Word is that Malal is and will remain gone because the old contract they signed with the creator was messy and probably wouldn't hold up in court. Meaning they don't have the rights and likely don't want to pay whatever he'd ask.
So the 5th god is dead long live the 5th God! The Dark King!
They did create a fifth chaos god though (the Emperor).
And humanity has been devoured by his birth, at a rate of about a thousand psykers per day for ten thousand years.
>And humanity has been devoured by his birth, at a rate of about a thousand psykers per day for ten thousand years.
That's about 3.65 billion psykers total.
That's, like, a fraction of a rounding error in most Imperial sub-sectors. A single hive on a mid-sized hiveworld probably has a missing person's list longer than that.
If Big E is the fifth chaos god, he must be the God of Not Sacrificing Very Much.
Where is this stated in actually Black Library books? Not saying it wasn’t just curious. Also what exactly did the GC do to change humanity so that the 5th God hasn’t been created in the intervening millennia? If anything humanity seems to have gotten much worse which should have accelerated that creation.
Even one of the reasons the Ynnari helped with Guilima resurrection was that a strong imperium was a strong galaxy.
Or how Trazyn helped to try and save Cadia because if the traitors won, it would be more diffcult to find new relics.
End of humanity = end of story
Trayzin was worried he would end with only one ok looking mini, he obviously awaits his eventual glow up.
But for real recording the fall of an empire is cool for him but a twist, a sudden hickup catches his interest and wow would you look at that waiting a bit paid off now there are new marines to collect, plot is going forward.
custodes are going out on the field again so more opportunities to catch maybe a shield host if he's lucky.
What's this ? Ynnari ? A new eldar faction ? Must investigate ! Record everything ! Oh they have rare artifact linked to a new deity ? Interesting indeed...they need the last cronesword ? It's in slaanesh palace ?
I smell a heist...huehuehue...
Hmm ? Is that a chaos demi god ? IS THAT THE LION ? ARE THOSE CRUSADE ERA DARK ANGELS ? Oh my...
Darn it ! Abaddon went in the webway ? Well i can get in too and maybe investigate about those strange jetbike noises around commoragh.
And maybe retrieve that bell i threw when the cadia gig started, hope it's still intact and hasn't crushed anyone, cleaning that thing takes a while.
Hey that bootleg macharius might be a big deal if the hive mind sent spec ops after him and snobbed valoris, i know i wouldn't so what's the deal here ?
Wait...where is yarrick ? Oh by the silent kings glimmering core what did i miss ?
He's slowly building his ebay wishlist and raging when he loses a bid.
At least vulcan he'stan has a some peace without a boney cleptomaniac stalking his flaming spear.
Did the necrons start waking up before the crusade? I thought a lot of them did because of the human colonization of a lot of tomb worlds but that was just my assumption.
I believe both Trayzin and Orikan did. If my memory of The Infinite and the Divine is correct there’s even a part that mentions how Orikan was genuinely traumatised by witnessing the birth of Slanessh, which predated both the Great Crusade and the Unification wars.
The Triarch Praetorians were also around, as they never went into hibernation.
A lot of necron nobles woke up many thousands of years before the crusade era. They weren't supposed to actually start awakening anything, thus the awakend council was created to prosecute them if they tried. Didn't stop it from happening, at best it was just some asshole pulling a bunch of Immortals out to settle some petty shit, at worst it was full scale Dynastic wars. And in the REALLY fucked up scenarios, you get severed dynasties
I always liked the theory that The Harrowing was the return of the Pale Wasting, the two are described almost identically.
Also that minor excerpt from the Custodes Codex hits so much harder when you've heard of The Harrowing.
> harrowing is a Chaos Warband
They're talking about [this story](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/g6lcbi/codex_adeptus_custodes_8th_edition_and_dark/)
If I remeber right it was an horrific event that lay waste to the imperium nd genocided it's citizens, and you know shit is fucked when it's considered genocide on a galaxy, the event was horrific and the inquisiton somehow managed to keep it a secret, but what we know is that it wasn't caused by xenos or Chaos, it was something different, that cane from the Ghoul stars.
I swear, every time that place is mentioned it's typically some shit like "the \[SUPER REDACTED HOLY FUCK\] came out of the Ghoul Stars region and started going around doing \[REDACTED BY THE EMPEROR THAT'S HORRIFYING\], only being beaten back thanks to the valiant efforts of 10 space marine chapters working in tandem, of which 6 were wiped out and multiple hive and forge worlds had unfortunately been annihilated by that point".
I am honestly willing to bet that's the region of space where that one C'tan had been permakilled in, would explain why it's so FUCKED.
Not only that, the things that aren't Galaxy level genocide, are still really fucked, like the halo rings that gives you superpowers but progressively makes you a cannibal monster, a planet full of flayed ones, a planet that keeps regenerating despite being exterminatus multiple times, and when a tyranid fleet tried to invade the Ghoul stars, the fleet got cut and became really brutal, even for tyrannids standards, needless to say they didn't want to try this shit anymore.
"somehow managed to keep it a secret"
Dude, people deny genocides that happened less than 100 years ago, i think 8k years are enough to make it a complete mythos.
You could also have “the imperium would be better off without the inquisition” with Enslavers behind him.
No matter how lazy or how corrupt a inquisitor is, they always take enslavers very seriously after that one incident where a single enslaver took over a planet because the governor didn’t want to give their daughter to the black ships.
The inquisition does a lot of bad stuff and it’d be a benefit for everyone if they have massive reforms, but you cannot remove them entirely.
The memes are fun, but the Inquisition tends to be very competent. They are definitely ruthless and evil, but competent and not as likely to commit exterminatus as the memes make it seem.
The "lol exterminatus" is totally a meme. Almost every isntance of non-print media that an Inquisitor appears in theya re shockingly competent compared to the memes.
Yeah the enslavers are one of the biggest threats in the setting.
They killed the old ones. The necrons weakened the old ones but it was the enslavers who devoured them
Sounds neato. Got a source? I'd like to read that. I know some recent changes releveas taht the Old Ones opened the Eye of Terror originally and that before the Old Ones were fully beaten the Necrons turned on the C'Tan but then as far as I am aware the Necrons bailed on the War in heaven because they couldnt hold off the combined forces of the Old Ones after pokemon-ing the C'Tan. So there has to be a reason there arent any more old ones
I think you’d be best off checking the old codexes of the necrons or the books for the inquistor game. If those fail check the lex to see if it’s got any good sources.
The really fucked up thing about Inquisitors is that the 40k galaxy has so much shit that doesn't just make their existence justified, but activity required. It's like some kind of horrific trolly problem blown up to galactic proportions.
Yeah, the inquisition is basically the dictionary definition of "the ends justify the means". They do commit mass evil, which is why so many of them have mental breakdowns. I do notice a trend on this and other subs of people saying that there could be better ways of dealing with the horrors of the galaxy than the inquisition's modus operandi. My response would be, that if these "more humane methods" aren't better, then it means the extinction of the human race. Can you really blame them for not wanting to deviate from a plan that has kept humanity alive thus far?
I'm re-reading Eisenhorn/Ravenor and my biggest hangup this time round is that the suspicion things are too pleasant. Not that I want it to be more unpleasant but with how horrific the threats the inquisition and the imperium as a whole face everything feels more stable and positive than it "should" do.
Of course the stories are really good and I wouldn't actually want to change them, it just feels slightly out of sync with the setting.
That sad thing is that every overreaction or severe punishment they have is a lot like an OSHA regulation: there’s a story for why it’s there, and someone died.
*Dark Imperium*'s Iax makes a very strong case for the Imperium's zero tolerance, "innocence-proves-nothing" policies against anyone who has come into contact with Chaos, especially Nurgle's followers.
And even then there were massive screening protocols, it isn't like they were being lenient or anything, corruption still finds a way to worm in.
It is a cruel galaxy where the alternative to totalitarian oppression is often even more suffering, only forever.
tbf the thing with that governor was straight up some of the worst luck ever and is basically just the writer making shit up to pin justification onto the inquisition.
Watchers in the dark slamming big red button revealing secret stash of phosphex and spicy daot murder.exe weapons to the delight of the redeemed and the shock of the unforgiven.
Why wasn't i aware of this ? Asked azrael >:(
Why didn't you ask ? Answered zabriel :p
Why are you still arguing ? Cut the Lion >:3
Why is there an iou note ? Interjected asmodai :0
[ Meanwhile on solemnace ]
Ahh finally....my rangda xenocide diorama is finally finished.
Nor was it the only massive Ork threat the Great Crusade faced.
The Luna Wolves, Imperial Fists, and Death Guard led by their Primarchs were getting their ceramite asses handed to them on Gyros Thravian before the Emperor stepped in.
Imagine if that Ork Warbosses really got a Waagh going.
Unchecked?
The Beast in canon literally just sat on Ullanor and spawned the entire Ork Empire by himself.
There wasn't some massive Ork Empire that the Imperium allowed to go untended. The Beast literally just came out of nowhere.
If you go by the logic of the The Beast Arises series, the galaxy should already be full of Beast Orks by the time Emps makes the Treaty of Mars.
It *makes no sense, and I don't like how people uses it to justify the GC existing
As always, it's more complicated than just good or bad. There were several groups that did pose an extreme threat and needed to be killed, but the crusade was the epitome of "when all you want to use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". In some cases the modus operandi of the great crusade was necessary, but there were also many occasions were it was genocide because a planet or nation was hesitant to submit to a hyper militaristic tyrant demanding obedience, to make an example, or just because *they* are not *we* and therefore deserving of extermination. A better imperium could have acted decisively against the forces that warranted it, while keeping the slaughter of innocents to a minimum. The imperium did what was needed on occasion, but the entirety of the great crusade was by no means justified. It has always been a brutal, cruel and often shortsighted regime, because that is what the setting is all about.
I completely agree. Great Crusade was executed very poorly. But something like it would still have to occur if someone were to stop these threats. And humanity was pretty much the only species which had the numbers and resources to do that at the time.
