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Dear Holy Emperor lock this heretical thread!!! We must burn the traitors!!!

You should explain to him about how noble Magnus attempted to spare the corpse emperor from the wrath of the great powers and in return the great libraries of Prospero were burned to the ground by his lapdog marines.

The greatest tragedy in the history of the Imperium, and Russ gets a lauded as a hero and savior.

Remember Prospero.

There is only one truth... The Primordial truth. Death to the False Emperor!

My 6 year old doesn't distinguish between good and bad in 40K. Everyone (Deathwing, Ravenwind and Orks) is just "Orks", Including her small force of rainbow marines.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
You should explain to him about how noble Magnus attempted to spare the corpse emperor from the wrath of the great powers and in return the great libraries of Prospero were burned to the ground by his lapdog marines.

The greatest tragedy in the history of the Imperium, and Russ gets a lauded as a hero and savior.

Remember Prospero.

You forgot conveniently blowing up Emperor's greatest work that if completed would have allowed warp-free travel across galaxy and instead now requires Emperor's full power to keep Earth from becoming daemon planet(and with that loss of human warp travel in any big scale).

He single handedly destroyed Emperor's plan, goal & hopes for future.

But you didn't lie. The chaos factions are the baddies*.

*An actual moral philosophy term.

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
You should explain to him about how noble Magnus attempted to spare the corpse emperor from the wrath of the great powers and in return the great libraries of Prospero were burned to the ground by his lapdog marines.

The greatest tragedy in the history of the Imperium, and Russ gets a lauded as a hero and savior.

Remember Prospero.

He was told to not mess with forces and powers he could not fully understand... and for a good reason, I might add.

And what did he do? Mess with forces and powers he could not fully understand. Magnus is obviously all about intellectualism but he's still sorely lacking when it comes to intelligence. And that's before we figure in "To know, is to know that you know nothing.", which is something that he might or might not know, though probably not. Either way, he was played like a fiddle.

They're not bad. They're just sculpted that way. Like Jessica Rabbit... but with more spikes.

TarkinLarson wrote:
So I bought the getting started with 40k magazine so my wife could get an easy idea of what it's all about.

My nephew was around and started flicking through it. He got to the page with a showcase of some chaos space marines and asked "Are these the baddies?"

I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth and felt myself lie to him. "Yes. Those are the bad guys."

I know I should have told him the truth... Told him about the false emperor.

What would you have done?

First off you belong in a slannesh torture chamber to repent for your blasphemy against the miss understood victims of the emperor and his false god status.

Second for not informing him of the benevolent grace and purifying attempts of the tyranids. They are simply trying to cleanse the universe of the infection of man and xenos alike. They are the universe's personal janitors, respect that.

Third, the woefully miss understood orcs, they are just a fungus that wants to have a good time. They are not good or evil, they are just misrepresented hooligans looking for a place to hooligan for the sake of hooliganing. How can you not share the glory of them. Remember they will things into existence, that is a great lesson for kids, with enough effort, thought and help anything is possible. Well unless it is 8th ed abd you are against eldar, then you don't get a shooting phase, but anything is possible.

Fourth You got the anime communists err t'au. The whole enslaveme.. err greater good... nope cannot do it exterminatus is not kind enough for these things. They are just evil wrapped in sheepskin.

Fifth Light meat and dark meat eldar are just depraved deviants trying to avoid going home to slannesh. Nothing good about either group.

Sixth you have the 90s Allstars of edge lord metal the necros, clearly not terminators, nope not terminators at all, nope. This horde of soul trapped robot zombies are the good guys. Just look how the ones that have freewill treat their enslaved brethren. They are so good they make rust look like a superhero.

Seventh harlequins, come on don't you like clowns? How about ninjas? I can do better space ninja clowns, that are running around screwing over everyone because. Daddy Cegorach and mommy?? Slannesh got a divorce and are fighting over the kids. These are just the rebellious brats that sided with daddy.

Eighth Ynnari, is just a sailor moon cosplay gone wrong injected into 40k because plot device.

See 40k is full of good guys... really

Everyone is a bad guy.

The so-called Imperium of man, the human maggot infestation with their undead Emperor and massive sacrifices of innocents just to maintain access to cosmic expressways are the most horrible of all of them.

usmcmidn wrote:
Dear Holy Emperor lock this heretical thread!!! We must burn the traitors!!!

tneva82 wrote:

 TwinPoleTheory wrote:
You should explain to him about how noble Magnus attempted to spare the corpse emperor from the wrath of the great powers and in return the great libraries of Prospero were burned to the ground by his lapdog marines.

The greatest tragedy in the history of the Imperium, and Russ gets a lauded as a hero and savior.

