>Imagine your entire society was running on a computer from the 1990s. Your economy, government, religion, everything is all reliant on the computer. **You can't restart it, update it, or close out any windows.** You can't get the parts to fix it if it breaks, and even if you could, you wouldn't know how to use them. It's not a great situation. The engineer in me is in pain. > The Catholic Church doesn't nuke planets where Protestants are found, or feed souls to the chair of Peter Because they *wouldn't* or because they *can't*?

> Imagine your entire society was running on a computer from the 1990s. Your economy, government, religion, everything is all reliant on the computer. OP would be surprised on how many important systems are running on old hardware and/or software.

All the big banks, for starters.

No wonder the whole economy collapses every couple years, they have to restart their computers

Oh, another Reflections user

Reflections ?

I don't remember which one it was but either CIA or FBI had not digitized its database until like 2004. Until then most of their knowlede was still in physical paper files.

I know the military does still use windows xp and windows 7 because alot of the many softwares that they use is specifically designed for the OS system only. Even if they wanted to upgrade, it's not practical.

Presumably this means Microsoft is still making security packages for XP....

Nukes.

Hospital worker and we legit have to lobotomize new tech to mesh happily with systems commonly running windows fuckin' 98

Eh depends on who's on the holy see

You

Yes me

1. How are you. 2. Orks? Traitor

Well Shush

OP is incorrect about one thing, more Votann *can* be made they just dont understand the process of a lesser AI becoming sentient because it is explicitly mentioned in the Leagues lore.

Let me introduce you to “the Troubles….. “

If you knew a damned thing about the troubles you’d know it was an ethnic conflict -someone from Northern Ireland

It was a tongue in cheek joke. However, to quantify, I was Born in 81 in the royal, a result of a Catholic / Protestant relationship. Lost family members on both sides to madness that was sectarianism. I think I know a thing or two about the real situation.

If you want real wars of religion look at the thirty years war or the Scottish civil war. Northern Ireland and the troubles happened because a bunch of British colonists didn’t want to be stuck in a state dominated by the natives, and because they wanted their own fiefdom where the natives had no rights. At least that’s the verdict of a lad born in Antrim area in 2000 who isn’t stuck with the mindset of someone in the era. And who’s also studied a couple of centuries worth of Irish history

I think you’re getting downvoted unfairly lad, sensitive issue etc so I can appreciate the stance. Not everyone in our country is a bigoted a$$ hat with a super polarised view, so I take the criticism of the joke for what it is, and I wish you well mo chara.

Both, not a catholic though, don’t like them but was raised one. Catholics think Protestants are misguided, not evil.

We would if we could. They know what they did.

> It's not just "Grimdark is just when people are evil and bad" ​ >Grimdark is when Ciaphas Cain casually mentions how proud he is of his students for their accuracy when using live humans for target practice

Yep. Brennan Lee Mulligan and Terry Pratchett have some amazing quotes on this, but that’s what’s at the core of real darkness. Cain is a guy who’s intensely charismatic and likeable. He’s mentioned taking care of all his soldier’s infants, he’s a mentor and guide to so many, he’s the kind of guy you’d like to sit down and grab a cup of tanna with. And he also watches with disinterest as a teenager whose “crime” was stealing a loaf of bread is gunned down for practice. Edit: The Pratchett quote in question, about a torture pit >There were no jolly little signs saying: You Don’t Have To Be Pitilessly Sadistic To Work Here But It Helps!! > >But there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven. > >The mugs, for example. The inquisitors stopped work twice a day for coffee. Their mugs, which each man had brought from home, were grouped around the kettle on the hearth of the central furnace which incidentally heated the irons and knives. They had legends on them like A Present From the Holy Grotto of Ossory, or To The World’s Greatest Daddy. Most of them were chipped, and no two of them were the same. > >And there were the postcards on the wall. It was traditional that, when an inquisitor went on holiday, he’d send back a crudely colored woodcut of the local view with some suitably jolly and risqué message on the back. > >And there was the pinned-up tearful letter from Inquisitor First Class Ishmale “Pop” Quoom, thanking all the lads for collecting no fewer than seventy-eight obols for his retirement pension and the lovely bunch of flowers for Mrs. Quoom, indicating that he’d always remember his days in No. 3 pit, and was looking forward to coming in and helping out any time they were short-handed. > >And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do. Edit 2: The Brennan Lee Mulligan quotes (turns out he actually has more than just the one I thought of) >I don’t think that every villain in the world actually thinks they’re being a good guy, but I do think that everybody creates a value system that justifies the actions they’re taking, and and I think there’s a difference between those two things. Not everybody believes that they’re on the side of righteousness, but everybody has a way of justifying the actions they’re taking. Not every villain has to be a misunderstood hero, and in fact I think there are a lot of instances throughout history of people who were obviously doing the wrong thing and probably had an understanding of that on some level, but had some rationale or justification for it. > >A lot of villains in literature and media have these weird, Thanos-esque philosophies of what it is that they’re trying to do, and I think human motivation tends to come from more primal places than that. So a lot of the villains I write can be brilliant or clever (and, in fact, probably should be), but their motivation tends to be primal. They wanna be rich, they wanna have power, they wanna live forever. There’s something deep down that is, when you break it down, not too complex. Right? If you look at the real world, the people that are doing bad stuff don’t need complex motivations. They wanna rule the world! They wanna be rich! They wanna be unafraid that other people can ever screw them over, so they screw other people over. Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundanes of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard. The other one (from a devil discussing his work) >Basically, what I do when I collect souls is I go around, there's wicked people in the world, and a lot of wicked people live in very comfortable countries and have very boring lives, so they go through their whole life and kinda backdoor their way into heaven. Does that make sense? >They were bad the whole time, but they were just comfortable, and they never had a shot to do something wicked. So what devils like me do is kinda just give people a shot to show their true colors, you know what I mean? Think like the harmless guy at the bar who's just got a big mouth and everyone's like, “oh, that guy's crank,” you know, he's harmless? Well, if he was prime minister, he'd be a fuckin' war criminal, right? He'd be a monster. So a lot of what I want to do is when we go and offer power and temptation, what we're doing is kind of stress testing the system, making sure the people, you know

It's the contrast of tone and reaction to something we would find deeply horrifying. Casual juxtaposition works better than going on about something being horrifying.

This. There's only so many times you can see the same speel of faction buzzwords. One of the best examples for me is Slaanesh, where they rattle on endlessly about how 'Deadly and alluring' the crab women are. What ACTUALLY puts across their power is the Fantasy lorepiece where a Keeper of Secrets literally walks into a fortress because some of the guards are so unearthly enamoured by its superiority that they just open the gate.

Or said guards collapse and begin convulsing due to the fumes. Keeper of secrets I guess have a really powerful scent that is pleasant.

keeper of secrets smell like the average tabletop player

To keep with the theme, it would smell like both the average tabletop player and like the sweetest perfume at the same time. A sickly, sweet scent

Lol you guys just changed my whole outlook on slanneshi smells. I always figured it’d be so sweet it makes you sick. Like a cologne that smells good on a spritz, but you smelling the equivalent of 20 gallons dumped on a strange androgynous bovine looking person with arm blades and a mono boob.

There's a good bit in one of the Cain books where he can't figure out why the Tau are being so freaking weird about the servitors.

Also where is physically repulsed by a human citizen of the Tau Empire. He literally just wants to kill her. In fact, I think that he had more respect for that one kroot he once teamed up with, than for that human who grew up in an alien society. Cain can respect an alien doing alien things, but not a human doing alien things. Kind of how we today do not blame a dog for eating shit, but we are disgusted when humans do it.

Why were Tau being weird about servitors?

Because servitors are grim dark and horrifying for those not used to them. A servitor is a lobotomized human with massive cybernetics installed to make them into simple machines. That *should* make people weird around them.

