While I think Andres is being a bit too generous towards the Imperium I feel the core point, that the Eldar Empire embraced the their own degenerancy and the Imperium didn't is broadly correct. The Eldar deliberately went far worse than anything the Imperium ever did and they loved it. They loved it so much that after their fall the majority of their population continued to embrace the ideals that led to their fall.
a large proportion of the Imperium fell to the Abomination after its birth so humanity can't claim any morale high ground there. To be honest there are very few factions that can claim any morale high ground in 40k. I personally consider the Tyranids to have the best claim with the argument that they are not capable of contemplating moral judgement so are neutral morality (Neutral Animal) rather then the small pits to endless chasms of everyone else.
The Eldar were an entire species of trillions if not higher numbers (what comes after trillions?) of active and extremely powerful psykers going full debauchery who I'd be unsurprised included at least one or two who could match emps in power, the Imperium was hundreds of trillions of non active humans worshipping a god who got 10000 sacrifices daily.
Emps death was never going to be simple, but the disparity of warp effecting power kinda implies something was going on that was incredibly...extreme.
But they didn't pray to those psykers, or follow rituals praising them or base their culture of depravity on them, or sacrifice others and themselves in their name. There was more power, but it was all spread out in a fairly general concept of thrill-seeking and depravity, while whole of Imperium was focused on the Emperor, with every act of obedience done for him, and every guardsman dying with words "For the Emperor" a sacrifice, even without psykers.
But they didn't pray to those psykers, or follow rituals praising them or base their culture of depravity on them, or sacrifice others and themselves in their name. There was more power, but it was all spread out in a fairly general concept of thrill-seeking and depravity, while whole of Imperium was focused on the Emperor, with every act of obedience done for him, and every guardsman dying with words "For the Emperor" a sacrifice, even without psykers.
@Durin
1. Did emps say what happened to the Assassin Temples/do we have any guesses?
2. How big is the Abomination's Imperium? Ophelia is meant to be the largest one, but how much of the galaxy do we think it controls (approx)
You are being generous to the Imperium here. Were priests erecting giant statues commemorating themselves unavoidable? Ruinous tithes, the Adeptus Ministorum and a hatred of innovation.. well TBH the Adeptus Ministorum and it's massive excesses probably represented like two thirds or more of the Abomination.
To begin with, the Imperium of Man was a necessity following the events of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. There was no one other polity that had the breadth and power to combat the orks and especially Chaos. The eldar might headcap the occasional upcoming Beast, but the galaxy is too large and their numbers too small for them to do so forever. Eventually, the galaxy would go too green for them to defeat. As for Chaos, they had something like 9 Astartes Legions with a warmaster capable of reigning them all in and launching crusades against the galaxy. Only the strength of a galaxy-spanning power could keep them at least somewhat contained. The Cicatrix Maledictum - or something of similar scale - would've been created long before the 41st millennium without an Imperium to stall them.
To ensure the survival of the Imperium of Man, unity was necessary. For the Imperium to maintain unity, many things were necessary, but faith was the single largest thing. No other single thing could match faith in how well it kept the humans of the galaxy united under a single polity. Faith improves morale, suppresses negative behaviours such as crime, encourages people to better the Imperium, discourages things like dissent and separatism, resists Chaos corruption, and limits the spread of other faiths, which is important because of Chaos.
The more faithful the Imperium was, the stronger it was as a whole. When faith was weak, the Imperium was weak. Because of this, it was important to increase faith as much as possible. This oftentimes justified the expense of things that had no practical value but encouraged and increased faith, such as places of worship, statues of important Imperial figures, and religious holidays. The Imperial Trust still has all these things.
The galaxy the Imperium was in had a significant amount of conflict. The Imperium was constantly attacked by very very very large numbers of enemies from both within and without. This required the Imperium to invest lots of resources into its warmaking capabilities. This required the extraction of resources from its worlds. The need for resources for endless, large-scale is always great, and so the tithes extracted are often great, and sometimes ruinous. It's very obvious why the Imperium extracted ruinous tithes at times. I'm not sure what's so baffling about it.
As for why the Mechanicus disliked innovation, I'm not certain. I'm guessing it's because they're really bad at it (they're not scientists, after all) and because of fear that someone will make Men of Iron or something equally bad. That feels incomplete, though.
