Warhammer 40k Fluff Discussion XVII: Call Necrosius, The Old Thread Is Dead!

[Fergie0044]

I think the best solution to the plot hole is to just pretend The Outcast Dead doesn't exist. In fact this is beneficial in many ways, the primary one being you no longer have to read The Outcast Dead.

RE: 30k Imperium, yea its obviously evil, just not as outrageously evil as 40k imperium. I guess that's why people tend to think it was some sort of utopia? Because they are comparing it with 40k Imperium? Quick rule of thumb, when your solution to a problem is "child soldiers", it doesn't matter what the problem is, you're evil.

Wolf at the Door is a short story that showcases how benevolent the 30k Imperium was. TLDR: Space Wolves find a hidden human planet and help the locals fight off the regular Dark Eldar raids. However their new BFFs aren't super keen to lose their new found freedom to the Imperium, so the Wolves kill all the folk they were just fighting alongside with, because compliance is always the goal, not freedom, liberation or the general betterment of humanity.

[LeSwordfish]

when your solution to a problem is "child soldiers", it doesn't matter what the problem is, you're evil.

An excellent way of putting it.

"We gotta do fascism to beat chaos" doesn't even really work in-universe if you can't admit to the existence of chaos. When your boss won't tell you what the problem is but that the solution is child soldiers, and you go along with him, you're evil.

[Cheesegear]

No, fascism was the method. And it never works, something someone as old as the Emperor should have known.

Chaos is real.

Nonsense. The Imperium delivered its greatest champions to Chaos

Because Chaos always wins, because anyone who isn't The Emperor, is corruptible. Since anyone is corruptible, the Emperor's job is hard.

Ah, yes the fascistic dictator will relinquish the absolute power he has taken for hismelf once the crisis has passed.

And that's what makes The Emperor better than everyone else.
That's the thesis of Superman.

It was built on hatred and a cult of personnality.

The Emperor said No Gods, No Masters.
The people said, You're the God, You're the Master.
The Emperor said ...Well, ****.

It allowed scientific knowledge to be kept by a cult of self-loathing fanatics who regard creativity as a sin.

That's not The Emperor.

It's vanguard was an army of children brutally operated on and indoctrinated into having no life but duty.

Who all had planned obsolescence built in. Because there would be a time when they were no longer needed.

No, the problem was that the Emperor thought he knew better than everybody else.

He did know better than everyone else.

"Clearly, people not knowing about Chaos is the best defense against Chaos. Konrad Curze and Angron don't need therapy, they need a million of unquestionning soldiers all able to level an average city by themself.

Chaos is real. If you don't know why ignorance is the best defense against it, I can't help you.
If you don't understand that none of the Primarchs lived the life they were meant to, I can't help you. All of them were products of their environment. Mankind is a ****hole. Someone needs to fix it.

One of my core policy is anti-religion. That arch-priest and prophet over there is a deeply religious man.

Tell me specifically who you're talking about.

Actually yes, turns out that genuine faith can
ward off Chaos. You know, the one thing the Emperor set out to stamp out?

Order beats Chaos.
The Imperial Truth was science. Science is Order.
Religion is also Order.

Either works. But the Emperor definitely was for the former, and firmly against the latter.

That's... That's the core tenet of fascism, you realize that?

We have the explicit motivations of the Emperor. His motivation was not fascism.

You can call it that, if you want. But the writers didn't, and thus we the audience aren't supposed to read that into it.
We can read that into it.
We do read that into it.
But we're not supposed to. Not really.

So he says, and what a wonderful job he's done!

None of it went to plan, because people who were not Him, kept ****ing up.

As the Imperium grew larger and larger, the Emperor delegated more and more.

The more the Emperor delegated, the more watered down his vision became, until his vision turned to ****, and he was forced to create the Primarchs to bring it all back together, where it fell apart even more, because Chaos is real and undermined him at every turn.

Really? How about telling people Chaos, gods and magic aren't real?

'There can be no sorcery, no Gods, in the Imperium of Man.'
That's not the same as they're not real. He's saying if you practice Sorcery, if you believe in Gods, you're not part of the Imperium.

Chaos is real. Because Psykers. The Emperor wanted Humanity to control it, not make bargains with it.

How about having two of his sons executed (probably) and then erasing them from history?

That's not a lie. That happened and he told everyone to forget that it did because they weren't on board.

More importantly, and I have said this before, in order to be erased from history...They would have to be worse than Horus. I don't know what 'worse than Horus' looks like. But that's the implication.

How about him betraying the Thunder Warriors?

I forget how He did that.

He set out to conquer the galaxy! He never listened to any objection because he thought he knew better than literally everyone!

Once again, He knew he knew better than everyone. But we'll never know what his end would have looked like, because Chaos Always Wins.

He built himself a palace the size of Asia! He had entire civilizations, including those who were doing just fine without him eradicated. He had entire species exterminated, he had entire planets burnt to a crisp.

To what end?

He installed a cult of personallity that makes the bloody Sun King look humble.

No he didn't. The Cult of Personality sprung up around Him and he couldn't stop it.
He never asked for it.
He explicitly said he didn't want it, and explicitly demanded that copies of the Lectitio Divinatus be burned.
He explicitly told Lorgar to get ****ed.
...Doesn't matter.

He claimed to want to help mankind but he just made everything worse for everyone. He treated eveybody around him, billions of people as disposable tools he could do away with and did not once consider that they would object. Of all his, many, many flaws, hybris is the biggest and most obvious.

The Emperor more or less said the ends justify the means.
The Emperor was also derailed significantly by the birth of Slaanesh.

I will take The Emperor at face value, because that's what the writers want me to do.

No, no, "Chaos bad, Me good." That was the Emperor' mindset. If the emperor had any love for humanity, why does he seem to hate humans so much?

In order to answer that question; I would have to say a thing.
But it's clear that you can't separate real world moral and political philosophy, with a fiction, where Chaos is Real, and Chaos Always Wins.

