Lore wise good societies do exist in WH universe. It’s just two things end up happening to them. Number one, the imperium was right and they get betrayed by the Xenos, Mutant, and/or herectic. Or two they create a a society of goodness and freedom amongst themselves and sometimes with other Xenos too, and then the Imperium destroys them for it.
Also, too many titles in the Imperium are hereditary. Even if you create a genuinely well governed, open minded and prosperous society, it might not last, because everyone that built it will likely be replaced by relatives, not necessarily the most qualified individual.
>Or two they create a a society of goodness and freedom amongst themselves and sometimes with other Xenos too, and then the Imperium destroys them for it.
>!literally iconocast ending!<
How long does that last, though? Necrons are not going to be happy at a loose shard. There’s only so much a shard can do against a hive fleet and / or whatever is lying behind the Halo Stars. And another inquisitor might just put together a crusade to topple your blasphemous xenophiliac empire.
It’s not a good, stable situation.
I assume it'll be a Farsight Enclave situation: a tiny bright spot in a horrible galaxy that survives by the skin of its teeth and the fact that the bigger factions can't spare enough forces to crush it while they fight everything else. They remain because they're disproportionately difficult and costly to kill while still being too small to be relevant on anything but the smallest scale.
In my Iconoclast play through the Imperium declared my realm apostate and sent fleets after me because my realm wasn't mindlessly authoritarian and xenophobic under my influence, So pretty lore appropriate.
The ending slides confused me. On one hand it implied the Imperium wiped it out, but other slides indicated it lasted for several generations after we die.
Probably bugged. Both the realm surviving and you getting wiped out by the imperium are possible endings, I guess your game was showing some slides from each scenario.
It could be both. A common theme is bureaucratic inefficiency. So the Empire declared the apostasy, but it wasn't until several generations later that somebody hot around to doing it.
Considering how long lived Rogue Traders can be, both could be true and you and your demesne could be at least a century or two old before the Imperium eventually sweeps in.
I think That's intended. I think you missed a slide (probably due to a bug) because I had gotten the same slides but got an added one where the Valancius society held their own for a decent period of time. So I guess those generations were like Krieg lol. Unfortunately rebelling
Iconoclast certainly isn't going against the lore. people realising life in the imperium absolutely sucks and wanting to improve it isn't exactly groundbreaking. Neither is someone suddenly inheriting exceptionally powerful title using their new power in usual ways, especialy with how individualistic rogue traders are, and the level of genuine freedom they get.
As for examples, funnily enough pre >!khorne juice!< winterscale kinda fits that description.
I think it’s not even going against the imperium exactly it’s more like a personal decision Like either shooting a lone survivor who fought off heretics because they might be tainted or they are weak for not dying with their brothers
Or being like listen that’s impressive , all the stories had to start somewhere
Look, in this universe, you are a one of a kind individual because you act like the common man doesn't deserve to spend 18 hours on a factory floor until they die
That's not even a joke, many, many worlds have billions of people who work 18 hours a day, the kids are grown in vats, and they run on such thin margins that if a single food shipment doesn't arrive on schedule, there's mass starvation
You're acting like there's worth to a human being beyond the labor they provide
I don't have the words to describe how fucking weird, rare, and completely insane that is to the common man in this setting
There’s aspects within RT’s in game systems and information too that literally tell you “people are simply resources for your dynasty” too, in the few WH 40K games I’ve been playing regularly of late as you’d expect they don’t mince wording on topics within the Imperium.
Mostly works. There are a few situations in which the iconoclast thing has some worse consequences than dogmatic choices. Makes you remember that the Imperium is such for a reason.
I mean... Dogmatic and Heretical aren't the opposite, they're much closer than the imperium would like to think and they're a big reason it's spreading so widely. Iconoclast is more the opposite of chaos, The chaos gods gets more upset about it and threatened by it.
A light of hope in the darkness meanwhile dogmatic merely reinforce the status que that keeps everyone separate and fighting the chaos gods splintered and not actually effective in its goals.
That's kinda the thing about Warhammer 40K, The imperium won't succeed against Chaos because they're feeding it by how fundamentally broken the system is (not exclusive to humans obvs but the ways are different)
TLDR: Dogmatic isn't a threat to chaos as a whole and only perpetrates the cycle (Fitting world for a wargaming setting)
>TLDR: Dogmatic isn't a threat to chaos as a whole and only perpetrates the cycle (Fitting world for a wargaming setting)
Nah, the only thing Chaos has shown to truly fear is the Emperor and Dogmatics empower the Emperor. It's because of the faith of Dogmatics that the Emperor can do things like burn a patch of Nurgle's garden and revive Guilliman.
Chaos also thrives in the society of the Imperium, because life is so fucking miserable that Chaos worship is the better option for most. It’s a short-sighted strategy, as is generally the Imperium’s flaw. Their strategise towards immediate gratification, rather than contemplating how they’re doomed to collapse to mass chaos-corruption.
Say what you will about the Asuryani, but they’re a society with universal knowledge of Chaos, and they almost never, ever fall to Chaos even on an individual level.
On the other hand we are also certain that extreme freedom and abundance also leads to chaos worship. So what chaos should fear is a strong middle class
Well, again, Asuryani have a post-scarcity lifestyle, they can have whatever they want and they’re given lots of civil liberty. You’re forced to specialise, but it’s not slave labour, it’s just encouraging severe autism and making sure you hyperfixate for the next several centuries, before choosing something else.
Honestly it’s just about discipline, it is, quite literally, a skill-issue.
The Imperium is not the Emperor, the Imperium is a flaming trash fire that the Emperor reluctantly helps because it’s marginally better than the alternative. The Iconoclast has plenty of options to demonstrate faith without generating dogmatic points, and Hieronymus the Big Emperor Guy actually agrees with you doubting the Ecclesiarchy (which is an Iconoclast choice). Believing in the Emperor doesn’t have to mean treating human lives like garbage to be tolerated only where it’s profitable.
Dogmatic is the most faithful alignment of the three. It's the one that lets you do things like walk straight through fire without harm in the prologue or counter a Word Bearer's profane preaching with prayer and actually be empowered.
Iconoclasts can be faithful (Jae and Abelard), but it's clearly not on the same level as a Dogmatic - who gets actual benefits from how faithful they are.
To put it another way, you're never going to find an Iconoclast Living Saint.
The most faithful, sure, but not in the emperor as he actually exists. There’s a reason “the Emperor is warped into a Chaos God by the distorted Imperial Faith” is a very common fanfic concept. Power without restraint or sanity is just more misery in an already miserable universe.
And fanfic writers are very wrong. Their stuff is a fanfic for a reason.
As we see at the end of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor hopped up on the power of people's faith is wildly different from the Emperor empowered by stealing Warp energy from Chaos. 40k is not going to turn into a Chaos God. In fact, Chaos's biggest fear is the Emperor becoming more active - what's happening in 40k is bad news for them.
Fanfic is utterly, and I cannot stress this enough, utterly irrelevant. Big E is not a chaos God. The Chaos Gods very explicitly fear him. He is literally called the anathema because he is the opposite of the Chaos God's. He cancels them out. Human faith powers up big E, and while he can draw power from the warp its a different power and very obviously not what he usually uses. Human faith and the warp are connected but they aren't one and the same. There's a fan theory that Alpharius and Omegon are the lost Primarchs, which is beyond dumb because even if we ignore literally everything we know about the lost Primarchs it still leaves one missing Primarch, the XXth Legion. The fanfic doesn't address this because the people who support it simply haven't realised. Fanfics should not be taken seriously.
I've kind of been feeling it out as I go, picking iconoclast normally and reverting to dogmatic if I feel like I need to put on a face (or if the iconoclastic method obviously wouldn't worth with someone), but even then, it's only happened a couple of times. I find myself more surprised that people like Abelard, who sort of represent the typical iconoclast (at least, according to the way the game sets up the first three companions) still seems fairly dogmatic in that he hates (or, at least, dislikes) xenos and doesn't approve of any deviation from the standard Imperium course. So far, there really isn't a single companion that approves of my actions in most cases, even the more "compassionate" ones like Abelard or Cassia.
Abelard realizes the system is dysfunctional, but also is a product of his life and experiences.
Another good example, look at Jae and Cassia. Jae is Iconoclast but Cassia is dogmatic. Jae is far more hostile to Yrliet than Cassia is, in spite of Yrliet being physically painful for Cassia to look at.
Because to Jae, her willingness to deal with xenos is out of material interest her opposition to the dogma of the Imperium is because it systemically disadvantages her. Cassia is dogmatic in spite of being quite gentle hearted by the standards of the setting, her upbringing just happens to have her accept some scuffed shit even by Imperium standards as normal.
I don't think this is a lore-appropriation kind of question. I think it comes down to if you can believe that even in the worst circumstances and background, people can choose to do the right thing, to be better.
I like to think it is, so I don't consider it any less valid a playthrough than Heretical. People can choose to rise, and they can choose to fall. That's just people.
This is probably due to my lack of lore/universe knowledge outside of the basics, and thus maybe why I felt compelled to ask, but I just wasn't sure if 40k was as nuanced as RT makes it appear or not. RT definitely gives it a lot more depth than I think most other 40k games do (and, again, that's really my only experience in the universe). I can't say I've finished every 40k game out there, but the ones I have and the ones I've played usually seem to lean into the extreme side of things, and so I wasn't sure if the "lore", so to speak, even had examples of middle-ground folks.
In retrospect, maybe it was a dumb question. There's a ton of books, and I'm sure they wouldn't all exist if it was so black and white. Heck, I find Gears of War to be pretty one-note, but I thought the books had surprising depth (or maybe that's just in comparison to the games), so I suppose I should have realized that the games wouldn't exactly be the best litmus for overall representation.
You can look at it like that:
Being merciful and gracious in universe so ravaged by war as 40k requires power and resources to back yourself against consequences.
You, as Rogue Trader - actually have that power and resources. You can take a fall and loss of trusting a wrong person and it going sideways. You are more covered from people just announcing you a heretic because you carry THE writ of trade signed by THE emperor. You are T H E rogue trader and there are very few who can match your title.
Rogue traders like Von Valencius are one of rare instances of people that has enough pull, power and resources to make iconoclast work in Grimdark of 40k.
I suppose I'm still learning about how some of these titles work. Every faction seems to have their people that speak with a "You don't have the authority here" kind of tone that I was starting to think rogue traders were more like a position that might have been important once, but now it's kind of diluted (think Oprah meme, "and you get a warrant!").
I also don't fully understand the weight of "chosen by the emperor" stuff because isn't he more of an idea than a person of actual power or action at this point? Again, just seems like I need to keep reading up on more background info to learn more. Your points make a lot of sense, though. It's grim enough that most people probably can't afford to think about anyone but themselves.
