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Well, playing the odds, being skinned is effectively guaranteed slow and painful death. Particularly if administered by a “professional”.

Whereas bombing, due to the indiscriminate nature of the attack *could* be quick. And in any case, probably less painful than being skinned. Heck, you might even survive bombing.

But you are NOT going to survive being skinned.

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Getting bombed strikes me as a far less bad way to die then slowly being skinned to death.

If you believe that everyone killed in bombing, artillery, or chemical/biological attacks dies quickly and painlessly then you need to study some actual military history and stop watching G.I. Joe.

I'm well aware of the fact that bombing can cause long term suffering. I'd probably still take it over being skinned alive.

 =Angel= wrote:
...Right of conquest. That's entirely secular, and differs from Might makes Right (Chaos) in key ways. If the Imperium of Man contacted our world today, the Emperor and the Highlords would be recognised as the legitimate government of all their territories, for the same reason that the US isn't governed by native Americans...

And the Native Americans recognize the US government as the legitimate government of all their territories and hold no ill will over the whole mess, do they?

 agurus1 wrote:
People have mentioned that there seem to be a lack of reciprocal “falling” from chaos to order, but we do have at least two examples I can think of even if the nature of the Imperium and their rejection of chaos meant they wouldn’t be fully accepted back into the human fold ever.

******************SPOILERS*******************

We have the Traitor General from the Guants Ghosts novels, who essentially becomes a traitor to chaos, supplying the Imperials with information while also saying that he is essentially at the point of being a conscientious objector. Additionally there is the character from Daemon World who essentially know he is still damned due to a millennia in service to the dark gods, but decides to rebel against them and to hit them where it hurts most destroy their prize jewel of a corrupted maiden world they had been fighting over.

So I think that chaos to order traitors could happen it’s just very hard due to the nature of selling your soul, and the fact that the Order faction thinks you may be irrevocably corrupted and just shoot you on the spot instead of accept you back into the fold.

That traitor guy from Demon World were a quite atypical person wasn't he? Been ages since I read it, but I seem to remember him being some sort of aeons old sorcerer/perpetual/something something who hid among the Emperor's legions because he believed in the cause, fell to chaos with his new Word Bearer brethren, and now returned to reap some vengeance on the chaos gods for luring him in in the first place? What a weirdly nihilistic, mess of a book btw. Some very cool fight scenes tho.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Getting bombed strikes me as a far less bad way to die then slowly being skinned to death.

If you believe that everyone killed in bombing, artillery, or chemical/biological attacks dies quickly and painlessly then you need to study some actual military history and stop watching G.I. Joe.

I'm well aware of the fact that bombing can cause long term suffering. I'd probably still take it over being skinned alive.

I think anyone in their right mind would want pretty much any other faith than being skinned alive seriously. However, wasn't the original question wether it is truly more evil to kill a relative few horrifyingly gruesomely than to kill millions or even billions indiscriminately?

 greatbigtree wrote:
Well, playing the odds, being skinned is effectively guaranteed slow and painful death. Particularly if administered by a “professional”.

Whereas bombing, due to the indiscriminate nature of the attack *could* be quick. And in any case, probably less painful than being skinned. Heck, you might even survive bombing.

But you are NOT going to survive being skinned.

Unless it's the Drukhari doing it.

nataliereed1984 wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Well, playing the odds, being skinned is effectively guaranteed slow and painful death. Particularly if administered by a “professional”.

Whereas bombing, due to the indiscriminate nature of the attack *could* be quick. And in any case, probably less painful than being skinned. Heck, you might even survive bombing.

But you are NOT going to survive being skinned.

Unless it's the Drukhari doing it.

Pretty sure death is the preferable fate by a damned good margin in that particular scenario.

Yeah, again, I’d rather take my chances with being bombed over *anything* skinning me alive.

Though I would totally do a death-bed conversion and try to summon a Daemon to smite the bastard skinning me. It would be worth it.

