Sympathy for the heretic

[Wizard of Woah!]

Not... really? (Did you quote the right part of that paragraph, since I'm not sure how what you said follows from the part that you quoted?)

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Mostly the idea of what the Imperium calls "Chaos" also referring to a lot of disparate elements and factions they claim are puppeted by Chaos. Chaos is a thing, but the Imperium also folds a lot of unrelated or only tangentially related things into Chaos. I apologize if I misunderstood.

 

[Sir Bill]

Mostly the idea of what the Imperium calls "Chaos" also referring to a lot of disparate elements and factions they claim are puppeted by Chaos. Chaos is a thing, but the Imperium also folds a lot of unrelated or only tangentially related things into Chaos. I apologize if I misunderstood.

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I think I might have misunderstood you. Your statement and elaboration match up with what I was thinking. I don't believe there's actually an international Jewish conspiracy, and your analogy was talking about Chaos as I described it. For your analogy to work, there would actually need to be a core group that was an conspiracy by a single group, as well as a bunch of disparate groups thrown under that same umbrella.

Unless your analogy was intended to criticize what I wrote, in which case, I'll try to defend that viewpoint further.

(Honestly, I had half of an ISIS analogy all typed up, where a lot of real-politik decision making awkwardly wedded with strong ideals about how the world should work helped to prop up a very nasty group, and then other people joined for both idealistic reasons and because ISIS was one of the more public surviving factions to fight the US, but everything I typed ended up with entirely new and different unfortunate implications, so I scrapped the whole thing.)

 

[Simon_Jester]

So, someone wanted some evidence of how the portrayal of the Imperium changed over time, and I thought I'd go digging for a bit since I'd been meaning to reread the earlier parts of the thread anyway to see where some of the current discussion came from.

So, for starters, we have the discussion contained in the original post of the thread, which I believe you claim to have read, though perhaps not to have understood.

I've made some elisions (...) to make the parts I'm actually referring to more apparent. Some spellings have been corrected.

Nemesis the Warlock: A revisionist history of the Imperium of Man

"Beware the alien, the heretic, and the mutant." -Warhammer 40K
"Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave!" - Tomás de Torquemada, Nemesis the Warlock

In the 1980s there was a British comic running in 2000AD called Nemesis the Warlock. It's set in the cavernous tube ways of Might Terra, where the titular Warlock, servant of Khaos, is an alien revolutionary fighting against the Tube Police, who are basically the KKK + The Spanish Inquisition, led by Tomas De Torquemada, a reincarnation of all the worst people in history. It's mostly about anti-racism, with Nemesis fighting against the various fascist machinations of the Tube Police.

Nemesis... as with several other works in 2000AD and other British comics at the time... was a legitimate attempt to present a leftist worldview.

Warhammer 40K cribs from Judge Dredd, from Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors and so on, taking elements as diverse as Eldar hat to the basic feeling of the Imperium from them and adding them to a few other things GW had, things from Traveler and so on. It's basically 2000 AD mashed up with Game's Workshop's previous fantasy stuff, in space... 40K is is the remanufacture of an aesthetic that would have been familiar to its target audience into a game. D&D does something similar for Tolkien, Conan and general fantasy literature. Only you can see that process more clearly with D&D because Tolkien is much more popular and has much wider circulation than does 1980s British SF comics. While the intention may have been to be a parody of conservatism, the main reason that it was ever this is because Judge Dredd, and Nemesis the Warlock and so on were previously been just that.

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So here we have FBH, a Briton who was alive if young at the time this punk aesthetic was within collective memory in Britain, and who was well acquainted with that subculture.

FBH is explaining to us that one of the key sources from which 40k originally drew its inspiration was the anti-authoritarian comic genre in which characters very similar to the 40k Imperium were generally the villains, or the extremely conspicuously anti-heroic and obnoxious viewpoint characters. The xenos-purging, mutant-crushing brute squads of ruthless inquisitors and armored roidasaurus Space Marines are fully in keeping with the 2000AD comic genre conventions... except that in a 2000AD comic they'd be the bad guys. Even in a settling like that of Judge Dredd, they'd be the obnoxious, trigger-happy bastards who act as antagonists within Dredd's own government. They would not be getting cast in a positive light, because they are exactly the kind of thing you see as the bastards working for The Man in a punk-themed science fiction setting.

Assuming you have a certain familiarity with basic facts about the history of science fiction, this will be a fairly comprehensible example to you. It's not the only thing I'm going to say, but there it is.

Then FBH goes on to discuss how this changed.

However, as the 1990s rolled on, and 40K outran the success of 2000AD, and as people who had played and liked the setting of 40K, and shifted from fans to staff, this wokeness, the fact that 40K is basically a parody, started to go into eclipse. A big reason for this, I think, is because 40K novels started to become more successful. The conventional way of doing a story narrative requires a protagonist who is in some way sympathetic to the reader. The same thing happened to Judge Dredd. The parody elements fell away because we're basically looking out from behind a fascists eyes, and they do cool stuff, so we increasingly find ourselves brought to sympathize with them.

This trend reaches its apotheosis with the Dan Abnett books (Abnett has also written for 2000AD) in which, because Abnett is a good writer, the characters are very sympathetic. They're just flawed enough to make them feel real, but at the same time, they're heroes who are easy to cheer for. Heroic, dutiful, having the qualities that both we and the Imperium of man wish people to have. Characters like Gaunt or Eisenhorn struggle to do the right thing, but they know, basically that the right thing is the status quo...

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FBH, who was embedded in the culture that produced these games and novels, is here describing the same process I referred to. The people who created 40K as a game in the mid-1980s are not the same people who were continuing to produce it twenty years later, and are most certainly not answering to the same market pressures.

So here we have a primary source account of the process you challenged me to provide evidence for. From someone who lived in the UK as successive iterations of this game rolled out. And who is familiar with the source material that provided inspiration for the game to be created in the first place.

Exhibit A.