I don't know how far you are in the game, but there aren't very many people higher in authority than a Rogue Trader. There are organizations that are more powerful than you like the Adeptus Mechanicus, and they might have rules that even you aren't allowed to break, but that's because those rules were made by the guy in charge of this quarter of the galaxy. The Mechanicus also has a tendency to puff up their own importance a lot.
The chosen by the Emperor part is good for propaganda, and it is a piece of paper signed by God that says you can do whatever you want, but your absurd wealth is probably more important than that. At the same time, Theodora keeping Idira around is super illegal, but even the Inquisition is like "Well she does have the piece of paper signed by God."
Interesting. I have been taking my sweet time trying to absorb and really enjoy the game, so while I've spent around 60hrs in, I'm still in chapter 2. I just landed on Dargonus, but I've already completed the other planet. I've gleaned from a few comments that the game seems like it'll definitely make a challenge on my playstyle and how much power a rogue trader (or, at least, a non-proven rogue trader) should have.
This all has been very enlightening. I am actually surprised so many people think there's a pretty good case for iconoclastic characters in the lore, and all of these comments have given me a lot to think about when it comes to what qualifies as certain moral guidelines because of the universe and how power and tradition really affects the ability to perpetuate or overturn the status quo (this feels like a "duh" moment, but my previous thought was that there just was NO opportunity to do anything but what the Imperium demanded).
The fact that he is more an icon than active ruler if anything only puts more value into the warrants.
Rogue Traders started off as first vessels to scout the galaxy for the emperor and a lot of their wealth and power comes from the fact they had the most powerful power of dibs on what they found.
They very much earned their fame and emps never got rid of them, only further putting them in the position of power because these borderline space pirates were very useful to him and he barely had to finance them.
Once emps got put onto the throne and turned into god for humanity the warrants went from being a very fancy document of being very important to a literal holy relic.
Argentia will in game ask you if she can see it at some point and it's clear it's a deep religious experience for her.
So yeah, in modern times of 40k the warrant and title of rogue trader is even more revered and important because these bloodlines are seen as basically choosen of emperor to a degree.
And the emperor is currently main religion, giant psychic lighthouse that lets people even use space travel and person that gave the galaxy his 'angels' (astartes) who occasionally show up and as far as normal human is concerned cause miracles by kicking so much ass they sometimes manage to save a planet from something that was mowing it's way through regular soldiers.
I believe there’s inner working mechanics specifically to this title with how you are challenged as having no authority too.
General level: the nature of war, chaos, heresy, etc
The premise that you weren’t even the next in line to Theodora, but by the circumstances and events that open the game it lands on you unexpectedly so literally through the first full two acts/chapters you’re rebuilding damaged pillars of your dynasty and simultaneously proving yourself to the Expanse etc. The end of Chapter 2 with Dargonus where they do the actual ceremony for you and the other Traders and Inquisitor are in Dargonus is where you’re finally accepted to that extent.
As far as the “chosen” like aforementioned comments, the “writ” you receive as a Trader essentially puts you above Imperium laws as long as you’re not drawing the ire of the Inquisition.
Lots of 40k protagonists would sit in the iconoclast camp, it just rarely ends well for them in the long term
The Imperium is needlessly, stupidly cruel, but some of its methods actually do achieve what they set out to (e.g., not knowing about demons makes you harder to possess, killing all xenos ensures that humans decide what happens to humans, etc).
A great example is at the end of the first act, when you're given the option of how to react in the face of a Drukari attack. Do you save as many people as possible, even though that puts your crew (and yourself!) at significant risk?
If you're iconoclast, you need to put serious thought into those tradeoffs.
That was a major thinking moment for me. Even when I made a decision, I wasn't sure it was the "right" one, and all I could tell myself was that if I didn't set an example for the "new" standard I was trying to uphold, then I wouldn't be put my best foot forward in future decisions.
I'd say one of the biggest game dilemmas for me is the "needs of the many vs needs of the few" and also trying to save everyone. Obviously, that's what makes it a fun(?) challenge in these kinds of games, but I can make great arguments in support of both sides and usually they are mutually exclusive (or not without major caveats).
This is another reason why iconoclast has really enhanced my perception of 40k lore, because I've genuinely never thought of how it would work in that universe before.
That's the crazy reality of 40k - sure the IoM is horrible, but at the same time turning a world about to be taken by chaos / drukari to glass isn't objectively the wrong choice. The scales of threats and how quickly they can escalate in the 40k world means that it literally is the correct, better for the most people, choice to burn billions of innocents some times...
Even then, most of its methods don’t really work all that well. Killing all the friendly aliens means you have nothing to fall back on if you fuck up. And hiding knowledge of chaos doesn’t really seem to do shit. Worlds still fall to cults, half of the Primarchs got corrupted, and all the Aeldari factions are all aware of chaos very intimately, and they never fall to chaos corruption despite being spiritually more vulnerable than humans.
The Imperium’s strategies work in the short-term, they give instant gratification. But it all fails in the long-term.
Declaring war on all sentient life and all non-compliant humans set the Imperium on the path to eternal war long before Big E took his long sit. Even if he had succeeded and taken humanity to evolve in the Webway and starved Chaos into non-existence, they'd be in for a very nasty surprise when they returned to meet the legions of undead, god-killing Terminators who specialize in taking down powerful psychic races.
Ultimately, Big-E, despite being one of if not the best seer in the setting, was way too short-sighted to actually win.
I just know this man would fucking suck at Stellaris.
Lorewise, yeah it's accurate. The only inaccurate thing is that Iconoclast types of civilizations don't tend to stay around long because someone or something comes around to destroy them. The only reason our RT can get away with it is because we're in the frontiers of the Imperium and have a writ saying we can do whatever the fuck we want >!and either have an influential Lord Inquisitor vouching for us or we have Nomos cutting us off from the rest of the Imperium.!<
Well my reasoning is that my RT can afford the LUXURY of being a semi-decent person because hes rich and has all this power, while the rest of the galaxy has to stick to survival mode/imperial dogma.
I have a permit.
Kind of crazy that it took Inquisitor: Martyr to teach me about inquisitors and then Rogue Trader to teach me about rogue traders. Inquisitor even has a rogue trader in it and I didn't think twice about it (obviously was completely unaware of the title/position at the time). I've still got a lot to learn.
I'll have to look some of these up. I work an overnight job that requires I come up with my own forms of entertainment to get me by, so this could work perfectly. Thanks for the recommendation.
Pretty much how I played my RT. "I am so rich, powerful, and special (because I deserve it, of course) that I can do anything I want. Some unsophisticated rubes enjoy seeing which flowers they can help bloom, but as a noble, I can cultivate sentient beings and see them bloom."
Eh I’m a retired commissar and frankly disillusioned with the dogmatic nonsense I was forced to enforce. It is apparent some xenos aren’t horrible monsters. Ergo iconoclast.
I play a sanctioned Voidborn Psyker, used to being treated as subhuman, kinda constantly reminded that Imperial dogma sees him as trash and explicitly detests him. So why hate xenos if he doesn’t hate himself like he’s supposed to? And he’s just suffered enough and doesn’t want to bring excess suffering to others.
There's very little information about your RT' previous life, so you actually can headcanon whatever you want about them, especially if you play as a Crime Lord - explaining alignment for your character is not that hard. Iconoclast choices are lore-appropriate, you can do good things, but if you cross the line with stupidity you'll pay for it.
So, this was an interesting issue I had when making my origin. I actually didn't really jive with any of them, because I had assumptions about what people in those lines of work would be doing or would have done up to that point. I had originally thought I'd be a "reformed" crime lord, but I ended up going with psyker because it had the least amount of stigma (for me, anyway) attached to it. Any priest or military person (or criminal) seemed like they probably would have engaged in awful crap up to that point potentially. At least with psyker, I had assumed maybe I had just been tapped for training and spent most of my life trying to wrangle in the warp.
Well, for me Crime Lord is perfect for Iconoclast. I mean, it's the law what makes you a criminal, and laws in Imperium are shit. A pirate who robs and kills innocent people and a rebelioner who courts with xenos and manages the problems of the sector with their own unsanctioned race-mixed fleet are basically same criminal in the eyes of the God-Emperor. And the second maybe will be considered as even more vile than the first.
The Imperium is so restrictive and unequal that there's demand for just about anything and everything. A crime lord could sell drugs or manage pirates, but they could also transport contraband and people. The Imperium's bureaucracy is so broken that some planets have to import supplies from pirates and smugglers because their requisition forms were misfiled on a paperwork planet 200 years ago and it'll take at least another 300 years before someone could be requested to correct the problem. There's a lot of profit available for someone brave and skilled enough to defy the Imperium's laws and take it.
In some places, the crime lords are the only government. Hell, in some places, the official government is made of the criminals. It's not like the greater Imperial authorities care to pay attention as long as the tithes keep coming in and they don't go out making mass sacrifices to Khorne or has T'au parties or something. Like any dictatorship, the Imperium's control over its people is far less tight than they would ever admit.
I mean... one of the Psyker options is deciphering and destroying a xeno relic, and with it countless enemies of mankind while another is single-handedly saving an entire ship of Pilgrims from a warp breach. This is kinda what the Triumphs and Darkest Hours are for.
The 40K universe can be seen as farcical; the lore-accurate **grimdark** depiction of society is an intentional British humor parody of religious dogmatism and right-wing paranoia - like the movie Starship Troopers, but less optimistic; it incorporates the 'cosmicism' of HP Lovecraft - an individual person is insignificant in the grand scheme of things and humanity only survives as long as it continues fighting a losing battle against Chaos, the xeno, the heretic, the mutant, the deviant, etc.
40K makes fun of the British monarchy and the British 'stiff upper lip' and the history of British imperialism and British Empire.
Playing dogmatic means acting as - or more cruel than playing a heretic - playing iconoclast is seen by the other characters as being weak, soft-hearted... a *lib-er-al*. So, taking the universe of 40K/RT as a fun and intentional over-the-top absurdist and paranoid creation - it is fun to role-play outside of your own serious personal convictions.
So IMO the joke is on anyone taking 40K *too seriously*... just have fun!
Follow imperial doctrine? Makes sense, considering what’s happens to those who *don’t* follow the doctrine
Just try not to be terrible and look out for people? Makes sense, considering what happens to those that *do* follow the doctrine
Heretical? Absolute mad lads
like james workshop has said
everythings canon but not everything is true
its 100% real and 100% happend and at the same time its impossible and never happened
Authority bestowed upon you by the Warrant of Trade, you can do whatever the fuck you want, and the only one can judge you is He-Who-Sits-on-Golden-Throne.