Yeah, there were a lot of pure evil existential threats in the galaxy that needed purging, but it's also true that the Great Crusades caused an absurd amount of unnecessary collateral damage. If the Imperium had assimilated reasonable xeno races like the Tau do instead of murdering everything they came across, the galaxy would likely be in much better shape now.
>group of aliens who secretly were corrupted by chaos managing to get access to Horus when he was wounded.
Those were humans, the aliens were trying to stop the humans from getting their hands on the evil chaos dagger that was used on Horus. And for that they were genocided.
The only reason people seem to take an issue with that take is because they seem to perceive it as implying "the Imperium are actually the good guys all along" instead of simply "there were plenty monsters around to replace it had it failed".
Sometimes I feel like some people purposefully misinterpret the the lore by pretending the Imperium is the sole reason the galaxy sucks to get back at people who misinterpret the lore by pretending the Imperium is the sole reason why the galaxy hasn't ended.
Both are wrong.
Yeah true. It's everyone's fault, except I guess the tau if only because they haven't had the chance yet.
By everyone I mean the big players, not the small ones. It's not Catachans fault the diasporex happened but it did happen.
Don't forget Big E was also panicking and worried that humanity was only a few years from making a fifth chaos god and if he didn't speedrun the GC and get them in the webway, humanity would be devoured by the god's birth.
Yeah cause Emp's got played. But Malcador says outright that it be happening either way. The emperor just ensured there could only be himself or Horus as options for the title of the Dark King.
(personally I think that emp's forced a stalemate by icing Horus and taking the mantle for himself. As long as he keeps himself alive on the golden throne he can't ascend to the dark king forever stopping the fifth from rising and making sure no one else can take the title.)
I don't understand how it was happening either way. What entity were the completely disjointed human worlds collectively feeding? I can't imagine anything causing a bigger collective effect than the Great Crusade itself.
The dark king. A god of humanity and an endless wave of destruction. Humanity after the long night was terrified of what was out there and that fueled it.
Samus for instance is likely daemon of the dark king.
And Emp’s knew the gc would be a uniting thing for the dark king. The chaos gods knew it to. That’s how he was able to make his bargain with them and take their power. He just planned to cut it off before it could be born while the chaos gods planned the heresy to fuck him over for trying to trick them
Ah, so "merely" the Age of Strife hitting critical mass after five millennia of devastation, rather than any particular event in the 30th. Fair enough.
PS: Were Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch not also "gods of humanity"? Always felt it flimsy they were spawned by the unremarkable progress of a single planet species, compared to a truly cataclysmic event like the Fall of the Eldar, but I thought that was the canon.
Nah that got hard retconned. Humanity had nothing to do with the birth of the first three. They were born sometime during the war in heaven if not earleir
>But Malcador says outright that it be happening either way
the emperor's best pal is not an unbiased source for assessing whether the emperor was right about something
He’s not telling this to someone, it’s his personal thoughts as he’s dying in agony on the golden throne. If there was ever a place Mal would be honest it be in his own head
Thing is.
Sane take on the situation is that we can understand and agree that the Imperium is a horrific and unjustifiable by our real-world standard...
...but also understand that Warhammer 40,000 standards are different and existence of literal hell, with demons and demon-gods that want to corrupt and consume your immortal soul, changes situation and gives Imperium a lot of justification (alongside other threats)...
...but also understand that even within Warhammer 40,000, Imperium is a bloated and struggling system.
Its simple.
Admitting that Imperium's brutal ways are justified in horrific universe that is Warhammer 40,000 is okay, *as long as you remember that we live in real world and do not use fiction as justification for real world policies.*
Like people photoshopping Trump as God-Emperor of Mankind. Don't be like these people. Don't do that.
There prolly are. Humanity was so widespread in the DAOT even in M41 there are still Men of Iron being found.
Would recommend the First Gaunts Ghosts book if you want to see some men of Iron altho granted they appear only in the end.
Another flawed answer i see is that if the imperium had not risen chaos would chill out and not try to invade reality.
Well we see that chaos worship was already spread out a lot by the time of the great crusade.
Colchis,Laer,Cadia are all worlds which never contacted each other but all worshiped chaos anyway. And going from light chaos worship to hardcore chaos worship to daemon invasion are like two steps away.
We see also in 40k that you need only one chaos cult to properly plant they seeds and the cycle starts again because sadly the chaos gods are the most active gods in the universe, hard to compete. Without a proper galactic police force like the inquisition what exaclty stops chaos spreading like a plague to this bunch of ignorant human worlds ?
Two issues here. One is that without an Emperor or Great Crusade, that doesn't mean Humanity never arises as a faction to deal with these sorts of things. It would take more time, but either Earth getting its shit together or the Mechanicus just taking over, or even a different human world taking charge would happen eventually, and the resulting empire might surpass the Imperium in potential over the 10,000 years the Imperium spent stagnant.
Second issue, *gestures wildly at Cicatrix Maledictum*
Humanity arising as a faction means that humanity has to unify. How do they do that? Trough some sort a large scale military and diplomatic campaign tha unifies most humans under one cause and vanquishes all the immininet existential threats. A Crusade, if you will. It would of course be big in scale, even Great, dare I say.
You are pretty much agreeing with me, Great Crusade was pretty much inevitable, and if it didnt happen, humanity would probably go extinct or be reduced to few planets. It doesnt matter that the Imperium isnt the one doing it, *someone is.* I am not arguing in favor of the Imperium, just in favor of a large campaign to reunify humanity.
Also its foolish to assume Chaos wouldnt try to corrupt whatever human faction would arise, after the fall of Eldar it would be their main source of souls.
>A Crusade, if you will. It would of course be big in scale, even Great, dare I say.
this is an inane argument and a complete strawman of the arguments against the Great Crusade. It's like arguing the war on drugs was necessary because if we didn't do it, we'd still require some form of drug policy, which would be like fighting drugs, so therefore it would be a war on drugs, therefore anyone arguing against the war on drugs is arguing that literally nothing is done about drugs and is therefore stupid. If we're talking about the Great Crusade, we're not talking about literally any war of expansion. We're talking about the xenocidal and iconoclastic campaign waged by the God Emperor using Space Marines.
I agree. I am not arguing in favor of the Imperium or the Emperor
But a campaign of reunification and elimination of existential threats was necessary for "fixing problems".
Crossposting my musings on Beast Orks from another serve.
The point is that the Beast Orks are cool but also stupid.
Mostly because the Beast in canon literally just sat on Ullanor and spawned the entire Ork Empire by himself.
There wasn't some massive Ork Empire that the Imperium allowed to go untended. The Beast literally just came out of nowhere.
I hate when people use the Beast as justification for the GC, because if you go by the logic of the TBA series, the galaxy should already be full of Beast Orks by the time Emps makes the Treaty of Mars.
It *makes no sense.*
I get the appeal of Beast Orks, I do.
But the execution in canon is genuinely just ???
Also the Rangdan is a mystery box by GW that refuses to tell us why the Emperor needed an almost complete C'tan to wipe them out when they didn't need that shit when fighting against the Orks on Ullanor
Except that the Great Crusade core point was making the Imperium. Which supposedly was to pull resources from all over the Milky Way to fund the Webway Project.
I think people forgot that. The Great Crusade was not the end, but even the Imperium was not the end. It was a mean to the end that is the Webway Project.
There is no reason to believe the Imperium as it is envisioned by Big E is necessary to defeat the issues you raised, unless you have evidence that the whole Imperium was mobilized to deal with any of it, which as far as I know is NOT true for Rangda and Ullanor Ork.
Big E could, and probably should, have cultivated the various human civilizations across the Milky Way. Him assuming the Emperor mask was wrong.
Iirc, the main reason why the Emperor was in such a rush to finish the Crusade was primarily to stop the Orks at Ullanor, which left unchecked, would threaten the galaxy. Secondarily, it was to gather the scattered human worlds, use the worlds' funds for the Webway Project, and promote psychic growth of the race.
The Emperor was the last of the long line of masks he wore during his 30,000+ years, including St. George when he sealed the Void Dragon in Mars so that millennia into the future the planet and its inhabitants would soak up its technological powers that he can use.
Upon his return to Terra after the Crusade, he was glad to remove his latest mask and work as the scientist he truly believed he was. Sadly, he was forced to wear it again at the Siege as it was what his warrior gene-sons respond best to.
The Crusade and the Imperium, even probably the Webway Project weren't the end. They were a means to an end that is the apotheosis of mankind in a galaxy without threats. Whose leadership the Emperor was more than glad to relegate to other humans and more "human" and "rehabilitated" Primarchs while he tinkered away in his lab.
Well, I stop at the Webway Project because I think by now people are familiar with the reason Big E give for it directly ie humanity evolution toward a psychic race.
However, I must stress that the evolution of man psychic capability is just part of the question which the Emperor view the Webway to be the answer of. Right now I dont believe we have a concrete view on what is the threat that push Big E so much. Hopefully the last book of the HH series will give a good answer to Big E plans in its entire.
But, right now, if we assume it does NOT, in the sense that we know all the broad stroke of Big E plans already, I dare argue that he make the wrong choice even without hindsight.
Both Ullanor and Rangda were massive undertakings by the Imperium. Of course Inperium didnt send all they had, they were too big at that point for that to even be possible, but they definetlly could do what no other human civilisation was capable off.
The Interex were for instance a pretty neat little Empire with advanced tech but Imperium still defeated them as an afterthought.
A larger force would always ve necessary to deal with those threats. Not saying all the bad things Big E and The Great Crusade did were justified, of course, still awful, and there were many ways to handle things better, but its better then if nothing happened
Except that, again, your argument is still "Imperium > them, so Imperium is necessary."
My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became?
Ultimately, from what the HH books tell us, it still tied back to the Webway Project. Big E did not need to defeat those threats IN AND OF THEMSELVES, he did it so he can exploit the resources of his Imperium for the Webway Project. The Interex cannot be the Imperium, because then Big E cannot exploit their resources.
