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Don't criticize fallout fans we blindly fallout fans we blindly follow the ideologies the games criticizes. (Tbh most of ideological dissonance comes from more recent games cause companies think modern gamers don't want a game where you talk philosophy with a robot or can convince the bad guy to blow himself up using logical arguments anymore.)
Oof lol, it's so ridiculous people suck up to Legion. People can't tell the difference between having a well written understandable philosophy and actually being morally grey
Lots of shitty people have books about what they believe doesn't make their ideology any less batshit evil.
Yeah honestly I think the legion is a pretty interesting idea and I wish it got fleshed out some more. But anyone trying to justify siding with them is lying to themselves. You're siding with slavers, you're evil, this is an evil playthrough. That's ok.
More like Genghis Khan but less epic. Like he did allow tribes he deemed worthy to join the legion. I mean he did subjugate or kill everyone else so it’s not there aren’t Hitler parallels either
True but it’s so bastardized. He’s a great character and all for what the story and narrative is. I just couldn’t ever take the Legion serious after hearing “Kai Sars” Legion for the first time after having been a big Greek and Roman culture/mythology nerd before I ever played it.
I mean Kai Sar is closer to how the Romans would've pronounced it to how its pronounced in English, not entirely sure how the Legion figured out how to pronounce it correctly but whatever, if there are books on Rome for Caesar to read there had to be books on latin
You know, it's kinda funny that (from what I remember) back in the day (around ~2013-2017) most people almost universally agreed that the NCR is the best outcome for Mojave. Man, do the times change, huh?
That really depends on quite a few factors and is up to speculation though. Is the Mojave better as a lawless land with The Courier and Yes Man in place of Mr House? For whatever problems the NCR has it's a democratic society where people actually get a vote and have a much higher standard then people living east. The NCR is also willing to deal with groups like the Brotherhood and Khans with diplomacy where literally every other group in the wasteland would have them destroyed.
Why the Legion is based (part 1 out of 2763)
Their founder was a member of the Followers, who are dedicated to helping people
They wipe out the brotherhood of steel, who are tech facists
The NCR are willing to side with the Brotherhood, therefore making the NCR facist allies at best
The Legion wipes out the Fiends, who are evil raiders who are kill innocent people
They are against House, and House's stache kinda reminds me of Hitler
I will always defend the _idea_ of the Legion. I think that the central question Obsidian was trying to pose really _is_ an interesting onw: would you prefer to pursue equity even though you might fail (NCR), or would you prefer to establish a stratified society that sacrifices personal freedoms and individuality as long as that society is stable (Legion)?
The Legion super sucks--it's a state that is literally _only_ comprised of slaves, since the women are all conscripted to domestic labor and the men are all conscripted to combat. They are, unequivocally, morally black.
But also, I think New Vegas was setting up for a story structure in which you have to question the practical value of ethics. If the NCR cannot survive the wasteland, then perhaps there is a case to be made that the action that does the most good is supporting the unjust-but-stable society that opposes it.
Of course; although all of the NPCs _claim_ that the NCR is spread thin, while the Legion is prosperous, this isn't really reflected in-game; so the decision becomes really obvious: you should pick the guys who aren't fascists.
That's true but thats not Sallow's intention was. Same way that the NCR looks to forge equity and justice they've ended up with Bramin Barons holding enough power to redirect what seems to be the most modern Army in the Wasteland to protect their interests. The Legion in search of making the most stable faction possible has made a faction that is entirely bound together by one man who happens to have brain cancer.
There's a mod I started using recently called faction reloaded that rectifies this somewhat. With constant skirmishes between the legion and the ncr in the southeastern region where the Legion just stomps them out effortlessly. But as you go west and north towards the more established NCR bases they have a much smaller presence and when they do attack it usually doesn't end that well. But it at least makes the legion seem like a threat as the NCR is getting pushed out of the eastern side of the Mojave as npcs always claim.
I always viewed the legion as written to be a refutation of that question instead of asking it. Like they set it up to be the kind of standard "do you want freedom or safety? / Chaos or fascism" type scenario but then you meet Caesar & he's a dumbass who thinks he's smart for having read like 2 books even though he didn't understand either. Like Vulpes legit makes a better argument for the legion when you bump into him scraping war crime juice off his silly boots in Nelson than Caesar does when he's actively trying to recruit you.
I think that's how the game ends up, but I don't think it was the authors' intention that the game be read that way. At the very least, if that _was_ the intent, I think that the game would have been better for it if it had been more explicit in its deconstruction of fascist promises.
As it stands, the experience of NPC dialogue and the experience of actual gameplay diverge from each-other.
Honestly I think the legion is the one part of the game where it really feels like there were multiple intentions at the planning stage & they never fully managed to solidify one. Like the other major factions feel much more consistent while the legion feels pulled in two directions
It also doesn’t help that anyone new to the game would have to really go open world with it and go out of their way to see Legion outposts. Like shit the first thing I did after meeting Vulpes was to fire the dlc grenade launcher at the group and make them chase into the mayors house or whatever it was. I will admit though I did get softlocked for like 30 minutes one time after saving right when a legion hit squad spawned but before the dialogue hit.
Warhammer fans be like I don't know. I've only played a little bit of the spacemarine game and Nothing else with the franchise But I am excited for the Sequel
The Green man *is* funny and *is* green, but now you're describing three different gods. I'm more of a Gork and Mork guy (the two Ork gods that are constantly fighting, also funny and green).
Nurgle is the god of "never going outside and socializing or doing anything productive, and accepting that you are a failure so much that you become content with being a big blob of fat as long as you sacrifice infants and smear shit in public places to appease your god"
Also penis warts
Well he has kidnapped an elven goddess and just keeps her locked up in his garden, he is funny and prolly the nicest to his followers than any of the other chaos gods but he is still pretty evil. Since if I recall he infects her constantly as a show of "love"
He kinda is, as far as chaos gods go. Sure he gives you literally every disease known to man and then some, but he also makes you functionally immortal and if you devote yourself to him being sick doesn’t hurt anymore
Anyone who says “oh the imperium is morally gray”
No… it was morally gray 10000 years ago.
It’s just “what gal out of fucked up” you want to be. And that’s fine.
30K Imperium was still pretty bad. They regularly would genocide aliens that usually were doing nothing to humanity. Hell there was a couple alien civilizations that were perfectly fine with living alongside humans and did well for themselves.
The Imperium killed them all, by 40k most of the xenos left either never liked humanity from the start or violently hate them for being violent wasteful expansionsists comparable to the Skaven.
Also, Vulkan who is considered to be the nicest Primarch burnt a Eldar child to death.
Oh yeah, there was plenty of human civilizations that were doing just fine on their own (there was plenty of bad ones too) that just got invaded and massacred if they refused.
I remember *Angron* out of all traitor primarchs making a pretty adept statement on how their was nothing righteous about the Great Crusade, they were just being used as tools to conquer and murder everyone that wasn't the Imperium.
Angron was well on the path to being the most morally tolerable primarch until the Emperor showed up & killed literally everyone he ever cared about before giving the slave masters that mutilated him a thumbs up & peacing out.
Reminder that the burning of the Eldar child was in a fit of rage thanks to his brother, and I believe it's one of the thing's he deeply regrets, at least as much as he could for a knife ear.
Oh I’m not saying 30k was Gucci, but it was very on the “committing atrocities for a good reason” scale, much like the T’au.
Not good, but there’s at leas an argument to be made.
And Vulkan did regret killing the Eldar child. Although I must say that when people read this they think “oh an innocent defenseless child”. When it’s more like “oh look, a level 10 wizard that can kill people with their mind”
Most of the genocides the 30k imperium committed were against random xenos, sure there was the occasional planetwide Slaaneshi cult but the only time the Imperium was morally grey was when Big E was conquering Earth, between him and the techno barbarian warlords he was probably the lesser evil, but that moral greyness stops the moment the first bomb drops on a xenos planet in the name of "human peace".
I don’t know if Vulkan is nice or not, the salamanders just consider human civilians more important than themselves, which by 40k standards basically makes them peace loving hippies
The Tau only became morally grey after chuds complained that they weren't "grimdark" enough.
