WH40K coming to Amazon stream

[pendell]

Seen in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/henry-cavill-warhammer-40000-amazon-1235283251)



Henry Cavill [...] -- who Wednesday officially hung up his Man of Steel cape after Warner Bros. announced it is going in a new Superman direction thanks to DC Studio heads James Gunn and Peter Safran — is attached to star in and executive produce a series adaptation of Warhammer 40,000, the popular science fiction fantasy miniature war game that is set up at Amazon.

Amazon is in final talks for the rights to the game, produced by Games Workshop, after months of negotiations and fending off rival companies that also sought the rights.

The game’s setting is 40,000 years into the future where things are dark indeed. Human civilization has stopped progressing and is in an unending war with aliens and magical beings, with gods and demons figuring into a theological class system.

The humans make up the Imperium of Man, who are militaristic. A race of skeleton-like androids are known as the Necron; there is an elvish race known as Aeldari as well as Orks; Tyranids are nasty aliens; and the T’au is a blue-skinned alien race that may offer some hope.

Cavill is known to be a Warhammer fan and paints figures. Because the project is in such early stages — to reiterate, Amazon has yet to close the deal — this is not the next gig for Cavill, who recently announced he was exiting his lead role in Netflix’s The Witcher.


BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

*Cough Cough*

Sorry, got carried away there.

Anyway, I'm very curious to see how the same Amazon who gave us Rings of Power butchers interprets WH40K. If Tolkien is considered problematic for fantasy racism, well, the various factions in WH40K are nothing but cardboard stereotypes played for laughs. That's the point; WH40K is an excuse plot for moving miniatures around a table, not any kind of in-depth social commentary. I forget just how many different models and miniatures which were played for laughs in the 1980s would send the modern twitterati to their fainting couch for smelling salts.

Also, the Empire of Man isn't just militaristic. It's a full-on theocratic despotism which protects humanity through the sacrifice of I forget how many psykers per day to power the Golden Throne.

How do you make a good vs. evil story out of that? There are no good guys in 40,000 CE: In the grim and dark future there is only war. That's the point.

I also find it humorous that they seem to think the T'au are the good guys because of their philosophy of the "greater good". You would think a writer who grew up in the Harry Potter era would have recognized the subtle sarcasm in the motto, which parallels exactly Grindelwald's slogan (written ten years later, but same strand of thought) "For the Greater Good". When you see an organization claiming to be for the greater good, you can bet a year's salary there's going to be a lot of lesser evil genocide along the way.

They're certainly taking on a challenge to update WH40K for modern audiences. I would be greatly surprised if the eventual series bears any relationship to the original game -- but I have hopes that it will at least be entertaining.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rynjin]

The Tau are still "the most good" of the factions at least. They're pretty easily sanitized into just being an authoritarian but otherwise well-meaning government, which from what I recall they were initially presented as before people claimed they clashed with the grim darkness of the 41st millennium and needed to have some mud thrown on them to match the other factions.

But my money would honestly just be on them going for some kind of unambiguous Imperium vs Tyranids ("THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE IMPERIUM") story that is basically just Starship Troopers: The Series with a slightly grittier edge.

[awa]

I would argue that most 40K adaptations just take a part of the setting and largely ignore the rest. I'm thinking of the few dawn of war video games Ive played here. Unlike lord of the rings 40k is not a single cohesive story its a giant mass of contradictions and logic so all you need to do is focus on a relatively small part of it. Can they screw it up? certainly no question but amazon is not a single person and the failure of one property does not guarantee the failure of another.

You mentioned the fear of offending someone and that definitely a possibility depending on where they put their focus (slanesh cough) but you could for instance probably do a story about brave guardsmen/pdf fighting against tyranids without steeping on many toes.

That said I hear vague rumors of some geek property being adapted for a tv/movie series all the time and rarely do they amount to anything so this is way, way to early to be worrying if they are going to do it well or not in my opinion.

edit


But my money would honestly just be on them going for some kind of unambiguous Imperium vs Tyranids ("THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE IMPERIUM") story that is basically just Starship Troopers: The Series with a slightly grittier edge.

I had the same thought but was picturing Aliens

[Lord Raziere]

Honestly, if a wh40k show just offends people too much and no one does any wh40k show ever again and it just stays in its lane, I'd consider that one of the better outcomes of a show happening. I'd be fine with that.

[Morgaln]

You mentioned the fear of offending someone and that definitely a possibility depending on where they put their focus (slanesh cough) but you could for instance probably do a story about brave guardsmen/pdf fighting against tyranids without steeping on many toes.



The funny thing is, there's a much better IP for this kind of story. StarCraft is basically SpaceMarines vs. Tyranids vs Eldar, but it threw out all of the grimdark and turned it into something much more in line with contemporary movies.
WH40k really defines itself by the grimdark, over the top machismo and grey on grey morality. It doesn't actually take itself serious but is very good at keeping a straight face. Keep that and it will not work well with new viewers. Throw it out and fans will most likely be unhappy.

[Eldan]

One has to keep in mind the production company behind this series. They almost entirely do small-scale horror. The Ring, It, Blair Witch, etc.
One would assume that this is not going to be a colossal war story involving anything like Tyranids. I'm guessing Inquisition, which is a popular setting within 40k anyway. Lots of material to draw from, too. Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Cain, Darktide, Dark Heresy...

[Sapphire Guard]

Something along the lines of the Space Marine game would be easy enough.

[Rynjin]

One has to keep in mind the production company behind this series. They almost entirely do small-scale horror. The Ring, It, Blair Witch, etc.
One would assume that this is not going to be a colossal war story involving anything like Tyranids. I'm guessing Inquisition, which is a popular setting within 40k anyway. Lots of material to draw from, too. Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Cain, Darktide, Dark Heresy...

All this means is that it will probably be a small-scale "Alien-esque" story about Genestealers trying to steal our genes like awa mentioned.

It's gonna be 'Nids. That's basically their only option...except for digging back into the Nurgle well for the 10000000000000000 time in a 40k adaptation as the only Chaos god/faction that both has a distinct identity (Khorne is conceptually boring for a show, and Tzeentch is too "behind the scenes" to adapt well except into a very poltically charged show, which they aren't gonna do) and is "safe for tv" because Slaanesh is too horny.

[Anonymouswizard]

If they have any sense they'll focus on the Inquisition or the Imperial Guard (who after rounding to like 12sf are responsible for about 100% of the Imperium's fighting ability*). Start with the human characters, and slowly transition the focus to the borderline heretical mutant scum gods among men as the series goes on.

I'm not holding out much hope, but maybe like Inquisitor: Martyr I'll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe this time they'll remember to add the middle aged woman in power armour in at the start of the series.

* When you run the numbers Space Marines make so little impact that recruiting them from any major Guard world is the worst thing you can do.

[The Glyphstone]

Inquisition is definitely their best bet if they're going for an ensemble cast, you can have great variety of characters in an acolyte team.


As far as public opinion, if anything sinks this it'll be that the IP is just too obscure to generate interest. Just those two paragraphs trying to describe the game as "like a Dungeons and Dragons" is a stark reminder of how niche 40k really is.

[snowblizz]

I also find it humorous that they seem to think the T'au are the good guys because of their philosophy of the "greater good". You would think a writer who grew up in the Harry Potter era would have recognized the subtle sarcasm in the motto, which parallels exactly Grindelwald's slogan (written ten years later, but same strand of thought) "For the Greater Good". When you see an organization claiming to be for the greater good, you can bet a year's salary there's going to be a lot of lesser evil genocide along the way.


The conniptions when they realise Tau are commies will be glorious to watch.

[Eldan]

They aren't commies, though. They have a rigid caste system with a hereditary ruling class.

[pendell]

They aren't commies, though. They have a rigid caste system with a hereditary ruling class.

My understanding is that, at least in the latest incarnation, the Ethereals exert a great deal of Brave New World-ish thought control. They don't butcher as casually as the Imperium does, but it's still a rigid oligarchy where anything resembling freedom is sharply curtailed. And it still doesn't stop them from planetary genocide.

So they aren't "good guys" but there's a strong argument they're the least evil faction by WH40K standards. I think the idea being they're the youngest faction and therefore haven't fully grasped the horrors of the Warp and the true darkness of the universe they live in. Sort of like the way humans were back when the Emperor was trying to start his kingdom of peace and rationality before it went all pear-shaped and turned into the rigid theocracy we all know in the 40th millenium.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[awa]

The funny thing is, there's a much better IP for this kind of story. StarCraft is basically SpaceMarines vs. Tyranids vs Eldar, but it threw out all of the grimdark and turned it into something much more in line with contemporary movies.
WH40k really defines itself by the grimdark, over the top machismo and grey on grey morality. It doesn't actually take itself serious but is very good at keeping a straight face. Keep that and it will not work well with new viewers. Throw it out and fans will most likely be unhappy.

You say that but they gloss over pretty hard in the video games, in most of the ones I played the blood ravens (if I recall correctly) are just straight up heroes fighting the good fight, entirely reasonable and heroic.

[Thomas Cardew]

Seen in Hollywood Reporter (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/henry-cavill-warhammer-40000-amazon-1235283251)



BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

*Cough Cough*

Sorry, got carried away there.

Anyway, I'm very curious to see how the same Amazon who gave us Rings of Power butchers interprets WH40K. If Tolkien is considered problematic for fantasy racism, well, the various factions in WH40K are nothing but cardboard stereotypes played for laughs. That's the point; WH40K is an excuse plot for moving miniatures around a table, not any kind of in-depth social commentary. I forget just how many different models and miniatures which were played for laughs in the 1980s would send the modern twitterati to their fainting couch for smelling salts.

Also, the Empire of Man isn't just militaristic. It's a full-on theocratic despotism which protects humanity through the sacrifice of I forget how many psykers per day to power the Golden Throne.

How do you make a good vs. evil story out of that? There are no good guys in 40,000 CE: In the grim and dark future there is only war. That's the point.

I also find it humorous that they seem to think the T'au are the good guys because of their philosophy of the "greater good". You would think a writer who grew up in the Harry Potter era would have recognized the subtle sarcasm in the motto, which parallels exactly Grindelwald's slogan (written ten years later, but same strand of thought) "For the Greater Good". When you see an organization claiming to be for the greater good, you can bet a year's salary there's going to be a lot of lesser evil genocide along the way.

They're certainly taking on a challenge to update WH40K for modern audiences. I would be greatly surprised if the eventual series bears any relationship to the original game -- but I have hopes that it will at least be entertaining.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

So I refused to watch RoP on principle and I didn't want to give it even the nominal support of my viewership even if I already have prime. And while I think RoP failure was overdetermined, I do think a large part of it had to do with just not having the rights to half the story and characters they were using to tell their story. This inherently meant they were going to piss off a lore nerd like myself. I don't think that will be the same issue for 40k/GW since it's both less the creation of a single author and still being progress (as much as there's any progress in 40k). There's no equivalent to the Tolkien estate saying 'no you can't use/acknowledge anything from this pile of pre-existing lore'

I've no-interest in the inevitable culture war fight that will spill out over it and social mores and modern audience ad nauseam... but in the grim dark present there is no peace only bickering. I can't wait to see how it relates to Star Wars.


They aren't commies, though. They have a rigid caste system with a hereditary ruling class.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", dialed to 11 like everything else in the setting? Castes and commies aren't mutually exclusive.

[Gnoman]

Cavill's said before that he really, really wants to do a Horus Heresy adaptation. Doesn't mean that's what this is, but it is a nugget of info.

[BloodSquirrel]

(Khorne is conceptually boring for a show, and Tzeentch is too "behind the scenes" to adapt well except into a very poltically charged show, which they aren't gonna do)

I'm not sure why you think this. A show about the internal politics of the Imperium would have the advantage of being cheaper (less need for giant set piece CGI battles) and the format has been shown to be very popular with audiences. Their marketing guys will certainly be happy to call it "Game of Thrones in space." And there's no reason why it would have to be "politically charged", since (like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon) the politics of the 41st Millennium have nothing to do with real world modern day politics, and the only reason those keep coming up in fantasy/sci-fi shows where they don't belong is because the writers are hacks (and if those people are on the writing staff, they'll shove them in there regardless).

You could quite easily make a show about a conflict between (roll a die twice and pick from below) and have no problem coming up with a reason for the conflict or way in which it can play out, with Tzeentch pulling the strings of one or both sides.

1)The Iquisition
2)The Mechanicus
3)An IG Regiment
4)An admiral in the Navy
5)An admiral in the local SDF
6)A general in the local SDF
7)Another general in the SDF
8)A Space Marine Company
9)The Ecclesiarchy
10)The Administratum
11)Another Space Marine Company
12)A different branch of the Inquisition
13)A planet's local royalty
14)A different inquisitor in the same branch of the Inquisition
15)The Commissariat
16)A slightly heretical cult of the Emperor
17)A Navigator House



"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", dialed to 11 like everything else in the setting? Castes and commies aren't mutually exclusive.

Castes are Not Real Communism^TM, just like everything else, mostly on account of communism being really vague when it comes to actual implementation details. Finding two communists who actually agree about what "real communism" is no easy task.

[The Glyphstone]

So poking around the internet further, there are multiple articles from earlier this year and last year about GW shopping for a producer and distributor for a TV adaptation of the Eisenhorn trilogy. Until further info comes out, thats where I'm putting my money on for this - Cavill could do a wonderful Gregor, and the ensemble nature of a retinue would be very different than the mostly-solo acting he did as Geralt.

[Rynjin]

I'm not sure why you think this. A show about the internal politics of the Imperium would have the advantage of being cheaper (less need for giant set piece CGI battles) and the format has been shown to be very popular with audiences.

Remember that Amazon relatively recently cancelled The Expanse (which is basically what you're describing), citing cost of production as the main factor. 40k would be even more expensive to produce.



Their marketing guys will certainly be happy to call it "Game of Thrones in space." And there's no reason why it would have to be "politically charged", since (like Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon) the politics of the 41st Millennium have nothing to do with real world modern day politics, and the only reason those keep coming up in fantasy/sci-fi shows where they don't belong is because the writers are hacks (and if those people are on the writing staff, they'll shove them in there regardless).

That's not actually what I meant by politically charged here. It's just fantasy politics that is going to involve a lot of Proper Nouns that prospect fans will need to learn, factions, etc. Which wouldn't be so bad if 40k's political lore wasn't so...what's the word...bad? The less they dig into the deep lore of the setting, the better.

[Anonymouswizard]

Sort of like the way humans were back when the Emperor was trying to start his kingdom of peace and rationality

You mean that time where he repressed all knowledge of the Chaos Gods despite several planets showing that a healthy understanding was more effective than blind ignorance?

The best thing the Emperor ever did for humanity was die so that he could become a figure of faith that is actually effective at countering the influence of the ruinous powers. Of course then he messed it up and didn't take Gulliman with him, so now humanity is under the heel of god-tyrants yet again. His ideas, well intentioned as they were, were just incorrect.

Consistent that the Tau have a low warp presence (without the pre-existing knowledge of the Squats) and a highly rational and focused mindset their first proper Chaos cult is going to go very poorly for them. Imagine the Slaaneshi fire caste daring to dig trenches for the experience of it. It'll be utter bedlam.

[BloodSquirrel]

Remember that Amazon relatively recently cancelled The Expanse (which is basically what you're describing), citing cost of production as the main factor. 40k would be even more expensive to produce.

In that case, they'd have to pass on a 40k project entirely, as there really isn't a cheaper way to do it short of possibly animating it.





That's not actually what I meant by politically charged here. It's just fantasy politics that is going to involve a lot of Proper Nouns that prospect fans will need to learn, factions, etc. Which wouldn't be so bad if 40k's political lore wasn't so...what's the word...bad? The less they dig into the deep lore of the setting, the better.

"Don't make 40k like 40k" is the kind of approach that has been taken on several big-name streaming adaptations lately, and it hasn't exactly proven fruitful. 40k that's embarrassed to be 40k is just going to wind up being generic and boring.

[Rynjin]

"Don't make 40k like 40k" is the kind of approach that has been taken on several big-name streaming adaptations lately, and it hasn't exactly proven fruitful. 40k that's embarrassed to be 40k is just going to wind up being generic and boring.

The big difference is 40k can be used for a lot of different things. Some things it does well: grim darkness, cool weapons, interesting broad factions.

Things it does poorly: anything that tries to tell a serious plot.

Trying to make the series "Game of Thrones in space" is, exactly, making "40k that's embarrassed to be 40k". 40k isn't Game of Thrones. It does not have the ability to tell a story like Game of Thrones without toning down the intentionally, PARODIUSLY over-the-top nature of the series when it comes to politics.

You're basically asking Amazon to make Spaceballs: The Series into an Honor Harrington-esque political drama. It just doesn't work.

[BloodSquirrel]

The big difference is 40k can be used for a lot of different things. Some things it does well: grim darkness, cool weapons, interesting broad factions.

Things it does poorly: anything that tries to tell a serious plot.


It's perfectly possible to make something that has either a serious plot, a political plot, or both while still being broad, bombastic, and melodramatic with over-the top, scenery-chewing characters. In fact, most of what is regarded as "classic" literature is quite ham-fisted by modern standards, and invariably very self-serious. Opera is, by nature, limited in how subtle and nuanced it can be by the need to have the characters loudly singing their emotions out on stage. Shakespeare was written to be performed on stage to common audiences. Epics from ancient history- The Iliad, Beowulf, Gilgamesh- were not written with gritty realism in mind.