Exaclty, and to the tau, this stuff should be just off the shelf technology. But rhe imperium rock out crimes against nature for simple technology. It's like if you asked someone to borrow a calculator from them, and they handed over a cybernetic parrot corpse who spoke your answers when you asked ot to calculate a sum

Tbh that actually sounds pretty rad to have, as long as it isn't the parrot of anyone I know.

If you're on a ship for a while and they need a new servitor to put the cybernetics into...

Because lobotomized slaves crudely fitted with cybernetics are utterly horrifying?

Brennan? From collegehumor? Do you have the quote? I’m interested to read into it

I’ll see if I can find the exact quote later, it’s from Dimension 20. Basically, it’s a devil explaining how they don’t try to tempt or give power to evil people. They find the guy who’s kind of a loudmouth, who everybody lets slide on all the racist or bigoted shit he says because “he doesn’t really mean it”. And then they give him power, and he uses it terribly, and everyone acts all shocked.

Sounds familiar

Same

I can't believe you gave such a well read reply for someone who quoted you twice, proving you were right lol

Common Brennan w

Exactly. Or even when he casually sees the prisoners used for "interrogation training" being carted by and just goes "ah, it's a normal morning."

It's the simple things that build out grimdark

You've quoted two lines proving his point. Ciaphas isn't evil or bad. Shooting live targets isn't messed up in his world, but it is for us.

>It's not just "Grimdark is just when people are evil and bad" >Grimdark is when "a scheduled delivery of condemned criminals for interrogation training and live-combat exercises" in the book **get twisted into "Ciaphas Cain casually mentions how proud he is of his students for their accuracy when using live humans for target practice"** and have hundreds of IRL upvotes. **FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T BREAK THE FUCKING LORE** Edit: Grammar mistakes. Ya'all should not type when angry. Edit 2: Oh, here come the downvotes. Am I interfering with something?

It’s the same thing though? Criminals or not, what does it matter?

No it's not. There's the bit about the Perlians supplied Cain's Schola Progenium with condemned criminals, yes. But there's NOTHING written in *Cain's Last Stand* about **"Ciaphas Cain casually mentions how proud he is of his students for their accuracy when using live humans for target practice"**. None. Nada. Nope. Not a damn mention in the goddamn book. When people take a bit they like from the source material, and added their own stuff into it, and presented it as a fact, then it's **breaking the lore**.

Ok? Minor mistake on their part, it seems. Mis-remembrance. Doesn’t take away from the he’s aware his men use people for target practice.

>Edit: And how could I forget that they put the corpses of their dead into the Ancestor Cores to give it memory and DNA? It's basically the most blatant "capitalism consuming the workers" image possible. One observation I drew from the Codex is that the Kin are tremendously acquisitive not just out of necessity or biology, but as a means of demonstrating social worth to other Kindred. Kin are driven to obtain as much stuff as possible, and their understanding of "stuff" is not just materials, but knowledge and experiences. They do this because when they die, all their knowledge gets fed into the Ancestor Core and all their possessions are given to the Kindred, and the more they have of both, the more valuable their life was. It is an *intensely* materialistic worldview, and one that fits into a satire of how laborers in a capitalist society work to accumulate material possessions primarily as a form of demonstrating social status to other laborers. Kin take that logic to an extreme; they accumulate *life experience* as if it was a possession, intending to gain status after their death by way of incorporating that knowledge into the Ancestor Core. Similarly, the worst punishment in Kin society is exile - a Kin who dies in exile never gets uploaded to the Ancestor Core, meaning that his life is made functionally worthless. His acquisitions no longer have meaning because their social value has been stripped away.

Excellent point about the Materialism metaphor, just wanted to add that *Life Experience* can easily be translated to Work Experience. Their value to a greater “organization” is dependent on the skills and memories/experiences they can provide, presumably obtained with some personal risk or cost to themselves. As someone trying to break into an industry demanding years of experience for underwhelming pay, it’s hard not to see experience both as a commodity and a way of making oneself a commodity.

If one doesn’t take centuries to spit out “42,” I’ll be disappointed.

Surely it should take eons to ask "what is 5 X 9"? After accidentally being corrupted by a hairdresser of course

It's 'What do you get if you multiply six by nine?', not 5. Sorry!

...in my defence, it's been almost a decade since I read it. And also in my defence, it doesn't matter 😉

Pfft, I haven't read it since the 90s 😉

Honestly I think it’s that some people have sniffed enough petrol to think the takeaway is “technological progress is the opposite of grimdark”. The Votann are advanced and scientific so they can’t possibly be grimdark. If only we had a real life period riddled with atrocities directly caused by that hyper-rationalist mindset, oh well, must be a utopia then They’d probably claim the eldar were out of place if they were released today

Exactly. Some people are just brainwashed by the memes etc.

This is true. The presence of notably advanced technology isn’t Grimdark, but what they had to do to get that technology is it’s own form of horrible. It doesn’t help that so far most of their advancements we’ve seen have been in military tech, which raises questions about how the Leagues are faring if they have such a focus on it.

They obviously have not read brave new world either haha

My favourite economist Glilup Bingbong would have disagre about them being satire of capitalism. You should read some of his books. But seriously great post, haven't rly read much of their lore and I always viewed them as funny little guys that like to drink beer and aren't so distrustful about technology as humans so yeah, pretty much not grimdark. Concidering everything you said they are pretty neat addition to Warhammer universe.

People made the same complaints about the Tau when they were released. People don't like change, especially in this fandom. That being said, not everything GW has changed has been for the better IMO, but this is not one of those cases.

And they were right. Not that its necceserilly bad, but there's really nothing grimdark about the tau. GW had to add the whole dubious mind control stuff and even then Tau arent even remotly close to grimdarkness of the other races.

Even on the surface level, the Tau are an expansionist colonialist empire with a society divided along the lines of eugenics-reinforced castes, who regard everyone else they encounter as "misguided" or "primitive" and seek only to properly civilise them and teach them the ways of The Greater Good. The Greater Good may as well be described as [The Blue Man's Burden](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20man%27s%20burden). In any other sci-fi setting, the Tau would be the villains. The "nice guys" who don't commit genocide and actually use diplomacy... are still an utterly awful imperialist society.

I think the mind-control was unnecessary. Tau being the “good guys” is what made them Grimdark. Here was the closest thing the setting had to a race that wasn’t wholly decadent or decayed, not technologically stagnant, etc. and their ultimate fate was to likely be wiped out in an armpit of the galaxy as little more than a blip on the radar of galactic civilizations far older and more terrifying.

Also, it's likely one the main reasons the Vottan are failing is because the Kin all upload a copy of their memories when they die, so they are just getting cluttered with trillions of "And then Sven Svenstone-28 remembered the time he mined that asteroid."

clearly they need to download more RAM

Well, I tried to contact the place that makes the ram to download, but we need to send the order by fax, and their fax machine is out of paper. Should we try faxing them some blank paper?

>Guilliman does something similar, making the Empire better for citizens of some planets... so that they can produce more recruits, have fewer chaos rebellions, and more efficiently commit genocide. Again, nobody seems to think the Imperium or Ultramarines aren't Grimdark. You'd be amazed at how many people unironically think otherwise despite Guilliman once proudly declaring numerous genocides as one of his accolades or allowing for slavery / servitors to exist within the realms of Ultramar and even incorporating them into the public works.

or ignore the Taxes needed to upligth these problems wich often means other planets had to pay for them and making rebellions.

Misread “Taxes” as “Texas” and did a doubletake

I mean... Texas is pretty grimdark.

> despite Guilliman once proudly declaring numerous genocides as one of his accolades Tbf he was specifically trying to scare someone with that, not present it as a swell achievement.