So in order to not have that conversation, and keep this thread unlocked, I wont answer that question.

You cannot organize society as a pyramid where everyone has to obey the people above absolutely and have it work for the masses.

Does anyone have near-omniscience? Does anyone have 40,000 years of personal life experience to draw upon?
If you could create a cultural hegemony, with 40,000 years of life experience with nigh-omniscient oversight, where there was no war because everyone was on the same page. Would that work? Would Humanity, all striving towards a single goal, all across the Galaxy, work? Could it happen?
Dunno. Never happened. Chaos undermined the Emperor and we never got the answer to that question and we never will know what that looks like.

It's not going to happen in the real world. Because real world.
And it's not going to happen in the Fiction, because a foundational premise of the fiction is that Chaos Wins Always.

Every failing of the Imperium is a direct continuation of the Emperor's philosophy.

The Imperial Truth is dead. The Emperor's philosophy died with him.
Now there is only the Imperial Creed. The Imperial Creed and the Imperial Truth are not the same thing.

The Imperial Creed is Lorgar's philosophy. Oddly enough.

In the grim darkness of the far future, there are no good guys. Not the Imperium and certainly not the Emperor.

I'm pretty sure we agree on that.

Where we disagree is:
What did the Emperor want?
What did the Emperor get?
How much are people who are not The Emperor, responsible for the way the Imperium is?
Do ends justify the means in a fictional setting where Chaos is Real and Chaos Always Wins?

RE: 30k Imperium, yea its obviously evil, just not as outrageously evil as 40k imperium.

I want to know how good the Imperium was, during 20K, pre-Men of Iron.
The Men of Iron were the first derailment of the Emperor's vision...Which led directly into the Age of Strife.
The Age of Strife is what is says on the tin.

[Eldan]

The Emperor said No Gods, No Masters.
The people said, You're the God, You're the Master.
The Emperor said ...Well, ****.

I mean, said it, but sure didn't act like it. He made himself a fifteen foot tall golden giant and absolute leader, leading an army of supersoldiers that all had religious or mythological names, to liberate hundreds of thousands of planets, many of which were technologically primitive and very religious.

What, exactly, did he think would happen?

[Fyraltari]

RE: 30k Imperium, yea its obviously evil, just not as outrageously evil as 40k imperium. I guess that's why people tend to think it was some sort of utopia? Because they are comparing it with 40k Imperium? Quick rule of thumb, when your solution to a problem is "child soldiers", it doesn't matter what the problem is, you're evil.

Exactly. Thank you.

Chaos is real.

Doesn't mean that fascism is the best answer to it.

Because Chaos always wins, because anyone who isn't The Emperor, is corruptible. Since anyone is corruptible, the Emperor's job is hard.

That's not true. Chaos does not always win. In fact Chaos can never actually win, because that'd be the end of Chaos. But even if Chaos always won locally, then there'd be no human civilizations left. And yet there were.

And that's what makes The Emperor better than everyone else.
That's the thesis of Superman.

What makes you think, it's true? You know, besides "the Emperor said he was good"?

The Emperor said No Gods, No Masters.
The people said, You're the God, You're the Master.
The Emperor said ...Well, ****.

You really trying to tell me that the guy who conquered most of the galaxy with an army of super-soldier slaves says "no master"?

Really. That's, where you're going with this?

That's not The Emperor.

The Emperor made the Mechanicum an integral part of the Imperium. That's why the imperial aquila has two heads, to represent the alliance of Terra and Mars. He knew what they were about and decided to help them spread it amongst the stars.

Who all had planned obsolescence built in. Because there would be a time when they were no longer needed.

Turning children into supersoldiers is fine as long as you plan to kill them all later? Really?

He did know better than everyone else.

Then why does he keep doing all this stupid, evil ****? Like seriously, who looks at Angron and Kurze and go "let's give these guys armies"?

Chaos is real. If you don't know why ignorance is the best defense against it, I can't help you.

Ignorance of what Chaos is is what allowed the Horus Heresy to happen in the first place!

If you don't understand that none of the Primarchs lived the life they were meant to, I can't help you. All of them were products of their environment

Are they? Because canonicallt they're partially made of Warp-stuff and isn't it odd how they all still ended up matching their legion's style lf warfare. Like the Alpha Legion spent the entire Crusade up to the point Alpharius/Omegon was found as covert operatives and guess what, that happens to be Alpharius's speciality. What a coinkidink!

Mankind is a ****hole. Someone needs to fix it.

Cite one example of the Emperor fixing anything.

Tell me specifically who you're talking about.

Lorgar. Lorgar's entire outlook was at odd with Emp's, and he decided to give him a legion, didn't check on him for two centuries, came back, found out that he was doing what he was obviously going to do and had an entire city burned down for the crime of obeying the guy he put in charge.

What a great ruler.

Order beats Chaos.
The Imperial Truth was science. Science is Order.
Religion is also Order.

The Imperial Truth is not science. In a world where magic, demons and gods are real, the scientific thing to do is to study them to better understand how to use them or defend against them. You know, the things the Interex and even ****ing Prospero were doing before the Imperium came along. The Imperial Truth blanketly denied their existence. It is dogmatic adherence to a point of view. It's the opposite of science.

Either works.

No, it doesn't. The Imperial Truth had half the Empire fall to Chaos in two-three centuries while the Imperial Creed for all its horrors held the line for 10, 000 years.

We have the explicit motivations of the Emperor. His motivation was not fascism.

I don't care, what his motivations were. He built an explictly fascist Empire and it didn't work because fascism never works.

You can call it that, if you want. But the writers didn't, and thus we the audience aren't supposed to read that into it.
We can read that into it.
We do read that into it.
But we're not supposed to. Not really.

The writers modeled the Empire after a mish-mash of all the the various fascist regimes of history and you're telling me we're not supposed to see the guy who set it all up as fascist? You sure about that?

None of it went to plan, because people who were not Him, kept ****ing up.