Well played.

Yeah, I figured I’d take a shot at getting the train back on the rails.

To which - spite - May be a piss-poor reason to sympathize with Chaos, but if someone were torturing you, I suppose it’s nice to know you have a potential way out?

 greatbigtree wrote:
Yeah, I figured I’d take a shot at getting the train back on the rails.

To which - spite - May be a piss-poor reason to sympathize with Chaos, but if someone were torturing you, I suppose it’s nice to know you have a potential way out?

So... what if we exchange the very hands on torture with the torturous existence of living under and being utterly controlled to the point of slavery by a boots to the neck, unyielding, uncaring and excessively violent and harsh 1984'ish totalitarian regime. A regime leaving you with absolutely no chance of escape, nor any way at all to better the situation for neither you, nor your family?

 Aestas wrote:

 greatbigtree wrote:
Yeah, I figured I’d take a shot at getting the train back on the rails.

To which - spite - May be a piss-poor reason to sympathize with Chaos, but if someone were torturing you, I suppose it’s nice to know you have a potential way out?

So... what if we exchange the very hands on torture with the torturous existence of living under and being utterly controlled to the point of slavery by a boots to the neck, unyielding, uncaring and excessively violent and harsh 1984'ish totalitarian regime. A regime leaving you with absolutely no chance of escape, nor any way at all to better the situation for neither you, nor your family?

Just like politics at the moment - to the best of their heavily restricted knowledge it’s better than the alternatives.

Hey, I can sympathize with the reasons that people would reject the Imperium's rule, and in a universe where Gods are demonstrably real via demonic entities that can grant tangible “gifts”, I can certainly see taking that risk.

Blindly, perhaps even stupidly, but yeah. I’d try to get out from under that boot.

Sympathy is for the weak anyway; Chaos will have blood, Yours or Theirs.

Primaris are heresy.
Reason number 1.

 Aestas wrote:


I really hate to refute your points with something so simple, but, well... Yes. It is a central point of the Chaos gods that they feed off all emotions linked to them, not just the extremities. I'm on holiday over Christmas, so sources will have to wait, but Khorne very much does feed off the background aggression of the universe (only requirement being a warp presence, I would guess). He is the god of killing and aggression, not only the god of extreme aggression and total war, and while, rightly, he is not the god of self-defense, he is very much the god of the aggression needed and displayed for self defense. That soldier standing his ground to the bezerker very much does feed Khorne.

To make things clear. That does not make it a zero sum game, it doesn't mean all violence is equal ,and it doesn't mean that Khorne, in as much as he truly has vested interests, doesn't have an interest in the outcome or that he feeds as much either way. But it does underline that this is not just a binary situation of good vs. evil or order vs. chaos. Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows - all conflict feeds him. This qualitative element of aggression is also visible in his worshippers and champions, as well as in their works. The top dogs and the most famous are mostly blood crazed maniacs: "Break their backs", "Skulls for the skull throne", "kill. maim. burn." and all that. They are (favored) extremists, just as the chaos gods pulls towards extremity in order to beget themselves. That doesn't mean all Khorne worshippers are like that. For example, we find mention of several tribes and societies living on deamon worlds within the eye of terror. Violent, mostly primitive societies, but functional, generational societies non the less, that worship Khorne in some form or another. We also know that Khorne enjoys a battle between equals and the sacrifices of worthy warriors more than the blood of the weak. To underline the point about this not being a clear cut dichotomy between the good empire and and evil chaos. Khorne would probably enjoy the work of the guardsman, for being such a bad ass that he took down one of his (unworthy) champions. He might even hold him in his favor and reward him for it ;-)

This is not some school boy Catholicism, where vices and virtues stands opposed to each other on a spectrum. In this universe, the devil eats from much much more than just the fallen.

