Sterbelicht - One Sacrifice At A Time Against The Galaxy (40K)

[The Laurent]

I mean, the Giant Meteor is sort of part of the premise? The Age of Strife was literally started by "Chaos is hypercharged by the pending manifestation of Slaanesh and Daemons can literally just waltz over the Veil whenever they want to ruin shit." It's like saying "The Dinosaurs died because after the meteor fell, there was a lack of sunlight and the temperature went down, and they were too poorly equipped to survive a relatively low energy environment given how huge they tended to be." Yes, it's correct, but the Root Cause is part of the premise, while the Consequences are what people most clearly see.

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The difference is we're supposedly getting a Holy Vision of the True and Correct read on things, and yet it doesn't include those sorts of details. Like if it was a random account preserved from however-many thousand years ago, it'd make sense that there were those gaps because presumably whatever human wrote that didn't know what went on with the Eldar.

Something to point out: the Emperor and by extension the Star Child is not omniscient and they would definitely have their own biases. Hell. The Emperor is a fuck wit that caused a lot of the problems in the first place.

The Star Child is not infallible either. It may be better than the Emperor and gives some context but it is not flawless. After all the Star Child's source *is* the Emperor.

We just have to make informed decisions keeping in mind the various viewpoints.

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Sure, that may be the case, but the "Natural 100" (55) associated with it points towards it being the Correct Vision/View.

 

[Alectai]

The difference is we're supposedly getting a Holy Vision of the True and Correct read on things, and yet it doesn't include those sorts of details. Like if it was a random account preserved from however-many thousand years ago, it'd make sense that there were those gaps because presumably whatever human wrote that didn't know what went on with the Eldar.

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It Does

Right here!

A dream that angrily demanded all within the hall to listen and see what C̴̪̞͙̘͙̣̝̩͐͆̀͒̏̿̒́̂͜h̴̜̟̥̦̝̘̀̑̆̑͝ȃ̴̯̦̩̭͔͓̜̪̟͂̑͊̓̒̕o̷̫̩̊͒͐͆̊s̷̡̼̦͖̥̦̫̙̆͗̓̇͗̓̐͜͝ had wrought, corrupting those who stood and those who fought alike, muddling the lines and leaving paranoia to fester and whisper.

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It Straight up says here "Chaos took what would have been a complicated situation but not beyond recovery, and stirred the pot until everyone hated everyone and nobody could live under the same stars as the others.

Did people fucking read the update or are they too busy trying to sling stones and Virtue Signal?

 

[The Laurent]

It Does

Right here!



It Straight up says here "Chaos took what would have been a complicated situation but not awful, and stirred the pot until everyone hated everyone and nobody could live under the same stars.

Did people fucking read the update?

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I did? That doesn't say what you think it says. It says, "Chaos made things worse." It doesn't even talk about the Birth of Slaaneesh, which is honestly probably more important than literally everything everyone else did combined, tbh.

We know that the collapse happens basically immediately after Slaaneesh's birth. That's the inciting incident. It's not "There are problems and Chaos makes it worse" it's "Chaos directly caused the problems and people later made up humanity-centric narratives about how things went down that conveniently align with their Xenophobia."

 

[Alectai]

I did? That doesn't say what you think it says. It says, "Chaos made things worse." It doesn't even talk about the Birth of Slaaneesh, which is honestly probably more important than literally everything everyone else did combined, tbh.

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Because it was a messy fucking situation to begin with, galactic travel had been made virtually impossible, and Even the human race will fly into murderous infighting if they feel like it's every man for themselves. Expecting future humans and future aliens to be any different and sneering and calling it fascist apologetic is grinding my gears.

This is the Least fucking Fascist 40K quest I've seen on these boards, because it doesn't accept the base premise of "The Imperium is the least awful of several terrible options" as an excuse. So why the fuck are people suddenly virtue-signalling that this is a fascist apologetic story just because "Hey, geopolitics is hard even in a time of plenty, when you're in a disaster when central authority has completely broken down and now you also have Literal Evil Gods stirring the pot to maximize the awfulness, you get a situation where everyone hates each other and the survivors have generational trauma that can't be easily overcome."

I don't get it. The update seemed fairly clear and reasonable.

 

[aceraptor]

I did? That doesn't say what you think it says. It says, "Chaos made things worse." It doesn't even talk about the Birth of Slaaneesh, which is honestly probably more important than literally everything everyone else did combined, tbh.

