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You were born too late. This isn't your fault, but you're still going to pay for it. The golden age is over. Great catastrophes have brought down society, with oligarchies and dictatorships rising in its place.

Your fate is determined by authority figures you'll never know or meet. They'll never meet or know you. The closest they'll ever come to caring about you is when discussing and determining approval ratings. How much can they tax you? How many regulations can they impose on you?

How much can they do before you snap?

Your life has little-to-no impact on the world. Very few people will take notice of your death, and those that do will move on quickly. At your funeral there won't be any speeches; no one can think of anything to say about you.

That is assuming you get a funeral. If you're caught in a warzone, plague, or natural disaster, you're just going to get dumped in a mass grave. Be thankful that the worms wait until after you're dead to eat your face.

Big things are going on all around you, and you don't have a say in any of them.

Lets look at the 1000 pyskers a day sacrifice with a different perspective

Its been said that weak and dangerous pyskers are the ones that are sacrificed. I mean, it can be that bad compared to what may happen should the unstable pysker were to live amongst the populace; he would be victim to demonic possession and possibly be used as a gateway for a daemonic incursion which would doom his soul to the chaos gods for eternity(remember, the souls of pyskers still retain conciousness in the warp and are easy game for daemons and the Chaos gods). Being weak, the psykers would not be able to fend himself very well in both the material and warp realms. However, if he was sacrificed to the golden throne, his soul would essentially be absorbed into the Emperor, giving him power and preventing his soul from falling victim to the forces of Chaos

Also FYI guys, 99% of all Imperial Guard related conflicts does NOT involve Chaos Space Marines, Eldar, Tau, Dark Eldar, Tyranids and possibly Orks. The majority of their combat invovles fighting planetary rebels armed with low tech autoguns with the occasional lasgun. Nothing really too scary.

For me, Servitors and servo skulls are pretty Grimdark.

Instead of relying on AI and computers, they stick machinery in somebody, and there's your robot servant.

Nasty, unnecessary, and yet another reason the Imperium of Man should be left to die off.

Ecclesiarchy...

The most grimdark thing in the 40k universe is simply being alive as a human. Like honestly look at the quality of life, the constant fear, the disease, famine, horrible crime. You guys are talking about true waste of human life like its a terrible thing when really a bullet to the head would be the fastest quickest way out of a much worse hell. There are way worse things to have happen to you as a human in the 40k universe then to have your soul consumed in fire by a powerful psyker sitting in a life support system claiming godhood. The fact that that's not even close to being the worst thing, is the worst thing.

Life is so bad, some convert to chaos

 Soo'Vah'Cha wrote:
A thousand psychers a day sacrificed to power a throne occupied by a corpse.

This

 djphranq wrote:
The most grimdark thing is when the Imperium of Man fell off the Fiscal Cliff.

Welp read this...and well...../thread thanks for the laugh good sir

guardsmen aren't sent precisely through the warp, just bunch aload of regiments together and send them so enough make it there.
Also, due to the sheer scale of the imperium, i doubt life on every world is that bad. Gotta be some that aren't constantly under attack.

a b3ached whal3 wrote:
guardsmen aren't sent precisely through the warp, just bunch aload of regiments together and send them so enough make it there.
Also, due to the sheer scale of the imperium, i doubt life on every world is that bad. Gotta be some that aren't constantly under attack.

"Constantly" is a hard word to use in 40k.

Considering even "current" fluff spans 1000+ years, its easy for writers to make it feel like a world is under constant attack even if it just experiences a massive siege once every 100+ years.

To put it into perspective, the First War for Armageddon was in 444.M41

The second war was 941.M41

Almost 500 years later.

When the mythos is so broad, it's easy to feel like places are always at war, because there is always some place at war. But I'm sure plenty of planets experience whole generations without war.

But there's still slavery, drug trade, corrupt government, gangs, poverty, the ever-looming thread of being accused of heresy for folding your napkins the wrong way, and so on.

 purplefood wrote:

Neutralista wrote:

 TheCrazyCryptek wrote:
The thing IMHO that is most grimdark is that if you put yourself in the shoes of almost any human in the 40k, life always sucks. You're a Guardsman, life sucks. You're a factory worker, life sucks. You're a slave in the bowels of some Imperial Navy ship, life sucks. There are very few positions for people that don't suck.

