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Is the Imperium of Man about to die?

I cannot for the life of me understand how people use Gaunt's Ghosts as a defense of the Imperium's virtue.

It is consistently a theme that other parts of the Imperium are as much if not more of a threat to the Tanith First And Only as Chaos is, the antagonists of the first book are a NOT Chaos Tainted Inquisitor and a High Lord General and they are far from unique in the superiors and peers Gaunt et al have to deal with.
 
Hykal94 said:
Abhumans are a thing.
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They're second class citizens at best, and only the ones that are lucky enough to be registered by that title. Mutants are regularly culled by imperial authorities, and the line between "abhuman" and "mutant" can grow thin indeed.

Case in point, the Imperium is human-supremacist, and their definition of what "humanity" is fits in a exclusionary mold of their ideology's own making.
 
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Baron Ouroboros said:
They're second class citizens at best, and only the ones that are lucky enough to be registered by that title. Mutants are regularly culled by imperial authorities, and the line between "abhuman" and "mutant" can grow thin indeed.
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Mutants in Chaos worlds are basically slaves with little to no chance of advancement, another step towards the road of Hell. If you're infected by Nurgle's love, you more or less lose control of your body. If you're with Slaanesh, you lose yourself further and further pursuing your art to the point of murdering your loved ones and always craving ecstasy, basically you become a drug addict. If you're Tzeentch's champion, it's just a long line of deals before you get gobbled up by him. If you're with Khorne okay maybe you might have a good time.

The end result is Chaos Spawn regardless. Being near Chaos mutates you even further. You might as well argue regular people should join the Cult of the Four Armed Emperor.
 
Hykal94 said:
Mutants in Chaos worlds are basically slaves with little to no chance of advancement, another step towards the road of Hell. If you're infected by Nurgle's love, you more or less lose control of your body. If you're with Slaanesh, you lose yourself further and further pursuing your art to the point of murdering your loved ones and always craving ecstasy, basically you become a drug addict. If you're Tzeentch's champion, it's just a long line of deals before you get gobbled up by him. If you're with Khorne okay maybe you might have a good time.

The end result is Chaos Spawn regardless. Being near Chaos mutates you even further. You might as well argue regular people should join the Cult of the Four Armed Emperor.
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I'm talking about mutants in Imperial worlds, not Chaos worlds. Abhumans are considered subhuman, while mutants are only ever seen worth killing. If the imperial authority considers you to be too strayed from the "genetic purity" of the human genome, then you're labelled a mutant and summarily murdered.
 
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Hykal94 said:
I was arguing against this. Yes, Chaos accepts everyone, all the mutants. As long of course, as you're willing to be a slave to their champions.

Either way, Chaos does not treat mutants nicely.
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Perhaps not nicely, perhaps they'd be slaves, but they'd still live. Compare this with the Imperium, where they'd be murdered outright without a second thought. Now, if you're an alien, the Imperium's policy toward you is unconditional genocide. They're literally worse than Chaos in this.


Ie. they are the baddies.
 
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Baron Ouroboros said:
Perhaps not nicely, perhaps they'd be slaves, but they'd still live. Compare this with the Imperium, where they'd be murdered outright without a second thought. Now, if you're an alien, the Imperium's policy toward you is unconditional genocide. They're literally worse than Chaos in this.


Ie. they are the baddies.
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I mean if I had the choice of death or tortuous slavery I would pick death.
 
Baron Ouroboros said:
Compare this with the Imperium, where they'd be murdered outright without a second thought.
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This isn't correct either, because you have people with literal eyeballs on their tongues and mouths on their stomach in Eisenhorn, who while living in ghettos (because the Imperium hates mutants), and well, they're living. Badly, but they're doing well enough for themselves. It varies from planet to planet, with some abhumans doing well and some don't. On Chaos worlds, everyone is a slave. If you can't make up the ranks through martial or magic might, you're cattle.