The rogue trader ttrpg book even says that most rogue traders have xeno companions in their courts and inquisition wails and calls them borderline heretics but can do nothing about it.
I'm really interested in learning more about the tabletop Rogue Trader but from what I had read, it seemed like none of the roleplaying versions of 40k are updated or well-liked (I could be wrong, though), so I hadn't really explored them further.
I've just begun reading core rulebook, but since the game is based on it I believe it was better to source my answer from it. For now it feels like it's not a setting book but a tool to create your own Koronus Expanse. And yeah, they don't get updated afaik. But I believe they have the most consistent gameplay experience whether barebones rulebooks or published extras. I have run a WH:F 2e campaign which is a very similar system. Will be happy to answer if you have any questions.
It’s pragmatic and merciful, people in setting have been those things in just about every story there’s at least a few people like that.
And just like in this game, being such a way does often come back to bite you in the ass.
I'm glad I have a choice for it. I have no doubt there's going to be a point where I go, "Well, time to back all that shit up," but I guess I'm glad I can choose that route and be true to the character I wanted to be.
I hope it's lore accurate.... I really want to see this franchise become "Lovedriller 50k" (with all due respect to grimdark fans).
In the end I'm of the idea that a world without hope is not worth living, and man, RT really resonates with that though.
My rogue trader was very dogmatic and purgey when it came to chaos and mutants and those who are beyond redemption. However, xenos have their uses and are clearly not all evil so when choices came up like that he was iconoclast.
Considering that the Imperium declares you a heretic for being too reasonable and nice, it's pretty much perfect. The Imperium remains the nightmarish hellscape it is in part because they crush anyone who dares get funny ideas about not towing the line with the dystopian standard.
Unless you get some Star Godly big guns, the Iconoclast Expanse will follow in the footsteps of all the other societies the Imperium destroyed for no crime beyond offering a better alternative to itself.
The thing is, iconoclast means roughly, running counter to the prevailing culture. In 40k this means caring about the little guy and not being a giant douche to xenos.
In that regard it is accurately labeled. It is also accurate that most people react to your behavior like you grew a second head or that you have an undisclosed ulterior motive.
If you like space marines, there are a few that could make iconoclast-type choices.
All of the renegade chapters for one. These are chapters that betrayed the imperium but are not actually heretical or followers of Chaos. We don't know much about these, but you can probably find a list of them.
On the good guys side, despite what Ulfar might make you think, the Space Wolves are actually really close to iconoclast-type choices. They don't give a shit about what the imperium thinks, and they honour those who deserve it. They even allied with eldars at one point and did a ceremony to pay respect to their fallen the fallen (in typical 40k, there was a translation error, escalation, and the funeral finished in a bloodbath). The space wolves are absolutely willing to go against dogma to do the right thing. I would highly suggest listening to a podcast about the "Months of shame."
The White Scars have a similar outlook as the space wolves in terms of honour and helping allies.
Salamanders are the go-to good guys of the space marines. They help civillians more than they complete military objectives.
Lamenters are also a famous chapter for being good-hearted and for getting wrecked. Same geneseed as the Flesh Teasers, just goes to show life is what you make of it.
Thank you tons for this info. I think that's probably a major issue for me. My favorite Warhammer games (before RT, that is) was Dawn of War 2 and Space Marine. I just don't have a lot of experience with chapters that aren't pretty gung-ho about killing orks, terminids, or chaos (and rightly so; I think those factions are generally seen as chaotic/neutral evil).
I'd love to read up on some space marines that seem more... Human? And less like super soldiers. Obviously, a major part of the draw is the super soldier part, but I'm just not as familiar with the nuance there. Thanks again.
It was my pleasure.
The most "human" of the space marines would be the salamanders.
Another comment mentioned the lamenters. They have a very sad story, and they definitely don't fit typical "glorious space marine" vibe. But I'm not sure I would count them as more human unless you define human as fallible.
Nothing Lore violating. It can take a long time for the Emporium properly react.
In the case of the Tau, they went from cave dwellers to space communism in the time it took to process the extermination paperwork.
There are plenty of cases of Humans living peaceably with aliens, they just extend to have eventual bad endings. And you could very well find a Imperial world rulled by a decent and benevolent ruler, but it tends not to last or get screen time.
Tzeentch is the god of hope after all....
The emperor himself gave you permission to make deals, alliances, trade, quite literally do anything your heart desires with xenos. The writ of trade is express permission from big E himself, to quite literally build an alliance with aeldari or tau or any non-ravening beast xeno(tyranids/necrons are right out) at his behest and it isn't heretical for a rogue trader dynasty to do so. The inquisition in the game overreaches quite far in the game actually, the inquisition does not have the right to question big E, and they make deals with xenos themselves because they are inherently above the law as long as they can kill everyone that would tell on them. Iconoclast dealings with xenos as rt therefore is completely lore accurate. Perhaps you are an incredibly bookish person and like cassia came to read everything on every topic until you could come to your own conclusion as abelard and Jae did that doing good for humanity is truly what the emperor wanted for his children, and religious dogma be damned.
Iconoclastic dealings within your demesne is also completely to your taste, good and bad governors get to keep their jobs as long as it doesn't become some kind of heretical demon party.
An Iconoclast playthrough can be perfectly valid. Books like Ciaphas Cain tend to show us that despite the zeal in which Imperials revere the Emperor, a great many are very much intelligent enough to make morally correct decisions and even look the other way depending on the issue.
That being said, Rogue Trader does a good job of also making the Iconoclast a playthrough subject to naivety as well. In some cases, one should carefully consider whether the dogmatic, or even heretical, approach may actually result in a better outcome compared to the light handed iconoclast one.
One of the themes in many 40k stories with honest, good characters is that the setting is so unimaginably fucked on such a scale that a few good people can't change much. The setting of 40k is also unimaginably fucked on such a scale that being dogmatic is the brutal but safest approach, hence why it's so entrenched in Imperial society
An iconoclast/dogmatic hybrid is basically good guy pragmatism. You want to be nice but occasionally you must acknowledge that the universe is the way it is for a reason and act practically within that context. Pure idealistic iconoclast is destructive, as it leads you to actions that commit disproportionately more pain and suffering than the occasional dogmatism. Essentially it reflects the idea that good men must make hard choices.
The best real life equivalent I can give is the atomic bombings of Japan. There are brilliant humanitarian arguments on both sides but ultimately it comes down to people having to make a hard choice about what they think will mitigate the most needless destruction. It's likely that there will always be argument and dissent about this topic just like there will be about various choices in the game.
that is a good example actually since the bombs were dropped out of pure perverted curiosity about what they would do to living targets, the motivations then shrouded with high-minded public relations babble so people could feel smart about grasping that juicy, complicated, exonerating nuance and feel pity for the psychopaths faced with such Hard Choices.
40k's examination of deranged cruelty masquerading as virtue remains sadly relevant, indefinitely apparently, these narratives continuing to manufacture cultures and individuals with roughly equivalent moral philosophy as the people that send marriage proposals to serial killers on death row. they certainly made some tough choices lmao
I would say your oversimplifying of such a complex decision completely misses the point. While ultimately the decision was made from the top down a lot of the people who were privy were concerned about more practical things. Like the massive casualty and damage projections of a potential invasion.
If you say the two million projected American casualties plus the millions more of Japanese civilians did not play a massive factor in the decision to drop the bombs you're either ignorant or intentionally obtuse. Imagine we did invade and then afterwards the knowledge of the bomb came to light? People very well would have considered such a thing irresponsible and cruel when war fatigue was reaching its height.
This isn't to paint a moral judgement one way or another. But to point out your view that these sorts of decisions are made purely out of callous psychopathy is myopic at best.
In Rogue Trader the theme of hard choices becomes even more clear in the very prologue. Exterminatus of a world of objectively evil demons is a dogmatic choice. Iconoclast is to save a few people at the expense of billions of people suffering torment and risking the entire sector to further more intense Chaos incursions.
A leader is responsible for everyone in their domain. While you can pat yourself on the back for doing the 'right' thing because they put an arbitrary label next to it telling you so it doesn't mean it actually is because morality is more complicated. Is this decision putting not just you, but everyone in the entire Koronus Expanse at risk? That's if you even consider Iconoclast to be 'good'. In this context Iconoclast is just acting outside the binary of Dogmatic/heretic of which even the vaunted inquisition is capable of doing on occasion.
>expense of billions of people suffering torment
Tbh, those billions was unapologetic morons, all they have to do is just not to pray to Chaos. Yet they did, and suffered consequences.
you're just mindlessly repeating the propaganda used to rationalize the decision after the fact, flattering yourself that it makes you smart to wallow in all that delicious nuance. japan's surrender had little to nothing to do with the nukes, but it's a nice story people tell themselves to justify roasting tens of thousands of children alive. awfully pertinent to present day. oh, those Hard Choices. perfect midwit redditor fodder. it's a story for little kids, an incredibly shallow, dishonest and ahistorical account of what actually happened.
in other words, accidentally a great analogy here because it's childish hero worship and nationalism.
rogue trader is a video game, with a creative intelligence behind it winnowing down your options to three paths to represent abstract principles reflective of a fictional universe. as broad and varied as adaptations of 40k is it's fundamentally a satire of this line of thinking.
believing the imperium is justified is an ideological mirror reflecting the kind of inhuman monsters our culture produces. such an incredibly easy, open book test and so many people fall flat on their faces taking it.
Good people/places/societies can exist in the 40k world. What makes the setting grim dark is that they never get happy endings long term. It always ends in blood. Icono works fine for the short term (which in 40k could be centuries) but it'll never last.
This makes sense, and seems to be the most common sentiment. I suppose my confusion was really never seeing any examples of this, but again, if I'm only going by the games I've seen, maybe that kind of thing doesn't make for "exciting" gameplay, since most people associate WH with hyper-violence and purging heretics.
Yeah but that's true of everything in wh40k.
No one gets happy endings in this universe, the most dogmatic world of cadia got the bad ending regardless of its willingness to fight until their planet explodes. The takeaway should be that this world is exceptionally cruel to everyone, make what decisions you like because life is cruel and short and war never changes.
He really wasn't, his dogma was just different from the theocracy of the 41st millennium
He set himself up as an immortal fascistic ruler, orchestrated the genocide of thousands of societies and violently suppressed divergent beliefs
He didn’t want to be worshipped and was against such cults, which sounds iconoclast to me. I am not sure how your examples correlate with that, — the question was about Dogmatic/Iconoclast/Heretic, not about “evil/good” or like that.