@Durin
1. Did emps say what happened to the Assassin Temples/do we have any guesses?
2. How big is the Abomination's Imperium? Ophelia is meant to be the largest one, but how much of the galaxy do we think it controls (approx)
1. he did not say. You suspect a mix of dead, scattered and debased and ??
2. you suspect he cotnrols around 10% in total. it was more but then the Krork seiged one section, Gork and Mork woke upa nd Orks took a whole lot more
I think the cause for the large differences in time between the Eldar creating Slaanesh and humanity creating the Abomination is due to the different types of gods they are. From Lin's research we know Slaanesh is a Primal god which means s/he was born with a very powerful domain on birth. The Abomination on the other hand is likely a form of religious god and formed like a cancer upon the Emperor who was probably on his way to becoming a transcendent god. These differences in type can explain the why the two took different amount of time since the the more psychic Eldar for a longer time practiced Excess in a broad spectrum while humanity focused their faith on a singular figure who was already godlike.
a large proportion of the Imperium fell to the Abomination after its birth so humanity can't claim any morale high ground there. To be honest there are very few factions that can claim any morale high ground in 40k. I personally consider the Tyranids to have the best claim with the argument that they are not capable of contemplating moral judgement so are neutral morality (Neutral Animal) rather then the small pits to endless chasms of everyone else.
The Tyranids? Nah. I'd say their nature of being pretty much animals disqualifies them entirely from consideration - they're just a force of nature. No, it's the Orks who have the true moral high ground, for their society is perfect. Name one other faction whose system of government can more accurately be described as a meritocratic democracy! And every Ork is born knowing exactly what they are, and what they want out of life. Outsiders may look at an Ork world and see a chaotic mess of infighting, but in actuality that's just the Orks enjoying themselves as Orks do until the next Waaagh is declared.
To begin with, the Imperium of Man was a necessity following the events of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. There was no one other polity that had the breadth and power to combat the orks and especially Chaos. The eldar might headcap the occasional upcoming Beast, but the galaxy is too large and their numbers too small for them to do so forever. Eventually, the galaxy would go too green for them to defeat. As for Chaos, they had something like 9 Astartes Legions with a warmaster capable of reigning them all in and launching crusades against the galaxy. Only the strength of a galaxy-spanning power could keep them at least somewhat contained. The Cicatrix Maledictum - or something of similar scale - would've been created long before the 41st millennium without an Imperium to stall them.
To ensure the survival of the Imperium of Man, unity was necessary. For the Imperium to maintain unity, many things were necessary, but faith was the single largest thing. No other single thing could match faith in how well it kept the humans of the galaxy united under a single polity. Faith improves morale, suppresses negative behaviours such as crime, encourages people to better the Imperium, discourages things like dissent and separatism, resists Chaos corruption, and limits the spread of other faiths, which is important because of Chaos.
The more faithful the Imperium was, the stronger it was as a whole. When faith was weak, the Imperium was weak. Because of this, it was important to increase faith as much as possible. This oftentimes justified the expense of things that had no practical value but encouraged and increased faith, such as places of worship, statues of important Imperial figures, and religious holidays. The Imperial Trust still has all these things.
The galaxy the Imperium was in had a significant amount of conflict. The Imperium was constantly attacked by very very very large numbers of enemies from both within and without. This required the Imperium to invest lots of resources into its warmaking capabilities. This required the extraction of resources from its worlds. The need for resources for endless, large-scale is always great, and so the tithes extracted are often great, and sometimes ruinous. It's very obvious why the Imperium extracted ruinous tithes at times. I'm not sure what's so baffling about it.
As for why the Mechanicus disliked innovation, I'm not certain. I'm guessing it's because they're really bad at it (they're not scientists, after all) and because of fear that someone will make Men of Iron or something equally bad. That feels incomplete, though.
I spoke of excesses. Even if faith is needed, giant statues of oneself is an excess (esp when it leads to starving children), nor would murdering everyone preaching a slightly different creed. Internal security is needed, but that wouldn't excuse rampant witch hunts and stigmatization of psykers that invariable force them to chaos, where they might at least not die. There's also the bit about feral worlds and that they are somehow militarily more valuable than a civilized worlds due to recruits, or the fact that every hive world seems to be overpopulated with tons of underhives as opposed to doing something more productive. Then there are the Shrine Worlds which are frankly a ludicrous expenditure of resources which could be going elsewhere and are also an affront to the Emperor. Or the paradise worlds.