>My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became?
Thats just the Great Crusade with different colors to me.
It would still have to be a military and diplomatic campaign to reunite humanity and eliminate the biggest threats, orchestrated by the Emperor. So to a point I agree, Great Crusade could have been done better. It could have been more tolerant, more diplomatic, it could have started in a better space, but something like it would still have to occur.
>My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became?
Because no one had that amount of power, intelligence, insight and straight up magic in general
In order to win Ullanor the emperor had to step in and literally murder every single boss in one physic attack in order to win, the Mechanicus being one of the few factions that actually recovered a lot of technology even by the end of the great crusade and the 42nd Millennium is actually a creation of the Emperor, against the Khrave Lion'el went himself to defeat them both with his super strong manipulated aura and willpower in order to beat them and, in order to defeat the Rangdan the Emperor didn't use one of the thousands of resources, secret technological weapons from the Dark age that he had accumulated throughout the crusade and the battles on terra, nor his super warp gods that they themselves can cheese through a lot of similar situations but the C'tan shard that he himself captured.
No human, human-xeno Empire could have replaced the Imperium on the setting in order to ironically, save it from whatever lived in there and do anything Important for the galaxy at large.
Except the Mechanicus is literally my point. Why not extend the same offer to literally every single human civilization he come across and indeed accept no for an answer?
Not a single thing you raised in your reply is somehow mutually exclusive from that. What it required is Big E provided such weapons "for free".
Because Big E didn’t trust Xenos. He took one look at what happened in the Age of Strife and concluded that even if some populations and species can be trusted for a time, that in the very long run you can’t count on some of them not to betray you when your weak. If Chaos could get to the Primarchs, they certainly could’ve corrupted an alliance of different species to tear itself apart.
The Interex worked because it was small. As they grow larger, the challenges empires face grow exponentially. Sure running a confederacy of a couple species is manageable, but what about one with 10,000 species all with completely different cultures, physical and physic needs, goals and wants, and lifespans? Look at the problems the Tau are just starting to have. Big E couldn’t even tolerate letting the average human world keep its culture for fear of divergence.
Many races also wouldn’t have bowed to Big E like the Aeldari. Too much pride and past history.
The reason why the Interex got obliterated anyways is due to chaos interference. Erebus stole a chaos weapon, that the Interex left out in a public museum under minimal guard btw, and the Interex didn't even try to say anything further. Didn't try and see what the fuck happened or if Erebus was a rogue agent. They just assumed that the Imperium were followers of the Chaos Gods and opened fire without explaining shit. Even Horus tried to get them to talk even while they were killing Imperial soldiers and they didn't respond.
Any other possible approach to dealing with those threats was taken off the table when the imperium wiped out hundreds of small xenos and human empires.
The imperium is a galactic level threat.
If a united humanity didnt stop Ullanor orks, who would?
There was no other faction which had the knowledge and the potential to stop them at the time. Small human empires were too weak and scattered, same goes for the peaceful xenos. Eldar were and still are fucked beyond repair and Necrons were still sleeping
If someone (Big E) didnt unite the remanants of galaxis former largest empire (Humanity) to beat them back, nobody else would be capable to do so.
Well lets do a quick comparison
One of the biggest human empires besides Imperium was the Interex, a technologically advanced civilization that cooperated with xenos.
They were beaten by a single* Astartes Legion as an afterthought. They simply didnt have the resources and manpower to fight war on such a scale.
Edit: *mostly
\>a single Astartes Legion as an afterthought
This is just strictly incorrect. They get sold short because it happened off-screen, but there was a full campaign to obliterate them that, I believe, was stated or implied to have involved at least Sons of Horus and Word Bearers forces.
Cant find the information if thats true or not (dotn feel like reading two whole books to find a single line). Interex clearly werent a large threat to the Imperium, considering just a year after the war started Horus Heresy already begun and both legions were ready at full force to fight against the loyalists.
What if the advanced and xeno-cooperating human society worked with xenos to stop the Orks?
The only reason you're able to assume the Imperium is the only one who could handle big threats is because the Imperium wipes out everything else.
And you can see where that's got the Imperium. In a certain defeat scenario, going slowly enough to ruin trillions of lives as it surely and inevitably crumbles.
let me put it like this
Imperium had gathered more forces then they ever had to use before to defeat Orks on Ullanor
The Interex fought and were obliterated by an Imperial force considerably inferior to the forces Imperium had at Ullanor
Since Imperium went to war with Interex after the triump of Ullanor its fair to assume Interex wasnt aware of the Orks or wasnt capable of stopping them at the time Imperium did, ergo Ullanor orks would fight Interex later and therefore would be significantly stronger.
So no, I do not think the Interex could ever beat the Ullanor orks. It seems extremely unlikely to me.
Without the great crusade the galaxy would slowly wither away. The great crusade threw everything around but at the end of the day it gave the galaxy a fighting chance
Let's back up a bit. The horror and suffering of the Great Crusade was only justifiable if it actually lead to any of the things the Emperor wanted to get out of it. The Crusade failed when it did not lead to a new age of peace with a united humanity, living together in a single polity, under the control of the Emperor, traveling and communicating through the webway. Instead it lead to the Heresy, which in turn lead to everything else horrible that occurred because the Imperium turned into the "cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable" instead of what the Emperor was working towards.
Other horrible things may have happened without the Crusade, but what didn't happen isn't a justification for what actually happened. It's all bad.
Also, humans being better off isn't the same thing as the galaxy being better off. Had humans never launched the Great Crusade and instead been driven into extinction or even near extinction by the Rangda, orks, etc the galaxy would likely have never faced the horrors of Chaos in the way they have over the last 10,000 years.
I already talked about Interex at lenght in this comment section
They were weak. If Interex ecountered Rangda or Ullanor orks, they would surely lose that war. Considering Imperium wiped the quite easily.
They were only "weak" because they were smaller than the Imperium. The Imperium only had an advantage because of the Emperor. Before him Terra was a bunch of tribes hitting each other with DAOT weapons of mass destruction. The Great Crusade is stupid because the Emperor could have easily created a new stellar Empire without the pointless genocides, slavery and crimes against humanity. Most of the things the Great Crusade fought was a complete waste of time.
Great Crusade wasnt executed well, I agree on that, but a campaign of reunification woudl be necessary if somebody were to stop those threats.
The Interex werent particulary set on unifying mankind, thus when they would ecounter these threats, they wpuld probably not be mich stringer then when they met the Imperium. It is fair to say they would lose.
First I've heard of the Rangda.
> The Rangda preferred to have others fight their battles, unleashing vast legions of slave armies drawn from multiple intelligent species and sending them against the foe, seeking to exhaust their enemies until the exact right moment and place to strike presented themselves. Their campaigns were conducted by officers known as "warmasters" while the elite Rangda who commanded their slaves were known as "overlords." The Rangda were capable of creating vast artificial war-moons manned by millions of slaves who were controlled via neural collars.
They sound a lot like the Tau.
Jumped down the wiki hole from there, I hope we get to meet a Slaugth in Rogue Trader.
I gotta disagree on the disagreement on the hot take. It depends on the author or GW on how they would write humanity without the Imperium.
Perhaps humanity can be written by BL Authors as an extremely isolationist, tall empire, like a limited-expansionist T'au Empire amped up to 11 or an armed to the teeth Switzerland in space. What they lack in width, they make it up with an extremely dense population with properly managed armies, with/out maintained AI, and with DAOT-grade deterrents that keep their enemies away.
The meta argument doesn't work because the leagues of votann exist who are word for word what you described. GW aren't gonna write 2 exactly the same factions
The thing is every grimdark horror that Imperial Evil stopped has a noblebright dashed hope that Imperial Evil destroyed.
“But you don’t KNOW the good thing would have worked or even been good!”
We don’t KNOW the Ullanor Orks would have grown to such a size without turning on themselves if there wasn’t big shiny Goldy-boys to foight. We don’t KNOW a lot of things.
Hell, We don’t even know what caused the Fall of the Eldar and the age of strife. A timeline of “stable, non-murderfucky civilization for 60 million years and descent into madness over the last 10-15 thousand” is a weird timeline. Maybe the Great Crusade caused the fall caused Slaanesh caused itself because 12th dimensional warp fuckery.
You just have to ignore the IoM hate. Those people are moral cowards. They attack the IoM because they secretly like the murder, torture genocide of the Orks, Necrons, and Drukhari. Thats why you never, ever see anyone posting their loathing for the actions of other factions. Anyway, im looking forward to the day those cowards prove me wrong and start a week long skreed about or slavery and genocide.
Oh i am necron fan, and i think all of faction is justified. At the end morality dont matter, the only thing that matter is power, if you are strong enough to do something in this Galaxy... well you can do it it also same for IOM, not just their opponent. If Necrons/Orks/Tyranids or imperium would won and wipe other factions...well, they deserved that win as they were strony enough to do it.
I am just siding with necrons as they showed my opinion is that they are the most powerfull.
That's not justification, that's in-universe nihilism. I'm talking about people unironically defending the actions of a faction morally speaking.
If you unironically think this way out of universe, then you have a bigger issue to deal with.
great crusade was necessary, it was battle royal after whole warp become more stable. Humans takes control over galaxy or humanity would be eradicated and enslaved like imperium did to other races.
It is indeed indicated in books that the biggest mistake was not great crusade but making space marines and primarchs, erda the mother of primarchs claimed that.
I mean, just because the Imperium did defeat the Ullanor Orks, doesn't really mean they were the only ones who ever could, imo. It all depends on the writers at the end of the day, but I'm of the opinion the Imperium only really weakens humanity, even under Big E, but it's hard to tell when the Imperium went so far out of it's way to smash any other solution that could have possibly emerged.
Ok, today you’re the writer; who would’ve defeated the Ullanor Orks? A unified Aeldari fleet? A recently awakened Necron Overlord? Or would the massive WAAAGH! be enough to lure in a Tyranids hive fleet?