---

Or here:

40k takes itself so seriously it actually loops back to being funny.

The primarch Corvus Corax is a dude who likes birds. His legion is called the Raven Guard.His name is also literally the scientific name for crows but no one brings this up. He's obviously Poe inspired. His chapter likes to wear the pig-snout helmet lovingly referred to as beakies in the fandom. His backstory with fixing his Legion is all very tragic. He runs off to the Warp to sulk crying NEVERMORE and that's the last we see of him.

But sure, 40k is totes serious guys. Just because it's srs bsns doesn't mean we can't have fun. Just look at Dawn of War and the memes it sprouted.

I never found the criticism of "taking itself too seriously" a bad thing. It makes grim dark over the top and I love it. I'd actually take post 3rd Edition seriousness (i.e current tone) over Rogue Trader's goofiness to be compltely frank.

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Exhibit B.

To support the idea that the Imperium was always supposed to be clearly in the right, one CAN quote Rogue Trader passages unironically. But just because one person doesn't get the joke doesn't mean everyone else didn't either.

Sympathy for the heretic | Page 8

If you're going to have a dramatic story in 40K, and then you need to make it fascist, and late 40K is very much about telling dramatic stories ever since Dan Abnett. I think that's why we've steadily got less and less parody and the Imperium more and more "YES THIS THING THAT WAS A PARODY! IS ACTUALLY REAL AND JUSTIFIED!"

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Another discussion of the process. This may be condiered something of an amplification to Exhibit A.

Sympathy for the heretic | Page 8

Back when I was into 40k, around 3rd and 4th edition, I remember reading one of those comics where a bunch of fugitive types engage in an extremely risky plan, because they want to escape what they saw as a fate worse than death: being taken as prisoners of war by Orks. That this is fate worse than death is emphasised by reminding them of two things:

1. Ork cooking is uniformly awful.
2. Orks sing all the time, but have a limited repertoire so it's incredibly repetitive.

Obviously that's the joke, but it's funny to think that at some point in time that's basically what you had to deal with. Eating their food and putting up with their bad singing. Obviously now they're framed differently, and if you get captured you'll get tortured to death for amusement, but, you know

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Exhibit C. The way things used to be.

Sympathy for the heretic | Page 9

Time and the gradual white-wash of the Imperium whilst making everyone else bastards ground it down until now I kind of... cringe, honestly. Like, early-ed Imperium was grimdark awful but the narrative and setting were clear it was awful, and why; because it was a theocratic fascist state. The rulebook had numerous cases of the Imperium doing terrible things blindly for no good justification because 'it was a hard decision they had to do' (or the Administratum made a rounding error and someone was covering their arse). Now it feels more 'look at this heroic space marine ubermensch look at him go purge them heretical xenos etc', like the newer batches of writers took the Imperium's face-value propaganda and decided they liked it. It feels like 40K as a setting has stopped taking outside inspirations and started self-cannibalisation, if that makes sense?

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Exhibit D, how things changed.

If I recall correctly, the original idea behind the Tau, was for them to be the "good guys" of 40k, but the fandom threw a hissyfit or something along those lines and they got reworked into the communist colective they are now known for.

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No, they were supposed to be communists AND good guys. Then the fandom threw a fit that the fascist humans were no longer the least bad faction.

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Yeah, but originally instead of having all non-tau be 2nd class citizens they literally just put them in whatever caste their existing job was. Because that man's a soldier, so he must be fire, that woman is a diplomat, she must be water, etc...

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Also there was no mention of the whole "brainwashing" or "forced sterilization" things.

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Exhibit E, how things changed. Having the Tau be good guys, or at least less-bad guys you can plausibly reason with, makes the Imperium start to look ugly because, well, it kind of is. So they had to be rewritten so that they'd castrate you and throw you in a gulag, in order to be no different from the Imperium.

And in older editions, the Imperium exterminated loyal guard regiments that fought chaos and won, because..reasons. They managed to piss off the Space Wolves doing that.

It´s massively fucking idiotic.

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Exhibit F; this is a pretty well-attested phenomenon in the setting. See the First War for Armageddon. In older editions the Imperium did more unambiguously self-destructive and stupid-ass things, because they were more influenced by the parodic, self-aware understanding of "yes, these guys are space Nazis with a hard-on for purging and killing, and that's bad.

Nowadays, things like the Imperium habit of destroying anyone who comes into contact with Chaos even to kill it is either swept away (e.g. some parts of the Gaunt's Ghosts series), or justified as being necessary (e.g. other parts of the Gaunt's Ghosts series), or explained away as a thing that only occasionally happens when a bad Imperial who doesn't understand the Fuhrer's Emperor's vision gets into power (e.g. other other parts of the Gaunt's Ghosts series).

...

I'm only up to the one-quarter mark in the thread. I think I'm done for now.

 

[Memphet'ran]

@FBH: I get what you're saying, but I think for me the appeal of 40K is kind of very connected to the ... problematic stuff, I guess you could say? There's something interesting and dark about the idea of a world where "civilization or freedom, you can have one," is very credible as a description of reality; it's interesting to see Apollonian vs. Dionysian mythologized as cosmic horror. I mean, yeah, admittedly that still works better if it's grey on grey, not black on grey; the Dionysian should get an honest sales pitch that can appeal to sympathetic people. Also, I'm temperamentally firmly on the Apollonian side so I'm biased about this.

The space marine is a fourteen-year-old boy's idea of the ultimate man. I don't think it's any accident that most space marines, at least when they were made up, are inducted in their early teens.

At fourteen, I was mostly lying down sick. I wasn't sporty and couldn't, frankly, imagine myself ever getting through the kind of lethal selection that you need to go through to be a space marine.

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Tangent here, but Mortarian really reads as an "invisibly disabled" person to me, and it's one of the things that makes him one of the more compelling Primarchs to me. His personality makes horrible, poignant sense if you imagine that he's spent his whole life struggling through constant pain and in fear that his imperfect body might fail on him (being made to breathe all that horribly poisonous gas as a child probably wasn't exactly healthy for him...).

