Good anti-Imperium of Man fappery essays.

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Lago PARANOIA
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Good anti-Imperium of Man fappery essays.

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Yes, I know that most of the people here are aware that the Imperium of Warhams is a comically dark dystopia and its extremely tongue-in-cheek prose is just part of the joke. But TGD isn't most of the Internet. One of my favorite essays on 1d4chan, How Imperial Life Is Worse Than You Can Imagine was utterly ruined by a bunch of butt-picking neckbeards who ruined the original awesome by slipping in their trite 'lol but the Imperium has a Greater Good reason for that' edit. So. For the purposes of soothing my butthurt enlightening the masses, can people link to similar essays or observations that spell out the WH40K satire for people too thick to get it?

For the record, I still think the best essay on the topic was FrankTrollman's mic-dropping diss to Elennsar. It's even better than the aforementioned essay.
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In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by Koumei »

It'll be hard, because there's an unwritten rule that, when writing about the Imperium, even just as a fan or whatever, you're supposed to take an "in character" approach. So basically, people who like 40k (there are still a couple left) are obligated to write Imperial propaganda, and people who don't like 40k are unlikely to write much about the world in it.

If that sounds mental, and like GW generally encouraging the fans to be a bit creepy and caught up in the hobby, welcome to Games Workshop.
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Post by TheFlatline »

To reinforce Frank's essay, I might point out that even Dan Abnett's Mary Sue Ravenor states that it's impossible to stay committed to the ideals of the Imperium and effectively serve the Imperium. He flat out states in Eisenhorn that it's inevitable that any Inquisitor who lives long enough is going to become a radical/borderline heretic.

Not to mention the whole suggested thing that the wholesale sacrifices of tens of thousands of psykers every day to the golden throne to keep it going probably is preventing humans from evolving into the pre-eminent psyker species of the galaxy.
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Post by name_here »

It is worth pointing out that if they stop feeding the Golden Throne the Astronomicon loses power and their FTL stops working. Which, when you consider that many hive worlds are not self-sufficient in food, kind of matters. The Eldar aren't sharing, the Tyranids and Necrons share even less, the Orks don't seem to be able to steer, and the Tau are just slow.
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Post by Sakuya Izayoi »

Hive worlds turn once-beautiful planets into big ugly messes of human coral. Maybe if they weren't being fed by whole other planets, they could start realizing that science is a good thing, and might be put to use doing basic things, like keeping the populace from starving.

It's a major given that the human species is a transitive state. The Emperor shows just what sort of potential a human can gain, without being subservient to Chaos, but rather, subverting it, mastering it. We know too, from how the human form interacts with Chaos, that it is protean in ways an Ork or Necron is not.

Contrast is a fairly simple matter. Let's take the most bloodthirsty, killjoy species, the Ork. The Ork way of life isn't sustainable if they kill their enemies faster they can breed. "Exterminatus" does not translate into the Ork vocabulary. Greenskins are, by fairly pedestrian logic, gooder than the Imperium! And if them, then what does that say about species with societal altruism like the Tau?
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Post by Morat »

TheFlatline wrote:To reinforce Frank's essay, I might point out that even Dan Abnett's Mary Sue Ravenor states that it's impossible to stay committed to the ideals of the Imperium and effectively serve the Imperium. He flat out states in Eisenhorn that it's inevitable that any Inquisitor who lives long enough is going to become a radical/borderline heretic.

Not to mention the whole suggested thing that the wholesale sacrifices of tens of thousands of psykers every day to the golden throne to keep it going probably is preventing humans from evolving into the pre-eminent psyker species of the galaxy.
Personally, I like the idea that it's not only culling psykers, but that keeping the Emperor in stasis is preventing him from being reborn into a warp god that would lead humanity into a golden age.

Not because I want that to happen in the fluff, but because the Imperium's decay and collapse should be their fault.
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Post by Silent Wayfarer »

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Hive worlds turn once-beautiful planets into big ugly messes of human coral. Maybe if they weren't being fed by whole other planets, they could start realizing that science is a good thing, and might be put to use doing basic things, like keeping the populace from starving.
Well, there's the problem that hive worlds are kind of unfit for anything other than housing people. Hives are essentially glorified arcologies which are needed because the rest of the world is pretty much inhospitable to anything. It's exactly like Mega-City One from the Judge Dredd universe, which is also where the Adeptus Arbites comes from.