I take your point that Khorne may be fuelled by that background aggression. But the issue is how much? A starving man subsisting on Moss and beetles is being fed, but he is slowly dying. The Emperor (who was wrong mainly about the character of his sons than any technical issue) believed that the background aggression/vice of the human race was not enough to sustain Khorne. He reckoned he could defeat the chaos gods by starving them, even as he launched a great crusade to free humanity from alien and psychic dominion (and all that troublesome religion and sovereignty). If the Anathema to Chaos thought that the violence of the crusade would help rather than hurt the chaos gods, he would have found another way. Instead he reckoned hammering out a new order would provide humanity with enough unity to resist the chaos powers and shepherd mankind into psychic dominion of the galaxy.
There's a meme that the Emperor was naive, but not so much that he expected humanity to drop all sexy/violent/cunning/desperate thoughts just because he plastered eagles and tasteful arches everywhere.

I'd accept that Khorne enjoys the spectacle of Cain and Jurgen melta-ing and chainswording one of his chosen champions. I don't accept that he's pleased that the bloodshed has now ceased, or that he (Cain) has praised the Anathema for his fortuitous deliverance, offering worship to Khorne's archenemy. He eats the soul of the Berzerker, or spits him out into a new warpforged body, or throws him to his hounds to tear asunder.

 Aestas wrote:
To give an example to back up my point, just pulled from the back of my mind. The Cabal during the Horus Heresy. They actively wanted Horus to win, because they foresaw that a victorious Horus would lead to the utter destruction of the human race. They wanted this, and even presumably convinced some fairly high ranking humans of the necessity of it, because a wiped out human race would mean the death of the chaos gods. It was better (to the Cabal) to let humanity burn bright in the warp for some time before the whole race collapsed in on itself, leading to the total erasure of the human emotions whirling up the warp. (This was a possibility because humanity was the all domineering warp present species at the time).

Now, I'm not saying this makes the Cabal "good", or that they shouldn't too be vehemently opposed (as bad guys). But I think it does back up my point. Also, the worst thing the Cabal foresaw was what we got: A stagnant Imperium, with a corpse emperor, slowly, undyingly feeding chaos as it grinds the wheels of empire ever onward.

The Cabal was a bunch of xenos and xenos alligned humans whose plan was for humanity to self destruct violently to save the galaxy for scum sucking aliens to enjoy. Their plan was based on two false premises:
1: The Emperor could not succeed
2: The galaxy of the 41st millennium is not preferable to human extinction (for humanity)

In a sense, the cabal gave us what we got. If the cabal had mobilised all their xenos fleets to Terra or some other decisive battle before it, or even just stayed out of the whole affair, the Emperor could have stayed whole, the traitors could have been decisively destroyed in detail and the galaxy could have been spared 10 millennia of Abaddon shaking a stolen powerfist at it from the Eye of Terror. Without the traitor legions and their raids, chaos would only have disorganised beastmen and mutants on spacehulks to throw at the Emperor and his legions.

 Aestas wrote:
Well, on this we can very much agree, and please bear in mind that this is possible even if Chaos feeds from all. Very well put too. The problem is, as you say, how.

Here I think Natalie and Locarno just made some good points, and I think it is central to the setting that the Imperium (and before that the Emperor) is fighting with tools that can never, ever lead to victory. They might be tragically forced to use those same tools. but it is helpless, endless reciprocity just the same.

I don't think that's true though. I think the tragedy is that the Emperor could have made it work. The chaos gods made a hail-mary play to save themselves, throwing everything at the wall and it worked because of the Cabal, because of the human hubris of the Primarchs and because of the narrative requirements to produce 40k. The corruption of the Word Bearers, pilgrimages into the eye, Horus, the Ruinstorm to contain the Ultramarines, the attempt to turn Sanguinius- if it was always going to end in tears, the chaos gods needn't have worked as hard.

