The Radiant Shepherd - A Warhammer 40K God-Emperor Quest

Eldar and Imperium is a self fulfilling cycle where the Eldar can see the future Imperium backstab them so they backstab the current Imperium to prevent that future which further distrust on bothside and rinse and repeat.
 
Amen to that. Aaaaaa, I guess the craftworlders and exodites are fine too. Aside from the excessive vanity that all Eldar suffer from, right? Or are they actually reasonable characters?

they are arrogant but beside biel-tan,their opinion is "undeveloped savages,we would sacrifice lots of them to save a eldar,but would not kill them if there is a better alternative"

biel-tan take is "we will reconquer the galaxy and destroy anyone standing in our way...one day.....believe us"

so some intolerance and prejudice is expected from most eldar,but nothing that makes impossible to work with them if the need arises,the biggest issue is conving the imperials to not shoot on sight
 
The average Craftworlder considers humans to be barely evolved animals so jackass is the expect baseline. Not to mention the whole doomed a human world to save less then a dozen Eldar thing they pull occasionally.

Ehh, not the worst, I think. The Necrons think the same and I adore those depressed skelly metal boys. Seems par for the course in 40K all things considered since uh, I'm sure an inquisitor would do the same and probably far far worse.

they are arrogant but beside biel-tan,their opinion is "undeveloped savages,we would sacrifice lots of them to save a eldar,but would not kill them if there is a better alternative"

biel-tan take is "we will reconquer the galaxy and destroy anyone standing in our way...one day.....believe us"

so some intolerance and prejudice is expected from most eldar,but nothing that makes impossible to work with them if the need arises,the biggest issue is conving the imperials to not shoot on sight

That's understandable, I guess. Long as they don't become a recurring headache. Mostly a personal gripe but um, characters like those aren't good for my health, bleh.
 
Nah, we are the imperium in 40K; you don't want xenocide? Werll, that is probaly not on the table as they are deeply entrenchend and probaly burn any and all who try this line of thinking; furthermore, its become a culture, and cultures only end in one way: the death of the culture, be it through external or internal threats, so yeah, if you want to go this route, throw away half the galaxy to save the other half as the imperium nihlius will be created, maybe even faster this time as we would fight a schism again probaly... and i dont know about you, but im perfectly happy with where we are atm. It might be a crap basket, but its ours, and we need to first unfuck us (Emps) to unfuck humanity, so yeah, I'm not shedding a tear for the xenos atm because we can't afford to, tbh.

Edit: Furthermore, the need of the many outweighs the need of the few at this point and as we know, humans are the many for us so if i have to exterminate worlds of xenos so we dont litaral have a shism where more people die, then we could probably save with xenos help. i say let it be and let it rest its 40k not to mention chaos would have a field day with this and probaly be on the pure human side and egg them on more if we try this.
 
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they are arrogant but beside biel-tan,their opinion is "undeveloped savages,we would sacrifice lots of them to save a eldar,but would not kill them if there is a better alternative"
This is wrong. Remember: The word Mon-Keigh inherently includes the understanding that the species called such needs to be cleansed from the galaxy. The craftworlds at their best are still "Wait to murder all humans and rebuild our glorious empire until after Slannesh is dead". Biel-tan just doesnt care to wait.
 
Yeah the Eldar are pretty much calling all humans the N word with every interaction even Eldar like Eldrad aren't exceptions to this.
But really, with how the Imperium (which includes the majority of all humans in Galaxy) has acted towards everyone who isn't them (and even the people within the Imperium) for 10 thousand years, is it really not understandable why some think that?
 
But really, with how the Imperium (which includes the majority of all humans in Galaxy) has acted towards everyone who isn't them (and even the people within the Imperium) for 10 thousand years, is it really not understandable why some think that?
Even if the Imperium wasn't so intensely xenophobic the Xenos aren't exactly going to stop being racists and being up front about it when they want to.
 
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40k didn't work like this. Friendship with aliens didn't exist in universe ( except temporary truce). Even traitors would not understand
That's because Games Workshop likes to sell a game where they need reasonably plausible excuses for any two armies from any two factions to fight each other at any time.

It doesn't mean we have to slavishly replicate that attitude in-quest.

Nah, we are the imperium in 40K; you don't want xenocide? Werll, that is probaly not on the table as they are deeply entrenchend and probaly burn any and all who try this line of thinking...
You do know we're playing as the God-Emperor of Mankind, right? If we start nudging leaders to stop blowing up Tau and trying to chase down non-Dark Eldar, and instead prioritize other real threats to galactic civilization, no, we actually can do that without getting either ourselves or the people following us thrown into fires.

furthermore, its become a culture, and cultures only end in one way: the death of the culture, be it through external or internal threats,
I don't think that's actually true unless you fix your definition of "the death of the culture" to a pair of very fast-moving goalposts.

