Corpse-starch

Corpse-starch is a major food source for the Imperium of Man. Produced from the remains of humans that have died in the many Hive Worlds of the Imperium, it is an alternative to the need for farming on such over-populated worlds. It helps in a number of other ways too:

• It can easily be supplied en mass to populations where numbers of the living outstrip demand for food.
• It is readily available due to the numbers of humans who die (regularly in the millions) on such worlds, and on the various battlefields of the galaxy.
• Without the quick disposal of corpses in these tightly packed worlds, many of the Hive Cities would soon fall due to plague & disease from these remains.

Factory sized corpse grinding machines fill parts of many major Underhives, and have a steady stream of corpses. Sometimes if a worker dies on the job, his or her remains are fed directly in with nothing more of a note to state what happened to them.
Soylens Viridians is a special off-shoot of corpse-starch. Not just does it take the corpse-starch itself, but it has the remains of other animals, plant material, and vat grown algae too. If anything the algae will make up a major component of it instead in some instances, and then the corpse-starch is added.

History

The use of corpse-starch started gradually, and was hand-in-hand with the burgeoning human populations throughout the Milky Way. It is also linked to both the need to feed such worlds as Hive Worlds & the military, as well as a need to quickly dispose of human remains efficiently. It soon took off in regions, worlds, and sectors where the populations could easily hit the trillions to hundreds of trillions of citizens. This in part put a strain on feeding these populations, where Agriworlds & the vagracies of space travel made it hard to import sufficient food, especially with the likes of Hive Worlds where the local environments are highly toxic due to spill-off from heavy industry over the course of millennia.
Over time, it has been ingrained that it's better to eat this substance than starve, and is now at the point most Imperial citizens don't even think of where this food stuff comes from.

Components and tools

The main food source common in this is human corpses, and they are processed using large (sometimes factory sized) machines that breakdown the remains. The bodies are broken down in the process into a thick paste in the process and then packaged into servings of different sizes.

Participants

Work gangs operate the whole process (from stripping the corpses, to feeding them into machines, and finally packing the remains) led by supervisors, who in turn answer to the main controllers of the the region of the Hive. Sometimes techpriests, and maintenance gangs can be found helping to maintain the working environment. The controllers can be anyone from the Hive nobility to lesser appointed officials who answer to the former.
On some worlds, such as Necromunda, there are travelling Corpse Guilds who fulfil a similar role in the areas & regions that lack access to the Hive City proper. They travel in these regions with mobile corpse-starch plants that are smaller and are a part of their caravans.

Primary Related Location

Hive World

Related Organizations

• The Imperium of Man