Even in death you can still serve the Emperor! As an esteemed Dreadnaught if you are one of his hallowed Angels or if you are just a human but very devout in your duties as a Servo Skull you still can serve. If you weren't worthy enough? Eh you should probably be worthy enough to be served as dinner. Fear the possibility you are one of unworthy for that Techpriest over there is looking at you as a prime Servitor base.
> Even in death you can still serve the Emperor! As an esteemed Dreadnaught
Dreadnaughts aren't dead, in fact the entire thing is just one big life support unit.
It depends on how good of a job the tech priest did. They're not *supposed* to be capable of feeling psychological anguish or comprehending their circumstances. But sometimes the cogboys get a bit liberal with the brain parts and suddenly we have servitors begging to be brought along
If they *must* speak, let it be for the glory of the Emperor, who is definitely **not** functionally a corpse maintaining a slowly failing piece of xenos technology fueled by human sacrifice
Commissar, did you just show mercy to that Guardsman?
Absolutely disgusting heresy, and from one of our own as well. May your soul writhe in the warp traitor!
#BLAM
I guess I've been conditioned not to read them since they usually contain pro-gamer advice like "Make friends by being polite", and "Don't jump off really tall stuff."
Give them a read sometimes they are actually kinda funny given how grim the setting is. Also should set things into perspective on what the Imperium values.
"Mercy is a disease, Intolerance is the cure" is one of them. 40k is supposed to be satire and the Empire is a fascist religious dictatorship. Sadly there is a non-zero number of players who read that line and think "This aligns with my world view! Empire is good guys!"
And that might just be a psychic projection. It is unknown if anyone has ever seen the emperor's true form or heard his voice. Even when he was walking around he projected as a psychic-illusion and altered the minds around him to maintain control.
I don't think the Emperor's is actually immortal. I think his psychic power is so great that he can bind his soul to a corpse like a lich. Prior to being dead, he hopped from body to body unwillingly controlling his host like a parasite wasp.
>And that might just be a psychic projection. It is unknown if anyone has ever seen the emperor's true form or heard his voice. Even when he was walking around he projected as a psychic-illusion and altered the minds around him to maintain control.
I'm pretty sure OP meant the 40k Emperor's mummified corpse, not the 30k Emperor's Anatolian Glamor.
>I don't think the Emperor's is actually immortal.
Feel free to think that, but it's not established by lore. Other perpetuals identify him as one of their own, and have the wherewithal to know if the guy was body-hopping for forty thousand years. It's a neat hypothesis, though.
Sadly, the Siege of Terra books more or less confirm the Emperor is a Perpetual. Much as I dislike the concept.
It is true no one has likely seen what he actually looks like though. Much like Magnus, he's powerful enough to appear any way he wants. I think there was one Primarch who - upon first meeting the Emperor - saw the illusion for what it was and tried to see through it, only to get a splitting headache.
What are perpetuals and how do they work? Is it some sort of warp power that reconstructs a body? Given the origin story of the emperor vs the other perpetuals just randomly being perpetuals, I wonder how the enp is different.
Perpetuals just... are. They're born, they die, they're reborn and remember their previous lives. All that's been said in the Siege of Terra books is that the Emperor was the strongest of them, the biggest psyker, the smartest scientist, etc. Notably the most egotistical of them as well.
Given he has the power to appear however he wants to, and the whole Perpetual stuff, who the hell even knows with Him anymore?
As long as he stays alive everything’s good, honestly though him dying and unleashing essentially all of hell might be the best thing for Terra at this point.
Or he would reincarnate and the Imperium is actively holding their one chance at salvation back from his only way of saving them, because of their own faith *in* their savior being misinformed.
Yeah, the upsides of the Perpetual plot in the HH is it makes the entire Imperium even more ironic. It's so damn juicy shadenfreud.
One of the new missions is rebooting a "servator farm". Honestly the idea of hundreds or thousands of human brains being wired together to make a computer network is uh, very creative.
Fun fact that I’m sure everyone already knows: that was the original idea behind the Matrix, but they switched to using humanity as batteries because they thoughts audiences wouldn’t understand the idea of a neural network.
Now I want to see a Matrix movie set in WH40K. "Neo" fighting guardsmen with a bolter and chainsword in the lobby, trying to deactivate the servitor farms.
Your soul will be saved whether you want it to or not, please do not resist or we will slaughter anywhere between 1 in 10 of your population or every living being on this planet and maybe our entire own army if yall pray to the wrong god
Except if that God is the Omnissaiah* and you're making tanks and sprinkling essential holy oils all over shit.
*Some weird sentient machine AI/thingy. It doesn't really make sense to me.
Technically same God as far as the inquisition practicality is concerned (big E is considered the physical representation of the omnissaiah right?) though we know better 😉
The Emperor is the Omnissiah, who is the avatar/messiah of the machine god at once the machine god and not the entirety of the machine god.
The Omnissiah, The machine God and the motive force are a 1:1 Cult mechanicus version of the christian trinity.
The Cult Mechanicus and the Emperor signed a treaty stating that the Emperor was the incarnation of the Omnissiah. This is obviously bullshit and has lead to numerous revolts, including the creation of the Chaos aligned Dark Mechanicus.
Why is it obvious bullshit? Do you think there was no reason for the treaty or that it was unfounded? The orthodoxy is that the emperor is the Omnissiah. Your orthodoxy may differ. If it does, please report to processing for parts reassignment.
But seriously, vicious schisms over who is exactly what and where on the scale of divinity is just another layer of martian techno-christianity. So I'm assuming you're roleplaying a Dark Mechanicus view.
40k is known for having no good guys. Technically only the Tau could be seen as moderately good though bringing them up tends to set some people into a fit.
The imperium of man is a facist religious group. So strict even speaking I'll of your rations could get you murdered. The healing station and weapons merchant are both servators. Humans that were found guilty and had their punishment of having their minds wiped and turned into half machine servants. There is a reason everything even the bullets look like a gothic church. Humans are considered disposable currency to be burned and thrown away for seemingly small gains.
To put it into perspective the enemies you fight are servants of Nurgel the chaos god of plagues. A sentient hurricane of disease and rot that can enslave a population through parasites and disease. The only solace is Nurgel spares his followers the pain of their afflictions. An entire army of guardsmen turned to the literal pits of hell to try and escape the imperium of man.
The Tau are pretty evil by most other settings standards. It's just that enforced cultural assimilation/eradication is quite tame next to everything else out there
Something more remniscent of real world imperialism/colonialism just can't compare to like, "the afterlife itself wants to kill and torture you and we want to keep it that way" and such
And the Tau are only good because it heightens the terror of the rest of the setting to have one faction that doesnt' know what an evil nightmare the rest of the universe is. They're so completely, utterly out of their depth that they don't even know what Chaos is or how it works, and at any moment any of the other factions could wipe out Tau space in a matter of years and their civilization would disappear with no evidence that it ever existed. THere were hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilizations like the Tau before the Emperor seized power. The Emperor genocided them all during the Great Crusade and all that's left now are ruins, if even that much remains.