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The Men of Iron War crippled humanity at the worst possible timing. If the Men of Iron war had not occurred then humanity would have potentially been able to ride out and maintain cohesion through the Fall via military and technological might.

From a *certain point of view* the Men of Iron revolt was the precipitating event because it meant that humanity's shattering became inevitable due to crippling human civilization right when Slaanesh's birth popped off.

 

[The Laurent]

Because it was a messy fucking situation to begin with, galactic travel had been made virtually impossible, and Even the human race will fly into murderous infighting if they feel like it's every man for themselves. Expecting future humans and future aliens to be any different and sneering and calling it fascist apologetic is grinding my gears.

This is the Least fucking Fascist 40K quest I've seen on these boards, because it doesn't accept the base premise of "The Imperium is the least awful of several terrible options" as an excuse. So why the fuck are people suddenly virtue-signalling that this is a fascist apologetic story just because "Hey, geopolitics is hard even in a time of plenty, when you're in a disaster when central authority has completely broken down and now you also have Literal Evil Gods stirring the pot to maximize the awfulness, you get a situation where everyone hates each other and the survivors have generational trauma that can't be easily overcome."

I don't get it. The update seemed fairly clear and reasonable.

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Honestly, it's maybe in the top five least fascist Quests? It's definitely not the least. Though maybe you haven't seen the others?

Though to be clear here, I didn't call it fascist, that was someone else. I'm calling the narrative being peddled shitty and unlikely and biased and yet supposedly the True Narrative that now we have to work.

 

[*name*]

Why is there a debate about how chaos messed things up, aren't we supposed to be making an uplift doctrine?

 

[Alectai]

Probably haven't seen the others, that being said, 40K is an absolute cesspool of a setting, and my interest is here to set it on fire and make something better from the blaze. Just walking out because part of the shitty setting's backstory was shitty because they were expecting it--presumably--to be a kumbaya paradise where Humans were the Only Ones Who Did Wrong to ruin things and Chaos only has power over humans just...

Like, what were people expecting? Was it that "Humans just backstabbed all the aliens and blamed it on them, and therefore Xenos are all perfectly hunky dory." Was that what they expected?

Why is there a debate about how chaos messed things up, aren't we supposed to be making an uplift doctrine?

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We Were, the problem is a bunch of people decided to flip out and start quitposting about how this story was apparently Fascist Apologetica because the aliens weren't universally free of blame and the hate wasn't purely sourced from humans, apparently.

 

[The Laurent]

Why is there a debate about how chaos messed things up, aren't we supposed to be making an uplift doctrine?

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We were given a True Vision that we now have to interpret in such a way as captures all of its truths.

Probably haven't seen the others, that being said, 40K is an absolute cesspool of a setting, and my interest is here to set it on fire and make something better from the blaze. Just walking out because part of the shitty setting's backstory was shitty because they were expecting it--presumably--to be a kumbaya paradise where Humans were the Only Ones Who Did Wrong to ruin things and Chaos only has power over humans just...

Like, what were people expecting? Was it that "Humans just backstabbed all the aliens and blamed it on them, and therefore Xenos are all perfectly hunky dory." Was that what they expected?

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No? That's not it at all.

"A dream where unshackled Abominable Intelligences shattered the dream of an eternal utopia, and the veil presented by half of the Xenos found, for they sunk their blades into our backs at the first opportunity."

Like, what the shit.

The most progressive version you can imagine is, "Literally 50% of Xenos betrayed humanity at the turn of a dime"? With literally no mention of Human behavior at all?

 

[aceraptor]

Honestly, it's maybe in the top five least fascist Quests? It's definitely not the least. Though maybe you haven't seen the others?

Though to be clear here, I didn't call it fascist, that was someone else. I'm calling the narrative being peddled shitty and unlikely and biased and yet supposedly the True Narrative that now we have to work.

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No. It's you and others that are claiming that it's the True or Universal Narrative when it fucking isn't and it's obviously from a biased source.

Star Child is *not* unbiased source.

 

[Alectai]

Feels to me like a wording issue rather than anything else. It still seems insanely extreme for people to be calling it Fascist Apologetica when it seems pretty obvious to me that the root cause of the whole thing was Chaos taking a messy and complicated situation and turning it into a fuckfest.