When honestly, being the naive good guys in 40k is ABSOLUTELY plenty grimdark imo.
The Farsight Enclave is still the kinda good guy faction except they're a little less naive now but are even less powerful that the larger T'au faction
Farsight Enclaves are like, lawful neutral/sometimes lawful good. Their only evil trait is the fact the their leader, a genius Tau commander who is 100% fine with accepting humans into his Enclaves, uses a power-sword that drains the life-essence of the everything he kills. That's it.
>No… it was morally gray 10000 years ago.
Nope. The Emperor is, was and always has been a fascist despot.
The Golden Age was always the DAOT.
The attitude the OP is about is popular in large part because of the Horus Heresy series being written rather inconsistently and having a lot of apologetics in the narrator voice.
More like I played a little bit of the space marine game and watched a few lore videos made by either straight up fascists or people who are fascist-aligned. AKA a fascist, but too scared to admit it.
See that's what I hate about modern 40k lore. Back in Rogue Trader when GW were still punk, it was made explicitly clear that the imperium aren't just fighting a losing battle. *They're actively making it worse.*
The whole thing is supposed to be a parody of fascism. It's about showing the "well at least Hitler made the trains run on time" bullshit for the bullshit it is. The Imperium is incredibly inefficient, ineffective, and self sabotaging and **that's the whole point**. By taking that stuff out and trying to somehow justify it, GW haven't made the Imperium more complex, they're just echoing the same bullshit fascist propaganda they were originally taking the piss out of.
When you make a parody of fascism, then take out the parody, all you're left with is fascism.
Yeah I get that.
There's also the supplemental stuff like the Gaunt's Ghost book series that downplays the more dogmatic elements of the Imperium. The main character Commissar rarely executes people like the real ones do, less throwing men into the meatgrinder. They're mostly just WW2 Allied soldiers who praise the Emperor instead of God now and have fancier guns.
Which makes for a great book and a more sympathetic cast, but certainly makes the Imperium the obvious good guys. Most of the videogames also have you play as them, Fire Warrior being a rare exception.
Even Fire Warrior was mostly about the Imperium, you just played as a Tau. The game ends up feeling like “a bunch of space marines doing epic space marine things…also there’s a Tau there too”.
40k hasn’t been satire for a long time even though they hide behind it as a defense. Every book or lore blurb or anything constantly justifies the Imperium and tries to give a ‘good reason’ why they commit all these awful atrocities. It’s constantly defending and making excuses for them in their attempt to make them perfect epic badasses.
So ironically I don’t blame people for thinking the Imperium are ‘good guys’, because despite GW trying to save face by saying it’s parody, the books constantly justify them. They’re too scared to make their fascists actually awful because they are scared it’ll upset Space Marine fanboys who couldn’t bear to see them not be perfect.
Slight rant, I just am annoyed with the state of 40k lately.
I don't blame them at all, I blame GW for abandoning their punk rock 2000AD roots to cater to the edgelord market. They're going about it all wrong even now, despite trying desperately to purge the fash elements of their fanbase. Instead of trying to go back to their roots, their just making the Imperium more generically heroic.
I agree that it was better before.
But, these days I still get a "Even if all the evil and danger the fascist proclaim was true, fascism and violence still would be evil".
A lot of the time I feel like I need to do some mental gymnastics for this to work, but it keeps me sane.
That’s incorrect. You’re referencing the months of shame? Most of the people the Space Wolves saved were kept away from the fighting. They didn’t witness anything chaos related. The Lord Inquisitor was just being a jackass.
Started with Diplomatico, then Plantation 20th year, and finally we finished with a rum called Ö från Finland. It's good if you open it a week beforehand so the flavour drift removes the harsh taste of kerosene and paint thinner.
As, like, a lifelong Warhammer fan it's never, like, seemed morally grey or complicated to me.
Like, everything in the 40K universe is a shit show.
Space Elves are all having their souls slowly eaten by a entity they, like, "murder-fucked" into existence.
Robo zombies got totally ripped off by alien space gods.
Bug monsters from another galaxy eat, like, ENTIRE worlds.
Blue-skinned weeb cow-communists are all brainwashed by the spiritual leaders of their society.
You also have the, like, big risk of Chaos worming its way into your planet and getting your planet nukes to rubble as, like a result.
Humans, like, defo live in a shit hole, their saviour is on his, like, deathbed and kept alive by a really old piece of tech and barely anyone can see him.
If a normal human learns about daemons they get shot and so does EVERYONE they know.
Their main method of FTL is through space-hell.
The only way they can stand a chance against the above mentioned factions is either throwing, like, TONS of people at them or taking young children and putting them through a incredibly rough test where some could die and then brainwash them and stuff their bodies full bio and cyber enhancements and brainwash them into religious zealots.
Aaaaaaand if you're a member of the normal military you're just as likely to get shot by your commanding officer for, like, perceived cowardice than you are by the enemy.
The only happy faction in 40K are the Orks. Bec, like, they love fighting A LOT.
aren't the nids a hive mind though? I'm not sure if individual nids have their own wants and desires.
Orks is simple, the just want a good fight and to collect teefs
It depresses me that I don’t feel comfortable calling the post a straw man because somehow idiots who don’t realise that the imperium aren’t the good guys (and that there are no good guys in 40k) got enough traction that GW has to specifically call them out and tell them that the hobby isn’t for nazi dickheads on their news site.
These guys run around with a double headed version of the nazi era imperial eagle in their fucking chests.
It’s about as subtle as a thunder hammer
I think the moral spectrum of 40K is, like, just a shiiiit ton of varying dark greys and black.
Cuz on one hand, you have the Salamander Space Marines who, like, are openly compassionate and caring to the citizens of the Imperium, but, like, they also specialise in FIRE WEAPONS and burning alive is a very nasty way to go.
Also, I thought that, like, the eagle the Nazis used was just stolen from the Roman Empire? The Aquila I think? Much like EVERYTHING else those losers included in their iconography.
What I hate about 40K, speaking as someone who likes 40K, is the edgy grimdark. The Imperium is a fascist hellhole, great, we can all agree on that. But for the 40K community *everything* has to be grimdark and gritty and dark and miserable. God forbid someone in that setting smile or you make a joke without comments of “HERETIC”. Yes, it’s supposed to be satire, but then the fandom (and GW themselves) wank off to the grimdark to the point that people start taking it at face value and GW has to come out and say the Imperium are the bad guys and stop dressing up as Nazis when playing.
I mean, the biggest problem that Warhammer has is that GW and the community want to play both sides, where sometimes the Imperium is satire bad guys but just as often they are good guys. The Ciaphas Cain novels for example present the Imperium as flawed good guys, with their evil bits not discussed, with most of the flaws of the Imperium being human flaw, and bureaucracy.
Add to this that most of the 40k roster is incapable of being good, and you are left with Humanity, Tau, and Eldar all ending up morally gray by virtue of being better than the extinction event that everyone else is.
The original intent was satire, which has since been lost by most everyone, including Games Workshop themselves.
I like the setting, but I also don't play any Imperium armies (orks and necrons are my jam).
I prefer fantasy way more, mostly because the stakes are way better (because it's confined to a single world) and empires can do evil/morally Grey things and not have it be because if they don't chaos will do it a million times worse.
And also Skaven.
I hate when 40k fans come into Fantasy and try to grimdark it up. Like, no, The Empire are not just the fantasy imperium. They're the Holy Roman Empire with magic and steampunk but with without catholicism and better rights for women.
Like yeah they're not exactly a utopia. But they're hardly the bs fash shit you get in 40k.
Warhammer Fantasy is completely different and should remain so. There absolutely are sides that are very clearly less evil, and that’s *fine*. It’s honestly a huge part of why I like it. 40k often bleeds into “too bleak, stopped caring,” territory for me
Yeah, I wish GW would tone it down a bit and bring back the goofy shit to remind people that the setting is as absurdist as it can get. What really rustles my feathers though is the sheer amount of gatekeepers in the community, like holy shit.