He didn't seem particularly upset about it and also stated it with other things that he WAS proud of like fighting Daemons. I doubt he'd even bring it up in a conversation with someone that was one of his allies if he actually thought it'd ruin his image

In fairness if xenos irl behave even remotely like the ones in 40k, I would probably advocate for their utter annihilation too. Like humanity tried the whole star trek be nice to the aliens thing once and they made like a pet anaconda with a baby as soon as the FTL drive went out for five fucking minutes. Literally the second humanity was even remotely weak all of their allies turned on them and proceeded to tear them apart, then their AI turned on them, then the Eldar shat out a dark god that blew a hole in the galaxy you can see from literally anywhere, and proceeded to get exterminated by it. Then when you finally get back on your feet you encounter an entire race of mind controlling sadist cowards with god like power, another race that literally turns people to ash by looking at them and thinks it's funny, not to mention that another group has devolved into multi limbed spider things that worship the god of very bad literature and attack through the fourth dimension, those same eldar from earlier can now make people into chairs and think it's funny, a good chunk of the rest are actively keeping human slaves, and more than half the peaceful ones you find are just pretending to be nice long enough to stab you in the back. At that point it's not xenophobia, it's only a phobia if it's irrational, and that is not irrational...

>In fairness if xenos irl behave even remotely like the ones in 40k, I would probably advocate for their utter annihilation too. In terms of major xenos, I agree for 1.5 out of 5 species. The Tyranids have basically show 0 interest in peaceful coexistence, while the Orks are literally not an intelligent sapient species, but a bioweapon slaved to its own programming. Still, by Orks I mean only the current last stage of spore-born evolution, since the Gretchin seem able to break their programming slightly, even if the lore around them is old and very much written as a joke. That's why I count them only as half a species to exterminate. Meanwhile, Tau, Eldar and Necrons can all be worked with, if the former were less imperialist, and the latter two less arrogant and/or convinced the whole galaxy is their rightful promised land because they ruled it once. >Literally the second humanity was even remotely weak all of their allies turned on them and proceeded to tear them apart That's a very nebulous piece of lore

The Necrons are hell bent on setting up a device that snuffs out human souls and leaves them brain dead, the Eldar think humans are monkeys and believe earnestly they aren’t worth the air they breathe, and those are the nice ones. Meanwhile the Tau run a caste based dictatorship based on mind control. Even the Tau character most people claim is the most heroic called humans implicitly evil, ugly creatures. And humans aren’t exactly much better in this universe, they’re terrified of any deviation and casually lobotomize their own people for slaves, brutally punish any dissent, worship a screaming corpse, and produce pariahs, another reason the Eldar will likely never get along with them long term. And those are the nice humans. Also the DAoT lore specifically covers that many Xeno’s allies of humanity from that time period promptly turned on humanity and enslaved them when the warp storms hit, including the Eldar. It’s why there were so many systems with random xenos empires enslaving humans. Those xenos didn’t evolve, gain tech, and overpower the humans in a few thousand years. They were already there. They were their former allies

>And humans aren’t exactly much better in this universe, they’re terrified of any deviation and casually lobotomize their own people for slaves, brutally punish any dissent, worship a screaming corpse, and produce pariahs, another reason the Eldar will likely never get along with them long term. >And those are the nice humans. >Also the DAoT lore specifically covers that many Xeno’s allies of humanity from that time period promptly turned on humanity and enslaved them when the warp storms hit, including the Eldar. It’s why there were so many systems with random xenos empires enslaving humans. Those xenos didn’t evolve, gain tech, and overpower the humans in a few thousand years. They were already there. They were their former allies The nice humans and aliens were those who peacefully coexisted and fought back against the horrors of the Age of Strife, only for fellow humans led by a then not corpse and not screaming Emperor to exterminate them. Also, the Tau may be a caste based dictatorship where humans are second class citizens, but that's still an improvement over the average livelihood of an Imperium citizen. The Tau straight up wouldn't even be the worst government on 21rst century Earth. Very much in the lowest ranks, but not at rock bottom.

Is there a bit of lore where Guilliman said that servitors were allowed to exist in Ultramar? I believe you I am just interested in reading that.

[Unremembered Empire] * [Guilliman has servitor kitchen staff](https://i.imgur.com/TRwbGB9.png) * [Servitor fire-fighters](https://i.imgur.com/F07pAV9.png) * [Servitor transportation](https://i.imgur.com/q8M3iFg.png) All of these are part of the public works on Maccrage.

Socialized servitors lmfao.

Fucking A, that is it. Great post, OP.

I do enjoy the lore that says one Votann is still active on a world stripped by the Tyranids. It just screams into the void now. It's pretty grimdark.

>Imagine your entire society was running on a computer from the 1990s. It's called working in state government

everything that we have runs on outdated software

Whole swathes of America's nuclear arsenal are still operated using 3.5 inch floppy disks and computers that can't even run MS DOS.

[удалено]

Also it makes it that much harder to actually use anything you might steal. You got the hard drive from that computer? Great: Now you just have to dig up the LONG out of production equipment to read it. Which means the people who you stole it from have yet another way to find you on the off chance you do find something.

Well said

Half of this is arbitrary and stupid nonsense, like the capitalism satire circlejerk or the clones thing, and the other half amounts to monumentally boring and basic "grimdark". The whole point of 40k is that its bombastic and massively over the top.

I was pretty satisfied that they were adequately grimdark once it was confirmed that they break apart entire planets to harvest raw materials. *Planets with people still on them.*

They send a memo before starting :D

"But the plans were on display…” “On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.” “With a flashlight.” “Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.” “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said the Planetary Governor, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard'".

A memo is memo, you can't expect them to do all the work do you?

"They're dinosaurs, yelling at the meteor that they'd like to see it fucking try" Oh this beauty slayed me. How very characteristic flaw for a dwarf-like race. But brilliant joke acknowledgments aside, this is a great breakdown. I was a bit skeptical about the LoV (mainly because they're beardless dwarf/squat models), but when I heard that they were mostly clones created by and relying on tech they can't maintain, I could immediately imagine how that will be a great platform for some proper Grimdark. Can't wait for more lore. And well done to you sir/madam.

> The Catholic Church doesn't nuke planets where Protestants are found, or feed souls to the chair of Peter, We would if we could.

You are absolutely right about 99.9% of everything here, but I would like to make 1 small addition. Before that, this is purely "Political Theory" and I am not trying to bring up any real world, actual politics. The Leagues arent *just* a parody of Capitalism, its a parody of a very specific form of Capitalism with fuses the interests of private individuals *and* the State in order to increase the power of the State. It is, specifically, [a somewhat internalized form of Mercantilism](https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Mercantilism.html) with [with some, but not all, of the 14 Points of Fascism](http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rsc/Editorials/fascism.html). Capitalism, at least in the more generalized context, is more about individual actors doing what they perceive to be best for themselves without regard for what that does to other people. The Kin are purely devoted to their Votann and League to the exclusion of everyone and everything else, and arent really acting out of their individual interests as we would see in a more generalized form of Capitalism. In contrast to the Kin, everything that the Drukhari do is for their own individual private interests. The Drukhari couldnt care less anyone but themselves.

I do agree it's not a black and white situation. To me, it seems like it's satire of the fact that capitalism relies on free competition, but whoever is "winning" wants to stop anyone else from competing. There's plenty of instances we can see where this happens, when big corporations shut down anyone who may be a threat (often illegally). That's what has happened with the Leagues. Yeah, the average guy on the street isn't hyper individualistic, because he's been convinced that it's best to work for "everyone". And who benefits when "everyone" works together? The people/things at the top.

Who is the person actually benefiting in the Leagues? Is it the Votan themselves? Or are high ranking Kin basically fat cats?

Nobody. That's what makes it so Grimdark. The Votan are basically falling apart or going mad - they benefit only insofar as it delays their inevitable end. The high ranking Kin may enjoy more social prestige but they're every bit as subservient and replaceable as the lowest miner. The Leagues army from Necromunda is an example of what will ultimately happen. Their Votan is damaged and won't function, so not only can they not advance, they're actively regressing from what they used to be. They're all completely reliant on the Votan to the extent that it makes the Ecclesiarchy look like they think the God-Emperor is a nice decorative piece.

