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Apparently things aren't nearly so bad in the 40k 'verse. This is the intro in Cavan Scott's Secrets of the Tau.

Dude that's kiddie 40k

That's the one where our gaggle of pint-sized psychopaths get a good chunk of the population of the space station killed by tentacle monsters. And then they defeat the Tau with an Excel spreadsheet.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
That's the one where our gaggle of pint-sized psychopaths get a good chunk of the population of the space station killed by tentacle monsters. And then they defeat the Tau with an Excel spreadsheet.

To be fair Microsoft Office 40000 must be pretty good

Well, considering the target audience this is is just a restrained wording of the rulebook introduction. Less poetic and grim, but still everybody lives in fear and there are dangerous things everywhere. Doesn't sound that nice to me, merely... as adventurous as living in the favelas.

So here's the thing - there are worlds in the Imperium that are peaceful, pleasant and nice to live on.


A lot of the artwork and the stories often focus on the most horrible of places. The super grim dark world of an Underhive in Necromunda; the Demonic corrupted warzones on the front lines and so forth.
As a result its easy to get an impression that everything is grim, dark and horrific. When in reality there are many places that you'd be comfortable even if you aren't nobility.


The thing is there IS also the war going on; there are tithes to pay; there are servitors and cogitators that are commonplace and accepted; there are those risks that someone develops psy powers and a Black Ship comes to take them away.

So there's overt super blunt on the nose grimdark; there's warzones that are literal hellscapes; there are subtle darknesses which is your manservant being an actual servitor - sure most are cloned human bodies which never had a mind to start with... most.





The Childrens Books take a slightly more casual approach, but if you read around the BL books like the Inquisition stories you can see plenty of other worlds where people carry on happy pleasant normal lives.

What age are these books aimed at? I would say if you've got to kiddify it, you should just get your kid to read something else. I got into 40K aged 11 and I understood that the Imperium was bad and that it was based on totalitarian regimes. I don't think it's needed, or even advisable, to soften that for kids. They are smarter than people give them credit for and often rise or fall to meet high or low expectations.

8-12 and the content isn't super diluted it's just not going into gruesome detail.

The most detailed review I read says the language is simple but the concepts are still very much 40k. The first book has Necrons detect an artifact of theirs, destroy local Guard and PDF forces, and Astartes reinforcements before destroying the planet and hunting down refugees in a matter of hours before sending a Deathmark after the main characters.
The pace is fast cos kids book but it sets this horrifying idea of how relentless the Necrons are.

It still shows people getting turned to dust by Necron weapons though so it doesn't shy away from killing or pretending that the 40k universe isn't a bad place to be.

99.9% of the outrage at those books was a VERY tiny minority of grumpy adults* of the "everything must be super grimdark or its not real 40K" group**.

Personally I thought they were a fantastic idea and it was huge shame there was any backlash at all. Many Warhammer fans are now adults with kids of their own and books like those are a fantastic way to have another avenue to introduce their children to their hobby and, even if they don't take it up, have some parent-child bonding and sharing of the hobby interest.


* at least going by DOB/Age

**who often as not haven't actually read all that many, if any BL books anyway. Hence their refusal to accept that there's anything but insane grimdark in the setting.

In terms of it not being universally awful?

There are worlds which will have known sustained periods of peace, where the toil to meet the Tithe is just how things might as well always have been. Everyone pulls together, everyone plays their part, their world keeps on turning.

What we need to remove from consideration is our own world views. Even in the hellscapes of a Hive? That’s all the denizens have ever known, and outside of joining The Imperial Guard, all they and countless generations ever will know.

Most Hivers wont consider never seeing the sky or fresh, flowing water unusual. To them, the stifling life they know is the norm. So whilst an unconsciable existence to most modern day humans? To those experiencing it, there’s just not other frame of reference.