You know what's the most important quality in a leader? Surrounding oneself with reliable people. The Emperoro made ot so that the Imperium would only work if the leadership was flawless and filled that leadership with monsters.

Also, that's accepting his definition of "the Imperium working" where genocides aren't bad.

As the Imperium grew larger and larger, the Emperor delegated more and more.

If that were true, he'd have shared his plans with his lieutenants. Like good leaders are supposed to do. He didn't because tye very idea that people would not blindly obey him apparently didn't cross his mind.

The more the Emperor delegated, the more watered down his vision became, until his vision turned to ****, and he was forced to create the Primarchs to bring it all back together, where it fell apart even more, because Chaos is real and undermined him at every turn.

Uh, no? He created the Primarchs back when he only controlled Terra at the very beginning of the Imperium. And at the time his "vision" was already "kill everyone who doesn't obey me without question".

'There can be no sorcery, no Gods, in the Imperium of Man.'
That's not the same as they're not real. He's saying if you practice Sorcery, if you believe in Gods, you're not part of the Imperium.

Which is dumb since gods are very much a fact in this setting. If people in the Imperium don't know gods and demons are real, it makes it really easy for Chaos to infiltrate it. Which is, you know, exactly what happened.

Chaos is real. Because Psykers. The Emperor wanted Humanity to control it, not make bargains with it.

Really hard to control something you're not allowed to study.

That's not a lie. That happened and he told everyone to forget that it did because they weren't on board.

Yes, that's a lie. He's telling people there were only 18 Primarchs when there were 20 (21 with Omegron), that's lying. He's erasing their part in creatinf the Imperium, that's lying.

More importantly, and I have said this before, in order to be erased from history...They would have to be worse than Horus. I don't know what 'worse than Horus' looks like. But that's the implication.

Now they would have to have been less successful. The Imperium is still trying to pretend the Traitor Primarchs never existed. They can't manage it because Horus effectively broke the Imperium in two. The Emperor could erase II and XI from history because the Imperium was still mostly intact after they died. For all we know their crime might have been as benign as quitting the Crusade.

I forget how He did that.

He used the Thunder Warriors to conquer Terra. And when that was done he had them all executed.

Once again, He knew he knew better than everyone. But we'll never know what his end would have looked like, because Chaos Always Wins.

If he'd knew better than everyone he would have seen the corruption of his sons coming. Like, again Angron and Kurze, anyone could have seen it coming.

To what end?

Oh, I'm willing to accept he was buying his own hype and genuinely believed he was doing everyone a favor. He just very clearly wasn't.

No he didn't. The Cult of Personality sprung up around Him and he couldn't stop it.
He never asked for it.
He explicitly said he didn't want it, and explicitly demanded that copies of the Lectitio Divinatus be burned.
He explicitly told Lorgar to get ****ed.
...Doesn't matter.

You don't know what a cult of personality is, do you?

It doesn't have to be religious. It just means presenting the leader as an unfaillible man, who everyone should obey, the father of the nation who is always right and justified in what he does, who does not have to answer to anyone, especially not the people.

The Emperor more or less said the ends justify the means.

And his means achieved no ends. Because they were never going to, because they are genuinely terrible ideas.

The Emperor was also derailed significantly by the birth of Slaanesh.

No, that was before.

I will take The Emperor at face value, because that's what the writers want me to do.

*Coughs*ThelastChurch*coughs*

In order to answer that question; I would have to say a thing.
But it's clear that you can't separate real world moral and political philosophy, with a fiction, where Chaos is Real, and Chaos Always Wins.

So in order to not have that conversation, and keep this thread unlocked, I wont answer that question.

This entire setting started as a lampooning of fascism. The fact that the Imperium is terrible is pretty foundational to it.

Does anyone have near-omniscience? Does anyone have 40,000 years of personal life experience to draw upon?

Eldrad?

If you could create a cultural hegemony, with 40,000 years of life experience with nigh-omniscient oversight, where there was no war because everyone was on the same page. Would that work? Would Humanity, all striving towards a single goal, all across the Galaxy, work? Could it happen?
Dunno. Never happened. Chaos undermined the Emperor and we never got the answer to that question and we never will know what that looks like.

You can't get humanity to co-operate by battering it. A cursory glance at history would tell that to anyone.

It's not going to happen in the real world. Because real world.
And it's not going to happen in the Fiction, because a foundational premise of the fiction is that Chaos Wins Always.

You can keep saying it, that doesn't make it true.

The Imperial Truth is dead. The Emperor's philosophy died with him.
Now there is only the Imperial Creed. The Imperial Creed and the Imperial Truth are not the same thing.

The Creed is the natural extension of the Truth. It's the same hatred of the different. The same glorification of war. The same dogmatic adherence to a single viewpoint. The same disdain for the individual. The same abject obedience to your betters.

The Imperial Creed is Lorgar's philosophy. Oddly enough.

And who did Lorgar model it on?

I'm pretty sure we agree on that.

Yet you seem to believe the Emperor and the early Imperium were heroic.

Where we disagree is:
What did the Emperor want?

Don't care.

What did the Emperor get?

He fubared the galaxy.

How much are people who are not The Emperor, responsible for the way the Imperium is?

A little bit.

Do ends justify the means in a fictional setting where Chaos is Real and Chaos Always Wins?

Maybe they would if they could actually lead to those ends.

I want to know how good the Imperium was, during 20K, pre-Men of Iron.
The Men of Iron were the first derailment of the Emperor's vision...Which led directly into the Age of Strife.
The Age of Strife is what is says on the tin.

That wasn't the Imperium. The Golden Age of Technology wasn't lead by the Emperor. That's why the Imperials call it "the Dark Age of Technology". It wasn't the Men of Iron revolt (which is mostly a Dune reference) that lead to the Age of Strife. It was the birth of Slaanesh.

[thethird]

Ah, yes the fascistic dictator will relinquish the absolute power he has taken for hismelf once the crisis has passed. Never heard that one before.

