It sadden me to see so many people choose war with a human populace than peace and slow change over time. Like I would understand if they followed chaos but there is no sings of chaos here.
If that was going to be an issue for us we would have remained a farmer. We agreed to this with open eyes and this is the heart of what the Crusade
is.
Peace, as with the other options, says much about what we are here for and its not particularly pretty. Let me make a particularly cynical interpretation of what peace means: We are willing to tolerate the intolerable because its
convenient, because the deaths and atrocity occur where we don't have to see them over a longer period of time rather than at our hand, in the hopes that maybe reform could occur if anybody can be assed to apply enough pressure for enough centuries when there is little external incentive to. This polity would do
just fine at producing ships and lasguns...
War is ugly but peace is also ugly.
Awkward Mortarion accidentally making a good speech and getting charmed by Horus is great.
Further proof that he isn't actually shit at public relations. He just is incapable of seeing it due to his issues.
There's a capacity for random space communities to confound the Mechanicum with their specialties, but I think it's worth a try. It could get very brutal very quickly if they start feeding their entire populace soldier pills or the death pills out of spite, but in the end maps pretty easily to Barbarus. Leaders enforcing their doctrine with poison = rip and tear.
I have to imagine these guys have crafted some
really good drugs over the millennia. Shit that makes what 40k had look like tylenol.
On the one hand, its kind of scary. On the other hand... it could probably do some good if, you know, not being used by totalitarian asshats who have no concern for human life. Tools for actual medical work, dealing with planets with acid for air, and all that. I want to coopt the hell out of both their pharmaceutical industry and their bureaucratic engine after beating some of the evil out.