Likewise Agri Worlds, where everyone on its surface is inherently tied to the land, animal husbandry and harvests. Some will be positively bucolic, others akin to vast factory farms. But whatever specific flavour? It’s again all the inhabitants and workers of that world have or will ever know for the most part.

To be fair I'm pretty sure the Hivers in the underhive know their life is pretty horrid. They just have no real choice in the matter. It also doesn't help that even IF they can make it out the skies around Necromunda are not the most healthy of skies.


But you are right there are many things that they will see as normal that we'd see as scary or horrific. Servitors and cogitators are things I like to bring up to show that.

I’m not persuaded they would, not for the worker class anyway. Their lives, were reliably informed, occur entirely within a tiny region where the eat, sleep, work, repeat.

Gangers, Merchants and others? Perhaps, and probably to varying, non-universal degrees.

I think it is possible to recognise your life is horrific, even if you don't know any alternative is available.

Hivers, at least on Necromunda, lead overworked, sleep-deprived lives with little leisure time and few pleasures. Violent retribution for the smallest misstep is always a hair's breadth away. Worker safety is an afterthought and accommodations for illness and disability minimal if you cannot access bionics- there are always more people to employ if you're no longer useful. That must be exhausting, painful, and intensely stressful. I don't see how you wouldn't think that is horrific. You don't need a frame of reference to suffer.

Plus you get exposed to your supervisors a little higher up the ladder, who seem to have it just a little easier than you. There is something to aspire to, where you can take out your frustrations on your former peers if you get there...

It’s all still relative.

Speaking for myself, my life is overall pretty sweet. Got my own place, no dependents, and a job which pays me a decent salary.

I don’t have everything I want, but I don’t have to work terribly hard to have everything I need. For a chunk of the human race, my personal situation is something to genuinely envy. From basic amenities literally on tap in some cases, to living in a politically stable country.

Yet, I’m exposed to various other possibilities via news and media. And yeah, I wouldn’t say no to having the sort of money which would allow me to give up working, and have a nice house with a pool and a Labrador, and just live off say, a chunky Euromillions win.

For the worker in an Imperial Hive? Their aspirations are inherently limited, because their own little corner of the world is so very limited. Lack of education, lack of knowledge of the outside world etc. they all conspire to inherently restrict what they might dream about achieving. Where I might dream of a steak dinner (medium rare, all the trimmings, no sauce or perhaps peppercorn sauce), their idea of a luxury meal might simply be double rations once in a while. Because when the only grub you’ve ever had is corpse starch (now with 5% less Great Uncle), your aspirations are again limited, because you may simply not know other foods exist.

I think having limited aspirations doesn't mean you won't know your life is horrid, which was the original point. They'll still be living uncomfortable lives.

Also, there seems to be a degree of knowledge of the outside world, because Guard recruitment often seems to be sold as an opportunity for a better life.

I’m not convinced. Your life is just your life. With no external reference to Another Way, it just is what it is.

I just don't think you need a frame of reference to suffer. Suffering isn't contingent on knowing an absence of suffering exists, it is contingent on conditions not meeting your needs. Noxious stimuli, sleep deprivation, lack of freedom will make most Necromundan hivers feel rotten.

It is what it is, but what it is is horrid, even if that is your entire world.

But that’s still your sole point of reference, preventing it from being considered poor.

Humans have the ability to emotionally adapt to pretty much anything that doesn't immediately kill them.

Sure they would know their world sucks, but what are they going to do about it? it is what it is and suffering about is both pointless and only going to get them killed faster.

They do have reading and video sources. Sure that post-hollo-card-vid that your greatgreatgreat uncle got off a space trader deck-hand the one time he was allowed up into the loading bays - might almost show a mythical place with blue skies and no walls.

But you can bet those things exist. They will have points of reference for things that are better than what they have. Most are just ground down to the point where they can't aspire to have too much better than perhaps a promotion.