Baron Ouroboros said:
They're literally worse than Chaos in this.
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Chaos forces war with aliens all the time, either against them or using them as mercs. The Imperium does too, to an extent. Look at the alliances between Eldar and Marines, which happens in almost every Dawn of War game (which is canon). Or how Guilliman is allying with the Eldar. Or how the Blood Angels fought begrudgingly with the Necrons against Nids. Or the Tau and Imperium on the other sides of the planet in Ciaphas Cain. Or how Ravenor is friendly with Eldar. Or so on and so forth.

Baron Ouroboros said:
Ie. they are the baddies.
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Yes, both Chaos and Imperium are baddies. What is new?
 
Hykal94 said:
So they're previous editions Grey Knights? Cool. Weird that a chapter with not that much lore (compared to other chapters), is the OP one right now.
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It's funny you use Grey knights as an example of being overpowered since currently they are solidly bottom tier. How times change.

As for fluff and crunch divide. My own head canon is that a lot of the fluff is exaggerated stories and legends and the tabletop game is more the reality. For example the stories of space marines being invincible one man armies exist within the setting but in reality they will fall down to enough shots like anyone else.
 
Alex said:
It's funny you use Grey knights as an example of being overpowered since currently they are solidly bottom tier. How times change.

As for fluff and crunch divide. My own head canon is that a lot of the fluff is exaggerated stories and legends and the tabletop game is more the reality. For example the stories of space marines being invincible one man armies exist within the setting but in reality they will fall down to enough shots like anyone else.
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I'd call it somewhere in between.

On tabletop, all that power armor and bioenhancement gives a Space Marine, statistically, about 1/3 to 1/2 the odds of being killed by a lasgun burst that a Guardsman has. If their armor was that bad or from another perspective if lasguns were that good, then there would be literally no point in having the Marines, not in such small numbers (~1000-or-so chapters of ~1000 Marines). it'd be infinitely more feasible to train 100 times more 'storm troopers' with carapace armor and hellguns, and just skip the whole 'bioengineered supersoldier regiment with their own planetary fortress-monastery, each member of which takes like a decade to grow and train' bit.

So either you have to completely rewrite factions like the Eldar and Space Marines to explain how they have the numbers to even go on existing in the face of the bigger, more numerous factions (Tyranids, Orks, Chaos as a whole, Imperium as a whole)... Or you have to accept that some of the higher-end stuff in the setting is nerfed to make it balanced for tabletop play.
 
The imperium is dying but it will never actually die, because GW knows the section do the fanbase that are unironic fascists will throw a fit if that happens. It will find more and more ways to pad things out so that it never happens.
 
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idk i wonder where they're going with "Psychic Awakening" and "Imperium must die for something new and better to take place"
Given that they gave us End Times, I am not hopeful about their writer chops, but, well....we'll see.
 
no. said:
The imperium is dying but it will never actually die, because GW knows the section do the fan lbase that are unironic fascists will throw a fit if that happens. It will find more and more ways to pad things out so that it never happens.
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They can have their pseudo Space Third Reich in the form of some splinter imperial faction.

There are enought planets and people in the Imperium to make that sort of faction and make it a credible threat.
 
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no. said:
The imperium is dying but it will never actually die, because GW knows the section do the fan lbase that are unironic fascists will throw a fit if that happens. It will find more and more ways to pad things out so that it never happens.
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GW doesn't give a shit about "fascists" in their fanbase. They are such a minority they don't even matter. GW has become far more progressive in recent years. There are literal hundreda of thousands on subreddits whereas a tg thread gets what? A few hundred. Do they exist? Yes. Do they matter? God no.

Besides, this is the same company that ended Fantasy, and that irked EVERYONE.
 
Hykal94 said:
GW doesn't give a shit about "fascists" in their fanbase. They are such a minority they don't even matter. GW has become far more progressive in recent years. There are literal hundreda of thousands on subreddits whereas a tg thread gets what? A few hundred. Do they exist? Yes. Do they matter? God no.