Also, WH40K is basically medieval europe in space. If people don't get food, they don't get smart; they panic, riot, resort to praying to the Empra double hard to get more food, etc. Society breaks down and all that crap. The Imperium is a really shitty place and that extends to its people.

But tbh the whole of 40K is a really shitty place and inasmuch as I interact with it through the RPGs, my characters are basically clawing their way to the top of the heap and living high off the hog and the labor of countless minions. It's a place to be a mean-spirited git and that, if nothing else, is the defining feature of 40K's humanity.
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Post by Dean »

After playing 40k for many years I eventually became bored of the static grimdark nature of the setting so I plumbed the fiction for something plausible that could be a legitimate force for positive change in the 40K world. My search ended in finding the piece of fiction packaged with the Cursed Founding rules. It was a story about a facility that had been attempting to create a perfect Adeptus Astartes gene seed (the Homo Sapiens Novus project). It sees some success but then the facility gets attacked by Chaos and you're meant to assume that Chaos gets everything. The facility is found much later and there's a hidden super secret room with an enormous primarch-esque super guy in stasis there but then they lose contact with the facility and you're supposed to assume that Chaos got everything. I understood what the story was supposed to be but like all 40K stories it refused to nut up and say what actually happened in it, instead allowing multiple implied results so I decided I'd choose the result I liked and create an army around it.

I created and played a Chapter for years called the Novus Marines based on the backstory that a new Primarch was revived at this facility and then used the ship and resources the Explorators had brought to escape. He names himself "Novus" after the name on his tube and as a 9 foot tall psychic superman he begins a campaign on the nearest inhabited world gaining followers to his cause to start a revolution, save the galaxy, and destroy Fabius Bile who is searching for him. His forces were a combination of Imperial troops he had raised planetside to fight for his cause and an allied group of Space Marines that were sent to destroy him but when met with the face of the galaxy's only living Primarch, joined him instead.

The Novus Marines were a hoot. To get the units that fit my story I would have to bend over backwards. I'd use the Space Marine Codex, Black Templar rules, Grey Knights, Witch Hunters, the Cursed Founding rules, and sometimes Kroot in various combinations. If, for instance, I wanted a few squads of Space Marines, some Imperial guard squads, and Novus himself to be there with a squad of new Marines made from his gene-seed then I would make that a standard Space Marine force with Imperial attachments from the Witch Hunters codex and Cursed Founding allies composed of one super-tough Librarian (Novus) and some +1Str +1Toughness Chosen Marines.

It was a really good time. I had to make many different versions of a force depending on exactly what would be in it because some choices would change what codex's I'd have to use to make the army legal but it was a lot of fun and honestly it was nice to carve out a tiny little piece of the fiction for my own and not have it feel so grimdark. It was nice to go away from a game with a sense of thematic victory alongside real world victory. Feeling like when my army kills a Bloodthirster that it's a good thing, and not something we did on the way to crushing some peasant's skulls underneath our armored boots.
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Post by Longes »

Morat wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:To reinforce Frank's essay, I might point out that even Dan Abnett's Mary Sue Ravenor states that it's impossible to stay committed to the ideals of the Imperium and effectively serve the Imperium. He flat out states in Eisenhorn that it's inevitable that any Inquisitor who lives long enough is going to become a radical/borderline heretic.

Not to mention the whole suggested thing that the wholesale sacrifices of tens of thousands of psykers every day to the golden throne to keep it going probably is preventing humans from evolving into the pre-eminent psyker species of the galaxy.
Personally, I like the idea that it's not only culling psykers, but that keeping the Emperor in stasis is preventing him from being reborn into a warp god that would lead humanity into a golden age.

Not because I want that to happen in the fluff, but because the Imperium's decay and collapse should be their fault.
To be fair, almost everything bad that happened to the Imperium is the result of the Emperor's paranoia and jerk-assness. When Magnus fucked up his attempt to tell the Emperor about Horus Heresy, the Emperor sent the wolves to kill the Thousand Sons, without even trying to clarify the situation, which all resulted in the Horus Heresy. The Emperor enforced strict dogmas and tried to spread atheism, but he never bothered to explain to his people the nature of Warp and its connection to human beliefs.
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Post by Koumei »

Keep in mind that the Emperor was involved in the whole "Golden Age" thing, which wasn't called that because people look back on a time where younguns respected their elders, but was called that because people understood science, and technology raced ahead. That was a great time, and the Emperor helped it all happen, likely due to being a powerful psyker amongst other things.