In fact, the over-the-top nature of the Imperium and its dysfunctional, fractious, dogmatic, and overzealous institutions is exactly what makes telling a political story so easy. You don't have to work very hard or explain too much detailed history to newcomers to justify the potential conflicts. "The IG General is jealous of the Space Marine Captain because they get all of the glory" is easy to grasp, as is "The Church and the Bureaucrats have different priorities and neither of them are very flexible, so they don't get along too well".

[Eldan]

The big difference is 40k can be used for a lot of different things. Some things it does well: grim darkness, cool weapons, interesting broad factions.

Things it does poorly: anything that tries to tell a serious plot.

Trying to make the series "Game of Thrones in space" is, exactly, making "40k that's embarrassed to be 40k". 40k isn't Game of Thrones. It does not have the ability to tell a story like Game of Thrones without toning down the intentionally, PARODIUSLY over-the-top nature of the series when it comes to politics.

You're basically asking Amazon to make Spaceballs: The Series into an Honor Harrington-esque political drama. It just doesn't work.

They actually have new book imprints that are telling smaller stories, now. Warhammer Crime, Warhammer Horror and so on. They are working decently well.

[Lord Raziere]

You mean that time where he repressed all knowledge of the Chaos Gods despite several planets showing that a healthy understanding was more effective than blind ignorance?

The best thing the Emperor ever did for humanity was die so that he could become a figure of faith that is actually effective at countering the influence of the ruinous powers. Of course then he messed it up and didn't take Gulliman with him, so now humanity is under the heel of god-tyrants yet again. His ideas, well intentioned as they were, were just incorrect.


Well.

figure of faith until he blows up into a second Slaanesh and takes all of Terra with him, except instead of being composed of decadence and pleasure, it'll be of humanity's zealotry, paranoia, hatred and so on. So, y'know the Fall of the Eldar, except worse.

[GloatingSwine]

You say that but they gloss over pretty hard in the video games, in most of the ones I played the blood ravens (if I recall correctly) are just straight up heroes fighting the good fight, entirely reasonable and heroic.

Ah, didn't play the rest of them then, where it turns out that the chapter master of the Blood Ravens has fallen to chaos and half the chapter went with him.

Also they've got some skeletons in the closet wrt who their "lost" primarch is* and how much heresy they've been up to. And how all the other chapters' relics mysteriously turn up in their armoury.

* Given that they're notable for how many psykers they have the speculation is that it's Magnus the Red.


I also think the series will probably be about the Inquisition, because that gives the most license to fiddle with pretty much whatever aspect of the universe it wants.

[Catullus64]

If a mainstream Warhammer 40,000 series were to be any success, I think it would be by fighting upstream of many of the current trends of high-budget IP-driven television, specifically by having a highly episodic structure rather than a highly serial one.

Imagine it, if you like, as a suitably grimdark version of classic Star Trek. Make the heroes (heroes in the narrative structure sense, not the moral sense; this is still 40k) people with a reason to trot around the galaxy, be they an Inquisitorial cell, an Imperial Guard regiment, a Rogue Trader fleet, Arbites enforcers, Assassins, or an Administratum audit team. Have every episode be a relatively self-contained story with its own central threat. Imply the vast scale and variety of the Imperium with a different world every episode. Minimize references to greater-scope 40k lore like the Horus Heresy or the Black Crusades, keep the focus on our main cast and their individual adventures. Most importantly, let every major army get an episode with it in focus, as either allies or enemies.

I expect basically none of this advice to be followed; highly-serialized, fanservice-packed melodrama mostly about Space Marines, here we go.

[Fyraltari]

They're just going to make the Imperium the good guys and "justified", aren't they?

[Anonymouswizard]

Well.

figure of faith until he blows up into a second Slaanesh and takes all of Terra with him, except instead of being composed of decadence and pleasure, it'll be of humanity's zealotry, paranoia, hatred and so on. So, y'know the Fall of the Eldar, except worse.

The fact of the matter is, he was going to be worshipped anyway, Lorgar or no Lorgar. This way Chaos won't infiltrate basically every Emperor cult. It might have been better if he'd accepted the religious role and wrote the bloody holy book himself (the entire Imperium pretty much runs off heresy at this point).

Plus it's really not certain what will happen when the Emperor does. For all his psychic might there's nothing definitive that makes him akin to the Ruinous Powers. It's possible he'll become more like the Eldar gods, or potentially just die. We know very little about him beyond 'terrifyingly powerful psyker, probably not actually three metres tall'.

[GloatingSwine]

Actually, I have an even better idea what the series should be.

Basically Tales from the Crypt but instead of the Cryptkeeper you have Trazyn the Infinite and every story is about one of his exhibits.

[Blackhawk748]

They're just going to make the Imperium the good guys and "justified", aren't they?

Reminder that the Imperium of Man is like... 12 factions all loosely bundled together with a whole bunch of guns sticking out at everything that twitches cuz pretty much everything that twitches wants to eat/kill/render them into fuel and their general reactions to things is fairly justified.

The 40k universe sucks and no faction that is "nice" lasts more than 10 minutes because one of the innumerable horrors wipes them out. Cuz even the minor factions are nasty.

Should they be seen as "good"? I mean, plenty of people in the Imperium are fine on the small scale. Inquisitors and various Guardsmen who just want to protect their fellow Man, Space Marines who believe in honor and decency. Them taken as a whole faction populated by Trillions of Trillions of people? No. But then again, noone is good in 40k. No not even the Tau even in their first iteration, they were just horrifically naive.


Actually, I have an even better idea what the series should be.

Basically Tales from the Crypt but instead of the Cryptkeeper you have Trazyn the Infinite and every story is about one of his exhibits.

I would watch this. It'd be great.

[Fyraltari]

Reminder that the Imperium of Man is like... 12 factions all loosely bundled together with a whole bunch of guns sticking out at everything that twitches cuz pretty much everything that twitches wants to eat/kill/render them into fuel and their general reactions to things is fairly justified.

The 40k universe sucks and no faction that is "nice" lasts more than 10 minutes because one of the innumerable horrors wipes them out. Cuz even the minor factions are nasty.

Should they be seen as "good"? I mean, plenty of people in the Imperium are fine on the small scale. Inquisitors and various Guardsmen who just want to protect their fellow Man, Space Marines who believe in honor and decency. Them taken as a whole faction populated by Trillions of Trillions of people? No. But then again, noone is good in 40k. No not even the Tau even in their first iteration, they were just horrifically naive.

[quote=The foreword of every warhammer40k publication]To be a man in such times [...] is to live in the cruellest and the most bloody regime imaginable
Emphasis mine.

Inquisitors will shoot you for wanting to think for yourself, space Marines and Guardsmen will slaughter entire factories for going on strikes. There are no good guys in W40k, but the Imperium especially isn't. The Imperium gets treated with leniency by the fanbase because they're the human faction, but every flaw present in any of the xeno factions is present a hundred times worse in the Imperium. And Chaos is practically indistiguishable from the Imperium. Simply put, the Imperium is the worst threat to humanity in the whole setting. Hell, the Mechanicus straight-up hate the fact that they are humans and want to be robots instead.

[SerTabris]

The funny thing is, there's a much better IP for this kind of story. StarCraft is basically SpaceMarines vs. Tyranids vs Eldar, but it threw out all of the grimdark and turned it into something much more in line with contemporary movies.
WH40k really defines itself by the grimdark, over the top machismo and grey on grey morality. It doesn't actually take itself serious but is very good at keeping a straight face. Keep that and it will not work well with new viewers. Throw it out and fans will most likely be unhappy.

Well, I don't imagine that a concept that starts with 'movie/series deal with Activision Blizzard' is going to get far with anyone right now considering their current reputation.

[Lord Raziere]

The fact of the matter is, he was going to be worshipped anyway, Lorgar or no Lorgar. This way Chaos won't infiltrate basically every Emperor cult. It might have been better if he'd accepted the religious role and wrote the bloody holy book himself (the entire Imperium pretty much runs off heresy at this point).

Plus it's really not certain what will happen when the Emperor does. For all his psychic might there's nothing definitive that makes him akin to the Ruinous Powers. It's possible he'll become more like the Eldar gods, or potentially just die. We know very little about him beyond 'terrifyingly powerful psyker, probably not actually three metres tall'.

Doesn't matter.

Ruinous powers are all emotion, all feeling, all experiences. religion is just an ignition for greater amounts of what they feed upon, thats it. the warp has shown that over long periods of time, concentrated amounts of emotion, feeling, concepts eventually birth another god. the last time one was birthed? Slaanesh ATE most of the Eldar gods themselves and got even more powerful from it. there is no actual metaphysical difference between one god or other, its all psychic energy. and even if he just dies....well 10,000 years of zealotry, faith and paranoia and whatnot don't just go away. that fifth Chaos God is coming whether humanity likes it or not and they're going to end up a second Eldar.

[Psyren]

I know next to nothing about WH40k so I'm interested in learning about the setting through this! Glad to see Henry Cavill has a prominent project lined up after all all the pants-on-head insanity going on over at the DCEU.

[Rynjin]

I know next to nothing about WH40k so I'm interested in learning about the setting through this! Glad to see Henry Cavill has a prominent project lined up after all all the pants-on-head insanity going on over at the DCEU.

All you really need to know is that IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE 41ST MILLENNIUM THERE IS ONLY WAR-

[t209]

Speaking of issue with modern audience, I think current trajectory since Gathering Storm is heading that way.
At least Necrons becoming quirky robots (at last Trazyn), Guilliman's Imperium trying to be abit more progressive, and even Squats are back (so far, other than explotation, they have decent living standards and basically Dark Age of Technology humanity).

[Cheesegear]

They're just going to make the Imperium the good guys and "justified", aren't they?

It's Amazon; So I'm pretty sure it will be the complete opposite.

Amazon's Halo comes to mind immediately.

[Eldan]

Speaking of issue with modern audience, I think current trajectory since Gathering Storm is heading that way.
At least Necrons becoming quirky robots (at last Trazyn), Guilliman's Imperium trying to be abit more progressive, and even Squats are back (so far, other than explotation, they have decent living standards and basically Dark Age of Technology humanity).

They have decent living standards, but they are also clones enslaved to insane AI that is slowly breaking down, and they make a living by mining entire planets, population included.

I think they are grimdark enough.

[Wraith]

A long time ago, the GitP Warhammer 40k thread had a discussion about a potential 40k TV show or movie, and we more or less came to the conclusion that 40k as it is CAN'T be made into something that is suitable for a normal audience.

It's not just the incredible amount of gore and violence, but also the political themes. To keep it incredibly brief to abide by the rules; there are no 'good' guys, but even the protagonists consider acts and mentalities which are unrepeatable on this board to be lightweight liberalism.

That being said, this was before The Boys and (to a lesser extent) some of the more depraved things that happened in Game of Thrones made it to TV, so perhaps there could now be room for softer version of 40k.

As such, I'm imagining that a 40k TV series will likely be about Space Marines being big and heroic and killing monsters, because that wouldn't be a million miles away from the 40k video game (Space Marine 2) that is due out reasonably soon, not quite as a tie-in but following it in the public memory. The alternative would be something like Eisenhorn, to slowly start out with normal humans doing relatively reasonable things, and then slippery-sloping their way into more typical 40k horror.

And frankly, Henry Caville as Captain Titus or Gregor Eisenhorn? I'm down for that. :smalltongue:

[KorvinStarmast]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FkHS7h9X0AEHoA2?format=jpg&name=large

Saw that elsewhere and dropped by here to see what you all thought.

Wow, I know only a little about WH 40K but I might get a bit more interested if this is coming.
But will Amazon screw it up? :smallconfused:

[dancrilis]

I think this would very much depend on the understanding of 40K that people have and what they want to do.

For instance
- Space Marine fanfic, we follow a space marine captain who is a decent guy and always right and who never suffers any serious setbacks (how some of the books and media over the years have indicated they are).
- Gorkamorka - there are a number of factions competing for scant resources and raiding each other but also trading captives and goods with each other, the muties are the major in focus faction as they come to terms (or not) with what has happened to them while trying to stay loyal to the Imperial Creed.
- Rogue Trader - a rogue trader and they entourage explore and conquer worlds in a very dark version of 'going where no man has gone before' style show, episodes could be almost stand alone.
- more or less anything else you can think of.

40K is a setting where you can pick and choose what you want, but if you try to pick and choose everything you have (in my mind) likely made a serious mistake.

[Trafalgar]

I am glad that Henry Cavill is involved as both an actor and an Executive Producer since he is a big WH40k fan. Of course, the title "Executive Producer" is more honorary than anything else.

I have mixed feelings about Amazon Prime though. On one hand, I like The Boys, Invincible, and The Expanse. On the other hand, I did not like Wheel of Time or Rings of Power.

[Rynjin]

Of those, the only one I actually liked was Invincible (never watched Rings of Power TBF). Weird seeing it laid out like that, Amazon basically never hits (TBF again, The Expanse wasn't really their show).

[Trafalgar]

Of those, the only one I actually liked was Invincible (never watched Rings of Power TBF). Weird seeing it laid out like that, Amazon basically never hits (TBF again, The Expanse wasn't really their show).

I think seasons 4-6 of The Expanse was Amazon. Good Omens was also excellent just because of David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

[GloatingSwine]

As such, I'm imagining that a 40k TV series will likely be about Space Marines being big and heroic and killing monsters, because that wouldn't be a million miles away from the 40k video game (Space Marine 2) that is due out reasonably soon, not quite as a tie-in but following it in the public memory. The alternative would be something like Eisenhorn, to slowly start out with normal humans doing relatively reasonable things, and then slippery-sloping their way into more typical 40k horror.


The problem with a Space Marine focused show is that Space Marines all talk like pillocks. It would be really hard to have dialogue that actual people would put up with listening to for more than ten minutes when everyone is talking in duty obsessed warrior monk nonsense.

That's why I think it'll be an Inquisitor focused show, because they deal with the "normal" people of the 41st millenium which means that you can nave normal people dialogue that the audience won't be baffled or annoyed by and also pick and choose which bits of the setting to focus on. It'll not actually *be* Eisenhorn because I think the rights to that are still out with someone else, but it'll be a similar shape. Square jawed inquisitor and his team of investigators with different special skills.

[Catullus64]

What would really rock, and do the most justice to the source material, would be even less serialized than my above-suggested Trek-like pitch. Imagine a series of short battle vignettes, akin to the animated Gennady Tartakovsky Clone Wars shorts. Light on dialogue and plot, heavy on action and atmosphere. Give every army its day in the grimdark limelight. 40k has pretty much always been better at implying good stories through visuals, tone, and sparse dialogue than it ever has been at actually telling those stories in detail. (That's not really even a criticism - as a wargame, that's pretty much all it needs to do.)

Again, not much real chance of that happening, since that wouldn't make too much use of Cavill's highly bankable face.

[snowblizz]

They're just going to make the Imperium the good guys and "justified", aren't they?

Yes. In a best case scenario.

[Lord Raziere]

Yes. In a best case scenario.

No, thats one of the worser ones.

[The Glyphstone]

Haven't we gotten plenty of modern media that proves shades of grey are possible? Heck, both The Boys and Game of Thrones were explicitly mentioned up-thread, why are we immediately going to the doom-pool of assuming morality-washing?

[Lord Raziere]

Haven't we gotten plenty of modern media that proves shades of grey are possible? Heck, both The Boys and Game of Thrones were explicitly mentioned up-thread, why are we immediately going to the doom-pool of assuming morality-washing?

Its hard to have shades of grey when everything is painted black. the fundamental problem is that the Imperium is an oppressive regime that makes the Star Wars Empire look cuddly, while the go to faction to rebel against that, are literal soul-eating demons and evil cultists who make the Joker look PG. there is no one to root for, not even in a subjective sense, they're just all horrible. which makes it highly vulnerable to the Eight Deadly Words: "I don't care what happens to these people."

and trying to give the Imperium and Chaos nuance when they are presented so over the top ridiculously is a tricky thing at best. My personal opinion is that some pieces of media are simply not for everyone and that one of the better things that could happen to Wh40k from this is that the show fails and nothing changes. it can just continue to be a niche franchise that grows on its own, attracts those that can stomach it and not those who can't, as a Wh40k fan, I'm fine with it not being mainstream, extremely fine.

[Trafalgar]

The problem is if Amazon makes a show that is for Warhammer 40k fans who also happen to have an Amazon Prime account, it won't be successful. Amazon needs to bring in non Warhammer 40k fans in. Balancing "grim dark" with "appealing to normies" will be difficult.

[pendell]

Well, The Tion Confederacy are blue skins and Avatar 2 is coming out -- why not tell a story from the Tion viewpoint against the evil colonialist Imperials? I'm not sure that's what the modern audience wants, but it's the sort of thing that would fly in modern Hollywood.

Thing about the empire is *within the context of its universe* it IS justified. Chaos starts out as a thought; therefore the Empire has extremely strict thoughtcrime laws and an Inquisition to enforce them. Any desire for positive change feeds Tzeentch , therefore the Empire locks down everything and ended any meaningful progress centuries ago. It's a city under siege, under martial law, except it's a "city" the size of a galaxy. A "siege" that has no hope of ever ending. Which would feed despair, except despair feeds Nurgle. I don't know how the Empire deals with that. The most you can say for the Empire is that it does hold the other factions at bay and leaves a place in the galaxy where ordinary humans can live, love, laugh without being eaten by demons or consumed by Tyranids or otherwise murdered. So long as you stay in your lane vis-a-vis heresy life can be .. well, maybe not good but certainly no worse than our middle ages.