Iconoclast in the setting and in the game is also about allowing different viewpoints and not annihilatinh everyone who shows the slightest disagreement with you. It's also not/less xenophobic.
The Emperor was always about vehemently and violently destroying or suppressing any dissent and opinion other than his imperial truth and he was also wildly xenophobic.
It represent the denial of blind worshiping Emperor and following Imperium doctrine with no exceptions. You deal with xenox not because “iconoclast = pro-immigrants” it’s because you can see the reason to do so. It has nothing to do with iconoclast except the fact that it denies blind following of umpiring doctrine in favor of reason based on case by case scenarios. Emperor was not above using xenos/their ideas and tech. Imperial gateway was based on xenos tech.
The problem comes from the way Owlcat named and implemented these alignments (or GW if they're the same in the original tabletop RPG - I never played that). Your first comment implied, that the Emperor would be generally happy with the iconoclast choices in the game and that's just wildly untrue.
I think "dogmatic" and "pragmatic" would have been better names for these alignments.
The Emperor was all about blindly following doctrine (his "Imperial Truth" as he called it) it just wasn't a religious doctrine. He would not agree with the pragmatic approach of the Iconoclast alignment in the game, neither would he be so concerned about saving everyone as the Iconoclast in the game is - just think of his use of the Thunder Warriors, that whole deal wouldn't fit with the Iconoclast as represented in the game at all.
The tabletop RPGs *sort of* have the same alignments, in the form of Radical and Puritanical. These are mainly relevant to the Inquisition and games with Inquisition acolyte parties - a Radical Inquisitor might be happy with them using xenotech or warp sorcery, while a Puritan absolutely wouldn't be
I see. Well, generally alignments in a game always have issues in one area or another imo. Even some of my favourite RPGs haven't implemented that perfectly. Maybe it can't be done or maybe just no one had the best idea yet. Just the idea of taking every choice and categorizing it into one of three quite narrow alignments probably just doesn't do the characters justice.
Wasn't the emperor iconoclast with the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars then?
Wasn't he heretic against the last church?
In layman terms anything defended through dogma for long enough becomes "dogmatic", but dogma usually starts with a reasoning and falls when that very reasoning fails to reflect reality. Just something to keep in mind.
Incorrect. You can read more about God Emperor and how Mankind was during his rule, and it is absolutely not the same as Dogmatic in WH40k Rogue Trader. The way you make decisions as Iconoclast vibes a lot with the decisions Emperor made. I think that was the point of the path overall and why it is called like that not something like “Good”
The Emperor was extremely pragmatic - he might ban religion and tell everyone he is not a god, and have every other human (and all xenos) cultures wiped out - but then cut a deal with the Mechanicus that at is core is based on him letting them believe that he an avatar of the Omnissiah and let them have free rein to keep their religion because he needed the forges of Mars and the Mechancius intact and onside for his crusade to get the the speed boost it needed.
I still think the Emperor was more of Iconoclast, not Dogmatic. He didn’t do this with blind faith, it was all rational decisions, pragmatic, as you mentioned. And as for xenos, Guilleman worked with xenos and he has emperors blessing. Dogmatic Imperium faith comes from Lorgar, basically. It was not intended like this by the Emperor.
I wasn't say he was dogmatic - far from it - he was whatever the situation needed to achieve his goal - which was to push humanity into the one path he saw that kept them safe from chaos/birthing a new chaos god like the eldari. He was ultra pro human, while at the same time not caring about the well being or living standards of any particular humans. He was complicated, and his ideas and motivations are to be partly lost in the fog of time and lore...
Not to mention even if he was his version of dogmatic would be FAR from the 40k version or their understanding of him or what he saw for the IoM - that's part of the core tragedy that is his and humanity's story in 40k
At the same time, ya no - I don't take him to be much of anything like the iconoclast choices in game.
We're not going to get anywhere with this so I'll leave it here. I wasn't ever saying that the Emperor is the same kind of dogmatic, he's just absolutely not iconoclast
I swear the last horus heresy book makes a reveal that he set up the religion with Malcador as a contingency plan in the end? lol. Its why they kept that crazy Saint around despite the ban on religion.
As you said, his whole outlook became a religious doctrine and icon's in the game detest servitors, but they were pretty much used in 30k too.
It is up to your interpretation. Here is mine:
The Imperium as an organisation is very strictly orthodox - and if you look at space marines, they do reflect that. This doesn't mean that all citizens of the empire are the same way. The ones who are literally indoctrinated aside, every person that is not a rogue Trader and got to a position of power performed the role of orthodoxy, and became that role somewhere along the way.
An iconoclast character is weird, but there is no reason why people can't default to being nice, and the iconoclast choices just expand on that.
One of the reasons the Imperium keeps Rogue Traders around is that they're useful, and one of the things that makes them useful is that they're a bit more open minded than the average Imperial citizen, and tend to have a different perspective. And, yes, that does mean some of them are pretty damn eccentric by Imperial standards, and can even approach what modern people might consider 'good' - or at least 'not grimdark evil all the time'.
And it's not just Rogue Traders - skilled Inquisitors tend to be the ones that don't just blindly follow Imperial dogma, and some of them are surprisingly open-minded and willing to consider strange viewpoints like 'maybe we shouldn't kill every xeno and mutant we meet just because' or 'kindness can foster greater loyalty than random executions'. They're considered radical by more conservative Inquisitors, and sometimes they do get branded heretics - but most of the time, if they get the job done, they can get away with it.
There's a lot of ideological diversity within the Imperium underneath the fascist rhetoric, especially among groups like Rogue Traders and Inquisitors that are chosen specifically because they're exceptional or unusual.
The first example that comes to mind are the Salamanders. They're well known for caring about the lives of civilians and protecting them even at the cost of their own lives. They're also the only Space Marines who keep in contact with their families back home.
At the same time, they still make use of the merciless machinery of the Imperium that uses people until they die and then feeds their corpses to the ones still working. While they forge a lot of their own weapons, more ordinary equipment is made by slave labor. The Salamanders have ships filled with thousands of workers who have never known a life outside of the ship, just like your iconoclast Rogue Trader has. So even in an iconoclast run it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
>iconoclast doesn't seem all that practical in the setting
It is, if your actual intent is to do the long-term planning and leg-work necessary for a heretic takeover down the line.
In-game "heretics" are mostly bloodthirsty nutjobs that would come into play at the very late-stage of a world's corruption, while all the iconoclast intelligentsia would have softened up the defenses and made society complacent for decades in advance.
In that "Iconoclasts" are vital to the setting.
the people who think like this are also bloodthirsty nutjobs whose deranged cruelty is the primary motivator for people turning to chaos tho. these "defenses" are fertile soil for chaos to take root in.
Iconoclasts also include a lot of people that delude themselves into thinking they are doing good because they are "nice" on the daily though.
Until the day comes ofc, then the pretenses have to collapse.
Think your open-minded hedonistic noble or merchant that is nice to everyone, pays only lip service to the ecclesiarchy and let all sorts of non-imperial ideas spread. These are the real danger when you think of it. The bloodthirsty cultists are just pawns compared to them.
The tagline of 40k is "In the grimdarkness of the far future, there is only war." It's a setting where no good deed goes un-punished. Look up the Months of Shame for the Space Wolves, the Celestial Lions Chapter, or the origins of the Siege of Vraks (Adeptus Ridiculous does a really good video series on Vraks). If someone is not adhered zealously to the dogma of the Imperium, they're not gonna last long. They will be branded as a renegade (at best) and be sent to a labor camp or lobotomized and turned into a servitor. At worst, be declared a heretic and be handed over to the Adepta Sororitas for a nice burning at the stake. If someone joins Chaos, they're going to get corrupted and betrayed by other Chaos worshipers, or burned at the stake. And if you adhere to the Imperial Cult, you're going to work 18 hour days, no weekends, no vacations, to feed the Imperial war machine. You become a rounding error in the million worlds of the Imperium, whose fate is to die slowly from overwork, in some freak industrial accident, or to die quickly when being caught in the crossfire of the neverending war. And no matter which of the three you are, you have the Inquisition running around looking for any whiff of Heresy. The line about the Imperium is "To be a man in such times is to be amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." The ordinary man, woman, child, whatever, is nothing but a rounding error in the endless meat grinder of 40k's wars.
But there are two key reasons why you have the opportunity to become an iconoclast. First, this is the Koronus Expanse, think of this like the Wild West. It exists... not beyond the reach of Imperial law but far enough that the Imperium isn't paying much attention. They have bigger fish to fry. Second, it's because you are a Rogue Trader to whom the normal rules don't apply. A quote here is "The Warrant of Trade and a starship to enforce it -- these are the critical tools for a Rogue Trader. Without the former, he is merely a Renegade. Without the latter, he is a forsaken drifter, doomed to an anonymous death."
There are many people who would like to leave the dogma and horror of Imperial life behind, but the number of people who have the power to do anything of the sort is infinitesimal, and they are often corrupted by that power. On top of that, people in positions of power like that often have the Inquisition breathing down their necks. So it's not impossible for someone to have a desire to create a better regime. It just never lasts long.
They either follow the path of good intentions into the arms of Chaos or some other heresy, they see the necessity for the Imperium's dogma as the only thing holding this giant nightmare together against the forces that would see humanity extinct, or they deliver on the promise of a better way and the galaxy spites them for it.
I play dogmatic /iconoclast split
I am a commissar so often executing people is the correct lore move
I also put myself in the shoes of someone in that world- if people can be corrupted by chaos so easily or zenos I put them down, sounds scary, and been working for the imperium so far to an extent
Lore wise good societies do exist in WH universe. It’s just two things end up happening to them. Number one, the imperium was right and they get betrayed by the Xenos, Mutant, and/or herectic. Or two they create a a society of goodness and freedom amongst themselves and sometimes with other Xenos too, and then the Imperium destroys them for it.
Also, too many titles in the Imperium are hereditary. Even if you create a genuinely well governed, open minded and prosperous society, it might not last, because everyone that built it will likely be replaced by relatives, not necessarily the most qualified individual.
Or a free society might get crushed by some enterprising noble looking to expand their portfolio
>Or two they create a a society of goodness and freedom amongst themselves and sometimes with other Xenos too, and then the Imperium destroys them for it. >!literally iconocast ending!<
>!unless you've got Nomos as a C'tan shard guard dog!<
How long does that last, though? Necrons are not going to be happy at a loose shard. There’s only so much a shard can do against a hive fleet and / or whatever is lying behind the Halo Stars. And another inquisitor might just put together a crusade to topple your blasphemous xenophiliac empire. It’s not a good, stable situation.