Remember Prospero.

You forgot conveniently blowing up Emperor's greatest work that if completed would have allowed warp-free travel across galaxy and instead now requires Emperor's full power to keep Earth from becoming daemon planet(and with that loss of human warp travel in any big scale).

He single handedly destroyed Emperor's plan, goal & hopes for future.

It's the chicken and the egg.
Emperor didn't tell Magnus his amazing and grand plan to give Magnus more power.
Magnus feels neglected and inadvertently ruins the Emperor's plan.

Who's to blame?

Galef wrote:Well, technically you didn't lie. Chaos Marines are one of the many baddies in 40K. So are regular Space Marines & all Imperials, Orks, Necrons, Nids, Tau and all other short sighted usurpers to the galaxy.

Only the Aeldari race knows what's best for the galaxy. Only their will is true and "good".

Right, because Aeldari always know best. Like letting the Imperium claim just about the whole galaxy unopposed, giving chaos 33% more gods, and letting your personal space become a hive of scum and villainy. Thanks for the 10 thousand years of warp-time though, now we can get around to cleaning up this whole mess if the Imperium would quit Mary-Sueing and Chaos feeding for a moment.
Bringing the greater good, because it's better to be happy under the Ethereal's will than a puddle of nutrient to feed the Hive.

Everyone knows that the Orks are the real "good guys" They just want to follow their dreams... everyone else are just varying forms of grey donkey-caves.

My 10-year-old brother learned most of what he knows about 40k by playing DoW and Dark Crusade. Because I've leaned heavily on my CSM/DG army until recently he has called me a heretic whenever given the opportunity. He also likes to say "For the Emperor!" a lot. He currently owns the Battle for Vedros box and 3-4 of those Primaris marines with the skull helmets.

I have yet to explain Chaos to him, but I'll leave that until he's older.

Chaos is the only true answer

Just tell him the next time he's sick that he's turning into a Nurgling and he should just worship everybody's favourite grandfather, Papa Nurgle

Wow what a response.

To me it's not that Chaos is "good". It's pretty horrific... it's just that the alternative is the Emperor who represents oppression, extermination, genocide. Whether this is intentional or not (on the Emperors part) changes depending on who you speak to.

In a world where children see people in red, white and blue and capes as super heroes and are good because they save lives, fight for freedom and against oppression, having an organization that will do anything for the continuation of an entire species is pretty grey (at best)!

This is great

I've always introduced Space Marines / Guard as the good guys to anyone not in the hobby.

Another odd thing ive notices with children is that (in Dungeons and Dragons for example) - they tend to go along with Chaotic/lawful good options. The idea that a campaign/party of players were "Evil" was baffling. Or that you would want to play the bad guys.

TarkinLarson wrote:
So I bought the getting started with 40k magazine so my wife could get an easy idea of what it's all about.

My nephew was around and started flicking through it. He got to the page with a showcase of some chaos space marines and asked "Are these the baddies?"

I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth and felt myself lie to him. "Yes. Those are the bad guys."

I know I should have told him the truth... Told him about the false emperor.

What would you have done?

Dude, he's 8. Youranswer is enough. Just turn it up a notch. "Yep those are the bad guys! Look at how gross they are! Look at the extra arms and stuff! Gross!"

An 8 year old will lose their mind and love it.

(I raised two kids, one actively played, and the other "helped" me paint a guard army-with sparkles and glue paint!)

You told him the truth. After all you betrayed the one and only Emperor, you all shall be burned.

[Answering OP's request of what I would tell my hypothetical nephew if asked if chaos are the "bad guys" ]

Depends on the level of patience and contemplation of my nephew and if he likes stories.

I would tell my nephew "Yes but there's also more to the story. I can tell you it now or later on when you're older."

If he likes stories and is willing to listen, I will have him sit down as I begin to tell him a LONG story...then get a lecture from my sibling as they demand to know why their child is asking philosophical questions of good and evil and questioning religious doctrine after "uncle told me a good story"

If my nephew is just excited to play and doesn't want to think about lore or listen to stories, I'll still offer to tell him later if he's interested, but then get down to just playing some kickass Warhammer 40,000 and let him choose whichever side he thinks is cooler.

 Frazzled wrote:

TarkinLarson wrote:
So I bought the getting started with 40k magazine so my wife could get an easy idea of what it's all about.

My nephew was around and started flicking through it. He got to the page with a showcase of some chaos space marines and asked "Are these the baddies?"

I took a deep breath, gritted my teeth and felt myself lie to him. "Yes. Those are the bad guys."

I know I should have told him the truth... Told him about the false emperor.

What would you have done?