For what is worth that's the original meaning of the term. Roman Dictators were given absolute power to deal with a crisis and then they would step down. They would even be given a timeframe in which they needed to resolve the crisis. Julius Caesar being named a dictator wasn't a big issue. Him being named dictator in perpetuity led to his assassination.

Order beats Chaos.
The Imperial Truth was science. Science is Order.
Religion is also Order.

Either works. But the Emperor definitely was for the former, and firmly against the latter.

[...]

None of it went to plan, because people who were not Him, kept ****ing up.

As the Imperium grew larger and larger, the Emperor delegated more and more.

The more the Emperor delegated, the more watered down his vision became, until his vision turned to ****, and he was forced to create the Primarchs to bring it all back together, where it fell apart even more, because Chaos is real and undermined him at every turn.

[...]

Does anyone have near-omniscience? Does anyone have 40,000 years of personal life experience to draw upon?
If you could create a cultural hegemony, with 40,000 years of life experience with nigh-omniscient oversight, where there was no war because everyone was on the same page. Would that work? Would Humanity, all striving towards a single goal, all across the Galaxy, work? Could it happen?
Dunno. Never happened. Chaos undermined the Emperor and we never got the answer to that question and we never will know what that looks like.

I find it interesting that if we agree that both Science and Religion are expressions of order and thus a way to fight back Chaos that Science was chosen over Religion. At least on the short term. I mean the Emperor is not above planned obsolescence as you mentioned. Why not go with religion? Religion Zealotry probably means less deviations from the plan. Maybe reign it in, sit down with Lorgar:
"Okay Lorgar let's read the Letticio Divinatus Book of Lorgar. I am not God in the sense that I am not Omniscient Omnipotent and Omnipresent."
"Yeah, I am not using God in the Abrahamic tradition, you are more like Greek gods, no one expected them to be perfect, just ultimate expressions of human."
"Oh. That makes sense. Just make sure you aren't conflating God with god."
"Of course father."
"And I'll send Uriah Olathaire there for editorial"

It doesn't even need to be imcompatible with Imperial Truth.

[Grim Portent]

Is it worth pointing out that Chaos and the Imperium are basically copies of each other and always have been? Similar iconography, dogma, military tactics, quality of life, so on and so forth. The whole point is that their conflict is actually pointless from an outside perspective.

The Imperium is a society where the bulk of the population are enslaved to work in factories that make Victorian workhouses look pleasant, uses military tactics based on overwhelming numbers, unethical super-soldier programs, cyborg necromancy, eugenics, cybernetic integration technology that causes immense pain and gradually fries the brains of those hooked up to it, engages in cannibalism as a standard part of the diet, and myriad other horrors.*

Part of the point of the setting is that the Imperium isn't actually any better for most humans than Chaos is, it even indulges in most of the same specific horrors.


And based on some of the Dark Age era tech that has survived, humanity wasn't any better before the Long Night. Most of the horrifying tech that the Imperium and Chaos use to grow humans in artificial wombs or modified surrogate mothers, ressurect the dead with their minds shattered, create irreperable slave soldiers, recycle people into food, turn psykers into immobile fax machines and so forth came from the Dark Age. Humanity in 40k has always been horrifying, and always will be, the Emperor himself comes from tainted soil and showed no inclination to prevent the horrors man inflicted on one another, only to stop the (often lesser) horrors aliens inflict on man.



*One of my issues with the Siege of Castellax novel is that the humans act as if eating rations secretly made from their own dead is somehow this massive act of betrayal when Corpse Starch is a common food source in the Imperium and frequently bulked out with human corpses. You'd think slave soldiers/workers who were grown from farmed embryos wouldn't be all that bothered by the idea of being recycled. People eating people is normal in 40k, though I suppose they don't normally talk about it.

[Lord Raziere]

Is it worth pointing out that Chaos and the Imperium are basically copies of each other and always have been? Similar iconography, dogma, military tactics, quality of life, so on and so forth. The whole point is that their conflict is actually pointless from an outside perspective.

Eeeeeeeehh.....

I'mma have to tilt my head at that just a little. I get what you mean by the quality of life and it being pointless, but the dogma I'mma have to be quizzical here:
-the Chaos gods are literally four different dogmas warring against each other, and the Imperial Creed doesn't really map to any of them.
-like sure you can argue that some of the space marines and other forces have some khornate dogma in them, and I can see civilians being told a Nurglite-like dogma to keep them in line
-but while you can argue that maybe some people have Tzeentchian/Slaaneshi tendencies, there isn't really any actual dogmas that map to them in the Imperium, at least none that I can remember

while on military tactics that is something I also tilt my head at because:
-the Imperium has the numbers advantage, but Chaos is a guerilla force that has to do surprise attacks and like, do a bunch of infiltration from within type of stuff. but then again, I've only read Ciaphas Cain.
-and doesn't the whole summoning demons thing introduce a tactical difference because the Imperium doesn't do that, I'm pretty sure that would introduce some differences in strategy.

as for iconography:

Spoiler: Imperium Aquila

Show

Spoiler: Chaos Star of Chaos

Show

I don't see the similarities. your right about the quality of life, but I dispute them being exactly the same, they're both horrible just different flavors.

[Drasius]

Why does it seem like nobody but Cheese has actualy read any of the books?

Yes, Emps is not nice, he's not meant to be. He's the designated protector of humankind, and if that means he has to make a choice that will kill off trillions of lives to ensure that *millions* survive instead of letting trillions be killed and *NOBODY* surviving, well, sucks to be him, but that's what he's got to do.

Oh, but he's **EVIL**, yeah, to your 2022, mostly peaceful existance not threatened with extinction at every turn line of morality, but this is 28/38 thousand years in the future where there are psychers, sentient murderous fungus, a galaxy full of terminator knockoffs who can use guns and spaceships, planet devouring bug monsters without number, every daemon from every religion and then some is real and they live in an edition where recursive summoning hasn't been patched out yet, BDSM space elves who aren't big on consent raid planets for slaves and butcher everyone else for the lulz whenever they've got nothing better to do and more besides.

