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Warhammer 40k General thread

killer565 said:
Fascism has a very specific meaning and the Imperium utterly fails to meet it on account of being a semi-decentralized feudal federation allied with a sovereign power with numerous wholly independent subfactions within it which hold large sections of space with little to no direct oversight. Not only is all its territory structured in a feudal manner with lords and overlords passing taxes up the chain to the Administratum but it doesn't even have a unified economy, let alone a planned one. Which is one of the most important features of Fascism- everything is controlled by the state. The Imperium shares far more with Stalinism than it does Fascism, and even then it's an awful stretch.
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No, fascism has a "very specific definition" only if you want to define fascism poorly. The fascist ideologies of the early 20th century were not homogenous, they had a variety of ideals and government structures. It's far more practical to define fascism by the common characteristics of its adherents.

Furthermore, I already addressed this, the Imperium is not decentralized because it wants to be. It's a product of the logistical problems of having an empire that size. Using it as evidence that they are not fascist is fallacious, it would be like asserting that Nazi Germany wasn't genocidal because it failed to completely exterminate the Jewish race. A lack of capability is not the same thing as a lack of intent.

I am not aware of any definition of fascism that does not cover the IoM, and any that doesn't is almost certainly worthless. If you compare the Imperium of Man to fascist states like Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and others the similarities are clear.
 
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Jesus Christ can we have a single 40k thread that doesn't devolve into nonsense defenses of the Imperium?

Hell here it wasn't even some longform critique of 40k, it was an offhand reference to the imperium being fascist to sprouted the defenders.
 
Alex said:
Eeeeeeeeh, its funny but it also has some aspects I kinda dislike as well. Like TTS makes a setting thats pretty focused on imperials and doubles down on that hard, with everyone but the imperium and especially the primarchs becoming some variation of background extras. Also while its miles better then 1d4chan and original /tg/ about some things, an air of chuddy nerd bro can sink through from time to time.
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It makes unlikable characters likable.
 
IfIhadaHammer said:
Jesus Christ can we have a single 40k thread that doesn't devolve into nonsense defenses of the Imperium?

Hell here it wasn't even some longform critique of 40k, it was an offhand reference to the imperium being fascist to sprouted the defenders.
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TBF its a valid discussion on what exactly the horribleness of the imperium is. If it fails to meet the technical definition of being facist, then defining it as such would be stretching the term from being a specific form of government, to being a catch all term for governments who practice things i don't like.
 
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Eos_Astraeus said:
TBF its a valid discussion on what exactly the horribleness of the imperium is. If it fails to meet the technical definition of being facist, then defining it as such would be stretching the term from being a specific form of government, to being a catch all term for governments who practice things i don't like.
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Good thing that no one is doing that.

I am using the common traits of fascism as defined by Umberto Eco.

There is no "technical definition of being fascist", the term is not one that has a neat definition. You're obviously right that utilizing an excessively broad definition is not useful, but it's just as bad to use a hyper-restricted definition.
 
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IfIhadaHammer said:
Jesus Christ can we have a single 40k thread that doesn't devolve into nonsense defenses of the Imperium?

Hell here it wasn't even some longform critique of 40k, it was an offhand reference to the imperium being fascist to sprouted the defenders.
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Who said we were arguing the Imperium is just? I know the Imperium is evil, though it not fascist.

Fourthspartan56 said:
Good thing that no one is doing that.

I am using the common traits of fascism as defined by Umberto Eco.

There is no "technical definition of being fascist", the term is not one that has a neat definition. You're obviously right that utilizing an excessively broad definition is not useful, but it's just as bad to use a hyper-restricted definition.
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It still does not meet all the definitions. The Imperium is a feudal society with fascist undertones.
 
killer565 said:
Bullshit. And you basically just said that it is feudal as it is forced to be. We all know the Imperium would love to be full blown fascist, though it cannot be.
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I am rapidly tiring of this discussion, you have repeatedly asserted that the Imperium of Man *definitely* isn't fascist and yet the only one to provide any traits of fascism is myself.

Dogmatically insisting that "true" Fascism cannot be decentralized at all is neither useful nor particularly compelling. Fascism is a type of ideology, it is not a government structure. There is nothing contradictory about a fascist state that is feudal out of necessity.
 