A lot of the necessities of the Imperium are due to self-inflicted wounds. Chaos is honestly just not as attractive unless your life is godawful. TBF I get the impression that the Imperium of Old is precisely what the 4 chaos gods were happy with. Rampant plotting between nobles. Gang warfare forever for Khorne, diseases in all the hives for Nurgle, and Slaneesh getting tons from all sorts of depraved nobles. Certainly they don't seem very interested in wiping out the Imperium.
And then there's races elsewhere that survived without an Imperium.
As for why the Mechanicus disliked innovation, I'm not certain. I'm guessing it's because they're really bad at it (they're not scientists, after all) and because of fear that someone will make Men of Iron or something equally bad. That feels incomplete, though.
AdMech was born on Mars, a place where innovating without caution is a good way to get yourself and all around you killed and what little databases left corrupted, even before it fell during Horus Heresy and got stuffed with every demonic engine, factory and code imaginable.
The Tyranids? Nah. I'd say their nature of being pretty much animals disqualifies them entirely from consideration - they're just a force of nature. No, it's the Orks who have the true moral high ground, for their society is perfect. Name one other faction whose system of government can more accurately be described as a meritocratic democracy! And every Ork is born knowing exactly what they are, and what they want out of life. Outsiders may look at an Ork world and see a chaotic mess of infighting, but in actuality that's just the Orks enjoying themselves as Orks do until the next Waaagh is declared.
To begin with, the Imperium of Man was a necessity following the events of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. There was no one other polity that had the breadth and power to combat the orks and especially Chaos. The eldar might headcap the occasional upcoming Beast, but the galaxy is too large and their numbers too small for them to do so forever. Eventually, the galaxy would go too green for them to defeat. As for Chaos, they had something like 9 Astartes Legions with a warmaster capable of reigning them all in and launching crusades against the galaxy. Only the strength of a galaxy-spanning power could keep them at least somewhat contained. The Cicatrix Maledictum - or something of similar scale - would've been created long before the 41st millennium without an Imperium to stall them.
To ensure the survival of the Imperium of Man, unity was necessary. For the Imperium to maintain unity, many things were necessary, but faith was the single largest thing. No other single thing could match faith in how well it kept the humans of the galaxy united under a single polity. Faith improves morale, suppresses negative behaviours such as crime, encourages people to better the Imperium, discourages things like dissent and separatism, resists Chaos corruption, and limits the spread of other faiths, which is important because of Chaos.
The more faithful the Imperium was, the stronger it was as a whole. When faith was weak, the Imperium was weak. Because of this, it was important to increase faith as much as possible. This oftentimes justified the expense of things that had no practical value but encouraged and increased faith, such as places of worship, statues of important Imperial figures, and religious holidays. The Imperial Trust still has all these things.
The galaxy the Imperium was in had a significant amount of conflict. The Imperium was constantly attacked by very very very large numbers of enemies from both within and without. This required the Imperium to invest lots of resources into its warmaking capabilities. This required the extraction of resources from its worlds. The need for resources for endless, large-scale is always great, and so the tithes extracted are often great, and sometimes ruinous. It's very obvious why the Imperium extracted ruinous tithes at times. I'm not sure what's so baffling about it.
As for why the Mechanicus disliked innovation, I'm not certain. I'm guessing it's because they're really bad at it (they're not scientists, after all) and because of fear that someone will make Men of Iron or something equally bad. That feels incomplete, though.
Were there no Imperium then there likely would have been no enemy for Abaddon to unite the Legions against. Shared hatred gets em moving in the same direction. Without an Imperium I'd imagine he'd have never reached the same dominant position of power.
Most of that could have been accomplished with the Imperial truth as well, which didn't need the religious. I'd also argue that the Imperial faith was foundationally corrupted, because guess who wrote it. At the end of the day the fact is that the Imperial Religion didn't do most of the stuff you argue it did, not because religion can't do that in theory, but because the Imperium was so fundamentally broken and the religion was so harsh and full of assholes that crime, despair and alternate religions ran rampant at all levels of society.