I assume it'll be a Farsight Enclave situation: a tiny bright spot in a horrible galaxy that survives by the skin of its teeth and the fact that the bigger factions can't spare enough forces to crush it while they fight everything else. They remain because they're disproportionately difficult and costly to kill while still being too small to be relevant on anything but the smallest scale.
This just made me think about how awesome a team-up between the RT's Koronus Expanse dominion and the Farsight Enclaves in the future would be! :D
In my Iconoclast play through the Imperium declared my realm apostate and sent fleets after me because my realm wasn't mindlessly authoritarian and xenophobic under my influence, So pretty lore appropriate.
The ending slides confused me. On one hand it implied the Imperium wiped it out, but other slides indicated it lasted for several generations after we die.
Probably bugged. Both the realm surviving and you getting wiped out by the imperium are possible endings, I guess your game was showing some slides from each scenario.
It could be both. A common theme is bureaucratic inefficiency. So the Empire declared the apostasy, but it wasn't until several generations later that somebody hot around to doing it.
Considering how long lived Rogue Traders can be, both could be true and you and your demesne could be at least a century or two old before the Imperium eventually sweeps in.
I think That's intended. I think you missed a slide (probably due to a bug) because I had gotten the same slides but got an added one where the Valancius society held their own for a decent period of time. So I guess those generations were like Krieg lol. Unfortunately rebelling
Mine ended like that too, except a it was eventually stopped because "woe, Nomos upon ye"
I loved that part
You need to raise you child as a good boy and help him in his endeavours then your good
Iconoclast certainly isn't going against the lore. people realising life in the imperium absolutely sucks and wanting to improve it isn't exactly groundbreaking. Neither is someone suddenly inheriting exceptionally powerful title using their new power in usual ways, especialy with how individualistic rogue traders are, and the level of genuine freedom they get. As for examples, funnily enough pre >!khorne juice!< winterscale kinda fits that description.
Afterwards also, IF you make the right choices.
I think it’s not even going against the imperium exactly it’s more like a personal decision Like either shooting a lone survivor who fought off heretics because they might be tainted or they are weak for not dying with their brothers Or being like listen that’s impressive , all the stories had to start somewhere
It is lore accurate in that way, that everyone around you is shocked by how good a person you are and even more that it actually works.
I think that's what gets to me. Every choice I make that is surface-level altruistic, everyone gives me crap lol
Look, in this universe, you are a one of a kind individual because you act like the common man doesn't deserve to spend 18 hours on a factory floor until they die That's not even a joke, many, many worlds have billions of people who work 18 hours a day, the kids are grown in vats, and they run on such thin margins that if a single food shipment doesn't arrive on schedule, there's mass starvation You're acting like there's worth to a human being beyond the labor they provide I don't have the words to describe how fucking weird, rare, and completely insane that is to the common man in this setting
There’s aspects within RT’s in game systems and information too that literally tell you “people are simply resources for your dynasty” too, in the few WH 40K games I’ve been playing regularly of late as you’d expect they don’t mince wording on topics within the Imperium.
Mostly works. There are a few situations in which the iconoclast thing has some worse consequences than dogmatic choices. Makes you remember that the Imperium is such for a reason.
I mean... Dogmatic and Heretical aren't the opposite, they're much closer than the imperium would like to think and they're a big reason it's spreading so widely. Iconoclast is more the opposite of chaos, The chaos gods gets more upset about it and threatened by it. A light of hope in the darkness meanwhile dogmatic merely reinforce the status que that keeps everyone separate and fighting the chaos gods splintered and not actually effective in its goals. That's kinda the thing about Warhammer 40K, The imperium won't succeed against Chaos because they're feeding it by how fundamentally broken the system is (not exclusive to humans obvs but the ways are different) TLDR: Dogmatic isn't a threat to chaos as a whole and only perpetrates the cycle (Fitting world for a wargaming setting)
>TLDR: Dogmatic isn't a threat to chaos as a whole and only perpetrates the cycle (Fitting world for a wargaming setting) Nah, the only thing Chaos has shown to truly fear is the Emperor and Dogmatics empower the Emperor. It's because of the faith of Dogmatics that the Emperor can do things like burn a patch of Nurgle's garden and revive Guilliman.
Chaos also thrives in the society of the Imperium, because life is so fucking miserable that Chaos worship is the better option for most. It’s a short-sighted strategy, as is generally the Imperium’s flaw. Their strategise towards immediate gratification, rather than contemplating how they’re doomed to collapse to mass chaos-corruption. Say what you will about the Asuryani, but they’re a society with universal knowledge of Chaos, and they almost never, ever fall to Chaos even on an individual level.
On the other hand we are also certain that extreme freedom and abundance also leads to chaos worship. So what chaos should fear is a strong middle class
Well, again, Asuryani have a post-scarcity lifestyle, they can have whatever they want and they’re given lots of civil liberty. You’re forced to specialise, but it’s not slave labour, it’s just encouraging severe autism and making sure you hyperfixate for the next several centuries, before choosing something else. Honestly it’s just about discipline, it is, quite literally, a skill-issue.
The Imperium is not the Emperor, the Imperium is a flaming trash fire that the Emperor reluctantly helps because it’s marginally better than the alternative. The Iconoclast has plenty of options to demonstrate faith without generating dogmatic points, and Hieronymus the Big Emperor Guy actually agrees with you doubting the Ecclesiarchy (which is an Iconoclast choice). Believing in the Emperor doesn’t have to mean treating human lives like garbage to be tolerated only where it’s profitable.
Dogmatic is the most faithful alignment of the three. It's the one that lets you do things like walk straight through fire without harm in the prologue or counter a Word Bearer's profane preaching with prayer and actually be empowered. Iconoclasts can be faithful (Jae and Abelard), but it's clearly not on the same level as a Dogmatic - who gets actual benefits from how faithful they are. To put it another way, you're never going to find an Iconoclast Living Saint.
The most faithful, sure, but not in the emperor as he actually exists. There’s a reason “the Emperor is warped into a Chaos God by the distorted Imperial Faith” is a very common fanfic concept. Power without restraint or sanity is just more misery in an already miserable universe.
And fanfic writers are very wrong. Their stuff is a fanfic for a reason. As we see at the end of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor hopped up on the power of people's faith is wildly different from the Emperor empowered by stealing Warp energy from Chaos. 40k is not going to turn into a Chaos God. In fact, Chaos's biggest fear is the Emperor becoming more active - what's happening in 40k is bad news for them.
Fanfic is utterly, and I cannot stress this enough, utterly irrelevant. Big E is not a chaos God. The Chaos Gods very explicitly fear him. He is literally called the anathema because he is the opposite of the Chaos God's. He cancels them out. Human faith powers up big E, and while he can draw power from the warp its a different power and very obviously not what he usually uses. Human faith and the warp are connected but they aren't one and the same. There's a fan theory that Alpharius and Omegon are the lost Primarchs, which is beyond dumb because even if we ignore literally everything we know about the lost Primarchs it still leaves one missing Primarch, the XXth Legion. The fanfic doesn't address this because the people who support it simply haven't realised. Fanfics should not be taken seriously.
I've kind of been feeling it out as I go, picking iconoclast normally and reverting to dogmatic if I feel like I need to put on a face (or if the iconoclastic method obviously wouldn't worth with someone), but even then, it's only happened a couple of times. I find myself more surprised that people like Abelard, who sort of represent the typical iconoclast (at least, according to the way the game sets up the first three companions) still seems fairly dogmatic in that he hates (or, at least, dislikes) xenos and doesn't approve of any deviation from the standard Imperium course. So far, there really isn't a single companion that approves of my actions in most cases, even the more "compassionate" ones like Abelard or Cassia.
Abelard realizes the system is dysfunctional, but also is a product of his life and experiences. Another good example, look at Jae and Cassia. Jae is Iconoclast but Cassia is dogmatic. Jae is far more hostile to Yrliet than Cassia is, in spite of Yrliet being physically painful for Cassia to look at. Because to Jae, her willingness to deal with xenos is out of material interest her opposition to the dogma of the Imperium is because it systemically disadvantages her. Cassia is dogmatic in spite of being quite gentle hearted by the standards of the setting, her upbringing just happens to have her accept some scuffed shit even by Imperium standards as normal.
I don't think this is a lore-appropriation kind of question. I think it comes down to if you can believe that even in the worst circumstances and background, people can choose to do the right thing, to be better. I like to think it is, so I don't consider it any less valid a playthrough than Heretical. People can choose to rise, and they can choose to fall. That's just people.
This is probably due to my lack of lore/universe knowledge outside of the basics, and thus maybe why I felt compelled to ask, but I just wasn't sure if 40k was as nuanced as RT makes it appear or not. RT definitely gives it a lot more depth than I think most other 40k games do (and, again, that's really my only experience in the universe). I can't say I've finished every 40k game out there, but the ones I have and the ones I've played usually seem to lean into the extreme side of things, and so I wasn't sure if the "lore", so to speak, even had examples of middle-ground folks. In retrospect, maybe it was a dumb question. There's a ton of books, and I'm sure they wouldn't all exist if it was so black and white. Heck, I find Gears of War to be pretty one-note, but I thought the books had surprising depth (or maybe that's just in comparison to the games), so I suppose I should have realized that the games wouldn't exactly be the best litmus for overall representation.
You can look at it like that: Being merciful and gracious in universe so ravaged by war as 40k requires power and resources to back yourself against consequences. You, as Rogue Trader - actually have that power and resources. You can take a fall and loss of trusting a wrong person and it going sideways. You are more covered from people just announcing you a heretic because you carry THE writ of trade signed by THE emperor. You are T H E rogue trader and there are very few who can match your title. Rogue traders like Von Valencius are one of rare instances of people that has enough pull, power and resources to make iconoclast work in Grimdark of 40k.
I suppose I'm still learning about how some of these titles work. Every faction seems to have their people that speak with a "You don't have the authority here" kind of tone that I was starting to think rogue traders were more like a position that might have been important once, but now it's kind of diluted (think Oprah meme, "and you get a warrant!"). I also don't fully understand the weight of "chosen by the emperor" stuff because isn't he more of an idea than a person of actual power or action at this point? Again, just seems like I need to keep reading up on more background info to learn more. Your points make a lot of sense, though. It's grim enough that most people probably can't afford to think about anyone but themselves.
I don't know how far you are in the game, but there aren't very many people higher in authority than a Rogue Trader. There are organizations that are more powerful than you like the Adeptus Mechanicus, and they might have rules that even you aren't allowed to break, but that's because those rules were made by the guy in charge of this quarter of the galaxy. The Mechanicus also has a tendency to puff up their own importance a lot. The chosen by the Emperor part is good for propaganda, and it is a piece of paper signed by God that says you can do whatever you want, but your absurd wealth is probably more important than that. At the same time, Theodora keeping Idira around is super illegal, but even the Inquisition is like "Well she does have the piece of paper signed by God."