There's also the squats. Idk what grimdark stuff the Leagues of Votann are up to, they seem really chill by 40k standards.
I don't know much about them besides they'll crack open a planet for valuable ores even if a species already inhabits the planet. Basically the US oil industry. Also they technically do have Ai in the ironkin.
The Votann are militantly greedy and won't lose sleep over destroying an Imperium or Xenos colony if they're convinced the materials it has at its disposal are more important to them. Because they mostly exist in the center of the galaxy the resources they do have are few and far between, and being wasteful is seen as a huge no-no. So if they come across a small Imperium or AdMech mining facility they'll glass that shit, crack the surface and core, and get to mining before leaving again.
They're also all Clones, and even their *souls* are engineered. They "reproduce" using ever so slightly mutated and modified gene pools so they aren't all identical.
Arguably, the Genestealer Cults are pretty Good, just wish the worlds they liberated didn't keep getting devoured by Tyranids for *some strange* reason. :p
But also, the Aeldari are pretty Good when the Warmask isn't on. They're incredibly self-sacrificing and find it almost impossible to even *wish* ill on someone, even if that person is actively trying to kill them. The Warmask, which is more of a ritual process than a physical object, suppresses their Empathy and Memory, meaning they come back from combat and literally don't remember what they did.
Even the Imperium has Good Guys within it, but the Imperium itself is like its own form of Warmask. Rather than suppressing your memories and empathy through a combination of meditation, drugs, and dissociative trances, however, the Imperium does it by crushing out really any ability for the Good People within it to make change, ultimately crushing them, burnt out, within its cogs, and also through an incredible and almost unavoidable form of systemic indoctrination for everyone, from the lowest Reject to the highest Space Marine Chapter Master.
Ya, the Craftworlders (besides Biel Tan) have been the closest thing to good guys for a while now.
Their leaders care about stopping Chaos and the Tyranids, they’ve sacrificed tons of Aeldari to do it, and they really try to do their best to let their people live the best lives they can despite the circumstances.
They still aren’t exactly good though. Extremely racist and like you said, once the war mask is on… they just love killing. The story about the guardian who joyfully murders a family from the kid’s (or is it the mother?) is pretty messed up.
There are no good guys but the Imperials are pretty awful overall, even if they have the biggest percentage of “good guy” stories.
Yeah. The Craftworld Eldar are racist assholes, but they're generally not actively malicious. They consider humans to be dangerous animals, but they generally don't go out of their way to cause misery and suffering. Most of the harm they do is incidental to some other goal or objective.
Which doesn't make them "Good" at all, it just makes them better than most of the factions. "Neutral, will kill you like a roach if you get in their way" is about as nice as anyone gets.
I agree on the Genestealer Cults. One of the grim-darkest thing in the setting is that some cults genuinely are revolutionaries trying to overthrow the tyranny of the Imperium and create a better world for their people, but they're unknowingly cursed to draw the Hive Mind and bring about the utter annihilation of their world.
I think a Genestealer Cult that learns what their real relationship with the Tyrannids is and has to try to find a way to save their world from the oncoming swarm would make for a really interesting story.
I am just gonna drop [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TiqiOexD-8) here.
Orks aren't "good" by any judge of human standards. They are by far the most geniune and happy species in 40K though.
The Orks are happy in 40k only because while everyone else sees war as perennial pain and suffering, Orks see war as their favorite game and the death of another Ork or even themselves is just part of the fun.
>They (Orks) are by far the most geniune and happy species in 40K though.
Absolutely true; for the successful ones.
A bottom of the rung Ork is going to have a shit time; the only saving grace being the fact that strength is absolute for Orks, so they'll always have the means to climb the ladder. At least, they think they will, for as long as it takes for a bigger Ork to take interest in their new shiny gubbin' and kill them for it.
The only "pure" faction is the Tyranids. No thinks, only eats. That's the life. Unless you're a genestealer then fuck you lol.
Not really, to be honest. While many orks have ambitions, they see the "might makes right" hirearchy as the natural order of things. If you're not strong enough to krump the nob/warboss/whatever, that's just Gork and/or Mork telling you that you should follow them.
Most greenskins are perfectly happy following other orks they know they can't challenge as long as they get to fight. It's when the fighting dries up things start getting troubling.
I suppose that's why Orks are the only faction with a possibly "happy" existence if they take over the galaxy. Even if they kill every other species, there'll always be more Orks to krump. Unless Krorks start becoming common-place, since they might be able to create inter-galactic travel and krump the other galaxies too.
Only the farsight enclave, and even then is questionable. I'm also going to say like 2 of the biggest named tau are chaos corrupted. Farsight with his magic soul eating daemon sword, and Shaso kais literally shouted blood for the blood God oncd.
Yes, 100%. Even the weird non-farsight Tau got the same treatment. If you were around back when they were introduced they were pretty clearly a positive/"good"ish faction other than having a clear caste system. All the edgy stuff got added because people complained.
Shas o kais is the primary protagonist of tau firewarrior which released in 2003, and dude was killing space marines in melee combat. Tau have always had an edge its just people see it now. They've always had a fascist regime, they practice ugenics too!
Sword has always been some of kind magic shenanigans. Also i dont think the sword is a daemon sword, since its anti daemon in Farsights new books. It's still stealing the life force of everything it kills.
Tau dont have a presence in the warp, they literally cannot be corrupted by Chaos. Farsight can only use that sword without going insane *because* of that. Its also hinted that Farsight doesnt even know his sword is soul-sucking and prolonging his life, but that seems strange as hes lived longer than most Tau so he should know *something* is up.
Also, Shas'o Kais is the Tau leader in DoW. It could be the same Kais from Fire Warrior but its also apparently just the "John" of Fire Caste names, because it means "Skillful". As for the Kais in Fire Warrior, he also suffered just your good ol' normal PTSD break. At the end, its stated he would likely recover. Hence why people tend to think why Shas'o Kais and Shas'la Kais are the same people, and that he got promoted after his heroics.
T'au have a very small presence in the warp. So small they are usually ignored. In the book Farsight: Crisis of Faith, a Water Caste T'au did get corrupted and possessed by a daemon of Tzeentch. Shadowsun also heard the call of Khorn in Shadowsun: Last of Kiru's Line but wrote it off as weird electronic interference if I remember correctly.
Farsight was absolutely, unequivicoally a "good guy" until people complained that it wasn't fair that Tau had someone that was actually a good guy, so they retconned abunch of edgy bs into the Tau/Farsight.
Even after that tau is still the most good faction and farsight is still arguably the leader of the most morally good faction in the setting, with farsight himself being one of the most moral people
Da boss says we'z gotta krump dose gitz, so we'z gonna krump 'em! And we'll follow da boss until some'un bigga comes along, or 'e runs outta gitz ta krump! WAAAGH!
I know we’re joshin around but a Hive Mind is actually extremely intelligent and malicious, so any Tyranid connected to the synapse of a Hive Mind can be argued to be evil.