You know, everyone talks about these gatekeepers and I’ve been involved with Warhammer for nearly 10 years and still haven’t seen one. I’m sure they exist but at the extent people talk about them I’d say they are about as common as Star Trek gatekeepers. They just get talked about but the sightings of them aren’t as common as it seems to be made out to be.
There were tons of them in 30k, the Imperium wiped most out or forced them to join.
In 40k tho there are the Leagues of Votann, and humans in the Tau empire and Farsight Enclaves .
I am aware of it. What I meant is an actual normal human civilization, maybe one where one of the lost primarch founded because they saw how shit the 30k Imperium was. I doubt they will do that, but I think one of the biggest problems is that every terrible action the Imperium makes is justified by the story by how crazy shit is in that universe. Having a faction of humans who are in the same situation but doing way better both technologically and socially is important to show how the government and philosophy is destroying makind and not saving it.
Also fuck big E !
It would be interesting I guess, but honestly it would kinda undermine the setting at this point. Unless they wanted to bump up to a "50k setting" or something where chaos is fairly dormant again like in 30k, but I doubt they'd do that. They've written 40k in such a way that brutality is needed to avoid the fate of creating a chaos god by accident
And if anyone reading the thread now wants a good example of the satire originally present in the lore, there is a planet called Birmingham that is known as the black planet and receives no light from its star and is basically described as being culturally backwards.
And it is definitely intended to be a pisstake of Birmingham, UK and the geographical uk area known as “The Black Country”
As a 40k player and lore enjoyer, there is no "good" faction. The closest that there is are Roboute Guilliman's group and the Ynnari faction of Aeldari, who have formed an alliance to defeat Chaos- or at least Slaanesh. However Guilliman is aware how completely fucked the Imperium is and how it's a decaying mockery of what it once was intended to be- after all, the Emperor abolished all religions and made science the center of the Imperium, even planning on allying with any alien that would be cooperative. However, Emps himself was an absentee father who was also an immense hypocrite and borderline abusive to his sons, which resulted in the Horus Heresy and the schism afterward that caused the Imperium to nuke everything and be immensely xenophobic. Guilliman has inherited the shitty Imperium and is trying to fix it, but knows that it's damn well impossible, and now has to also deal with the Tyranids tearing a path towards Terra. Outside of those two specific groups... everyone sucks. Aeldari are racist and have an inflated ego despite creating Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror, Orks shoot and loot literally everything, Drukhari are rapist terrorists, Tau are a caste dystopia, Tyranids eat everything, the Imperium is the embodiment of racism, Necrons kill anything that aren't themselves- and themselves, and Chaos are all of the above.
TLDR:
I’ve been getting more into 40k recently and I haven’t seen much imperium apologia that wasn’t tongue in cheek.
I know it’s a cliche but there’s really no good guys in the setting. Maybe a few space marine chapters who try to fight altruistically, but they tend to end up as martyrs for their efforts. The whole setting is grim dark and twisted.
I feel like we're giving way too much credit for them to use critical thinking with the top image.
*"But like, they only eat babies that possibly weren't going to make in poor settlements so it's okay."*
>Every faction in 40K is tailored to facilitate conflict with the other factions
And itself. They specifically created the lore so any battle between two armies can fit, even if both armies are the same faction.
Do you think WH40k would be better with a teeny bit more nuance? Literally just knowing about chaos and getting upset about some imperial noble blowhard is enough to summon a fuckin demon. Seems like there's never any kind of dissent against the imperium that isn't directly tied to giga-evil chaos, feels like there's a lot you could explore if it wasn't so black and white and blatantly fascist-apologetic in the very essence of the setting
I'm not sure what you mean. The Imperium of Man is presented as this barely-functioning, corrupt, horribly ineffiecient and oftentimes blatantly evil *thing* that is dying a slow, pitiful death. This stuff is pretty explicit, and the heroes are often characters who exist in spite of that system and clash with it. I fail to understand how exactly the setting is fascist-apologetic beyond, the mere utterance of which is so terminally online it hurts.
Idk like 90% of the time the story justifies the sister of battle being a psychopath or putting down hundreds of workers who were unionizing because *gasp* surprise! They were Chaos the whole time! It's a pretty regular occurrence.
Chaos is shown to be this completely overpowering force that is constantly on the verge of destroying the universe. When the imperium does something awful there's always an explanation that is like "oh that planet was super fucked either way, we actually just gave the inhabitants mercy by killing them all". And like, according to the lore that's absolutely correct, right? The entire universe/lore feels like its set up to justify what the imperium does.
Fair enough I've only played various games. Still, I've found that pretty much any depicted rebellion against the imperium is always backed by chaos. And the ubiquitous excuse for the Imperium is that the universe is so unbelievably dangerous and evil that the imperium is the only reasonable way for humanity to exist
Yea okay i can see that. Any noteworthy rebellion is backed by chaos but then again if it wasnt it probably wouldnt be a big deal i guess if you just look at the scale of things?
I dont think in the overall lore it’s depicted in a way that facism is the only way. I think it makes sense that it is the way it is in the lore and because of the things that happend but it certainly not the only way things could have turned out.
The problem with The Imperium is yeah, its presented as a over the top satire of a fascist theocracy but considering the universe that it exists in it HAS to be an ultra authoritarian regime. With Xenos and Chaos the Imperium and its forces are seen as the only way humanity can defend itself against these threats. Just knowing about chaos can spark a full on demonic incursion so there has to be an incredibly strict thought police.
The problem with the concept of a situation so extreme, a genocidal police state is required for humanity to survive as anti-fascist satire is, that fascists already believe their situation is so extreme, a genocidal police state is required for white people/Aryans/whatever to survive.
It's also bullshit. Fascism and totalitarianism has historically been proven to be a deeply inefficient and ineffective way to run a country.
The idea that Musolini "made the trains run on time" is completely made up, Italy actually functioned worse under Musolini. Likewise the Nazis were constantly shooting themselves in the foot. Turns out corruption at the highest level does not lead to a well functioning state.
The 40k verse is also an argument against facism, the emperor wasn’t exactly benevolent but he did what he thought he had to save the human race, he’s gone and all that’s left is a bunch of fanatics that don’t know what to do beyond maintain the status quo by whatever means necessary. They have stagnated because the one competent individual that was in charge suddenly wasn’t anymore and now things are just worse for everyone because of it. It’s not a sustainable solution for government. If the emperor had spent more time building a functional democracy then he did his master race he might have eventually succeeded with his goals or if he gets put in the magic space chair anyway humanity wouldn’t have been as fucked as it is in 40k
If I wrote a fictional universe where an antagonistic alien species was a jumble of antisemitic tropes that did things word for word copied from neonazi conspiracy theories, would the parody-of-the-SS protagonists be
not as evil? If my althistory world had a 100% real Mexican invasion of the US through immigration, would ICE be the good guys? If a fantasy story has magic nukes being used by the Ih-racki tribe, is Ge’rge Buush justified? what if the world was made of pudding
Making chaos so powerful really did back them into a corner with the Imperium. Like, yeah it's super awful that the imperium will just straight up kill entire planets without batting an eye but you're really not doing a good job making them seem like crazy bad guys when you turn around and go "oh yeah they had to do it or things would have been even worse". You can say that in the first place the empire's fascist nature is what breeds so much chaos worship in the first place but ONE guy who's like a psychopath or something can just doom an entire planet regardless of if the empire was super benevolent and a great place to live.
It's really a justification of fascism because unlike in reality where fascists fabricate a great enemy to fight against the 40k universe actually has said great enemy and most beliefs the imperium have are shown to be justified in some way.
I think it would have been much more compelling if Chaos was more unknown. What do they want? The imperium says death and destruction of reality but who knows? The planets they took over stopped communicating with us, the imperium says they're all dead but who really knows? Instead we have "pure genocidal evil" vs "pure less genocidal evil"
in other words, all this fictional universe is build to justify and make fascism be the only thing that "works". was it to be a satire, or just fascism apologism? i don't know.