Avoiding the rabbit hole.

Personally, i think the best stories from the universe are either
  • Partially comedic (Cain Archives)
  • Emphasise the plight of the common man/Eldar who isn't one of the big named character either trying to live their lives
  • Focus on people trying to rationalise the horrible decisions they make, and seeing the internal contradictions manifest and bite them in the arse. (commander who callously abandons his troops see's everything he has burn, dark eldar trying to understand romance, Tau chafing under the constraints of the greater good)
  • Humanise the unlikable characters (chaos, dark eldar), them remind you how horrible they actually are.
The thing i hate most would be faction invincibility.

Chaos: Never really losing anything in story and not really having a loose condition. The Dark gods are perfectly safe and unthreatened. Demon Princedom is the best immortality in the verse. Chaos Space marines and cultists are an effectively limitless resource and demons and dark mechanicus provide an infinite supply of special equipment. There's never a sence that the faction suffers any loses that matter, and the same force will always come back no matter the defeat.
  • Necrons loose tombworlds and its a big loss to the forces they have available, and they have to awaken soon otherwise the galaxy will be lost to them (Nids Chaos)
  • Tyranids loosing a hive fleet is a loss of genetic potential that they have to recover from. Even they are worried about the galaxy becoming non-viable (Chaos), and enough gun will stop them.
  • Orks are reliant on a Big Warboss to unify them, so the loss of any major warboss is a big setback to their threat factor. But they don't really care

But Chaos demons have no avenue to be weakened as a faction or reason to be concerned about the state of the galaxy. A nameless/Fodder Chaos lord getting stopped doesn't weaken Chaos nearly as much as the 5 systems and 10 Gaurd regiments that died before the space marines showed up.

Tau: Their small size means that they can never faec a major loss otherwise they'll cease to exist as a faction. As such they just keep getting handed victories over forces that should have rolled them for plot reasons
 
Eos_Astraeus said:
Chaos: Never really losing anything in story and not really having a loose condition. The Dark gods are perfectly safe and unthreatened. Demon Princedom is the best immortality in the verse. Chaos Space marines and cultists are an effectively limitless resource and demons and dark mechanicus provide an infinite supply of special equipment. There's never a sence that the faction suffers any loses that matter, and the same force will always come back no matter the defeat.
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Eh, I wouldn't say this is true.

Sure you can't permanently kill the Chaos Gods but you don't really need to, just keep a lid on its influence and your civilization can keep on going for who knows how long. I would call that a victory.

The only reason Chaos's realspace forces are limitless is because the Imperium is a hyper-dysfunctional state that is quite literally its own worst enemy. I highly doubt the Eldar empire at its height or Humanity during the Age of Technology had to deal with anything nearly as bad. It's just that Warhammer 40k is set in a time period in which Chaos is ascendant because of the aforementioned incompetence.
 
Best Legions are Emperor's Children and Word Bearers.



I need to start buying more books, though. I got this huge frickin' list....
 
It's pretty hard to blame the Imperium for being the way they are when you look at their history, and the kind of threats they face.

It was written to be a dystopian setting after all.

Has anyone ever written an AU where the Emperor reveals himself during the DAOT, the technology is never lost, and there is no Horus Heresy?
 
Nikkolas said:
Best Legions are Emperor's Children and Word Bearers.



I need to start buying more books, though. I got this huge frickin' list....
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My big problem with chaos marines in 40k is that they are almost infinitely more interesting in 30k where they have much more nuanced motivation then just being angry legions from hell.
 
SeptimusMagisto said:
It would be nice if Chaos occasionally just ran out of Traitor Guard and had to put plans on hold until it could bus in more from another sector.
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This is pretty much what i want. A chaos plan being shut down not because of some massive sacrifice, but because they've run out of non replaceable resources. (e.g. a massive chaos plot to take a forgeworld because they've lost that capacity to make a certain class of war ship > that plot failing and there now being a thing chaos can't have >chaos plots now being conducted to aquire loyalist ones that rarely succeed so now that class of warship is incredibly rare in chaos forces rather than them falling into their laps).
 
Chaos not having something would miss the point of chaos.

Chaos is a reflection of the "Worst" of humanity.