 Aestas wrote:
While I think you are pretty much right in the money, I do also see the polar opposite occur. Here's an exaggerated example just because it is Christmas: "Those are bad guys, just look at those flaming skulls, that snarling face and those guts coming out of that gut. Clearly bad guys. Now, these guys all up in uniform with that golden Aquila on their breasts. Those bearing it all over just MUST be good guys, just look at how golden and regal it is".

(you can blame marketing for that one too)

Btw. Merry Yuletide everyone!

Merry Christentide.

One of the reason I dislike the new Primaris is that they lack the snarling MkVII helms that look like Vader took a course in angry. The basic Primaris helm and the Mk IV its based on are less obviously villainous than the brutal marines we have had for many years.
40k communicates a lot visually, as a miniatures game. The Imperium's uniforms visually echo powerful but authoritarian governments form our history and the Ecclesiarchy echoes the familiar alongside the worst of Europe's religious history. Its not meant to look aspirational- its meant to look cool. Diluting that with Golden knights and neutral space soldiers doesn't help the game much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 =Angel= wrote:
...Right of conquest. That's entirely secular, and differs from Might makes Right (Chaos) in key ways. If the Imperium of Man contacted our world today, the Emperor and the Highlords would be recognised as the legitimate government of all their territories, for the same reason that the US isn't governed by native Americans...

And the Native Americans recognize the US government as the legitimate government of all their territories and hold no ill will over the whole mess, do they?

The smart ones do. It's what they were doing to each other, after all. I don't think American Indians can be called upon as allies in a potential coup against the US government.

 greatbigtree wrote:
Hey, I can sympathize with the reasons that people would reject the Imperium's rule, and in a universe where Gods are demonstrably real via demonic entities that can grant tangible “gifts”, I can certainly see taking that risk.

Blindly, perhaps even stupidly, but yeah. I’d try to get out from under that boot.

That's part of the issue with the Imperium's "the armor of ignorance" policy. It's like in the stories for Psychic Awakening where the group of psychic refugees is forced to have someone offer to get their eye stabbed out as payment so that the group can be "rescued" by the Red King.

Or the number of situations where there's no way to tell whether some regional sect is a real Imperial cult, a Genestealer cult, a Chaos cult, or just plain weird. But no one knows any better, so it's just the way the local cult is.

There is a ton of stuff in the early material about early stage Chaos devotees not having any idea what it is that they're dealing with. A lot of the times, it's just seen as "Finally, I've got a way to get out from underneath the boot." And because the setting isn't one known for peaceful co-existence, once you've tried to get out from under the boot, the next thing you have to deal with is the bigger boot to replace the one you got out from under. And then everything spirals out of control from there.

 Aestas wrote:

 agurus1 wrote:
People have mentioned that there seem to be a lack of reciprocal “falling” from chaos to order, but we do have at least two examples I can think of even if the nature of the Imperium and their rejection of chaos meant they wouldn’t be fully accepted back into the human fold ever.

******************SPOILERS*******************

We have the Traitor General from the Guants Ghosts novels, who essentially becomes a traitor to chaos, supplying the Imperials with information while also saying that he is essentially at the point of being a conscientious objector. Additionally there is the character from Daemon World who essentially know he is still damned due to a millennia in service to the dark gods, but decides to rebel against them and to hit them where it hurts most destroy their prize jewel of a corrupted maiden world they had been fighting over.

So I think that chaos to order traitors could happen it’s just very hard due to the nature of selling your soul, and the fact that the Order faction thinks you may be irrevocably corrupted and just shoot you on the spot instead of accept you back into the fold.

That traitor guy from Demon World were a quite atypical person wasn't he? Been ages since I read it, but I seem to remember him being some sort of aeons old sorcerer/perpetual/something something who hid among the Emperor's legions because he believed in the cause, fell to chaos with his new Word Bearer brethren, and now returned to reap some vengeance on the chaos gods for luring him in in the first place? What a weirdly nihilistic, mess of a book btw. Some very cool fight scenes tho.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:

Gadzilla666 wrote:

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
Getting bombed strikes me as a far less bad way to die then slowly being skinned to death.