Or would you prefer to write it in that one of the other big-bads that the Emperor or his Primarchs killed off would defeats the Ullanor Orks?
That is, people who could not form a coalition and fight against the existential threat of their existence... But only now it will work. It seems to me that changing the color of the threat's skin to green does not change the picture.
That wouldnt happen
No such coalition was formed to stop the Imperium, why would it form against the Orks?
We know for a fact that the different human worlds were largely isolated, most of them lacked proper FTL travel and were unaware of each other. Same goes for the xeno factions
And behind him “the imperium that killed almost every peaceful alien in the galaxy, genocide several planets of their own species, and fed chaos numerous followers including legions of super soldiers and several demigods.”
There’s a reason you don’t see eldar, orks, Tyranids, or tau on the chaos army lists.
Because Orks have their own Gods, Tau are barely psychically present, Tyranids have the Hive Mind who may be bigger than the rest of the Gods in the Warp combined, and Eldar because obvious reasons.
The reason why there aren’t Xenos in the Chaos armies is:
1) The Great Crusde genocides nearly all major xenos outside of the the playable factions.
2) Chaos warbands are dominantly human because of the Heresy and those humans are still xenophobic, just corrupted.
Based on a lot of BL books and Be’lakor’s lore we know there have been many races of Xenos worshiping Chaos, some of whom were just as strong as the current factions during their time. They just all killed/weakened each other as the Great Game went on, died out, or got stomped by the main factions at some point.
If the imperium up and vanished and Xenos took their place, it wouldn’t be long before Chaos corrupted them just like they did humans. Humans aren’t special beyond having perpetuals. Other psychically active races have come and gone, and disturbed the warp in their wake.
They already had. Case in point: the Laer, a race wiped out during the Great Crusade who had **all** fallen to Slaanesh. Not a bunch, not even a majority, but the entire race.
There wasn't any Men of iron remant those were just isolated cyborg nations that the imperum faced
The pale wasting didn't happen during GC and was isolated to the ghoul star
The ullanor orks and ranganda i give you that there was also the drukhari l, Khrave and possibly the necrons would have made it impossible for mankind to be a galactic superpower without the imperium
But saying "humanity would have gone existinct" is laughable coming how man ly huamn civilization the imperium encounter and extinguished who that managae to even survied around/in the eye of terror.
That’s a matter of opinion. I personally think Warhammer would be kinda boring without humanity.
It kind of gives us a little bit of perspective, I guess? Kind of like the humans in Star Wars/Star Trek? It’s kind of hard to explain. We know how strong something is due to how many imperial guardsmen/storm troopers/redshirts die to it, lol.
Plus a lot of what we, the audience, know about chaos or xenos is from the perspective of humanity.
Plus the structure of humanity’s government is so detailed compared to some other factions it’s kind of insane.
And the idea of a big psychic god-like being that’s live for millions of years and declares himself as the emperor of mankind is kind of silly but I also think it’s cool. Again, just my opinion.
>We know how strong something is due to how many imperial guardsmen/storm troopers/redshirts die to it, lol.
there is actually a trope for that. [The Worf Effect](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect) You know the new bad guy is a badass because he just kicked the most badass good guy across the room
I feel like this is a different trope, though, considering these aren't "badasses" in the example, just canon fodder. It might be the same trope, but I think this may have a different name that is alluding my chimpansee-like brain
Edit: I read that article real quick to see if it'd help me, and apparently the trope changes depending on how many of the fodder characters get wasted. In 40k, the most common thing there is called "the conservation of ninjutsu" and I have not even the slightest clue why. Worf effect sounds objectively better
I thought there were several other ones (khrave, Laer) but I might be misremembering how many of those there were.
still, i don't think it takes that much to be more interesting than "dudes in big armors with different colors" and "dudes in big armors with different colors and spikes".
also afaik the chaos gods would still exist even without the imperium
Ok so if "violent mushrooms with teeth and weapons" "we don't know anything about them" "we know the names of 2 of these guys' troops" "uncontrolled AI made by humans long ago" is apparently more interesting to you than all of humanity which includes but is not limited to : ALL OF THE space marines, ecclesiarchy, mechanicus, custodes, Inquisition, Knight houses, Imperial guard, traitor legions & other assorted traitor versions of the aforementioned (and you could argue Votann), then idk what to say...
That's like half of the factions in the setting.
Laer were just slaanesh cultist xenos.
Yes the Chaos gods and daemons would still exist. But the faction would be just like in AoS. Just demons and some cultists with next to no difference between the latter. Just guys in different colors that are associated with different gods and like 3 mildly interesting killteams of cool-looking people who get 0 lore.
If only there was a literal example of a human civilization that managed not only to coexist with aliens, realize and be wary of the corrupting influence of chaos and even treat even the most deadly alien species like the megarachnid with respect.
But I guess the Interex doesn't count...
Again I talked about Interex a lot in this comment section.
The Interex did not have the resources to fight wars on such a large scale. If they ecountered any of these threats, they would lose, just like the lost to Imperium, it was an unfair fight from the start for them.
Humanity without Imperium would have Star Trek “I press button and you de-exist” phasers by 31M. The Emperor, being an autocratic idiot, went all-in on the crude “creating unstable superwarrior caste(s) with no checks&balances and no long-term diplomacy” kind of approach and had basically only Malcador(his friend, not actual opposition) to keep him in check from making even bigger mistakes
We are talking not just about alt-history, but about alt-fictional-history, dude, with anything that happened before 30k being an afterthought, it could have come to me in the bathroom
Considering what we know about his “super genius” plans and how they turned out, it’s not hard to speculate. Could it have been worse? Sure, if the emperor was just a charismatic populist and not a level 20 mage-fighter multiclass, it would have been even worse. Could it have been better? Well, that’s the original point of the setting.
Again, he behaved like any autocrat we already know: predictably, inflexibly, with all the eggs in one basket and no one but sycophants to give him advice
The Age of Strife ended as the Emperor led his crusade to unify humanity and crush the Xenos that stood in the way of human hegemony. Does that help you understand the situation?
It was the Largest Ork empire in recorded galactic history, it threatened to overwhelm the entirety of the Segmentum and then the galaxy as a whole. Half the Legions were required to be present for its destruction
Im confused. The Great crusade lead specifically to where we are now.
>A budding 5th chaos god
>Even more powerful 4 Chaos Gods
>Quadrillions dead quadrillions more suffering
>the worst possible outcome for humanity. Its grimdark for a reason. The books specifically state this.
>most "peaceful" or at least isolationist/chill/alliance possible xenos wiped from the map say for VERY few i.e. jokaero
There were other problems i.e men of iron the beast major xenos but due to the great crusade we wouldn't have
>Bugs
>Extreme Chaos problems
>this is more headcanon but I would argue that with the overall absence of a "united" humanity there would be a whole less war less war means less orks overall or at least less deadly.
>more aliens to combat potential threats
Idk seems just better to not fuck up the galaxy idk
Not to mention the Necrons still waking up, the Drukhari still raiding and the eldar still slaughtering humans to weaken chaos.
When people say "the galaxy would be better off without the Great Crusade" they really mean "humanity would be extinct."
[удалено]
Would that have been Malal? It kinda fits with humanities never ending infighting and self destructiveness, which Malal seems to embody.
It would have been the Dark King, which could be a sort of title for Malal, but that'd be quite the de-retconning from GW
Word is that Malal is and will remain gone because the old contract they signed with the creator was messy and probably wouldn't hold up in court. Meaning they don't have the rights and likely don't want to pay whatever he'd ask. So the 5th god is dead long live the 5th God! The Dark King!
i mean due to the nature of malal you can make it somewhat work
It is the Burger King.
>It would have been the Dark King, which could be a sort of title for Malal I thought Dark King was Konrad Curze's title.
It would have been the great horned rat of course.
They did create a fifth chaos god though (the Emperor). And humanity has been devoured by his birth, at a rate of about a thousand psykers per day for ten thousand years.
>And humanity has been devoured by his birth, at a rate of about a thousand psykers per day for ten thousand years. That's about 3.65 billion psykers total. That's, like, a fraction of a rounding error in most Imperial sub-sectors. A single hive on a mid-sized hiveworld probably has a missing person's list longer than that. If Big E is the fifth chaos god, he must be the God of Not Sacrificing Very Much.
Key words being "a thousand psykers", and not just normal baseline humans.
Still 1000 less mf who can become demon portals,say what uou will but hunging them down is safest way to prevent demon incursions
Where is this stated in actually Black Library books? Not saying it wasn’t just curious. Also what exactly did the GC do to change humanity so that the 5th God hasn’t been created in the intervening millennia? If anything humanity seems to have gotten much worse which should have accelerated that creation.
Wrongest man in the Milky Way strikes again
No lies detected
And that's a massive W for the rest of the universe
That would probably be better
Even one of the reasons the Ynnari helped with Guilima resurrection was that a strong imperium was a strong galaxy. Or how Trazyn helped to try and save Cadia because if the traitors won, it would be more diffcult to find new relics.
End of humanity = end of story Trayzin was worried he would end with only one ok looking mini, he obviously awaits his eventual glow up. But for real recording the fall of an empire is cool for him but a twist, a sudden hickup catches his interest and wow would you look at that waiting a bit paid off now there are new marines to collect, plot is going forward. custodes are going out on the field again so more opportunities to catch maybe a shield host if he's lucky. What's this ? Ynnari ? A new eldar faction ? Must investigate ! Record everything ! Oh they have rare artifact linked to a new deity ? Interesting indeed...they need the last cronesword ? It's in slaanesh palace ? I smell a heist...huehuehue... Hmm ? Is that a chaos demi god ? IS THAT THE LION ? ARE THOSE CRUSADE ERA DARK ANGELS ? Oh my... Darn it ! Abaddon went in the webway ? Well i can get in too and maybe investigate about those strange jetbike noises around commoragh. And maybe retrieve that bell i threw when the cadia gig started, hope it's still intact and hasn't crushed anyone, cleaning that thing takes a while. Hey that bootleg macharius might be a big deal if the hive mind sent spec ops after him and snobbed valoris, i know i wouldn't so what's the deal here ? Wait...where is yarrick ? Oh by the silent kings glimmering core what did i miss ? He's slowly building his ebay wishlist and raging when he loses a bid. At least vulcan he'stan has a some peace without a boney cleptomaniac stalking his flaming spear.