The Emperor gave humanity a shot at doing their own thing, but the same bunch of collective retards who refuse to wear a mask in the middle of a planet-wide plague ran things into the ground so bad that the Emperor was forced to intervene. Do a search on what a wonderful time the unification wars were if you think that 30k or even 40k is a bad time to be some random human without plot armour. Considering that the combined might of the million+ worlds of the Imperium is only enough to lose more slowly against the various forces set against them, ask yourself how well humanity would have done as individual colonies, cut off from each other every time one of the major powers invaded them?

Big E is a man faced with the runaway trolly problem every day, but instead of pulling the lever to kill one man to save 5 others, the choice he's given is to do nothing and watch humanity be destroyed or pull the lever and feed a few million lives into the meatgrinder so humanity survives to do something super dumb another day. Which choice is more evil in that regard? The condeming of all humanity because you refuse to sacrifice [insert unpleasantly large number here] people, or to sacrifice [number] of humans? Is the blood on your hands and concience any less when you're just as responsible for not pulling the lever as for pulling it?

The whole 40k setting is a story about doing what you have to in order to survive, the ends DO justify the means and there is no "take a third option" that makes everything work out all right. It's what happens when the delicate sensibilities of a civilised people are put to one side due to being on a war footing for survival for thousands of years in a row and it explores what is necessary for survival against certain doom.

The Emperor isn't meant to be GOOD, he's meant to be RIGHT.

[LeSwordfish]

"The Imperium is/was doing what has to be done" is the worst 40K take. It's literally buying into arguments that are presented satirically. No empire that fights wars with giant space cathedrals full of actual chain gangs hauling shells into place with actual chains is doing things sensibly or efficiently. No scaremongering about external threats makes sense if an empire then goes on to survive 10,000 years without the guy who claimed he was the only protection. Please don't read warhammer as pro-fascist.

This is kind of also my point - claiming that there are existential external threats that require the sacrifice of liberty and happiness to defend against is pretty much straight out of the Authoritarian Dictator Handbook. It's the argument the Emperor/Imperium presents in-universe, you shouldn't read it uncritically. There are dozens of other sentient species on the 40K universe that have survived for thousands or millions of years without signing up to the Imperial strategy and ideology.

Treating every alien species as an existential threat demanding extermination is (patently obviously) untrue - you just have to ask yourself "why haven't all the aliens destroyed each other" to see why. Just to take one example, the Orks were created for the War in Heaven, so they've been around for 65 million years but somehow haven't driven the Eldar extinct (or snuffed out humanity in the cradle).

Of course it's a narrative weakness of 40K that, being a smorgasbord of wargame factions, it's always telling several stories at once, and one or two of those stories (Tyranids, Necrons - though I think the Necrons are presented as less omnicidal now?) are genuinely about galaxy-wide extinction events. However, those threats are threats that arose ~10,000 years after the Emperor died and the Imperium took shape, and they're threats that look like they're coming regardless of whether or not the Imperium gets in the way. They're largely decoupled from the story of how the Imperium got to be the way it is.

The Imperium's story is about what happens when humanity takes its worst tendencies into space instead of its best. The Emperor's project is very clearly modelled on 19th- and 20th-century dictators, and that's not just expressed literally, but also very clearly telegraphed through the choice of language and aesthetics of the Imperium. Fans taking it as "ah yes, the future is a boot stepping on a human face forever, but actually that's for the best" make me super uncomfortable with my fellow travellers in the hobby.

Alternative: it doesn't make sense, because it's motivated by supremacist, imperialist ideology, not by some ironclad chain of logic that makes it the Only Way. Then you don't need an 'unexplainable plot device', and you're not engaging in an exercise of imagining a world where fascism and genocide are Actually Necessary. Because... why would you do that, if not to feel good about stepping into the boots of an imaginary fascist?

We had this exact discussion a couple of threads ago and I'm going to quote LCP's excellent points on this from before. TL:DR: "the world is dangerous so i have no choice but to be a fascist" is what the fascist says in-universe, not an out-of-universe fact the setting considers de facto true, or is trying to present as true in the real world.

[Lord Raziere]

Daily reminder that the Interex knew what Chaos was and were educating people about it and weren't falling to Chaos until the Imperium screwed everything up.

[Azuresun]

RE: 30k Imperium, yea its obviously evil, just not as outrageously evil as 40k imperium. I guess that's why people tend to think it was some sort of utopia? Because they are comparing it with 40k Imperium? Quick rule of thumb, when your solution to a problem is "child soldiers", it doesn't matter what the problem is, you're evil.

I think the main difference is that in 30K, there was at least a plan that all the atrocities and betrayals were building towards realising. It might not have been a successful plan, or a good one....but there was a hand on the wheel. Something that the Emperor believed would justify everything he did to lead up to it. And if it had worked as advertised....maybe it would all have been worth it in hindsight, seen as a kind of harsh but necessary lesson? But we'll never know.

After the Heresy (and certainly after the War of the Beast), there is no plan guiding the Imperium, just short-term survival. Actually, before that point. At the end of Master of Mankind, the Emperor pretty much admits that since the Webway is gone, even he has no idea what will happen next, that the future he was building towards just went up in smoke.

We had this exact discussion a couple of threads ago and I'm going to quote LCP's excellent points on this from before. TL:DR: "the world is dangerous so i have no choice but to be a fascist" is what the fascist says in-universe, not an out-of-universe fact the setting considers de facto true, or is trying to present as true in the real world.

I think of it like this--either the horrible things the Imperium does are necessary for human survival, or they're not. And both possibilities are equally horrific.

[Fergie0044]

The whole 40k setting is a story about doing what you have to in order to survive, the ends DO justify the means and there is no "take a third option" that makes everything work out all right. It's what happens when the delicate sensibilities of a civilised people are put to one side due to being on a war footing for survival for thousands of years in a row and it explores what is necessary for survival against certain doom.