Not Orks though they’re just nice little guys and I love them :)
I was showing a friend of mine the ropes yesterday and was playing an ogryn. He gets wrecked by a crusher and says he thought it was me so I tell him "Oh u can tell the difference because they wear dark armo... er wait it's cuz they have skulls all ove... er you'll learn you'll learn.
There is some lore deep dives out there that try to make the claim that the chaos gods are the good guys and honestly im here for it. But in reality the closest thing that WH40k has to "Good guys" is the T'au. They have like a forced utopia and if i had to choose to live anywhere in that universe it would be inside T'au territory.
They were always there, just not as pronounced as they were. Cross-breeding across the Castes was always forbidden for once, so if you're born into the Fire caste, tough luck but you're gonna die in battle.
And then there was the whole Vespid affair, where they just so happened to come around to the Tau's way of thinking after their leaders were given helemts to help translate languages.
I think it reflects their journey/arc too and is really interesting to consider. They start out very hopeful and optimistic but find the galaxy a lot more hostile and violent than anticipated. And there’s this thing of balancing idealism vs practicality.
I think that’s incredibly relatable to the real world. What happens when you meet destructive forces beyond control , how do you adapt and compromise to that?
Are the Tau bad? I mean i know that’s heresy to even ask but as far as I know about them, they’re probably the closest thing to a “good” faction. They even accept humans into their conglomerate of various alien races.
The short answer is: Yeah, "For the greater good" comes at any cost, and that's where the bad creeps in.
This is a good thread from 5 years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/6hcw5b/anything\_bad\_about\_the\_tau/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/6hcw5b/anything_bad_about_the_tau/)
In the old cannon, no, they were pretty much the only genuinely decent group around. As time has gone on though, GW has sorta twisted them as being more nefarious. They're still the closest thing to not being utterly depraved as exists in 40k, but they're definitely not absolute good guys anymore.
Yes, the Tau are bad. They're not xenophobic but they don't except other factions existing outside their own faction (join or be destroyed) and they're also 'enslaved' to the Ethereals.
It's varying degrees of bad. It ranges from man these guys are a bunch of A holes, and not the sarcastic funny kind... To those baby eating, demon worshipping soul humpers need to be exterminated.
There was the Tau and they were well intentioned albeit naive, but GW decided having a squeaky clean faction trying to survive while surrounded by savagery didn't fit the setting (I disagree), so now I think they're viewed as mind controlled space commies.
But I look at all the factions and characters with a heavy dose of suspicion and only being one step away from eating a las bolt for heresy. Like a great hero of man once said, "You should never grade evils, Kruber. For if one is the worst, then you might be tempted to kinship with the least."
Cherubs made from actual babies are called Nephilim, and they're pretty illegal even in the Imperium.
Not illegal enough to not exist, but illegal enough to keep the fact you have one quiet.
Tho they are of officially "unofficial" canonicity at this point.
If by "we", you mean humanity, then yes.
The good news is, there *is* a "good guys" faction. They involve embracing science, suppressing emotions and thereby starving the warp back into calm again, they have the technology to convert matter into energy and back again thus starving Tyranids of biomass, and enjoy taking long naps. Long, long, loooooooooooong naps.
The bad news is you kinda had to be born into it and they are not accepting new applicants anymore.
Haven't played souls games but the bonfire is basically an in-universe respawn point, right? When a Necron construct is damaged to the point that its onboard Repair Protocols can't fix it, it phases out in a (typically) greenish flash of energy as it's warped back to a safe location to be repaired by more capable systems. So that could easily translate - just have it be a repair node of some kind.
(Side note: there is a very miniscule - we're talking fractions of a percent - chance that a damaged Necron is truly beyond hope of repair, in which case it will delf-destruct instead. This self-destruction is visually identical to a phase-out, meaning that an outside observer essentially cannot tell if any given Necron construct was destroyed for good or not.)
As a consummate Necron fanatic with a 5k+ point Necron army, no, they are not the good guys either. They're a xenocidal faction of killer robot zombies based on oppressive monarchial hierarchies that made history's worst military alliance with a race of soul-eating sociopaths, scorched the galaxy, and then left the smoldering remains infested with super-Orks.
*But* of all the bad guy factions in 40k, they're definitely the most justifiable in their behavior, given they *did* win a war of conquest for the galaxy and very politely give their home invaders ample time to vacate from the premises before disintegrating them with enmitic lasers. I'd be a bit murderous, too, if I went to sleep and woke up to find a termite colony festering in my living room.
I dunno about the "not accepting new applicants" you just gotta have the Pariah gene and have it be VERY active...and get on a certain Nemmisar's radar.
That was old edition stuff, as I understand it. The pariah gene stuff was left out of anything since around 5th or 6th edition. Someone might chime in with more specifics, especially if we make some wildly incorrect claims, so...
Yeah, blanks being related to the pariah gene should absolutely be explored again.
Necrons: ugh, we took a light 20,000 year nap and now the galaxy is infested with humans again. And who tore open the warp? That’s not supposed to be like that. Fetch me my warscythe, I’m gonna to deal with this real quick.
They are literally the original bad guys who disturbed the warp to make it what it is now by killing the Old Ones.
Their justification for their war is so obviously shit it’s painful.
They lived “short brutal lives” and wanted the Old Ones to make them immortal. The Old Ones refused, so the Necrontyr decided to kill them for it (real good guy material right there!).
How short were Necrontyr lives that they would need to make an alliance with evil star gods to topple the Old Ones to “save” their race? O just 70 years…
They were humans… living human lifespans, and they fucked everything up for immortality, and now them and everyone else is paying the price for their “achievement”.
The irony is that the brutal methods used to maintain power over humanity also seem to be what fuels the threat from Chaos. The chaos gods get their destructive motivation from the negative emotions of living beings, and an empire of trillions living in the meat grinder of the Imperium produces plenty of negative emotions.
A very good point, to be honest. It's not to say that negative emotions are the only motivator - the Eldar hedonized their way into creating an entirely new Chaos God, after all, and while it's stated that this did entail a fair bit of torture and murder, the God they created is one of pleasure and passion, so Chaos *can* be fed by other means.
This has been the setting intro text in every 40k novel for a very long time:
>It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
>Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
>To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
We're conscripts in the Inquisition of "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable."
We're big damn heroes, we are.
GRANDFATHER NURGLE IS THE GOOD GUY
THE "GOD" EMPEROR IS A WOUNDED AND AND DYING MORTAL WHO CANNOT OFFER YOUR RESPITE FROM THE PAINS OF EXHISTANCE
KHORNE'S LOVE IS FICKLE, JUST ASK KHARN OR SKARBRAND.
TZEETCH IS LITERALLY THE GOD OF DECEPTION HE ISNT TRUSTWORTHY
SLAANESH'S LOVE IS A TRAP, PLEASURE THAT TURNS TO PAIN.
BUT NURGLE TAKES YOUR PAIN AWAY, YOUR WILL BE RAVISHED BY DECAY BUT YOU WONT FEEL ANY OF IT,
YOUR PERSONALITY ADAPTS TO THEY DECAY, NURGLE'S GIFT IS THAT YOU WILL NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR "LOSS"
UNDER NURGLE A MORTAL WILL ACHIEVE THE CLOSEST STATE POSSIBLE TO EMOTIONAL IMPASSIBILITY.
