What disturbs you the most in 40k background?

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**TheRedWingArmada**

The most disturbing thing about the 40k universe? The absolute endless waste of life. @.@

As someone who, irl, strives towards utopia, plenty and all that jazz organizations like The Venus Project tout, it disturbs me to know end that peace really is completely unattainable for so many of these people, species, planets, systems, etc.

Best example ever of a situation that could've gone so much better and amicably for everyone is the fighting that breaks out in the Horus Heresy series between the Sons of Horus and the Interrex.

It's like there's just one misunderstanding after another that sees entire systems burn. @.@

**Medium of Death**

I wouldn't say it disturbs me but the Dark Eldar codex has some of the more grim examples of what happens in the 40k universe. Particularly Grotesques and the other flesh puppets of the Haemonculi.

Tyranid living weaponry is also pretty horrific. Getting eaten alive as the "rounds" burrow in to your flesh or spray you with acid.

**Selym**

I find Slaanesh to be quite disturbing...

And the worst part is that most male humans will be feeding Slaanesh regularly...

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Do you mean male humans always strive for perfection ?

**gossipmeng**

The novel Dark Apostle goes into detail about a world being taken over by chaos. One of the viewpoints is from a local who is enslaved and forced to work in a labour camp. The torture and psychological damage is so intense that when guardsmen finally come to liberate the planet, the slaves end up attacking their liberators since their bodies and minds are twisted past recovery. Pretty disturbing stuff.

**da001**

I love that novel. Dark disciple is quite disturbing too.

**Selym**

Selym wrote:I find Slaanesh to be quite disturbing...

And the worst part is that most male humans will be feeding Slaanesh regularly...

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:Do you mean male humans always strive for perfection ?

[Mod Edit - Clever, but sorry, no. - Alpharius]

**bocatt**

I just gotta put this one because no one has said it and it's a deep personal fear of mine.

In the Eldar Path series by Gav Thorpe

Spoiler:

Yeah, that's some deep, psychological torture there...

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Selym wrote:
Selym wrote:I find Slaanesh to be quite disturbing...

And the worst part is that most male humans will be feeding Slaanesh regularly...

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:Do you mean male humans always strive for perfection ?

8-----D ~ ~ ~

Some grinning guy with a very long nose and a long thin beard ?

**Selym**

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Selym wrote:
Selym wrote:I find Slaanesh to be quite disturbing...

And the worst part is that most male humans will be feeding Slaanesh regularly...

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:Do you mean male humans always strive for perfection ?

8-----D ~ ~ ~

Some grinning guy with a very long nose and a long thin beard ?

Hmmm... How can I put this...

Spoiler:

:S

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Selym wrote:
Hmmm... How can I put this...

Spoiler:

fapping

:S

I'm not sure it feeds Slaanesh. It's neither trying to reach perfection, nor necessarily being self-indulgent, nor being excessive in itself.
Also, don't women do that too ?

**squidhills**

Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Selym wrote:
Hmmm... How can I put this...

Spoiler:

fapping

:S

I'm not sure it feeds Slaanesh. It's neither trying to reach perfection, nor necessarily being self-indulgent, nor being excessive in itself.
Also, don't women do that too ?

Perfection was the hangup of Fulgrim, who turned to Slaanesh. It is not what Slaanesh is about. Slaanesh is about excess and pleasure, and excessive pleasure. And pleasuring yourself excessively, if people who field Slaanesh armies are anything to judge by.

**daedalus**

I'm sure it's been said in eight pages, but Argoflagellation.

Uuuugh. (that's the sound I make when I shudder, apparently)

Lets lobotomize criminals, replace their limbs with flails and buzzsaws, and pipe them full of downers and hymnals, only to crank the deathmetal and switch on the uppers when we want them to eviscerate anything in the vicinity.

