Aah, the setting that literally invented the term “grimdark”. I’ve played, and was a regular White Dwarf subscriber for years.
The Emperor is literally sustained by human sacrifice - a thousand psykers a day, mostly unwilling, canonically killed by slow suffocation in sealed sarcophaguses. There’s no universe in which that’s “broadly good”
I’ve run across some people who think all WH40k fans are closet fascists. But WH40k is one of the few fandoms I’ve run across where none of the fans would want to live in that setting.
Read Dan Abnett. He’s pretty much the best of the authors that write about 40K.
I highly recommend the Eisenhorn series.
The Ravenor Series.
And probably best of all Gaunts Ghosts. The first two are a little slow but then they rip.
I’ve read a lot of the Horus Heresy novels but they can be a mixed bag. Abnett wrote one on the Space Wolves that was fantastic.
I’ve read the books and played some of the RPG games as well as the computer games. It’s all rather dark and glorious.
I think one of the things that I like about it is the same thing I liked about a lot of the stuff in 2000 AD: it’s dystopian but the people in the middle of it kind of just deal with it as it’s simply “the way things are”. And the protagonists, like Judge Dredd, are not simply heroes. They are the focus of the story, sure, but they do awful, awful things in order to further the goals of the society and/or master(s) they serve. I’m not sure an American could or would be able to replicate the feeling, exactly. Our stories and myths, our cultural ouvre, involve people who are clearly Good and clearly Evil. There’s very little grey area.
But the creators of these franchises, stories, characters, etc. clearly see that awful people do awful things for awful reasons, even as they proclaim their right to them for the good of the the people/society/the ruling class, etc.
Like I said, once I understood that the Imperium was NOT a good place, despite having a goal for humanity that sounds objectively desirable, I grokked where things were coming from.
It makes for fascinating study and reading and brings a sense of realism to what are otherwise fantastical settings and situations.
I feel like this should be someone’s doctoral thesis; there’s just so much at play it can’t be condensed down to a few brief paragraphs.
Thanks you for the recommendations.
Unfortunately my book won’t arrive until 27 April. I’m hoping that a bunch of short stories will be a fine introduction to things and prompt me to say “hey, I wanna know more about that” at least once or twice.
Meantime, I’ve watched THE IMPERIUM’S 10 BEST JOBS (26:58) and for now I’ll prolly lay off the videos so I don’t have too much info before I start reading actual stories.
Oddly, the Cult doesn’t have much to do with that, if anything. That’s controlled by the Inquisition (which is weirdly a more or less a secular force) and a specialized telepathic group. As far as the sacrifices themselves, they’ve written different things about it and I don’t believe they’re actually involuntary, as they actually require considerable training to join the astropathic choir.
I don’t think the astropath choir are the ones who are sacrificed to the God Emperor of Mankind. It’s those psykers collected by the black ships who aren’t fit to become sanctioned psykers who are turned into lunch.
I was gonna say: I’ve heard about the Black Ships that transport psykers back to Terra to be consumed by the Emperor.
Officially, as of the current lore, the Black Ships do indeed “recruit” psykers. However, they aren’t just chucked into the furnace so to speak. Those who can be controlled are trained, and some of them are chosen to join the Astronomicon. Yes, I knwo they’ve written other things in the past but this seems to be the current. And regardless, the Imperial Cult doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Adeptus Astra Telepathica - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum and Astronomican - Warhammer 40k - Lexicanum
Has anyone else watched the linked short film yet?
Turns out, it’s not as wordless as I thought. I thought the only word uttered was “Astartes”, but now I know that’s wrong.
And I know because I just finished watching an excellent analysis of Part 5 that’s 3 times as long as the segment it is analyzing.
And holy fuck is there a lot of lore in this little film.
I watched a couple of reactions to Part 5 and I was blown away by how the guys recognized the insignias and armor and the little things that signify rank and status, but the guy who made the 34:36 analysis video, Arch Warhammer, is really into this stuff. He comes across like a freaking Warhammer scholar (and I have no doubt that’s an accurate description ) and it’s mind-boggling how much detail is packed into this film.
If Arch is a scholar, the guy who made the film must be the guy who teaches the scholars.
If you’ve watched it but haven’t watched the analysis, go ahead and post what you think happens and who/what is involved in Part 5; I’m curious to see how obscure some of the details that Arch talks about really are.
And if you haven’t watched Astartes yet, please find 13 minutes to do so. It is truly brilliant in both substance and execution.
It’s “broadly good” only in the sense that the Emperor dying would be much much much worse for humanity.
The Emperor is basically the only thing that makes human space travel possible, right?
Other than prpping many of those sacrifices to (initially) be quite willing. Some probably still die that way.
…says the Imperium.
The Tau seem to do alright without using the Warp. Including the Gue’vesa.
I had not! Very Dread-like appearance!
Granted, though the forces of Chaos seem to fear and detest him even in his current state no matter whether the propaganda is true or not.
The difference being that the Tau are a rapidly advancing civilization, whereas mankind has been on a slow decline since millenia before the Emperor revealed himself, and at this point lack the ingenuity or wherewithal to manage FTL in a way that doesn’t involve the Astronomicon.
The Gue’vesa I’m not familiar with.
I would actuially not recommend the Caine series as an entry Point. As usual, Satire is only really fun if you understand what it is satirizing.
Fully underline the Abnett recommendation. And basically your idea to dig into short stories is a good one. I think a lot of the material is best served in small doses.
If you Can still get hold of them somewhere, the Inferno Magazine as an awesome bimonthly Collection of short stories in both the Fantasy and the 40k universe.
That’s the Tau name for those humans who’ve been incorporated into the Tau Empire and accepted the Greater Good.
Regarding FTL: the Imperium does know of alternatives, but none of them are realistically usable given the vast distances or extreme technology. Not counting the webway, which is a bit of a special case, Necrons, Tau and Tyranids all have FTL forms which are arguably superior in some respects (definitely so in the Necron case). The Tyranid form is un-usable by humans evidently, and the Necron version is so far advanced that even humans at the height of technology never had anything like it.
The Warp, while dangerous, is blazingly fast since it tends to ignore linear time, and thus works very considering the huge numbers of voyages undertaken. Sure, it’s dangerous in that a failure is very very bad, but the failure rate is extremely small. Even warships stay in service for millennia. The Tau, depending on which sources you read, has anyone where from one to four different FTL methods and the game is very unclear about how they all work. Speed generally seems to be slower than the Imperial version, which is one reason they are expanding locally but are no threat to the greater Imperium.
I don’t mind the Tau although many players dislike them for being so cheery. I always thought they were being setup for a later fall (though not necessarily within the scope of the game timeline) as that seems to be the general theme of the game. Every culture seems to have a great era of ascension only to be brought down, sooner or later, by their mistakes or the evil of others (or both). The Tau haven’t yet hit their own self-destruction, but the writers have already sewn the seeds of a disaster to come.
When I was a teenager, I’d read the rulebooks and codexes (codices?) just for fun. It had good art, descriptions and stories as long as you take them the same was as Army of Darkness.