Besides, this is the same company that ended Fantasy, and that irked EVERYONE.
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On this tangent, I've read the lore for Beastgrave (expansion for Underworlds) yesterday evening and...I actually liked it, I think. It's pretty atmospheric, if somewhat generic, fantasy feel. Not iconic like 40k or some parts of WHFB, but those weren't iconic back when they were created either.

So maybe Age of Sigmar's setting has potential. /shrug
I am still hyped for the Old World tho.
 
ctulhuslp said:
On this tangent, I've read the lore for Beastgrave (expansion for Underworlds) yesterday evening and...I actually liked it, I think. It's pretty atmospheric, if somewhat generic, fantasy feel. Not iconic like 40k or some parts of WHFB, but those weren't iconic back when they were created either.

So maybe Age of Sigmar's setting has potential. /shrug
I am still hyped for the Old World tho.
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I don't hate AoS or anything, Fantasy was something I was aware of but didn't care for at least until the games came around. What AoS needs is a good video game, because from what I understand, it's somehow more metal than Fantasy was.
 
Hykal94 said:
GW doesn't give a shit about "fascists" in their fanbase. They are such a minority they don't even matter. GW has become far more progressive in recent years. There are literal hundreda of thousands on subreddits whereas a tg thread gets what? A few hundred. Do they exist? Yes. Do they matter? God no.

Besides, this is the same company that ended Fantasy, and that irked EVERYONE.
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Eh, I agree and disagree. On the GW front I agree that they have actually more progressive in the sense that they are including more women and minority characters, with authors like ADB even making it a point to try and add them in whenever possible to balance out the sheer hyper masculine ball that is space marine stories. On the other hand I think GW knows they are walking a balancing act where they don't want to be too fashy too alienate new people but are also aware there is a core segment that does like the fashy angle and thus don't want to come down too critically of it either.

I think the middle ground they have gone for is bringing back Gulliman and introducing the primaris marines to round off some of the imperium's worst edges while also playing up chaos as the major enemy of the setting, thus pushing it a bit into a more generic space mil sci fi.

As for the Reddit/4chan thing in some ways I think the reddit 40k community is more fascist but Its weird. 4chan is quite obviously on aggregate more bigoted and hateful then the average reddit, but they are also deeply cynical, and that cynicism can manifest in them being less prone to endlessly defend the impreium like some reddit threads or endlessly post memes that amount to "Lol genocide aliens good".

Edit: I should try to be clear here, that I am not trying to defend 4chan. It is a bigoted shit hole, only commenting on how its brand of apathy and nihlism can stave off bad ideologies as well as good.
 
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no. said:
The imperium is dying but it will never actually die, because GW knows the section do the fanbase that are unironic fascists will throw a fit if that happens. It will find more and more ways to pad things out so that it never happens.
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I swear, I would kill for at least one anti-Imperium uprising that's cool, has actual screentime, and aren't a bunch of chaos deranged idiots! I don't care how doomed they are in the long term!

It's not likely, I know, judging how the last thread about drove a lot of people into a tiff.
 
tankdrop24 said:
I swear, I would kill for at least one anti-Imperium uprising that's cool, has actual screentime, and aren't a bunch of chaos deranged idiots! I don't care how doomed they are in the long term!

It's not likely, I know, judging how the last thread about drove a lot of people into a tiff.
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Another player and I are going to be blogging the sequel to our current campaign when we start it in a few months.

The current campaign which seems to be ending with us in possession of a planet, some ships, a cache of DoT tech including a genetic recipe for fertile female space marines, and way more ambition than common sense.
 
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Leila Hann said:
Another player and I are going to be blogging the sequel to our current campaign when we start it in a few months.

The current campaign which seems to be ending with us in possession of a planet, some ships, a cache of DoT tech including a genetic recipe for fertile female space marines, and way more ambition than common sense.
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Sounds cool. I'll keep an eye out for it, thanks!
 
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