You could argue that he was a dick with his "run up to planets and kick them in the face" approach, but that's what the Imperium kept doing after his death, and without the actual "properly uniting people" and "scientific progress". An Imperium under the living Emperor is so much better than an Imperium under some crazy dudes and a corpse. The place for any argument at all is whether Living Emperor Imperium is better or worse than "Being part of the Tau Empire" (or if you're pessimistic about him, "Being slaves to the Tau Empire as put forth in video games") or "Being servants to the Eldar".

Apparently though, the Inquisition have actually made one (1) change towards a more good force, and are doing one (1) actual thing that can work to weaken the Chaos gods: when they decide to destroy a planet, they no longer begin with virus-bombing it. Because they realised that when you cover an entire world in a deadly disease that infects every living thing, you are giving growth pills to Nurgle, Chaos God of space-polio. No they haven't figured out the bit where plasma-bombing a planet to oblivion is a massive sacrifice to Khorne, but hey, baby steps are better than Moonwalk steps.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I had heard it explained that science basically needs to be re-invented. AI's get possessed by Demons just like Humans can, and Mars saw just as much fighting as Terra did. I believe there's a copypasta that goes something like you don't know how the button turns the device on because the owner's manual tried to take over your brain and the facilities that would be able to reverse-engineer it doesn't exist anymore and can't be rebuilt.

All in all, I think the real issue with 40k is that space marines eat brains to gain memories.
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Post by Longes »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I had heard it explained that science basically needs to be re-invented. AI's get possessed by Demons just like Humans can, and Mars saw just as much fighting as Terra did. I believe there's a copypasta that goes something like you don't know how the button turns the device on because the owner's manual tried to take over your brain and the facilities that would be able to reverse-engineer it doesn't exist anymore and can't be rebuilt.
It's canon now, that the Omnissia of Mars is the C'tan, a giant mechanical dragon-god of the Necrons, imprisoned on Mars by the Emperor. AIs are tech-heresy, because they get possessed by Demons much easier than humans. Among humans, only psykers are in a real danger of random possessions. EVERY AI can be possessed by the evil demons at any moment.
Koumei wrote:Keep in mind that the Emperor was involved in the whole "Golden Age" thing, which wasn't called that because people look back on a time where younguns respected their elders, but was called that because people understood science, and technology raced ahead. That was a great time, and the Emperor helped it all happen, likely due to being a powerful psyker amongst other things.

You could argue that he was a dick with his "run up to planets and kick them in the face" approach, but that's what the Imperium kept doing after his death, and without the actual "properly uniting people" and "scientific progress". An Imperium under the living Emperor is so much better than an Imperium under some crazy dudes and a corpse. The place for any argument at all is whether Living Emperor Imperium is better or worse than "Being part of the Tau Empire" (or if you're pessimistic about him, "Being slaves to the Tau Empire as put forth in video games") or "Being servants to the Eldar".
My point was, that while the Emperor took humanity to the stars and into the golden age, he is also personaly responsible for the Imperium's downfall and current state. Because he refused to explain things to his followers.
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Post by TheFlatline »

name_here wrote:It is worth pointing out that if they stop feeding the Golden Throne the Astronomicon loses power and their FTL stops working. Which, when you consider that many hive worlds are not self-sufficient in food, kind of matters. The Eldar aren't sharing, the Tyranids and Necrons share even less, the Orks don't seem to be able to steer, and the Tau are just slow.
Actually FTL *does* still work, it's just slower and more dangerous without the Astronomicon.

I mean, no other FTL species needs the Emperor putting out the red light to navigate by. Without the emperor humanity would have to find a way to survive or go extinct.
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Post by TheFlatline »

Morat wrote:
TheFlatline wrote:To reinforce Frank's essay, I might point out that even Dan Abnett's Mary Sue Ravenor states that it's impossible to stay committed to the ideals of the Imperium and effectively serve the Imperium. He flat out states in Eisenhorn that it's inevitable that any Inquisitor who lives long enough is going to become a radical/borderline heretic.

Not to mention the whole suggested thing that the wholesale sacrifices of tens of thousands of psykers every day to the golden throne to keep it going probably is preventing humans from evolving into the pre-eminent psyker species of the galaxy.
Personally, I like the idea that it's not only culling psykers, but that keeping the Emperor in stasis is preventing him from being reborn into a warp god that would lead humanity into a golden age.

Not because I want that to happen in the fluff, but because the Imperium's decay and collapse should be their fault.
It fits. It's also cyclically thematic from human lore. See the Fisher King, the Authurian Legend, hell you can even tie in the myth of the Titan Chronus eating his own children out of fear of being overthrown.