The Emperor isn't meant to be GOOD, he's meant to be RIGHT.

I can certainly see why Big E may think the ends justify the means, but that doesn't mean I have to think he's right. He is a flawed character after all, deliberately presented so. Spoiler, they don't have See above child soldiers post. But it does make for a fun thought experiment.

As for a 3rd option; we can look at the Interex. Sure we only saw them briefly but they had;
- Advanced tech
- High quality of life
- Reasonable size (Lexicanum says 30 systems)
- Fought with xenos, but peacefully integrated them once they beat them (or imprisoned them) Turns out we can just say no to genocide!
- Knows about chaos and also knows not to go near it (Take note Big E, turns out ignorance isn't a good defence, who'd have thunk?)
- Good relations with the eldar for what it's worth
- Capable of beating threats even marines struggled with i.e. the megarachnids.

Now this should all be taken with a pinch of salt, as they were clearly written as a perfect society to contrast against the IoM for us readers who know how that will turn out. But it does show that a third way is possible. And may even have proven highly successful, if a certain someone's army of child soldiers hadn't blundered into it.

EDIT - ninja'ed by Lord Raziere

[LCP]

I do feel sorry for GW, that they can put out direct statements saying "this bit of the setting is intended as satire" and they still get fans who think the message is that everyone in the setting is being very logical and taking the Only Possible Path through fascism with extra skulls.

The Imperium of Man stands as a cautionary tale of what could happen should the very worst of Humanity’s lust for power and extreme, unyielding xenophobia set in. Like so many aspects of Warhammer 40,000, the Imperium of Man is satirical.

For clarity: satire is the use of humour, irony, or exaggeration, displaying people’s vices or a system’s flaws for scorn, derision, and ridicule.

How much more can they spell it out?

[Grim Portent]

Eeeeeeeehh.....

I'mma have to tilt my head at that just a little. I get what you mean by the quality of life and it being pointless, but the dogma I'mma have to be quizzical here:
-the Chaos gods are literally four different dogmas warring against each other, and the Imperial Creed doesn't really map to any of them.
-like sure you can argue that some of the space marines and other forces have some khornate dogma in them, and I can see civilians being told a Nurglite-like dogma to keep them in line
-but while you can argue that maybe some people have Tzeentchian/Slaaneshi tendencies, there isn't really any actual dogmas that map to them in the Imperium, at least none that I can remember

while on military tactics that is something I also tilt my head at because:
-the Imperium has the numbers advantage, but Chaos is a guerilla force that has to do surprise attacks and like, do a bunch of infiltration from within type of stuff. but then again, I've only read Ciaphas Cain.
-and doesn't the whole summoning demons thing introduce a tactical difference because the Imperium doesn't do that, I'm pretty sure that would introduce some differences in strategy.

as for iconography:

Spoiler: Imperium Aquila

Show

Spoiler: Chaos Star of Chaos

Show

I don't see the similarities. your right about the quality of life, but I dispute them being exactly the same, they're both horrible just different flavors.

Chaos and the Imperial Creed are both death cults, use skull iconography, use actual skulls and bones in their buildings, armour and weapons, like to bind pentitent or slave forces in chains and hoods, have a fondness for hooded figures in their statuary, engage in human sacrifice (though the trappings are different,). Eye imagery is common to Imperial psykers and also to the forces of Tzeentch and the Black Legion

The aquila and the star of chaos/chaos marks are different, but basically everything else imagewise carries across.

Where chaos has a row of people impaled on burning spikes to glorify the gods, the Imperium has a row of people clasping heated iron poles while being whipped to death as penance for misdeeds against the Emperor.

Chaos has people working to death in a daemonic factory and feed the corpses to the furnaces, the Imperium works people to death in a factory and then melts down the dead to feed to the workers.

Chaos has hordes of cultists that surge through the lower hives, the Imperium has the Frateris Militia, a horde of cultists who swarm through lower hives.

Foaming at the mouth priests in dark robes wielding massive chainsword and flamers? Both of them.

Murderous assassins butchering people in the dark for religious reasons? Both of them.

Giant statues built at great expense on the backs of fanatical devotees many of whom died in the process? Both of them.

Military officers who kill any soldier who tries to retreat? Both of them.

Enslaved soldiers treated with drug or cybernetics to make them frenzied warriors? Both of them.

A lot of the similarities only get more pronounced when you look at the nobles and merchant families that control a lot of the Imperium. Murder, conspiracy, mystery cults, mad science, eugenics and other things that can be the hallmark of a human chaos champion but without the corruption.

A lot of the stuff is funamentally the same despite surface level differences, which is kind of the point. Chaos is a dark mirror of the Imperium, but both are dark mirrors of the worst things humans have done.

Military strategy is basically the same, which is again kind of the point. Chaos is the Imperium but spiky and with sorcery instead of miracles. Chaos marines fight like marines, renegade guard fight like guard, chaos cultists fight like imperial militia. Chaos is usually attacking defended positions or Imperial bases, which means you either get chaos fighting guerilla combat or they show up in overwhelming force with thousands of marines and tens of thousands of cultists to attack a single fortress.

[Fyraltari]

I do feel sorry for GW, that they can put out direct statements saying "this bit of the setting is intended as satire" and they still get fans who think the message is that everyone in the setting is being very logical and taking the Only Possible Path through fascism with extra skulls.



How much more can they spell it out?

Meh, they dug their own grave by having more and more books and games that present the Imperial point of view uncritically, dialing down the humour and absurdity and having marketing repeating the in-universe talking points.

[Lord Raziere]

@ Grim Portent:
Oh. okay.

that makes sense.

[Eldan]

Don't forget that the entire idea of a Horus Heresy started out because one of their earliest game boxes had blue and red titans that looked the same, representing the two sides, and they had to come up with an idea for why Imperial Titans were fighting each other.