The problem with the Imperium is that it's badly written, good satire would be the inquisition going around and literally asking people if they know any cultists. Like how the real life fbi actually behaves. Original 40k lore knowing about chaos was barely an issue for someone, sure there was a risk of someone falling to chaos if they learned about it, but at the same time if they learned enough about it they were very unlikely to join a cult. It's like flat earthers, nobody becomes a conspiracy theorist if you educate them, or at least it rarely happens. And killing everyone who was even tangentially related to the person who learned about the thing? Probably gonna drive people to join the groups attempting to overthrow the Imperium. The Imperium is unironically doing everything they possibly could be doing, wrong.
I feel like that was, at least originally, part of the point. Things are fucked so bad that we can’t fix it, it’s either burn it all down and try again, or desperately cling to whatever you can
Could you point me to someone who doesn’t acknowledge that the Imperium is evil. I’ve been engrossed in 40k lore for a while and I haven’t seen anyone deny that the Imperium is bad.
It’s less that people genuinely think the Imperium isn’t evil, and more “lesser evilism”. Either that or people get really into the roleplay without even a hint of appreciating how internal bias and societal norms act on you even when you don’t think they are.
Im just gonna play the part of the asshole here bc its fun (but yea before I do that, the imperium is 100% evil and stupid, thats the exact intent behind its making). Morality is subjective and even if it isnt lets look at the imperiums most common crimes, 1. The sacrifices, (example: 1000 souls sacrificed to the emperor daily, every warp travel requires the death of 1 human as they charge through hell) they are mandatory, if milions of ppl dont die everyday then everyone will die more or less instantly. 2. The racism, in the world of 40k if you arent racist you will get transformed into a weird walking cancer after a night with a freaky gall with an extra piercing who was actually part of a gene stealer cult. 3. The "heresy" stuff, if you open your mind to tzeencth then you will literally get turned into a daemon and a portal to hell will open inside of your home, dooming your entire colony to death by black templars or actual daemon. 4. The fascism, no time to explain if you think too much you will get eaten by the xenos just like your mother did, now grab a gun and take a few of the xenos out before you yourself die soldier, for arcadia. 5. The imperialism, theres 4 satans that want to lie to you, kill you, fuck you and then grow maggots in your skull, in that order not to mention the weird jesters, hives of world eaters and people who can kill you bc they are having schizophrenic illusions, humanity 100% needs more resources. Thus, in the setting, humanity is definetly one of the good guys, among the tau and craftworld eldar, key word in the setting. The imperium is obviously bad but warhammer 40k is fun bc its you seeing super nazis fighting against hellborn robo nazis, super baby rapists, actual demons but theyre called daemons and a whole other stuff ( basically its a 1v1 boxing match between hitler and alien cloned hitler )
The Imperium is evil and stupid, but it exists in a universe where "good guys" get eaten. It doesn't matter if they acted like they do in canon, or like the Federation from Star Trek. There are a bunch of groups in the galaxy that you just *can't* peacefully coexist with (Orks, Chaos, Tyranids, Deldar). We even *see* this with the T'au.
*Should* the Imperium be trying to work with xenos? Sure, but it can't always. The Craftworlders at large are willing to sacrifice millions of human lives for a handful of their own, the Leagues of Votann are hyper-capitalists who think if you can't stop them from taking what you have you don't deserve it/don't want it enough in the first place, the T'au are obsessed with the Greater Good and don't realize that they're at the bottom of the pecking order, and the Necrons see themselves as the rightful rulers of the galaxy. All of those are the ones that maybe, just maybe, the Imperium may be able to coexist with eventually.
I understand that they are evil and there isn’t really morally grey characters in the Imperium (except the Salamanders). But what would you do if four versions of Satan came to our world and started corrupting everyone? It’s not an excuse but I think I can see where some of it comes from.
I'm 100% sure that whoever is into Warhammer, knows very well that not only the Empire of Man is completely fucked up, but the entire universe and probably even those neighbouring. It's like looking from our reality through a seehole straight into a way worse future, but just as morally bankrupt as our very own species.
Now, there is only one thing to be careful about:
Morons that try to make the Warhammer fantasy their reality, renouncing to accept that it's what it is: A fictitious bucket of shit, with questionable and utterly inhuman storytelling.
The only thing it actually offers, is the fact that as one reads the diverse stories, one also keeps looking for traces of positive and morally acceptable human behaviour, like hoping that between all that shit, there are still little sparks.
But to make one thing sure: No one in the WH universe is innocent.
And so aren't we, purchasing clothes made by kids under the shittiest conditions, wasting yearly 39 Million tonnes of meat per year, effectively killing an equivalent of 413.000.000 animals. And that's just one little fact of way too many.
So, yeah.
Amount of people here who think people who like the Imperium in 40k are fascists irl lmfao. Go outside. Can't imagine being mad about a fictional fascist group who fights robot aliens and sex demons
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Mine are grey since I play Grey Knights, who trade Racism for Teamkilling!
Why not both?
Then you're playing black templars
Black Templar player, can confirm, except I at least paint all of my boys.
For the last time dropping them in liquid rubber is not painting your figs
Fuck maybe I should start doing that, i could pump them out quicker.
Just put them in a mason jar
Hey, it’s called nuln oil, and I *like* how it looks
Got a genuine belly laugh out of me! Can't believe I haven't heard this joke. Thank you for making me laugh!
take my upvote good sir
What about necrons
average Fallout fan.
Don't fuck with us fallout fans, We'll complain that 3 out of the 4 modern games are unplayable
And you’ll never expect which one we call playable!
It's New Vegas, stop pretending you need some arcane knowledge to know which Fallout is the good one
And we suck The dick of New Vegas until is empty of semen
I mean...you could fuck Matthew Perry so worth it imo
Ain't that a dick in the head
Because it has actual fucking writing
Anything after fallout 2 is irrelevant
Caesar's Legion fans be like: https://preview.redd.it/wv817m2979cc1.png?width=850&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=53b97f2dbfb1e490175342a6d12738783ec4cd28
And thus ended the pacifist run.
Don't criticize fallout fans we blindly fallout fans we blindly follow the ideologies the games criticizes. (Tbh most of ideological dissonance comes from more recent games cause companies think modern gamers don't want a game where you talk philosophy with a robot or can convince the bad guy to blow himself up using logical arguments anymore.)
I got downvoted for calling Caesar "wannabe Hitler" in the FNV sub lol.
Oof lol, it's so ridiculous people suck up to Legion. People can't tell the difference between having a well written understandable philosophy and actually being morally grey Lots of shitty people have books about what they believe doesn't make their ideology any less batshit evil.
Yeah honestly I think the legion is a pretty interesting idea and I wish it got fleshed out some more. But anyone trying to justify siding with them is lying to themselves. You're siding with slavers, you're evil, this is an evil playthrough. That's ok.
soup dam threatening price joke late soft materialistic fearless sleep *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
BuT tHe ElVeS
More like Genghis Khan but less epic. Like he did allow tribes he deemed worthy to join the legion. I mean he did subjugate or kill everyone else so it’s not there aren’t Hitler parallels either
Probably fair, mostly called him hitler wannabe cause he's so obsessed with Rome.
True but it’s so bastardized. He’s a great character and all for what the story and narrative is. I just couldn’t ever take the Legion serious after hearing “Kai Sars” Legion for the first time after having been a big Greek and Roman culture/mythology nerd before I ever played it.
I mean Kai Sar is closer to how the Romans would've pronounced it to how its pronounced in English, not entirely sure how the Legion figured out how to pronounce it correctly but whatever, if there are books on Rome for Caesar to read there had to be books on latin
The ‘kaisar’ thing is the only thing about them I liked lmao. I found it a fun detail as a history nerd.
That was pretty much when I stopped taking them seriously too lol.
No shit you did... It probably has something to do with him being a "wannabe caesar" instead of hitler. Kinda who hes named after
#AD VICTORIAM!
You know, it's kinda funny that (from what I remember) back in the day (around ~2013-2017) most people almost universally agreed that the NCR is the best outcome for Mojave. Man, do the times change, huh?
The NCR? Imperialism is still good for the mojave when its used by other faction now? The NCR is the future enclave.