Which is why WH40K -- at least, as written as a wargame -- can only be a parody where everything is made as dark as possible for humor. Because if we were to take the Empire's view of the world as applying in the real world -- that the world is dark and full of terrors, which only a military dictatorship can protect us from -- that's the apologia of every two-bit dictator and strongman since Caesar "protecting" Rome from the Gauls. It's the antithesis of modern western thought and a reversion back to -- well, not the middle ages but the early modern period which gave us both the original Inquisition and Louis XIV's absolute monarchy.

To criticize the Empire we have to step outside the fictional universe and criticize the bedrock foundations and assumptions which make up the world in the first place. But if we accept the universe running as written, it's hard for me to see how the human race could survive without creating something like the Imperium. Those humans which took a different path are either dead, slaves of the other factions, or chaos-creatures.

Actually, that might be one way to explore the world -- perhaps the world as we know it from Games Workshop is merely the Imperium's propaganda and the galaxy in the year 39000 CE isn't as dark a a place as dictatorial propaganda makes it out to be and the Empire can be made something else. Certainly it would be a different view of the world.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Rynjin]

Thing about the empire is *within the context of its universe* it IS justified. Chaos starts out as a thought; therefore the Empire has extremely strict thoughtcrime laws and an Inquisition to enforce them. Any desire for positive change feeds Tzeentch , therefore the Empire locks down everything and ended any meaningful progress centuries ago. It's a city under siege, under martial law, except it's a "city" the size of a galaxy. A "siege" that has no hope of ever ending. Which would feed despair, except despair feeds Nurgle. I don't know how the Empire deals with that. The most you can say for the Empire is that it does hold the other factions at bay and leaves a place in the galaxy where ordinary humans can live, love, laugh without being eaten by demons or consumed by Tyranids or otherwise murdered. So long as you stay in your lane vis-a-vis heresy life can be .. well, maybe not good but certainly no worse than our middle ages.

Isn't part of the DEEPEST LORE that this wrong though? In that it's a short term "solution" but will eventually result in an exponentially worse outcome once something goes wrong.

[pendell]

Isn't part of the DEEPEST LORE that this wrong though? In that it's a short term "solution" but will eventually result in an exponentially worse outcome once something goes wrong.

Agreed, it's a short-term bandaid. But until someone in universe comes up with a better solution it's what humanity has. A bandaid won't solve the deeper problems but it may keep the patient from bleeding out before a proper solution CAN be brought into play. So the Empire is essentially fighting a delaying action until that better solution can appear -- a solution which won't appear in game lore because there's no wargame to be made from that. It might be hinted at at some point, though.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Lord Raziere]

GW has come out and specifically said that the Imperium are not the good guys (https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/11/19/the-imperium-is-driven-by-hate-warhammer-is-not/).

they are not justified. they are not good. they are the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable, and they are not to be taken as who are doing the best they can, or the right thing.

[Fyraltari]

Thing about the empire is *within the context of its universe* it IS justified.
No it isn't. The ultimate joke of the Imperium of Man is that even the existence of Chaos does not justify its crimes. Because their approach to it is terribly ineffective. It's no coincidence that the leaders of every chaos faction in 40K are Space Marines. The Imperium gave chaos its bast warriors, provides it with a constant flow of desperate people who would side with anyone and anything to escape the Imperium and the Imperium even does them the favour of hiding the existence of Chaos, leaving billions upon billions of people unprepared to deal with them. The technology, and the armies of Chaos all come from the Imperium. The Ruinous Powers wouldn't be a tenth as ruinous without the Imperium to prop them up.

Chaos starts out as a thought; therefore the Empire has extremely strict thoughtcrime laws and an Inquisition to enforce them. Any desire for positive change feeds Tzeentch , therefore the Empire locks down everything and ended any meaningful progress centuries ago. It's a city under siege, under martial law, except it's a "city" the size of a galaxy. A "siege" that has no hope of ever ending. Which would feed despair, except despair feeds Nurgle. I don't know how the Empire deals with that. The most you can say for the Empire is that it does hold the other factions at bay and leaves a place in the galaxy where ordinary humans can live, love, laugh without being eaten by demons or consumed by Tyranids or otherwise murdered. So long as you stay in your lane vis-a-vis heresy life can be .. well, maybe not good but certainly no worse than our middle ages.


A logical argument must be dismissed with absolute conviction!
A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy.
A suspicious mind is a healthy mind.
Be strong in your ignorance.
By the manner of our death are we judged.
Call no man happy until he is dead.
Death is honor.
Death is the only answer
Destroy, destroy, destroy!
Enlightenment is a myth we do not need to understand in order to hate.
Exist for the Emperor.
Faith, Hate and Ignorance.
Fear the shadows; despise the night. There are horrors that no man can face and survive.
Happiness is a delusion of the weak.
I could keep going, but you get the point. The Imperium does not want its subjects to "live, love, laugh" they want them to be paranoid, hateful and small-minded cogs who endlessly toil without respite until they die in service. Human life is literally worthless to the Imperium, every moment not in service to the war machine is a waste, every thought not of absolute dedication to the rotting skeleton-in-chief or hatred towards anything different is suspect. It is much worse than the middle-ages ever was. Again, it's written in every book that the Imperium is the cruelest regime imaginable.



Which is why WH40K -- at least, as written as a wargame -- can only be a parody where everything is made as dark as possible for humor. Because if we were to take the Empire's view of the world as applying in the real world -- that the world is dark and full of terrors, which only a military dictatorship can protect us from -- that's the apologia of every two-bit dictator and strongman since Caesar "protecting" Rome from the Gauls. It's the antithesis of modern western thought and a reversion back to -- well, not the middle ages but the early modern period which gave us both the original Inquisition and Louis XIV's absolute monarchy.
But Warhammer 40k wasn't written as a parody. It was written as a satire, as a political one even, in the vein of 2000 AD. The point of it was to mock a specific political trend that I won't discuss more here.


To criticize the Empire we have to step outside the fictional universe and criticize the bedrock foundations and assumptions which make up the world in the first place. But if we accept the universe running as written, it's hard for me to see how the human race could survive without creating something like the Imperium. Those humans which took a different path are either dead, slaves of the other factions, or chaos-creatures.
Or, in the vast majority of cases, were slaughtered by the Imperium. The Imperium itself destroyed every other human civilization during the Great Crusades even though many had been not only surviving but thriving. ****, with the recent return of the Squats as the LEagues of Votann, we see that there's another human civilization that isn't employing the Imperium's methods, even allying with non-humans, and is doing just fine ten thousand years after big-E and Horus's shouting match. In-universe, Mankind used to be a much more advanced and powerful race and stayed as such during millenia until it was destroyed by a freak phenomenon (the birth of Slaanesh creating warp storms isolating every other planet) that the Imperium wouldn't be able to deal with either, but the Imperium conceals this golden age and call it "The Dark Age of Technology".

So yeah, even in a world were every fear of the fascist is true, fascism is still a terrible way to address them.

[Spacewolf]

A long time ago, the GitP Warhammer 40k thread had a discussion about a potential 40k TV show or movie, and we more or less came to the conclusion that 40k as it is CAN'T be made into something that is suitable for a normal audience.

It's not just the incredible amount of gore and violence, but also the political themes. To keep it incredibly brief to abide by the rules; there are no 'good' guys, but even the protagonists consider acts and mentalities which are unrepeatable on this board to be lightweight liberalism.

That being said, this was before The Boys and (to a lesser extent) some of the more depraved things that happened in Game of Thrones made it to TV, so perhaps there could now be room for softer version of 40k.

As such, I'm imagining that a 40k TV series will likely be about Space Marines being big and heroic and killing monsters, because that wouldn't be a million miles away from the 40k video game (Space Marine 2) that is due out reasonably soon, not quite as a tie-in but following it in the public memory. The alternative would be something like Eisenhorn, to slowly start out with normal humans doing relatively reasonable things, and then slippery-sloping their way into more typical 40k horror.

And frankly, Henry Caville as Captain Titus or Gregor Eisenhorn? I'm down for that. :smalltongue:

Cavill is probably to young for Eisenhorn, Ravenor on the other hand. They could start it while Eisenhorn was still teaching him then use Cavills power to start of the Eisenhorn show before spinning off into two tv shows. Someone mentioned these guys do horror and Cherubael would be a good first season antagonist if they wanted horror.

[Rynjin]

Cavill is probably to young for Eisenhorn, Ravenor on the other hand. They could start it while Eisenhorn was still teaching him then use Cavills power to start of the Eisenhorn show before spinning off into two tv shows. Someone mentioned these guys do horror and Cherubael would be a good first season antagonist if they wanted horror.

Eh, isn't Eisenhorn like "really 700 years old" anyway? Does it matter if he's 400 and looks 50 or 400 and looks 39?

[Catullus64]

I hardly see the problem of 'no good guys in 40k.' There's no faction of good guys, but individual writers have had success shaping individuals who can remain sympathetic and understandable. Ciaphas Cain stands out to me as one of the great achievement in this regard, mostly accomplished via his wry detachment and cynicism about the horrors of the 41st Millenium. This despite him being a Commissar, practically the embodiment for Imperial oppression and fanaticism.

[BloodSquirrel]

Eh, isn't Eisenhorn like "really 700 years old" anyway? Does it matter if he's 400 and looks 50 or 400 and looks 39?

Adding ten years to a 39 year old an actor isn't exactly hard anyway. A little bit of grey hair will about do it.

[dancrilis]

they are not justified. they are not good. they are the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable, and they are not to be taken as who are doing the best they can, or the right thing.

... even the existence of Chaos does not justify its crimes.

... hmmm, sounds like heresy.


It's no coincidence that the leaders of every chaos faction in 40K are Space Marines.

I think you might be forgetting the very real gods and the infinite demons that they have at their command - the chaos space marines come to your world you are having a bad day, much like if the orcs, tyranids come to your world (maybe a bit worse), but if the deamons of chaos come to your world you are about to have one of the worst days imaginable and they can show up anywhere at any time.

There is a reason that the Ordo Malleus is the most powerful Inquisition faction - and the initial focus point of the Inquisition.

On the topic of deamons, a 40k show about 'The Adventurers of Skulltaker' essentially in the same kindof idea as 'One Punch Man' might work - you know at some point he will show up and kill whoever it is he is killing today but that could act as more a framing device for what viewers know to expect and the episodes could focus on anything in any location across the 40k universe.

[GloatingSwine]

I think you might be forgetting the very real gods and the infinite demons that they have at their command - the chaos space marines come to your world you are having a bad day, much like if the orcs, tyranids come to your world (maybe a bit worse), but if the deamons of chaos come to your world you are about to have one of the worst days imaginable and they can show up anywhere at any time.


Daemons in 40k don't really just manifest in the materium like that though. They need help from the mortal side. It's not like WHFB where there can be major daemonic incursions at army scale without mortals pulling the trigger on it.

And usually that help is from one of the traitor legions.

[Fyraltari]

... hmmm, sounds like heresy.
Thanks! Did you know that the word "heresy" comes from the Greek word for "choice" and is best translated as "the process of deciding for oneself how to live rather than deferring to authority"?


I think you might be forgetting the very real gods and the infinite demons that they have at their command - the chaos space marines come to your world you are having a bad day, much like if the orcs, tyranids come to your world (maybe a bit worse), but if the deamons of chaos come to your world you are about to have one of the worst days imaginable and they can show up anywhere at any time.
No they can't. That's why they reached to Horus in the first place.


There is a reason that the Ordo Malleus is the most powerful Inquisition faction - and the initial focus point of the Inquisition.
And they're bad at their jobs. They literally burn their own planets to cinders (when they don't use virus bombs while one of their main enemies feeds on disease, real smart move, there) and murder any witnesses they can find.

[pendell]

Thanks! Did you know that the word "heresy" comes from the Greek word for "choice" and is best translated as "the process of deciding for oneself how to live rather than deferring to authority"?


No they can't. That's why they reached to Horus in the first place.


And they're bad at their jobs. They literally burn their own planets to cinders (when they don't use virus bombs while one of their main enemies feeds on disease, real smart move, there) and murder any witnesses they can find.

That's one of the many, many ironies of the WH40K universe that everything the Empire does to restrain chaos actually feeds it. Go to war? Khorne has a feast of skulls and blood. Drop a virus bomb? Nurgle gets to party. There isn't one thing they can do that won't make the situation worse, including nothing. The Empire is at best fighting a holding action, but the situation is not stable.

However, WH40K being what it is, I suppose we'll never in-universe see the 43rd or 44th millenium or any solution to the problem. Instead we will endlessly see the same factions locked in never-ending combat, like replaying 1916 over and over and over.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[GloatingSwine]

No they can't. That's why they reached to Horus in the first place.


Lorgar.

Lorgar was the first traitor, whose fear of Chaos and belief in the inevitability of its victory due to the divine nature of the Chaos gods and the rejection of religious worship from the Emperor led him to believe that submission to the Ruinous Powers was humanity's only hope for survival.

[LeSwordfish]

Lorgar.

Lorgar was the first traitor, whose fear of Chaos and belief in the inevitability of its victory due to the divine nature of the Chaos gods and the rejection of religious worship from the Emperor led him to believe that submission to the Ruinous Powers was humanity's only hope for survival.

Sure but the chaos gods used Lorgar and Erebus to get their in with Horus.

[Fyraltari]

That's one of the many, many ironies of the WH40K universe that everything the Empire does to restrain chaos actually feeds it. Go to war? Khorne has a feast of skulls and blood. Drop a virus bomb? Nurgle gets to party. There isn't one thing they can do that won't make the situation worse, including nothing. The Empire is at best fighting a holding action, but the situation is not stable.

However, WH40K being what it is, I suppose we'll never in-universe see the 43rd or 44th millenium or any solution to the problem. Instead we will endlessly see the same factions locked in never-ending combat, like replaying 1916 over and over and over.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I gotta ask, why are you insisting on calling it "The Empire" instead of "The Imperium"?

Also, the solution is to educate people about Chaos and magic so that they understand why it's better to stay away, to treat your citizens with decency so that Chaos doesn't have much to offer to them, to not to go to war every five goddam minutes, to cooperates with the aliens that can be reasoned with like the Eldar, the Necrons and the Tau (the Orks and the Tyrannids are lost causes, frankly) and to advance technological research to find countermeasures to Chaos and FTL that doesn't rely on the warp (the Necrons have both of those things so it's definitely possible).

And again, human factions outside of the Imperium worked it out better than it did. The Leagues of Votann have mutually beneficial relationship with their A.I.s and genetically engineered themselves to keep under Chaos's radar, the Gueva'sa enjoy more freedom and higher standards of living that 99.99% of the Imperium's population and they're not flooded with bloodletters, and the historical human factions like the Interex and the Diasporex were dealing with Chaos just fine until the Imperium steamrolled them.

Edit:

Lorgar.

Lorgar was the first traitor

Don't you mean Erebus or Kor Phaeron? :smalltongue:

[Catullus64]

However, WH40K being what it is, I suppose we'll never in-universe see the 43rd or 44th millenium or any solution to the problem. Instead we will endlessly see the same factions locked in never-ending combat, like replaying 1916 over and over and over.


Hmm. I can't tell if you're stating this as a problem or just a fact. This is true, but it's most definitely a feature. 40k isn't a story, it's the texture of a story, there to provide a sense of narrative and epic scope as you smash your army of tiny action figures against the other guy's. That, and to provide a sense of emotional investment that justifies spending a month's rent on said tiny action figures.

[dancrilis]

Daemons in 40k don't really just manifest in the materium like that though.


No they can't.
Yes they can.

Daemons can speak to mortals through the warp into real space (and can hear mortals in turn) - that is how the corrupt people, and if those people succumb to corruption then they could become daemonhosts or be guided into other service. Psykers are particularly easy to speak to but they can speak to seemingly anyone (probably not blanks).

For instance Gheistos Cataclysm where a latent psyker with no knowledge of anything lashed out at a single guy and doomed a world.

Also the warp occassionally simply eats planets and spits them out later (i.e the War of Piety).

Another example would be the incursion of Ferrite Mons where a joke was heard in the warp and responded to.

Another would be the Purging of Camp 109 (https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Purging_of_Camp_109) didn't seem to have any psykers, and traitor marines etc - just a desperate man offering a prayer to a power of the warp and the power responding.
Actually the Purging of Camp 109 might make a fine series - enough going on there to hold audience attention and tell a story with various characters.

Ignoring all this the Chaos Gods can seem to simply open warp rifts if they want - they just don't normally, if I recall correctly.

The fact that the Imperium has no real way of dealing with this isn't really the fault of the Imperium - their enemy is simply beyond them.

[GloatingSwine]

Yes they can.

Daemons can speak to mortals through the warp into real space (and can hear mortals in turn) - that is how the corrupt people, and if those people succumb to corruption then they could become daemonhosts or be guided into other service. Psykers are particularly easy to speak to but they can speak to seemingly anyone (probably not blanks).


There's a difference between daemons speaking to mortals and influencing them and them just being able to manifest from the warp. Random bloodthirsters don't just show up and wreck stuff, they need something to weaken the boundaries of reality from the materium side.

[dancrilis]

There's a difference between daemons speaking to mortals and influencing them and them just being able to manifest from the warp. Random bloodthirsters don't just show up and wreck stuff, they need something to weaken the boundaries of reality from the materium side.

The details are somewhat scatchy but it seems Skarbrand did materialise (rather the was summoned) on Lutoris Epsilon.

Ignoring that Bloodthirsters and other daemons do engage Elder, Necrons etc seemingly without any Imperial (or traitor) presence - so they can get to real space without such.

Whether it weakens them or is uncomfortable or they have better things to do at home etc they seem to normally stay in the warp, but they can seem to get around that if they feel the need.