Because the Imperium is so freaking large that a lot of the time the tithes don't seem reasonable. The amount of waste the Imperium managed just by bureaucratic error could have let tithes drop considerably.
To the final one, I don't know an exact reason is never given.
My theories would be
A. A desire to not recreate the Men of Iron.
B. A fundamental lack of understanding about WTF they're doing.
After all the Admech gets STCs from across tech levels, they don't know where to start especially since a lot of the stuff likely requires Men of Stone to be made in a reasonable degree of time which they won't make and they won't know that because they don't know the capabilities of a man of stone.
AdMech was born on Mars, a place where innovating without caution is a good way to get yourself and all around you killed and what little databases left corrupted, even before it fell during Horus Heresy and got stuffed with every demonic engine, factory and code imaginable.
Ah, you mean the brutally oppressive theocracy where people are forced to worship the Emperor whether they want to or not? Bah. Have you ever heard of an Ork needing to be forced to worship Gork and Mork?
Or perhaps you mean that corrupt cesspit where a bunch of corrupt nobles inherit entire worlds based on bloodline, regardless of their competence? Bah. We all see how the Emperor's sons mucked things up. The Orkish political process on the other hand is beyond reproach. It is pure. One only needs prove oneself da biggest in da Waaagh, and the rest shall follow without complaint. And what's more, the process is entirely accepted by all Orks everywhere.
What Ork morals? They don't deal in terms of good and evil any more than heat-seeking missile thinking it's "good" to follow its target, or a sword thinking it's "evil" to be parried.
Pretty much, but those self-inflicted wounds were caused by attempts (successful or otherwise) to deal with otherwise mortal wounds inflicted by others.
Imagine the Imperium of Man is a human. Chaos has force-fed the human poison and has melted its mouth shut. The human now has two choices: die, or cut a mouth hole and vomit out the poison. The human chooses the latter. Because the human has long forgotten how to safely cut open holes and prevent infections, and has no time to learn how to do either, the rough-made mouth hole it cuts open gets infected. The human is once more in a life-threatening condition, this time at its own hands, but at least its death has been delayed.
I spoke of excesses. Even if faith is needed, giant statues of oneself is an excess (esp when it leads to starving children), nor would murdering everyone preaching a slightly different creed. Internal security is needed, but that wouldn't excuse rampant witch hunts and stigmatization of psykers that invariable force them to chaos, where they might at least not die. There's also the bit about feral worlds and that they are somehow militarily more valuable than a civilized worlds due to recruits, or the fact that every hive world seems to be overpopulated with tons of underhives as opposed to doing something more productive. Then there are the Shrine Worlds which are frankly a ludicrous expenditure of resources which could be going elsewhere and are also an affront to the Emperor. Or the paradise worlds.
The excesses are unavoidable side-effects. You can't have a polity that so greatly focuses on faith as the Imperium (which, again, it had to do) without producing several instances where too many resources go into faith stuff. There's just too many stupid, corrupt, fallible, etc. humans for everything to go well. If the Imperium toned down its love of faith, then those religious-type excesses would've been reduced, but then the Imperium would've suffered from the negatives of its people having less faith, and those negatives would've been the greater evil. Like, I say this a lot, but one of the big themes of the Imperium is that it's in the best worst case scenario.
The Imperial Creed is highly flexible and is tailored by Missionaries to fit the native culture, religion, and practices of whatever world it exists upon. As such, practices adhered to on one world may be held as abhorrent on another. The Ministorum tolerates this vast range of practices and beliefs, as it would be impossible to maintain a complete standardization of the faith across the Imperium.
However, the Ecclesiarchy does enforce basic key tenets:
The Emperor once walked among men, but He is, and always has been, a god.
The Emperor is the one true god, regardless of what past faiths any human may have worshipped.
To purge the heretic, beware the psyker and mutant, and abhor the alien.
Every human being has a place within the Emperor's divine order.
To unquestionably obey the authority of the Imperial government and one's superiors.
Granted, some of those variant creeds are very intolerant of other creeds, but that's not the official stance of the Ecclesiarchy as a whole.