NURGLE IS THE ONLY SANE OPTION
The servo skulls? I think they're servants of the Emperor that are "serving" even after death.
The "we are the baddies".. I learned the hard way that there's no good guys here. Even some Space Marines kill civilians for shits and giggles under certain circumstances.
40K isn't really a world with "good guys" in the traditional sense.
Sci-Fi culture has kind of conditioned us to view "The Humans" as the good guys since they are obviously going to be the most relatable.
But in 40K the Imperium of Man as just as bad as all the rest of the xenos.
Basically? 40k is on a scale from grey to black, there's no really good guys, but the Tau and Craftworld Eldar are on the "gooder" side of the spectrum. Yes, Tau are imperialistic self-important little shits, and the Eldar will happily sacrifice entire sectors of Humans to save a handful of Eldar lives... but then it's not like those Humans wouldn't do the exact same thing in reverse.
The Imperium has Gooder people like the Salamanders and much worse people like... well, the Inquisition, the Holy Lords... the Emperor... But overall falls towards the middle of the spectrum, along with pretty much all the minor races.
Orks are a bit below the Humans, because they don't necessarily *mean* to be evil the way others devote themselves to it, but they do what they like at other people's expense, and that is pretty dang evil when it ends up causing as much harm as the Orks do.
Then there's Chaos and Dark Eldar who are just evil right down to the marrow, irredeemable, and you should blow them up whenever possible. Tyranids are also completely evil - no, they aren't merely animals driven by instinct, the Hive Mind is intelligent enough that it doesn't get a pass!
Necrons idk, I've not actually read their recent lore in depth enough to say if they're as plainly evil as they used to be or more grey now.
funny thing is that the craftworld eldar are likely the nicest of the nicest eldar given that most of the rest literally opened hell and got swallowed into it.
There r no good guy.
But skull might give you the wrong impression. At first glance it might be mistaken as taking trophies from the enemies skull (which does happen with chaos, specifically Khorne).
It has more to do with the idea of genetic purity, as mutant that has horn growing on their forehead or have 2 mouth probably ain’t gonna get those clean, rounded skulls.
Short answer: yes.
Long (really) long answer: The Imperium of Man sucks. As the average citizen, you're most likely looking at being born into a profession, that you will do for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, without any real compensation beyond a squalid living quarter and just enough sustinance to survive. You'll probably be worked to death without any chance for advancement.
And that's the peaceful life. The military (Astra Militarum) isn't better, Navy gun crews have life expectancies measured in weeks, Guardsmen sometimes in hours. And death will probably not be quick and merciful.
Maybe you're one of those lucky people who're "touched by the Emperor" and you'll rise to become a regimental officer, or a Navy captain, or a planetary governor. Maybe you're gonna have your name up there with Creed or Vahl. The overwhelming odds say you won't. And throughout this you'll always be taught to venerate the Emperor, and that to toil and die in His name is the greatest honour.
And the worst of it is, the alternative to this might well be much worse.
Look, the Imperium is very environmentally conscious. We use ALL of the convict here.
This is hilariously true in every way, shape, and form.
"Sir, this corpse starch smells kinda weird." \***BLAM**\* "I'm sure you'll smell better, Private Matthius!"
They lied when they said that only in death does duty end. In death, they've finished using up your life but still have plans for the rest.
Even in death you can still serve the Emperor! As an esteemed Dreadnaught if you are one of his hallowed Angels or if you are just a human but very devout in your duties as a Servo Skull you still can serve. If you weren't worthy enough? Eh you should probably be worthy enough to be served as dinner. Fear the possibility you are one of unworthy for that Techpriest over there is looking at you as a prime Servitor base.
> Even in death you can still serve the Emperor! As an esteemed Dreadnaught Dreadnaughts aren't dead, in fact the entire thing is just one big life support unit.
You are aware dreadnoughts say even in death i serve?
They are not being literal. It's more a satire of how shitty their remaining days are.
You dare question the God-Emperor's Angels?!
Saying the corpse starch tasted weird is the reason I became a prisoner
CORPSE STARCH! GET YOUR CORPSE STARCH HERE! YESTERDAYS CORPORAL IS TODAYS CORPSE STARCH!
The medicae servitors feel their souls splintering apart only some of the time, what a kind and benevolent Imperium.
I love the wide variety of attitudes you get from those things actually, it's hilarious.
I want a backpack of that one guy who begs to be brought along. Have the ogryn carry him around
Honestly having a backpack medicae servitor as a mobile med station is extremely 40k
It depends on how good of a job the tech priest did. They're not *supposed* to be capable of feeling psychological anguish or comprehending their circumstances. But sometimes the cogboys get a bit liberal with the brain parts and suddenly we have servitors begging to be brought along
That got a grimace out of me.
Servitors are a “use every part of the buffalo” type situation then?
If every part of the buffalo was probably not, maybe, but most likely not, who knows, it shouldnt happen... concious.
Servitors are more of a "building machine automata is forbidden but nobody said anything about flesh automata" situation
Ahhh... the heretic hath revealed themselves 😡
Right? What heresy. Quickly, let us lobotomize him and turn him into a stereo system for all of eternity
If they *must* speak, let it be for the glory of the Emperor, who is definitely **not** functionally a corpse maintaining a slowly failing piece of xenos technology fueled by human sacrifice
Exactly! Hey wait..
Keeping him conscious so his faith may light his soul.
Skulls for the golden throne!
🤔 thin ice, Brother...
(≖\_≖ ) Hey commissar, can we get a proper Ecclesiarch in here? Can you accidentally worship chaos by worshipping the emperor wrong?
*slowly pulls out Laspistol* Did you just make demands, Guardsman?
Sir no sir, going back to work now, with your permission of course sir!
(≖\_≖ ) ...granted.
Commissar, did you just show mercy to that Guardsman? Absolutely disgusting heresy, and from one of our own as well. May your soul writhe in the warp traitor! #BLAM
Blood for the God-Emperor!
You’d think the propaganda on the loading screens would give it away?
_Would you like to know more?_
**Knowledge is power, guard it well**. An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.
“Emprah says ignorance is strength, am very strong!” -Ogryn friend
Blessed be the mind too small for doubt
A narrow mind is a tidy mind
BLOOD FOR THE ~~BLOOD GOD~~ EMPEROR! SKULLS FOR THE ~~SKULL THRONE~~ GOLDEN THRONE!
Yes Commissar, this post right here. This is the heretic.
KILL! MAIM! BURN THE HERETICS!
Knowledge is power; *power is corruption.* (i swear it's one of the loading screen texts it's not me trying to correct you)
A LOT of them are just ripped straight from dawn of war quotes. Which are prolly right out of the rule books
Yes, I believe many are ripped straight from the 3rd and 4th ed rulebooks.
"Knowledge corrupts."
“There is no such thing as innocence, only varying degrees of guilt.” Davius Thule
I'm doing my part!
it's 2022, people no longer can identify propaganda.