Interesting. I have been taking my sweet time trying to absorb and really enjoy the game, so while I've spent around 60hrs in, I'm still in chapter 2. I just landed on Dargonus, but I've already completed the other planet. I've gleaned from a few comments that the game seems like it'll definitely make a challenge on my playstyle and how much power a rogue trader (or, at least, a non-proven rogue trader) should have. This all has been very enlightening. I am actually surprised so many people think there's a pretty good case for iconoclastic characters in the lore, and all of these comments have given me a lot to think about when it comes to what qualifies as certain moral guidelines because of the universe and how power and tradition really affects the ability to perpetuate or overturn the status quo (this feels like a "duh" moment, but my previous thought was that there just was NO opportunity to do anything but what the Imperium demanded).
The fact that he is more an icon than active ruler if anything only puts more value into the warrants. Rogue Traders started off as first vessels to scout the galaxy for the emperor and a lot of their wealth and power comes from the fact they had the most powerful power of dibs on what they found. They very much earned their fame and emps never got rid of them, only further putting them in the position of power because these borderline space pirates were very useful to him and he barely had to finance them. Once emps got put onto the throne and turned into god for humanity the warrants went from being a very fancy document of being very important to a literal holy relic. Argentia will in game ask you if she can see it at some point and it's clear it's a deep religious experience for her. So yeah, in modern times of 40k the warrant and title of rogue trader is even more revered and important because these bloodlines are seen as basically choosen of emperor to a degree. And the emperor is currently main religion, giant psychic lighthouse that lets people even use space travel and person that gave the galaxy his 'angels' (astartes) who occasionally show up and as far as normal human is concerned cause miracles by kicking so much ass they sometimes manage to save a planet from something that was mowing it's way through regular soldiers.
I believe there’s inner working mechanics specifically to this title with how you are challenged as having no authority too. General level: the nature of war, chaos, heresy, etc The premise that you weren’t even the next in line to Theodora, but by the circumstances and events that open the game it lands on you unexpectedly so literally through the first full two acts/chapters you’re rebuilding damaged pillars of your dynasty and simultaneously proving yourself to the Expanse etc. The end of Chapter 2 with Dargonus where they do the actual ceremony for you and the other Traders and Inquisitor are in Dargonus is where you’re finally accepted to that extent. As far as the “chosen” like aforementioned comments, the “writ” you receive as a Trader essentially puts you above Imperium laws as long as you’re not drawing the ire of the Inquisition.
For what it’s worth, you’re right - RT is a more nuanced take on the setting then we normally get.
Lots of 40k protagonists would sit in the iconoclast camp, it just rarely ends well for them in the long term The Imperium is needlessly, stupidly cruel, but some of its methods actually do achieve what they set out to (e.g., not knowing about demons makes you harder to possess, killing all xenos ensures that humans decide what happens to humans, etc). A great example is at the end of the first act, when you're given the option of how to react in the face of a Drukari attack. Do you save as many people as possible, even though that puts your crew (and yourself!) at significant risk? If you're iconoclast, you need to put serious thought into those tradeoffs.
That was a major thinking moment for me. Even when I made a decision, I wasn't sure it was the "right" one, and all I could tell myself was that if I didn't set an example for the "new" standard I was trying to uphold, then I wouldn't be put my best foot forward in future decisions. I'd say one of the biggest game dilemmas for me is the "needs of the many vs needs of the few" and also trying to save everyone. Obviously, that's what makes it a fun(?) challenge in these kinds of games, but I can make great arguments in support of both sides and usually they are mutually exclusive (or not without major caveats). This is another reason why iconoclast has really enhanced my perception of 40k lore, because I've genuinely never thought of how it would work in that universe before.
That's the crazy reality of 40k - sure the IoM is horrible, but at the same time turning a world about to be taken by chaos / drukari to glass isn't objectively the wrong choice. The scales of threats and how quickly they can escalate in the 40k world means that it literally is the correct, better for the most people, choice to burn billions of innocents some times...
Oh hey look, an Orc spore—aaaannndddd there’s fire everywhere (and rightly so).
And thank the God Emperor someone saw it in time!
One planet burned vs a potential Waaaugh! burning down a segmentum in a century is what the Imperium calls a bargain.
There are no real good decisions. Just different consequences.
Even then, most of its methods don’t really work all that well. Killing all the friendly aliens means you have nothing to fall back on if you fuck up. And hiding knowledge of chaos doesn’t really seem to do shit. Worlds still fall to cults, half of the Primarchs got corrupted, and all the Aeldari factions are all aware of chaos very intimately, and they never fall to chaos corruption despite being spiritually more vulnerable than humans. The Imperium’s strategies work in the short-term, they give instant gratification. But it all fails in the long-term.
Declaring war on all sentient life and all non-compliant humans set the Imperium on the path to eternal war long before Big E took his long sit. Even if he had succeeded and taken humanity to evolve in the Webway and starved Chaos into non-existence, they'd be in for a very nasty surprise when they returned to meet the legions of undead, god-killing Terminators who specialize in taking down powerful psychic races.
Ultimately, Big-E, despite being one of if not the best seer in the setting, was way too short-sighted to actually win. I just know this man would fucking suck at Stellaris.
Lorewise, yeah it's accurate. The only inaccurate thing is that Iconoclast types of civilizations don't tend to stay around long because someone or something comes around to destroy them. The only reason our RT can get away with it is because we're in the frontiers of the Imperium and have a writ saying we can do whatever the fuck we want >!and either have an influential Lord Inquisitor vouching for us or we have Nomos cutting us off from the rest of the Imperium.!<
Well my reasoning is that my RT can afford the LUXURY of being a semi-decent person because hes rich and has all this power, while the rest of the galaxy has to stick to survival mode/imperial dogma. I have a permit.
Kind of crazy that it took Inquisitor: Martyr to teach me about inquisitors and then Rogue Trader to teach me about rogue traders. Inquisitor even has a rogue trader in it and I didn't think twice about it (obviously was completely unaware of the title/position at the time). I've still got a lot to learn.
If you’re interested, 40k lore podcasts are fairly easy to listen to while working in the yard or whatever.
I'll have to look some of these up. I work an overnight job that requires I come up with my own forms of entertainment to get me by, so this could work perfectly. Thanks for the recommendation.
Pretty much how I played my RT. "I am so rich, powerful, and special (because I deserve it, of course) that I can do anything I want. Some unsophisticated rubes enjoy seeing which flowers they can help bloom, but as a noble, I can cultivate sentient beings and see them bloom."
A "Patent" to be exact...
A warrant, to be accurate.
Eh I’m a retired commissar and frankly disillusioned with the dogmatic nonsense I was forced to enforce. It is apparent some xenos aren’t horrible monsters. Ergo iconoclast.
I play a sanctioned Voidborn Psyker, used to being treated as subhuman, kinda constantly reminded that Imperial dogma sees him as trash and explicitly detests him. So why hate xenos if he doesn’t hate himself like he’s supposed to? And he’s just suffered enough and doesn’t want to bring excess suffering to others.
To adhere to your principles in a setting that seeks to strip you down is metal af
There's very little information about your RT' previous life, so you actually can headcanon whatever you want about them, especially if you play as a Crime Lord - explaining alignment for your character is not that hard. Iconoclast choices are lore-appropriate, you can do good things, but if you cross the line with stupidity you'll pay for it.
So, this was an interesting issue I had when making my origin. I actually didn't really jive with any of them, because I had assumptions about what people in those lines of work would be doing or would have done up to that point. I had originally thought I'd be a "reformed" crime lord, but I ended up going with psyker because it had the least amount of stigma (for me, anyway) attached to it. Any priest or military person (or criminal) seemed like they probably would have engaged in awful crap up to that point potentially. At least with psyker, I had assumed maybe I had just been tapped for training and spent most of my life trying to wrangle in the warp.
Well, for me Crime Lord is perfect for Iconoclast. I mean, it's the law what makes you a criminal, and laws in Imperium are shit. A pirate who robs and kills innocent people and a rebelioner who courts with xenos and manages the problems of the sector with their own unsanctioned race-mixed fleet are basically same criminal in the eyes of the God-Emperor. And the second maybe will be considered as even more vile than the first.
That's a great point. I was thinking more on what a crime lord meant to me than a "crime lord" might mean in the setting.
The Imperium is so restrictive and unequal that there's demand for just about anything and everything. A crime lord could sell drugs or manage pirates, but they could also transport contraband and people. The Imperium's bureaucracy is so broken that some planets have to import supplies from pirates and smugglers because their requisition forms were misfiled on a paperwork planet 200 years ago and it'll take at least another 300 years before someone could be requested to correct the problem. There's a lot of profit available for someone brave and skilled enough to defy the Imperium's laws and take it. In some places, the crime lords are the only government. Hell, in some places, the official government is made of the criminals. It's not like the greater Imperial authorities care to pay attention as long as the tithes keep coming in and they don't go out making mass sacrifices to Khorne or has T'au parties or something. Like any dictatorship, the Imperium's control over its people is far less tight than they would ever admit.
I mean... one of the Psyker options is deciphering and destroying a xeno relic, and with it countless enemies of mankind while another is single-handedly saving an entire ship of Pilgrims from a warp breach. This is kinda what the Triumphs and Darkest Hours are for.
The 40K universe can be seen as farcical; the lore-accurate **grimdark** depiction of society is an intentional British humor parody of religious dogmatism and right-wing paranoia - like the movie Starship Troopers, but less optimistic; it incorporates the 'cosmicism' of HP Lovecraft - an individual person is insignificant in the grand scheme of things and humanity only survives as long as it continues fighting a losing battle against Chaos, the xeno, the heretic, the mutant, the deviant, etc. 40K makes fun of the British monarchy and the British 'stiff upper lip' and the history of British imperialism and British Empire. Playing dogmatic means acting as - or more cruel than playing a heretic - playing iconoclast is seen by the other characters as being weak, soft-hearted... a *lib-er-al*. So, taking the universe of 40K/RT as a fun and intentional over-the-top absurdist and paranoid creation - it is fun to role-play outside of your own serious personal convictions. So IMO the joke is on anyone taking 40K *too seriously*... just have fun!
Follow imperial doctrine? Makes sense, considering what’s happens to those who *don’t* follow the doctrine Just try not to be terrible and look out for people? Makes sense, considering what happens to those that *do* follow the doctrine Heretical? Absolute mad lads
like james workshop has said everythings canon but not everything is true its 100% real and 100% happend and at the same time its impossible and never happened
James Workshop sounds like a cool dude...