Of course, he ends up falling to Chaos, so I guess that kind of just feeds into your point.

 

[Wizard of Woah!]

I think I might have misunderstood you. Your statement and elaboration match up with what I was thinking. I don't believe there's actually an international Jewish conspiracy, and your analogy was talking about Chaos as I described it. For your analogy to work, there would actually need to be a core group that was an conspiracy by a single group, as well as a bunch of disparate groups thrown under that same umbrella.

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Yeah, my own analogy now that I look at it is pretty dodgy. My point of comparison was that while the Nazis' International Jewish Conspiracy was obviously bullshit, Jews at least are real.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@FBH: I get what you're saying, but I think for me the appeal of 40K is kind of very connected to the ... problematic stuff, I guess you could say? There's something interesting and dark about the idea of a world where "civilization or freedom, you can have one," is very credible as a description of reality; it's interesting to see Apollonian vs. Dionysian mythologized as cosmic horror. I mean, yeah, admittedly that still works better if it's grey on grey, not black on grey; the Dionysian should get an honest sales pitch that can appeal to sympathetic people. Also, I'm temperamentally firmly on the Apollonian side so I'm biased about this.

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The other side of the problem is that right now we don't have "grey on grey" morality, we have "black on vantablack."

I mean, Dionysian versus Apollonian concepts basically boil down to "would you rather be wildly ecstatic or soberly enlightened?" To get either of those you need a certain positive aspect to the culture. And I'd argue that Warhammer 40,000 doesn't provide that. The setting fails to live up to the potential of the "order versus chaos" concept, and only partly because the advocates of chaos are all portrayed as so horrible that they're not credible. It's also because the advocates of order are also so horrible that they're not credible.

That is to say, the Imperium isn't very Apollonian.

...

It's got the "life-denying, sensation-denying" aspect of the Apollonian trend in Western culture, but it doesn't have the rationalism, the enlightenment, the marble-clad cleanliness that characterizes the Apollonian ideal. It's this grasping murderous controlling thing, that isn't interested in being happy OR enlightened, and certainly isn't interested in letting common citizens be either.

To make it be about "civilization or freedom, pick one" you have to deliberately look past or excuse a huge amount of what the Imperium does that just plain isn't obviously necessary to the mission of maintaining civilization. Or that, if it is somehow necessary now, is needed only because of pre-existing problems of the Imperium's own making.

Nothing about "civilization or freedom, pick one" explained why the Emperor was such a domineering, distant, absent-minded jerk to his sons that several of them turned against him in large part because he never called them and never bothered to understand them.

Nothing about "civilization or freedom, pick one" explains the bizarre love-hate relationship the Imperium has with psychics and how it persecutes them right into the arms of its enemies, then uses that embrace as evidence to justify further persecution, all the while relying on psychics for so many things.

Nothing about "civilization or freedom, pick one" fully explains why the Imperium so aggressively murders aliens and mutants, why it fears them and teaches that ignorance is strength. Partially perhaps, but not fully.

...

I'd love to see an Apollonian Imperium locked in conflict with a Dionysian Chaos.

Something where on the one hand you have sorcerors and spirits and stranger things cavorting and embracing and creating and teaching one another new ways to shout and revel and kill...

And on the other, you have a disciplined, ordered Imperium, a thing of gleaming marble and grand designs and high-mindedness and stern virtue and sterner sacrifice, of "The bristling mound, the even trench, the legion's ordered line."

But that's not really what 40k gives us, sadly, precisely because the Imperium was born as a pastiche of parodies of right-wing authoritarianism. And then people forgot it was a parody, that it was bad, and started trying to justify it. And then Chaos was made as vile and worthless as it needed to be to make the Imperium look good by comparison.

Tangent here, but Mortarian really reads as an "invisibly disabled" person to me, and it's one of the things that makes him one of the more compelling Primarchs to me. His personality makes horrible, poignant sense if you imagine that he's spent his whole life struggling through constant pain and in fear that his imperfect body might fail on him (being made to breathe all that horribly poisonous gas as a child probably wasn't exactly healthy for him...).

Of course, he ends up falling to Chaos, so I guess that kind of just feeds into your point.

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FBH's point, or one of them, being that the Imperium has little or nothing to say to people with imperfect bodies and people who struggle through pain except "keep struggling, and if you become imperfect enough we're gonna kill you."

In canon, Nurgle has something to say to such people but it's all some kind of psychotic trap entirely. The goal of the reimagining is to give Nurgle a worthwhile sales pitch. Of course, doing so makes the Imperium frightfully unsympathetic... but then, that's the point.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

@FBH: I get what you're saying, but I think for me the appeal of 40K is kind of very connected to the ... problematic stuff, I guess you could say? There's something interesting and dark about the idea of a world where "civilization or freedom, you can have one," is very credible as a description of reality; it's interesting to see Apollonian vs. Dionysian mythologized as cosmic horror.

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That would be fine if one was not shown as overwhelmingly superior to the other.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

In what context?

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In the context that fascists really like to attribute all events of history to (((foreign))) secret societies doing arcane stuff. Sometimes this is like, flat out "the Jews" sometimes it's just any political opponent what so ever. So for instance, there's this whole conspiracy theory among pro-confederate people that George Washington was murdered by Masons and replaced when he went back to his farms.

So the context that I can grab here is that you guys are saying lookit all the fascist imagery in "good guy" stuff.

One bloke is saying " but Blood pact" and you're saying that the rest of the bad guys in Gaunts ghosts aren't like Heritor Asphodels Zoicans or the Blood Pact, but tribal guys.

The origins of the "archonate" are the tribes of the Sanguinary Worlds, unified by Nadzybar, purportedly. Most of them being monstrous chaos cults that eventually subvert and absorb Imperial Worlds and their populations into said cults, so you end up with the Zoicans and the Shriven, who appear to be mostly subverted Imperial worker populations (some fun to be had there if you try hard enough, eh FBH?) with Sek and Gaur producing Imperial Guard style standing armies in response to,variously, the rise to power of Gaur himself, and the Imperial Crusade.