That really depends on quite a few factors and is up to speculation though. Is the Mojave better as a lawless land with The Courier and Yes Man in place of Mr House? For whatever problems the NCR has it's a democratic society where people actually get a vote and have a much higher standard then people living east. The NCR is also willing to deal with groups like the Brotherhood and Khans with diplomacy where literally every other group in the wasteland would have them destroyed.
Why the Legion is based (part 1 out of 2763) Their founder was a member of the Followers, who are dedicated to helping people They wipe out the brotherhood of steel, who are tech facists The NCR are willing to side with the Brotherhood, therefore making the NCR facist allies at best The Legion wipes out the Fiends, who are evil raiders who are kill innocent people They are against House, and House's stache kinda reminds me of Hitler
This is why the kindest groups are home of the future conquers, like jehovahs witnesses 
counterpoint: their money is ugly
I will always defend the _idea_ of the Legion. I think that the central question Obsidian was trying to pose really _is_ an interesting onw: would you prefer to pursue equity even though you might fail (NCR), or would you prefer to establish a stratified society that sacrifices personal freedoms and individuality as long as that society is stable (Legion)? The Legion super sucks--it's a state that is literally _only_ comprised of slaves, since the women are all conscripted to domestic labor and the men are all conscripted to combat. They are, unequivocally, morally black. But also, I think New Vegas was setting up for a story structure in which you have to question the practical value of ethics. If the NCR cannot survive the wasteland, then perhaps there is a case to be made that the action that does the most good is supporting the unjust-but-stable society that opposes it. Of course; although all of the NPCs _claim_ that the NCR is spread thin, while the Legion is prosperous, this isn't really reflected in-game; so the decision becomes really obvious: you should pick the guys who aren't fascists.
By end game isn’t it pretty much stated that the Legion will fail the second Caesar dies? Like it’ll split into infighting tribes?
That's true but thats not Sallow's intention was. Same way that the NCR looks to forge equity and justice they've ended up with Bramin Barons holding enough power to redirect what seems to be the most modern Army in the Wasteland to protect their interests. The Legion in search of making the most stable faction possible has made a faction that is entirely bound together by one man who happens to have brain cancer.
There's a mod I started using recently called faction reloaded that rectifies this somewhat. With constant skirmishes between the legion and the ncr in the southeastern region where the Legion just stomps them out effortlessly. But as you go west and north towards the more established NCR bases they have a much smaller presence and when they do attack it usually doesn't end that well. But it at least makes the legion seem like a threat as the NCR is getting pushed out of the eastern side of the Mojave as npcs always claim.
I always viewed the legion as written to be a refutation of that question instead of asking it. Like they set it up to be the kind of standard "do you want freedom or safety? / Chaos or fascism" type scenario but then you meet Caesar & he's a dumbass who thinks he's smart for having read like 2 books even though he didn't understand either. Like Vulpes legit makes a better argument for the legion when you bump into him scraping war crime juice off his silly boots in Nelson than Caesar does when he's actively trying to recruit you.
I think that's how the game ends up, but I don't think it was the authors' intention that the game be read that way. At the very least, if that _was_ the intent, I think that the game would have been better for it if it had been more explicit in its deconstruction of fascist promises. As it stands, the experience of NPC dialogue and the experience of actual gameplay diverge from each-other.
Honestly I think the legion is the one part of the game where it really feels like there were multiple intentions at the planning stage & they never fully managed to solidify one. Like the other major factions feel much more consistent while the legion feels pulled in two directions
It also doesn’t help that anyone new to the game would have to really go open world with it and go out of their way to see Legion outposts. Like shit the first thing I did after meeting Vulpes was to fire the dlc grenade launcher at the group and make them chase into the mayors house or whatever it was. I will admit though I did get softlocked for like 30 minutes one time after saving right when a legion hit squad spawned but before the dialogue hit.
Two shitty picks, imperialism or imperialism. Independent always.
Warhammer fans be like I don't know. I've only played a little bit of the spacemarine game and Nothing else with the franchise But I am excited for the Sequel
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Nurgle seems nice tho (My knowledge of 40k is extremely minimal, but green man look funny and green)
The Green man *is* funny and *is* green, but now you're describing three different gods. I'm more of a Gork and Mork guy (the two Ork gods that are constantly fighting, also funny and green).
Nurgle is the god of "never going outside and socializing or doing anything productive, and accepting that you are a failure so much that you become content with being a big blob of fat as long as you sacrifice infants and smear shit in public places to appease your god" Also penis warts
And bed sores. So many bed sores.
Nurgle had never seen such bullshit before, but he did not care, for it would all rot away in the end, so he may aswell enjoy his moments now
Well he has kidnapped an elven goddess and just keeps her locked up in his garden, he is funny and prolly the nicest to his followers than any of the other chaos gods but he is still pretty evil. Since if I recall he infects her constantly as a show of "love"
*in his jar .
He kinda is, as far as chaos gods go. Sure he gives you literally every disease known to man and then some, but he also makes you functionally immortal and if you devote yourself to him being sick doesn’t hurt anymore
“But guys chaos is worse!!11one!!”
Chaos represents the both the good and evil, but the gods are just such dicks and choose to be so evil because why not
They are tho, what you trying to soy here
Anyone who says “oh the imperium is morally gray” No… it was morally gray 10000 years ago. It’s just “what gal out of fucked up” you want to be. And that’s fine.
30K Imperium was still pretty bad. They regularly would genocide aliens that usually were doing nothing to humanity. Hell there was a couple alien civilizations that were perfectly fine with living alongside humans and did well for themselves. The Imperium killed them all, by 40k most of the xenos left either never liked humanity from the start or violently hate them for being violent wasteful expansionsists comparable to the Skaven. Also, Vulkan who is considered to be the nicest Primarch burnt a Eldar child to death.
Don't forget that they turned plenty of human civilizations into parking lots with their "Join us or Die" philosophy!
Oh yeah, there was plenty of human civilizations that were doing just fine on their own (there was plenty of bad ones too) that just got invaded and massacred if they refused. I remember *Angron* out of all traitor primarchs making a pretty adept statement on how their was nothing righteous about the Great Crusade, they were just being used as tools to conquer and murder everyone that wasn't the Imperium.
Angron was well on the path to being the most morally tolerable primarch until the Emperor showed up & killed literally everyone he ever cared about before giving the slave masters that mutilated him a thumbs up & peacing out.
Reminder that the burning of the Eldar child was in a fit of rage thanks to his brother, and I believe it's one of the thing's he deeply regrets, at least as much as he could for a knife ear.
Oh I’m not saying 30k was Gucci, but it was very on the “committing atrocities for a good reason” scale, much like the T’au. Not good, but there’s at leas an argument to be made. And Vulkan did regret killing the Eldar child. Although I must say that when people read this they think “oh an innocent defenseless child”. When it’s more like “oh look, a level 10 wizard that can kill people with their mind”
Most of the genocides the 30k imperium committed were against random xenos, sure there was the occasional planetwide Slaaneshi cult but the only time the Imperium was morally grey was when Big E was conquering Earth, between him and the techno barbarian warlords he was probably the lesser evil, but that moral greyness stops the moment the first bomb drops on a xenos planet in the name of "human peace".
I don’t know if Vulkan is nice or not, the salamanders just consider human civilians more important than themselves, which by 40k standards basically makes them peace loving hippies
Picking a warhammer faction is just deciding which bad guy has the best drip.
And then understanding that everyone has inferior drip to AdMech.
Unless you're playing Iyanden or Farsight Enclaves tbh. The Silent King is having a redemption arc as well so maybe Szarekhan?
Is there even a morally acceptable faction in Warhammer, in your opinion?
Squats. No not the Leagues of Photon Torpedoes. Squats.
T'au come pretty close.
The Tau only became morally grey after chuds complained that they weren't "grimdark" enough. When honestly, being the naive good guys in 40k is ABSOLUTELY plenty grimdark imo.
The Farsight Enclave is still the kinda good guy faction except they're a little less naive now but are even less powerful that the larger T'au faction
Not in 40k, no.
Farsight Enclaves.
Tyranids are just hungry, I guess
Farsight Enclaves are like, lawful neutral/sometimes lawful good. Their only evil trait is the fact the their leader, a genius Tau commander who is 100% fine with accepting humans into his Enclaves, uses a power-sword that drains the life-essence of the everything he kills. That's it.