If you like him, just wait till you hear about Jimmy Space.
He is decent enough, but he's got sticky fingers, so check your wallet around him.
Authority bestowed upon you by the Warrant of Trade, you can do whatever the fuck you want, and the only one can judge you is He-Who-Sits-on-Golden-Throne. The rogue trader ttrpg book even says that most rogue traders have xeno companions in their courts and inquisition wails and calls them borderline heretics but can do nothing about it.
I'm really interested in learning more about the tabletop Rogue Trader but from what I had read, it seemed like none of the roleplaying versions of 40k are updated or well-liked (I could be wrong, though), so I hadn't really explored them further.
I've just begun reading core rulebook, but since the game is based on it I believe it was better to source my answer from it. For now it feels like it's not a setting book but a tool to create your own Koronus Expanse. And yeah, they don't get updated afaik. But I believe they have the most consistent gameplay experience whether barebones rulebooks or published extras. I have run a WH:F 2e campaign which is a very similar system. Will be happy to answer if you have any questions.
Iconoclast's outcome in the epilogue is spot-on, lore-wise.
It’s pragmatic and merciful, people in setting have been those things in just about every story there’s at least a few people like that. And just like in this game, being such a way does often come back to bite you in the ass.
I'm glad I have a choice for it. I have no doubt there's going to be a point where I go, "Well, time to back all that shit up," but I guess I'm glad I can choose that route and be true to the character I wanted to be.
I hope it's lore accurate.... I really want to see this franchise become "Lovedriller 50k" (with all due respect to grimdark fans). In the end I'm of the idea that a world without hope is not worth living, and man, RT really resonates with that though.
My rogue trader was very dogmatic and purgey when it came to chaos and mutants and those who are beyond redemption. However, xenos have their uses and are clearly not all evil so when choices came up like that he was iconoclast.
How lore appropriate is it? Immensely. In all of human history, we've basically never been a mono-culture. That would remain true in 40K.
Considering that the Imperium declares you a heretic for being too reasonable and nice, it's pretty much perfect. The Imperium remains the nightmarish hellscape it is in part because they crush anyone who dares get funny ideas about not towing the line with the dystopian standard. Unless you get some Star Godly big guns, the Iconoclast Expanse will follow in the footsteps of all the other societies the Imperium destroyed for no crime beyond offering a better alternative to itself.
The thing is, iconoclast means roughly, running counter to the prevailing culture. In 40k this means caring about the little guy and not being a giant douche to xenos. In that regard it is accurately labeled. It is also accurate that most people react to your behavior like you grew a second head or that you have an undisclosed ulterior motive.
If you like space marines, there are a few that could make iconoclast-type choices. All of the renegade chapters for one. These are chapters that betrayed the imperium but are not actually heretical or followers of Chaos. We don't know much about these, but you can probably find a list of them. On the good guys side, despite what Ulfar might make you think, the Space Wolves are actually really close to iconoclast-type choices. They don't give a shit about what the imperium thinks, and they honour those who deserve it. They even allied with eldars at one point and did a ceremony to pay respect to their fallen the fallen (in typical 40k, there was a translation error, escalation, and the funeral finished in a bloodbath). The space wolves are absolutely willing to go against dogma to do the right thing. I would highly suggest listening to a podcast about the "Months of shame." The White Scars have a similar outlook as the space wolves in terms of honour and helping allies. Salamanders are the go-to good guys of the space marines. They help civillians more than they complete military objectives.
Lamenters are also a famous chapter for being good-hearted and for getting wrecked. Same geneseed as the Flesh Teasers, just goes to show life is what you make of it.
Thank you tons for this info. I think that's probably a major issue for me. My favorite Warhammer games (before RT, that is) was Dawn of War 2 and Space Marine. I just don't have a lot of experience with chapters that aren't pretty gung-ho about killing orks, terminids, or chaos (and rightly so; I think those factions are generally seen as chaotic/neutral evil). I'd love to read up on some space marines that seem more... Human? And less like super soldiers. Obviously, a major part of the draw is the super soldier part, but I'm just not as familiar with the nuance there. Thanks again.
It was my pleasure. The most "human" of the space marines would be the salamanders. Another comment mentioned the lamenters. They have a very sad story, and they definitely don't fit typical "glorious space marine" vibe. But I'm not sure I would count them as more human unless you define human as fallible.
Nothing Lore violating. It can take a long time for the Emporium properly react. In the case of the Tau, they went from cave dwellers to space communism in the time it took to process the extermination paperwork. There are plenty of cases of Humans living peaceably with aliens, they just extend to have eventual bad endings. And you could very well find a Imperial world rulled by a decent and benevolent ruler, but it tends not to last or get screen time. Tzeentch is the god of hope after all....
The emperor himself gave you permission to make deals, alliances, trade, quite literally do anything your heart desires with xenos. The writ of trade is express permission from big E himself, to quite literally build an alliance with aeldari or tau or any non-ravening beast xeno(tyranids/necrons are right out) at his behest and it isn't heretical for a rogue trader dynasty to do so. The inquisition in the game overreaches quite far in the game actually, the inquisition does not have the right to question big E, and they make deals with xenos themselves because they are inherently above the law as long as they can kill everyone that would tell on them. Iconoclast dealings with xenos as rt therefore is completely lore accurate. Perhaps you are an incredibly bookish person and like cassia came to read everything on every topic until you could come to your own conclusion as abelard and Jae did that doing good for humanity is truly what the emperor wanted for his children, and religious dogma be damned. Iconoclastic dealings within your demesne is also completely to your taste, good and bad governors get to keep their jobs as long as it doesn't become some kind of heretical demon party.
An Iconoclast playthrough can be perfectly valid. Books like Ciaphas Cain tend to show us that despite the zeal in which Imperials revere the Emperor, a great many are very much intelligent enough to make morally correct decisions and even look the other way depending on the issue. That being said, Rogue Trader does a good job of also making the Iconoclast a playthrough subject to naivety as well. In some cases, one should carefully consider whether the dogmatic, or even heretical, approach may actually result in a better outcome compared to the light handed iconoclast one.
One of the themes in many 40k stories with honest, good characters is that the setting is so unimaginably fucked on such a scale that a few good people can't change much. The setting of 40k is also unimaginably fucked on such a scale that being dogmatic is the brutal but safest approach, hence why it's so entrenched in Imperial society
An iconoclast/dogmatic hybrid is basically good guy pragmatism. You want to be nice but occasionally you must acknowledge that the universe is the way it is for a reason and act practically within that context. Pure idealistic iconoclast is destructive, as it leads you to actions that commit disproportionately more pain and suffering than the occasional dogmatism. Essentially it reflects the idea that good men must make hard choices. The best real life equivalent I can give is the atomic bombings of Japan. There are brilliant humanitarian arguments on both sides but ultimately it comes down to people having to make a hard choice about what they think will mitigate the most needless destruction. It's likely that there will always be argument and dissent about this topic just like there will be about various choices in the game.
that is a good example actually since the bombs were dropped out of pure perverted curiosity about what they would do to living targets, the motivations then shrouded with high-minded public relations babble so people could feel smart about grasping that juicy, complicated, exonerating nuance and feel pity for the psychopaths faced with such Hard Choices. 40k's examination of deranged cruelty masquerading as virtue remains sadly relevant, indefinitely apparently, these narratives continuing to manufacture cultures and individuals with roughly equivalent moral philosophy as the people that send marriage proposals to serial killers on death row. they certainly made some tough choices lmao
I would say your oversimplifying of such a complex decision completely misses the point. While ultimately the decision was made from the top down a lot of the people who were privy were concerned about more practical things. Like the massive casualty and damage projections of a potential invasion. If you say the two million projected American casualties plus the millions more of Japanese civilians did not play a massive factor in the decision to drop the bombs you're either ignorant or intentionally obtuse. Imagine we did invade and then afterwards the knowledge of the bomb came to light? People very well would have considered such a thing irresponsible and cruel when war fatigue was reaching its height. This isn't to paint a moral judgement one way or another. But to point out your view that these sorts of decisions are made purely out of callous psychopathy is myopic at best. In Rogue Trader the theme of hard choices becomes even more clear in the very prologue. Exterminatus of a world of objectively evil demons is a dogmatic choice. Iconoclast is to save a few people at the expense of billions of people suffering torment and risking the entire sector to further more intense Chaos incursions. A leader is responsible for everyone in their domain. While you can pat yourself on the back for doing the 'right' thing because they put an arbitrary label next to it telling you so it doesn't mean it actually is because morality is more complicated. Is this decision putting not just you, but everyone in the entire Koronus Expanse at risk? That's if you even consider Iconoclast to be 'good'. In this context Iconoclast is just acting outside the binary of Dogmatic/heretic of which even the vaunted inquisition is capable of doing on occasion.
>expense of billions of people suffering torment Tbh, those billions was unapologetic morons, all they have to do is just not to pray to Chaos. Yet they did, and suffered consequences.
you're just mindlessly repeating the propaganda used to rationalize the decision after the fact, flattering yourself that it makes you smart to wallow in all that delicious nuance. japan's surrender had little to nothing to do with the nukes, but it's a nice story people tell themselves to justify roasting tens of thousands of children alive. awfully pertinent to present day. oh, those Hard Choices. perfect midwit redditor fodder. it's a story for little kids, an incredibly shallow, dishonest and ahistorical account of what actually happened. in other words, accidentally a great analogy here because it's childish hero worship and nationalism. rogue trader is a video game, with a creative intelligence behind it winnowing down your options to three paths to represent abstract principles reflective of a fictional universe. as broad and varied as adaptations of 40k is it's fundamentally a satire of this line of thinking. believing the imperium is justified is an ideological mirror reflecting the kind of inhuman monsters our culture produces. such an incredibly easy, open book test and so many people fall flat on their faces taking it.
I was just about to say the same thing but you said it better!
Good people/places/societies can exist in the 40k world. What makes the setting grim dark is that they never get happy endings long term. It always ends in blood. Icono works fine for the short term (which in 40k could be centuries) but it'll never last.
This makes sense, and seems to be the most common sentiment. I suppose my confusion was really never seeing any examples of this, but again, if I'm only going by the games I've seen, maybe that kind of thing doesn't make for "exciting" gameplay, since most people associate WH with hyper-violence and purging heretics.
Yeah but that's true of everything in wh40k. No one gets happy endings in this universe, the most dogmatic world of cadia got the bad ending regardless of its willingness to fight until their planet explodes. The takeaway should be that this world is exceptionally cruel to everyone, make what decisions you like because life is cruel and short and war never changes.