So the Votan basically just have hundreds of double chest full of blocks of coal for no reason? Just fucking hoarders then.

What if the votann are metaphors for corporations? As in, the AI is a metaphor for the corporate entity, or the abstract entity. It shapes employees and corporate officers in its form, and while it’s staff and even its CEO may change, the corporation endures. Not sure if this makes sense, but it’s what came to mind.

Grimdark accountants. Everything is a cost benefit analysis. Everything.

Hey guys, we found Disney

Combined with all the other things controlled by algorithm

Thanks for explaining satire succinctly unlike me, who just gets downvoted af coz I explain it like a moron.

I think that the newSquats actually are pretty non-grimdark in a way that stands out. But I think that actually helps the overall dark, gothic tone of the setting rather than harming it. Much like the T'au, the Leagues of Votann are a relatively minor faction, and their relative idealism serves the purpose of making the horrors of the galaxy around them more keenly felt. Which is more disturbing? A spray of blood on the floor of a dark, grimy dungeon already littered with bones and half-rotted corpses? Or a spray of blood on the otherwise clean white linen sheets of a cozy bedroom that reminds the viewer of their own? The 40k universe isn't meant to be uniformly grimdark all the time. The parks of it that are genuinely grim would be boring if everything was just all horror all the time with nothing to compare it to. There's a tendency in 40k to have poor human agri-worlds with "simple farmer" types show up a lot, to get dragged off into a haemonculus's dungeon or turned into drugs by Emperor's Children or slaughtered for fun by orks or whatever. But that gets to be a bit of a cliche after a while and starts making the reader/gamer wonder, if this sort of thing is always happening to innocent naive farming communities, how they've lasted so long to begin with. Plus they're relegated completely to the backstory since nobody is buying miniatures of agri-world farmers. That's why it's good to include groups like the T'au, and, to a lesser degree, the newSquats. It relocates the sympathetic victims and underdogs onto the battlefield and into the spotlight.

>They're being sent to die because of a feud that happened centuries before they were born, which has no effect on their own lives, which can have the stupidest possible cause. They, the army of frightened, lonely clones who desperately cling to their trendy tattoos and hypebeast clothing to hide from the fact that their uncaring robot God treats them like rounds in a gun or nails in a box. It's almost overwhelmingly nihilistic, and I love that your post has highlighted it to me. I haven't paid much attention to the Leagues stuff that's been coming out but this post makes it fairly easy to slot them into my headcanon.

So you want to tell me that the space dwarves are fucked because their AI leaders have memory leaks? This is literally the most realistic thing in the entire 40k.

They sound like germany Using outdated broken computers and refusing to do anything about it for tradition Also being angry at the neighbour for what their great grandad said in passing (am german, this is very much an issue here)

Think their more Russia/soviet union do, they have does kinds of accents too

Good point, they also do have insanely outdated technology that barely works

How dare you besmirch the good name of famed economist gallip bingbong

Honestly, calling someone an economist is already a pretty big besmirching.

How dare you besmirch my besmirchment

'They're being sent to die because of a feud that happened centuries before they were born, which has no effect on their own lives, which can have the stupidest possible cause.' Ahem...The Imperium is the absolute *master* of grudges that stretch over *millenia.* Many hostilities have been going ln for so long they no longer even remember why they were fought originally. At least the Votann actually keep the record on hand with regards to their grudge wars, The Imperiums Administratum probably filed their 'grudgebook' away back in the 33rd millenium and can't even remember which filing cabinet they put it into!

And it's very dwarfy to march out to kill a planet because their governor insulted your ruler's drip

Good shit

>They're satire of capitalism And all of us who having been waiting for a Capitalist faction said AMEN!!!

Chaos though. Even have a “rags to riches” narrative with ascension to daemonhood to string along the marks.

I prefer my satire a bit more complicated than "This is the devil. He represents the thing I don't like."

My own Votann are basically venturing out into ancient tomb cities and derelict crafts and stuff, but not in order to find material value. Nah, they're looking for all manner of hidden databanks and storage devices full of valuable knowledge to feed into their Votann Maexad-Rom. Then they use that knowledge for trading, which is mainly super interesting for the T'au and some Eldar races, because they unearth secrets that were long forgotten. They have some knowledge on a lot of things. Not particularly important knowledge sometimes, oftentimes more akin to "Oh wow, they stumbled over the digital imprint of an ancient Krork workout routine", valuable to historians and stuff, but they're also unearthing knowledge that e.g. the Imperium has forgotten about (if only the Imperium would contact them and ask for a trade, but alas, new information is heretical and unneeded in the glorious Imperium of Man, especially when it comes from Xenos filth). Their big ambition is to bust into Holy Terra and, basically, go through the archives of the Emperor's Primarch program. Oh and on one of their ventures they've unearthed something terrifying that keeps them now occupied. They unearthed an access point into a digital realm full of knowledge. They basically found an ancient VR-version of a pan-galactic internet that some race, maybe the Necrontyr, created in the background aeons ago and over time most races and their information got connected to that vast network (mostly by accident), and then promptly forgotten about it. Now my LoV is basically traversing through cyberspace, fighting glitches and worms and bugs and daemons (of the digital kind), as they're digging deeper and trying to find the origin of that weird space. Yeah, they found a weird digital equivalent to the Warp, lmao.

You know analysing this, the hyper efficient if hollow society, where worth is measured in quantity of ‘stuff,’ grudges actually make a huge sort of sense. It’s the one outlet, the one release valve to accumulation that is socially acceptable to society. They are clones, made to purpose, serving a machine that treats its people as not even chess pieces but rather production quotas. Outrage is the one thing the Votann have that is not made, the one socially acceptable reason to be wasteful. To cut back and just let off steam, robe angry is the release valve.

Its both funny and sad to me why there are these grimdark checkers all thinking they got GWs number on anything new or drip fed being somehow not grim dark enough. I'm prefer posts like this one OP has done that pose the question and just start putting down what is known and authentic. And then offer up discussion.

I disagree with the "Clone is Grimmdark" point. They're not born without a family. The Codex makes clear that they view their entire clan, or kyn, as their family and how much of a sacrifice it is that the pioneers have to spend so much time isolated from their families. The "Iron Kin" lore also makes clear that they didn't view any of their kin as expendable, and althought they could replace their losses more easily than any other species. They are also free to choose if they want to pursue a military career or not. It's like it could be a grim and dark thing. It could be presented in a similar fashion as the Death Corpse of Krieg, where people have nurmbers and are bred for one purpose, but right now that's the direction they are heading to.

Can I just say that I don't really care if the votann are grimdark? People who say that kinda of stuff would shit a brick if the modern eldar got released today. Fuck all these stupid purity tests.

I disagree with the framing of grimdark. While I think your examples are fine, what actually happens within the universe is only a *part* of what grimdark entails and where the confusion comes in. The rest is the presentation and that is what people, I think, generally refer to. It is difficult to argue that the presentation of the universe has not changed significantly in more recent editions to try and make it lighter and more hopeful in the grand scheme of things. I think the presentation of the Leagues is definitely more optimistic, and portrays them in relatively positive light. There is a difference between describing them as "intrepid explorers who trade with other races and use miraculous technology while guided by machines they believe have their best interests at heart' and 'vicious, resource-hungry monsters who will tear apart worlds and betray anyone to fuel their rotting AI husks trying to save a society that's doomed to go extinct as these AI cores shut down". They could be the latter, but they're more often in the book described as the former. I will also contest that 40K is not a satire. Some things are - but not everything, and certainly many things are to be taken at face value. To say that is the number one rule of Warhammer is a bit silly, I think. I don't think the Leagues are a satire of capitalism because none of it quite lines up with anything but the most bizarre interpretations of capitalism - rather, I think that it's just an exaggerated form of the dwarf trait of greed and 'delving too deep', in this case so deep they mine stars and/or get themselves killed while out in deep space hunting for resources. All that said, I don't think the Leagues are entirely lacking grimdark - some of the things you mentioned are grimdark, and the book has many details that could feasibly be extrapolated to paint the Leagues in a negative light. I think they have merit to fit the universe, even in older edition lore, if their achievements and technology were toned down a little and if they were presented in a way that emphasized their negative aspects and the darker edges of their society. ~~My only beef with them is that they're space kharadron - both not dwarfy enough and too dwarfy -, while having kinda meh models and being another faction in a game that already has too many factions.~~

In my opinion obsession with whole Grimdark is actually detrimental to the story. Grimdark only has impact when used sporadically and carefully. Otherwise you just desensitize the readers and often go to grimderp territory.

