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Thoughts about the Warhammer 40,000 universe

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Morituri:
So, wait, she's not even supposed to be in control of the thing?  She's doing "penance" by being in between incoming anti-tank shells and a tank?

So tell me, in the Warhammer Universe, is the code of punishment the same for men as it is for women?  Or is this just another example of blatant mysogyny?  Because using someone as armor because they're a sexy woman is just completely hateful.

TheEvilDog:
Woah, easy there Morituri.

Penitent Engines showed up in the Ecclesiarchy army list, specifically the Adepta Sororitas, the Sisters of Battle. Think nuns in full body power armour and armed with grenade launcher assault rifles.

The whole force ran with the whole "Catholicism is crazy", with several units running on faith, guilt and fanaticism.

So in 40K, heretics can be forgiven, traitors can't. In this instance, heretics have been found guilty of a crime and as penance, they're strapped into the penitent engine, which is one of the worst punishments in the Imperium. Dozens of implants are injected into the spine of the heretic, so that when they aren't in combat, the implants distribute chemicals that reinforce their feelings of guilt and their desire for penance, which in turn fuels the engine when they walk into combat. Usually, its a death sentence because their desire for penance is so strong it leads them into suicidal charges into the heaviest forces.

Because this was a punishment specific for members of the Ecclesiarchy, the penitent engines were piloted by those who were once seen as pious but who have committed a crime. Which means they could have been piloted by former Sisters of Battle or Priests and Preachers (the latter two were more often male due to how the Ecclesiarchy was structured, as they are forbidden to have men under arms, but got around that with having the Sisters of Battle). There is a variant model that has a male pilot, who is even more emaciated and wears little more than a hood and a strip of a loincloth.

LeeC:

Here's the wiki (well, "a" wiki as there are multiple warhammer wikis):
http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Penitent_Engine

Pretty much what castlerook said.  Its a suicide mech to make heretics repent via a zealous death charge. It's not meant for only women but any heretic that wants to repent.  Its a hyper futuristic version of flagellants.  Again, warhammer can be weird and there are few "good guys" in the universe.  Mostly just varying degrees of bad. But its not all doom and gloom, just grim dark.  Its unfortunate if this is your first foray into the Warhammer 40k universe as it is so much more than just this.  The politics are like from the book "Dune" by Frank Herbert, the technology is medieval space combat mixed with modern militaries, and space travel is going through a literal hell and hoping you make it to the other side.  There are also space elves, space orks, deamons, super-soldiers, aliens, robots, giant bug swarms, and your average human trying to keep it all together.

Its originally from a miniature's wargame so most of the lore and games are based around the different militaries and factions.

TheEvilDog:

--- 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.

Morituri:
Okay though - but I still have a problem with it, because this isn't just grimdark, evil, or whatever.

It is also stupid.

It is so stupid that it would cause me to quit in disgust even if cruelty to and exploitation of some imagined "penitent" were not a thing.

It is so stupid that it would cause me to quit in disgust even if I bought the faction's ethos and believed that those "penitents" were well-served by leading suicide charges.

It is so stupid that no force which actually wants to win would ever do it, regardless of their ethos.

The thing that would cause me to rage quit, from any militarish game, is utterly stupid, counterproductive, nonsensical crap tactics that I literally can't imagine any faction ever using, because those tactics would INSTANTLY LOSE!

We are being asked to believe that somebody built this battle machine, then strapped a person to the front of it where that person can be taken out by a single small-caliber bullet rendering the entire thing useless.

NOPE.  Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope ....  There's about fifty kinds of NOPE on there. 

The same battle machine could have been built with a compartment for the person somewhere else, like, say, on the INSIDE of the damn thing, and then you might have gotten more than one minute's use out of the machine, or for that matter the pilot.  Say, maybe a half hour or so before the "suicidal charge" leads to its inevitable conclusion.  If you had the opportunity, for the same expenditure of resources, would you choose NOT to get thirty times as much effect?

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