**Inky**

Although i love DE I don't think they're the most disturbing race. I really dig the inhuman orange and blue morality with the Fae folk and pre-tolkien elf references (to quote Pratchett "No one ever said elves were nice ) but I think the sheer inhuman bureaucracy of the IoM is the worst. There's one example somewhere of an entire regiment being deployed to completely the wrong world and being wiped out yet it didn't affect anything whatsoever it was just...pointless.
The futility is what gives me the heeby of the jeebys, moreso than any Haemonculus or Daemon.

**Swissgeese**

daedalus wrote:
I'm sure it's been said in eight pages, but Argoflagellation.

Uuuugh. (that's the sound I make when I shudder, apparently)

Lets lobotomize criminals, replace their limbs with flails and buzzsaws, and pipe them full of downers and hymnals, only to crank the deathmetal and switch on the uppers when we want them to eviscerate anything in the vicinity.

Agree with above. Also any servitor really. Especially cherub ones! Its pretty sick.

**asimo77**

For me there's something horrifying in the most primordial sense about Tyranids. Something about being eaten alive stirs the most primitive animal parts of the brain into fits of terror.

**Wyzilla**

Not much at all really. W40K really isn't that horrific compared to other fictions like Lovecraft. The only thing that "disturbs" me (or rather, incites RAAAAAGE!), the spank of Grey Knights and Ultramarines, along with the flipflopping of the Necrons. Otherwise it seems all good.

**Spinner**

The almost casual way planets undergo apocalyptic disasters. Whether they're consumed by Chaos, harvested by Necrons, get buried under a hostile alien ecosystem (green or chitinous, your pick!), or just...vanish. It's a hell of a lot of life, and it disappears in such an offhand manner.

Really gives you a sense of scale, as well as a clue on why the people in charge of the Imperium think the way they do.

**Lord Gatlas**

Ninjacommando wrote:
I say Honsou takes the cake for the most disturbing/Evilest thing in the 40k universe.

he created the Daemonculaba which does the following:

The Daemonculaba process was a means by which to produce new Chaos Space Marines entailing a shocking myriad of cruelties including, among other things, skinning people alive and forcibly impregnating women via reverse c-sections with said skinned people.

Dark Eldar are pastel-colored ponies compared to this.

**PredaKhaine**

Lord Gatlas wrote:
Ninjacommando wrote:
I say Honsou takes the cake for the most disturbing/Evilest thing in the 40k universe.

he created the Daemonculaba which does the following:

The Daemonculaba process was a means by which to produce new Chaos Space Marines entailing a shocking myriad of cruelties including, among other things, skinning people alive and forcibly impregnating women via reverse c-sections with said skinned people.

Dark Eldar are pastel-colored ponies compared to this.

They didn't impregnate women with skinned people...

The Iron Warriors were stealing kids and putting them in the demonculaba (woman who has been warped by chaos into basically a great big, still sentient womb), which were using geneseed to hot-house new chaos marines.
When the chaos marines were full size, they were taken out of the demonculaba - but the process didn't cover them with skin (I think they grew too quickly for skin)
So the Iron Warriors made skin farms where they force fed people to get them fatter (more skin) and then skinned the fat people so they could put skin on the kids they'd stolen, put in a demon womb, giant sized and rendered skinless...

**Selym**

PredaKhaine wrote:
Lord Gatlas wrote:
Ninjacommando wrote:
I say Honsou takes the cake for the most disturbing/Evilest thing in the 40k universe.

he created the Daemonculaba which does the following:

The Daemonculaba process was a means by which to produce new Chaos Space Marines entailing a shocking myriad of cruelties including, among other things, skinning people alive and forcibly impregnating women via reverse c-sections with said skinned people.

Dark Eldar are pastel-colored ponies compared to this.

They didn't impregnate women with skinned people...
The Iron Warriors were stealing kids and putting them in the demonculaba (woman who has been warped by chaos into basically a great big, still sentient womb), which were using geneseed to hot-house new chaos marines.
When the chaos marines were full size, they were taken out of the demonculaba - but the process didn't cover them with skin (I think they grew too quickly for skin)
So the Iron Warriors made skin farms where they force fed people to get them fatter (more skin) and then skinned the fat people so they could put skin on the kids they'd stolen, put in a demon womb, giant sized and rendered skinless...