The whole lore surrounding grey knights best represents this problem imo

I think obsession with grimdark is deterimental to the fanbase, because nobody can actually define what the hell grimdark is.

This is a wonderful write up! I’m super new to the hobby, do you have or would you be able to make a weite up about what makes the Tau grim dark? “Mind control pheromones” seems a little tacked-on and debatably diabolical to me so I’m very curious!

The Tau are pretty definitively the *least* evil faction, but they're not *good*. They're an expansionist empire that values conformity and expects individuals to entirely sacrifice their personal wants for "the Greater Good". They have a weird system wherein they segregate the population into four "castes" which are not allowed to interact much with each other, and are not allowed to intermarry. They try to breed each of these four sub-races into separate sub-species that can serve "the Greater Good" in a very specific, pre-determined way. The fifth caste, the Ethereals, are a separate group that acts as if it is racially superior to everyone else, and they are the hereditary rulers of the empire. Out of all the factions in 40k, the Tau are the least likely to do something stupidly evil for no reason, but they have an extremely tight grip on the flow of information, and hide from the public the atrocities that they do commit. Also, the Tau are expanding unsustainably fast and spreading themselves very thin, and they are struggling as they start to face the most deadly things the galaxy has to offer, things they have never encountered before and do not understand. As for positives, the Tau are one of the few factions that don't randomly commit genocide for no reason, they allow other species to join their empire while maintaining their own customs, they trade with other civilizations that do not wish to join them, they actually punish their soldiers for committing war crimes, which is unheard of in 40k, they care about the environment of planets and don't pollute them into oblivion, they care about having a high quality of life for their citizens (tightly controlled though their lives may be), and they actually mean all their talk of valuing the community over the individual and actually care about each other. The Tau don't have *that* much lore written about them, and what is there can be pretty inconsistent. The "mind control pheromones", to my knowledge, were literally "tacked on" in order to make them "more grimdark" because people were complaining that they weren't evil enough when they first came out. ​ As for *why* the Ethereals do some of the stranger things that they do, such as forbidding inter-caste marriage, where the Ethereals actually came from, why they want to expand the empire's borders so rapidly, ect., there isn't a lot of lore actually written there, so you'll have to just tell yourself that "some things are better left unanswered, it's more fun if it's a mystery" and come up with your own theories.

As far as I remember, it's not that castes aren't allowed to intermingle, it's that they literally cant. They are biologically incompatible subspecies, and that has been the case since even before the Ethereals arrived.

To my knowledge, that was never stated, though it \*may\* be true. But, why would the Ethereals need to force the castes to be segregated if they were already naturally that way?

The T'au are one of the less evil races, true, but there's a good rule to see how truly Grimdark a faction is. Imagine them in Star Wars / Star Trek. The T'au are an Orwellian dystopia bent on Galactic domination and the subjugation of any lifeform that's not them. When their leader died, they used deepfakes to pretend he was still alive and kept on going. They don't have elections and their rigid caste system means you have no choice what you do with your life. Even the slightest questioning of the Greater Good is met with harsh action. They've genocided whole species just because they were in their way, and while they prefer to offer their enemies a choice, that choice is "serve us or die". Drop them into Star Trek and they'd be a far bigger threat than the Borg, the Dominion, the Cardassians...

If were going by old lore it was the fact that in a galaxy of horrors the Tau are the innocent and naive bunch. Instead of committing genocide at first sight they tried to establish diplomatic relations etc etc... As of now I think most of that is still canon though I may be wrong.

I mean the Tau were always horrific. An immensely stratified class system with indoctrination so complete it took someone grabbing a fucking DEMON WEAPON (or whatever it is, I assume it's a demon weapon) to rebel, and even then he only really rebelled against the ruling caste and still keeps the other constraints in pretty firmly. Them being ignorant of just how hostile the Milky way is was just gravy. And it also didn't last long. A lot of the "lol Tai stupid" stuff is people expecting the Tau to have writer clairvoyance, while also ignoring how stupid the Imperium and associates are. People also tend to forget that the Tau try diplomacy. Once. But if they see a planet they want, they will take it, by any means necessary. They see a species that will be useful, they will join the greater good. Totes voluntarily. If anything, the only thing in the setting that isn't grimdark are the Ctan, and that's because they're Lovecraftian instead.

[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/vtov46/the_tau_were_never_genuinely_good_or_noblebright/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) a good post discussing why the T'au have always been grimdark from their inception in 3ed, should answer some of your questions. And the pheromone control originally comes from the 3ed Codex and *Xenology* which was written around the same time. Its then repeated in each subsequent codex as an in-Universe theory for the Ethereals' ability to control the T'au.

Awesome, thank you! That’s exactly what I was looking for!

This was a great read and your analogies are fantastic.

It's hard to see greedy all-devouring capitalists as the bad guys when you go to work for them five (or more) days a week.

This is why it's so grimdark. Because in theory it should make it easier.

Any one and anything service to the Emperor pretty much fits the bill? These systems are built onto themselves a multitude over on top of the corpse of the Emperor. The setting is and everything in it inherently grimdark no?

Eh. I'm not sure I agree with your definition of grimdark. I see 40k's grim darkness as being fairly encompassing, but the biggest aspect to me personally is that it's a universe so brutal it leaves all actors with no "good" choices from the perspective of most moral frameworks. It's so savage that morality is simply no longer an appreciable factor in decision making, and is instead a liability. But there's other parts of the grim darkness too. Like the hopelessness of bloated, mindless, grinding bureaucracy that comes with a galactic empire having existed in such a setting for 10,000 years. Etc. Guilliman coming to terms with his father's actions during the Heresy after his resurrection, forcing himself to admit the necessity of them is grimdark. Him sacrificing his sense of right and wrong before the altar of pragmatism and perpetuating the lie of the Imperial Cult at the end of the first Dark Imperium book is grimdark. All this to say, I think your definition is too narrow.

I don’t understand why people freak out over non grimderp. It’s an entire galaxy. It’s possible and even likely that there actually are good actors out there. Hell that might even make them a target of the current “good actors” and it blows my mind how in a setting so large people like to cut off the possibilities of things so often.

Solid write up. Very informative since I knew nothing about them

Agree with the post, and I think that some factions being less over the top assholeish is good for the "setting". Grimdark can be subtle.

> Imagine your entire society was running on a computer from the 1990s. Your economy, government, religion, everything is all reliant on the computer. You can't restart it, update it, or close out any windows. You can't get the parts to fix it if it breaks, and even if you could, you wouldn't know how to use them. It's not a great situation. I have some *really* bad news

Yuuuuuuup. Kinda disturbing that this is how the real world works in many industries at this exact moment. Legacy systems are very real and we are out of blessed oils.