If you believe that everyone killed in bombing, artillery, or chemical/biological attacks dies quickly and painlessly then you need to study some actual military history and stop watching G.I. Joe.

I'm well aware of the fact that bombing can cause long term suffering. I'd probably still take it over being skinned alive.

I think anyone in their right mind would want pretty much any other faith than being skinned alive seriously. However, wasn't the original question wether it is truly more evil to kill a relative few horrifyingly gruesomely than to kill millions or even billions indiscriminately?

Yes that was what I was originally trying to argue. Also the fact that people generally seem to be more ok with killing as long as it takes place at a distance and they don't have to know the gruesome details.

And don't forget the Imperium doesn't just use conventional ordnance. They also use chemical and biological. Phosphex and virus bombs anyone?

In a sense, the cabal gave us what we got. If the cabal had mobilised all their xenos fleets to Terra or some other decisive battle before it, or even just stayed out of the whole affair, the Emperor could have stayed whole

I'm not sure staying out of it would have been enough, but they certainly needn't have got involved in the shooting. A pretty big chunk of the heresy could have been avoided by ensuring the Emperor was aware exactly where Kor Phaeron's loyalties lay.

Of course, that assumes the cabal knew in advance about him - the acuity may be supposedly all-knowing and infallible but the fact Eldrad was able to do what he did kind of undermines that idea...

Really, if we were to reduce the whole 30K/40K metaplot down to one theme, it's "Nobody is half as smart as they think they are." It's all one massive Xanatos Gambit pileup where nobody is playing with anywhere near a full deck and nobody really knows if their plans/precognitive visions are being manipulated by somebody else. And everyone is also an arrogant douchnozzle who thinks they alone have all the right answers.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Really, if we were to reduce the whole 30K/40K metaplot down to one theme, it's "Nobody is half as smart as they think they are." It's all one massive Xanatos Gambit pileup where nobody is playing with anywhere near a full deck and nobody really knows if their plans/precognitive visions are being manipulated by somebody else. And everyone is also an arrogant douchnozzle who thinks they alone have all the right answers.

An arrogant genocidal douchnozzle

And in everyone's arrogance, Primordial Annihilator wins. Magnus thought that he was and is more clever than anyone. Primordial Annihilator had manipulated and manipulates Magnus like a toy.

Emperor thought he was smarter than everyone. In doing so, he had created this future himself. The state of affairs now is directly handiwork or his failure, not the efforts of Chaos. It is an interesting irony. Like Horus was shown future and what it would mean to fail, like son like father, Emperor too "seen the future" and was creating it by his own very hands while thinking that he is trying to stop this from happening.

 solkan wrote:


That's part of the issue with the Imperium's "the armor of ignorance" policy. It's like in the stories for Psychic Awakening where the group of psychic refugees is forced to have someone offer to get their eye stabbed out as payment so that the group can be "rescued" by the Red King.

Or the number of situations where there's no way to tell whether some regional sect is a real Imperial cult, a Genestealer cult, a Chaos cult, or just plain weird. But no one knows any better, so it's just the way the local cult is.

There is a ton of stuff in the early material about early stage Chaos devotees not having any idea what it is that they're dealing with. A lot of the times, it's just seen as "Finally, I've got a way to get out from underneath the boot." And because the setting isn't one known for peaceful co-existence, once you've tried to get out from under the boot, the next thing you have to deal with is the bigger boot to replace the one you got out from under. And then everything spirals out of control from there.

This is a fair point. Its part of the fun of the setting, and I agree that the Imperium goes about this in a hamfisted, incompetent way but there are in universe reasons for a lot of this.

One is that it is impossible and impractical for the Imperium to force orthodoxy beyond rooting out obvious chaos cults- due to the sale of the galaxy, the limits of warp travel and the inaccuracy/unreliability of telepathy- each domain (and to a lesser extent each world) stands alone, connected by trade and oaths to each other in a vast web. The Bloodsworn of the Eternal Warrior may be a sanctioned Imperial warrior fraternity (venerating the Immortal God-Emperor in his aspect of mankind's champion) or a dangerous chaos cult, but its the Inquisitors job to find out which.