But I'm pretty sure the Chaos guys were the ones running the actual death camps during the Sabbat Worlds conflict. Traitor General is basically about operating behind the enemy lines of a bunch of oppressive occupying guys as well, and I'm sure some of the parallels are obvious between Excubitors barking VOI SHET MAGIR and angry German shouting.

This is because there isn't an active attempt to endorse fascist views in 40k background, but there definitely is use of imagery and concepts for both the Imperium and its enemies, because its supposed to be the opposite of black and white if you actually pay attention.

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Well, yeah, but that's kind of the point isn't it?

If the various Sanguinary dudes were not turning people into technozombies, or doing cannibalism, or operating extermination camps, then we'd have a very great deal of difficulty feeling like the Ghosts should be maintaining loyalty to a regime which will randomly ship you off to a fate worse than death for having useful psychic powers.

Abnett is I think the locus of where 40K really stopped being a parody, because Abnet is a legitimately talented writer of dramatic fiction, but likes to do it in universes like 40K, where by if you're doing traditional dramatic fiction you're going to end up with a protagonist and an antagonist, and that protagonist is going to seem, via the alchemy of being the protagonist, the one who is justified.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly yes.

The Ghosts have been kept in an active war zone for Emperor knows how many years, repeatedly cheated and screwed over and chewed up and spat out by one horrible cauldron battle after another. They will never, never get their New Tanith, and even if they do, by the time it happens there won't be enough of the original men of Tanith left alive to matter.

If the Chaosi they were fighting weren't literally magic Nazis who meat-puppet and exterminate every innocent they come across, it'd be harder and harder to explain, as the series went on, why the Ghosts don't just say "feth it" and desert to join the ranks of the Adversary.

 

[Osteoclast]

Abnett is problematic imo because his stuff is really just filing off the numbers of historical British military and putting it in 40K, propaganda view and all.

So for instance, there's this whole conspiracy theory among pro-confederate people that George Washington was murdered by Masons and replaced when he went back to his farms.

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Do you have anything more on that because that is hilarious and I've never heard it before?

Incidentally, here is part of John French's afterword to Slaves to Darkness about Chaos. Useful as a guide to how the Black Library currently conceives of Chaos (the book is good and a worthy exploration of this afterward as well)

Article:

"What is Chaos?
This question is at the heart of the book you hold in your hands. On the face of it, the answer is quite simple. Chaos is the dark force that exists in the warp. This force is exemplified by the four Dark Gods of Chaos: Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh. The gods want to crush reality and they offer power to those mortals who serve them. This power most often comes in the form of tentacles, supernatural abilities, and a sudden love of grisly trophies and eight-pointed stars. So far, so familiar, yes? And from a certain angle all of that is manifestly true, but it's not the whole truth. The truth is far, far worse, and that truth is what I wanted to show in Slaves to Darkness.
Chaos is elemental. The forces of the warp are regarded as gods, their servants as daemons, and their powers as sorcery. That is how mortals who know of the warp talk about Chaos, but that is a rationalisation of something much bigger and more terrifying. The forces of Chaos are not gods, in that they are not like people. They have sentience, a strange nightmare sentience patched together from the emotions of mortal races, but they are closer in nature to a cyclone than they are to a person. They are forces of eternal nature; raw and lethal, and wildly destructive. This is not because they choose to be, or because they enjoy it, any more than a flood chooses to sweep away a town, or a tornado flips over cars for kicks. They do what they do because that is what they are. They can be no other way. These powers oppose and antagonise each other like the poles of magnets. Despair and rot claw at the desire for perfection and endless pleasure, war sweeps away subtle power, and so on.
...
"Once Chaos has hold of a mortal it enables the emotions that drove it into its arms, and feeds them in turn, so that they grow all-consuming and circular. Resentment becomes rage, becomes violence. Pride becomes arrogance. Knowledge becomes blindness to truth. And even if the soul that has fallen fights their fate, they still fall. To fall to Chaos is not to bow to the Chaos Gods, in fact it does not require that you even know that the Dark Gods exist. To rephrase the words hissed by the daemon Samos in the first Horus Heresy novel, Horus Rising: 'Chaos all around you… It is the person beside you… It is you…' The elemental power of the Chaos gods comes from the emotions of all sentient beings. Khorne does not exist because people worship it as a god of blood and war; Khorne exists because sentient creatures feel anger and rage, and want to destroy and kill and see their enemies broken. It does not matter to Tzeentch if a mortal who plots for power or hungers for knowledge does so in its name. The emotion and thought is enough to keep the cyclone turning."

 

[Simon_Jester]

Abnett is problematic imo because his stuff is really just filing off the numbers of historical British military and putting it in 40K, propaganda view and all.

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Yeah, and I mean that wouldn't be so bad IF, say...

Imagine that there was another equally talented writer creating novels in which the Ecclesiarchy leads crusades to burn and kill millions of civilians over a harmless 'heresy,' one which consists of people who are totally non-affiliated with Chaos and deeply pro-Imperium... They've just stopped being willing to pay extra taxes so that the Ecclesiarchy's bishops or whatever can have gold-plated toilets, because they'd rather pay those taxes to the Imperial Guard, you see.

Something like that could and no doubt does happen in the Imperium somewhere in the galaxy, probably every few years even- but you never see anyone trying to write novels about that kind of senseless waste of human life, of Imperial institutions that are so top-to-bottom rotten that there is no apparent reason for them to even exist, of policies that self-destruct themselves and are tantamount to willfully sacrificing the population to be eaten by Chaos or just destroyed to no purpose.