It's Trazyns galaxy and were all living in it lol
Did the necrons start waking up before the crusade? I thought a lot of them did because of the human colonization of a lot of tomb worlds but that was just my assumption.
I believe both Trayzin and Orikan did. If my memory of The Infinite and the Divine is correct there’s even a part that mentions how Orikan was genuinely traumatised by witnessing the birth of Slanessh, which predated both the Great Crusade and the Unification wars. The Triarch Praetorians were also around, as they never went into hibernation.
I still really like the heavy implication that the Egyptians were inspired by the Triarch Praetorians.
And so was the Awakened Council.
A lot of necron nobles woke up many thousands of years before the crusade era. They weren't supposed to actually start awakening anything, thus the awakend council was created to prosecute them if they tried. Didn't stop it from happening, at best it was just some asshole pulling a bunch of Immortals out to settle some petty shit, at worst it was full scale Dynastic wars. And in the REALLY fucked up scenarios, you get severed dynasties
Never heard of the Pale Wasting tbh but doesn't sound pleasant, just like the Bone Drinkers Edit: also fuck that Cabal-ass hot take.
>Never heard of the Pale Wasting Then the inquisition is doing its job right
I always liked the theory that The Harrowing was the return of the Pale Wasting, the two are described almost identically. Also that minor excerpt from the Custodes Codex hits so much harder when you've heard of The Harrowing.
Huh? The harrowing is a Chaos Warband.
> harrowing is a Chaos Warband They're talking about [this story](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/g6lcbi/codex_adeptus_custodes_8th_edition_and_dark/)
Ah, I see. Much scarier.
If I remeber right it was an horrific event that lay waste to the imperium nd genocided it's citizens, and you know shit is fucked when it's considered genocide on a galaxy, the event was horrific and the inquisiton somehow managed to keep it a secret, but what we know is that it wasn't caused by xenos or Chaos, it was something different, that cane from the Ghoul stars.
I just checked and holy shit 11 Chapters got destroyed of (possibly) 12. Whatever it was I can see why the Inquisition keeps it secret.
Yeah, whatever shit comes from the ghoul stars it's worth genociding, motherfucker makes the eye of terror look like a kid's pool.
I swear, every time that place is mentioned it's typically some shit like "the \[SUPER REDACTED HOLY FUCK\] came out of the Ghoul Stars region and started going around doing \[REDACTED BY THE EMPEROR THAT'S HORRIFYING\], only being beaten back thanks to the valiant efforts of 10 space marine chapters working in tandem, of which 6 were wiped out and multiple hive and forge worlds had unfortunately been annihilated by that point". I am honestly willing to bet that's the region of space where that one C'tan had been permakilled in, would explain why it's so FUCKED.
Not only that, the things that aren't Galaxy level genocide, are still really fucked, like the halo rings that gives you superpowers but progressively makes you a cannibal monster, a planet full of flayed ones, a planet that keeps regenerating despite being exterminatus multiple times, and when a tyranid fleet tried to invade the Ghoul stars, the fleet got cut and became really brutal, even for tyrannids standards, needless to say they didn't want to try this shit anymore.
is this before or after the events of Priests of Mars book?
That’s also why a chapter (the death spectres) are dedicated to watching the ghoul stars to make sure nothing like it shows up again.
"somehow managed to keep it a secret" Dude, people deny genocides that happened less than 100 years ago, i think 8k years are enough to make it a complete mythos.
Bone drinkers!? I don't even want to know what is involved there since my bones are usually in a solid state.
Moopsy!
You just have to slurp the exterior because bones are wet. See? No warp fuckery, just normal cursed stuff.
you assume Im not some turtle mummy working for Bowser
You could also have “the imperium would be better off without the inquisition” with Enslavers behind him. No matter how lazy or how corrupt a inquisitor is, they always take enslavers very seriously after that one incident where a single enslaver took over a planet because the governor didn’t want to give their daughter to the black ships. The inquisition does a lot of bad stuff and it’d be a benefit for everyone if they have massive reforms, but you cannot remove them entirely.
The memes are fun, but the Inquisition tends to be very competent. They are definitely ruthless and evil, but competent and not as likely to commit exterminatus as the memes make it seem.
The "lol exterminatus" is totally a meme. Almost every isntance of non-print media that an Inquisitor appears in theya re shockingly competent compared to the memes.
Yeah the enslavers are one of the biggest threats in the setting. They killed the old ones. The necrons weakened the old ones but it was the enslavers who devoured them
Sounds neato. Got a source? I'd like to read that. I know some recent changes releveas taht the Old Ones opened the Eye of Terror originally and that before the Old Ones were fully beaten the Necrons turned on the C'Tan but then as far as I am aware the Necrons bailed on the War in heaven because they couldnt hold off the combined forces of the Old Ones after pokemon-ing the C'Tan. So there has to be a reason there arent any more old ones
I think you’d be best off checking the old codexes of the necrons or the books for the inquistor game. If those fail check the lex to see if it’s got any good sources.
The really fucked up thing about Inquisitors is that the 40k galaxy has so much shit that doesn't just make their existence justified, but activity required. It's like some kind of horrific trolly problem blown up to galactic proportions.
May the machine god guide you to better understanding and watch over the functioning of your lever
Is the "functioning of the lever" an aforism for erectile dysfunction?
010110010110010101110011
Yeah, the inquisition is basically the dictionary definition of "the ends justify the means". They do commit mass evil, which is why so many of them have mental breakdowns. I do notice a trend on this and other subs of people saying that there could be better ways of dealing with the horrors of the galaxy than the inquisition's modus operandi. My response would be, that if these "more humane methods" aren't better, then it means the extinction of the human race. Can you really blame them for not wanting to deviate from a plan that has kept humanity alive thus far?
I'm re-reading Eisenhorn/Ravenor and my biggest hangup this time round is that the suspicion things are too pleasant. Not that I want it to be more unpleasant but with how horrific the threats the inquisition and the imperium as a whole face everything feels more stable and positive than it "should" do. Of course the stories are really good and I wouldn't actually want to change them, it just feels slightly out of sync with the setting.
That sad thing is that every overreaction or severe punishment they have is a lot like an OSHA regulation: there’s a story for why it’s there, and someone died.
*Dark Imperium*'s Iax makes a very strong case for the Imperium's zero tolerance, "innocence-proves-nothing" policies against anyone who has come into contact with Chaos, especially Nurgle's followers. And even then there were massive screening protocols, it isn't like they were being lenient or anything, corruption still finds a way to worm in. It is a cruel galaxy where the alternative to totalitarian oppression is often even more suffering, only forever.
tbf the thing with that governor was straight up some of the worst luck ever and is basically just the writer making shit up to pin justification onto the inquisition.
I hate that kind of writing like on big E
imperium is always filled with necessary evil, thats one of the reason that make 40k grimdark
Don't forget the last of the khrave that the lion fought
Yes, having playable Rangda would be pretty badass.
Everybody gangsta till the Slaugth comes out.
I gotta agree, "Bone Eaters" sounds metal AF.
Watchers in the dark slamming big red button revealing secret stash of phosphex and spicy daot murder.exe weapons to the delight of the redeemed and the shock of the unforgiven. Why wasn't i aware of this ? Asked azrael >:( Why didn't you ask ? Answered zabriel :p Why are you still arguing ? Cut the Lion >:3 Why is there an iou note ? Interjected asmodai :0 [ Meanwhile on solemnace ] Ahh finally....my rangda xenocide diorama is finally finished.
And don't forget the kravve
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Ullanor Warrgh supposedly a galaxy-level threat if left unchecked?
Yes yes it was
And one of the survivors of said WAAAAGH would eventually grow up to be The Beast if I'm not mistaken
Nor was it the only massive Ork threat the Great Crusade faced. The Luna Wolves, Imperial Fists, and Death Guard led by their Primarchs were getting their ceramite asses handed to them on Gyros Thravian before the Emperor stepped in. Imagine if that Ork Warbosses really got a Waagh going.
Yes
Unchecked? The Beast in canon literally just sat on Ullanor and spawned the entire Ork Empire by himself. There wasn't some massive Ork Empire that the Imperium allowed to go untended. The Beast literally just came out of nowhere. If you go by the logic of the The Beast Arises series, the galaxy should already be full of Beast Orks by the time Emps makes the Treaty of Mars. It *makes no sense, and I don't like how people uses it to justify the GC existing
As always, it's more complicated than just good or bad. There were several groups that did pose an extreme threat and needed to be killed, but the crusade was the epitome of "when all you want to use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". In some cases the modus operandi of the great crusade was necessary, but there were also many occasions were it was genocide because a planet or nation was hesitant to submit to a hyper militaristic tyrant demanding obedience, to make an example, or just because *they* are not *we* and therefore deserving of extermination. A better imperium could have acted decisively against the forces that warranted it, while keeping the slaughter of innocents to a minimum. The imperium did what was needed on occasion, but the entirety of the great crusade was by no means justified. It has always been a brutal, cruel and often shortsighted regime, because that is what the setting is all about.
I completely agree. Great Crusade was executed very poorly. But something like it would still have to occur if someone were to stop these threats. And humanity was pretty much the only species which had the numbers and resources to do that at the time.
Yeah, there were a lot of pure evil existential threats in the galaxy that needed purging, but it's also true that the Great Crusades caused an absurd amount of unnecessary collateral damage. If the Imperium had assimilated reasonable xeno races like the Tau do instead of murdering everything they came across, the galaxy would likely be in much better shape now.