It was actually the central point of my Dark Heresy game. I established that from outside the Imperium, the Emperor *needed* to die. Death and rebirth is a cycle that needs to be obeyed, and the Emperor's condition is an affront to that cycle. As he atrophies, so does the Imperium. You can argue the logistics of it all you want- the tithe, the constant war, the sacrifice of psykers, but in a metaphysical sense, the empire is caught in a state of undeath because the Fisher King is perpetually mortally wounded. So in my game, there were... touched individuals who had the seed in them to become a new Emperor, and there was a silent, low-grade war of ascendancy going on to try to usurp the Emperor. Eventually, years into the game, the players and their characters realized that while it would be severely painful, the Emperor finally dying so that someone else could claim his throne would be a *good* thing for humanity. It's also the single most heretical thing that they could possibly imagine and goes against every fiber of their moral will.

It was a good game. The session where all that finally came to light was pretty much just the players discussing, more or less in character, what the fuck they were supposed to do with this information now.
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Post by name_here »

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Hive worlds turn once-beautiful planets into big ugly messes of human coral. Maybe if they weren't being fed by whole other planets, they could start realizing that science is a good thing, and might be put to use doing basic things, like keeping the populace from starving.
Um, while I agree it's entirely possible they could produce more food on-world than they do if they discovered new technology and implemented it on a massive scale, that crap takes time. Modern cities are generally estimated to have ~2 weeks of food on hand.

The whole business with machine spirits is a bit confusing, because it's hard to tell exactly how much of the Adeptus Mechanicus religion is bullshit. Clearly technology can get possessed by demons, but it's not clear how easy that is or how much burning incense affects it. Given that C'Tan hate the warp so much that their minions are the only faction with non-warp FTL, I don't think that's a serious contributor to risk of possession.
When Magnus fucked up his attempt to tell the Emperor about Horus Heresy, the Emperor sent the wolves to kill the Thousand Sons, without even trying to clarify the situation, which all resulted in the Horus Heresy.
That situation is a bit more complicated. First, there had been a big-ass meeting where all the Space Marines and Primarchs were told they had to stop using psyker powers. Second, the Emperor sent the Space Wolves to apprehend the Thousand Sons and ask Magnus what the fuck. Horus ordered the Space Wolves to attack.

No, the Emperor's grand fuckup was earlier and contributed to hilarious irony. See, Lorgar was a religious nutjob who united his homeworld with preaching about the coming of a god, specifically the Emperor, and his Word Bearers made a point of spreading worship of the Emperor on planets they conquered, founding the Imperial Cult. Since the Emperor was big on atheism, he decided to put a stop to this by exterminating one of the converted worlds and humiliating Lorgar in front of the other Primarchs. So Lorgar decided to go find a god who actually wanted worship, and went to the Eye Of Terror, wrote the holy book of Chaos, and set in motion an elaborate plan to convert the other Primarchs.

So yes, the Imperial Cult was founded by the guy directly responsible for the Horus Heresy.
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Post by TheFlatline »

name_here wrote:
Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Hive worlds turn once-beautiful planets into big ugly messes of human coral. Maybe if they weren't being fed by whole other planets, they could start realizing that science is a good thing, and might be put to use doing basic things, like keeping the populace from starving.
Um, while I agree it's entirely possible they could produce more food on-world than they do if they discovered new technology and implemented it on a massive scale, that crap takes time. Modern cities are generally estimated to have ~2 weeks of food on hand.
Except that it's stated that frequently ships might only drop in out of warp once every few years.

I actually imagine the vast majority of hive dwellers eat processed protein from bacteria and algae and fungus and insects and shit. The farther down the food chain you get the more efficient your food sources are. I remember some dude trying to sell power bars with flour made out of crickets and it's like 10 times more efficient to use protein from crickets than from cows or chickens.
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Post by name_here »

TheFlatline wrote:
name_here wrote:
Sakuya Izayoi wrote:Hive worlds turn once-beautiful planets into big ugly messes of human coral. Maybe if they weren't being fed by whole other planets, they could start realizing that science is a good thing, and might be put to use doing basic things, like keeping the populace from starving.
Um, while I agree it's entirely possible they could produce more food on-world than they do if they discovered new technology and implemented it on a massive scale, that crap takes time. Modern cities are generally estimated to have ~2 weeks of food on hand.
Except that it's stated that frequently ships might only drop in out of warp once every few years.