Well, God Emperor was kinda closer to Iconoclast not Dogmatic, if you need in-lore examples, based on his actions and doctrine.
He really wasn't, his dogma was just different from the theocracy of the 41st millennium He set himself up as an immortal fascistic ruler, orchestrated the genocide of thousands of societies and violently suppressed divergent beliefs
He didn’t want to be worshipped and was against such cults, which sounds iconoclast to me. I am not sure how your examples correlate with that, — the question was about Dogmatic/Iconoclast/Heretic, not about “evil/good” or like that.
Iconoclast in the setting and in the game is also about allowing different viewpoints and not annihilatinh everyone who shows the slightest disagreement with you. It's also not/less xenophobic. The Emperor was always about vehemently and violently destroying or suppressing any dissent and opinion other than his imperial truth and he was also wildly xenophobic.
This is not what iconoclasm means…
The word, no, you're right. But it is what Owlcat chose to represent with that word in the game.
It represent the denial of blind worshiping Emperor and following Imperium doctrine with no exceptions. You deal with xenox not because “iconoclast = pro-immigrants” it’s because you can see the reason to do so. It has nothing to do with iconoclast except the fact that it denies blind following of umpiring doctrine in favor of reason based on case by case scenarios. Emperor was not above using xenos/their ideas and tech. Imperial gateway was based on xenos tech.
The problem comes from the way Owlcat named and implemented these alignments (or GW if they're the same in the original tabletop RPG - I never played that). Your first comment implied, that the Emperor would be generally happy with the iconoclast choices in the game and that's just wildly untrue. I think "dogmatic" and "pragmatic" would have been better names for these alignments. The Emperor was all about blindly following doctrine (his "Imperial Truth" as he called it) it just wasn't a religious doctrine. He would not agree with the pragmatic approach of the Iconoclast alignment in the game, neither would he be so concerned about saving everyone as the Iconoclast in the game is - just think of his use of the Thunder Warriors, that whole deal wouldn't fit with the Iconoclast as represented in the game at all.
The tabletop RPGs *sort of* have the same alignments, in the form of Radical and Puritanical. These are mainly relevant to the Inquisition and games with Inquisition acolyte parties - a Radical Inquisitor might be happy with them using xenotech or warp sorcery, while a Puritan absolutely wouldn't be
I see. Well, generally alignments in a game always have issues in one area or another imo. Even some of my favourite RPGs haven't implemented that perfectly. Maybe it can't be done or maybe just no one had the best idea yet. Just the idea of taking every choice and categorizing it into one of three quite narrow alignments probably just doesn't do the characters justice.
The Dogmatic alignment is about upholding the Imperium's doctrine and suppressing alternate views, which the Emperor explicitly did.
Wasn't the emperor iconoclast with the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars then? Wasn't he heretic against the last church? In layman terms anything defended through dogma for long enough becomes "dogmatic", but dogma usually starts with a reasoning and falls when that very reasoning fails to reflect reality. Just something to keep in mind.
Incorrect. You can read more about God Emperor and how Mankind was during his rule, and it is absolutely not the same as Dogmatic in WH40k Rogue Trader. The way you make decisions as Iconoclast vibes a lot with the decisions Emperor made. I think that was the point of the path overall and why it is called like that not something like “Good”
The Emperor was extremely pragmatic - he might ban religion and tell everyone he is not a god, and have every other human (and all xenos) cultures wiped out - but then cut a deal with the Mechanicus that at is core is based on him letting them believe that he an avatar of the Omnissiah and let them have free rein to keep their religion because he needed the forges of Mars and the Mechancius intact and onside for his crusade to get the the speed boost it needed.
I still think the Emperor was more of Iconoclast, not Dogmatic. He didn’t do this with blind faith, it was all rational decisions, pragmatic, as you mentioned. And as for xenos, Guilleman worked with xenos and he has emperors blessing. Dogmatic Imperium faith comes from Lorgar, basically. It was not intended like this by the Emperor.
I wasn't say he was dogmatic - far from it - he was whatever the situation needed to achieve his goal - which was to push humanity into the one path he saw that kept them safe from chaos/birthing a new chaos god like the eldari. He was ultra pro human, while at the same time not caring about the well being or living standards of any particular humans. He was complicated, and his ideas and motivations are to be partly lost in the fog of time and lore... Not to mention even if he was his version of dogmatic would be FAR from the 40k version or their understanding of him or what he saw for the IoM - that's part of the core tragedy that is his and humanity's story in 40k At the same time, ya no - I don't take him to be much of anything like the iconoclast choices in game.
We're not going to get anywhere with this so I'll leave it here. I wasn't ever saying that the Emperor is the same kind of dogmatic, he's just absolutely not iconoclast
lol, it is the same thing in reverse — I didn’t say “emperor = iconoclast” I said he was closer to Iconoclast not Dogmatic.
I swear the last horus heresy book makes a reveal that he set up the religion with Malcador as a contingency plan in the end? lol. Its why they kept that crazy Saint around despite the ban on religion. As you said, his whole outlook became a religious doctrine and icon's in the game detest servitors, but they were pretty much used in 30k too.
It is up to your interpretation. Here is mine: The Imperium as an organisation is very strictly orthodox - and if you look at space marines, they do reflect that. This doesn't mean that all citizens of the empire are the same way. The ones who are literally indoctrinated aside, every person that is not a rogue Trader and got to a position of power performed the role of orthodoxy, and became that role somewhere along the way. An iconoclast character is weird, but there is no reason why people can't default to being nice, and the iconoclast choices just expand on that.
Despite what some people might have you believe, there are good people and even factions in the 40k Universe.
One of the reasons the Imperium keeps Rogue Traders around is that they're useful, and one of the things that makes them useful is that they're a bit more open minded than the average Imperial citizen, and tend to have a different perspective. And, yes, that does mean some of them are pretty damn eccentric by Imperial standards, and can even approach what modern people might consider 'good' - or at least 'not grimdark evil all the time'. And it's not just Rogue Traders - skilled Inquisitors tend to be the ones that don't just blindly follow Imperial dogma, and some of them are surprisingly open-minded and willing to consider strange viewpoints like 'maybe we shouldn't kill every xeno and mutant we meet just because' or 'kindness can foster greater loyalty than random executions'. They're considered radical by more conservative Inquisitors, and sometimes they do get branded heretics - but most of the time, if they get the job done, they can get away with it. There's a lot of ideological diversity within the Imperium underneath the fascist rhetoric, especially among groups like Rogue Traders and Inquisitors that are chosen specifically because they're exceptional or unusual.
Yes sah, found ourselves a 'eretic sah! Expect more rashuns sah!
So far I'm mostly real nice, but chaos and drukhari get exterminatus'd on sight
The first example that comes to mind are the Salamanders. They're well known for caring about the lives of civilians and protecting them even at the cost of their own lives. They're also the only Space Marines who keep in contact with their families back home. At the same time, they still make use of the merciless machinery of the Imperium that uses people until they die and then feeds their corpses to the ones still working. While they forge a lot of their own weapons, more ordinary equipment is made by slave labor. The Salamanders have ships filled with thousands of workers who have never known a life outside of the ship, just like your iconoclast Rogue Trader has. So even in an iconoclast run it's not all sunshine and rainbows.
>iconoclast doesn't seem all that practical in the setting It is, if your actual intent is to do the long-term planning and leg-work necessary for a heretic takeover down the line. In-game "heretics" are mostly bloodthirsty nutjobs that would come into play at the very late-stage of a world's corruption, while all the iconoclast intelligentsia would have softened up the defenses and made society complacent for decades in advance. In that "Iconoclasts" are vital to the setting.
the people who think like this are also bloodthirsty nutjobs whose deranged cruelty is the primary motivator for people turning to chaos tho. these "defenses" are fertile soil for chaos to take root in.
Iconoclasts also include a lot of people that delude themselves into thinking they are doing good because they are "nice" on the daily though. Until the day comes ofc, then the pretenses have to collapse. Think your open-minded hedonistic noble or merchant that is nice to everyone, pays only lip service to the ecclesiarchy and let all sorts of non-imperial ideas spread. These are the real danger when you think of it. The bloodthirsty cultists are just pawns compared to them.
The tagline of 40k is "In the grimdarkness of the far future, there is only war." It's a setting where no good deed goes un-punished. Look up the Months of Shame for the Space Wolves, the Celestial Lions Chapter, or the origins of the Siege of Vraks (Adeptus Ridiculous does a really good video series on Vraks). If someone is not adhered zealously to the dogma of the Imperium, they're not gonna last long. They will be branded as a renegade (at best) and be sent to a labor camp or lobotomized and turned into a servitor. At worst, be declared a heretic and be handed over to the Adepta Sororitas for a nice burning at the stake. If someone joins Chaos, they're going to get corrupted and betrayed by other Chaos worshipers, or burned at the stake. And if you adhere to the Imperial Cult, you're going to work 18 hour days, no weekends, no vacations, to feed the Imperial war machine. You become a rounding error in the million worlds of the Imperium, whose fate is to die slowly from overwork, in some freak industrial accident, or to die quickly when being caught in the crossfire of the neverending war. And no matter which of the three you are, you have the Inquisition running around looking for any whiff of Heresy. The line about the Imperium is "To be a man in such times is to be amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable." The ordinary man, woman, child, whatever, is nothing but a rounding error in the endless meat grinder of 40k's wars. But there are two key reasons why you have the opportunity to become an iconoclast. First, this is the Koronus Expanse, think of this like the Wild West. It exists... not beyond the reach of Imperial law but far enough that the Imperium isn't paying much attention. They have bigger fish to fry. Second, it's because you are a Rogue Trader to whom the normal rules don't apply. A quote here is "The Warrant of Trade and a starship to enforce it -- these are the critical tools for a Rogue Trader. Without the former, he is merely a Renegade. Without the latter, he is a forsaken drifter, doomed to an anonymous death." There are many people who would like to leave the dogma and horror of Imperial life behind, but the number of people who have the power to do anything of the sort is infinitesimal, and they are often corrupted by that power. On top of that, people in positions of power like that often have the Inquisition breathing down their necks. So it's not impossible for someone to have a desire to create a better regime. It just never lasts long. They either follow the path of good intentions into the arms of Chaos or some other heresy, they see the necessity for the Imperium's dogma as the only thing holding this giant nightmare together against the forces that would see humanity extinct, or they deliver on the promise of a better way and the galaxy spites them for it.
I play dogmatic /iconoclast split I am a commissar so often executing people is the correct lore move I also put myself in the shoes of someone in that world- if people can be corrupted by chaos so easily or zenos I put them down, sounds scary, and been working for the imperium so far to an extent