It kind of sounds like you're predicting horrific consequences of even vaguely moving in the general direction of "maybe we shouldn't be encouraging the tendency to kill all aliens indiscriminately," and I don't think those consequences are at all realistic.

This is wrong. Remember: The word Mon-Keigh inherently includes the understanding that the species called such needs to be cleansed from the galaxy. The craftworlds at their best are still "Wait to murder all humans and rebuild our glorious empire until after Slannesh is dead".
That's not plausible, because the Eldar were calling humans "mon-keigh" back before Slaanesh, back in the days when they still had the Aeldari Dominion and could absolutely have exterminated humanity if they wanted to badly enough.

I don't think it's actually true that the Eldar have a consistent cultural belief that there is some 'need' to render humanity extinct, either now or in the future.

Yeah the Eldar are pretty much calling all humans the N word with every interaction even Eldar like Eldrad aren't exceptions to this.
They totally are insulting us all the time, though, don't get me wrong about that part.
 
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to chase down non-Dark Eldar, and instead prioritize other real threats to galactic civilization
What if those Eldar just got done directing an Ork WAAGH!!!, or Tyranid Hive Fleet to an Imperial planet? After all the Imperium doesn't always attack the Craftworld Eldar unprovoked since they have a tendency to show up and attack without explaining themselves. Same with the Tau when they start encroaching on the Imperium's boarders boundaries have to be set with them so they know taking human worlds is not okay.
 
What if those Eldar just got done directing an Ork WAAGH!!!, or Tyranid Hive Fleet to an Imperial planet? After all the Imperium doesn't always attack the Craftworld Eldar unprovoked since they have a tendency to show up and attack without explaining themselves.
There's a difference between punitive expeditions launched in response to specific provocations, and a general policy of trying to exterminate them because their ears are too pointy. The way some Imperials behave towards Maiden Worlds is an obvious example, because the residents of a Maiden World are decidedly not going out and doing this kind of crap to us.

Furthermore, if we are controlling an Emperor who is starting to recover, it seems likely that we may be able to catch them at more of their shenanigans and make them into losing propositions. Two can play at this "predicting the future" game, and if the farseers start seeing that we're more capable of actually noticing the crap they pull, they may be less inclined to pull crap.

Same with the Tau when they start encroaching on the Imperium's boarders boundaries have to be set with them so they know taking human worlds is not okay.
Oh yes! But it would be a lot easier to negotiate boundaries if we were, say, sending out actual diplomats who can tell the Ethereals that we actually do accept their species' right to exist and to even expand into the many many territories the Imperium does not actually control in any normal sense.

It's a lot harder to get people to respect your borders when they have nothing to gain from the prospect of actual peace with you because lasting peace has been taken off the table by your own policies.
 
It's a lot harder to get people to respect your borders when they have nothing to gain from the prospect of actual peace with you because lasting peace has been taken off the table by your own policies.
As OP said the Tau were the ones who started it by trying to subvert human worlds if they hadn't tried to do that most of the Inperium would have been content to ignore them. Even after the Damocles Crusade they show no intention of stopping despite it earning Imperial reprisals.
 
Actually the Tau made their choice. The Imperium was ignoring them until the Ethereals deliberately started subverting Imperial planets.
The thing with this attitude is that it makes a lot of sense if you completely ignore the Tau perspective.

From their point of view, the "Imperium of Man" is this thing so big and diffuse that at first they probably weren't actually sure it was a single cohesive government as opposed to a shambling feudal mass incapable of responding to being poked, and frankly they're not wrong to wonder about that given that the Administratum regularly loses track of whole-ass planets for centuries at a time. One can reasonably imagine the Tau strategists thinking that humans are kind of like orks- they're a species that is ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, such that it's almost impossible to live anywhere without clashing with them, but just because you're fighting the local warbands doesn't mean the whole species is going to up and bum-rush you in retaliation.

They didn't turn out to be correct about that, but I can see why they'd think so.

Furthermore, the Tau could very easily look at what a colossal shitshow Imperial governance is on many planets and go "we could totally do better than that," and frankly they could, it is well within their capacity to provide better governance than the Imperium circa M41 does. And in their original canonical versions the Tau did, it was objectively completely understandable why people were leaving the Imperium for the Tau. At least, until the GW writers started altering the situation to make the Tau look worse because they couldn't be having anyone make the Imperium look like a genuinely bad government by comparison!

So looking at that situation and saying "no no, the Tau chose Only War Forever with us, we cannot possibly negotiate with them" is just nonsense.

