtonian mining guilds embody their aggressiveness and drive for acquisition. The Cthonians brave the harshest environments and mine them for everything they can. They see precious stockpiles owned by other species the same as ore locked away in a rock face, and are more than willing to resort to violent means if trade negotiations fail.
The Demiurg
The Kin are in fact, the Demiurg – this is the name they are referred to by the T’au Empire, though some humans also know them by that name. To the Aeldari they are the “Helosi Ancients,” and they’ve been referred to as the Gnostari, the Grome, and the Kreg elsewhere in the galaxy. The Seran-Tok Mercantile League are known to have done the most trade with the T’au empire (known to the T’au as “SrryTok,” as we noted above – a nice callback). And in the Imperium they are still referred to by the derogatory term “Squats.”
The Ironkin
Alongside the Kin you have the Ironkin, manufactured AI beings with their own mechanical bodies. They possess tremendous intelligence and can mimic Kin social behavior so well that they’ve fully integrated with the flesh-and-blood Kin. They dedicate their lives to aiding their biological peers and are treated as equal and valuable members of Kin society, both in times of peace and war. Ironkin have individual talents, personalities, and a desire to learn, and typically slot into roles where they can best serve Kin culture. That said, they can only imitate the emotions and drives of their biological cousins, and as such rarely show ambition or the desire to become leaders, though there are rumors of an “Iron Kâhl” out there.
Among the highest positions an Ironkin can achieve is to become a Memnyr Strategist, advising war leaders in battle. The Memnyr are generally the key minds and logistics operatives for the Kin, using their advanced cogitation to take in massive amounts of data and advise the Kin. These include Wayfinders, who accompany Kin ships and calculate probable paths through the Warp. Although slower than Imperium and T’au methods, the Kin traverse the Warp via a series of small, safe jumps, nearly always arriving when and where they intend to.
The Votann
The Kin revere and are governed by ancient thinking machines called Votann, or Ancestor Cores. These are massive, sophisticated AIs from the Dark Age of Technology, sent out with the ships that bore the Kin’s ancestors on colonization missions in the Dark Age of Technology. But while the Kin recognize that they likely come from Earth originally, they feel no connection or duty toward humans and humanity.
The Votann possess all the knowledge a spacefaring species would need to flourish harsh environments – from weapon specs, STC designs, and engineering knowledge to survival theory, philosophy, and military strategy. And over time they’ve become even more intelligent, accumulating more and more data over the millennia and changing. They’ve been augmented and improved, developed behavioral quirks, and even personalities. They weren’t designed to last this long or deal with the sheer amount of data and demands placed on them and over time, they’ve become less responsive and harder to access. Even worse, they’ve become erratic and prone to errors – though few Kin would suggest that a Votann had made an error – the Ancestor Cores are considered to be beyond mortal understanding in their judgment and reasoning.
On a day to day basis, the Votann are responsible for regulating the genetic data required to breed new generations of Kin, and they also connect to the accumulated cerebral data of dead Kin and Ironkin. In that sense, the Kin can see their dead processed into immortal data forms within the Votann – something they all hope for. This lends an air of religion to the Votann, who are not just thinking machines but hold the memories and lives of their ancestors as well. The first leagues were built around kindreds who were in direct possession of a Votann, and the first leagues were actually built to protect the Votann.
For the Kin, the word and judgments of the Votann are absolute and undisputed. That said, only a select few – Grimnyr, or Living Ancestors – are permitted to commune with the Votann. They do this in chambers called fanes, the nodes used for communication between Votann and other voidcraft. These fanes are thinking computers and have, on rare occasion, developed a full artificial intelligence in their own right.
The Leagues
Leagues more or less represent the subfactions and common color schemes for the Kin forces. Each league has its own culture and heraldry, and they vary in size from a single group to hundreds of allied kindreds. We’ll cover the major ones here:
Greater Thurian League
The “default” color scheme for the Leagues of Votann, the Greater Thurian League are the largest of the leagues, with more than two hundred allied kindreds. They have massive flotillas of warships and are known for venturing out of the core, into what the Kin refer to as “far-space,” where they explore and exploit new regions and trade with other species. Recent warp storms on their territory borders have forced them into other neighboring sectors, where they’ve clashed with Imperium forces.
Kronus Hegemony
A relatively young league founded with a fane achieved self-awareness, the Kronus Hegemony have an aggressive drive for raw materials and knowledge. Kindred who join Kronus are required to meet quotas, conquering enemy worlds and sending back spoils each cycle.