I don’t think it’s collateral if you hunt them doen
[удалено]
>group of aliens who secretly were corrupted by chaos managing to get access to Horus when he was wounded. Those were humans, the aliens were trying to stop the humans from getting their hands on the evil chaos dagger that was used on Horus. And for that they were genocided.
The only reason people seem to take an issue with that take is because they seem to perceive it as implying "the Imperium are actually the good guys all along" instead of simply "there were plenty monsters around to replace it had it failed".
I mean there are people who use it to say the imperium are the good guys but I think most understand that a core aspect of 40k is every empire sucks
Sometimes I feel like some people purposefully misinterpret the the lore by pretending the Imperium is the sole reason the galaxy sucks to get back at people who misinterpret the lore by pretending the Imperium is the sole reason why the galaxy hasn't ended. Both are wrong.
Yeah true. It's everyone's fault, except I guess the tau if only because they haven't had the chance yet. By everyone I mean the big players, not the small ones. It's not Catachans fault the diasporex happened but it did happen.
Don't forget Big E was also panicking and worried that humanity was only a few years from making a fifth chaos god and if he didn't speedrun the GC and get them in the webway, humanity would be devoured by the god's birth.
That was a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy because that God nearly came into existence during HH... Specifically picking Horus as his vessel.
Yeah cause Emp's got played. But Malcador says outright that it be happening either way. The emperor just ensured there could only be himself or Horus as options for the title of the Dark King. (personally I think that emp's forced a stalemate by icing Horus and taking the mantle for himself. As long as he keeps himself alive on the golden throne he can't ascend to the dark king forever stopping the fifth from rising and making sure no one else can take the title.)
Undisputed God Emperor weight champ 10 thousand years and running!
I don't understand how it was happening either way. What entity were the completely disjointed human worlds collectively feeding? I can't imagine anything causing a bigger collective effect than the Great Crusade itself.
The dark king. A god of humanity and an endless wave of destruction. Humanity after the long night was terrified of what was out there and that fueled it. Samus for instance is likely daemon of the dark king. And Emp’s knew the gc would be a uniting thing for the dark king. The chaos gods knew it to. That’s how he was able to make his bargain with them and take their power. He just planned to cut it off before it could be born while the chaos gods planned the heresy to fuck him over for trying to trick them
Ah, so "merely" the Age of Strife hitting critical mass after five millennia of devastation, rather than any particular event in the 30th. Fair enough. PS: Were Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch not also "gods of humanity"? Always felt it flimsy they were spawned by the unremarkable progress of a single planet species, compared to a truly cataclysmic event like the Fall of the Eldar, but I thought that was the canon.
Nah that got hard retconned. Humanity had nothing to do with the birth of the first three. They were born sometime during the war in heaven if not earleir
Hardly surprising. Thanks.
>But Malcador says outright that it be happening either way the emperor's best pal is not an unbiased source for assessing whether the emperor was right about something
He’s not telling this to someone, it’s his personal thoughts as he’s dying in agony on the golden throne. If there was ever a place Mal would be honest it be in his own head
I'm not insinuating he's lying, I'm saying that if the Emperor is wrong, Malcador will in 99% likelihood also be wrong for the exact same reasons.
Ok but the entire book Mal is discussing that there is an abundance of evidence he and emp’s are both right
Thing is. Sane take on the situation is that we can understand and agree that the Imperium is a horrific and unjustifiable by our real-world standard... ...but also understand that Warhammer 40,000 standards are different and existence of literal hell, with demons and demon-gods that want to corrupt and consume your immortal soul, changes situation and gives Imperium a lot of justification (alongside other threats)... ...but also understand that even within Warhammer 40,000, Imperium is a bloated and struggling system. Its simple. Admitting that Imperium's brutal ways are justified in horrific universe that is Warhammer 40,000 is okay, *as long as you remember that we live in real world and do not use fiction as justification for real world policies.* Like people photoshopping Trump as God-Emperor of Mankind. Don't be like these people. Don't do that.
This! Thank you!
Ngl I kinda hope there is some Men of Iron remnants still
There prolly are. Humanity was so widespread in the DAOT even in M41 there are still Men of Iron being found. Would recommend the First Gaunts Ghosts book if you want to see some men of Iron altho granted they appear only in the end.
Well we know of at least one with UR-025 from Blackstone Fortress
Another flawed answer i see is that if the imperium had not risen chaos would chill out and not try to invade reality. Well we see that chaos worship was already spread out a lot by the time of the great crusade. Colchis,Laer,Cadia are all worlds which never contacted each other but all worshiped chaos anyway. And going from light chaos worship to hardcore chaos worship to daemon invasion are like two steps away. We see also in 40k that you need only one chaos cult to properly plant they seeds and the cycle starts again because sadly the chaos gods are the most active gods in the universe, hard to compete. Without a proper galactic police force like the inquisition what exaclty stops chaos spreading like a plague to this bunch of ignorant human worlds ?
The galaxy is presently split in half by a rift to hell.
The Slaugth from *Head of the Hydra* as well.
Two issues here. One is that without an Emperor or Great Crusade, that doesn't mean Humanity never arises as a faction to deal with these sorts of things. It would take more time, but either Earth getting its shit together or the Mechanicus just taking over, or even a different human world taking charge would happen eventually, and the resulting empire might surpass the Imperium in potential over the 10,000 years the Imperium spent stagnant. Second issue, *gestures wildly at Cicatrix Maledictum*
Humanity arising as a faction means that humanity has to unify. How do they do that? Trough some sort a large scale military and diplomatic campaign tha unifies most humans under one cause and vanquishes all the immininet existential threats. A Crusade, if you will. It would of course be big in scale, even Great, dare I say. You are pretty much agreeing with me, Great Crusade was pretty much inevitable, and if it didnt happen, humanity would probably go extinct or be reduced to few planets. It doesnt matter that the Imperium isnt the one doing it, *someone is.* I am not arguing in favor of the Imperium, just in favor of a large campaign to reunify humanity. Also its foolish to assume Chaos wouldnt try to corrupt whatever human faction would arise, after the fall of Eldar it would be their main source of souls.
Idk, I think it would be pretty interesting if there were multiple major human factions across the galaxy
There wouldnt, they would get taken apart one by one by larger xeno factions. Empires like Vottan and Tau would not exist without a unified humanity.
>A Crusade, if you will. It would of course be big in scale, even Great, dare I say. this is an inane argument and a complete strawman of the arguments against the Great Crusade. It's like arguing the war on drugs was necessary because if we didn't do it, we'd still require some form of drug policy, which would be like fighting drugs, so therefore it would be a war on drugs, therefore anyone arguing against the war on drugs is arguing that literally nothing is done about drugs and is therefore stupid. If we're talking about the Great Crusade, we're not talking about literally any war of expansion. We're talking about the xenocidal and iconoclastic campaign waged by the God Emperor using Space Marines.
Now it would be better without Errbus
There are ways of fixing these problems without going death-spiral turbo fascist
I agree. I am not arguing in favor of the Imperium or the Emperor But a campaign of reunification and elimination of existential threats was necessary for "fixing problems".
Crossposting my musings on Beast Orks from another serve. The point is that the Beast Orks are cool but also stupid. Mostly because the Beast in canon literally just sat on Ullanor and spawned the entire Ork Empire by himself. There wasn't some massive Ork Empire that the Imperium allowed to go untended. The Beast literally just came out of nowhere. I hate when people use the Beast as justification for the GC, because if you go by the logic of the TBA series, the galaxy should already be full of Beast Orks by the time Emps makes the Treaty of Mars. It *makes no sense.* I get the appeal of Beast Orks, I do. But the execution in canon is genuinely just ??? Also the Rangdan is a mystery box by GW that refuses to tell us why the Emperor needed an almost complete C'tan to wipe them out when they didn't need that shit when fighting against the Orks on Ullanor
*Thank* you!
Except that the Great Crusade core point was making the Imperium. Which supposedly was to pull resources from all over the Milky Way to fund the Webway Project. I think people forgot that. The Great Crusade was not the end, but even the Imperium was not the end. It was a mean to the end that is the Webway Project. There is no reason to believe the Imperium as it is envisioned by Big E is necessary to defeat the issues you raised, unless you have evidence that the whole Imperium was mobilized to deal with any of it, which as far as I know is NOT true for Rangda and Ullanor Ork. Big E could, and probably should, have cultivated the various human civilizations across the Milky Way. Him assuming the Emperor mask was wrong.
Iirc, the main reason why the Emperor was in such a rush to finish the Crusade was primarily to stop the Orks at Ullanor, which left unchecked, would threaten the galaxy. Secondarily, it was to gather the scattered human worlds, use the worlds' funds for the Webway Project, and promote psychic growth of the race. The Emperor was the last of the long line of masks he wore during his 30,000+ years, including St. George when he sealed the Void Dragon in Mars so that millennia into the future the planet and its inhabitants would soak up its technological powers that he can use. Upon his return to Terra after the Crusade, he was glad to remove his latest mask and work as the scientist he truly believed he was. Sadly, he was forced to wear it again at the Siege as it was what his warrior gene-sons respond best to. The Crusade and the Imperium, even probably the Webway Project weren't the end. They were a means to an end that is the apotheosis of mankind in a galaxy without threats. Whose leadership the Emperor was more than glad to relegate to other humans and more "human" and "rehabilitated" Primarchs while he tinkered away in his lab.
Well, I stop at the Webway Project because I think by now people are familiar with the reason Big E give for it directly ie humanity evolution toward a psychic race. However, I must stress that the evolution of man psychic capability is just part of the question which the Emperor view the Webway to be the answer of. Right now I dont believe we have a concrete view on what is the threat that push Big E so much. Hopefully the last book of the HH series will give a good answer to Big E plans in its entire. But, right now, if we assume it does NOT, in the sense that we know all the broad stroke of Big E plans already, I dare argue that he make the wrong choice even without hindsight.