Second is that Chaos is so malign that even naming one of the chaos gods or hearing the name can cause physical/psychic pain. They are magic words, in a sense, and talking or thinking about chaos can lead to spiritual corruption. The runes of the gods are said to hurt the eyes of non corrupted humans who view them. Even inquisitors go radical and get corrupted. An attempt to educate the populace with PSA's could only address the most cursory of details.

There is a reason that cults begin addressing the 'changers of the ways' or the 'blood god'- these are more than just honorifics- they are euphemisms and ways to discuss the chaos powers in a way that doesn't immediately cause your brain to hurt. While the Blood Pact does scream the name Khorne, the corpse grinder blood cult probably haven't even heard it. Now that they are corrupted through ritual and practice, they could probably employ the runes and names of the gods and daemons, if they knew them.

The aforementioned story about the psykers willing to make a ritual mutilation of their own body in order to bargain passage to the planet of the Sorcerors- Doesn't mention Tzeentch or Magnus by name. The Red King is used as an alternate name for Magnus, and Tzeentch is not brought up- but the psykers are definitely doing blood magic for Tzeentch.

What the Imperium is doing is probably the best that can be achieved with the resources at hand, and with the prevailing culture.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Really, if we were to reduce the whole 30K/40K metaplot down to one theme, it's "Nobody is half as smart as they think they are." It's all one massive Xanatos Gambit pileup where nobody is playing with anywhere near a full deck and nobody really knows if their plans/precognitive visions are being manipulated by somebody else. And everyone is also an arrogant douchnozzle who thinks they alone have all the right answers.

Douchnozzle is an outstanding word!

Well, I am building a Black Legion army based off the theory in this video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=share&v=oEO0hyIGzgc

Is the theory correct? IDK. sounds good enough to me to work with. Yes, I get that these duders are not nice and will not treat any one before them with...mercy? respect? But this is 40k, and 1, not many of the factions show restraint or mercy, and 2, it's all fake, so I have no issue sleeping at night.



edit:Abby on a mission to kill the Emp for the Emp, sent by the Emp, using the Emp's failed tools, in a war of mutual destruction, to restart at zero.

I'm not gonna watch a 13min video.

Summarize.

Since you asked so nicely...

At some point, Abby stares into the astronomicon, in the period following Horus’ death. Because the Emperor controls the Astronomicon, he might have subliminal messaged Abby into trying to destroy his mortal form, since the loyal servants won’t.

This frees the Emp to either be reborn, as a perpetual, or ascend to Godhood.

Abby actively refuses the pacts of the Gods. Even if he wins, a “mortal” man controls the Imperium, not the Gods. In order for Abby to take down the Emp, it would virtually wipe out both loyal and rebel Marines, similar to the treatment the Thunder Warriors got when they were done.

Depleting the number of living humans also diminishes the raw power of the Chaos Gods (fewer batteries) and with a resurgent Emperor and Chaos unable to recover from their losses... long-game victory.

Well, you know what they say. When you stare into the Astronomicon, the Astronomicon stares back.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Well, you know what they say. When you stare into the Astronomicon, the Astronomicon stares back.

I think that is what ABD was going for. Talon of Horus had some fascinating warp based Emperor stuff in it.

All the factions are bad in 40k, the issue is because the imperium are largely the "protagonists" some people think they are good.

Tell that to the alien races that were minding their business who just got genocided because the Imperium wanted their world. No one is good in 40k.

To quote Terry Pratchett.

“I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.”

This quote sums up 40k.

My admiration for chaos isn't really admiration.

It's more a fascination with a 'tragic' situation. Some guys who thought they had it figured out, and it devoured them and they're on a downward spiral.