Trans-Hyperian Alliance
The Trans-Hyperian alliance is populated with explorers and adventurers, who seek out new worlds, warp routes, and trade partners with a compulsive determination. Their dedication to enriching the Votann brings them closer to religious fervor than the rest of their species.
Urani-Surtr Regulates
Known as the “URSR” (hell yeah?), the URSR clash regularly with the Necrons, Tyranids, and Orks. They hold more grudges and fight more fiercely than many other Kin would deem necessary. They have in their possession what is thought to be the oldest Votann, though this “Somnant” as they call it is unresponsive.
Ymyr Conglomerate
The Ymyr Conglomerate allows entry to kindred based on either buying their way in with raw materials or demonstrating exceptional ability to build battle gear, voidships, or technology. They’re among the smaller of the major Leagues but are known for their superior technology and craftsmanship.
Kin Technology
The Kin are adept at the construction and maintenance of technology, and what they can produce is far beyond the tech-adepts of Mars. They frequently field superior models of Dark Age weapons seen in the Imperium, and their designs for rail guns and ion weaponry have seen adoption by the T’au (though they keep the best versions of these weapons to themselves). Their technology tends to be durable and practical, sharing a common origin with Human weapons when it comes to things like bolt and las weapons, but is typically safer, more reliable, and more effective. They regard the Adeptus Mechanicus as superstitious tech-shamen, whose ignorance makes them dangerous and to be avoided or eliminated.
That said, not everything employed by the Kin is of their making and ability to understand. In the case of the Ironkin, the books suggest these are designed by the Votann to help the Kin and not by the Kin themselves. These are built in forges and endowed by the Votann with some capabilities that immediately mark them for specific tasks, but they aren’t enslaved to those. The robotic servants created by the Kin Brôkhyr are COGs, who are possessed of highly complex logic cores but not intelligent or aware in the same way as the Ironkin.
Grimnyr
The psykers of the Kin, the Grimnyr are the only Kin permitted to speak with the Votann, asking them for wisdom and guidance, and interpreting the results. As mentioned earlier, Grimnyr do not open their minds to the Warp but instead have carefully selected mutations which allow them to activate special, safe devices that act as a conduit for warp energies to create effects comparable to those of the psykers of other races.
Ironhead Squat Prospectors
There’s one more place the Kin show up: Necromunda. We already mentioned Grendlsen and Gunnstein, but there’s a full gang in Necromunda now for the Squats: The Ironhead Squat Prospectors. These Squat clans have been on Necromunda ever since before the Horus Heresy and were among the planet’s original colonizers. They helped rebuild Necormunda in the wake of the heresy and have mining the Ash Wastes for treasure, living semi-nomadic lifestyles in their great Land Trains. They’re supposedly the only Kin who call themselves Squats. Their technology isn’t quite up to par with the rest of the Kin, as they lost their Ancestor Core in the 36th millennium when it was buried deep underground in an earthquake.
This is more or less how Games Workshop reconciles the old lore for the Kin with the current lore, and it mostly works. The goofier aspects of the Squats can be chalked up to them being a special case compared to the other Kin, and living in Imperial space and interacting with humans on a regular basis.
Where to Read More
We’ve covered the basics of the Leagues of Votann here, but if you’re interested in diving deeper, there’s more to read. In particular, I’d recommend starting with the ninth and tenth edition codexes. The Tenth edition book has key info on new additions like Steeljacks and Buri, but the ninth edition book does a better job talking about the origins of the Kin.
The High Kâhl’s Oath by Gav Thorpe is the quintessential Black Library primer on the Leagues of Votann, following the rise of a new High Kâhl. It’s got a cool scene involving a Kin Whaling ship taking on a Tyranid hive ship. It’s highly rated among Black Library fans, and our own Jay Kirkman enjoyed it more than he expected to.
Final Thoughts
What a journey! The path for the Kin was long and difficult, but with their re-release of the Leagues of Votann they’ve finally arrived in a visually interesting modern form that nails the “space dwarfs” concept without being overly goofy or silly. It’s an aesthetic that meshes much better with the current Warhammer 40k universe, and the way they managed to tie them to the previous work done with the Demiurg was commendable, allowing that work to stick around in canon without needlessly duplicating work. The result is an interesting faction that has a lot to offer, while creating interesting new dynamics as a humanlike race capable of limited cooperation and trade with the Imperium, Aeldari, and the T’au Empire. That’s a refreshing change of pace, even if they still go to war with each group often.
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