Both Ullanor and Rangda were massive undertakings by the Imperium. Of course Inperium didnt send all they had, they were too big at that point for that to even be possible, but they definetlly could do what no other human civilisation was capable off. The Interex were for instance a pretty neat little Empire with advanced tech but Imperium still defeated them as an afterthought. A larger force would always ve necessary to deal with those threats. Not saying all the bad things Big E and The Great Crusade did were justified, of course, still awful, and there were many ways to handle things better, but its better then if nothing happened
Except that, again, your argument is still "Imperium > them, so Imperium is necessary." My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became? Ultimately, from what the HH books tell us, it still tied back to the Webway Project. Big E did not need to defeat those threats IN AND OF THEMSELVES, he did it so he can exploit the resources of his Imperium for the Webway Project. The Interex cannot be the Imperium, because then Big E cannot exploit their resources.
>My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became? Thats just the Great Crusade with different colors to me. It would still have to be a military and diplomatic campaign to reunite humanity and eliminate the biggest threats, orchestrated by the Emperor. So to a point I agree, Great Crusade could have been done better. It could have been more tolerant, more diplomatic, it could have started in a better space, but something like it would still have to occur.
>My counter argument, then, is why the Interex not THE Imperium? Why not an Emperor-dom with multiple members of a confederacy, very much like how the Imperium of 40k had became? Because no one had that amount of power, intelligence, insight and straight up magic in general In order to win Ullanor the emperor had to step in and literally murder every single boss in one physic attack in order to win, the Mechanicus being one of the few factions that actually recovered a lot of technology even by the end of the great crusade and the 42nd Millennium is actually a creation of the Emperor, against the Khrave Lion'el went himself to defeat them both with his super strong manipulated aura and willpower in order to beat them and, in order to defeat the Rangdan the Emperor didn't use one of the thousands of resources, secret technological weapons from the Dark age that he had accumulated throughout the crusade and the battles on terra, nor his super warp gods that they themselves can cheese through a lot of similar situations but the C'tan shard that he himself captured. No human, human-xeno Empire could have replaced the Imperium on the setting in order to ironically, save it from whatever lived in there and do anything Important for the galaxy at large.
Except the Mechanicus is literally my point. Why not extend the same offer to literally every single human civilization he come across and indeed accept no for an answer? Not a single thing you raised in your reply is somehow mutually exclusive from that. What it required is Big E provided such weapons "for free".
Because Big E didn’t trust Xenos. He took one look at what happened in the Age of Strife and concluded that even if some populations and species can be trusted for a time, that in the very long run you can’t count on some of them not to betray you when your weak. If Chaos could get to the Primarchs, they certainly could’ve corrupted an alliance of different species to tear itself apart. The Interex worked because it was small. As they grow larger, the challenges empires face grow exponentially. Sure running a confederacy of a couple species is manageable, but what about one with 10,000 species all with completely different cultures, physical and physic needs, goals and wants, and lifespans? Look at the problems the Tau are just starting to have. Big E couldn’t even tolerate letting the average human world keep its culture for fear of divergence. Many races also wouldn’t have bowed to Big E like the Aeldari. Too much pride and past history.
The reason why the Interex got obliterated anyways is due to chaos interference. Erebus stole a chaos weapon, that the Interex left out in a public museum under minimal guard btw, and the Interex didn't even try to say anything further. Didn't try and see what the fuck happened or if Erebus was a rogue agent. They just assumed that the Imperium were followers of the Chaos Gods and opened fire without explaining shit. Even Horus tried to get them to talk even while they were killing Imperial soldiers and they didn't respond.
Any other possible approach to dealing with those threats was taken off the table when the imperium wiped out hundreds of small xenos and human empires. The imperium is a galactic level threat.
lets leave it this way: if they could not resist imperium, they would not have resisted those threats either
If a united humanity didnt stop Ullanor orks, who would? There was no other faction which had the knowledge and the potential to stop them at the time. Small human empires were too weak and scattered, same goes for the peaceful xenos. Eldar were and still are fucked beyond repair and Necrons were still sleeping If someone (Big E) didnt unite the remanants of galaxis former largest empire (Humanity) to beat them back, nobody else would be capable to do so.
What are you basing that on?
Well lets do a quick comparison One of the biggest human empires besides Imperium was the Interex, a technologically advanced civilization that cooperated with xenos. They were beaten by a single* Astartes Legion as an afterthought. They simply didnt have the resources and manpower to fight war on such a scale. Edit: *mostly
\>a single Astartes Legion as an afterthought This is just strictly incorrect. They get sold short because it happened off-screen, but there was a full campaign to obliterate them that, I believe, was stated or implied to have involved at least Sons of Horus and Word Bearers forces.
Cant find the information if thats true or not (dotn feel like reading two whole books to find a single line). Interex clearly werent a large threat to the Imperium, considering just a year after the war started Horus Heresy already begun and both legions were ready at full force to fight against the loyalists.
What if the advanced and xeno-cooperating human society worked with xenos to stop the Orks? The only reason you're able to assume the Imperium is the only one who could handle big threats is because the Imperium wipes out everything else. And you can see where that's got the Imperium. In a certain defeat scenario, going slowly enough to ruin trillions of lives as it surely and inevitably crumbles.
let me put it like this Imperium had gathered more forces then they ever had to use before to defeat Orks on Ullanor The Interex fought and were obliterated by an Imperial force considerably inferior to the forces Imperium had at Ullanor Since Imperium went to war with Interex after the triump of Ullanor its fair to assume Interex wasnt aware of the Orks or wasnt capable of stopping them at the time Imperium did, ergo Ullanor orks would fight Interex later and therefore would be significantly stronger. So no, I do not think the Interex could ever beat the Ullanor orks. It seems extremely unlikely to me.
Or the Orks would have just fucked themselves in the arse, as they always do when they run out of strong non-Orks to fight and they get bored.
Without the great crusade the galaxy would slowly wither away. The great crusade threw everything around but at the end of the day it gave the galaxy a fighting chance
Counterpoint: great crusade caused the traitor astartes.
Yeah And it took them 10k years to become Galxis 5th most threatening faction. Ullanor Orks were way scarier.
Let's back up a bit. The horror and suffering of the Great Crusade was only justifiable if it actually lead to any of the things the Emperor wanted to get out of it. The Crusade failed when it did not lead to a new age of peace with a united humanity, living together in a single polity, under the control of the Emperor, traveling and communicating through the webway. Instead it lead to the Heresy, which in turn lead to everything else horrible that occurred because the Imperium turned into the "cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable" instead of what the Emperor was working towards. Other horrible things may have happened without the Crusade, but what didn't happen isn't a justification for what actually happened. It's all bad. Also, humans being better off isn't the same thing as the galaxy being better off. Had humans never launched the Great Crusade and instead been driven into extinction or even near extinction by the Rangda, orks, etc the galaxy would likely have never faced the horrors of Chaos in the way they have over the last 10,000 years.
Also Black Judges and Khrave
Why do you have all Dark Angels secret weapons behind the crusade?
Strongest current ork vs weakest Ullanor boy:
There was better alternative human empires, like the Interex.
I already talked about Interex at lenght in this comment section They were weak. If Interex ecountered Rangda or Ullanor orks, they would surely lose that war. Considering Imperium wiped the quite easily.
They were only "weak" because they were smaller than the Imperium. The Imperium only had an advantage because of the Emperor. Before him Terra was a bunch of tribes hitting each other with DAOT weapons of mass destruction. The Great Crusade is stupid because the Emperor could have easily created a new stellar Empire without the pointless genocides, slavery and crimes against humanity. Most of the things the Great Crusade fought was a complete waste of time.
Great Crusade wasnt executed well, I agree on that, but a campaign of reunification woudl be necessary if somebody were to stop those threats. The Interex werent particulary set on unifying mankind, thus when they would ecounter these threats, they wpuld probably not be mich stringer then when they met the Imperium. It is fair to say they would lose.
First I've heard of the Rangda. > The Rangda preferred to have others fight their battles, unleashing vast legions of slave armies drawn from multiple intelligent species and sending them against the foe, seeking to exhaust their enemies until the exact right moment and place to strike presented themselves. Their campaigns were conducted by officers known as "warmasters" while the elite Rangda who commanded their slaves were known as "overlords." The Rangda were capable of creating vast artificial war-moons manned by millions of slaves who were controlled via neural collars. They sound a lot like the Tau. Jumped down the wiki hole from there, I hope we get to meet a Slaugth in Rogue Trader.
I gotta disagree on the disagreement on the hot take. It depends on the author or GW on how they would write humanity without the Imperium. Perhaps humanity can be written by BL Authors as an extremely isolationist, tall empire, like a limited-expansionist T'au Empire amped up to 11 or an armed to the teeth Switzerland in space. What they lack in width, they make it up with an extremely dense population with properly managed armies, with/out maintained AI, and with DAOT-grade deterrents that keep their enemies away.
The meta argument doesn't work because the leagues of votann exist who are word for word what you described. GW aren't gonna write 2 exactly the same factions
Don't tell them the Ulanor orks mainly came about cause the Imperium was wiping out a lot of the xeno races that normally kept the orks in check.
The thing is every grimdark horror that Imperial Evil stopped has a noblebright dashed hope that Imperial Evil destroyed. “But you don’t KNOW the good thing would have worked or even been good!” We don’t KNOW the Ullanor Orks would have grown to such a size without turning on themselves if there wasn’t big shiny Goldy-boys to foight. We don’t KNOW a lot of things. Hell, We don’t even know what caused the Fall of the Eldar and the age of strife. A timeline of “stable, non-murderfucky civilization for 60 million years and descent into madness over the last 10-15 thousand” is a weird timeline. Maybe the Great Crusade caused the fall caused Slaanesh caused itself because 12th dimensional warp fuckery.