[Cheesegear]

I do feel sorry for GW, that they can put out [...] "this bit of the setting is intended as satire"

How much more can they spell it out?

The Horus Heresy is not presented as satire.
The Solar War is not presented as satire.
Steve Parker and John French are not writing satirical novels.

Dan Abnett...Maybe he is? Maybe that's why I don't like his stuff.

It doesn't matter what GW says in the modern day, far removed from their satirical roots.

Huge swathes of the modern canon are to be taken 100% seriously. Because that's the way they are written. No more dancing Space Marines. I haven't seen that in a long, long time.

The days of Orks firing shootas with ammo clips with only a dead rat for the firing pin, are over.
They even went out of their way to explain that no, red ones do not go faster. There is a logical - albeit unknown reason to the Ork - reason for why the red one goes faster.
Then there was Octarius.
Even the Orks are serious business in modern 40K. There is no satire. Ghazgkull is a threat, and he will murder anyone - and everyone - he can.

Ciaphas Cain is sometimes satirical. But, as I've said before, the best thing about Ciaphas Cain, is that entire sections of the series are extremely serious business.

GW says 40K is satirical.
Almost all of the novels I've read say differently.
The only real satire in 40K is ever found on 1d4chan.

[LCP]

You're confusing satire with humour. Satire can be humorous, but doesn't have to be; GW gave a handy dictionary definition in their own statement. They even spell it out further for you: "the Imperium is a cautionary tale". Just because a story is told with a straight-faced affect doesn't mean that it's supposed to be taken literally.

I also find the argument "it doesn't matter what they say now, that's all in the past" as bizarre as I imagine everyone else does.

[Lord Raziere]

The only real satire in 40K is ever found on 1d4chan.

So what your saying is.....1d4chan is the best take on Wh40k.

[Grim Portent]

When a setting has characters who do things that are based on real life historical military disasters being hailed as a military genius, it shouldn't need to have people in setting laughing at them to know they're not being serious.

[BRC]

I think the better term is "Over the Top" than Satire. Satire is pointed, Warhammer 40k takes plenty of elements from elsewhere, but it's really only a "Satire" of itself.


I think it's also reasonable to say that Warhammer 40k is full of Homages. For example, Catachan Jungle Fighters are not a "Satire" of Rambo, They're an homage to Rambo.

I don't think the setting is supposed to be Comedic so much as it's supposed to be absurd and ridiculous. It's ridiculous in that it sounds like a couple kids making up backstories for their favorite action figures and trying to one-up each other with how "Epic" and "Dark" the stories are.

Like, yeah, the Admech performing the "Rite of Slumber and Awakening" with an hour of chanting and candles in order to turn a machine off and back on is a little bit silly. Orks using "Tellyporta's" is a bit silly. The Adeptus Sororitas existing due to a loophole in the rule saying that the Ecclesiarchy cannot have "men under arms" is SUPER silly, as if the other Imperial powers, after banning the church from building it's own army, suddenly said "Oh, well, Heh, they got us there. You ladies have fun with those flamers".



I also think there's a good deal of just, straight up disagreement and inconsistency within the setting writers themselves on what the setting means.


Consider the following scenario: An Inquisitor suspects that a planet is home to a Chaos Cult and orders an Exterminatus.


In the hands of one writer, that might be "Oh, in this horrible imperium, a paranoid fanatic Inquisitor has the power to condemn an entire world to destruction on the Suspicion that it houses a chaos cult. Look how horrible the Imperium is".

For another writer, that might be "oh, in this GRIM DARK FUTURE, the taint of Chaos is so dangerous that an entire planet must be destroyed in order to ensure it does not spread to other worlds."

For a third writer, the point might be that the imperium is so mind-bogglingly vast that they can write off the destruction of an entire planet as a minor statistic.

Like, On one hand, the Imperium is presented using every trope of repressive theocracy available to the writers. Any signs of lack of faith or questioning are met with brutal, horrible violence, all to enforce the worship of a man who despised the concept of Religion. However, the other "Religions" available to humans are "Demon Cults, who will summon demons that will devour everybody's souls", and "Cthulu Cults who will summon a swarm of spacebugs that will just straight up devour everybody". That's basically it. You never run into "The humans on this planet worship a benevolent ocean spirit" without "The Ocean Spirit is actually a Demon" showing up. The Imperial Cult is a horrible repressive religion, but the setting kind of paints it as better than all the alternatives, considering how easily people will start worshipping Chaos.


They'll go into long digressions about how many countless people are chewed up and destroyed by the Imperium's cruel war machine, from workers who die in unsafe munitions factories to Guardsmen thrown away in human wave tactics to planets that starve as their food is redirected to the front, all in the name of the Imperium's millitant xenophobia.

And it would read as a parody, except that usually those wars are against Orks or Tyranids or Chaos, groups that are very much an Existential Threat to humanity, and want nothing more than the complete destruction or subjugation of everything they can get their hands on. The only "Parody" bit is how BAD and Inefficient the Imperium is at warfare. From any other franchise, the message would be "The Imperium shouldn't fight so many wars". Here, it's "The Imperium should be BETTER at fighting wars, but they're so bogged down by tradition, corruption, incompetence, and bureaucracy that they just write off massive, unnecessary losses".
One writer creates an Absurdity, another explains that that absurdity is Good Actually In Context.



It's why I love the Idea of the Tau, but kind of hate the Grimdarkness of "Oh, the Ethereals sterilize human populations that join their empire" or whatever. Like, the Tau SHOULD be the thing that reveals that the Imperium are Not The Good Guys, not necessarily by being "The Good Guys" themselves, the Tau can still be imperialistic douchebags who use "The Greater Good" as a cover for pursuing petty material desires, but by being a reasonable space empire, one that can be talked to. One that does NOT want to fight the Imperium until one side or the other is destroyed. With the idea being that if the Imperium was really just "Doing what was necessary" they would negotiate and co-exist with the Tau where possible, and that the Imperium's, in this case Unjustified Xenophobia is the primary driver of the conflict. The idea of having a non-human version of, basically Star Trek's Federation showing up in-setting to demonstrate how absolutely bonkers the Imperium is.