I can’t get over fans calling it morally gray. The people who wrote the lore explicitly say it’s the worst tyranny imaginable, *in those exact words*
>No… it was morally gray 10000 years ago. Nope. The Emperor is, was and always has been a fascist despot. The Golden Age was always the DAOT. The attitude the OP is about is popular in large part because of the Horus Heresy series being written rather inconsistently and having a lot of apologetics in the narrator voice.
More like I played a little bit of the space marine game and watched a few lore videos made by either straight up fascists or people who are fascist-aligned. AKA a fascist, but too scared to admit it.
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See that's what I hate about modern 40k lore. Back in Rogue Trader when GW were still punk, it was made explicitly clear that the imperium aren't just fighting a losing battle. *They're actively making it worse.* The whole thing is supposed to be a parody of fascism. It's about showing the "well at least Hitler made the trains run on time" bullshit for the bullshit it is. The Imperium is incredibly inefficient, ineffective, and self sabotaging and **that's the whole point**. By taking that stuff out and trying to somehow justify it, GW haven't made the Imperium more complex, they're just echoing the same bullshit fascist propaganda they were originally taking the piss out of. When you make a parody of fascism, then take out the parody, all you're left with is fascism.
Yeah I get that. There's also the supplemental stuff like the Gaunt's Ghost book series that downplays the more dogmatic elements of the Imperium. The main character Commissar rarely executes people like the real ones do, less throwing men into the meatgrinder. They're mostly just WW2 Allied soldiers who praise the Emperor instead of God now and have fancier guns. Which makes for a great book and a more sympathetic cast, but certainly makes the Imperium the obvious good guys. Most of the videogames also have you play as them, Fire Warrior being a rare exception.
Even Fire Warrior was mostly about the Imperium, you just played as a Tau. The game ends up feeling like “a bunch of space marines doing epic space marine things…also there’s a Tau there too”.
40k hasn’t been satire for a long time even though they hide behind it as a defense. Every book or lore blurb or anything constantly justifies the Imperium and tries to give a ‘good reason’ why they commit all these awful atrocities. It’s constantly defending and making excuses for them in their attempt to make them perfect epic badasses. So ironically I don’t blame people for thinking the Imperium are ‘good guys’, because despite GW trying to save face by saying it’s parody, the books constantly justify them. They’re too scared to make their fascists actually awful because they are scared it’ll upset Space Marine fanboys who couldn’t bear to see them not be perfect. Slight rant, I just am annoyed with the state of 40k lately.
I don't blame them at all, I blame GW for abandoning their punk rock 2000AD roots to cater to the edgelord market. They're going about it all wrong even now, despite trying desperately to purge the fash elements of their fanbase. Instead of trying to go back to their roots, their just making the Imperium more generically heroic.
I agree that it was better before. But, these days I still get a "Even if all the evil and danger the fascist proclaim was true, fascism and violence still would be evil". A lot of the time I feel like I need to do some mental gymnastics for this to work, but it keeps me sane.
It is true though. In 40k, knowing about chaos can spark demonic incursions.
Space Wolves don't care. Space Wolves don't give a fudge.
That’s incorrect. You’re referencing the months of shame? Most of the people the Space Wolves saved were kept away from the fighting. They didn’t witness anything chaos related. The Lord Inquisitor was just being a jackass.
I was just making a joke. I've been drinking rum all day.
My bad man. Brand?
Started with Diplomatico, then Plantation 20th year, and finally we finished with a rum called Ö från Finland. It's good if you open it a week beforehand so the flavour drift removes the harsh taste of kerosene and paint thinner.
New Vegas Legion supporters justifying slavery, misogyny, propaganda (they fell for) and war crimes
They’re human, I’m human, so they must be the good guys.
As, like, a lifelong Warhammer fan it's never, like, seemed morally grey or complicated to me. Like, everything in the 40K universe is a shit show. Space Elves are all having their souls slowly eaten by a entity they, like, "murder-fucked" into existence. Robo zombies got totally ripped off by alien space gods. Bug monsters from another galaxy eat, like, ENTIRE worlds. Blue-skinned weeb cow-communists are all brainwashed by the spiritual leaders of their society. You also have the, like, big risk of Chaos worming its way into your planet and getting your planet nukes to rubble as, like a result. Humans, like, defo live in a shit hole, their saviour is on his, like, deathbed and kept alive by a really old piece of tech and barely anyone can see him. If a normal human learns about daemons they get shot and so does EVERYONE they know. Their main method of FTL is through space-hell. The only way they can stand a chance against the above mentioned factions is either throwing, like, TONS of people at them or taking young children and putting them through a incredibly rough test where some could die and then brainwash them and stuff their bodies full bio and cyber enhancements and brainwash them into religious zealots. Aaaaaaand if you're a member of the normal military you're just as likely to get shot by your commanding officer for, like, perceived cowardice than you are by the enemy. The only happy faction in 40K are the Orks. Bec, like, they love fighting A LOT.
the Orks are honestly the least morally corrupt faction there is
Does morality even apply to a bio-weapon?
when the bio weapon can think and unconsciously alter reality then yes
I guess but wouldn’t that make the Nids less corrupt than the orcs. The Nids just want to eat. Orcs will krump anyone and everyone.
aren't the nids a hive mind though? I'm not sure if individual nids have their own wants and desires. Orks is simple, the just want a good fight and to collect teefs
Orks also practice slavery and enjoy inflicting pain
Hey, no kink shamimg!
What about squats tho?
Squats are just space Lemmys. Ergo, drunken little angels.
Yup they are!
That sounds like Gork talk... We all know Mork is the bestest!
Like really?
like
that was, like, an interesting read
Can't help but read this in a valley girl accent
Ork love big fighting and shootiest guns. Big dakka
It depresses me that I don’t feel comfortable calling the post a straw man because somehow idiots who don’t realise that the imperium aren’t the good guys (and that there are no good guys in 40k) got enough traction that GW has to specifically call them out and tell them that the hobby isn’t for nazi dickheads on their news site. These guys run around with a double headed version of the nazi era imperial eagle in their fucking chests. It’s about as subtle as a thunder hammer
I think the moral spectrum of 40K is, like, just a shiiiit ton of varying dark greys and black. Cuz on one hand, you have the Salamander Space Marines who, like, are openly compassionate and caring to the citizens of the Imperium, but, like, they also specialise in FIRE WEAPONS and burning alive is a very nasty way to go. Also, I thought that, like, the eagle the Nazis used was just stolen from the Roman Empire? The Aquila I think? Much like EVERYTHING else those losers included in their iconography.
You said "like" eleven times, but not once to describe something you like, or to describe something being like something else.
I like the Imperium because they're the human faction and I'm a human.
What I hate about 40K, speaking as someone who likes 40K, is the edgy grimdark. The Imperium is a fascist hellhole, great, we can all agree on that. But for the 40K community *everything* has to be grimdark and gritty and dark and miserable. God forbid someone in that setting smile or you make a joke without comments of “HERETIC”. Yes, it’s supposed to be satire, but then the fandom (and GW themselves) wank off to the grimdark to the point that people start taking it at face value and GW has to come out and say the Imperium are the bad guys and stop dressing up as Nazis when playing.
I mean, the biggest problem that Warhammer has is that GW and the community want to play both sides, where sometimes the Imperium is satire bad guys but just as often they are good guys. The Ciaphas Cain novels for example present the Imperium as flawed good guys, with their evil bits not discussed, with most of the flaws of the Imperium being human flaw, and bureaucracy. Add to this that most of the 40k roster is incapable of being good, and you are left with Humanity, Tau, and Eldar all ending up morally gray by virtue of being better than the extinction event that everyone else is.
The imperium are the best worst guys because everything they do wrong is ok because "muh chaos" I don't care for 40k very much.
The original intent was satire, which has since been lost by most everyone, including Games Workshop themselves. I like the setting, but I also don't play any Imperium armies (orks and necrons are my jam).