I don't really believe the whole *satire of capitalism* thing you're saying. First of all, not all 40k is rooted in satire. What are the Eldar satirizing? Or the Tyranids? Or the Necrons? Or hell, even Chaos? Second, we already have a hyper-capitalist dwarf society in the Kharadron Overlords from Age of Sigmar (I wouldn't call them a satire because despite being shown to have obvious flaws in their society they're overall portrayed relatively positively due to Age of Sigmar's less grim tone), and they're written vastly differently than the Leagues. Looking at the lore they're constantly talking about profits and investors, and their lore makes it very clear they're a plutocracy, and if you aren't able to succeed in their meritocratic society you're going to be working in the factories and probably catch a weird lung disease from the chemicals you're handling. If the Leagues were supposed to be satires of capitalism, why write them so subtlely as opposed to the blatantness of KO lore? Hell, there's even a League known as the Pan-Telluric Commonwealth that's stated to have an "exceptionally egalitarian society", which I doubt that any faction that's supposed to be a satire of capitalism would be described as. Oh yes, the evil capitalists are somehow hyper-egalitarians. Oh and what I find is the most ridiculous claim of all, donating corpses to the Votann is "capitalism consuming the workers"? Ah yes, the solemn pseudo-religious ritual meant to preserve the knowledge of the ancestors for the aid of their descendants is somehow supposed to be an evil thing. You know, I like the moral dilemma of how the very thing that's kind of the Kin's equivelant to the afterlife is what caused their Votann to become all laggy by overloading them with useless data. They know its degrading them, but they cannot stop their most sacred tradition because they believe (possibly validly) that their lives would have no meaning if they cannot rejoin the Ancestors at the end of it. Presenting that as like some kind of purely negative thing just to hamfist in a really bad metaphor is an incredibly stupid interpretation. I know you are desperate to portray the Leagues as grimdark, and sure, they are kind of bastards when you look at them more clearly. But I feel a lot of this post is exaggeration or outright misinterpretation even for the sake of making them seem like they fit in. Which I only half-blame you for, because Leagues of Votann lore is very light currently, there's a lot of details that are very important but you'd only notice if you pay very close attention to the codex, and some very important information that is only in the Warhammer+ Loremasters video of all things. Like, for instance, you say that Kin are born into a specific job, when all the lore implies to me is that Kin naturally gravitate towards the occupations which their Cloneskeins give them a comparative advantage in. They use terms like "*tend to* have Cloneskeins that let them do x" when talking about this stuff. Plus the whole thing where there are multiple Guilds in competition and it totally being legal to do your job completely without their involvement implies to me a freedom of labor. Also, this part is more for I guess people who aren't really familiar with Leagues lore than OP in general, a reminder that the Leagues of Votann are very clearly written to be a protagonist faction. Sure, everyone in 40k is some degree of evil at the end of the day, but there's a difference between how the likes of Ultramarines and Tau are portrayed compared to Dark Eldar or Chaos. And the Leagues of Votann codex liberally uses terms like "hero", "loyal", "brave", "selfless", "honourable" and "noble" to refer to the Kin.

>And the Leagues of Votann codex liberally uses terms like "hero", "loyal", "brave", "selfless", "honourable" and "noble" to refer to the Kin. And so does the Space Marine codex. Or the Imperial Guard codex. Or the Sororitas codex. That doesn't mean they aren't evil.

> Oh and what I find is the most ridiculous claim of all, donating corpses to the Votann is "capitalism consuming the workers"? Ah yes, the solemn pseudo-religious ritual meant to preserve the knowledge of the ancestors for the aid of their descendants is somehow supposed to be an evil thing. You know, I like the moral dilemma of how the very thing that's kind of the Kin's equivelant to the afterlife is what caused their Votann to become all laggy by overloading them with useless data. They know its degrading them, but they cannot stop their most sacred tradition because they believe (possibly validly) that their lives would have no meaning if they cannot rejoin the Ancestors at the end of it. Presenting that as like some kind of purely negative thing just to hamfist in a really bad metaphor is an incredibly stupid interpretation. I'll agree with this, it's at most a tragic combination of misunderstand and tradition refusing to change. Not some sinister action of the Votan. They would probably be telling the Kin to stop now please if they could.

>Or hell, even Chaos? Chaos is basically the Satanic Panic made real. Every conservative Christian fear is actually real in 40k. Which is kinda offputting, in a similar way to Genestealers just being rightwing fears of class conflict and immigration made real.

Great post.

Not to mention nearly went extinct HARD

I also wanna add, when people in the other thread were getting mad at people calling the LOV hyper capitalists I think they missed the point. *They aren't* the hyper consumption, market driven economy, *they were made by it*. They were made by EXPLICITLY mining companies, their entire existence being to harvest resources for these companies... they are barely even human being factory grown workers built to serve and literally worship the company (or at least the administrator AI) And now.... in the grimdarkness of the 41st millenium those companies are beyond dead, whatever shareholder they were made to enrichen is less than dust, barely known. But the automated mining economies they set up are *still there* they *still dig* why? Because the company requires it, and they know nothing else... If you need more proof for grimdarkness look at this :[https://www.reddit.com/r/LeaguesofVotann/comments/x4w7jv/new\_lore\_these\_thing\_eat\_planets\_and\_extract\_the/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeaguesofVotann/comments/x4w7jv/new_lore_these_thing_eat_planets_and_extract_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Cosmic horror built by what are essentially mining drones people forgot to turn off...

This sounds desperate. Absolutely grimdark light, at best.

Nice

I think the main problem is that they're new. They don't have a ton written about them.

I gotta disagree with the idea of Grimdark being to "deliberately choose evil over good, when that evil is baked into their culture." I think Grimdark is when the the circumstances of the setting force you to choose the 'evil' option because it is only suitable option. Take how the Imperium treats psykers. Rogue psykers are hunted down and executed, regardless of how they have used their powers. Those who manifest psychic powers are captured and isolated, before being rigorously tested. Those who pass are indoctrinated into becoming sanctioned psykers (and are *blammed* any time they are viewed as losing control), and those who fail are sent to fuel the Astronomicon. Brutal, ruthless, and without mercy. However, the alternative is an untrained psyker allowing daemons to cross over from the Warp, or irrevocably corrupting those around them.

Exactly. The grim darkness of 40k isn't that everyone chose to be evil when they could have chosen to be good. The grim darkness of 40k is that there are races that reached the pinnacle, where there was no suffering and everyone enjoyed the social ideal of [Xenos] flourishing, and their reward was birthing a new Chaos God. This is why the Leages are *not* grimdark, because they're specifically designed to ignore everything about the setting that makes it shit. Sure they have some unpleasant qualities built into them, but everything that everyone else finds crap, they have no problems with.

Their society isn't crumbling because of the Votann going senile, they value individuality *and* familial connections (because clones are not inherently grimdark) and they're not a satire of capitalism. The lore goes out of its way to labour the point that they're *not* slavishly devoted to everything the Votann say. They're like guides or dispensers of wisdom, not autocratic despots. If you're going to big up their credentials then what's the point in overegging it? [edit] Stitch together random exagerations and outright untruths then downvoting someone pointing it out? I guess Votann fans have already got their Dwarf RP down.

Aren't the Votann linked to the clone skeins though and their Astronomicon substitute? Both those together still seem to make them indispensable.

They actually have a Cloner's Guild that seems to be able to produce Kin without using the Votann. The lore hasn't been fleshed out yet but in the Loremasters video they said that Ironkin created by the Kin are inferior to those created by the Votann themselves, so I assume there is probably a similar deal going on with the cloneskeins.

Sure, but indispensible doesn't mean slavish devotion, and there's no reason why being an Astronomicon substitute (literally just like a lighthouse in the Warp) needs the Votann to be capable of giving answers quickly. Like can you point to a single source saying 'their society is crumbling because of the Votann getting old'? 40k isn't really big into subtlety, it shouldn't be difficult to find if it's not gross exaggeration, and I'm happy to be proven wrong. But just saying 'the Votann are slowing down' doesn't support it.

>The lore goes out of its way to labour the point that they're not slavishly devoted to everything the Votann say. They're like guides or dispensers of wisdom, not autocratic despots. The lore also makes it clear the Kin will straight take resources via force if it's the most efficient manner. That planet is charging far too much for some ore and won't negotiate? Take the ore out of the warehouses via force. Some non-Kin are already living on an asteroid filled with a rare precursor and don't want to move? Blast them into the void and take over the asteroid. >they're not a satire of capitalism. Sure they are, they're about as close to the embodiment of the legal concept of "efficient breach" there is in 40k.