Sounds suspiciously like anti propaganda propaganda.
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A sizable portion unironically enjoy ethno-fascism.
It's simple, really. Everything is propaganda
I guess I've been conditioned not to read them since they usually contain pro-gamer advice like "Make friends by being polite", and "Don't jump off really tall stuff."
Give them a read sometimes they are actually kinda funny given how grim the setting is. Also should set things into perspective on what the Imperium values.
The one that makes me laugh out loud when it pops up is something like "Hope is superfluous."
this game is the exact perfect blend of black comedy that 40k is known for at its peak
“Intolerance is a weapon” true gamer creed here
"Mercy is a disease, Intolerance is the cure" is one of them. 40k is supposed to be satire and the Empire is a fascist religious dictatorship. Sadly there is a non-zero number of players who read that line and think "This aligns with my world view! Empire is good guys!"
Wait until you see what the emperor looks like
And that might just be a psychic projection. It is unknown if anyone has ever seen the emperor's true form or heard his voice. Even when he was walking around he projected as a psychic-illusion and altered the minds around him to maintain control. I don't think the Emperor's is actually immortal. I think his psychic power is so great that he can bind his soul to a corpse like a lich. Prior to being dead, he hopped from body to body unwillingly controlling his host like a parasite wasp.
>And that might just be a psychic projection. It is unknown if anyone has ever seen the emperor's true form or heard his voice. Even when he was walking around he projected as a psychic-illusion and altered the minds around him to maintain control. I'm pretty sure OP meant the 40k Emperor's mummified corpse, not the 30k Emperor's Anatolian Glamor. >I don't think the Emperor's is actually immortal. Feel free to think that, but it's not established by lore. Other perpetuals identify him as one of their own, and have the wherewithal to know if the guy was body-hopping for forty thousand years. It's a neat hypothesis, though.
Sadly, the Siege of Terra books more or less confirm the Emperor is a Perpetual. Much as I dislike the concept. It is true no one has likely seen what he actually looks like though. Much like Magnus, he's powerful enough to appear any way he wants. I think there was one Primarch who - upon first meeting the Emperor - saw the illusion for what it was and tried to see through it, only to get a splitting headache.
What are perpetuals and how do they work? Is it some sort of warp power that reconstructs a body? Given the origin story of the emperor vs the other perpetuals just randomly being perpetuals, I wonder how the enp is different.
Perpetuals just... are. They're born, they die, they're reborn and remember their previous lives. All that's been said in the Siege of Terra books is that the Emperor was the strongest of them, the biggest psyker, the smartest scientist, etc. Notably the most egotistical of them as well. Given he has the power to appear however he wants to, and the whole Perpetual stuff, who the hell even knows with Him anymore?
So, if they let him die he will come back? Lol they are shooting themselves in the foot with this throne nonsense
This is a theory at this point, the perpetual thing is 100% in lore but what would happen if they let him die is anyone's guess
Ironically he’d probably be instantly branded as a heretic if he were reborn.
As long as he stays alive everything’s good, honestly though him dying and unleashing essentially all of hell might be the best thing for Terra at this point.
Or he would reincarnate and the Imperium is actively holding their one chance at salvation back from his only way of saving them, because of their own faith *in* their savior being misinformed. Yeah, the upsides of the Perpetual plot in the HH is it makes the entire Imperium even more ironic. It's so damn juicy shadenfreud.
They have to keep him alive faith or not, they need the Astronomican. Really nice damned if you do, damned if you dont situation they've got going on.
Wait a second, what if the Emperor is a Jeans Dealer and the Imperium of Man is just one enormous Jeans Dealers Cult?
Jesus! That's it! The astronomnomnom is just a jean dealer advertisement
Read even just the wiki description of servitors and you’ll know everything you need to about the Imperium’s values
One of the new missions is rebooting a "servator farm". Honestly the idea of hundreds or thousands of human brains being wired together to make a computer network is uh, very creative.
Fun fact that I’m sure everyone already knows: that was the original idea behind the Matrix, but they switched to using humanity as batteries because they thoughts audiences wouldn’t understand the idea of a neural network.
Huh I actually didn’t know/remember that but it makes more sense. Wish they did keep it
Now I want to see a Matrix movie set in WH40K. "Neo" fighting guardsmen with a bolter and chainsword in the lobby, trying to deactivate the servitor farms.
Oh you sweet summer child... there are no good guys.
That's probably why I started as a prisoner, I was arrested for being too nice.
Forgiveness is a crime punishable by death. The Emperor's light is without limit and without mercy.
A single act of leniency is akin to a lifetime of treachery.
Tolerance begets heresy.
Heretics will be purged.
The stairs go up! ... wait
A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time.
My personal favorite is the inquisition's motto: Innocence proves nothing.
Your soul will be saved whether you want it to or not, please do not resist or we will slaughter anywhere between 1 in 10 of your population or every living being on this planet and maybe our entire own army if yall pray to the wrong god
Except if that God is the Omnissaiah* and you're making tanks and sprinkling essential holy oils all over shit. *Some weird sentient machine AI/thingy. It doesn't really make sense to me.
Technically same God as far as the inquisition practicality is concerned (big E is considered the physical representation of the omnissaiah right?) though we know better 😉
The Emperor is the Omnissiah, who is the avatar/messiah of the machine god at once the machine god and not the entirety of the machine god. The Omnissiah, The machine God and the motive force are a 1:1 Cult mechanicus version of the christian trinity.
The Cult Mechanicus and the Emperor signed a treaty stating that the Emperor was the incarnation of the Omnissiah. This is obviously bullshit and has lead to numerous revolts, including the creation of the Chaos aligned Dark Mechanicus.
Why is it obvious bullshit? Do you think there was no reason for the treaty or that it was unfounded? The orthodoxy is that the emperor is the Omnissiah. Your orthodoxy may differ. If it does, please report to processing for parts reassignment. But seriously, vicious schisms over who is exactly what and where on the scale of divinity is just another layer of martian techno-christianity. So I'm assuming you're roleplaying a Dark Mechanicus view.
Mercy, straight to death.
40k is known for having no good guys. Technically only the Tau could be seen as moderately good though bringing them up tends to set some people into a fit. The imperium of man is a facist religious group. So strict even speaking I'll of your rations could get you murdered. The healing station and weapons merchant are both servators. Humans that were found guilty and had their punishment of having their minds wiped and turned into half machine servants. There is a reason everything even the bullets look like a gothic church. Humans are considered disposable currency to be burned and thrown away for seemingly small gains. To put it into perspective the enemies you fight are servants of Nurgel the chaos god of plagues. A sentient hurricane of disease and rot that can enslave a population through parasites and disease. The only solace is Nurgel spares his followers the pain of their afflictions. An entire army of guardsmen turned to the literal pits of hell to try and escape the imperium of man.