Some random person on some random planet who is proud of their ability to fight would be better not calling out a challenge to any who might hear - just in case something does hear and chooses to respond, the chances of that responce are low but higher then zero.

[Fyraltari]

Regardless of whether its impossible or merely extremely hard for daemons to manifest in large numbers without mortal help, it reamins true that they wouldn't have the Traitor Legions, the Dark Mechnaicus, who-knows-how-many renegade Guard regiments and astartes chapters if it weren't for the Imperium, and that those forces certainly seem to be their main ones. The Black Crusades aren't lead by Be'lakor.

[dancrilis]

Regardless of whether its impossible or merely extremely hard for daemons to manifest in large numbers without mortal help

Well I would say it is not impossible* anyway Ix'thar'ganix seeded worlds with lesser daemons who stayed on them for thousands of years manipulating events, and they personally opened a warp rift and lead a daemonic invasion to capture the powers of one oracle (although opening the rift was difficult apparently).
Tz'Keth'K'Zar gave visions to psykers tricking them into thinking he was the Emperor and then greatly enhanced their powers, and only manifested when they called to the Emperor for help, at which point he transformed them into a warp rift - so again he wasn't actually summoned (although the barrier was likely weak).

*of course chaos does not tend to follow the rules - even their own rules - so even when something is stated as absolute exceptions are likely plentiful.


, it reamins true that they wouldn't have the Traitor Legions, the Dark Mechnaicus, who-knows-how-many renegade Guard regiments and astartes chapters if it weren't for the Imperium, and that those forces certainly seem to be their main ones. The Black Crusades aren't lead by Be'lakor.

I don't think those forces really matter (much) to the discussion on Imperial control - the citizens of the Imperium are not being oppressed to avoid bringing the Traitor Legions down on themselves it is so that they don't have hope, despair, rage, joy etc and effectively exist in a state of apathy as such is less likely to attract attention from the immaterium.

The mortal forces of chaos are effectively the scouting party, testing the defences and setting the stage for the real forces - without the Imperium the forces of Chaos would want a different scouting party but likely such would be acquired without much effort.

[Trafalgar]

Adding ten years to a 39 year old an actor isn't exactly hard anyway. A little bit of grey hair will about do it.

Hopefully, using makeup to add 10 years to Henry Cavill will be much easier than using CGI to remove his moustache.

[pendell]

I gotta ask, why are you insisting on calling it "The Empire" instead of "The Imperium"?


Because "The Imperium of Man" sounds a lot like the "Empire of Man" in Jerry Pournelle's Codominium universe. They are both religious dictatorships which claim to be the sole legitimate government for all humanity, and when I'm typing in a hurry I can confuse the two. Imperium and Empire are synonyms in English, in any event.



Also, the solution is to educate people about Chaos and magic so that they understand why it's better to stay away, to treat your citizens with decency so that Chaos doesn't have much to offer to them, to not to go to war every five goddam minutes, to cooperates with the aliens that can be reasoned with like the Eldar, the Necrons and the Tau (the Orks and the Tyrannids are lost causes, frankly) and to advance technological research to find countermeasures to Chaos and FTL that doesn't rely on the warp (the Necrons have both of those things so it's definitely possible).



I don't know if these next quotes are reliable, but human encounters with the Eldar have been a lot less friendly than those they had in Tolkien's world.



Trust not in their appearance, for the Eldar are as alien to good, honest men as the vile Tyranids and savage Orks. There is no understanding them for there is nothing to understand - they are a random force in the universe.



It is too easy for an Eldar to embrace the obscene virtues of Chaos, for Slaanesh is nothing more than a manifestation of the Eldar mind in its most wild and unconstrained form. Human morality is meaningless to the Eldar, and to the dark side of the Eldar mind all live is to be expended at a whim. Cruelty and generosity are but the impulse of a moment. Beauty and sensuality are virtues that can be expressed in bloodshed just as easily as in song. To an unfettered Eldar mind there is neither sanity nor madness, but merely a wave of perfect existence fulfilled by its own savage momentum.



Eldrad is the greatest among us. He is the sun which eclipses the light of our stars. He is Ulthwé and the fate of our kind rests in his hands. His eyes are the keenest, no detail goes unnoticed. Four thousand runes can he cast, guiding our path through torment and war, death and salvation. He is the pathfinder, the seeker, the true guide. Even your race has trembled before his might, though you may not have known it. It was he who guided us to the Ork known as Ghazghkull, and commanded us to steer his path to your world of Armageddon. Ten thousand Eldar lives would have been lost if he had not done so. What sacrifice is a million humans for such a cause?

He knows your affairs better than you do yourself. He warned that weakling seer you call Emperor of the treachery of Horus and the strife which would engulf us, just as it engulfed the rest of the galaxy, but your arrogance deafened you to his words. Your stupidity almost destroyed the galaxy, yet you never knew how close the forces of light were to our ultimate defeat. He saw the Great Devourer and warned our kin on Iyanden, even before they had neared our galaxy.

To him all futures are laid out, just as your crude implements of torture are laid out on the cold metal of that shelf. You say we are random and capricious, we say you are vulgar and idiotic. Some of you call us your enemies. All races are our enemy in time. Some of you call us your allies. You are not allies, any more than a butcher’s knife is his ally. You are tools, nothing more. To be used and expended to protect our race, that is your fate.

Your kind think you are so magnificent, yet even now, at the nadir of our power, we can manipulate you, turn you to our ends, as easily as you might pull a trigger and fire a gun. Our time will come again, Eldrad has promised us. Once more you upstart Mon-keigh [subject spits] shall kneel before our power! This time we will not be so lenient! We will exterminate you, every world, every vessel, every one of you! Eldrad has seen the stars stained red with your blood, and it pleases him!

You think us weak, but we will be your doom, children of Earth.







And again, human factions outside of the Imperium worked it out better than it did.


The best rebuttal of this is the simple fact that the Imperium is still around and those other factions aren't. Yes, the Imperium may have destroyed them, but the Imperium is one peer faction among several. If these smaller human groups can't repel the Empire, they can't repel the Tyrannids, Chaos Legions, etc. etc. either.

The Imperium survives, they do not. So all in all, I'd say the Imperium must be doing something right .. in-universe. I still consider them utterly abhorrent.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[GloatingSwine]

I don't know if these next quotes are reliable, but human encounters with the Eldar have been a lot less friendly than those they had in Tolkien's world.


It's important to remember that the Eldar place absolutely no value on any other life compared to their own.

If a billion mon-keigh had to die to save a single Eldar soul from She-who-thirsts, that's not even a choice to them.

[awa]

The best rebuttal of this is the simple fact that the Imperium is still around and those other factions aren't. Yes, the Imperium may have destroyed them, but the Imperium is one peer faction among several. If these smaller human groups can't repel the Empire, they can't repel the Tyrannids, Chaos Legions, etc. etc. either.

The Imperium survives, they do not. So all in all, I'd say the Imperium must be doing something right .. in-universe. I still consider them utterly abhorrent.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
Definitely
Most were destroyed almost casually with only a small fraction of the Imperiums military force.

A key thing to note is that war-hammer is not the vision of a single person or group it is a thing that has existed for decades with vast amounts of wildly contradictory material and outright retcons, depending on which bits of the cannon you read almost any perspective of the setting could be found.

[Sapphire Guard]

There are also no good factions in, say, Cyberpunk or Vampire, but that doesn't mean you can't tell stories in those settings. Space Marine made a great game out of being at the coalface of an ork invasion, uniting most characters in the desire not to be eaten by orks, without compromising the setting.

[TheSummoner]

Amazon being attached to this gives me a bad feeling and the only thing that's cause for any degree of cautious optimism is Henry Cavill's position as executive producer. Whether the show has a chance or not, really comes down to how much creative control he has over it. There's plenty of recent evidence that Amazon simply does not care about staying accurate to the source material in their adaptations, while at the same time Cavill himself is known to care about keeping true to the source material and is also a fan of 40k. I wouldn't call myself hopeful, but my outlook is better for this than it has been for many shows or movies that have come out lately. Time will tell.

[Fyraltari]

Because "The Imperium of Man" sounds a lot like the "Empire of Man" in Jerry Pournelle's Codominium universe. They are both religious dictatorships which claim to be the sole legitimate government for all humanity, and when I'm typing in a hurry I can confuse the two. Imperium and Empire are synonyms in English, in any event.
Okay, it's just a tad confusing because "The Empire of Man" is the main faction in the Fantasy setting.


I don't know if these next quotes are reliable, but human encounters with the Eldar have been a lot less friendly than those they had in Tolkien's world.
Yes I know, this isn't called PeaceHammer. But I did say "can be reasonned with" not" friendly". It's entirely possible to find common ground with the Tau, the Necrons and the Eldar. Your own quotes there point out that Eldar tried to warn the Imperium about the Horus Heresy and they just refused to listen.



The best rebuttal of this is the simple fact that the Imperium is still around and those other factions aren't.
The Leagues of Votann are older than the Imperium (probably, it's hard to tell) and they're still around.

Yes, the Imperium may have destroyed them, but the Imperium is one peer faction among several. If these smaller human groups can't repel the Empire, they can't repel the Tyrannids, Chaos Legions, etc. etc. either.
There wouldn't be Chaos Legions if not for the Imperium. Orks have been everywhere for as long as Mankind has had interstellar travel so clearly they could deal with them. And the Imperium can't deal with Tyrannids either. Like, it's straight-up said in the fluff that there are more Tyrannid organisms than bullets in the galaxy. Genestealer cults would have harder time of doing their thing in a society not as corrupt and repressive as the Imperium, though.


The Imperium survives, they do not. So all in all, I'd say the Imperium must be doing something right .. in-universe.
That's such a weird argument. You're familiar with The Man in the High Castle? if not, the only important thing is that it's a world where the Axis won WWII and managed to take over the entire world. Would you say "The Nazis survive, the Allies do not. So all in all, I'd say the Nazis must be doing something right... in-universe"?

Like "The Imperium are the best at defending Humanity against aliens and demons, as proven by the fact that they destroyed most other human factions" isn't a very convincing argument.



It's important to remember that the Eldar place absolutely no value on any other life compared to their own.

If a billion mon-keigh had to die to save a single Eldar soul from She-who-thirsts, that's not even a choice to them.
Which is to be constrasted with the Imperium which places absolutely no values on even the lives of their own. If the commanders of the Imperial Guard have to sacrifice a billion men to kill a few Eldars, they'll do it.

It's always funny to me when people argue that the Xenos are jsut as bad as the Imperium because they do to other people less than a tenth of what the Imperium does to its own. Frankly, can you give me a reason why the average human would be better off under the Imperium than as a Gue'vasa, a Kin or even under the rule of a Chaos Lord?

[hamishspence]

The description of the Men Of Stone (created around M21) sounds very much like the Leagues of Votann:

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Men_of_Stone

Artificially created (all organic Leagues of Votann members are cloned), lack of "being affected by daemons", and the building of Men of Iron, fit perfectly. The difference being that theirs are not enemies to them. Perhaps the decision to make them citizens and part of the Leagues, was what kept the Leagues from being destroyed by their Men of Iron - now known as Ironkin.

[pendell]

Which is to be constrasted with the Imperium which places absolutely no values on even the lives of their own. If the commanders of the Imperial Guard have to sacrifice a billion men to kill a few Eldars, they'll do it.

It's always funny to me when people argue that the Xenos are jsut as bad as the Imperium because they do to other people less than a tenth of what the Imperium does to its own. Frankly, can you give me a reason why the average human would be better off under the Imperium than as a Gue'vasa, a Kin or even under the rule of a Chaos Lord?

Here's where I have to ask a lore question because I'm not familiar with it.

Just how large is the Imperium? And how many of those worlds are, at any time, a battleground or the subject of an exterminatus?

I haven't seen that part of the lore, but if it's anything like the star wars universe, I expect there are many worlds, perhaps millions, where all of this is nothing but a bedtime story for the children and the subject of endless commissar lectures which the populace sleeps through. Like in Orwell's 1984 -- things are terrible in the theaters of war where the three factions fight a never-ending stalemate, but the entire point of the 1984 world order is these regions are relatively small compared to the massive territories ruled over by the factions. To Smith and everyone he knows, war is something that happens on a telescreen, the subject of a ten minute's hate. He doesn't experience air raids or Eurasian tank raids. The world of 1984 is in state of war not all that different from the real-world cold war; a war in which there are firm rules confining the various conflicts to peripheral theaters, not the all-out wars of the 1940s.

Given the fact that the Imperium has been in a stalemate for centuries if not millenia by this point in the story, I would expect it to be a similar situation -- you would have a thin slice of worlds and space in which the Imperium sacrifices lives by the billion to secure the peace of the thousands of worlds and trillions (quadrillions? quintillions?) of human citizens who know nothing of it. Who pay exorbitant war taxes and labor the whole lives for the war machine but who are nonetheless living more-or-less peaceful lives.

That fragile peace is the reason the Imperium exists ; to provide a refuge and sanctuary from war for the human race. And to a commissar or inquisitor, that fragile peace is worth any cost and any sacrifice. Worth both dying for and killing for.

Again, I'm willing to be corrected if the lore doesn't work that way. But if you're dealing with a society which is locked in a stalemated war for such a long time I would expect there to be some "safe" region which supplies the fighting troops. If the entire Imperium was under threat at all times they should have already collapsed centuries ago. I see it sort of like the Roman Empire circa 200 CE -- war on all the peripheries but invisible to the vast majority of citizens in the interior provinces, who experience pax romanum.

UPDATE: According to this (https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Imperium_of_Man) the Imperium consists of more than a million worlds and has a population , according to extrapolation (https://financialsentiments.com/blog/2018/2/11/the-imperium-of-man-and-the-dark-ages-part-iv-humanitys-gdp), of 8 quadrillion citizens. 8 THOUSAND THOUSAND BILLION people. And that's just the Hive Worlds.

Again: How many of these are experiencing war at any time?

To us, sacrificing an entire world and a billion people is a catastrophe because we only live on the one world. But if you're in the Imperium and you're weighing up a single world in the scales against a million worlds and 8 quadrillion citizens -- well, suddenly a billion lives looks like a bargain, if it means we buy 8 quadrillion citizens a breathing space of peace. Compared to a quadrillion, a billion is less than one percent of one percent, not even a rounding error.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[dancrilis]

Frankly, can you give me a reason why the average human would be better off under the Imperium than as a Gue'vasa, a Kin or even under the rule of a Chaos Lord?

Due to these groups having less negativity towards dealing with xenos races they are more likely to deal with the Dark Eldar - and the average human likely is better off being as far from the Dark Eldar as possible.



Just how large is the Imperium? And how many of those worlds are, at any time, a battleground or the subject of an exterminatus?


It depends on the story being told.

Saying a thousand worlds are destroyed daily be the inquisition due to filing errors where someone put the world in the heresy folder instead of the non-heresy folder, is likely to most people a caricature of the setting.
Saying the the inquisition destroys a world maybe once a century and only when it is beyond salvation (daemon world, tyranid infestation etc) is likely low according to most lore.

There are indications (which I think are more modern) that there are ~1,000,000 human populated imperial worlds - but this seems fairly low to me, particularly as the Imperium itself has no clue as they lose worlds all the time (the routes to them cut off by warp storms) and they find worlds all the time (Rogue Traders do have a job to do after all).

So I think the best answer you will get is they have 'lots' of worlds, and 'very few' of them (as compared of 'lots') are destroyed with any frequency by their own side (or any side).

As for the average imperial citizen they will go through life never having a chance to burn the heretic, kill the mutant or purge the unclean.

[hamishspence]

I see it sort of like the Roman Empire circa 200 CE -- war on all the peripheries but invisible to the vast majority of citizens in the interior provinces, who experience pax romanum.



The Imperium is pretty thinly spread. The whole thing could be said to be peripheries to some extent. Even quite close to Terra there will be large areas of non-Imperial worlds between the Imperial ones.

[snowblizz]

Here's where I have to ask a lore question because I'm not familiar with it.

Just how large is the Imperium? And how many of those worlds are, at any time, a battleground or the subject of an exterminatus?

I haven't seen that part of the lore, but if it's anything like the star wars universe, I expect there are many worlds, perhaps millions, where all of this is nothing but a bedtime story for the children and the subject of endless commissar lectures which the populace sleeps through. Like in Orwell's 1984 -- things are terrible in the theaters of war where the three factions fight a never-ending stalemate, but the entire point of the 1984 world order is these regions are relatively small compared to the massive territories ruled over by the factions. To Smith and everyone he knows, war is something that happens on a telescreen, the subject of a ten minute's hate. He doesn't experience air raids or Eurasian tank raids. The world of 1984 is in state of war not all that different from the real-world cold war; a war in which there are firm rules confining the various conflicts to peripheral theaters, not the all-out wars of the 1940s.

Given the fact that the Imperium has been in a stalemate for centuries if not millenia by this point in the story, I would expect it to be a similar situation -- you would have a thin slice of worlds and space in which the Imperium sacrifices lives by the billion to secure the peace of the thousands of worlds and trillions (quadrillions? quintillions?) of human citizens who know nothing of it. Who pay exorbitant war taxes and labor the whole lives for the war machine but who are nonetheless living more-or-less peaceful lives.

That fragile peace is the reason the Imperium exists ; to provide a refuge and sanctuary from war for the human race. And to a commissar or inquisitor, that fragile peace is worth any cost and any sacrifice. Worth both dying for and killing for.