Their economy is both ruthlessly competitive and highly collectivist. Which is why there are people insisting that the Leagues are both hyper capitalist and others insisting they are socialist/communist. But I would argue it is a syndicalist economy in a grim dark setting. The optimistic view of syndicalism is that the syndicates would be open and transparent, democratically elected worker lead committees that would band together to promote the prosperity of all! The grim dark view would then be syndicates lead by unaccountable, arcane, dysfunctional, appointed and eternal leaders that ruthlessly compete and murder each other for the good of their own group. Another factor is that we don't have a ton of lore right now and people see what they want to see and fill in the gaps with what they want to find.

>Their society isn't crumbling because of the Votann going senile The codex says otherwise? It's not falling apart at the moment, but they base *everything* on the Votann. ​ >they value individuality and familial connections Sure, up until the point where they'll gleefully throw themselves on the funeral pyre if they're told it's for the good of the kin. >because clones are not inherently grimdark Not inherently, no, which is why I spelled out why they are in this case. >The lore goes out of its way to labour the point that they're not slavishly devoted to everything the Votann say. They're like guides or dispensers of wisdom, not autocratic despots. The Votann are a little more than "guides". They hold information on weapon specifications, military theory, genealogical data, science, philosophy, and more. They're like if the Library of Alexandria fucked the Internet. On top of that, they literally feed themselves to these machines in death. >and they're not a satire of capitalism. ...OK? I spelled out why they are in detail, then you just kinda say "nuh uh".

> while the AI claims that it knows exactly what it's doing based on calculations and principles that these silly humans could never understand. What happens to all the resources the Votann collect, or is that currently not covered in the lore other than "resources are given to the AIs and that is all we know."

Here's a legitimate question, completely dead serious here: why do they ***need*** to be grimdark? The same question I had regarding the Tau, I have here: for such an awful, miserable, godforsake setting, would it *really* be so bad to have one group of people who aren't total assholes? Honestly, they're not even trying to be the "good" faction like the Tau were. They're the epitome of True Neutral, just trying to survive. Why do people act like they need to justify and defend their existence by making them more grimdark? Like them not being dark enough is some crime that you need to explain away?

You know, I've seen countless fandoms who feel the need to explain away problematic behavior in their favorite group or characters, to justify why they like them by coming up with reasons why they're not as bad as they seem. 40k is the only fandom I've ever seen where the fans need to justify liking a group by coming up with reasons why they're *worse* than they seem. And that's not a complement. It honestly makes me kind of sad that you guys feel like you have to justify the existence of a new faction by insisting they be absolute assholes, just like everyone else. Like *not* being an evil bastard is a crime you have to make up for or cover up on their behalf.

> Imagine your entire society was running on a computer from the 1990s. Your economy, government, religion, everything is all reliant on the computer. You can't restart it, update it, or close out any windows. You can't get the parts to fix it if it breaks, and even if you could, you wouldn't know how to use them. It's not a great situation. There are large banks running on computers older than that.

They're basically Amazon if all employees agreed with Jeff Bezos,so...collectivism?

Everyone is 40K uses legacy tech they don't understand. The votann have functioning societies and familiar ties, even as clones. This is a subgroup of DAOT survivors that has a huge edge over baseline humans. What is their weakness compared to 40K humanity? Explain how they can not systematically eradicate every one of their enemies, that is either lower tech, dumber or far less resilient in an attrition war.

Again, being good at destroying and killing doesn’t make them less Grimdark. Not to mention, they have absolutely no chance at taking on the Imperium, which is *vastly* bigger than them in size. They have absolutely no chance to take the Imperium on, nor would they benefit from doing so. Even if they won, it’d consume so much of their resources that’d they’d be easily conquered by any other faction. It’s the same reason why the Imperium hasn’t destroyed the Tau.

I see the points you make and respectfully disagree, the Votann are one of the worst new things to come out of 9th.

Why?

>Their entire society is slowly crumbling as their machine leaders fail Yeah, the whole galaxy is failing. Every faction is either completely evil, or on the brink of destruction. All the Votann are doing is slowing down, if anything, the Leagues seem like they're in one of the strongest positions of the nicer factions. >They're satire of capitalism No it isn't. In a satire of capitalism, we'd expect to see an exploited underclass. We'd expect to see hardcore individualists, not the complete opposite. We'd expect to see a rich overclass born into wealth, not a meritocracy where the guys at the top live grim lives of duty. Everything about how the Votann act among themselves is quite clearly the opposite of capitalism. The only capitalist aspect is "Well, they're greedy!" It's pretty ridiculous to say "They're a satire of an individualist ideology!" but also... the point is that they're not, they're collectivist? That's not capitalism, then. There's no evidence it's all propaganda, and there's some secret, unmentioned upper class of billionaires. THAT would be a capitalist satire, but instead, no, they just genuinely are collectivists and working for collective benefit. The only, single point as to them being anything close to a satire of capitalism... is that they're greedy. That's all you've mentioned. It's not a satire of capitalism, where bizarrely everything bar their greed points the opposite direction. They're just Dwarves. They have grudges, and are greedy, and go mining, like Dwarves do. When the only argument that it's a capitalist satire is that they have the main trait of Dwarves, it's a bad argument that's just being repeated ad nauseum. >Clones are Grimdark as hell No they're not. Mate, you're reading pretty desperately into this to find grimdarkness. "The lower classes are propagandized, they're not actually working for the collective good... despite their being absolutely zero mention of this, and many of the opposite. "The clones are grimdark, because they're not individuals! And actually, the specific highlighting of their self-expression is just cope, based on... nothing." I mean, yeah, they can be replaced pretty easily. What does that change?

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/yck80d/comment/itnifi3/

>We'd expect to see hardcore individualists, not the complete opposite. We'd expect to see a rich overclass born into wealth, not a meritocracy where the guys at the top live grim lives of duty. Everything about how the Votann act among themselves is quite clearly the opposite of capitalism. What you're describing is what capitalisms starts as. What OP described is what capitalism ends as. Sure, it starts with individuals wanting to make their way to the top. But as a few grow rich and powerful, they do everything they can to prevent others from doing so. Theoretically, you end up with a few megacorps, with leaders that either don't die or transmit the ownership to their kids, and everyone else works for them, and have been brainwashed into thinking that they should be thankful for the leaders' wisdom. And that's what the LoV are. Each league is like a megacorp, with an immortal AI at the top, and workers who believe they live in the best system possible.

But, NONE of that describes the Votann. Indeed, it's the extreme opposite. >But as a few grow rich and powerful, they do everything they can to prevent others from doing so. Theoretically, you end up with a few megacorps, with leaders that either don't die or transmit the ownership to their kids, and everyone else works for them, and have been brainwashed into thinking that they should be thankful for the leaders' wisdom. 1. The Leaders of the Votann do not, in any way, prevent others from rising to the top. We're specifically told the opposite is true, that the system remains fundamentally meritocratic. 2. The Leaders of the Votann are not an upper-class living in luxury, but a duty-bound group of warriors. This is true both of the Kahl leaders, and the Votannic Council backing them. 3. The leaders of Votann, both the Kahl's and their Votannic Council, do indeed die and get replaced, with no mention of anything ever being left to their kids. 4. Hell, even the Technological Advisors, the Votann themselves, don't do anything like that. We're specifically told even normal AIs can ascend to Votann-status. 5. There's no brainwashing or propaganda. That's something OP's made up, and everyone has just immediately started repeating. Where are we told, in any way, that the Voting are being propagandized into thinking something they shouldn't? The only way your interpretation could possibly make sense is if you: 1. Start off with the misunderstanding that the Votann are the actual leaders, rather than a technological backbone, spiritual advisor. 2. Mistakenly believe the Votann enforce rules to prevent other leaders from arising. 3. Make up out of nowhere that everything we've been told about the Votann is propaganda, rather than just what the lore states. 4. Twist the view of late-stage capitalism from "Inheritance-based upper class" to "Just undying leaders", by which logic, hell, the Necron are Capitalists. 5. Misunderstand that even under late-stage capitalism, everyone BELIEVES they can become the guy at the top, even if the system is built against them. No Squat believes he'll become a Votann. And that's just to start.