Oh, because that's much more humane

**varzaman**

dementedwombat wrote:
This is going to completely go against most of the other stuff in the thread, but to me the Tau empire just depresses the heck out of me. We have what is pretty much the only bit of optimism and progress ever shown in the universe (and to be fair even they aren't all that great, but at least they are willing to talk to you before they kill you, which is more than most of 40k has going for it), and it's located in such a tiny insignificant part of the galaxy that if any of the major factions stopped killing each other for about a year and actually bothered to try they could completely wipe it out like it never even existed.

Just that we have that little bit of hope and its so incredibly outclassed and irrelevant really messes with my head.

What are the hints that the Tau are evil?

**Selym**

lettuceman44 wrote:
dementedwombat wrote:
This is going to completely go against most of the other stuff in the thread, but to me the Tau empire just depresses the heck out of me. We have what is pretty much the only bit of optimism and progress ever shown in the universe (and to be fair even they aren't all that great, but at least they are willing to talk to you before they kill you, which is more than most of 40k has going for it), and it's located in such a tiny insignificant part of the galaxy that if any of the major factions stopped killing each other for about a year and actually bothered to try they could completely wipe it out like it never even existed.

Just that we have that little bit of hope and its so incredibly outclassed and irrelevant really messes with my head.
What are the hints that the Tau are evil?

In the grim darkness of the far future, the Tau is too good to be true!

**Androxine Vortex**

Squats

**Casbyness**

CadianXV wrote:
The Tyrant Star.

We don't know what it is, how it works, where it'll next appear, or when it'll next appear.

But we know what it does. With little warning, a ghostly star apparently emitting black flames and esoteric, unknown forms of radiation, spontaneously materialises in a planetary system, often appearing to posses the local star, shines malevolently for a few days, and then, just as mysteriously, vanishes without trace.

The visitation is accompanied by psychic disturbance, geological upheaval, increased mutation and sociological problems on inhabited worlds, including mass rioting and unrest.

It has flummoxed every theory and remains a terrifying enigma.

Sounds like Matt Ward to me.

**Selym**

Casbyness wrote:
CadianXV wrote:
The Tyrant Star.

We don't know what it is, how it works, where it'll next appear, or when it'll next appear.

But we know what it does. With little warning, a ghostly star apparently emitting black flames and esoteric, unknown forms of radiation, spontaneously materialises in a planetary system, often appearing to posses the local star, shines malevolently for a few days, and then, just as mysteriously, vanishes without trace.

The visitation is accompanied by psychic disturbance, geological upheaval, increased mutation and sociological problems on inhabited worlds, including mass rioting and unrest.

It has flummoxed every theory and remains a terrifying enigma.

Sounds like a full c'tan to me.

Fix'd that for ya

**Lord Spartacus**

Chaos in general, especially Nurgle and Slaanesh.
Hellraiser traumatized me when I saw it as a kid, so DE are ungodly scary to me.

Imagine if your city is attacked by the Emperor's Children... Or if you try to escape from daemons only to run into a Great Unclean one...

**Selym**

I actually have a hard time imagining the ways that chaos would be scary/disturbing...

I agree that they are supposed to be, but the concept just slides off my face whenever I meet it.

**Lord Spartacus**

Selym wrote:
I actually have a hard time imagining the ways that chaos would be scary/disturbing...

I agree that they are supposed to be, but the concept just slides off my face whenever I meet it.

We are all different eh?

I certainly don't want to see pink women with crab claws running towards me.

**TheCustomLime**

The Imperium. The fact that people like you or me get driven to do such horrible, horrible things is just disturbing. How they just throw lives away and make a wall out of their dead is just one example. Imagine the cultural indoctrination it would take to get people to be used to such things.