Again, I'm willing to be corrected if the lore doesn't work that way. But if you're dealing with a society which is locked in a stalemated war for such a long time I would expect there to be some "safe" region which supplies the fighting troops. If the entire Imperium was under threat at all times they should have already collapsed centuries ago. I see it sort of like the Roman Empire circa 200 CE -- war on all the peripheries but invisible to the vast majority of citizens in the interior provinces, who experience pax romanum.

UPDATE: According to this (https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Imperium_of_Man) the Imperium consists of more than a million worlds and has a population , according to extrapolation (https://financialsentiments.com/blog/2018/2/11/the-imperium-of-man-and-the-dark-ages-part-iv-humanitys-gdp), of 8 quadrillion citizens. 8 THOUSAND THOUSAND BILLION people. And that's just the Hive Worlds.

Again: How many of these are experiencing war at any time?

To us, sacrificing an entire world and a billion people is a catastrophe because we only live on the one world. But if you're in the Imperium and you're weighing up a single world in the scales against a million worlds and 8 quadrillion citizens -- well, suddenly a billion lives looks like a bargain, if it means we buy 8 quadrillion citizens a breathing space of peace. Compared to a quadrillion, a billion is less than one percent of one percent, not even a rounding error.


Respectfully,

Brian P.
So the problem is that there isn't really any "safe space". The nature of Warhammer 40k, and it is specifically written so, allows war to come to any place at any time. Not every world is always at war, but all of it are under threat, internally or externally. And those who aren't actively at war are usually producing resources and feeding the ones who are. The threat always exists. Any day the planet you live on can be subjected to a threat that was completely unforeseen and a massive Space Hulk filled with millions of orks just popped into existence at the fringes of your solarsystem. If you are lucky. The Imperium is incomprehensibly large, but stretched over incomprehensible amount of space as well with a lot of "dead" space in between the concentrations. If the Warp wasn't such a fickle and dangerous place to navigate, there just is no assurance you will end up where you want to go usually, other than the shortest most stablest routes, the Imperium would have fallen along time ago. The Imperium is basically everywhere, but also beset from all sides. Also don't be fooled by the "stalemate". Vast "territories" are lost or regain constantly. Entire (sub-)sectors can be cut off, lost to invasion and eventually retaken.

[Fyraltari]

Like in Orwell's 1984 -- things are terrible in the theaters of war where the three factions fight a never-ending stalemate, but the entire point of the 1984 world order is these regions are relatively small compared to the massive territories ruled over by the factions. To Smith and everyone he knows, war is something that happens on a telescreen, the subject of a ten minute's hate. He doesn't experience air raids or Eurasian tank raids. The world of 1984 is in state of war not all that different from the real-world cold war; a war in which there are firm rules confining the various conflicts to peripheral theaters, not the all-out wars of the 1940s.
That's not... What!? Have you read 1984, because that is very much not the point.

For Winston Smith, the war is real, London is under semi-permanent bombing and it is theorized in-universe (by Julia) that the Party is the one bombing the city to ensure compliance with the regime in the name of winning the war. O'Brien, of the Innee Party says that the three world powers all adhere to the same ideology under different name and only keep the war going to control their respective populations. And given what doublethink is, it's entirely possible that Eurasia and Eastasia don't even actually exist and that Oceania covers anywhere between all of the globe and as little as Airstrip One and made the war up.

The point isn't that Winston Smith lives a relatively cozy existence far away from the war (he really doesn't, his life is appalling at every level) it's that "the War" is something the Regime keeps going to legitimize its uncessary abuses.


Given the fact that the Imperium has been in a stalemate for centuries if not millenia by this point in the story, I would expect it to be a similar situation -- you would have a thin slice of worlds and space in which the Imperium sacrifices lives by the billion to secure the peace of the thousands of worlds and trillions (quadrillions? quintillions?) of human citizens who know nothing of it. Who pay exorbitant war taxes and labor the whole lives for the war machine but who are nonetheless living more-or-less peaceful lives.
If you can call a life of constant toil, terrified of your superiors who do little to nothing to protect you against gangs and literal monsters but while execute an entire factory for demanding a 17-hour workday "peace". The highborns of the hive cities literally go to the underhives to hunt humans for sport.
Also every planet has to pay a tithe which includes people for the Guard, the Astartes or to be devoured by the Golden Throne


That fragile peace is the reason the Imperium exists ; to provide a refuge and sanctuary from war for the human race.
No, it does not. The Imperium is constantly involved in wars of conquest and agression. The Imperium attacked the Tau not the other way around.


And to a commissar or inquisitor, that fragile peace is worth any cost and any sacrifice. Worth both dying for and killing for.
Nope, to an inquisitor or a commissar, the existence of anything but humans in servive to the God-Emperor is a personal affront. It is the Imperium stated goal to purge the galaxy of anything but themselves. They just don't have the means to do it, but not for lack of trying. Any human life not spent in the constant struggle is seen as worthless, wasted or heretical.n


Again, I'm willing to be corrected if the lore doesn't work that way. But if you're dealing with a society which is locked in a stalemated war for such a long time I would expect there to be some "safe" region which supplies the fighting troops. If the entire Imperium was under threat at all times they should have already collapsed centuries ago.
Yeah, it should. The kore of the games where big man in armor beats tank doesn't have very realistic logistics. Big surprise.

I see it sort of like the Roman Empire circa 200 CE -- war on all the peripheries but invisible to the vast majority of citizens in the interior provinces, who experience pax romanum.
Sorry, but I have to:
In the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millenium, there is no Pax Romanum. There is only war.


To us, sacrificing an entire world and a billion people is a catastrophe because we only live on the one world. But if you're in the Imperium and you're weighing up a single world in the scales against a million worlds and 8 quadrillion citizens -- well, suddenly a billion lives looks like a bargain, if it means we buy 8 quadrillion citizens a breathing space of peace. Compared to a quadrillion, a billion is less than one percent of one percent, not even a rounding error.
Which is funny because the Imperium actually does lose planet due to rounding error. Damn, it's like they're bad at this or something. This is a false equivalency by the way. Not burning up a planet does not condemn the entire Imperium. The inquisition simply will not brook anyone existing outside of the scope of the Imperium and they don't have the manpower necessary to retake the planet available. Or the inquisitor in question was on a power trip, which given what they're like is just as probable as the other thing.

[snowblizz]

Which is funny because the Imperium actually does lose planet due to rounding error. Damn, it's like they're bad at this or something. This is a false equivalency by the way. Not burning up a planet does not condemn the entire Imperium. The inquisition simply will not brook anyone existing outside of the scope of the Imperium and they don't have the manpower necessary to retake the planet available. Or the inquisitor in question was on a power trip, which given what they're like is just as probable as the other thing.

It's not just a planet here or there sometimes. The gambit to turn away Hivefleet... ermm Behemoth maybe it was, involved depopulating an entire swath of space to turn the hivefleet towards Ork infested space. Which in theory is brilliant plan until you consider that whoever wins that war isn't going to be a veeeeery difficult opposition. But in the short term it diverts the hivefleet and at least it's eating another enemy instead of some hundreds oh human worlds on it's way towards Terra.
There is a lot of short term this might fu us in the future things the Imperium does because it's expedient in the now.

[hamishspence]

It's not just a planet here or there sometimes. The gambit to turn away Hivefleet... ermm Behemoth maybe it was, involved depopulating an entire swath of space to turn the hivefleet towards Ork infested space.

Hive Fleet Leviathan. The guy responsible (Lord Inquisitor Kryptmann) didn't do so to divert the fleet, but to slow the fleet (and he was declared a heretic for it by the Inquisition at large, and a warrant put out for his arrest.)

Diverting the fleet required a different thing - capturing Genestealers, taking them to Ork space, and dropping them off.

[GloatingSwine]

Hive Fleet Leviathan. The guy responsible (Lord Inquisitor Kryptmann) didn't do so to divert the fleet, but to slow the fleet (and he was declared a heretic for it by the Inquisition at large, and a warrant put out for his arrest.)


Although that was possibly due to the number of mail-squigs they received thanking him for "da best present evver!"

[-D-]

Which is to be constrasted with the Imperium which places absolutely no values on even the lives of their own. If the commanders of the Imperial Guard have to sacrifice a billion men to kill a few Eldars, they'll do it.
Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.


It's always funny to me when people argue that the Xenos are jsut as bad as the Imperium because they do to other people less than a tenth of what the Imperium does to its own.
First, Imperium isn't just Hivecities and Forge Worlds. There is everything from Paradise worlds to just some outpost in bum**** nowhere.

Xenos are just as bad although it depends on Xenos.

Tyranids - will eat you and turn you into more Tyranids
Leagues - would probably kill you for not being Kin
Necrons - some would flay you, others would use you as cattle for body parts, and some would vaporize you because you aren't made of necrodermis.
Tau - forced sterilization and draft, maybe they will send you to cultural exchange with a Demon world
Eldar - you are essentially Monkey to them, so killing you all to postpone their inevitable decay a few years is great
Drukhari - will kill you if they are merciful. If not, I hope you like being sentient furniture for several hundred years
Ork - will gleefully exterminate you
Chaos - will spread memetic, mind-destroying hazards, and being on their Demon worlds isn't much better. Each of these will destroy you over time, both physically and mentally.
- Nurgle - Hope you like eternal despair and letting flies live in your eyes
- Tzeentch - Are you tired of waking up as a sentient being? Mutations are fun.
- Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.
- Slaanesh - Have you ever considered being used as a joytoy for a demon? Then ground to cocaine and snorted/eaten?

[Rynjin]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?



I'm not sure if this is really convincing Warhammer RP, or you really think there's some intelligent equivalency to be made between sapient beings and dead skin cells.

Sentences like this are why a lot of people associate the Warhammer crowd with other unsavory stereotypes and groups.


- Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.

Genuinely, I've never been clear on how, exactly, this is different from the life of an average Guardsman. Except that maybe the Khorne Flakes get superpowers out of the deal and seem to really enjoy themselves.

(As evidenced by my favorite voiceline from Darktide, the Zealot Preacher's "Blood for the Emperor, skulls for the Golden Throne!" warcry on activating your class skill.)

[Psyren]

really convincing Warhammer RP

I still know barely anything about the property and I laughed out loud :smallbiggrin:

[Fyraltari]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.
Brushing aside how incredibly callous this is.

My own body doesn't strive to make each and every single cell in it a miserable and barely functionnal wreck.



First, Imperium isn't just Hivecities and Forge Worlds. There is everything from Paradise worlds to just some outpost in bum**** nowhere.
More than 90% of the population lives there though.
But it's true there are other types of worlds. Let's see:
Death Worlds, Feral Worlds and Feudal Worlds: I think it's clear why living there is bad, now remember that the Imperium actively refuses to better the living conditions on them to get stronger recruits for the Guard or the Space Marines. Nevermind that 75% of babies on Catachan don't live past ten.

Agri-World: You're a farming slave!

Fortess World: You're a war slave!

Paradise World: If you're lucky you spend all day scrubbing the casino floor, if you're unlucky you're a sex slave! Remember, these are paradise for the elite (meaning nobles or very rich) of the Imperium, not the natives. But I guess you get to live on one of the few worlds the Imperium hasn't polluted to the point of near-unhinability.

Mining world: You're a mining slave!

The list goes on, but these are the main one, and in every case there isn't a single world type that doesn't suck ass for everyone but the ruling elite.


Xenos are just as bad although it depends on Xenos.
Oh this is gonna be fun.


Tyranids - will eat you and turn you into more Tyranids
Unlike the Imperium, who kills everybody else but prefers to eat its own people (corpse stach).

Leagues - would probably kill you for not being Kin
No, that's the Imperium. The Leagues' whole deal is that they're willing to trade with other people.

Necrons - some would flay you, others would use you as cattle for body parts, and some would vaporize you because you aren't made of necrodermis.
Hey, you know the Book of Judgement? The legal code of the Imperium that forbids pretty much everything and is too big tonbe read in a single lifespan? It's written on human skin. Again, the Imperium does to its own people what the fanbase accuse Xenos of doing to others. Likewise using humans as cattle. The Imperium's main resource is living human bodies. And for killing everyone who isn't one of them... Really? ****, most Necrons are fine with everyone who hasn't colonized one of their Tomb Worlds.

Tau - forced sterilization and draft, maybe they will send you to cultural exchange with a Demon world
I think it's pretty telling that you could find so little to bad mouth the Tau that you resorted to something that is only rumored to happen (and only in one of the non-canon ending of a single video game) and a thing that never happened. The cultural exchange thing wasn't with demons, it was with some Dark Eldars that had just rescued a Tau world. It was their first contact with DE, and theve never done anything like this again. Unlike the Imperium wherein Planetary governors doing backroom deals with Drukhari is a recurring problem.

Eldar - you are essentially Monkey to them, so killing you all to postpone their inevitable decay a few years is great
Again, the Craftworlders would sacrifice humans to save their own, the Imperium would sacrifice their own to kill Craftworlders. Honestly, I don't understand how people can seriously say "wanting to exterminate everyone else in the universe is no worse than prioritising your own survival".

Drukhari - will kill you if they are merciful. If not, I hope you like being sentient furniture for several hundred years
You know what servitors are, right?

Ork - will gleefully exterminate you
From a third party perspective, the main difference between an Orkish WAAAGH! and an Imperial Crusade is the dominant color.

Chaos - will spread memetic, mind-destroying hazards, and being on their Demon worlds isn't much better. Each of these will destroy you over time, both physically and mentally.
Just like the Imperium! Funny that!
Also, Chaos isn't a Xeno faction. They're just the Imperium but even less organized.

- Nurgle - Hope you like eternal despair and letting flies live in your eyes
Like I quoted upthread, the Imperium straight-up orders its people to reject happiness.

- Tzeentch - Are you tired of waking up as a sentient being? Mutations are fun.
Servitors again.

- Khorne - Fight all day, for the sake of fighting another day.
How is that any different from any of the Imperium's armies?

- Slaanesh - Have you ever considered being used as a joytoy for a demon? Then ground to cocaine and snorted/eaten?
Which is pretty much what Imperial nobles get up to to pass the time.


And again most of the Xeno crimes you listed are directed towards outsiders while the Imperium does it to its own. Orks, Necrons, Eldars, Tyrannids, Kroots? They give their population exactly what they want. The Imperium brutally oppresses its own.

Hey you know what's considered tasteful interior decoration in the Imperium? Cherubim. That is taking a dead baby and stuffing it with metal wing so that the adorable little corpse can flying around your living room.

Why does anyone defend this faction?

You know how most 40k factions have parallels in Fantasy? The Imperium's parallel isn't the Empire of Man. It's the Skaven. The only difference is that the skaven's visual design is more honest about what their society is like.

[Eldan]

A few of those points have been reduced to the level of not quite as bad.

Corpse starch is an interesting tidbit. At least two recent books about the Imperial Guard, by different authors, have mentioned that it's not really made of corpses, or not mainly. It's disgusting and made of the cheapest materials (yeast, algae, undefined "starch") and the name is said to mainly come from rumours among the soldiers and the horrible taste. Makes sense, really: you can't feed humans just on corpses, that's not sustainable.

Of course, other sources claim that corpse starch is very real and a main food source for hivers, but that's 40k for you. Always disagrees with itself.

Anyway, in addition to the various feudal and slave worlds, there's also less immediately horrible worlds. Warhammer Crime and Warhammer Horror are actually interesting sources in that regard: they are set mainly on worlds far from the front lines with decent levels of development. For example, in Flesh and Steel, the main character is a son of a rich family, who partially made their money producing consumer goods like cars for the world's inhabitants. So private industry still exists on at least some planets, as well as consumers who actually have enough money to buy things. It also mentions people having private appartments or at least rooms, even if those of the workers are horribly cramped and in bad repair. They also have breathable air and some form of nature outside the cities.

Not that it's not still horrible, of course. This is also the book that introduced the idea of the "not properly wiped" servitor, who is still aware what is being done to them.

[pendell]

Do you cry for dandruff as well?

Let's put things in perspective. The human body has about 37.2 trillion cells and daily you shed 500 million of skin cells.

Imperium has about one quadrilion people and since GW is British the quadrilion is probably 10^24 (or 10^15 in metric). If we do simple scaling we end up with 1.34*10^19 (10^10).

Even if Imperium lost billions of billion of people (or billions in the case of metric quadrillion), it would still be more comparably efficient than your own body.


I'm going to assume this was a joke but even so it needs rebutting. As Heinlein would say, "men are not potatoes". Which is to say, human life is of transcendent value and can't be weighed in an accounting spreadsheet in the same way you could balance out sacks of wheat versus oranges in a commodity exchange. One of the cruelties of war is it does force us to weigh human lives against other human lives, and even then it's a bad idea although it's necessary.

We see a glimpse of this in Star Wars where Force Sensitives are the fulcrum on which everything turns. That's why Vader is willing to take Death Squadron into an asteroid field in pursuit of the Falcon, allowing other rebel ships to escape. They aren't important. He wins if he subverts or kills Luke; the small fry who aren't force sensitive don't count at all. The life of a force sensitive is of transcendent value.

Take that idea and apply it to a universe where there's no such thing as a force sensitive; ALL human lives need to be treated with that degree of care if at all possible. You never know which seemingly useless squalling infant is going to be the next Einstein, the next Beethoven, the next Susan B. Anthony. That's why it's such a crime that we as humans can often think of nothing better to do with our young than give them guns and have them kill each other. Although even there my argument smacks of utilitarian thinking and misses the larger point that every human life has value even if it can't be of "benefit", at least as a market or Imperial planner would categorize as "useful".

It's not a hard leap to make; most parents feel that way about their children. The next step is to realize everyone you meet is someone's child and means as much to someone as your own kids mean to you.