I actually imagine the vast majority of hive dwellers eat processed protein from bacteria and algae and fungus and insects and shit. The farther down the food chain you get the more efficient your food sources are. I remember some dude trying to sell power bars with flour made out of crickets and it's like 10 times more efficient to use protein from crickets than from cows or chickens.
That arrival number is in general. Hive worlds are another matter entirely, and it's explicitly stated they can face mass famine with even a brief interruption in warp travel. They've got local food production, but they also have insanely high population densities and very little usable land.
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Post by Sakuya Izayoi »

I just mean to say, being so wholly dependent on something you live in fear of and treat as religious anathema is not a sustainable lifestyle.

Either you have to let the hive worlds starve, or you need go and make the Warp your bitch, and let the human species evolve to do so if it has to.
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Post by Pixels »

name_here wrote:Given that C'Tan hate the warp so much that their minions are the only faction with non-warp FTL, I don't think that's a serious contributor to risk of possession.
The Tyranids also use non-Warp FTL. If I recall correctly, they have some handwavium gravity manipulation technology.
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Pixels wrote:
name_here wrote:Given that C'Tan hate the warp so much that their minions are the only faction with non-warp FTL, I don't think that's a serious contributor to risk of possession.
The Tyranids also use non-Warp FTL. If I recall correctly, they have some handwavium gravity manipulation technology.
I think that depends on the writer, or has changed recently. I definitely recall them emerging from the Warp in some cases.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Morat wrote:]Personally, I like the idea that it's not only culling psykers, but that keeping the Emperor in stasis is preventing him from being reborn into a warp god that would lead humanity into a golden age.

Not because I want that to happen in the fluff, but because the Imperium's decay and collapse should be their fault.
I like the idea that the Emperor could get off the throne any time he wants but doesn't because he isn't confident in his leadership ability anymore and is depressed over losing Horus.

I mean, say what you will about the Imperium's leadership, there hasn't been a repeat of the Horus Heresy since the Emperor was put on the throne.

That is to say, the Emperor is just a man, and like any man has his flaws. And being forced to kill his favorite son is something that would fuck up most people, emotionally.
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Post by Chamomile »

hyzmarca wrote:I mean, say what you will about the Imperium's leadership, there hasn't been a repeat of the Horus Heresy since the Emperor was put on the throne.
Depends on what you mean by that. There totally was another Imperium spanning civil war, but neither side fell to Chaos.
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Post by DSMatticus »

name_here wrote:
Pixels wrote:
name_here wrote:Given that C'Tan hate the warp so much that their minions are the only faction with non-warp FTL, I don't think that's a serious contributor to risk of possession.
The Tyranids also use non-Warp FTL. If I recall correctly, they have some handwavium gravity manipulation technology.
I think that depends on the writer, or has changed recently. I definitely recall them emerging from the Warp in some cases.
Proper canon is that they travel through the warp by harnessing the gravity of distant masses to pull themself towards those masses. Tyranid hive fleets are drawn to disturbances in the warp (such as the Astronomican), but they actually block access to the warp in their vicinity. Which leads to the very obvious fan canon that they are intergalactic artillery engineered by some warp sensitive race for the purpose of exterminating (and insulating their creators from in the process) other warp sensitive races because of shit like the birth of Slaanesh, which throws out warp storms in every direction. They are heading for Terra because the Emperor on his golden throne is a gestating chaos god of grimderp and he smells delicious.

Unfortunately, the authors were probably just going for "they are attracted to warp disturbances because they want to eat them for their super awesome warp powers" or "they are attracted to warp disturbances because."
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Post by Morat »

I also really dislike the recent grimdarkifying of the Tau. No, no, please don't make them the mind-controlled slaves of the Ethereal caste with death camps galore.

There needs to be at least one faction that shows that the Imperium could be better. That yes, if their leaders weren't terrible, they actually had a handle on their technology, and weren't completely awful to all of their neighbors, the Imperium could be a reasonably okay place. If every faction is evil and awful always and forever, it's hard to criticize the Imperium for also being evil and awful. You need someone on the scene behaving better to really show the Imperium's failure for what it is.
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Post by Koumei »

I'm not going to fault the Imperium for its attitude on other races. Because every single time they've even met another race, said race expressed the desire to wipe them out to the last. So by the time the Tau came along, it's just a natural survival instinct to say "Fuck it, give me a plasma cannon, I'll sort this out". If they had thought to develop FTL technology (ie get written up earlier), then they could have established good relations before the orks, eldar, necrons and tyranids turned them off the idea.
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