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Thoughts about the Warhammer 40,000 universe
TheEvilDog:
You're talking about sanity about a game where the opening blurb is....under this spoiler:
(click to show/hide)It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
That's the whole point. The entire setting is insane.
Humanity worships a corpse that is hooked onto a life support machine the size of a mountain.
The greatest enemy Humanity faces is a reflection of its own dark side.
40K isn't a setting where people wage war to expand their own realms. Its a setting that is eternal war because it is about a war of survival.
Humanity is so far past the point of compassion and understanding that its actually considered a crime to offer a hand to the enemy. This is a setting where Humanity will throw millions of soldiers to capture a point and consider it a victory if they capture it.
This is a setting that runs on insanity. Everything is the machination of some diseased mind. You can't bring rationality or logic into the equation.
Thrillho:
Being heavily critical of the game for misogyny is one thing, but we're inching closer to just pouring scorn on people for enjoying a game, regardless of whether it's one that disregards logic. Also inching close to a thread split.
LeeC:
--- Quote from: Castlerook on 02 Jul 2018, 11:25 ---
--- Quote from: LeeC on 02 Jul 2018, 09:40 --- Again, warhammer can be weird and there are few no "good guys" in the universe. Mostly just varying degrees of bad "Oh-dear-god-what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-everyone".
--- End quote ---
Fixed that for you. ;)
But seriously, I met one of the original developers years ago and one thing he said stuck with me. "Warhammer 40,000 is not about good guys against bad guys. Everyone thinks themselves as the hero of their story and everyone else sees them as the villain in their own. " Its levels of evil against evil. The Imperium, Eldar are only the "Heroic" factions because each is opposed to Chaos. The truth is that is one faction were to outright win, it would be hell for everyone else. If Humanity won, instead of chaos, you'd have a monolithic, unchanging, unmoving society forever locked into worshipping a half-dead corpse, stuck on life support on a dead planet. No change, no growth, no culture. Which would be the worst possible thing that could happen to Humanity and the galaxy.
--- End quote ---
That sounds like heresy to me. :-D
The background is very compelling though. The Emperor unites mankind to create a secular empire build on logic and reason. After the civil war , which is essentially a retelling of Paradise Lost or King Arthur except Lucifer/Mordred explodes and God/Arthur is left a vegetable at the end, the empire degrades into hokey religious backward space empire where whole planets are destroyed or culled over misunderstandings deemed "heretical." So with millennia of power struggles and fragmenting of humanity's bulwark against demon and alien invaders, its a terrible place to live unless you are one of the few (minute?) people to be born in a position of wealth or power...and even then its dangerous in its own way (see "Dune" by Frank Herbert).
I just deleted half my post as it may cause confusion after Castlerook's new post, so here's a funny video about the WH40K universe
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhHJC3PAN4A
LeeC:
Sorry to double post but I felt this would be better if seperate from my original post:
--- Quote from: Castlerook on 02 Jul 2018, 12:04 ---You're talking about sanity about a game where the opening blurb is....under this spoiler:
(click to show/hide)It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
That's the whole point. The entire setting is insane.
Humanity worships a corpse that is hooked onto a life support machine the size of a mountain.
The greatest enemy Humanity faces is a reflection of its own dark side.
40K isn't a setting where people wage war to expand their own realms. Its a setting that is eternal war because it is about a war of survival.
Humanity is so far past the point of compassion and understanding that its actually considered a crime to offer a hand to the enemy. This is a setting where Humanity will throw millions of soldiers to capture a point and consider it a victory if they capture it.
This is a setting that runs on insanity. Everything is the machination of some diseased mind. You can't bring rationality or logic into the equation.
--- End quote ---
Which is also why there is an amazing Warhammer 40K youtube series where the corpse like emperor is finally given a text to speech device so he can communicate with his subjects. He agrees that everything and everyone is being stupid and is trying to enact decrees to fix things and get everything back in shape. Its an amazing comedy series that is still ongoing and a wonderful lore dump for both fans and new comers alike.
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9w_uoUHgiE
Morituri:
Eh. Whatever. I'll let it drop. But if they really wanna wipe out heresy, or whatever, it's hard to imagine them passing up an opportunity to make this system thirty times as effective. At minimum.
We can say that in their context the unprotected status of the penitent and incoming doom makes perfect sense. We can say that they value pain and cruelty as a positive good. We can say that they are all insane. That's all context, right? All of that is just the difference in values system between theirs and ours.
But them not caring whether they succeed in their mission, like not really trying to wipe out heresy or whatever, just croggles my suspension of disbelief irrepairably. That's like a borderline between "compelling and over the top" to "doesn't make any goddamn sense EVEN IN ITS OWN CONTEXT."
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