Juvenat[1a][2][3][4][5][6], rarely named Juvenatus[1b] or Rejuvenat[1c] - any of a number of anti-ageing treatment used by the Imperium for the extension of human life, maintained primarily through the use of juvenat-drugs but supplemented with augmetic surgery to maintain the youthful look.[1a] Among the wealthy of the Imperial society it extends the lifespan to the point when being just shy of two centuries old is considered an early middle-age,[2] making it hard to distinguish a difference in human appearance in a range between 40 and 400.[3]
The treatment is known to be able to replenish the entirety of a damaged body, for example if utterly annihilated in an accident, provided at least the brain stayed intact. Although it is noted that the recovery from such a state takes something between 2 and 3 Terran years (9 Fenrisian months).[4]
Overview
Among the cheapest and more widely available treatments, there are known practices of: plumping flesh with collagenics; filling creases and wrinkles with dermics, cleaning of eyes and organs, applying a skinweave that pins up the skin folds, resculpting of bones or permanent staining of a skin a tanned colour with nanotic pigments considered in the Imperium as presenting as a mark of health.[4] Multiple treatments on low budget can leave visible deviance from a natural youth, with overly tight flesh and skin too smooth and too monotone.[3]
On the other hand, to the wealthiest there is an availability of gene therapies, skeleto-muscular grafts, implants, skin underweaves, transfixes, and stem-splices. The extreme juvenat treatment can replace the entirety of the body of a subject with mineral bonding and bone grafts to reconstitute a new skeleton, resleeved in a musculature gene-copied from the subject's code, reinforced with plastek weaves and polymers, with all organs replaced with similarly gene-copied transplants. Those individuals were known to indisputably maintain their prime appearance, sometimes even considered looking better than when they were the age they appear now.[4] People with less than the best access to juvenats are known to be able to present truly youthful, or at least not monstrously caricaturesque, while the precise reasoning isn't posited, the individuals known for this trait lead physically demanding and active lifestyles, which might be causative to the scarcity of such an effect on the wider populace.[5]
Even with access to the treatment, some people keep parts of their aged self, like grey hair or slight droop to the cheeks,[6] the lack of those vanity enhancement is outside a selected few nobles apparent mostly in rejuvenated officers.[7b] Some more spineless individuals are viewed by less privileged to purposefully alter their appearance for the aim of obfuscating their innate slimy expressions with those considered approachable, though it's a matter of conjecture.[3] Juvenat treatments are known to work on some xenos like the T'au, who can reach otherwise impossible age of eighty, albeit with definitive deformation with parchment like skin and the definition of their body hanging mostly on bones.[7a].
At the times of circa M30 while they were effective at greatly expanding one's life, they ultimately couldn't stop the onset of DNA damage and cellular failure, causing the subject of juvenats to eventually grow frail with veins and arteries devastated by the drugs, forcing them to succumb to the true old age, unless other more effective treatments like Adarnian elixir could have been administered, although this particular resource quickly ran dry.[8] It is unknown if this state of juvenats was absolute or is actual any longer, since even prior to the Council of Nikaea of early M31 there had existed a technology that allowed for rebuilding the body fully from one's genetic template.[4]
Known Rejuvenat Adepts
See also
Sources
- 1: Malleus (Novel):
- 2: Hereticus (Novel), Chapter One
- 3: Playing Patience (Short Story)
- 4: Prospero Burns (Novel), Part One, Chapter Four
- 5: Ravenor (Novel), Part One, Chapter Five
- 6: Atlas Infernal (Novel), Interregna I
- 7: Fire Caste (Novel):
- 8: Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work (Novel) - Chapter 1
- 9: Codex: Elucidian Starstriders pgs. 15–16