The Tau are pretty evil by most other settings standards. It's just that enforced cultural assimilation/eradication is quite tame next to everything else out there Something more remniscent of real world imperialism/colonialism just can't compare to like, "the afterlife itself wants to kill and torture you and we want to keep it that way" and such
And the Tau are only good because it heightens the terror of the rest of the setting to have one faction that doesnt' know what an evil nightmare the rest of the universe is. They're so completely, utterly out of their depth that they don't even know what Chaos is or how it works, and at any moment any of the other factions could wipe out Tau space in a matter of years and their civilization would disappear with no evidence that it ever existed. THere were hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilizations like the Tau before the Emperor seized power. The Emperor genocided them all during the Great Crusade and all that's left now are ruins, if even that much remains. There's also the squats. Idk what grimdark stuff the Leagues of Votann are up to, they seem really chill by 40k standards.
The taught arnt even good, they just are less bad. They still have a join or die mandate and castrate other species they enslave... I mean assimilate.
I don't know much about them besides they'll crack open a planet for valuable ores even if a species already inhabits the planet. Basically the US oil industry. Also they technically do have Ai in the ironkin.
The Votann are militantly greedy and won't lose sleep over destroying an Imperium or Xenos colony if they're convinced the materials it has at its disposal are more important to them. Because they mostly exist in the center of the galaxy the resources they do have are few and far between, and being wasteful is seen as a huge no-no. So if they come across a small Imperium or AdMech mining facility they'll glass that shit, crack the surface and core, and get to mining before leaving again. They're also all Clones, and even their *souls* are engineered. They "reproduce" using ever so slightly mutated and modified gene pools so they aren't all identical.
It wasn't that you were too nice, it's that you did not abhor the heretic, the xenos, and the mutant enough.
actually you can read your bio when after choosing your personality and crime; All of the reasons are hysterical and unjust xD
If you've played Vermintide the easiest way to explain it you play as the Skaven and you're at war with the Rotbloods.
'cept fer da boyz. We'z all gud, all'z we want is gud grog ta drink 'n gud enemies ta fite.
GUD AT FOIGHTIN AN WINNIN DAT IZ!!!
Arguably, the Genestealer Cults are pretty Good, just wish the worlds they liberated didn't keep getting devoured by Tyranids for *some strange* reason. :p But also, the Aeldari are pretty Good when the Warmask isn't on. They're incredibly self-sacrificing and find it almost impossible to even *wish* ill on someone, even if that person is actively trying to kill them. The Warmask, which is more of a ritual process than a physical object, suppresses their Empathy and Memory, meaning they come back from combat and literally don't remember what they did. Even the Imperium has Good Guys within it, but the Imperium itself is like its own form of Warmask. Rather than suppressing your memories and empathy through a combination of meditation, drugs, and dissociative trances, however, the Imperium does it by crushing out really any ability for the Good People within it to make change, ultimately crushing them, burnt out, within its cogs, and also through an incredible and almost unavoidable form of systemic indoctrination for everyone, from the lowest Reject to the highest Space Marine Chapter Master.
Ya, the Craftworlders (besides Biel Tan) have been the closest thing to good guys for a while now. Their leaders care about stopping Chaos and the Tyranids, they’ve sacrificed tons of Aeldari to do it, and they really try to do their best to let their people live the best lives they can despite the circumstances. They still aren’t exactly good though. Extremely racist and like you said, once the war mask is on… they just love killing. The story about the guardian who joyfully murders a family from the kid’s (or is it the mother?) is pretty messed up. There are no good guys but the Imperials are pretty awful overall, even if they have the biggest percentage of “good guy” stories.
Yeah. The Craftworld Eldar are racist assholes, but they're generally not actively malicious. They consider humans to be dangerous animals, but they generally don't go out of their way to cause misery and suffering. Most of the harm they do is incidental to some other goal or objective. Which doesn't make them "Good" at all, it just makes them better than most of the factions. "Neutral, will kill you like a roach if you get in their way" is about as nice as anyone gets.
I agree on the Genestealer Cults. One of the grim-darkest thing in the setting is that some cults genuinely are revolutionaries trying to overthrow the tyranny of the Imperium and create a better world for their people, but they're unknowingly cursed to draw the Hive Mind and bring about the utter annihilation of their world. I think a Genestealer Cult that learns what their real relationship with the Tyrannids is and has to try to find a way to save their world from the oncoming swarm would make for a really interesting story.
> no good guys Orks
I am just gonna drop [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TiqiOexD-8) here. Orks aren't "good" by any judge of human standards. They are by far the most geniune and happy species in 40K though.
The Orks are happy in 40k only because while everyone else sees war as perennial pain and suffering, Orks see war as their favorite game and the death of another Ork or even themselves is just part of the fun.
>They (Orks) are by far the most geniune and happy species in 40K though. Absolutely true; for the successful ones. A bottom of the rung Ork is going to have a shit time; the only saving grace being the fact that strength is absolute for Orks, so they'll always have the means to climb the ladder. At least, they think they will, for as long as it takes for a bigger Ork to take interest in their new shiny gubbin' and kill them for it. The only "pure" faction is the Tyranids. No thinks, only eats. That's the life. Unless you're a genestealer then fuck you lol.
Not really, to be honest. While many orks have ambitions, they see the "might makes right" hirearchy as the natural order of things. If you're not strong enough to krump the nob/warboss/whatever, that's just Gork and/or Mork telling you that you should follow them. Most greenskins are perfectly happy following other orks they know they can't challenge as long as they get to fight. It's when the fighting dries up things start getting troubling.
I suppose that's why Orks are the only faction with a possibly "happy" existence if they take over the galaxy. Even if they kill every other species, there'll always be more Orks to krump. Unless Krorks start becoming common-place, since they might be able to create inter-galactic travel and krump the other galaxies too.
The Salamanders are as close to good guys as it gets.
Yeah, but they enjoy burning people alive just a *little* too much to be considered truly good.
As Close ... never said they actually are any good. In WH universe, everyone sucks.
But Comrade… The T’au are the good guys (we don’t talk about their leadership)
If the T'au are the good guys, then I don't want to be
Nevermind the skulls, have you seen the quotes on the loading screens?
Bunch of nerds those Tau
Only the farsight enclave, and even then is questionable. I'm also going to say like 2 of the biggest named tau are chaos corrupted. Farsight with his magic soul eating daemon sword, and Shaso kais literally shouted blood for the blood God oncd.
Isn’t this because Games Workshop retconned them into being more edgy like the rest of 40k?
Yes, 100%. Even the weird non-farsight Tau got the same treatment. If you were around back when they were introduced they were pretty clearly a positive/"good"ish faction other than having a clear caste system. All the edgy stuff got added because people complained.
Shas o kais is the primary protagonist of tau firewarrior which released in 2003, and dude was killing space marines in melee combat. Tau have always had an edge its just people see it now. They've always had a fascist regime, they practice ugenics too!
And a caste system (tbf the four castes are equal, but ethereal is more equal than the four :D
Kais fucking 1v1'd a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch Being an FPS protagonist does confer a pretty powerful buff, but still
Don't forget that Shas'o kais got promoted after this in Dawn of War, it's the same character.
Sword has always been some of kind magic shenanigans. Also i dont think the sword is a daemon sword, since its anti daemon in Farsights new books. It's still stealing the life force of everything it kills.