2. The Imperium did not have the resources to do everything optimally. Dealing with psykers was one of those things it couldn't do optimally. Witch hunts and the like was the best they could do without overly sacrificing on some other thing. Also, witch hunts are a tried and true method of dealing with psykers. Age of Strife - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
As it happened, uncontrolled psykers proved to be a dangerous threat to humanity, and many worlds fell under hellish dominance, as the minds of these psykers became the gateways through which Warp entities were able to enter the material universe. Only worlds which had rigorously suppressed psykers survived this fate.
3. If they think feral worlds are a good idea, it's fine to assume they're right. They wouldn't let them exist unless there was benefit to uplifting them. Kinda like how there's benefit in letting Avernites exist despite the massive loss of lives and resources living on a warp-touched death world results in.
4. Shrine worlds are useful for a similar reason that forge worlds are useful. Forge worlds output lots of material goods, shrine worlds output faith. Whether it's by attracting pilgrims, training clergy, creating Imperial Guard regiments with high morale, or producing prime recruits for the incredibly zealous and elite Adepta Sororitas, shrine worlds provide several valuable services to the Imperium.
5. Paradise worlds are also useful. Their purpose is to improve morale and they fulfil that purpose well. Not the most industrially active, but that's what other places are for, and the capital needed to make paradise worlds more industrially powerful could instead be used to make non-paradise worlds more industrial. So you have a choice between creating more industry, or creating more industry at the expense of a morale-boosting planet. Additionally, paradise worlds produce people that are useful to the Imperium. From DH2:
Though the mindset of the community determines much of their behavior, many Garden World natives exude an almost eerie and unearthly sense of calm. They are for the most part methodical, but approach problem-solving in a more holistic way, utilising both hard analysis and intuition to complete their objectives. These folk sometimes constitute some of the Imperium's finest envoys and orators, having an innate ability to put people at ease and connect with others. Garden Worlders are open people and expressive but are equally skilled at keeping their emotions under control temporarily to achieve necessary goals. They do not relish this, however, and most make a point of finding a way soon after to process the emotional content before it finds new and unhealthy ways to manifest.
With these skills sets, Garden Worlders make for exceptional military analysts, healers, and diplomats throughout the Imperium. The Adeptus Administratum frequently recruits from these worlds and -- though the Imperial Tithes for psykers are normally low on Garden Worlds -- the quality of the recruits from these planets ensures that very few of them escape notice from the Scholastica Psykana. The Adeptus Ministorum has also found exceptionally talented scholars and priests on these planets and often maintains permanent bases there to find new clergy. Rogue Traders who frequent such worlds often take the finest to become part of their crews, where their skills in calm discussion can aid in commercial negotiations.
So, you've got planets that produce above average military analysts, healers, diplomats, administrators, psykers, scholars, priests, and merchants. All good things for the Imperium.
Kinda? Orks do get into fights over whether you should worship Mork or Gork. Or whether it's Gork and Mork or Mork and Gork. Not believing in Gork and Mork could also get you beaten up, as could believing in Gork and Mork if you're near an ork who doesn't believe in them.
Rememba when da ladz got togetha and put all da skullz in a pile and did a dance for a laugh and da sky went all red and Ozgob said "Da Time Of Blood Has Come" in a funny voice and a bunch of red ladz came through da walls and we had a fight and it woz great? Some of the big wunz had gunz. They'z good and they whisper fun stuff to ya' about killin' and battles.
This may just be because I've studied the inspiration for the Cult, but this works...until the main body of the Ecclesiarchy gets there.
Missionaries are allowed to adapt creeds to fit local traditions, stereotypes etc. in order to spread the faith, but once the conversion is pretty much complete then the church will usually clamp down and ensure that the "true" religion is being followed.
Minor variation in things like what Saints are venerated where is fine, as is local festivals, that's fine.
But, divergence from the canon not fine at all.
IRL this resulted a pope writing a list of questions to a khan telling them that no I do not care about how long your trousers are (that happened BTW Innocence IV's Cum no Solum to Khan Güyük. Had a lot of questions and answers, but the trouser one is just funny to me...that particular relationship didn't end well), but in 40K best case scenario lots of dead people.
2. The Imperium did not have the resources to do everything optimally. Dealing with psykers was one of those things it couldn't do optimally. Witch hunts and the like was the best they could do without overly sacrificing on some other thing. Also, witch hunts are a tried and true method of dealing with psykers.