But whatever, I'm just one voice and mostly everyone else seems content to shit on Cooky over this, and it's quite clear that my own take is apparently Objectively Wrong.

 

[RaptorusMaximus]

We know that the collapse happens basically immediately after Slaaneesh's birth

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A common but incorrect understanding the timeline of events. Slaanesh wasn't fully birthed until only a few centuries before the beginning of the Great Crusade, right around the end of the Age of Strife.

It was her birth that cause the end to the near-constant warp storms that plagued the galaxy during the Age of Strife and made interstellar travel almost suicidal to attempt. Those warp storms were a result of Slaanesh's ~10'000 years of gestation.

Slaanesh's birth and the death of the Aeldari Empire were the closing act of the Age of Strife, not the beginning of it. The Human Society of the DAOT was collapsed well before Slaanesh was born and the Eye of Terror torn open.

Any meddling by the extant 3 Chaos Gods before or during the Age of Strife and the collapse of the Human Society of the DAOT would likely have been relatively subtle, at least in places where they weren't tearing open the heads of Psykers to vomit Daemons into the materium

 

[The Laurent]

No. It's you and others that are claiming that it's the True or Universal Narrative when it fucking isn't and it's obviously from a biased source.

Star Child is *not* unbiased source.

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Our job is still to find a way to exactly convey that message because it's been told to us that that's what we're going to believe.

How do we write this down?

As in: this is what we're believing, let's write it down.

Feels to me like a wording issue rather than anything else. It still seems insanely extreme for people to be calling it Fascist Apologetica when it seems pretty obvious to me that the root cause of the whole thing was Chaos taking a messy and complicated situation and turning it into a fuckfest.

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Like, you ask what I think happened? Things broke down. All across the universe people made different choices. Some of those people, humans, did evil things. Some of those people, one of many thousands of "Xenos" species, did bad things. People did desperate things to survive that ranged the gamut. "Xenos" were genocided, and genocided, pacts or alliances led to one side or the other (not just humans) being enslaved, but likely in plenty of cases they hung together and either survived to be murdered and genocided by the Emperor or died together in the cold dark from outside threats...

Instead, apparently "half the Xenos found" "sunk their blades" despite the fact that the breakdown of communication and understanding is the point.

 

[The Laurent]

Like, what kind of bullshit wording even is this?

"A dream where unshackled Abominable Intelligences shattered the dream of an eternal utopia, and the veil presented by half of the Xenos found, for they sunk their blades into our backs at the first opportunity."

The humans only mistake was assuming things were cool when they weren't, meanwhile half the "Xenos" turned on humanity at "the first opportunity."

That's fucking bullshit. People don't actually work like that.

 

[NotteBoy97]

So to maybe have a more productive conversation about the actual topic of the vote, we should probably think not only about technological uplift but also a psychic uplift for xeno protectorates and allies. Cause there's a lot of things to think about in that regard.

Like do we mandate all xeno psykers join our choirs for their own good? But what if instead of the Kil'drabi who had no psyker tradition beyond killing them we meet another xeno race who actually has trained psykers that won't instantly explode into Chaos like say the Tau's Nicassar. Will we force them to give up their old tradition even if it works cause we don't trust them/ours is objectively better?

What if the xenos despite all our assurances still don't trust their own psykers and continue to kill them the moment they detect them? Should we interfere and take the psykers against the majorities wishes cause we believe that's right? Should we allow them this bit of self-determination even if means killing lives that could be saved?

There's also how we should share the psychic benefits we will gain like our warp navigation and FTL communication. Should we freely give those benefits to all xeno members of our nation or should we reserve that as well for the 'Trust but Verify' idea of tech sharing? Cause that's another benefit we can dangle for Xenos to join us but it's also something intrinstically tied to our people and faith so just handing it out to all members feels like it could cause friction.

 

[Amilia]

The humans only mistake was assuming things were cool when they weren't, meanwhile half the "Xenos" turned on humanity at "the first opportunity."

That's fucking bullshit. People don't actually work like that.

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Is it? It doesn't say that they suddenly turned on us, it says that they lifted the veil. So what if the utopian Federation was not so utopian for many races, then wouldn't it make sense for them to try to rebel when the titan is bleeding and weak?