Getting back to the WH40K universe, I see this as the only possible justification for the Imperium: That for all its cruelties and faults, by design the worst human government ever to exist, it still allows human life to continue as humans, not as chaos corrupted or Tyrannid food. To paraphrase Churchill, from the human perspective the Imperium is the worst government and the worst faction except for all the others.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Eldan]

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.

[Rynjin]

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere.

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument?

[Eldan]

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument?

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point. Call it awful, but it is necessary.

(Also kind of personally offended at being called awful.)

[pendell]

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.


That doesn't sound right. Is that 10% chance per year? And how many walkers? If 100 walkers walk that path in a year, you're going to have 10 people on average, falling. So yeah, you'd better put those guard rails up. You'll be paying more for the medical expenses (which is NOT quite the same thing as evaluating a human being's "worth", only the medical expenses you have to pay for them) than you would for the railings.



There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.

"Transcendental", like "infinite" , is a word that has a hard time fitting into a world where we are allocating finite resources. But just because we can't afford to have an emergency hospital on every corner doesn't mean you can simply trade human lives on a cash basis -- say, sell 10 humans for their organs in exchange for $100 million dollars. They're not potatoes, and treating them as such leads to all manner of evils we're trying to move away from.

If I can indulge a bit of philosophy for a second, this is one of the pose points where the ideal form -- the infinite worth of every human life -- comes into contact with the real -- which is, that we don't have infinite resources and thereby cannot give every human the infinite treatment they deserve. And to my mind there are two extremes when approaching this conumdrum, and both are errors: The first is to attempt to fulfill the ideal in this world literally, and that will break you; there is simply no way you can meet infinite requirements with finite resources; no matter how big the second pile is , the requirements will always be infinitely larger.

The second error is to assume that just because we live in a real world where the ideal is not possible, that therefore we should disregard it entirely ; to treat humans as if they are of no more worth than a single dandruff cell, as the poster up above jokingly suggested. That way lies involuntary medical experimentation, slavery, and all the rest of it.

People may argue for that second category, but precious few of them actually mean it. Many of those willing to sacrifice strangers will balk at putting their own children on the treadmill to the slaughterhouse. And when they are the ones subject to the same experiments they designed for others they will no doubt scream "it's not fair!". As a rule, humans are more than willing to give transcendent value to people they care about, while treating everyone else like an NPC in a murderhobo campaign. That is the reality of the world we live in, and I think it's something we need to rise above, to aim for better, not sink down to the lowest common denominator.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Fyraltari]

Getting back to the WH40K universe, I see this as the only possible justification for the Imperium: That for all its cruelties and faults, by design the worst human government ever to exist, it still allows human life to continue as humans, not as chaos corrupted or Tyrannid food. To paraphrase Churchill, from the human perspective the Imperium is the worst government and the worst faction except for all the others.
You know who lets human life continue as human life? The Tau, the Votanns and the countless civilizations the Imperium destroyed.


You know who doesn't let human life continue as human life? The Imperium. The Imperium takes children puts them through a wringer tht kills most and leaves the other with additional organs, acid spit and a stunted psyche that cannot feel fear and lives for violence and they call poor souls "angels". The Imperium takes ordinary people and hollows out their skull to serve as menial workers. The Imperium takes a 365, 000 children a year and tortures each of them for a month to feed their undead cruel god. The Imperium takes billions upon billions of people and sends them to die in poorly planned battles to conquer worlds that pose no threat so that their generals can add another medal to their collection. Half the time, the Imperium is fighting itself.

But what of everybody else? The quadrillions of people this is alledgedly for? What life do they have? They work mindlessly from beofre dawn to after dusk to keep going a machine too big for anyone to comprehend for no benefit to themselves. They live in squalor, they are taught nothing but what little they need to complete their task and to hate everything else. Beauty, joy, happiness, love, pride, thoughtfulness, humor, contentment, hope, curiosity, peace? These are the hallmarks of the Enemy, they must excise them from their minds. Their existence is to be spent in abject servitude, despising the very thought that there could be more to life than being a cog in the machine that is the Imperium, while yearning for the ultimate reward: to die in service to the system. Because the Imperium does not see their people as humans, they hate the very notion. If the High-Lords of Terra, the Inquisition and the planetary governors had their way, every single human but the nobility would be a unthinking machine pouring evermore wealth into their manors. They take away everything that makes life worth living and say people should be thankful for being alive.

A government's legitimacy is measure in its service to its people. The Imperium does not exist to serve Mankind, Mankind exists to serve the Imperium. If the Imperium's purpose were to protect human life from Xenos and Chaos, then shouldn't human life under the Imperium be better than it is under Xenos and Chaos?


Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example?

There's a path where an expert estimates there's a 10% chance that, a walker might slip and fall to their death. Putting up a railing is difficult and would cost almost a million dollars. Do we put up the railings? If no, a human life is worth less than 10 million dollars.

There's calculus like this every day, everywhere. Insurance. Deciding where emergency services go. Healthcare and disease prevention. Deciding how long we extend life saving measures for. There is no such things as a transcendent value as long as resources are limited.
But we measure the quality of these things by the number of human lives they save and how much they improve them. They're not perfect but we're trying. The Imperium does not try, does not save, does not improve. It is a parasite, nothing more.

[Rynjin]

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point. Call it awful, but it is necessary.

(Also kind of personally offended at being called awful.)

Are you outing yourself as someone who deliberately violated OSHA regulations to save a corporation money? If not, I didn't call you awful.

If so, please report yourself immediately.

[Eldan]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

[Rynjin]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

I think the miscommunication we have here is that I don't consider risk assessment to be the same thing as the example you were giving.

In risk assessment you simply...assess a risk. How likely is success or failure? Partial success or failure? What is the worst case scenario, best? Etc.

The example given is not a risk assessment. Or, at the least, it does not stay one. The risk is assessed as "high" (a 10% chance of failure is a ludicrously high number for a high volume/traffic device or pathway) and then that risk is deliberately ignored in the pursuit of profit.

That is not assigning an objective value to human life. That is assigning a price that you personally are willing to pay for a human life. It is entirely selfishly motivated and does nothing to change the fact that a human life is not disposable.

[Psyren]

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution.

Assessing risk isn't the problem; the guy ultimately deciding not to help people based on that assessment so they can afford their second yacht is. The only attack was directed at the systems we take for granted.

Dystopian fiction like Warhammer is intended to shine a light on such things by exaggerating them to bloated extremes.

[Rynjin]

Assessing risk isn't the problem; the guy ultimately deciding not to help people based on that assessment so they can afford their second yacht is. The only attack was directed at the systems we take for granted.

Dystopian fiction like Warhammer is intended to shine a light on such things by exaggerating them to bloated extremes.

Exactly; this says it a lot more succinctly than I did.

[-D-]

I'm not sure if this is really convincing Warhammer RP, or you really think there's some intelligent equivalency to be made between sapient beings and dead skin cells.
Think of it this way, you are an emergent property of your cells reacting and sensing each other. You can't notice 500+ million of your own cells dying, why would Imperium, a much messier system?


Sentences like this are why a lot of people associate the Warhammer crowd with other unsavory stereotypes and groups.
I'm not a parf of Warhammer 40k crowd, I just like some of the lore and some of the 'puter games.


Genuinely, I've never been clear on how, exactly, this is different from the life of an average Guardsman.
The same difference between being near fire (Imperium battlefield), and being on fire (Khornate World). The thing about Guardsmen is they are allowed a time to sleep, eat, drink, (if only occasionally) etc. For a follower of Khorne, the daily routine is very simple - "Are there enemies? Yes (good). No (make some enemies by attacking whatever is closest."


Brushing aside how incredibly callous this is.
I disagree, it's not callous, it's practical, and not too different from what we as humans did or do. And for the record, things can get more grimdark. See Xeelee Sequence.


My own body doesn't strive to make each and every single cell in it a miserable and barely functionnal wreck.
Then you don't know how your body works. Suicidal cells, cells created with only one purpose to devour everything, and with only off switch is their brief expiration date, ancient virus DNA that awakens to cause horrible illnesses, chemical warfare, full on nuclear self-destruction in presence of an irritant (cytokinin storm or deadly allergy) etc.



Death Worlds, Feral Worlds and Feudal Worlds: I think it's clear why living there is bad, now remember that the Imperium actively refuses to better the living conditions on them to get stronger recruits for the Guard or the Space Marines.
Eh, it's neofeudalism, so not everyone is just a slave, there are probably guards, feudal lords and their lackeys, etc.


Unlike the Imperium, who kills everybody else but prefers to eat its own people (corpse stach).
It says corpse starch not HUMAN corpse starch. So not just humans. Anything that survives sterilization is fair game. Usually animal and biomass. I think that's kinda like a parallel to Dune, where Freemen drain all fluids from anything with any left.


No, that's the Imperium. The Leagues' whole deal is that they're willing to trade with other people.
Pretty sure Leagues are highly secretive and hyper-capitalists with their AIs going crazy from thousands of years of service. It's least grimdank faction, but they are new kids on the block. Give em time



Hey, you know the Book of Judgement? The legal code of the Imperium that forbids pretty much everything and is too big tonbe read in a single lifespan? It's written on human skin. Again, the Imperium does to its own people what the fanbase accuse Xenos of doing to others. Likewise using humans as cattle. The Imperium's main resource is living human bodies. And for killing everyone who isn't one of them... Really? ****, most Necrons are fine with everyone who hasn't colonized one of their Tomb Worlds.

I did hear that once on If Emperor had Text to Speech Device. Tome is impregnated leather, i.e. not likely to fall off and need constant replacement.

It's gruesome, but Flayers are worse, much worse. They wear their skins, skin rots away, Flayers go crazy, raid a human/Xeno world and harvest the skins, then go back to chillin' and wearing their skin.

Also, source on living human bodies as resources? They are resources in battle, doing anything questionable would see you branded as a heretic.

Some Necrons dynasties see life as a disease. I.e. they see bacteria as a threat and sterilize planets. They all used to be like that before lore change.



I think it's pretty telling that you could find so little to bad mouth the Tau that you resorted to something that is only rumored to happen (and only in one of the non-canon ending of a single video game) and a thing that never happened. The cultural exchange thing wasn't with demons, it was with some Dark Eldars that had just rescued a Tau world. It was their first contact with DE, and theve never done anything like this again. Unlike the Imperium wherein Planetary governors doing backroom deals with Drukhari is a recurring problem.

That's the issue, Tau are the naive enough that a well-disguised Demon could trick them. If BDSM and spike enthusiast on meth managed to convince them for a "cultural exchange", so can a Demon with Disguise Self skill.

Plus you are omitting the reeducation, pheromone control or the curious fact humans are a non-existent faction in Tau roster.


Again, the Craftworlders would sacrifice humans to save their own, the Imperium would sacrifice their own to kill Craftworlders.
You're forgetting the scale. Billions of humans to save like 23 eldars, or hell postpone their deaths for like a month? Attack the hive fleet and redirect them to a human world.

Humans would attack Eldar if they thought they had a substantial advantage to gain (like resources, STC, easier trade routes). Eldar would attack humans if they thought they have any advantage.


You know what servitors are, right?
You know what Drukhari do, right? People don't kill themselves prematurely to avoid becoming servitors. They do when Drukhari come.

The point of servitors is punishment and showing what happens if you disobey. Point of a Drukhari slave is suffering to prolong Drukhari lives. So while servitor is sometimes sentient, Drukhari slave is always sentient and always suffering.


From a third party perspective, the main difference between an Orkish WAAAGH! and an Imperial Crusade is the dominant color.
Not really. Humans don't grow back if you defeat them. An Orkish WAAGH can resprout if not cleansed enough.


Also, Chaos isn't a Xeno faction. They're just the Imperium but even less organized.
They existed before Humans, and their goals conflict with Humans. Humans will attack them on sight. The fact that some Space Marines got recruited to be Chaos' latest toy doesn't change that fact.


Like I quoted upthread, the Imperium straight-up orders its people to reject happiness.
Because it feeds the Chaos gods. They also promote not giving into despair either. "Hope is the first step on a road to disappointment."


Servitors again.
Servitors don't wake up in different body/state of matter every day. Again the matter is of degree. Imperium is cruel but alternatives are far, far crueler.


How is that any different from any of the Imperium's armies?
I said so above the same as being near a fire and being on fire. In Deamon world the point is you feed your Demon God with hypercharged emotion. You being functional is non-important. Imperium can't let all their warriors die, Chaos can stuff you with more warp and you're good as warp-rain.


I'm going to assume this was a joke but even so it needs rebutting. As Heinlein would say, "men are not potatoes".
Heinlein didn't have 10^24 men. Or potatoes. At those scales, minor ****ups can become, "whoops we lost a star system".
Like for example having 10^24 potatoes, forming a small planet and destroying the balance of orbits in a star system.

As a small note: Humanity didn't choose to become a xenophobic, psyker hating, oligarchic theocracy.

It evolved into this role. Any world that allows Xenos was likely destroyed by Xenos. So the few xenophobic ones destroyed the remaining good xenophilic worlds.

If you had psykers that weren't killed or weren't God-Tier, congratulations your planet is a Daemon World. I hope you like infinite Pain/Backstabbing/Fights/Diseases/Preaching.

Few good men that were placed to keep the peace after Horus heresy were replaced by more and more corrupted people.

[Psyren]

Think of it this way, you are an emergent property of your cells reacting and sensing each other. You can't notice 500+ million of your own cells dying, why would Imperium, a much messier system?

I get your point (somewhat) but it's still callous. A system that treats its sapients like replaceable cells, no matter how many of them there are, is a morally reprehensible system - and I think that was Rynjin's underlying point. Regardless of whether the Imperium is the "least bad" faction in WH40k (are they, even? Genuinely don't know), "least bad" is still bad.

[KorvinStarmast]

Balancing "grim dark" with "appealing to normies" will be difficult. Indeed. My wife won't watch it if it's too grim and too dark.

I still know barely anything about the property and I laughed out loud :smallbiggrin: Likewise.

Human lives are put into spreadsheets and given values every day, even if we build up a layer of language around it to mask it. Simple example? The airline industry.

Done by awful people who should never have been given authority over another human being's life. Next argument? It would appear that you need to boycott the airline industry.

The next argument is that we have limited resources and we need to make decisions on how to use them. That's the entire point. Correct.

No, I worked several years in a government statistical office and we did a lot of risk assessment and resource distribution. Won't comment on my experiences beyond I have been on the investigation team for a number of fatal accidents, some involving aircraft.

As to the matter of orders of magnitude discussion at hand:
a. Let us presume to use the American version of one Quadrillion, so the Imperium's Quadrillion people looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000
b. Let us round the current population of China (or India) to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people purely for purposes of illustration.
(1) If the Imperium sacrifices / loses 1,000,000,000 people in a battle to achieve "X" it would be as though China or India were in a war and lost 1,000 people in a battle to achieve {whatever goal/aim that battle/war had}

I won't take that any further as I am sure that the edges of proper forum rules stuff are getting close.

[-D-]

I get your point (somewhat) but it's still callous. A system that treats its sapients like replaceable cells, no matter how many of them there are, is a morally reprehensible system - and I think that was Rynjin's underlying point. Regardless of whether the Imperium is the "least bad" faction in WH40k (are they, even? Genuinely don't know), "least bad" is still bad.
That's basically any military system ever. Without ruthless pragmatism you will get nowhere.

I think it points to you growing in different environment than one Warhammer 40k.

Constraints put upon humanity made the ****house it is today. Any better part has been annihilated by Iron Men, Psykers, Chaos, Xenos, (or Imperium that tried to prevent former from appearing) etc.

There is no least bad faction. But there might be some least bad fraction. Like Exodites, Cawl and his retinue, some Necrons.

[Rynjin]

The airline industry.
It would appear that you need to boycott the airline industry.
Correct.
Won't comment on my experiences beyond I have been on the investigation team for a number of fatal accidents, some involving aircraft.


While I wouldn't be surprised that some actors in the airline industry are frequently breaking laws and making planes deliberately more unsafe to increase their profits, that is not a rebuttal to my statement, but a reinforcement.



As to the matter of orders of magnitude discussion at hand:
a. Let us presume to use the American version of one Quadrillion, so the Imperium's Quadrillion people looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000
b. Let us round the current population of China (or India) to 1 billion (1,000,000,000) people purely for purposes of illustration.
(1) If the Imperium sacrifices / loses 1,000,000,000 people in a battle to achieve "X" it would be as though China or India were in a war and lost 1,000 people in a battle to achieve {whatever goal/aim that battle/war had}

And if those people are not combatants, but civilians (as is often the case in 40k), that would be a war crime. Circle back to "awful people".


I think it points to you growing in different environment than one Warhammer 40k.


...Did you not? Are you a time traveler from the 41st Millenium? =p

[-D-]

Did you not? Are you a time traveler from the 41st Millenium? =p
I recognize how my own upbringing and environment has biased my morality. I won't claim it's the be all, end all.

Here is a hypothetical. Is eating your own children good or bad? What if tomorrow we discover an alien race that greets us with (perfect English) "We wish for peace and that you eat your children". Upon inspection the translation isn't faulty. They do in fact eat most of their children. Are they evil?

[Rynjin]

Easy answer, yes. And to forestall any of the information you've "hidden" from me or made up on the spot that contextualizes the hypothetical in such a way as to make me wrong: I do not care. It's a meaningless conversation to have, and is only going to serve to piss people off as we get dragged down into the mud to argue BS hypothetical after BS hypothetical cherrypicked to make one side sound unreasonable or closeminded and the other side sound unhinged.

If you want to continue the discussion, leave it to contexts that are already established.