Rigorously suppressed psykers ain't the same as witch hunts though. Remember these be dark age worlds with 22-25 level tech in Embers, not level 9-10 hive worlds (in a good scenario).
3. If they think feral worlds are a good idea, it's fine to assume they're right. They wouldn't let them exist unless there was benefit to uplifting them. Kinda like how there's benefit in letting Avernites exist despite the massive loss of lives and resources living on a warp-touched death world results in.
Eh personal bias from DH, but there rarely seems to be any benefit to letting them exist. Deathworlds produce people like Avernites and Catachanians, and any "feral" worlds where astartes recruit can be classed as low level death worlds at a minimum.
But, an actual feral world generally produces nothing while their soldiers are usually really shit.
Who benefits from these paradise worlds? Tends to just be the nobles, who as a rule are worth less than the dribble.
I'd like to hope they're sending regiments for RnR, but given the size of the astra militarum, the small number of paradise worlds, those world's small size and the constant demand for regiments to keep going to the next grinder, I'd imagine if that is the case it is so rare that being picked for it is a statistical anomaly and for a sector any morale increase is so small to be unnoticeable.
Was reading da regimentul bosspile and found out that orks don't believe in machine spirits. Kinda ironic that the faction that has ridiculously psykic tech doesn't believe in it, and the faction with mostly real, working tech, the admech, do.
A park for the richest, most exclusive people who can afford it isn't a park, nor does it fulfil any point of boosting moral except among the elites who should be the people who need that the most.
Was reading da regimentul bosspile and found out that orks don't believe in machine spirits. Kinda ironic that the faction that has ridiculously psykic tech doesn't believe in it, and the faction with mostly real, working tech, the admech, do.
2. The Imperium did not have the resources to do everything optimally. Dealing with psykers was one of those things it couldn't do optimally. Witch hunts and the like was the best they could do without overly sacrificing on some other thing. Also, witch hunts are a tried and true method of dealing with psykers.
Lucriduous. The Imperium had too much resources to do anything optimally.
Placing psykers into a situation whereby their only realistic hope of survival is to go chaotic is a fail idea. Witch Hunts just don't work once you have actually dangerous psykers as opposed to some zeta or epilson that is the norm.
3. If they think feral worlds are a good idea, it's fine to assume they're right. They wouldn't let them exist unless there was benefit to uplifting them. Kinda like how there's benefit in letting Avernites exist despite the massive loss of lives and resources living on a warp-touched death world results in.
4. Shrine worlds are useful for a similar reason that forge worlds are useful. Forge worlds output lots of material goods, shrine worlds output faith. Whether it's by attracting pilgrims, training clergy, creating Imperial Guard regiments with high morale, or producing prime recruits for the incredibly zealous and elite Adepta Sororitas, shrine worlds provide several valuable services to the Imperium.
5. Paradise worlds are also useful. Their purpose is to improve morale and they fulfil that purpose well. Not the most industrially active, but that's what other places are for, and the capital needed to make paradise worlds more industrially powerful could instead be used to make non-paradise worlds more industrial. So you have a choice between creating more industry, or creating more industry at the expense of a morale-boosting planet. Additionally, paradise worlds produce people that are useful to the Imperium. From DH2:
3. This is literally the appeal to authority fallacy. And what about Feudal worlds?
4. You mean more faith for the adeptus ministorum so they can line their pockets and built statues of themselves? What about providing actually good training and superior amenities to provide high morale instead of empty faith and a commissar's gun?
5. Paradise worlds as described are practically the non-use of a world. At least if the world was owned by the Eldar there might be reason to not colonize it.
Faith and morale do not 'radiate' from worlds that so happen to have giant statues and nice gardens. It must be instilled in individual soldiers. Gardens are useless to a population that can't access them. At least on Earth one could visit them, in 40k you need to take a dangerous warp trip to get to the planet and back. A massive waste of resources when one could just grow gardens in the city.
Ok the update is going to be later than usual that means two things
1 a lot happen in this turn and he has to write it out.
Or
2 we are moving to war turns.
Now if he was going to be late with the update or busy he would tell us because he is just that kind of GM.