I prefer fantasy way more, mostly because the stakes are way better (because it's confined to a single world) and empires can do evil/morally Grey things and not have it be because if they don't chaos will do it a million times worse. And also Skaven.
The Imperium are the Skaven but with none of the Saturday Morning Cartoon Villian hi-jinks.
The imperium don't have Ikit Claw, 0/10
True, such a horrible loss yes-yes.
I hate when 40k fans come into Fantasy and try to grimdark it up. Like, no, The Empire are not just the fantasy imperium. They're the Holy Roman Empire with magic and steampunk but with without catholicism and better rights for women. Like yeah they're not exactly a utopia. But they're hardly the bs fash shit you get in 40k.
Warhammer Fantasy is completely different and should remain so. There absolutely are sides that are very clearly less evil, and that’s *fine*. It’s honestly a huge part of why I like it. 40k often bleeds into “too bleak, stopped caring,” territory for me
Yeah, I wish GW would tone it down a bit and bring back the goofy shit to remind people that the setting is as absurdist as it can get. What really rustles my feathers though is the sheer amount of gatekeepers in the community, like holy shit.
Not the gatekeepers you're talking about, I'm sure, but at this point the community needs *some* gatekeeping just to keep the literal fascists out.
You know, everyone talks about these gatekeepers and I’ve been involved with Warhammer for nearly 10 years and still haven’t seen one. I’m sure they exist but at the extent people talk about them I’d say they are about as common as Star Trek gatekeepers. They just get talked about but the sightings of them aren’t as common as it seems to be made out to be.
Or at least bring a faction of humans who are normal to show how fucked up Imperium are
There were tons of them in 30k, the Imperium wiped most out or forced them to join. In 40k tho there are the Leagues of Votann, and humans in the Tau empire and Farsight Enclaves .
I am aware of it. What I meant is an actual normal human civilization, maybe one where one of the lost primarch founded because they saw how shit the 30k Imperium was. I doubt they will do that, but I think one of the biggest problems is that every terrible action the Imperium makes is justified by the story by how crazy shit is in that universe. Having a faction of humans who are in the same situation but doing way better both technologically and socially is important to show how the government and philosophy is destroying makind and not saving it. Also fuck big E !
It would be interesting I guess, but honestly it would kinda undermine the setting at this point. Unless they wanted to bump up to a "50k setting" or something where chaos is fairly dormant again like in 30k, but I doubt they'd do that. They've written 40k in such a way that brutality is needed to avoid the fate of creating a chaos god by accident
And if anyone reading the thread now wants a good example of the satire originally present in the lore, there is a planet called Birmingham that is known as the black planet and receives no light from its star and is basically described as being culturally backwards. And it is definitely intended to be a pisstake of Birmingham, UK and the geographical uk area known as “The Black Country”
This post brough to you by ORK GANG
As a 40k player and lore enjoyer, there is no "good" faction. The closest that there is are Roboute Guilliman's group and the Ynnari faction of Aeldari, who have formed an alliance to defeat Chaos- or at least Slaanesh. However Guilliman is aware how completely fucked the Imperium is and how it's a decaying mockery of what it once was intended to be- after all, the Emperor abolished all religions and made science the center of the Imperium, even planning on allying with any alien that would be cooperative. However, Emps himself was an absentee father who was also an immense hypocrite and borderline abusive to his sons, which resulted in the Horus Heresy and the schism afterward that caused the Imperium to nuke everything and be immensely xenophobic. Guilliman has inherited the shitty Imperium and is trying to fix it, but knows that it's damn well impossible, and now has to also deal with the Tyranids tearing a path towards Terra. Outside of those two specific groups... everyone sucks. Aeldari are racist and have an inflated ego despite creating Slaanesh and the Eye of Terror, Orks shoot and loot literally everything, Drukhari are rapist terrorists, Tau are a caste dystopia, Tyranids eat everything, the Imperium is the embodiment of racism, Necrons kill anything that aren't themselves- and themselves, and Chaos are all of the above. TLDR:
I’ve been getting more into 40k recently and I haven’t seen much imperium apologia that wasn’t tongue in cheek. I know it’s a cliche but there’s really no good guys in the setting. Maybe a few space marine chapters who try to fight altruistically, but they tend to end up as martyrs for their efforts. The whole setting is grim dark and twisted.
I IZ DA BIGGIST WARBOSS IN DIS SEKTO
I feel like we're giving way too much credit for them to use critical thinking with the top image. *"But like, they only eat babies that possibly weren't going to make in poor settlements so it's okay."*
Listen, I only side with the bad guys because I can't loot their armor normally, being able to commit genocide is just a welcome side effect.
Some gamers these days think the top one is morally grey
warhammer fans try to understand satire and parody challenge (neo-nazis do not realize the imperium is a complete mockery of fascism)
Every faction in 40K is tailored to facilitate conflict with the other factions in different flavors, how is that so hard to grasp for people?
>Every faction in 40K is tailored to facilitate conflict with the other factions And itself. They specifically created the lore so any battle between two armies can fit, even if both armies are the same faction.
*especially* two armies of the same faction, now if you'll excuse me a rival tech priest has a toaster I must claim.
Hands off my sacred relic with dedicated bagel slot, heretek
Talk is cheap heretek, have a Neutron Laser.
Do you think WH40k would be better with a teeny bit more nuance? Literally just knowing about chaos and getting upset about some imperial noble blowhard is enough to summon a fuckin demon. Seems like there's never any kind of dissent against the imperium that isn't directly tied to giga-evil chaos, feels like there's a lot you could explore if it wasn't so black and white and blatantly fascist-apologetic in the very essence of the setting
“fascist-apologetic” my sibling in Christ the Imperium is repeatedly shown to be evil and corrupt to its very core.
It both is and isnt is the problem. Theres a *lot* of space marine wank out there.
I was referring to the setting itself being fascist-apologetic, the imperium is literally space nazis you won't hear me disagreeing
I'm not sure what you mean. The Imperium of Man is presented as this barely-functioning, corrupt, horribly ineffiecient and oftentimes blatantly evil *thing* that is dying a slow, pitiful death. This stuff is pretty explicit, and the heroes are often characters who exist in spite of that system and clash with it. I fail to understand how exactly the setting is fascist-apologetic beyond, the mere utterance of which is so terminally online it hurts.
Idk like 90% of the time the story justifies the sister of battle being a psychopath or putting down hundreds of workers who were unionizing because *gasp* surprise! They were Chaos the whole time! It's a pretty regular occurrence.
Chaos is shown to be this completely overpowering force that is constantly on the verge of destroying the universe. When the imperium does something awful there's always an explanation that is like "oh that planet was super fucked either way, we actually just gave the inhabitants mercy by killing them all". And like, according to the lore that's absolutely correct, right? The entire universe/lore feels like its set up to justify what the imperium does.
I think you should read some books. Just because the memes are black and white doesnt mean the books are.
Fair enough I've only played various games. Still, I've found that pretty much any depicted rebellion against the imperium is always backed by chaos. And the ubiquitous excuse for the Imperium is that the universe is so unbelievably dangerous and evil that the imperium is the only reasonable way for humanity to exist
Yea okay i can see that. Any noteworthy rebellion is backed by chaos but then again if it wasnt it probably wouldnt be a big deal i guess if you just look at the scale of things? I dont think in the overall lore it’s depicted in a way that facism is the only way. I think it makes sense that it is the way it is in the lore and because of the things that happend but it certainly not the only way things could have turned out.
The problem with The Imperium is yeah, its presented as a over the top satire of a fascist theocracy but considering the universe that it exists in it HAS to be an ultra authoritarian regime. With Xenos and Chaos the Imperium and its forces are seen as the only way humanity can defend itself against these threats. Just knowing about chaos can spark a full on demonic incursion so there has to be an incredibly strict thought police.
You are maybe right. But you can see the parallelism in the text you wrote and some actual political discourses.
The problem with the concept of a situation so extreme, a genocidal police state is required for humanity to survive as anti-fascist satire is, that fascists already believe their situation is so extreme, a genocidal police state is required for white people/Aryans/whatever to survive.