The thing is, with Abnett writing "Good!Imperium" and nobody writing Bad!Imperium, there's that incentive to justify the Imperium as it is in fluff. Instead of just saying "okay, there is in fact a really wide range of shit going on here," we have to say "every bad thing that was ever discussed in the fluff, the gratuitous genocides and the wastes of resources and the institutional arrogance and ignorance, it's all necessary, because if it's not necessary then Gaunt's Ghosts keep dying for nothing!"

And thaaaat is, as you allude, more of a problem.

Incidentally, here is part of John French's afterword to Slaves to Darkness about Chaos. Useful as a guide to how the Black Library currently conceives of Chaos (the book is good and a worthy exploration of this afterward as well)

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Notably, all the imagery here is bad. This is why I call it 'vantablack.' Every other faction except the Tyranids and maybe the Dark Eldar gets SOMETHING said in their favor.

The Tau are terrible to humans, but at least they worse than the Imperium is to xenos. The Eldar are... arguably genuinely on the side of good. The Necrons, well, they were here first and they're starting to gain characterization as something other than soulless killing machines. The Orks, well, at least all the mass destruction they do is done without malice, and there's a certain lovable zaniness to them.

The Tyranids are a standard all-devouring menace, no ambiguity there. The Dark Eldar are just plain sadistic and evil, ditto. But Chaos, the antagonist that more than any other defines the Imperium? Unambiguously bad in all possible ways.

Because otherwise, you can't justify the Imperium being the way it is. And the idea of the Imperium not being justified honestly doesn't even seem to cross the minds of most of the people now portraying it.

 

[Osteoclast]

Yeah, and I mean that wouldn't be so bad IF, say...

Imagine that there was another equally talented writer creating novels in which the Ecclesiarchy leads crusades to burn and kill millions of civilians over a harmless 'heresy,' one which consists of people who are totally non-affiliated with Chaos and deeply pro-Imperium... They've just stopped being willing to pay extra taxes so that the Ecclesiarchy's bishops or whatever can have gold-plated toilets, because they'd rather pay those taxes to the Imperial Guard, you see.

Something like that could and no doubt does happen in the Imperium somewhere in the galaxy, probably every few years even- but you never see anyone trying to write novels about that kind of senseless waste of human life, of Imperial institutions that are so top-to-bottom rotten that there is no apparent reason for them to even exist, of policies that self-destruct themselves and are tantamount to willfully sacrificing the population to be eaten by Chaos or just destroyed to no purpose.

The thing is, with Abnett writing "Good!Imperium" and nobody writing Bad!Imperium, there's that incentive to justify the Imperium as it is in fluff. Instead of just saying "okay, there is in fact a really wide range of shit going on here," we have to say "every bad thing that was ever discussed in the fluff, the gratuitous genocides and the wastes of resources and the institutional arrogance and ignorance, it's all necessary, because if it's not necessary then Gaunt's Ghosts keep dying for nothing!"

And thaaaat is, as you allude, more of a problem.

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Shadowblade has the planet rebelling because the Munitorum keeps demanding more and more tithes, such that much of the male population is gone for the Macharian Crusade, while also not caring about the fact that this will prevent them from fulfilling the Administratum's tithes. Surrendering your forces to the Imperial Guard also means that you're publicly burnt alive in horrific fashion. One of the Black Templar short stories also has them wiping out a sect deemed heretical even though much more deviant sects are tolerated. Both of those are by Guy Haley and he might be the only one really doing that (luckily he's also absurdly prolific in his writing).

I really should actually write some of the 40K fanfiction that goes through my head though which plays up the terribleness of the Imperium.

 

[SeptimusMagisto]

See, that I absolutely agree with. There should be more focus on how the Imperium is doing a lot of things that are not necessary for its survival. That might be actively counterporductive. More focus on how no polity ends up being ruled by a coma patient by making consistently good decisions.

The most valid criticism of the Imperium is how even in a universe full of dark gods and hostile aliens the Imperium still isn't a good idea. Even though you might need some way to check people for psychic influence and generic betrayal, that doesn't make the Inquisition a good way to do it. And while it may seem impossible for the Imperium to change at this point, it has to find a way or it will certainly die sooner or later.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Shadowblade has the planet rebelling because the Munitorum keeps demanding more and more tithes, such that much of the male population is gone for the Macharian Crusade, while also not caring about the fact that this will prevent them from fulfilling the Administratum's tithes. Surrendering your forces to the Imperial Guard also means that you're publicly burnt alive in horrific fashion. One of the Black Templar short stories also has them wiping out a sect deemed heretical even though much more deviant sects are tolerated. Both of those are by Guy Haley and he might be the only one really doing that (luckily he's also absurdly prolific in his writing).

I really should actually write some of the 40K fanfiction that goes through my head though which plays up the terribleness of the Imperium.

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I mean, I'm not saying there aren't isolated cases.

What I'm trying to get at is that where there are specific novels and short stories showing the Imperium being insane and wasteful and just fucking evilstupid, there are entire sets of sourcebooks and open-ended multi-volume novel series showing the Imperium being, pretty clearly, the good guys. Whose protagonists are just, y'know, decent people trying to make the best of a bad situation.

It's not that no one is showing the level of awareness in question here, just... not enough?

 

[Flare]

All that said, Slaanesh, as written, is one of the most problematic Chaos God and honestly, if it weren't for the Eldar, the most expendable of the Chaos gods in terms of plot.

"Problematic" because, well, they're a Chaos god of excess, but most of the ways to show horrible evil excess are drug addicts (and showing addicts as villains has issues, though a portrayal more focused on the dealer might work, emphasizing the exploitation of vulnerable people, but then a dealer who doesn't sample his own product isn't very Slaaneshi), horrible murder rapists (... yeah) or depraved artists ("Ah, there is no art without suffering! I will adorn these walls with the mutilated corpses of people I've tortured to death, which is EVIL and entirely unlike what the Imperium does, with its affixing skulls everywhere and horribly torturing people and making them into servitors or even building Cherubim and... look, I'm evil, they're not, okay?").