[-D-]

Easy answer, yes. And to forestall any of the information you've "hidden" from me or made up on the spot that contextualizes the hypothetical in such a way as to make me wrong: I do not care.

Easy. And wrong. Less wrong ;)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5TqCuizyJDfAPjkr/the-baby-eating-aliens-1-8

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

[InvisibleBison]

Easy. And wrong. Less wrong ;)

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n5TqCuizyJDfAPjkr/the-baby-eating-aliens-1-8

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.

[Rynjin]

They just pursue a different survival strategy. World peace, no wars, almost perfect logic, and for low low price of eating some of your 10000 brood.

See above. I'll give you double bonus points for taking your BS hypothetical from a guy who's best known for his edgy Harry Potter fanfic though.

[-D-]

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.
You do know how axioms work, right?

You pick your axioms, then construct a framework on them. You can't prove Pythagorean theorem in non-Euclidian space. Does that mean Pythagora was wrong? No. He had different set of axioms.

I.e. they are relative and depend on problem's environment. Same as morality.

That said let's circle back to this:


If you want to continue the discussion, leave it to contexts that are already established.
Ok. But different context like Warhammer 40k will lead to different outcomes. What is moral in one context won't be in another.

If you take something like Kant's categorical imperative as a measuring stick (Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law).

In context of Earth it's not moral to kill another.
Basic Axiom goes something like this: I don't want to kill because I don't want others to kill, and each life is considered sacred.

In Warhammer 40k axioms goes like this:
Killing an unregistered Psyker in Warhammer 40k is a moral thing, because letting free Psykers live would mean complete devastation of the human species.
-----
The horrible realization is that so far Imperium despite being a miserable, inhuman, oligarchic theocracy, they still managed to survive and it seems to be working i.e. Emperor is slowly becoming a Warp God.

[pendell]

Moral axioms don't become false just because following them would result in your species going extinct.

???

I don't follow this at all. I would argue that morality is not a goal in and of itself. It exists for a reason-- to improve the length and quality of lives of everyone. I think it Heinlein who said the purpose of morality is group survival. If your "morality" is leading to the extinction of the species, it ain't moral.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[InvisibleBison]

You do know how axioms work, right?

You pick your axioms, then construct a framework on them. You can't prove Pythagorean theorem in non-Euclidian space. Does that mean Pythagora was wrong? No. He had different set of axioms.

I.e. they are relative and depend on problem's environment. Same as morality.

The thing is, all moral questions exist in the same environment. There's no difference between a situation where you benefit from killing someone and one where you don't that would affect whether or not it's acceptable to do so.



If your "morality" is leading to the extinction of the species, it ain't moral.

Only if you decide that survival of the species is a moral axiom.

[Lord Raziere]

Look here is the real problem with the Imperium: no matter what anyone says, they don't actually do what say they do, or at least what people think they do.

like looking at the Imperium from a utilitarian-consequentialist perspective, which y'know, is the grounds people like to argue for the Imperium on, they fail at accomplishing their goals from this perspective. A utilitarian accepts that some lives will be lost for a greater good, but doesn't mean any amount of lives is acceptable. If you can sacrifice ten people rather than 100 people to accomplish your objective, you take the 10 because that is 90 manpower resources saved. Minimum losses for maximum gain. Furthermore, a utilitarian can recognize when something is no longer worth pouring sacrifices/resources into and can y'know, give up and do something else when its most cost-effective and gainful to do another thing that will be better in the long run.

The Imperium....does not do this. When a world rebels against it, they send the imperial guard to recapture it no matter how many men they must sacrifice to do so. Problem is, not all worlds are worth the sacrifice and lives to do this:
-If your going to defend some bombed out nuclear wasteland uh....what resources are you supposedly defending? if all the world contributes is something like manpower or something, why bother since you have tons of other worlds that also contribute manpower.
-If your going to fight to defend a hive world, its not actually a smart move since hive worlds rely on other planets in the Imperium to function by food being brought in from agri-worlds, so why even fight them on the ground just cut them off from their food supply and watch them fall into killing each other, but the Imperium fights them anyways, despite being the ones with a navy to quarantine people and the rebels they are fighting.....don't have ships of their own. Meaning they send imperial guard onto rebelling planets they don't NEED to fight on, but just cut off the food supply and wait then sweep in while they're weak.
-if you receive any transmission about tyranids attacking, you might as well not respond because tyranids eat the planet faster than the Imperium can send people to help you. But the Imperium still does this anyways, wasting resources pursuing a xenos threat that has already moved on from the planet and thus now has to figure out how to play catch up when they probably don't know where they went because of the tyranids ability to block transmissions and thus cut off any further distress calls from astropaths coming your way.

if they were truly utilitarian or doing whats necessary, they'd actually like, figure out whether or not the Emperor is dying on this golden throne and actually y'know, try to figure out how to fix that he remains stable oh and whether or not he is going to blow up into being a fifth chaos god, do they do this? No. they just have faith that he will somehow save them all and don't question what his last orders were and thus continue doing them.

if they were truly utilitarian they'd think about what fights they can do something about, problems they have to actually solve and prioritize one thing over another. Eldar and Tau? even if you don't think the Imperium needs to team up with them, they're low priority and low threat. Necrons? real scary advanced tech but they're not really doing anything majorly aggressive, low priority. Orks, Tyranids and Chaos though? those are high priority stuff. but no its "kill all xenos" no matter what they are. just like how its defend all worlds, no matter what they are. the Imperium lacks the ability to prioritize threats and its own assets to focus on what they need to do over things they can get to later or just abandon because they don't have the ability to do anything about it. they try to defend everything and end up defending nothing because their resources are stretched too thin and end up taking horrible losses because they constantly need replacements for the people and commanders they lose, so they are constantly recruiting more newbies to fight in their stead and get killed more with more incompetent commanders and green recruits, which lead to them dying thus starting the cycle all over again.

Now you may say "but Raziere! if they didn't do all this it'd be EVEN WORSE!" but, that doesn't really work. Its easy to claim any number of imagined hypothetical scenarios could be worse than the current situation and say whatever you did made sure those scenarios did not come to pass, especially when your doing something horrible to supposedly negate something more horrible. But you can just as easily say that if they didn't do this horrible thing....that things could be better. an Inquisitor might justify using exterminatus on a planet with heretics on it as something that prevented further heresy, but the possibility that they could've gotten rid of those heretics with a knife rather a hammer also exists, assuming of course that the heretics are actual real chaos cultists rather than some big misunderstanding or you being misinformed by some Tzeentch manipulator tricking you into killing millions of your own dudes at the cost of losing far less cultists:
Inquisitor: "Pity them not and scorn their cries of innocence - it is better that one hundred innocently fall before the wrath of the Emperor than one kneels before the Daemon." (actual Wh40k quote)
Tzeentch Infiltrator: "One hundred loyalists slain for one cultist gone, just as planned."

the Imperium are not doing what is necessary, utilitarian, consequentialist or needed in any way shape or form. they are zealous fanatics mindlessly trying to wipe out all enemies on principle without any overall plan of how to do so, often doing things that are more costly to themselves than it is to their enemies, because each exterminatus they do destroys all the resources on the planet they could've used, every time they slay droves of people in their undercities on the suspicion they're all cultists, the destroy all the non-cultists there they could've gotten more men from. every time they transport a guard regiment of people using primitive weaponry from a feudal world or something, thats wasted time and effort on people that could've been better spent on regiments that could or even standardizing the Imperial Guard so they all fight better, and every time they take ruthless shortcuts and "horrible but necessary" things to be victorious, all the people who are victims of those horrible things still alive remember and get driven into Chaos's waiting arms so they can get their revenge, which is more waste, more enemies, more problems down the line.

the Imperium is not utilitarian at all, but in fact incredibly wasteful and prone to shooting itself in the foot at every opportunity it can without realizing that is what its doing. If humanity is surviving in the 41st millennium, its not because of the Imperium's efforts, but in spite of them.

[Eldan]

I recognize how my own upbringing and environment has biased my morality. I won't claim it's the be all, end all.

Here is a hypothetical. Is eating your own children good or bad? What if tomorrow we discover an alien race that greets us with (perfect English) "We wish for peace and that you eat your children". Upon inspection the translation isn't faulty. They do in fact eat most of their children. Are they evil?

Hm. Sibling cannibalism isn't rare among the animal kingdom, but I can't think of many instances of paternal cannibalism. I may have instead gone with "may your children eat each other".

If their children ate each other after hatching and that was the only way for them to survive... probably not evil. But, well, if they have enough technology to travel to other planets, they should be able to solve a nutrition issue.

[Eldan]

Look here is the real problem with the Imperium: no matter what anyone says, they don't actually do what say they do, or at least what people think they do.


I think that's the big one. The entire point of the parody is that the Imperium does not work. You could write a version of the Imperium that is coldly utilitarian and sacrifices a hundred planets to defeat the tyranids because they have to, that hunt down psykers to save their population. But that's not the Imperium GW has given us.

They aren't utilitarian. They are religious fanatics. Guilliman isn't, and he's trying to turn things around, but he's just one person, in a universe that has decades of communication lag between outlying provinces. Going too far is most of what the Imperium does.

And not only that, it's not working. The galaxy is torn in half, chaos warbands are running roughshod over at least half of it, the Tyranids are continually advancing, the necrons are waking up and during all of it, the imperial leadership is bickering like children and hundreds of paranoid factions are backstabbing each other. They started out fascist, became a theocracy and then went downhill from there. The entire history of the last 10'000 years is the Imperium slowly sliding into oblivion and the only reason it's taking so long is that a corpse that big takes a long time to decay.

[Fyraltari]

Quite right. The Imperium is coasting on the momentum gained from the Age of Technology (and to a lesser extent the Great Crusade), not its own qualities.

Furthermore, that's the inevitable result of The Emperor's design: a fascist society can never improve or course correct, it can only get worse and worse. It is simply not equipped to deal with anything in an effective fashion.

[-D-]

The thing is, all moral questions exist in the same environment.
Does our universe contain actual Psykers? Does it contain resurrection tech? If not. Then it's not the same environment.


I think that's the big one. The entire point of the parody is that the Imperium does not work. You could write a version of the Imperium that is coldly utilitarian

Well there are two layers. Meta layer: Grimdark sells. Games Workshop keeps doing what makes money.

In universe: They did start like that, they were ruthless but efficient. That was around 30k. Inquisition started as few good incorruptible men hand picked by Malcador. They ended as yet another corrupted organization of the Imperium.


And not only that, it's not working. The galaxy is torn in half, chaos warbands are running roughshod over at least half of it, the Tyranids are continually advancing, the necrons are waking up and during all of it, the imperial leadership is bickering like children and hundreds of paranoid factions are backstabbing each other.
You're forgetting status Quo is permanent. GW is famous for letting hope sparks then to extinguish it and offer another hope. At end of the day what sells gets updated lore. See poor Ynnari being shafted for not selling enough

For almost verything you listed there is an upside.
Galaxy is torn in half an Chaos is rearing its ugly head but Warp increase also Empowered the Big E. Tyranids and Nekrons have returned but Silent King is dead set on murdering Tyranids. Imperial leadership bickering and backstabbing is just a day that end with day.


Quite right. The Imperium is coasting on the momentum gained from the Age of Technology (and to a lesser extent the Great Crusade), not its own qualities.
That's not how timelines in Warhammer 40k worked. Age of Technology > Age of Strife > Imperium. They didn't coast. They rebuilt from the Age of Strife.

Age of Strife is basically Mad Max.

[InvisibleBison]

Does our universe contain actual Psykers? Does it contain resurrection tech? If not. Then it's not the same environment.

If you want me to agree with your position, you're going to have to provide some sort of argument as to why it is correct instead of simply asserting it.

[-D-]

If you want me to agree with your position, you're going to have to provide some sort of argument as to why it is correct instead of simply asserting it.
I told you why. They aren't the same environment.

Reasons they aren't same - tech levels of Warhammer 40k and Earth 2023 are not the same. And even basic physics isn't the same.

---

Anyway, was anything else revealed about WH40K project? I hope it's a Ciaphas Cane rendition. I want to see Black Adder in Spess.

[Lord Raziere]

Does our universe contain actual Psykers? Does it contain resurrection tech? If not. Then it's not the same environment.


here is the thing: Psykers have nothing to do with why the situation 40k is so horrible actually. killing them does nothing but treat a symptom of the actual problem.

like the psykers are just victims, they aren't responsible for demons possessing them. the reason for demons possessing them is partly because the Eldar screwed up whent hey partied so hard they created Slaanesh, and partly because the ancient Necrontyr and Eldar screwed up 65 million year ago fighting each other because the old ones wouldn't just give the Necrontyr their immortality or help them with their blasted radioactive planet, that old war is what made the other three Chaos gods exist, probably, and for the vast majority of 40k's existence, the Warp Was Not As Bad As It Is Now.

like here is the thing, the Materium and Immaterium used to be closer together, then at some point the Eldar and Necrons decided that fighting each other was no longer worth it, made tech to separate the realms. but back then the Warp was calm, peaceful, and even after all that fighting wasn't as bad as it is now. like sure it got a bit worse but nothing that couldn't be controlled. Like, if psykers didn't exist, there would still be rifts between the Materium and Immaterium that would allow daemons to come through, and there would still be sorcerers/witch reading stuff from books that could do rituals to summon daemons without any psykers being born. psykers are just doing naturally what everyone has the potential to do.

then Slaanesh happened, but that took like an insanely long time to happen. like the period where the Eldar started to make Slaanesh last like thousands of years. the kind of corruption that has happen to make the Warp requires an extremely long time to really take effect. like none of us would make something like Slaanesh in our lifetime, and it took many many lifetimes for the Eldar to get to the point where they can make Slaanesh then actually go about making them. we're basically looking at this universe worst ten thousand years they've ever had, and all the times before it weren't nearly as bad as it is now, except maybe the War in Heaven but we don't have records of what that war was actually like, so we don't know what went down. and the state of the Warp is kind of the accumulated horribleness of the galaxy going uncleaned and unaddressed for too long, its not something that can be solved by just doing some quick thing with the psykers, they're just the conduits through the source of badness flows out, not the source themselves.

if anything the Warp is an environmental message and how one man no matter how "genius" or "great" they are, can't solve that. The Emperor tried, but his plans got cut off half way through before he put in the rules that would really work to even start to fix it, having only treated the symptoms with his plan of disallowing religion, because the Chaos God don't really NEED religion to exist, they just like it because it gets more emotional bang for their buck, provides focus for the emotions, feelings and ideas they feed on to get their energy more efficiently. like all these Imperials running around, shooting any heretic they see? thats all kneejerk symptom treatment. Khorne doesn't care as long as he gets enough of his battle-thirst, rage and courage emotion juices to be satisfied. to actually get to the point where they could solve all this, the best time for humanity to start would've been ten thousand years ago, trying to actually innovate and figure out their problems and what is causing the Warp to go bad rather than mindlessly follow some dude's last orders forever. they didn't and when they inevitably get destroyed and scattered across the galaxy to become the next Eldar? I'll play the smallest violin in the world.

like the Emperor despite all his powers and supposed genius, had all the all too common desire to want to control everything to the way he wanted things to go and that never works. doesn't matter what the environment is, because the lesson is ultimately the same: force, mindless dogma and kill everything different doesn't work. because all that even when the things your killing are legit evil, are just...the appearance of thing and not the underlying root cause of the thing. Orks? sure you can kill them but the real problem is burning the spores after which the Imperium doesn't always do or knows to do. Tyranids? sure, you can kill them but the real problem is figuring out how to stop their biomass-run war machine so that they lose more biomass than they gain from fighting people.

because turns out, the way to win a war? isn't by grabbing an axe and shouting blood for the blood god like a lunatic and killing as much as the enemy as possible no matter what some Khornate cultist would have you believe, and that some of the most important parts of warfare is what occurs off the battlefield, as Guilliman understands with all his logistics and organization. To win, it requires a clear concrete objective, a plan, and direction that can be reasonably accomplished.

But the Imperium doesn't have that (maybe Guilliman can give it one before he meets whatever horrid fate he gets, but who knows with that?) What it has is a techno-barbaric theocratic space oligarchy is way too oppressive in some ways and way too permissive in others, playing symptom whack-a-mole with the galaxy, and psykers are one of the symptoms because they're just the gate for the demons to get in- the real problem is the warp and no amount of symptom-treating absolves them of failing to solve the actual problem. Because turns out, a society built on ignorance, superstition and hatred of what is different is bad at figuring out what they actually need to do to solve a problem- regardless of what that problem actually is. It doesn't matter what the real solution to solve their problems turns out to be, because the Imperium won't investigate properly what is needed to solve them. Guilliman doesn't have the time, he is just trying to figure how to patch things up so that Imperium has some minimal functionality to it.

like, the entire problem with psykers is analogous to the Imperium in their ignorance having a broken water system filled with sewage then blaming their sinks for spewing out brown liquid and being superstitous and hateful of all sinks, so they ruthlessly control the sinks, ever watchful of them so that when they spew out brown liquid they can shoot them. nevermind actually getting some plumbers and going to investigate what went wrong, just keep shooting those sinks until the Emperor somehow comes back and magically fixes all of it. Because don't you know? the secrets of clean water is something only the God-Emperor is allowed to know, he said so, don't you have faith in him? be thankful for your ignorance and keep drinking the brown liquid until he decides you deserve to drink clean water, citizen, he still hasn't so clearly you haven't prayed enough and have done something wrong to deserve this suffering, so clearly the solution is for you to take this flagellant and whip yourself so that he will someday decide we are worthy or we will kill you for not faithfully whipping yourself for whatever sin made him decide you deserve to drink brown liquid instead of water. (I jest, but I wouldn't be surprised if there at least one world in the Imperium that unironically preaches this)

[Mechalich]

Well there are two layers. Meta layer: Grimdark sells. Games Workshop keeps doing what makes money.