They are rather directly a mirror of the empirum.
"You have space marines, we have space marines, you have gaurdsmen, we have gaurdsmen" Etc etc


Because you need to justify the evil facist government that is the emperium.


So you just make a mirror opposite of it and make them the bad guys.
Chaos is the evil twin to an evil man resorting to comical levels of evil just to make his brother look like a good guy.

I mean it's pretty fair to call the emperium and chaos relationship "Nazis who love space Jesus fighting demonic nazis"
That whole set piece exist in such a way to let Nazis be the good guy.


Chaos doesn't get it's own toys and plans (to a real degree) because it's a justification framed as a reflection.
 
I remember that in the old lore, the portrayal of the Emperor was more "neutral" and that he had actually noble intention for mankind (which make the Horus Heresy and current Imperium even more of a tragedy), current lore depicts him as just another asshole with superpowers. Now it´s cannon he didn´t even had fatherly love for the Primarchs.
 
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Sabertooth said:
I remember that in the old lore, the portrayal of the Emperor was more "neutral" and that he had actually noble intention for mankind (which make the Horus Heresy and current Imperium even more of a tragedy), current lore depicts him as just another asshole with superpowers. Now it´s cannon he didn´t even had fatherly love for the Primarchs.
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The Horus Heresy novel series is both a dumpster fire and a mistake, and is one of the primary sources of the Poochyfication of Chaos over the last twenty years.
 


I really appreciate when content creators go back to fix mistakes they make. My respect for them has shot up even more.
 
Sabertooth said:
I remember that in the old lore, the portrayal of the Emperor was more "neutral" and that he had actually noble intention for mankind (which make the Horus Heresy and current Imperium even more of a tragedy), current lore depicts him as just another asshole with superpowers. Now it´s cannon he didn´t even had fatherly love for the Primarchs.
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I mean, he did let them be dumped all over the galaxy to be tortured so....

Also

Conquest? What tyrant first dreamed of conquest and clad violent oppression in terms of virtue? Why does the imposition of one will over another draw men like no other sin? For more than two hundred years, the Emperor has demanded that the galaxy align itself to his principles at the cost of ten thousand cultures that lived free and without the need for tyranny. Now Horus demands that the stellar nations of this broken empire dance to his tune instead. Billions die for conquest, to advance the pride of these two vain creatures cast in the shapes of men. There is no virtue in fighting for conquest. Nothing is more worthless and hollow than obliterating freedom for the sake of more land, more coin, more voices singing your name in holy hymn.

Conquest is as meaningless as glory. Worse, it is evil in its selfishness. Both are triumphs only in a fool's crusade. No. Not glory, not conquest.

[...]

Angron's smile fades, wiped clean by his son's ignorance. None of them have ever understood. They were always so convinced that he should have been honoured by being given a Legion, when the life he chose was stolen from him the day the Imperium tore him away from his true brothers and sisters.
'I do not stand with Horus.' Angron breathes the confession. 'I stand against the Emperor. Do you understand, Kauragar? I am free now. Free. Can you not understand that? Why have you all spent these last decades telling me I should feel honoured to live as a slave, when I was so close to dying free?'

[...]

Angron. Angron. Angron. His name. A slave's name.

He walks through the ruins, enduring the cheers of his bloodstained followers – warriors concerned with glory and conquest, who were born better than the aliens and traitors they slay. Fighting their own kind is practically the first fair fight they have ever endured, and their gene-sire's lip curls at the thought.
Before he was shackled by the Emperor's will, Angron and his ragged warband defied armies of trained, armed soldiers on his home world. They tasted freedom beneath clean skies and razed the cities of their enslavers. Now he leads an army fattened by centuries of easy slaughter, and they cheer him the way his masters once cheered when he butchered beasts for their entertainment.

This is not freedom. He knows that. He knows it well. This is not freedom, he thinks as he stares at the World Eaters screaming his name. But the fight is only just beginning.

When the Emperor dies under his axes, when his final thought is of how the Great Crusade was all in pathetic futility, and when his last sight is Angron's iron smile... Then the Master of Mankind will learn what Angron has known since he picked up his first blade.

Freedom is the only thing worth fighting for.
It is why tyrants always fall.
 
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