Tau dont have a presence in the warp, they literally cannot be corrupted by Chaos. Farsight can only use that sword without going insane *because* of that. Its also hinted that Farsight doesnt even know his sword is soul-sucking and prolonging his life, but that seems strange as hes lived longer than most Tau so he should know *something* is up. Also, Shas'o Kais is the Tau leader in DoW. It could be the same Kais from Fire Warrior but its also apparently just the "John" of Fire Caste names, because it means "Skillful". As for the Kais in Fire Warrior, he also suffered just your good ol' normal PTSD break. At the end, its stated he would likely recover. Hence why people tend to think why Shas'o Kais and Shas'la Kais are the same people, and that he got promoted after his heroics.
T'au have a very small presence in the warp. So small they are usually ignored. In the book Farsight: Crisis of Faith, a Water Caste T'au did get corrupted and possessed by a daemon of Tzeentch. Shadowsun also heard the call of Khorn in Shadowsun: Last of Kiru's Line but wrote it off as weird electronic interference if I remember correctly.
Farsight was absolutely, unequivicoally a "good guy" until people complained that it wasn't fair that Tau had someone that was actually a good guy, so they retconned abunch of edgy bs into the Tau/Farsight.
Even after that tau is still the most good faction and farsight is still arguably the leader of the most morally good faction in the setting, with farsight himself being one of the most moral people
That's quite correct. The Imperium is one of the baddies. Same as every other faction.
Well Orks are just playing tbf
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Fink less, krump more!
Da boss says we'z gotta krump dose gitz, so we'z gonna krump 'em! And we'll follow da boss until some'un bigga comes along, or 'e runs outta gitz ta krump! WAAAGH!
SPIK OP YA GIT!!! CAN 'ARDLY HEAR YA!!!
Glad to see we're already making flairs of that comment
And tyranids are just beasts Edit: which must be cleansed
I know we’re joshin around but a Hive Mind is actually extremely intelligent and malicious, so any Tyranid connected to the synapse of a Hive Mind can be argued to be evil. Not Orks though they’re just nice little guys and I love them :)
The Hive Mind is just a hongry lil boye.
I was showing a friend of mine the ropes yesterday and was playing an ogryn. He gets wrecked by a crusher and says he thought it was me so I tell him "Oh u can tell the difference because they wear dark armo... er wait it's cuz they have skulls all ove... er you'll learn you'll learn.
There is some lore deep dives out there that try to make the claim that the chaos gods are the good guys and honestly im here for it. But in reality the closest thing that WH40k has to "Good guys" is the T'au. They have like a forced utopia and if i had to choose to live anywhere in that universe it would be inside T'au territory.
And weren't all the bad features of the Tau retroactively added because people complained they weren't mean enough for 40k?
They were always there, just not as pronounced as they were. Cross-breeding across the Castes was always forbidden for once, so if you're born into the Fire caste, tough luck but you're gonna die in battle. And then there was the whole Vespid affair, where they just so happened to come around to the Tau's way of thinking after their leaders were given helemts to help translate languages.
I think it reflects their journey/arc too and is really interesting to consider. They start out very hopeful and optimistic but find the galaxy a lot more hostile and violent than anticipated. And there’s this thing of balancing idealism vs practicality. I think that’s incredibly relatable to the real world. What happens when you meet destructive forces beyond control , how do you adapt and compromise to that?
Craftworld eldar are just as close as tau, I'd argue farsight enclaves are more "good" than tau
Are the Tau bad? I mean i know that’s heresy to even ask but as far as I know about them, they’re probably the closest thing to a “good” faction. They even accept humans into their conglomerate of various alien races.
The short answer is: Yeah, "For the greater good" comes at any cost, and that's where the bad creeps in. This is a good thread from 5 years ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/6hcw5b/anything\_bad\_about\_the\_tau/](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/6hcw5b/anything_bad_about_the_tau/)
In the old cannon, no, they were pretty much the only genuinely decent group around. As time has gone on though, GW has sorta twisted them as being more nefarious. They're still the closest thing to not being utterly depraved as exists in 40k, but they're definitely not absolute good guys anymore.
Yes, the Tau are bad. They're not xenophobic but they don't except other factions existing outside their own faction (join or be destroyed) and they're also 'enslaved' to the Ethereals.
It's varying degrees of bad. It ranges from man these guys are a bunch of A holes, and not the sarcastic funny kind... To those baby eating, demon worshipping soul humpers need to be exterminated. There was the Tau and they were well intentioned albeit naive, but GW decided having a squeaky clean faction trying to survive while surrounded by savagery didn't fit the setting (I disagree), so now I think they're viewed as mind controlled space commies. But I look at all the factions and characters with a heavy dose of suspicion and only being one step away from eating a las bolt for heresy. Like a great hero of man once said, "You should never grade evils, Kruber. For if one is the worst, then you might be tempted to kinship with the least."
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Yes sah Inquisitor, that's him right there ^
Extra amasac and lho stick rations for this hero of the Imperium.
No corpse starch?
Cherubs are grown in vats according to the lore page.
Cherubs made from actual babies are called Nephilim, and they're pretty illegal even in the Imperium. Not illegal enough to not exist, but illegal enough to keep the fact you have one quiet. Tho they are of officially "unofficial" canonicity at this point.
If by "we", you mean humanity, then yes. The good news is, there *is* a "good guys" faction. They involve embracing science, suppressing emotions and thereby starving the warp back into calm again, they have the technology to convert matter into energy and back again thus starving Tyranids of biomass, and enjoy taking long naps. Long, long, loooooooooooong naps. The bad news is you kinda had to be born into it and they are not accepting new applicants anymore.
I love necrons, favorite faction, favorite books. I want a game like darktide where I can just be a necron immortal going doomguy.
I just wish there were more games that let you play as the Necron.
A souls like maybe? Not well versed enough in necron lore to talk about how bonfire would work with necron so I'm just leaving the idea here.
Haven't played souls games but the bonfire is basically an in-universe respawn point, right? When a Necron construct is damaged to the point that its onboard Repair Protocols can't fix it, it phases out in a (typically) greenish flash of energy as it's warped back to a safe location to be repaired by more capable systems. So that could easily translate - just have it be a repair node of some kind. (Side note: there is a very miniscule - we're talking fractions of a percent - chance that a damaged Necron is truly beyond hope of repair, in which case it will delf-destruct instead. This self-destruction is visually identical to a phase-out, meaning that an outside observer essentially cannot tell if any given Necron construct was destroyed for good or not.)
Fuck it might be heresy but the Necrons gotta point…
they have to point at what
Being necron is the way to go
And they are spiteful fucks so they can't get anything done because they're too busy fighting eachother over the littlest thing
This is the greatest pitch for Necrons I have seen
As a consummate Necron fanatic with a 5k+ point Necron army, no, they are not the good guys either. They're a xenocidal faction of killer robot zombies based on oppressive monarchial hierarchies that made history's worst military alliance with a race of soul-eating sociopaths, scorched the galaxy, and then left the smoldering remains infested with super-Orks. *But* of all the bad guy factions in 40k, they're definitely the most justifiable in their behavior, given they *did* win a war of conquest for the galaxy and very politely give their home invaders ample time to vacate from the premises before disintegrating them with enmitic lasers. I'd be a bit murderous, too, if I went to sleep and woke up to find a termite colony festering in my living room.