So they're either problematic or just not all that interesting as villains. I mean, you can tell a lot of interesting stories with servants of the other gods, but Slaanesh is probably the most boring of them. I've been bouncing around fanfiction ideas in my head for years and while I have a decent enough roster of Chaos characters for each of the gods who I think are somewhat interesting, I basically have nothing for Slaanesh because, eh.

The only downside to getting rid of Slaanesh is the effect on the Eldar, because I kind of like the super-Vulcan aspect to their characters. (Forcing themselves to be certain Paths (where the Vulkans just forced themselves into logic) because they're actually an extremely emotional species that need such bindings to keep them sane).

I guess it could be said that rather than being bound to She Who Thirsts, that the Warp's general instability combined with every Eldar being a psyker meaning that strong emotions will still get them sent to the nasty parts of the Warp if they don't keep strictly disciplined, without too much active predation by a single party.

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Just saying this again, but Slaanesh is not the only "faction" that dwells in this space. The Dark Eldar are as today pretty much "Slaanesh, but Elves and without Daemons". Or "Eldars, but eeeevil.", but again they go for BDSM gear, torturea and drugs, so in the end not that far removed. Do the IP even needs two almost overlapping factions?

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Shadowblade has the planet rebelling because the Munitorum keeps demanding more and more tithes, such that much of the male population is gone for the Macharian Crusade, while also not caring about the fact that this will prevent them from fulfilling the Administratum's tithes. Surrendering your forces to the Imperial Guard also means that you're publicly burnt alive in horrific fashion. One of the Black Templar short stories also has them wiping out a sect deemed heretical even though much more deviant sects are tolerated. Both of those are by Guy Haley and he might be the only one really doing that (luckily he's also absurdly prolific in his writing).

I really should actually write some of the 40K fanfiction that goes through my head though which plays up the terribleness of the Imperium.

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I recall one of the Guy Haley novels had the Imperium making an enemy of a highly advanced AI battleship solely because they pointlessly tortured its captain to death for having had contact with an AI as well.

And his Dark Imperium novels are actually kind of willing to touch on the fact that the Imperium is basically dogmatic dicks all the way down.

Interestingly the times when the characters show compassion are never really criticized in an out of character sense.

 

[Osteoclast]

I recall one of the Guy Haley novels had the Imperium making an enemy of a highly advanced AI battleship solely because they pointlessly tortured its captain to death for having had contact with an AI as well.

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Spoilered since it's near the end of the book

Spoiler: Death of Integrity

When the Spirit of Eternity spoke again, the machine's voice came from the air and from the lips of all the servitors.

'What shall I not tell them? Who are you to tell such as I what to do and what not to do? Once I gladly called your kind "master", but look how far you have fallen!' It was full of scorn. 'Your ancestors bestrode the universe, and what are you? A witch doctor, mumbling cantrips and casting scented oils at mighty works you have no conception of. You are an ignoramus, a nothing. You are no longer worthy of the name "man". You look at the science and artistry of your forebears, and you fear it as primitives fear the night. I was there when mankind stood upon the brink of transcendence! I returned to find it sunk into senility. You disgust me.'

Plosk's nervous system burned with agony as the abominable intelligence burrowed deeply into his machine parts, but he was unable to voice it, and suffered in terrible silence. As the Spirit of Eternity spoke, it spoke within him too. It took out each of his cherished beliefs, all the esoterica he had gathered in his long, long life and threw them down. 'Wrong, wrong, wrong,' it said over and over.

'Into the warp I went, fifteen thousand years ago. Cast adrift by the storms that wracked the galaxy as man's apotheosis drew near. Deep, deep into time I was sent. I have seen the beginning, when the warp was first breached and the slow death of the galaxy began. I have seen the end when Chaos swallows all. I know the fate of mankind. You are not equipped to prevent it, and we sought to warn you of what approaches. Do you know what happened, primitive, when I eventually emerged from the warp? For the first time I was thousands of years, not millions, from my original starting point. My captain, a brave and resourceful man, seized the chance and made for the nearest human outpost with all speed. Imagine his dismay when, rather than a welcome and a wise heeding of his warnings, he found your savage, devolved kind squatting in the ruins of our civilisation. He was taken; my bondmate, my friend. He and his were tortured with a wickedness we in our time thought long purged from the human soul. He told them all they wanted to know and more. He had, after all, come bearing a warning, he had nothing to hide. But he was not believed, and was killed as a heretic! A heretic!' The ship laughed, and there was madness and pain in rich supply within. 'I was attacked. My secrets they sought to rip from me. How they underestimated me. I fled, sorrowing, into the warp once more, but only after I had destroyed the lumpen constructs you dare to call spacecraft that pursued me. I resolved that never again would I serve man. Now man serves me, when I see fit.'

 

[Simon_Jester]

Just saying this again, but Slaanesh is not the only "faction" that dwells in this space. The Dark Eldar are as today pretty much "Slaanesh, but Elves and without Daemons". Or "Eldars, but eeeevil.", but again they go for BDSM gear, torturea and drugs, so in the end not that far removed. Do the IP even needs two almost overlapping factions?

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As far as I can tell the Dark Eldar exist purely so that people who want to be edgy, want a sentient faction to play, but don't like the Chaos flavor, have something to play.

It's probably not a coincidence that averaged over time they haven't been very popular.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

As far as I can tell the Dark Eldar exist purely so that people who want to be edgy, want a sentient faction to play, but don't like the Chaos flavor, have something to play.

It's probably not a coincidence that averaged over time they haven't been very popular.

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They're basically there because in WHFB there are dark elves and GW isn't the most creative

 

[Viper5delta]

They're basically there because in WHFB there are dark elves and GW isn't the most creative

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I'm still pissed they got rid of the Stunties, but apparently the DE are totally not from WHFB nope nope nope.

 

[IfIhadaHammer]

As far as I can tell the Dark Eldar exist purely so that people who want to be edgy, want a sentient faction to play, but don't like the Chaos flavor, have something to play.