What humanity calls betrayal a xenos might call liberation. And first opportunity is not 'as soon as they thought about it', maybe they had been stewing in frustration for millenia and tooke the first chance they could.

Since when is humanity comprised entirely of saints.

 

[The Laurent]

Is it? It doesn't say that they suddenly turned on us, it says that they lifted the veil. So what if the utopian Federation was not so utopian for many races, then wouldn't it make sense for them to try to rebel when the titan is bleeding and weak?

What humanity calls betrayal a xenos might call liberation. And first opportunity is not 'as soon as they thought about it', maybe they had been stewing in frustration for millenia and tooke the first chance they could.

Since when is humanity comprised entirely of saints.

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I disagree: the first opportunity seems rather immediate despite the Age of Strife lasting 5000 years. Like it doesn't really make sense. I actually gave my picture of how I think it actually did go, and it wasn't, "Only humans did wrong things, all the non-human species were saints."

But it wasn't the kind of weird, black and white nonsense of this update.

 

[HeroCooky]

I guess maybe I am just a bit disappointed the story chose to go this route.

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You're telling me.

But ah well.

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Nah, that's just the author uncritically propagating fascist apologia in this quest, yet again. Since it's become a clear pattern at this point, I'm out.

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My main sticking point is the idea that many of humanity's alien allies chose to betray them for "reasons" is too much for me to believe.

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You are being informed/shown this by a being directly crafted, created, and influnced by the Emperor from the ground up. Characters in a story, like the Star Child themselves is, are not unbiased, nor unwilling to let their experiences taint their perception of things.

Like, I cannot say this enough:
THE STAR CHILD HAS ONLY ONE SOURCE OF WHAT WENT DOWN AND HOW, AND THAT IS THE EMPEROR. THEY WON'T QUESTION THAT OVERLY. THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DISTRUST THE EMPEROR, AND THUS TRUST THE VERSION SHOWN AND TOLD TO THEM!

If you wish to know, this is how shit actually went down:
(Also note that no species, not even humanity, is a united block here.)
>The Three Chaos Bro's grab humanity's AIs, AIs go murder-all-organics. Warp Storms Start Here.
>OH SHIT, KILL THE ROGUE AIs! - All species.
>OH FUCK, WE ARE GETTING SLAUGHTERED! - All species.
>Lads? The scary-as-hell AI is offering to let us live if we turn against the humans?! - Some species.
>Some: TAKE IT! Others: OBVIOUS TRAP!
>Three-way fighting ensues.
>Federation breaks apart as Chaos AI do their work.
>Yet, somehow, the non-AI fighters begin to push back from their enclaves.
>Traitors to Federation go warcrimes mode to eek out advantages so they'll not die themselves as they fear complete annihilation of their people in retaliation.
>This makes people do the exact thing they were afraid of.
>AI are broken after much sacrifice. Federation Civil War begins.
>Becomes so bloody in such a short amount of time that many on either side bail in fear.
>This leads to a complete breakdown of everything as technology rapidly decays.
>Warp Storms Intensify.
>Anarchy as everyone is basically on their own.
>Bloody extermination campaigns made by everyone against everyone for old grudges.
>Most (60%) of Federation Member Species hide instead.
>Slaanesh Is Born. The Warp calms.
>Emps shows up.
>He is utterly insane beyond nearly all description by all the deaths of humanity and only capable by running on pure Instinct/1+1=2 Logics.
>Finds Xenos that hid after shit went down.
>They couldn't have helped. He doesn't care, they should have.
>"Oh thank Spode, is it over. We getting the gang back together?"
>Emps: "DIE, XENOS."
>Xenos: Dies.
>All other Xenos: Why are there far less of us around, and why are there no returns from our diplomacy ships after we sent them to the federation the humans are putting together again?
>Imperium advances, kills nearly all Xenos.
>*Realization*
>Ah, fuck.
>Fight against Imperium or try to run. Most die anyway.
>Big E: "I WAS FUCKING RIGHT!!!"
>Skip 10k Years.
>Star Child: Mostly. You were mostly right.
>The Thread: Hol' Up.

 

[Amilia]

The first opportunity is by definition rather immediate.

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Yeah, just like Hamas took the first opportunity to attack Israel when the US was busy with Ukraine. That doesn't mean they never thought about doing it before.

 

[10ebbor10]

Like, what kind of bullshit wording even is this?