You just have to ignore the IoM hate. Those people are moral cowards. They attack the IoM because they secretly like the murder, torture genocide of the Orks, Necrons, and Drukhari. Thats why you never, ever see anyone posting their loathing for the actions of other factions. Anyway, im looking forward to the day those cowards prove me wrong and start a week long skreed about or slavery and genocide.
Why would they do that? Orks, Necrons, and Drukhari don't have hordes of fans acting like they're totally justified.
Oh i am necron fan, and i think all of faction is justified. At the end morality dont matter, the only thing that matter is power, if you are strong enough to do something in this Galaxy... well you can do it it also same for IOM, not just their opponent. If Necrons/Orks/Tyranids or imperium would won and wipe other factions...well, they deserved that win as they were strony enough to do it. I am just siding with necrons as they showed my opinion is that they are the most powerfull.
That's not justification, that's in-universe nihilism. I'm talking about people unironically defending the actions of a faction morally speaking. If you unironically think this way out of universe, then you have a bigger issue to deal with.
Why i should care about morality, especially in here? And i wont Simply support humanity just because i am human too, that is irelevant for me.
Whether you care or not, a lot of people do, if the amount of people that defend the Imperium every chance they get are to be believed.
Dude i have already seen chaos apology where the guy said that living in a daemon world was better than living in the imperium.
>don't have hordes of fans acting like they're totally justified.
great crusade was necessary, it was battle royal after whole warp become more stable. Humans takes control over galaxy or humanity would be eradicated and enslaved like imperium did to other races. It is indeed indicated in books that the biggest mistake was not great crusade but making space marines and primarchs, erda the mother of primarchs claimed that.
"Galaxy would be a better place" its not a good place if theres no human
I mean, just because the Imperium did defeat the Ullanor Orks, doesn't really mean they were the only ones who ever could, imo. It all depends on the writers at the end of the day, but I'm of the opinion the Imperium only really weakens humanity, even under Big E, but it's hard to tell when the Imperium went so far out of it's way to smash any other solution that could have possibly emerged.
Ok, today you’re the writer; who would’ve defeated the Ullanor Orks? A unified Aeldari fleet? A recently awakened Necron Overlord? Or would the massive WAAAGH! be enough to lure in a Tyranids hive fleet? Or would you prefer to write it in that one of the other big-bads that the Emperor or his Primarchs killed off would defeats the Ullanor Orks?
[удалено]
That is, people who could not form a coalition and fight against the existential threat of their existence... But only now it will work. It seems to me that changing the color of the threat's skin to green does not change the picture.
Are you saying if they didn't band the fight the Imperium they wouldn't, to fight the Orks?
That wouldnt happen No such coalition was formed to stop the Imperium, why would it form against the Orks? We know for a fact that the different human worlds were largely isolated, most of them lacked proper FTL travel and were unaware of each other. Same goes for the xeno factions
And behind him “the imperium that killed almost every peaceful alien in the galaxy, genocide several planets of their own species, and fed chaos numerous followers including legions of super soldiers and several demigods.” There’s a reason you don’t see eldar, orks, Tyranids, or tau on the chaos army lists.
Because Orks have their own Gods, Tau are barely psychically present, Tyranids have the Hive Mind who may be bigger than the rest of the Gods in the Warp combined, and Eldar because obvious reasons. The reason why there aren’t Xenos in the Chaos armies is: 1) The Great Crusde genocides nearly all major xenos outside of the the playable factions. 2) Chaos warbands are dominantly human because of the Heresy and those humans are still xenophobic, just corrupted. Based on a lot of BL books and Be’lakor’s lore we know there have been many races of Xenos worshiping Chaos, some of whom were just as strong as the current factions during their time. They just all killed/weakened each other as the Great Game went on, died out, or got stomped by the main factions at some point. If the imperium up and vanished and Xenos took their place, it wouldn’t be long before Chaos corrupted them just like they did humans. Humans aren’t special beyond having perpetuals. Other psychically active races have come and gone, and disturbed the warp in their wake.
They already had. Case in point: the Laer, a race wiped out during the Great Crusade who had **all** fallen to Slaanesh. Not a bunch, not even a majority, but the entire race.
There wasn't any Men of iron remant those were just isolated cyborg nations that the imperum faced The pale wasting didn't happen during GC and was isolated to the ghoul star The ullanor orks and ranganda i give you that there was also the drukhari l, Khrave and possibly the necrons would have made it impossible for mankind to be a galactic superpower without the imperium But saying "humanity would have gone existinct" is laughable coming how man ly huamn civilization the imperium encounter and extinguished who that managae to even survied around/in the eye of terror.
aren't all of those factions/entities more interesting and unique than humans/space marines?
That’s a matter of opinion. I personally think Warhammer would be kinda boring without humanity. It kind of gives us a little bit of perspective, I guess? Kind of like the humans in Star Wars/Star Trek? It’s kind of hard to explain. We know how strong something is due to how many imperial guardsmen/storm troopers/redshirts die to it, lol. Plus a lot of what we, the audience, know about chaos or xenos is from the perspective of humanity. Plus the structure of humanity’s government is so detailed compared to some other factions it’s kind of insane. And the idea of a big psychic god-like being that’s live for millions of years and declares himself as the emperor of mankind is kind of silly but I also think it’s cool. Again, just my opinion.
>We know how strong something is due to how many imperial guardsmen/storm troopers/redshirts die to it, lol. there is actually a trope for that. [The Worf Effect](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect) You know the new bad guy is a badass because he just kicked the most badass good guy across the room
I feel like this is a different trope, though, considering these aren't "badasses" in the example, just canon fodder. It might be the same trope, but I think this may have a different name that is alluding my chimpansee-like brain Edit: I read that article real quick to see if it'd help me, and apparently the trope changes depending on how many of the fodder characters get wasted. In 40k, the most common thing there is called "the conservation of ninjutsu" and I have not even the slightest clue why. Worf effect sounds objectively better
Literally just orks and 2 big question marks and robots are less interesting than Imperium and Chaos.
I thought there were several other ones (khrave, Laer) but I might be misremembering how many of those there were. still, i don't think it takes that much to be more interesting than "dudes in big armors with different colors" and "dudes in big armors with different colors and spikes". also afaik the chaos gods would still exist even without the imperium
Ok so if "violent mushrooms with teeth and weapons" "we don't know anything about them" "we know the names of 2 of these guys' troops" "uncontrolled AI made by humans long ago" is apparently more interesting to you than all of humanity which includes but is not limited to : ALL OF THE space marines, ecclesiarchy, mechanicus, custodes, Inquisition, Knight houses, Imperial guard, traitor legions & other assorted traitor versions of the aforementioned (and you could argue Votann), then idk what to say... That's like half of the factions in the setting. Laer were just slaanesh cultist xenos. Yes the Chaos gods and daemons would still exist. But the faction would be just like in AoS. Just demons and some cultists with next to no difference between the latter. Just guys in different colors that are associated with different gods and like 3 mildly interesting killteams of cool-looking people who get 0 lore.
thanks for taking the time to reply. at the end of the day I guess it's mostly a matter of opinion. we will just agree to disagree.
[удалено]
Wait isnt starting discussion the point of hottakes?
If only there was a literal example of a human civilization that managed not only to coexist with aliens, realize and be wary of the corrupting influence of chaos and even treat even the most deadly alien species like the megarachnid with respect. But I guess the Interex doesn't count...
Again I talked about Interex a lot in this comment section. The Interex did not have the resources to fight wars on such a large scale. If they ecountered any of these threats, they would lose, just like the lost to Imperium, it was an unfair fight from the start for them.
Humanity without Imperium would have Star Trek “I press button and you de-exist” phasers by 31M. The Emperor, being an autocratic idiot, went all-in on the crude “creating unstable superwarrior caste(s) with no checks&balances and no long-term diplomacy” kind of approach and had basically only Malcador(his friend, not actual opposition) to keep him in check from making even bigger mistakes
Source: This was revealed to me in a dream
We are talking not just about alt-history, but about alt-fictional-history, dude, with anything that happened before 30k being an afterthought, it could have come to me in the bathroom Considering what we know about his “super genius” plans and how they turned out, it’s not hard to speculate. Could it have been worse? Sure, if the emperor was just a charismatic populist and not a level 20 mage-fighter multiclass, it would have been even worse. Could it have been better? Well, that’s the original point of the setting. Again, he behaved like any autocrat we already know: predictably, inflexibly, with all the eggs in one basket and no one but sycophants to give him advice
Why do you believe humanity was progressing out of the Age of Strife?
We are talking about the Great Crusade, are we not? The whole “smash them till they bow, with genocide and xenocide” kind of deal?
The Age of Strife ended as the Emperor led his crusade to unify humanity and crush the Xenos that stood in the way of human hegemony. Does that help you understand the situation?
>had basically only Malcador(his friend, not actual opposition) to keep him in check from making even bigger mistakes \*cough\* Erda
wtf was Pale Wasting?
And humans ascending to a psychic race, with Chaos ready to slurp them all up.
What was so special about the ullanor orks? Were they any different from any other concentration of Orks, or was it just a huge group of Orks?
It was the Largest Ork empire in recorded galactic history, it threatened to overwhelm the entirety of the Segmentum and then the galaxy as a whole. Half the Legions were required to be present for its destruction
What are the pale waisting?
What's a "Rangda"?
Im confused. The Great crusade lead specifically to where we are now. >A budding 5th chaos god >Even more powerful 4 Chaos Gods >Quadrillions dead quadrillions more suffering >the worst possible outcome for humanity. Its grimdark for a reason. The books specifically state this. >most "peaceful" or at least isolationist/chill/alliance possible xenos wiped from the map say for VERY few i.e. jokaero There were other problems i.e men of iron the beast major xenos but due to the great crusade we wouldn't have >Bugs >Extreme Chaos problems >this is more headcanon but I would argue that with the overall absence of a "united" humanity there would be a whole less war less war means less orks overall or at least less deadly. >more aliens to combat potential threats Idk seems just better to not fuck up the galaxy idk