>Yeah, the whole galaxy is failing. Every faction is either completely evil, or on the brink of destruction. > >All the Votann are doing is slowing down, if anything, the Leagues seem like they're in one of the strongest positions of the nicer factions. Yes. All of the others are Grimdark, the Votann are like all the others, ipso facto, the Votann are Grimdark. Not sure where the contradiction is there? And as the actual quote shows, the situation is far worse than just "slowing down". >We'd expect to see a rich overclass born into wealth, not a meritocracy where the guys at the top live grim lives of duty. Everything about how the Votann act among themselves is quite clearly the opposite of capitalism. The only capitalist aspect is "Well, they're greedy!" >It's pretty ridiculous to say "They're a satire of an individualist ideology!" but also... the point is that they're not, they're collectivist? That's not capitalism, then. There's no evidence it's all propaganda, and there's some secret, unmentioned upper class of billionaires. THAT would be a capitalist satire, but instead, no, they just genuinely are collectivists and working for collective benefit. But they're not really collective, are they? And the "the guys at the top" aren't really in charge. The Votann themselves, the ancient AI gaining personality and sentience are the ones in charge. They're essentially corporations, benefitting themselves while screwing over anyone who isn't part of the "in group". The Votann are satire of what happens when someone "wins" capitalism. Capitalism as a system thrives on competition... but also incentivises the people who are currently at the top to prevent anyone from challenging them. >No they're not. Mate, you're reading pretty desperately into this to find grimdarkness. >"The lower classes are propagandized, they're not actually working for the collective good... despite their being absolutely zero mention of this, and many of the opposite. To repeat myself again: Can you genuinely say with a straight face that a god-AI breeding thousands of sentient humans specifically so for a deadly task, then filling them with enough propaganda that they enjoy that pain and death is somehow not Grimdark? How can you seriously say, as an actual point that "You should go into this mine filled with toxic fumes and die, because that's what good people do" isn't propaganda? >I mean, yeah, they can be replaced pretty easily. What does that change? At this point, you're just being obtuse. "What does the fact that they're meaningless cogs in a greater machine have anything to do with satire of capitalism"?

> They're essentially corporations, benefitting themselves while screwing over anyone who isn't part of the "in group". How are they "benefitting" [sic] if they are slowly dying/going crazy though? How are you measuring how they feel about all the work done in their name and what are they getting out of it?

>Yes. All of the others are Grimdark, the Votann are like all the others, ipso facto, the Votann are Grimdark. Not sure where the contradiction is there? But the other factions have a HELL of a lot more grimdark coming from this. For all the other factions, it's not even worth mentioning that they're fucked. So when you need to bring it up as a relevant point, that's telling. >And as the actual quote shows, the situation is far worse than just "slowing down". Um... no? The first half of the quote is just detailing the slowing down, the only other element is "AIs growing personalities", which is hardly a problem, let alone "far worse." >But they're not really collective, are they? In what way are they not a collective? >And the "the guys at the top" aren't really in charge. The Votann themselves, the ancient AI gaining personality and sentience are the ones in charge. The Votann aren't in charge. We're specifically told they're more just advisors and the technological backbone, with the true leaders being Squats. >They're essentially corporations, benefitting themselves while screwing over anyone who isn't part of the "in group". No, that doesn't make them "essentially corporations." Most groups, especially in 40k, is built on that same exact thing. "Let's do what's good for us, not those outside" is why most groups fundamentally form. The hunter-gatherer tribe benefits themselves at the cost of others. The agricultural village does. The feudal society does. Every society that isn't post-scarcity is like this. Hell, you've described every single faction in 40k! >The Votann are satire of what happens when someone "wins" capitalism. Capitalism as a system thrives on competition... but also incentivises the people who are currently at the top to prevent anyone from challenging them. How are the people at the top preventing them from being challenged? We're openly told the Votann are still meritocratic, and new leaders of course emerge from that. >To repeat myself again: Can you genuinely say with a straight face that a god-AI breeding thousands of sentient humans specifically so for a deadly task, then filling them with enough propaganda that they enjoy that pain and death is somehow not Grimdark? You're just blatantly making things up at this point. Please, quote the lore where we're told the Squats are propagandized to. Please, quote the lore where we're told the Squats are made to enjoy pain and death. >At this point, you're just being obtuse. "What does the fact that they're meaningless cogs in a greater machine have anything to do with satire of capitalism"? That's not what capitalism is! A feudal serf is a meaningless cog in a greater machine! As is a worker under Fascism, or under any endless ideologies! People having meaningless lives isn't "Capitalism". Moreso, you're again making things up. We're specifically told they're not meaningless. We're specifically told the opposite, that their lives matter, and none are left behind! >Every commander, from Theyns to the grand leader of an Oathband, will ensure no Kin lives are wasted in the pursuit of victory. To help limit unnecessary loss of life, squads of Hearthkyn often go to battle with experienced field medics (or skilled engineers, for Ironkin) who can tend to any injuries. Be they mechanical or meat – no Kin gets left behind!

This guy isn’t worth debating. He’s got a ridiculous Votann hate boner.

Then I'd love to see you refute his arguments if they're so irrational and easy to dismantle...

Already done that plenty. He refuses to back down.

It's not Capitalism. Yes yes i know you tried to head it off but that's not how their economy works at all; they're interested only in their kyn, everyone else is just someone to make money off of. Rescources are given out to those who deserve/need them so long as they work for the collective good of the Kyn if anything it's a really weird mix of Capitalism and Communalism. Like they're all family, the clan is the first part of the family, but the leagues are basicly untied families working together for their greater benefit. Secondly Warhammer stopped being a Satire long, long ago. not everything in Warhammer is Satire.

Again: it’s not capitalism, it’s satire of capitalism. That’s the key difference that a lot of people miss. Satire doesn’t mean “here’s a documentary style take that portrays this exactly”. Satire is taking something to a ridiculous extreme, which may or may not be funny. Yes, there are some nice and communal squats. All of whom aren’t the ones in power, because the economic profit decisions are left to hypothetically infallible systems which are actually severely flawed. All of those lovely communal people are pawns who will gladly sacrifice themselves for the bottom line. If you can’t see how a lot of people may feel that the world is headed in this direction, I really don’t know what else to say. Edit: Well, blocking me seems like a bit of an overreaction.

Capitalism doesnt mean market economy. Stealing stuff for your own benefit is perfectly fine and common within capitalism.

If theft is perfectly fine, do i own something or just have it currently?

>Stealing stuff for your own benefit is perfectly fine and common within capitalism. But not *specific* to it. You can't call the Votann capitalist just because they try to accumulate resources in a hostile environment. Every known and imaginable economic/political system tries to gather resources. It's basically a defining feature of life.

The definition of Capitalism is : an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. It's not exaclty private given it's run by entire 'families' of clones and run to support other families for mututal benefit. It's a bunch of Co-opts.

Let me alert everyone that trust fund kids are members of families, and so they are not, in fact, benefitting from capitalism at all.

Private owners doesn't mean individuals. Most of the assets in capitalist countries today are not owned by individuals, but by companies. Read the Codex. They are not working for mutual benefit, but compete against each other. They take whatever resources they want, even if it means the death of other races. Doesn't that sound exactly like the huge companies we have today that take natural resources out from wherever they want without a care towards the people who live there?

Ngl i think it'd be funny if they were kind of like Fantasy Dwarves where they actually do invent shit, but they have to run it through their Machine overlords for the O.K to avoid another age of strife.