It's those very things that cults prey on. Genestealer Cult telling you that the Skygods or Four Armed Emperor will come to bless and improve the world and modify it to be perfect; Chaos promising everyone a ticket off the hellhole of a world to a better one using the vast riches that the nobility hoard in their vaulted towers at the top of the Hive City.

Yeah... I think one of the core themes of the setting is that, as tight as the totalitarian nightmare grip of the Imperium is, people still have desires for change - Necromunda, for example, doesn't need to spend that much effort on compliance if people genuinely couldn't conceive of getting anything from noncompliance, even if is a small portion of the population that might ever try to reorder their lives in small ways, and even smaller will be the number of people who try to do it in large ways.

Heck, even if you have a place where rote acceptance is so successful that everybody is just browbeaten into complete acceptance such that no brows need beating, there's always the whispers of Grandfather Nurgle.

Without getting into IRL too much, some set of people will find ways to avoid thinking about it too much in awful conditions, but a lot of people will also acknowldge that it's awful, even if they can't see a way out or what's over the next horizon.

If you don't know about grox meat and you're hungry, you still probably want a second portion of corpse starch.

Majorkill did a thing about this and concluded that a large, maybe even half the number of Imperial citizens live an okay life (civilized worlds, pleasure worlds, agri-worlds, high tier worlds, some feudal worlds etc...). Some GW novels give weight to Majorkill's argument too, most notably the Warhammer Crime novels. There are multiple depictions of the cop's apartment and several middle class citizen's homes in the Hive City of Gargantua and it seems like an okay abode (two bedrooms, kitchen, two bathrooms, living room, den).

Take that how you will. Some people hate him, some like him. I attached the video, its good shower lore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgw9qyZKv-Y

Isn't there a sub-plot in the crime series that the population of Gargantua are all being literally poisoned by the air though..?

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Isn't there a sub-plot in the crime series that the population of Gargantua are all being literally poisoned by the air though..?

Could be, I can’t remember. Solid books though, rly fun reads. But to have individual living quarters for your family and large enough to have two separate baths and bedrooms is pretty decent. Some people in the US don’t even have that. There’s a portion of the book that explains if the guy makes Sgt or Lt? he would be upgraded to a larger home too. He eventually ranks up at the end because the definitely not an Inquisitor guy he was working for promotes him.

I remember some retired IG guys making a new home for themselves on a world in reward for their service... and they only had one small ork problem.

Everything was pretty decent until some "I can see the future" Space Marines showed up.

usmcmidn wrote:
But to have individual living quarters for your family and large enough to have two separate baths and bedrooms is pretty decent.

Two baths?!! Sign me up and hand me a lasgun!

As a general rule, security and military forces tend to have good quality of life as a way to buy their loyalty.

E.g. North Korean peasant may be starving, but the North Korean soldiers are eating well (and exponentially better with rank).

And because 40k literally has war in the name, protagonists are likely going to enjoy relatively privileged economic situations (assuming they don't die in the process). But that says nothing for the large majority of the human population.

The Imperium will only give you your two baths AFTER service though. Until then you get to live on rations if you're lucky; corpsestarch and get shipped to wherever the Imperium wants you.

If you're lucky you get a cushy guard post on a world that isn't really all that hostile.

If you're unlucky you can be on the front line on some death world fighting some abominations of once-men as cultists charge madly at you with blades whilst commanders fire artillery right over your head (and if you're unlucky right at your head!).

Where you have trenches to charge over; demons to dodge; that crazy psycher in your own army that just might go mad and fry your brains out.


So there are rewards; but you can end up going through very literal hell to get there.

Unless the people that come to save your planet from destruction happen to wear Capital "I" on their paldrons then it's off to mind-wipes, servitor-hood, or death!

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Unless the people that come to save your planet from destruction happen to wear Capital "I" on their paldrons then it's off to mind-wipes, servitor-hood, or death!

Or yellow Space Marines with a winged lightning bolt on their pads....