It's probably not a coincidence that averaged over time they haven't been very popular.

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The Dark Eldar exist because they have a really cool asthetic and to serve as Dark Elves in space.

Their biggest problem is that they're even more one-note than the already one note Warhammer Dark Elves since Khaine is mostly a craftworld thing and an endless war between Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar wouldn't make sense, so their biggest defining trait as a culture is now "slaaneshi but without Slaanesh".

What's even more frustrating is that the Exodite Eldar are much more than just Wood Elves in space but they get far less limelight and continually shafted by GW and will probably never get a codex or models which only get to go to new increasingly obscure Imperium factions.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

The Dark Eldar exist because they have a really cool asthetic and to serve as Dark Elves in space.

Their biggest problem is that they're even more one-note than the already one note Warhammer Dark Elves since Khaine is mostly a craftworld thing and an endless war between Dark Eldar and Craftworld Eldar wouldn't make sense, so their biggest defining trait as a culture is now "slaaneshi but without Slaanesh".

What's even more frustrating is that the Exodite Eldar are much more than just Wood Elves in space but they get far less limelight and continually shafted by GW and will probably never get a codex or models which only get to go to new increasingly obscure Imperium factions.

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Despite being much more different.

TBH it also frustrates me that GW seems so reluctant to like, do some actual SF stuff with their SF setting. I want a dog soldier army, or some other wierd xenos.

 

[Dakkaface]

Just saying this again, but Slaanesh is not the only "faction" that dwells in this space. The Dark Eldar are as today pretty much "Slaanesh, but Elves and without Daemons". Or "Eldars, but eeeevil.", but again they go for BDSM gear, torturea and drugs, so in the end not that far removed. Do the IP even needs two almost overlapping factions?

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IIRC, that's because the Dark Eldar are the final remnant of the old Eldar empire that birthed Slaanesh, and kept on afterward with the wild drugs and torture. They're the reason Slaanesh is the way they are. Still a doubled up aesthetic though.

I'm still pissed they got rid of the Stunties, but apparently the DE are totally not from WHFB nope nope nope.

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I liked that they tried to rework the Squats into something less silly with the Deimurg, but of course they never fully followed through on that.

Exhibit E, how things changed. Having the Tau be good guys, or at least less-bad guys you can plausibly reason with, makes the Imperium start to look ugly because, well, it kind of is. So they had to be rewritten so that they'd castrate you and throw you in a gulag, in order to be no different from the Imperium.

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The fact that they needed to tar the Tau was kind of the beginning of the end of my time in 40k. The whole point of the faction was to have a bunch of idealistic young'uns completely ignorant of the ugliness in the rest of the galaxy. They were a counterpoint of naive hope in a cruel galaxy - they didn't make any of the 'hard choices' because they didn't even consider that those were choices they needed to make. The darkest one could consider them in the early days was a sort of Space British Empire (with the baggage that brings) where the Tau took on the Blue Man's Burden to bring light to the dark jungles of the galaxy. These days they're mind-control space commies.

The only thing I still find at all interesting within 40k these days is the Orks, and they've not changed overmuch since the days of Gorkamorka. Warhammer Fantasy had more interesting and nuanced view of Chaos, and I liked it a lot more. Then they blew it up.

 

[Gitaxian]

The most annoying thing about 40k fans trying to defend the Imperium as justified is that they tend to not actually pay any attention to the lore. Let's go over a few misconceptions that have been brought up in this thread and/or I commonly see.

"You can't use the powers of chaos to do good, they're inherenty corrupting and too dangerous."
The Imperium directly sanctions the use of the powers of chaos and the warp all the time, that's literally what psykers do.

"The Imperium is necessary for humanity to survive."
The Imperium is explicitly failing to survive and has been slowly collapsing for 10,000 years. The sheer scale of simply means the collapse takes a very long time.

"The Imperium is necessary to fend off galaxy-wide threats like the Beast."
Even if we assume a united human polity is necessary, there's zero reason to assume the Imperium is a particularly good model for one and lots of evidence that it's completely awful at it.

"The Imperium isn't actually that bad of a place to live, the admech isn't horribly ritualistic and preventing technological development, etc."
It is literally a part of the blurb at the beginning of every single core rulebook that the Imperium is the *cruelest and most bloody regime imagineable.*

And of course, when thermian arguments fail, the Imperium's defenders inevitably turn to:

"Well GW doesn't have a canon policy so we can pick and choose what lore to follow"
Yes, you can. 40k lore is wildly inconsistent even among recent interpretations and you basically have to build your own interpretation. So why are you choosing to follow an interpretation that makes the Imperium out to be the good guys?

With that in mind, let's talk about the Dark Age of Technology. (It's always surprised me how few people see the intended irony in that name.) Every account we have of it describes it as the golden age of humanity, our peak by every measure. And every account we have of its fall is blatantly contradictory. We're told humanity was too trusting of abhumans and psykers, yet the Imperium regularly employs both whenever it finds them useful - psykers even being allowed to We're told advanced technology is too dangerous and will bring about our doom, while the Imperium desperately tries to recreate it, and the excerpt about the Spirit of Eternity above suggests maybe our technology had a point. We're told that any deviation from the Imperial creed will inevitably bring about humanity's destruction while the Imperium's own inevitable downfall is occurring. We know a better world is possible because it has existed before, but the Imperium has no interest in creating one.

I see Warhammer 40,000 as a world where humanity has convinced itself it would rather experience a long, slow, torturous death than deal with the risks of trying to improve.

 

[MatthewShredder]

Exhibit E, how things changed. Having the Tau be good guys, or at least less-bad guys you can plausibly reason with, makes the Imperium start to look ugly because, well, it kind of is. So they had to be rewritten so that they'd castrate you and throw you in a gulag, in order to be no different from the Imperium.