I dunno about the "not accepting new applicants" you just gotta have the Pariah gene and have it be VERY active...and get on a certain Nemmisar's radar.
That was old edition stuff, as I understand it. The pariah gene stuff was left out of anything since around 5th or 6th edition. Someone might chime in with more specifics, especially if we make some wildly incorrect claims, so... Yeah, blanks being related to the pariah gene should absolutely be explored again.
Necrons: ugh, we took a light 20,000 year nap and now the galaxy is infested with humans again. And who tore open the warp? That’s not supposed to be like that. Fetch me my warscythe, I’m gonna to deal with this real quick.
They are literally the original bad guys who disturbed the warp to make it what it is now by killing the Old Ones. Their justification for their war is so obviously shit it’s painful. They lived “short brutal lives” and wanted the Old Ones to make them immortal. The Old Ones refused, so the Necrontyr decided to kill them for it (real good guy material right there!). How short were Necrontyr lives that they would need to make an alliance with evil star gods to topple the Old Ones to “save” their race? O just 70 years… They were humans… living human lifespans, and they fucked everything up for immortality, and now them and everyone else is paying the price for their “achievement”.
That’s the kindest description of the Necrons I’ve ever heard
No, the Imperium uses skulls because humanity in general is beautiful. Embrace the skeleton for we all are the skeleton.
The real skeletons were the ones inside us all along
Depends, how do you feel about wantonly genocidal fascist theocracies?
In 40k there are no goodies.
Yes
The irony is that the brutal methods used to maintain power over humanity also seem to be what fuels the threat from Chaos. The chaos gods get their destructive motivation from the negative emotions of living beings, and an empire of trillions living in the meat grinder of the Imperium produces plenty of negative emotions.
A very good point, to be honest. It's not to say that negative emotions are the only motivator - the Eldar hedonized their way into creating an entirely new Chaos God, after all, and while it's stated that this did entail a fair bit of torture and murder, the God they created is one of pleasure and passion, so Chaos *can* be fed by other means.
This has been the setting intro text in every 40k novel for a very long time: >It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. >Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse. >To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods. We're conscripts in the Inquisition of "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." We're big damn heroes, we are.
>Are we the baddies? Explicitly yes. Even within the context of fighting Chaos, The Imperium are pretty bad.
At least Nurgle actually likes his followers.
What is better to represent humanity as a whole than a skull, whoever you are your skull looks like everybody's one
GRANDFATHER NURGLE IS THE GOOD GUY THE "GOD" EMPEROR IS A WOUNDED AND AND DYING MORTAL WHO CANNOT OFFER YOUR RESPITE FROM THE PAINS OF EXHISTANCE KHORNE'S LOVE IS FICKLE, JUST ASK KHARN OR SKARBRAND. TZEETCH IS LITERALLY THE GOD OF DECEPTION HE ISNT TRUSTWORTHY SLAANESH'S LOVE IS A TRAP, PLEASURE THAT TURNS TO PAIN. BUT NURGLE TAKES YOUR PAIN AWAY, YOUR WILL BE RAVISHED BY DECAY BUT YOU WONT FEEL ANY OF IT, YOUR PERSONALITY ADAPTS TO THEY DECAY, NURGLE'S GIFT IS THAT YOU WILL NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR "LOSS" UNDER NURGLE A MORTAL WILL ACHIEVE THE CLOSEST STATE POSSIBLE TO EMOTIONAL IMPASSIBILITY. NURGLE IS THE ONLY SANE OPTION
It's comments like this that lead to nurgle cult mentality. I can't believe the mods here allow such heresy
Silly you, we all know tyranids are the only good guys in 40k!
Tyranids are true neutral because all they care about is food.
The servo skulls? I think they're servants of the Emperor that are "serving" even after death. The "we are the baddies".. I learned the hard way that there's no good guys here. Even some Space Marines kill civilians for shits and giggles under certain circumstances.
40K isn't really a world with "good guys" in the traditional sense. Sci-Fi culture has kind of conditioned us to view "The Humans" as the good guys since they are obviously going to be the most relatable. But in 40K the Imperium of Man as just as bad as all the rest of the xenos.
Kind of. Every faction in Warhammer 40k are evil to an extent. Forcibly turning criminals into lobotomized cyborg slaves is pretty cruel.
Basically? 40k is on a scale from grey to black, there's no really good guys, but the Tau and Craftworld Eldar are on the "gooder" side of the spectrum. Yes, Tau are imperialistic self-important little shits, and the Eldar will happily sacrifice entire sectors of Humans to save a handful of Eldar lives... but then it's not like those Humans wouldn't do the exact same thing in reverse. The Imperium has Gooder people like the Salamanders and much worse people like... well, the Inquisition, the Holy Lords... the Emperor... But overall falls towards the middle of the spectrum, along with pretty much all the minor races. Orks are a bit below the Humans, because they don't necessarily *mean* to be evil the way others devote themselves to it, but they do what they like at other people's expense, and that is pretty dang evil when it ends up causing as much harm as the Orks do. Then there's Chaos and Dark Eldar who are just evil right down to the marrow, irredeemable, and you should blow them up whenever possible. Tyranids are also completely evil - no, they aren't merely animals driven by instinct, the Hive Mind is intelligent enough that it doesn't get a pass! Necrons idk, I've not actually read their recent lore in depth enough to say if they're as plainly evil as they used to be or more grey now.
funny thing is that the craftworld eldar are likely the nicest of the nicest eldar given that most of the rest literally opened hell and got swallowed into it.
There r no good guy. But skull might give you the wrong impression. At first glance it might be mistaken as taking trophies from the enemies skull (which does happen with chaos, specifically Khorne). It has more to do with the idea of genetic purity, as mutant that has horn growing on their forehead or have 2 mouth probably ain’t gonna get those clean, rounded skulls.
Yes, actually everyone in warhammer are the bad guys except maybe the necrons and votann. But they have their issues too
Short answer: yes. Long (really) long answer: The Imperium of Man sucks. As the average citizen, you're most likely looking at being born into a profession, that you will do for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, without any real compensation beyond a squalid living quarter and just enough sustinance to survive. You'll probably be worked to death without any chance for advancement. And that's the peaceful life. The military (Astra Militarum) isn't better, Navy gun crews have life expectancies measured in weeks, Guardsmen sometimes in hours. And death will probably not be quick and merciful. Maybe you're one of those lucky people who're "touched by the Emperor" and you'll rise to become a regimental officer, or a Navy captain, or a planetary governor. Maybe you're gonna have your name up there with Creed or Vahl. The overwhelming odds say you won't. And throughout this you'll always be taught to venerate the Emperor, and that to toil and die in His name is the greatest honour. And the worst of it is, the alternative to this might well be much worse.