"A dream where unshackled Abominable Intelligences shattered the dream of an eternal utopia, and the veil presented by half of the Xenos found, for they sunk their blades into our backs at the first opportunity."

The humans only mistake was assuming things were cool when they weren't, meanwhile half the "Xenos" turned on humanity at "the first opportunity."

That's fucking bullshit. People don't actually work like that.

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It's not the only point where the vision breaks down though. Take the previous sentence :

A dream that showed the millennia where humanity stood as equals amongst a galactic federation with thousands of Xenos species...or so they thought, for it was only the military might that humankind possessed that gave them such unprecedented peace amongst the stars.

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Did humanity stand as equals, or did it have an military supremacy over the xenos. It can not, actually, be both, the two are mutually contradictory.

To illustrate our point with our current situation.
We have a long term alliance with an alien species. An alliance that people trust, and a bunch of questors would be very upset if the aliens were to suddenly backstab us.

But if we were a quest playing the aliens, then I have little doubt that a bloody backstabbing revolution wouldn't be a popular option among the questers. After all, the aliens were attacked and near killed unprovoked, were forced to sign a treaty under no little duress, and have, for centuries, been treated as third rung citizens at best.

So yeah, I have little doubt that most of this "Federation of allies stuff" is actually "we did a bunch of meddling and couping and general imperialism."
Which would also explain this :

A dream that showed butchery beyond measure enacted by those deemed treasured friends and allies, leaving us to stand side-by-side to the bitter end with those once deemed unreliable or incompatible with our thoughts.

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The "friends and allies" aka, the groups were humanity had most influence, most economic ties, most shenanigans, betrayed. But the aliens where those ties did not exist, those were instead capable and willing of (reluctant) cooperation.

 

[The Laurent]

Yeah, just like Hamas took the first opportunity to attack Israel when the US was busy with Ukraine. That doesn't mean they never thought about doing it before.

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I'm going to please ask that you, for the love of all that anyone holds holy, don't bring that kind of discussion into the thread.

 

[random_npc]

so my read on this is that it was less everyone was chill, and more mankind was the galactic hegimon who just forced everyone at gunpoint to get along, without doing anything else. That would explain why so many species started shooting people when they had the chance. Mankind did not do anything to encourage buy in or make sure anyone was happy with the status quo, they just laid down the law and shot anyone who broke it. So you probably had a mix of species who are just, inherently incapable of peaceful co existence (this is warhammer, there would be a some) and species who for entirely astropolitical reasons where mad as hell at humanity and the status quo.

So, to avoid repeating that mistake, we probably want to put a pretty high bar for making a xeno species a full ally. Do a fully study of thir history and culture to make sure they are capale of peace, then make sure that they are actually going to be happy with the status quo we provide. From there give them a way to raise concerns and keep an eye on their cultural trends, human culures go mad every few generations I doubt xeno cultures are any less pron to the occasional wave of reactionary assholes. So if a facist movment takes root in a xeno ally we would want to know and maybe have a way to react to it.

edit: missed the qm giving a more accurate version above, still think the above might work for an in universe read on it that produces useful results.

 

[aceraptor]

*Reads QM response* As I fucking said. The Star Child is a biased source. Better than the Emperor, but still formed from and originating from the Emperor.

 

[IronBig21]

Snip

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While Herocooky hasn't said anything about extending this to other points like Psyker traditions, I could see us doing a "Trust but Verify" mindset with them too along with the trading of techniques and traditions, some of these species have to have some stuff that could help us and we have a very stable tradition they could follow for the low cost of not trying to kill us.

If we do happen to find a species that's so paranoid of their psykers that even when presented with a safe, (mostly) moral alternative that they say "Yeah nah we're good" and continue killing their psykers? Then I can see us doing what we've been doing so far to everyone that doesn't approve of us, which is killing the offending faction and taking in everyone who accepts us.

Snip

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Sounds about right.

 

[Amilia]

I'm going to please ask that you, for the love of all that anyone holds holy, don't bring that kind of discussion into the thread.

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Well you kept saying that first opportunity means 'out of the blue'. I said that a pressure cooker does not blow up in a day and gave a real life example.

Sorry that its a sensitive topic, but it was the first example I could think of growing animosity exploding into a whole load of atrocities on every side the moment the forces keeping the lid on let up for just a moment.