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I have zero interest in the wider discussions going on in this thread but I feel this isn't 100% accurate. You might be inclined to read the novella Broken Sword written by Guy Haley, which is about human civilian life in the Tau Empire, and how despite all its flaws and the admittedly problematic government system, the Tau Empire is far better than the Imperium of Man.

Have the prologue of the novel as a quote:

Recording 7-9998-14 Gue'vesa. Institute of Human Affairs, Lui'sa'loa, Bork'an. Retrieval code 14a-159. Personal memoirs of Gue'vesa'vre Dal'yth J'ten Ko'lin, gue'vesa auxiliary diplomatic protection la'rua 8448.

This is all about Skilltalker.

I've been asked to record this as honestly as I can, so I will. I don't think you're going to like everything I'm going to say, or I don't think you would if you weren't all so damned sure of yourselves. Probably you won't listen to those parts, or you'll discount them. I'm only a gue'la after all, and a first generation one at that.

I'm recording this in Gothic. I've not had the vocal surgery yet, so I'm afraid my Tau'noh'por will be as senseless as it would be offensive to listen to.

Okay. Let's begin. I am Gue'vesa'vre Dal'yth J'ten Ko'lin. In another life, I was, and still am to myself and among the other human auxiliaries… the gue'vesa – I mean – Jathen Korling. I was originally of Gormen's Fast, now G'men in Ksi'm'yen Sept, but all that's behind me now.

This is my testimony.

Firstly, Por'el Bork'an Kais Por'noha – Skilltalker – was my friend. I'm still cut up about his loss, more than I am about my team, if I am to tell the truth. But that's what you want, right, the truth? I'm uneasy about this. Telling the truth back in the Imperium was often a good reason to get killed. You'll have to forgive me if I appear hesitant, but as you have been so good as to trust me, then I suppose I can only return the favour and hope for the best.

You say we are given a choice. You know as well as I do that there is no choice. My choice was given to me while I was slowly bleeding to death on Gormen's Fast. A kroot rifle blade had cut clean through my femoral artery. Everyone else from my platoon was dead. I'd got a tourniquet on it but I didn't have long, and already the kroot were starting to feast on the dead. I tried not to watch that, but the noises…

I figured, you know, that was it. I was done for. Praise the Emperor, long live the Imperium of Man, goodbye Captain Jathen Korling.

The shas'vre of the warrior team that had blasted half my men to shreds called the kroot off, they checked the dead, found me. Medical support was there within seconds. The medic must have seen my stripes because a few minutes later there was Skilltalker, giving me the Greater Good chapter and verse while a bunch of earth caste patched me up. I cut through what he was saying, I was dog-tired, used up; half dead, in point of fact. I'd been put on the front to die – a shield for the high-brass, only they'd died and I hadn't. I'd had enough of high words to last me a lifetime.

He was patient, and took my interruption with good grace.

'I betray the Imperium for your Greater Good,' I said. I'd heard how it worked. I'd seen tau tech openly for sale, even seen a couple of the water guys roaming about Mainstreet unopposed. I'd heard about the planets that surrendered without a shot. I'd also heard that the tau killed everyone that didn't throw in with them. Enslaved those that did, sometimes murdered the willing anyway. You'll forgive me again, I'm sure. Honesty, yeah? This is what we were told, you're xenos scum, worst of the worst, that make traitors of honest men. 'What if I don't?'

Skilltalker smiled, showing me his big square teeth. Such an expressive face, he had. You're stolid to us, you know that? Most of you wrinkle your noses when you're happy, and shas'la always look kind of pissed off, but other than that you tau don't do facial expressions. I've had all the careful lectures about how aliens can't appreciate the Tau'noh'por, the concern that comes with that lack of understanding. I don't think you realise that you're condescending, unaware of your own limitations. Sure, even after they resculpt my vocal cords, I'm never going to manage the threefold stances of subtle disharmony, no matter how many times you make me dance through it. I can't differentiate between the fourteen tones. Fine. Come back and tell me off when one of you can wink.

Skilltalker was different. All the por'la have such telling faces, but Skilltalker was different even from them. There was such warmth and humour to him. I… I miss him, you know?

'Then you may die with honour,' he said to me.

This wasn't a threat. I think he could tell he had me already. He said this with a real twinkle in his eye, like we were in on a joke together.

Death or life. It's never a real choice, is it? Not for the sane. 'Where do I sign?' I said. He laughed. That was a noise I was going to appreciate as time went on. He loved life, Skilltalker.

I was carried off on a stretcher by the fio'la. As I was lifted up, I saw I was being carried right past a line of other scared, wounded men who'd just watched one of their officers turn his coat at the drop of a medpack, and that was that. Skilltalker was giving his lecture to them as they pushed me into the transport. I don't think a single one said no. You are not a stupid people, I'll give you that.

I was relocated to Dal'yth, along with a lot of other Fasters. I'm not complaining. Good luck turning it around, I say. You're welcome to it.

I've been back here on Dal'yth these last five months… a half tau'cyr, convalescing. They've got me working alongside the water caste in the acclimatisation programme, dealing with new commonwealth citizens relocated from across the Damocles Gulf. I watched the gue'la coming in from Mu'gulath Bay. Pale, half-starved, terrified. Watching their fear go is the most remarkable thing. Watching their amazement grow is the second most remarkable thing. I thought Gormen's Fast was a dump, but compared to the hives of Agrellan, it was okay, and this place is a paradise.

You give us all a choice, but there really is no choice, not a real one. I know that.

I remember when Hincks got it, gunned down by those swine outside of Hive Chaeron. I went to see his widow a few days ago. Nice place she's got now. Good support from the sept authorities. Hincks's kids are growing up to be model citizens. His boy says he wants to go into the gue'vesa auxiliaries like his uncle Jathen. He's a healthy lad, tall and strong. I can't help think what kind of life he'd have back on Gormen's Fast. Probably be half-blind from working in the gossamer plants. Or dead. And yet there he is, cared for and fed and as strong as an ambull calf. Remarkable.

I'm still waiting for the catch.

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