YOU say "subverting imperial planets," they say "providing actual government and managing to be more compassionate and effective than their own species' aristocracy while also bringing technology that works and that the people can learn to use instead of having it be janky and all in the hands of that weird cyborg cult the humans have to obstruct their development."

Obviously, we have to shut that kind of shit down, but a big part of that is in just plain providing a comparable or superior alternative to the Tau for the typical Imperium citizen, something I strongly suspect the M41 Imperium would otherwise fail to do.

As OP said the Tau were the ones who started it by trying to subvert human worlds if they hadn't tried to do that most of the Inperium would have been content to ignore them.
I'm honestly not sure about that. It's not like the Imperium hasn't launched genocides for lesser or for no reason in the past.

To an extent this feels kind of like excuse-making: "you poke me, I exterminate your entire species."

Even after the Damocles Crusade they show no intention of stopping despite it earning Imperial reprisals.
Well, gee, I wonder why after finally encountering a major Imperium attack force that loudly proclaimed its intent to exterminate the xenos and purge them from the worlds they'd "subverted" out from under us with in many cases the support of those worlds' own citizenry, they didn't just give up altogether on the idea of securing forward bases and buffer zones at our expense?

I strongly suspect that if we wanted a negotiated peace with them, with clearly demarcated borders, badly enough to enforce it against both sides' own fire-eaters and jerks, we could have it.
 
From their point of view, the "Imperium of Man" is this thing so big and diffuse that at first they probably weren't actually sure it was a single cohesive government as opposed to a shambling feudal mass incapable of responding to being poked, and frankly they're not wrong to wonder about that given that the Administratum regularly loses track of whole-ass planets for centuries at a time. One can reasonably imagine the Tau strategists thinking that humans are kind of like orks- they're a species that is ubiquitous throughout the galaxy, such that it's almost impossible to live anywhere without clashing with them, but just because you're fighting the local warbands doesn't mean the whole species is going to up and bum-rush you in retaliation.
As a reminder for others, it was over eleven hundred years between Water Caste diplomats converting dissident imperial worlds into Tau territory and the Damocles Gulf Crusade. That is a comfortably lengthy period of time to justify an attitude of, "if these humans had a functional central government it would've said something by now."
 
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That's not plausible, because the Eldar were calling humans "mon-keigh" back before Slaanesh, back in the days when they still had the Aeldari Dominion and could absolutely have exterminated humanity if they wanted to badly enough.

I don't think it's actually true that the Eldar have a consistent cultural belief that there is some 'need' to render humanity extinct, either now or in the future.
Its always been canon that the original mon-keigh were according to Eldar Legend a species that managed to conquer and enslave the Aeldari for a period until they managed to rebel and then cleanse them from the galaxy. Its very hard to not see a very clear and implicit genocidal undertone to using to refer to another species. As for the period of the Aeldari Dominion when humanity was arising, there was a big catch with just going out and exterminating humanity in that the Aeldari were a bit busy with chasing the newest drugs and murder fucking each other.
 
As a reminder for others, it was over eleven hundred years between Water Caste diplomats converting dissident imperial worlds into Tau territory and the Damocles Gulf Crusade. That is a comfortably lengthy period of time to justify an attitude of, "if these humans had a functional central government it would've said something by now."
I dunno. The part where it took 1100 years for the Imperium of Man to muster a centralized response, when as I understand it most Tau don't live more than about 100 years if that long, may have tended to reinforce their perception that the central government either doesn't exist or isn't relevant.

Like, if we flipped the roles around and it was a technologically dynamic and expanding young human polity centered on Earth, trying to make headway in a scary galaxy dominated by a vast, dogmatic, massively decentralized, stagnant, brutally repressive nonhuman empire, and we knew that a thousand years had passed with no coherent response to our efforts to convert the aliens to just join the Terran League...

We would probably not be expecting the alleged central government that supposedly exists at the galactic level to ever mount a serious and coordinated response.

This is especially true if we'd started out by flipping "dissident" alien worlds that were already not paying taxes to the big alien empire.

...

Like, frankly, we're only even MAD about this because we're taking the side of the giant stagnant empire that's having little slices carved off its periphery by an expanding power. If it weren't happening to the guys we choose to identity with, we might very well be inclined to root for the Tau. Certainly the bare act of the Tau expanding at the giant shambolic empire's expense wouldn't seem all that unreasonable, or sufficient grounds for their total extermination as a species.

Its always been canon that the original mon-keigh were according to Eldar Legend a species that managed to conquer and enslave the Aeldari for a period until they managed to rebel and then cleanse them from the galaxy. Its very hard to not see a very clear and implicit genocidal undertone to using to refer to another species. As for the period of the Aeldari Dominion when humanity was arising, there was a big catch with just going out and exterminating humanity in that the Aeldari were a bit busy with chasing the newest drugs and murder fucking each other.
I mean maybe, but it's fairly clear to me that the Aeldari didn't even really try to exterminate humanity, because they didn't even go after our longest-inhabited and most very much not a secret homeworld. Like, they HAD corsair fleets going around doing various horrible crimes; it would not have been much of a stretch for them to preferentially fuck us up.