[Cheesegear]

They even spell it out further for you: "the Imperium is a cautionary tale".

I don't care what they say, if that's not what I'm reading in the work they present.
Death of the Author, they call it.

It's the same with...Anything...Alan Moore writes. It doesn't matter what you intend if you don't put in the book.
If you don't write it the way you want it to be read, then it's not going to be read that way. Easy.

The Emperor is presented as right, not good.
If you don't want him presented as neither right nor good in the fiction that he is written for...You probably shouldn't write him or the fiction the way you have.

Drasius puts it excellently:
Kill millions to save thousands (and no I don't have that backwards). Or do nothing and everyone dies regardless.

Maybe it's satirical. Maybe it's not. However, in the context of the fiction and the setting, it doesn't feel very satirical. It feels like the kind of choice a ruler in a world of fiction would agonize over written by a writer who cares about his character.

I also find the argument "it doesn't matter what they say now, that's all in the past" as bizarre as I imagine everyone else does.

I trust you've read Horus Heresy novels?
I trust you've seen dancing Space Marines from the '80s.

See how those two things don't mix, and things change over time, so that what you did in the past, isn't actually relevant in the present anymore unless you continued doing it?

'The Imperium is meant to be satire!!!1!'
Okay then. What's the straight version of the Imperium?

I've read 40K from the '80s and '90s.
I unironically believe that Space Marine and The Inquisition War are some of the best novels ever written, and yes. I 100% see the satire in those novels. Everything is awful. No. More awful than that. Times by three, add four. And it's still more awful. At a certain point The Inquisition War is just silly. It's satire.
I've read 15 Hours. Everything is awful. All the time. Then you die. I don't recommend anyone read 15 Hours. I get it. I get what you're saying. Nobody needs to read it.
I've read the Forge of Mars trilogy where there are several chapters of satire, of just how ****ty the draft is when you're in the Imperium and you're literally just a cog in the machine - pun unintended.

I've also read far, far, far more than those novels where there's no satire at all, books I would recommend, to non-40K readers, who enjoy serious, military, sci-fi and space fiction action/thrillers...And I have.

40K, for the most part, is not satirical. As I said, I don't care what GW says, because it's not what they produce - unless you're specifically talking about action scenes and sequences, which are over the top and often quite dumb (Death of Antagonis comes to mind...But also there's whole sequences in that novel which are not dumb).

So what your saying is.....1d4chan is the best take on Wh40k.

Sometimes. Not always. But sometimes.

[LCP]

Just like there's a difference between satire and humour, there's a difference between "not there in the text" and "not what I personally take from the text".

You don't need to read a hundred serialised space marine novels to see what's being held up about the Imperium as a cautionary tale. It's laid on extremely heavily, both narratively and visually. If you don't see the authorial criticism being aimed at an organisation that dresses up like the SS and uses war machines powered by prisoners in iron maidens then I think that says more about you than any failure of communication on geedubs' part. If you want to keep arguing otherwise, that's your prerogative, but I'd just gently remind you (in the same way I would an elderly relative who'd forgotten to put clothes on) that this is a public forum and people can see what you post.

[Eldan]

I mean, yeah, 40k is intended as satire, but I can see where he is coming from. A lot of hte bolterporn has swallowed its own propaganda. I don't think you can deny that there's quite a bit of "OMG space marines so cool" in the setting.

[LCP]

For sure, but there's a big leap between unironically enjoying bolter porn for the chainsaws and the battles and saying that the space fascists are Ideologically Right.

[Eldan]

Of course. The question, I think, if 40k actually represents the satire it claims to be.

And how much of it actually does.

[Cheesegear]

For sure, but there's a big leap between unironically enjoying bolter porn for the chainsaws and the battles and saying that the space fascists are Ideologically Right.

But that's the problem.
The text is saying that space fascism, is the correct choice of action for the world that they are in. What do you do, in the grim darkness of the future where there is only war?

If the text is supposed to be satirising, or at the very least, criticising fascism...Well, it doesn't.* It actually presents fascism in the single-best light I've ever seen, in arguably the only setting where it would be useful and arguably correct**; Chaos is Real. Chaos Always Wins. Also, there's Orks, Tyranids and Necrons, all of which provide their own existential threats to Humanity. What do?

*I am aware that this causes problems for those who can't separate fiction from real life; Namely unguided children and the mentally ill.
**I am aware that this causes problems for those who can't separate art from real life; Namely unguided children and the mentally ill.

In any case.
We're devolving back into 'IRL Fascism bad,' territory which everyone with a working brain agrees with (see above). So I'm out.

Of course. The question, I think, if 40k actually represents the satire it claims to be.

And how much of it actually does.

That's my point. If the writers want 40K - and especially the Imperium - to be satire, there are entire series worth of novels that should've gone out of production years ago.

[Grim Portent]

Thing is that the Imperium is only threatened by Chaos because of the Imperium's own actions.

Before the Emperor dropped a handful of maladjusted demi-gods and legions of slightly less maladjusted super soldiers in their lap all Chaos had was daemons, who aren't good at invading realspace, a handful of tiny chaos worshipping societies like Colchis which couldn't grow powerful because they were too self destructive in nature, and a few enclaves of xenos who mostly stuck to their own space and did much the same as the chaos aligned humans. Each individual chaos faction at the time was trivial to exterminate by the setting's standards, even if costly in human life.

Chaos is generally speaking a self made problem, a form of massive metaphysical insurrection caused by the Imperium and the Eldar empires (and the previous human cilisations) own bad choices.


The Necrons are able to be negotiated with a lot of the time, even if they're *******s about it. The Orks are only interested in humanity because they find fighting them fun, and the Tyranids would be a lot less threatening if the Imperium hadn't been degrading for ten thousand years because of internal disputes over dogma and power balances.