I can show you two things that prove you wrong.

Being an Astartes only sucks if you get killed.

Being a Sister of Battle only sucks if you get called a Bolter Bitch, or get killed.

Being an Inquisitor can't suck, really...

An Inquisitor is constantly on guard. He or she must doubt everyone in their loyalty unless they are betrayed and the Imperium suffers. He or she must be prepared to kill anyone. Lover, friend, comrade, a planet...
A Space Marine is taken from early life and trained for nothing but war. Once upon a time they may have contemplated great things and been philosophers and artists but in more 'modern' times they are merely biological weapons. They are feared by those they protect and will never have a normal life. They are so far removed from humanity that there are some who hate them and hunt them despite the fact they protect them.
A Sister of Battle is merely a guardsman with more faith, better training and bigger firepower. However, they will never have a normal life, the only chance they can hope for is to live long enough to be useless on the battlefield and become a trainer of others to teach them how to kill and how to die.

Thank you. I was about to explain the downside to those things

Also, I did say the average persons life sucks. Space Marines and Inquisitors are definately not average.

The Imperium crumbling under the High Lords of Terra and the Imperial Church, having forgotten (deliberately so) the high ideals of the Emperor embodied in the Imperial Truth.

"Constantly" is a hard word to use in 40k.

Considering even "current" fluff spans 1000+ years, its easy for writers to make it feel like a world is under constant attack even if it just experiences a massive siege once every 100+ years.

To put it into perspective, the First War for Armageddon was in 444.M41

The second war was 941.M41

Almost 500 years later.

Yeah. Too bad after the first war for Armageddon, the Imperium was so worried about lingering cults that they rounded up all the survivors of the Hives and Imperial Guard both, and sterilized them and put into forced labor concentration camps, and those are the ones that weren't simply killed.

What a reward for fighting and sacrificing so the planet could keep on being an "efficient producer" for the rest of the Imperium.

The citizens of "five hundred years later" are actually the descendents of the colonists they brought in wholesale to replace them.


The Imperium is so dystopic, it would have citizens of the book 1984 cutting themselves out of sorrow.

 LoneLictor wrote:
You were born too late. This isn't your fault, but you're still going to pay for it. The golden age is over. Great catastrophes have brought down society, with oligarchies and dictatorships rising in its place.

Your fate is determined by authority figures you'll never know or meet. They'll never meet or know you. The closest they'll ever come to caring about you is when discussing and determining approval ratings. How much can they tax you? How many regulations can they impose on you?

How much can they do before you snap?

Your life has little-to-no impact on the world. Very few people will take notice of your death, and those that do will move on quickly. At your funeral there won't be any speeches; no one can think of anything to say about you.

That is assuming you get a funeral. If you're caught in a warzone, plague, or natural disaster, you're just going to get dumped in a mass grave. Be thankful that the worms wait until after you're dead to eat your face.

Big things are going on all around you, and you don't have a say in any of them.

This pretty much sums up the world we live in today, so little change in 39k years, hurh?

For me it's the stupidity of the imperial stagnation. They are dooming themselves in your ignorance and fear, and refuse to let humanity evolve into a state where there might be a chance

 LoneLictor wrote:
You were born too late. This isn't your fault, but you're still going to pay for it. The golden age is over. Great catastrophes have brought down society, with oligarchies and dictatorships rising in its place.

Your fate is determined by authority figures you'll never know or meet. They'll never meet or know you. The closest they'll ever come to caring about you is when discussing and determining approval ratings. How much can they tax you? How many regulations can they impose on you?

How much can they do before you snap?

Your life has little-to-no impact on the world.

Big things are going on all around you, and you don't have a say in any of them.

Sounds like nowadays Poland.

Feeding a 1000 psychers a day to a corpse is pretty grim.

Thread is being locked due to thread necromancy.