I think this idea that even the 'Light' Eldar are actually planning to exterminate humanity if they ever get the chance sounds just really fucking paranoid. I don't buy it.
 
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I dunno. The part where it took 1100 years for the Imperium of Man to muster a centralized response, when as I understand it most Tau don't live more than about 100 years if that long, may have tended to reinforce their perception that the central government either doesn't exist or isn't relevant.

Like, if we flipped the roles around and it was a technologically dynamic and expanding young human polity centered on Earth, trying to make headway in a scary galaxy dominated by a vast, dogmatic, massively decentralized, stagnant, brutally repressive nonhuman empire, and we knew that a thousand years had passed with no coherent response to our efforts to convert the aliens to just join the Terran League...

We would probably not be expecting the alleged central government that supposedly exists at the galactic level to ever mount a serious and coordinated response.

This is especially true if we'd started out by flipping "dissident" alien worlds that were already not paying taxes to the big alien empire.
Yes, I was reinforcing your point for the edification of others' :p
 
I dunno. The part where it took 1100 years for the Imperium of Man to muster a centralized response, when as I understand it most Tau don't live more than about 100 years if that long, may have tended to reinforce their perception that the central government either doesn't exist or isn't relevant.

I think they're agreeing with you.

Anyways, this "we must destroy all xenos" argument is precisely why the Imperium is losing. We're choking to death trying to preserve maximalist gains against the rest of the galaxy, when we can very easily cede ground to our benefit. There's no material reason to keep fucking over the Tau, or going out of our way to hunt down Craftworlds/Exodites, when they hate our enemies (Tyranids, Orks, Chaos, etc) just as much as we do and cost of placating them is miniscule at worst.

The Emperor is very much responsible for running the Imperium on xenophobic dogma , so condemning his human agents for following that doctrine is a bit hypocritical, but that doesn't make said principles right.
 
YOU say "subverting imperial planets," they say "providing actual government and managing to be more compassionate and effective than their own species' aristocracy while also bringing technology that works and that the people can learn to use instead of having it be janky and all in the hands of that weird cyborg cult the humans have to obstruct their development."
I would still say the Tau do deserve severe reprisals for overstepping their bounds and messing with Imperial Worlds that told them no the first time to joining their Empire. Just another thing to despise GW for creating the 'nicest' race in 40k, having them face off against bigger opponents but won't let them suffer severe consequences for doing so and still as of yet not having a inner Civil War with the other Xenos races within their empire.
 
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I mean maybe, but it's fairly clear to me that the Aeldari didn't even really try to exterminate humanity, because they didn't even go after our longest-inhabited and most very much not a secret homeworld. Like, they HAD corsair fleets going around doing various horrible crimes; it would not have been much of a stretch for them to preferentially fuck us up.

I think this idea that even the 'Light' Eldar are actually planning to exterminate humanity if they ever get the chance sounds just really fucking paranoid. I don't buy it.
This is GW we are talking about. GW is predictable in trying to make 40K the shittiest setting in existence to be in. It was 100% put in to make it so that the Aeldari were just as genocidal as the Imperium so you couldn't pretend they were any nicer.
 
I would still say the Tau do deserve severe reprisals for overstepping their bounds and messing with Imperial Worlds that told them no the first time to joining their Empire.
Again, we're talking about periods of hundreds of years here, and most of these planets are under some form of dictatorial or oligarchic rule.

I can absolutely imagine a bunch of Tau going "yeah, so the hereditary planetary governor said 'no' and shot anyone who disagreed too strenuously, let's just back off and try to establish some soft power influnce for, oh, fifty years or so, and we'll see if we can get things to turn around some time in my grandchildren's time."

And the Imperium registers that as "Tau perfidiously infiltrated and subverted a righteous God-Emperor-fearing world that told them to go away!"

But it's really hard to blame the Tau for doing it.

...

As a matter of Imperium public policy, yes, we'd have to put pressure on the Tau.

But that doesn't mean we can't negotiate a real border with them and agree to peace.

Just another thing to despise GW for creating the 'nicest' race in 40k, having them face off against bigger opponents but won't let them suffer severe consequences for doing so and still as of yet not having a inner Civil War with the other Xenos races within their empire.
I dunno, I don't think it makes sense to resent GW not giving the Tau an internal civil war?

And the "consequences" of them opposing the people around them boil down to "they are now at war a lot and may well lose in the next few centuries." They just haven't lost yet.
 
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