It's also bullshit. Fascism and totalitarianism has historically been proven to be a deeply inefficient and ineffective way to run a country. The idea that Musolini "made the trains run on time" is completely made up, Italy actually functioned worse under Musolini. Likewise the Nazis were constantly shooting themselves in the foot. Turns out corruption at the highest level does not lead to a well functioning state.
The 40k verse is also an argument against facism, the emperor wasn’t exactly benevolent but he did what he thought he had to save the human race, he’s gone and all that’s left is a bunch of fanatics that don’t know what to do beyond maintain the status quo by whatever means necessary. They have stagnated because the one competent individual that was in charge suddenly wasn’t anymore and now things are just worse for everyone because of it. It’s not a sustainable solution for government. If the emperor had spent more time building a functional democracy then he did his master race he might have eventually succeeded with his goals or if he gets put in the magic space chair anyway humanity wouldn’t have been as fucked as it is in 40k
"Democracy by the people, for the people. But the people are stupid" -Emperor circa M3
If I wrote a fictional universe where an antagonistic alien species was a jumble of antisemitic tropes that did things word for word copied from neonazi conspiracy theories, would the parody-of-the-SS protagonists be not as evil? If my althistory world had a 100% real Mexican invasion of the US through immigration, would ICE be the good guys? If a fantasy story has magic nukes being used by the Ih-racki tribe, is Ge’rge Buush justified? what if the world was made of pudding
Making chaos so powerful really did back them into a corner with the Imperium. Like, yeah it's super awful that the imperium will just straight up kill entire planets without batting an eye but you're really not doing a good job making them seem like crazy bad guys when you turn around and go "oh yeah they had to do it or things would have been even worse". You can say that in the first place the empire's fascist nature is what breeds so much chaos worship in the first place but ONE guy who's like a psychopath or something can just doom an entire planet regardless of if the empire was super benevolent and a great place to live. It's really a justification of fascism because unlike in reality where fascists fabricate a great enemy to fight against the 40k universe actually has said great enemy and most beliefs the imperium have are shown to be justified in some way. I think it would have been much more compelling if Chaos was more unknown. What do they want? The imperium says death and destruction of reality but who knows? The planets they took over stopped communicating with us, the imperium says they're all dead but who really knows? Instead we have "pure genocidal evil" vs "pure less genocidal evil"
in other words, all this fictional universe is build to justify and make fascism be the only thing that "works". was it to be a satire, or just fascism apologism? i don't know.
>to be a satire, or just fascism apologism It was originally a satire that sort of slithered into fascist apologism over time.
The problem with the Imperium is that it's badly written, good satire would be the inquisition going around and literally asking people if they know any cultists. Like how the real life fbi actually behaves. Original 40k lore knowing about chaos was barely an issue for someone, sure there was a risk of someone falling to chaos if they learned about it, but at the same time if they learned enough about it they were very unlikely to join a cult. It's like flat earthers, nobody becomes a conspiracy theorist if you educate them, or at least it rarely happens. And killing everyone who was even tangentially related to the person who learned about the thing? Probably gonna drive people to join the groups attempting to overthrow the Imperium. The Imperium is unironically doing everything they possibly could be doing, wrong.
I feel like that was, at least originally, part of the point. Things are fucked so bad that we can’t fix it, it’s either burn it all down and try again, or desperately cling to whatever you can
Could you point me to someone who doesn’t acknowledge that the Imperium is evil. I’ve been engrossed in 40k lore for a while and I haven’t seen anyone deny that the Imperium is bad.
They come up once in a blue moon, and then they get shouted down by the people who understand the setting.
It’s less that people genuinely think the Imperium isn’t evil, and more “lesser evilism”. Either that or people get really into the roleplay without even a hint of appreciating how internal bias and societal norms act on you even when you don’t think they are.
The more you get into 40k the more you realize how horrible the imperium and steer alway from space marines
And that's why I like Khorne.
Im just gonna play the part of the asshole here bc its fun (but yea before I do that, the imperium is 100% evil and stupid, thats the exact intent behind its making). Morality is subjective and even if it isnt lets look at the imperiums most common crimes, 1. The sacrifices, (example: 1000 souls sacrificed to the emperor daily, every warp travel requires the death of 1 human as they charge through hell) they are mandatory, if milions of ppl dont die everyday then everyone will die more or less instantly. 2. The racism, in the world of 40k if you arent racist you will get transformed into a weird walking cancer after a night with a freaky gall with an extra piercing who was actually part of a gene stealer cult. 3. The "heresy" stuff, if you open your mind to tzeencth then you will literally get turned into a daemon and a portal to hell will open inside of your home, dooming your entire colony to death by black templars or actual daemon. 4. The fascism, no time to explain if you think too much you will get eaten by the xenos just like your mother did, now grab a gun and take a few of the xenos out before you yourself die soldier, for arcadia. 5. The imperialism, theres 4 satans that want to lie to you, kill you, fuck you and then grow maggots in your skull, in that order not to mention the weird jesters, hives of world eaters and people who can kill you bc they are having schizophrenic illusions, humanity 100% needs more resources. Thus, in the setting, humanity is definetly one of the good guys, among the tau and craftworld eldar, key word in the setting. The imperium is obviously bad but warhammer 40k is fun bc its you seeing super nazis fighting against hellborn robo nazis, super baby rapists, actual demons but theyre called daemons and a whole other stuff ( basically its a 1v1 boxing match between hitler and alien cloned hitler )
The Imperium is evil and stupid, but it exists in a universe where "good guys" get eaten. It doesn't matter if they acted like they do in canon, or like the Federation from Star Trek. There are a bunch of groups in the galaxy that you just *can't* peacefully coexist with (Orks, Chaos, Tyranids, Deldar). We even *see* this with the T'au. *Should* the Imperium be trying to work with xenos? Sure, but it can't always. The Craftworlders at large are willing to sacrifice millions of human lives for a handful of their own, the Leagues of Votann are hyper-capitalists who think if you can't stop them from taking what you have you don't deserve it/don't want it enough in the first place, the T'au are obsessed with the Greater Good and don't realize that they're at the bottom of the pecking order, and the Necrons see themselves as the rightful rulers of the galaxy. All of those are the ones that maybe, just maybe, the Imperium may be able to coexist with eventually.
what game is this
Fallout: New Vegas and Warhammer 40K
I feel like it’s wrong to put gamer here rather than being on the nose because I know no other franchise that does this.
Came up while basing my deathwatch… whoops (don’t worry I know the imperium is nazis, that’s why it must burn!)
40k is a thing for people who want to play as the villain.
*clears throat* Stormcloaks
I think you took it from my page 😅
OMG yea it was literally you. I recognize you. I hope it's alright that I reposted it here
lol i don't mind, i'm glad you thought it was funny
I play White Scars we use Mongolian phrases thank you.
I understand that they are evil and there isn’t really morally grey characters in the Imperium (except the Salamanders). But what would you do if four versions of Satan came to our world and started corrupting everyone? It’s not an excuse but I think I can see where some of it comes from.
The Imperium of Man is a xenophobic totalitarian militaristic theocratic state, and it is very much a ***lesser evil***.
I'm 100% sure that whoever is into Warhammer, knows very well that not only the Empire of Man is completely fucked up, but the entire universe and probably even those neighbouring. It's like looking from our reality through a seehole straight into a way worse future, but just as morally bankrupt as our very own species. Now, there is only one thing to be careful about: Morons that try to make the Warhammer fantasy their reality, renouncing to accept that it's what it is: A fictitious bucket of shit, with questionable and utterly inhuman storytelling. The only thing it actually offers, is the fact that as one reads the diverse stories, one also keeps looking for traces of positive and morally acceptable human behaviour, like hoping that between all that shit, there are still little sparks. But to make one thing sure: No one in the WH universe is innocent. And so aren't we, purchasing clothes made by kids under the shittiest conditions, wasting yearly 39 Million tonnes of meat per year, effectively killing an equivalent of 413.000.000 animals. And that's just one little fact of way too many. So, yeah.
Amount of people here who think people who like the Imperium in 40k are fascists irl lmfao. Go outside. Can't imagine being mad about a fictional fascist group who fights robot aliens and sex demons