It goes beyond grimdark simply selling. For the purposes of a tabletop wargame, it is massively beneficial for every faction to plausibly be able to fight every other faction, simply because most players will only ever invest to the point of fielding a single army. This is hugely advantageous in small markets where the regular 40K group might be 4-8 people. This generates the grimdark because only in a grimdark universe does this war of all-against-all setup make even a lick of sense.

There are parallels in other game formats. MtG, while not quite grimdark by most standards, is extremely messy and gruesome and contains many planes with multi-party perpetual conflicts even though most players of the card game don't really care about the story.

[InvisibleBison]

I told you why. They aren't the same environment.

Reasons they aren't same - tech levels of Warhammer 40k and Earth 2023 are not the same. And even basic physics isn't the same.

Sure, there are differences. But why do those differences affect moral decision making?

[-D-]

here is the thing: Psykers have nothing to do with why the situation 40k is so horrible actually. killing them does nothing but treat a symptom of the actual problem.

They kinda do, just not Human Psykers. Eldars and Old Ones are a big reason why the situation is screwed up. They used their powers to bring Warp Entities i.e. Eldar Gods into Materium, so much that at times War In Heaven was paused at times to fight the increasing appearance of Warp Entities. Destroying Old Ones didn't help and neither did Khaine's Temper Tantrum which indirectly caused Eldar downfall.


Khaine tried to kill Eldar due to the prophecy they would destroy him. So Khaine decided to murder Eldars first. Other gods and Eldar intervened, making Khaine's gate to prevent Eldar Gods from entering Materium.

Without their Gods, Eldars fell to depravity and eventually gave birth to Slaanesh that would have destroyed Khaine if Khorne didn't shatter him first.


When Emperor became an active player he had to limit interactions with Warp. His plan was to starve the Warp Gods of worship, but by then most worlds that survived Psychic awakening were rabid anti-Psykers. He was given a very **** hand.

Dealing with Warp entities is a very, very bad idea because the only things left were at that moment Four Massive Warp Leeches and their armies, few non-existent Chaos gods, few barely existing non-Chaos gods. To see how badly Psykers can get played see Thousand Sons Chapter. And these weren't any Psykers, these were the finest Space Marines Psyker led by the most powerful psyker Primarch. What chances does a run-of-the-mill Psyker have?


Essentially noble Psykers, using their warp powers for good. And talking to Warp entities that shared their knowledge, and even served as friendly familiars. Sadly they had a horrible mutation rate, so their Primarch gave one of his eyes to halt the mutation rate. Pretty wholesome

Then came the anti-Psykers Council, led by Russ and Mortarion. Did Magnus listen then? Ofc not. He was too proud of his abilities.

When Magnus fails to cure Horus' corruption he tries to warn Emperor, but can't break a giant barrier preventing warp communication. With the help of a warp entity, Magnus manages to deliver news of Horus' Betrayal to the Emperor only to realize he got duped by Tzeentch. By breaking the wall, he ensured Emperor will be tied to deal with Terra's failed Webway.

Then during Russ's botched attempt to bring/kill Magnus, those friendly familiars turn on their former masters and cause a cluster****, leading Magnus to accept Tzeentch's deal and move the Planet of Sorcerers'




like the psykers are just victims, they aren't responsible for demons possessing them.
And you can't treat the disease if the infected can summon an army of hell just by existing. Like best you can hope is you put them into a room with some creepy Blanks that will slowly eat away at Psyker's sanity and/or try to teach him to serve the Imperium either as a battery pack for the Emperor or caster for Imperium.


Sure, there are differences. But why do those differences affect moral decision making?
See how easy Psykers are manipulated above. You are a person living on some relatively rural world during Age of Strife and you encounter a Psyker. Do you?
A) Kill him
B) Let him live and doom him and the planet he's on?

It's like a trolley problem where you can either kill that guy, or that one guy + millions more, and if you choose option two, that guy may turn into another trolley (become a corrupted cultist/daemon).

To call it a non-brainer moral problem is putting it mildly.

[Eldan]

It goes beyond grimdark simply selling. For the purposes of a tabletop wargame, it is massively beneficial for every faction to plausibly be able to fight every other faction, simply because most players will only ever invest to the point of fielding a single army. This is hugely advantageous in small markets where the regular 40K group might be 4-8 people. This generates the grimdark because only in a grimdark universe does this war of all-against-all setup make even a lick of sense.

There are parallels in other game formats. MtG, while not quite grimdark by most standards, is extremely messy and gruesome and contains many planes with multi-party perpetual conflicts even though most players of the card game don't really care about the story.

Yeah, that's one of the problems Warhammer fantasy had. Arguably, yes, the least of its problems, but it was one:

Several of the factions were... too good. High elves and most human factions could resolve their problems diplomatically, most of the time. Same for imperials and dwarves. At least on the higher levels, I'd imagine a dwarven vengeance expedition against some minor noble who wronged them works quite well.

Mobility problems were in addition to that: the tomb kings rarely left their territory, same for several other factions. Having ogres and dark elves meet would require some really strange explanations.

So, 40k starts out as war of everyone against everyone, because that works. Though since they started more and more imperial factions, they also have to make the imperium extremely infighty, so you can have an explanation for your sisters army to fight your friend's grey knight army.

[InvisibleBison]

See how easy Psykers are manipulated above. You are a person living on some relatively rural world during Age of Strife:
A) Kill him
B) Let him live and allow him to communicate with hell, which will probably result in him dying (most likely) or being corrupted and most of the planet falling to Warp

It's like a trolley problem where you can either kill that guy, or that one guy + millions more, and if you choose option two, that guy may turn into another trolley.

To call it a non-brainer moral problem is putting it mildly.

I don't see how the question of whether or not it's acceptable to kill one person to save the lives of many people is one that can't arise in the real world.

[-D-]

I don't see how the question of whether or not it's acceptable to kill one person to save the lives of many people is one that can't arise in the real world.
In real world you don't have people with private connection to hell. And in real world they can't become conduits for said hell world, dooming others and themselves just by existing.

[InvisibleBison]

In real world you don't have people with private connection to hell. And in real world they can't become conduits for said hell world, dooming others and themselves just by existing.

Ok, I'm pretty sure this is just a clash between deontology and consequentialism, so I don't see any point in continuing the discussion.

[-D-]

Ok, I'm pretty sure this is just a clash between deontology and consequentialism, so I don't see any point in continuing the discussion.
You are missing my point. Both of those crumble under the warped reality of Warhammer 40k. Namely that hell exist and can manifest via Psykers, and that death is a reversible process. Sure morals depend on rules, but rules depend on shared reality. There's little to no shared reality between us and Warhammer 40k.

Look at pre fall Eldar, for them death was a slap on a wrist. If they didn't overindulge in murder-boning they would have still be able to partake in recreative suicides.

[InvisibleBison]

Both of those crumble under the warped reality of Warhammer 40k. Namely that hell exist and can manifest via Psykers, and that death is a reversible process.

Why would any of those things cause the nature of morality to change? "Hell existing" means that there is a place where there are dangerous people who want to kill you, hardly something that has never presented itself in the real world. "[Hell] can manifest itself via Psykers" means that occasionally there are people who will cause harm to large numbers of people around them, which is also something that happens in the real world. "[D]eath is a reversible process" isn't something that can happen in the real world (mostly), but I don't see why it would make any currently existing moral philosophy fundamentally unworkable.



Sure morals depend on rules

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Morality doesn't depend on rules; morality is rules.

[GloatingSwine]

Why would any of those things cause the nature of morality to change? "Hell existing" means that there is a place where there are dangerous people who want to kill you, hardly something that has never presented itself in the real world.

Yeah, the difference is that that place is everywhere, all the time, and it can talk to you and almost everything you do with any level of emotion makes you more interesting to it.

It's not just Psykers, Khorne wouldn't piss on a Psyker if they were on fire, and he pisses prometheum. Any strongly felt emotion can call out and can draw you to the ruinous powers.

Humans don't have the mental discipline of the craftworld Eldar or the psychic gestalt of the Waaagh! to protect them, and they haven't made a society-wide decision to surf the wave and try and stay ahead of the break like the Dark Eldar.

[Rynjin]

Which brings us to the natural conclusion of the so-called morality argument. If all acts are justified in service of "the greater good" (here defined as stymieing the Chaos Gods and the spread of the Warp), why hasn't everyone in the Imperium killed themselves yet?

That would be the most effective single thing they could do to ensure that there are no Psykers to corrupt, and fewer strong emotions to feed the Chaos Gods with.

[GloatingSwine]

Which brings us to the natural conclusion of the so-called morality argument. If all acts are justified in service of "the greater good" (here defined as stymieing the Chaos Gods and the spread of the Warp), why hasn't everyone in the Imperium killed themselves yet?

That would be the most effective single thing they could do to ensure that there are no Psykers to corrupt, and fewer strong emotions to feed the Chaos Gods with.

Or the teradeath sacrifice will immediately rent the materium asunder and there will only be Chaos forever.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

It's like the Emperor. If he finally dies he *might* become a true god of Humanity, protecting their souls as Gork and Mork do to the Greenskins, reflecting the hopes placed in him by the faithful, or he *might* become a fifth Chaos god of tyranny and oppression (basically Hashut in space) representing the Imperium as it exists, or he *might* just die and deprive humanity of even that protection he currently provides.

[Lord Raziere]

They kinda do, just not Human Psykers. Eldars and Old Ones are a big reason why the situation is screwed up. They used their powers to bring Warp Entities i.e. Eldar Gods into Materium, so much that at times War In Heaven was paused at times to fight the increasing appearance of Warp Entities. Destroying Old Ones didn't help and neither did Khaine's Temper Tantrum which indirectly caused Eldar downfall.


Khaine tried to kill Eldar due to the prophecy they would destroy him. So Khaine decided to murder Eldars first. Other gods and Eldar intervened, making Khaine's gate to prevent Eldar Gods from entering Materium.

Without their Gods, Eldars fell to depravity and eventually gave birth to Slaanesh that would have destroyed Khaine if Khorne didn't shatter him first.


When Emperor became an active player he had to limit interactions with Warp. His plan was to starve the Warp Gods of worship, but by then most worlds that survived Psychic awakening were rabid anti-Psykers. He was given a very **** hand.

Dealing with Warp entities is a very, very bad idea because the only things left were at that moment Four Massive Warp Leeches and their armies, few non-existent Chaos gods, few barely existing non-Chaos gods. To see how badly Psykers can get played see Thousand Sons Chapter. And these weren't any Psykers, these were the finest Space Marines Psyker led by the most powerful psyker Primarch. What chances does a run-of-the-mill Psyker have?


Essentially noble Psykers, using their warp powers for good. And talking to Warp entities that shared their knowledge, and even served as friendly familiars. Sadly they had a horrible mutation rate, so their Primarch gave one of his eyes to halt the mutation rate. Pretty wholesome

Then came the anti-Psykers Council, led by Russ and Mortarion. Did Magnus listen then? Ofc not. He was too proud of his abilities.

When Magnus fails to cure Horus' corruption he tries to warn Emperor, but can't break a giant barrier preventing warp communication. With the help of a warp entity, Magnus manages to deliver news of Horus' Betrayal to the Emperor only to realize he got duped by Tzeentch. By breaking the wall, he ensured Emperor will be tied to deal with Terra's failed Webway.

Then during Russ's botched attempt to bring/kill Magnus, those friendly familiars turn on their former masters and cause a cluster****, leading Magnus to accept Tzeentch's deal and move the Planet of Sorcerers'



Except they do let them live. a lot. They're called sanctioned psykers, astropaths, primaris psykers, they're kind incredibly vital to keeping communication between planets going, combat wise one of the few ways a daemon can permanently die is through overwhelming psychic power, and not everyone has a holy blade, so if you want killing that daemon to stick you might want a psyker to do it

and correction, its ANCIENT Eldar that are responsible for why the situation is screwed up. you can't blame the modern Eldar for their ancestors mistakes especially when the Craftworld and Exodite ethos are "we saw how we screwed up and our entire lifestyle being changed is how we fix it", you can't blame people for wanting to live. sucks to be Khaine, but I shed no tears for him failing. god of murder not getting to murder people ain't as sad as you think it is.

as for Tzeentch, the Chaos Gods operate on a "lowest cost for greatest gains" kind of mentality. he doesn't need to corrupt every single psyker like you fear- he just needs to corrupt this big one that looks flashy and is powerful and important to make him look symbolic of all psykers everywhere, thus when he is corrupted he creates and exploits a narrative about psykers for his own gain so that everyone acts as if that narrative is true, the Imperium acting as if every psyker will become the next magnus and thus treat them badly will inevitably draw them to Tzeentch because of their fear, making the Imperium do his work for him so he saves on warp energy if the psykers all come to him. After all, if the Imperium's just gonna shoot them all anyways, why would the psykers just lie down and let them? create this division this binary choice of life or death, suddenly Chaos becomes their only option because they're the only outfit in town that give them the strength to fight back. so not only would trying to kill all the psykers get rid of the Imperium's galactic telegram service, it would also bolster Chaos's ranks with even more psykers seeing first examples and acting to not become the next. because if one side will talk only about killing you and another about not only letting you live but give you more power to live and all the things you want in life? Chaos starts to look like a good idea.

Except its not a good idea. and the fact that sanctioned psykers consistently serve in the Imperium proves there is a third option and is in fact the better option, because if a Psyker has a chance to serve, to help, that is one less psyker working for chaos, one more psyker killing things that need to be killed, one more psyker sending messages that need to be sent, one more psyker learning discipline and strength of mind that makes them able to control their powers better, oh and there is evidence to suggest that humanity as a whole is evolving to be a psychic race in general so everyone will have this problem sooner or later! I guess the only solution the imperium has is to kill everyone for everyone's protection, that'll show Chaos.

[Bunny Commando]

I guess the only solution the imperium has is to kill everyone for everyone's protection, that'll show Chaos.

Joke aside, IIRC one of the reasons Alpharius\Omegon joined Horus was because they were convinced by some mysterious cabal that if the Heresy succeeded, Humanity would go extinct in the span of few generations and that would starve Chaos.

[KorvinStarmast]

And if those people are not combatants, but civilians (as is often the case in 40k), that would be a war crime. Circle back to "awful people". The number of assumptions embedded in this post makes further discussion pointless. Thanks for engaging.

[Rynjin]

The number of assumptions embedded in this post makes further discussion pointless. Thanks for engaging.

I mean there's no assumptions, it's just speaking to direct examples of things the Imperium has done that have come up in this conversation, like glassing inhabited worlds to win a battle, or sacrificing tens of thousands of their own people daily in a religious sacrament.

[-D-]

Except they do let them live. a lot. They're called sanctioned psykers, astropaths, primaris psykers
Sure, but I was talking about the moral options faced by humans during Age of Strife. In Imperium their prospects are just as grimdark but not just getting killed on a stake (getting killed to help the Emperor, getting killed on the battlefield). At least you can kinda die to make Imperium live another day.

A high-level psyker, would probably not end up on a pyre, but they have less chance to accidentally summon/become a demon host anyway.


and correction, its ANCIENT Eldar that are responsible
Fair enough, although I mostly blame the Old Ones and not Dino and Craftworld Eldar. Their refusal to cut deal with Necrontyr and making Ancient Eldars and Krorks is what got the universe in the ****ty state it's today.


Which brings us to the natural conclusion of the so-called morality argument. If all acts are justified in service of "the greater good" (here defined as stymieing the Chaos Gods and the spread of the Warp), why hasn't everyone in the Imperium killed themselves yet?
My argument was about stopping a psyker on a world. Most humans aren't extreme enough to feed the Chaos gods.

Second, by maliciously maximizing a goal, you can twist any morality argument. E.g., your goal is peace on earth. Well, if humans attain peace, some animals would still be killing each other, therefore there is no peace while there is life, therefore sterilize the earth. It's the kind of "paperclip maximizer" for moral argument.

Also, if one was to follow the "greater good" argument you made, killing humans wouldn't be nearly enough. Every Eldar needs to die, every Ork, every human, every T'au (maybe they'll evolve into a stronger warp race), and every sentient race (i.e. Necrons were right). Except you have to kill Necrons as well (can't have them returning to flesh and blood). And bacteria, can't take chances developing new sentient race.


as for Tzeentch, the Chaos Gods operate on a "lowest cost for greatest gains" kind of mentality. he doesn't need to corrupt every single psyker like you fear- he just needs to corrupt this big one that looks flashy and is powerful and important to make him look symbolic of all psykers everywhere
I used Thousand Sons as an example of what a Chaos God can do to corrupt high-level Psykers. Tzeentch is but one of four major ****stains. And he's kind of the chillest. He won't kill you but he will laugh at your mutations and pathetic attempts to avoid them. That said pretty sure Tzeentch, at one point almost won the war for Chaos but rigged the game against himself to give other Chaos Gods a fighting chance, so he isn't as min-maxing as implied.


I'm not sure what you mean by this. Morality doesn't depend on rules; morality is rules.
Morality depends upon physical rules on which your universe rests. You can't have thou shalt not kill if "kill" isn't a concept. Or if "thou" isn't a concept (it's why we don't talk about the morality of plants).

We dislike death because it's traumatic and you can't undo it, but what if both don't apply to a race? E.g., Ancient Eldar. They got high from dying and could freely reincarnate since their souls were strong enough to fight off Warp predators.