Dude, he's 8. Youranswer is enough. Just turn it up a notch. "Yep those are the bad guys! Look at how gross they are! Look at the extra arms and stuff! Gross!"

An 8 year old will lose their mind and love it.

(I raised two kids, one actively played, and the other "helped" me paint a guard army-with sparkles and glue paint!)

Aside from my response above... this is more or less what I did afterwards. I told him that Plague Marines were really smelly and snotty. So we called them smelly marines. He really liked the bad guys, but I didn't want him to have nightmares, so tried to make it a bit more fun as some of those pictures could be nightmarish for more sensitive people.

On a serious note, I did tell him about sometimes its hard to tell who are the good and bad guys, and sometimes good people can do bad things and the other way around... and that it's all from someone's point of view. He's very into thinking everything that doesn't go the way he wants is "unfair" at the moment, so that is a good way to help him with that.

Best is to tell the truth.
Things are more complicated than black white, goodies and baddies.
Most of the warriors who kill and die are raised within a myth that tells them that what they are taught to feel is good, is good, and bad, bad.
People on Earth are the same. Even him.
It takes a real hero to see past these encompassing myths, and to think for himself/herself.
.

TarkinLarson wrote:


On a serious note, I did tell him about sometimes its hard to tell who are the good and bad guys, and sometimes good people can do bad things and the other way around... and that it's all from someone's point of view. He's very into thinking everything that doesn't go the way he wants is "unfair" at the moment, so that is a good way to help him with that.

(Daughter getting ready to head off to school)
"What do we say today's goal is?"
"Be sure to crush some souls today."
"Thats my girl."

 TheBlankPlank wrote:
Everyone knows that the Orks are the real "good guys" They just want to follow their dreams... everyone else are just varying forms of grey donkey-caves.

Preach.

TarkinLarson wrote:
Wow what a response.

To me it's not that Chaos is "good". It's pretty horrific... it's just that the alternative is the Emperor who represents oppression, extermination, genocide. Whether this is intentional or not (on the Emperors part) changes depending on who you speak to.

Oppression, extermination, genocide, eh? Sure, Imperium does all that but I'm pretty sure that chaos has gotten to all that action as well. And their methods are worse and for all the wrong reasons.

Extermination? Nurgle releases all kinds of horrible maladies and diseases on people. The suffering lasts longer than Imperial extermination, whether it's by flamer or, well, exterminatus.

Genocide? Khorne. They'll do it without provocation just for the heck of it. Imperial genocide won't (always) happen without provocation if those nearby just agree to play to ball and don't pose a threat. Yes, even aliens. Some of them are allowed to live for now if they are harmless.

Oppression? That's Tzeentch and also Slaanesh. First, it's all about promises of personal power, freedom, sensations and the ability to change the universe. Then you'll either become a chaos spawn or remain as an insignificant chaos cultist, who are worse off than imperial guardsmen. Or the worst of all, you'll become a daemon "prince" and spend aeons as a carrier boy for some space mollusk, less free than the lowliest lackey of Administratum. It's a more subtle form of oppression but more binding. At least Imperial oppression stops when you die.

Also? While both chaos and imperium do oppression, extermination and genocide, Imperium does other, more positive and constructive things as well, unlike chaos. I've read plenty of official fluff where some imperials occassionally do things that are actually decent, even noble. I've yet to read official fluff where any chaos follower does something even remotely similar.

Tl;dr: 40k is not black and white. It's more like black and extremely dark grey. The difference is slight but it's there.

I'd have gone with "From a certain point of view."

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'd have gone with "From a certain point of view."

That's ground for the "Chaos is not really evil, when you think about it, am I like right?"-argument. Which is a baffling argument.

 BigWaaagh wrote:

 TheBlankPlank wrote:
Everyone knows that the Orks are the real "good guys" They just want to follow their dreams... everyone else are just varying forms of grey donkey-caves.

Preach.

Orks, saving the galaxy in the 41st Millennium, one good krumpin at a time.

Red Wunz Go FASTA!

 RedCommander wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'd have gone with "From a certain point of view."

That's ground for the "Chaos is not really evil, when you think about it, am I like right?"-argument. Which is a baffling argument.

Nope. It's about the nature of extremes. The Chaos Gods represent essential bits of human nature taken to their absolute extremes, while a lot of the other folks in the setting attempt to deny those elements in their entirety. Take Tzeentch, for instance, whose profile is ambition and change. Go too far with it and you end up sacrificing everything else for power (and possibly turning yourself into a tentacle beast), but if you wander towards the other extreme you end up with the Imperial dogmatic suppression of all initiative and innovation.

Both extremes are bad options. Whether you think the Imperium or Chaos is more evil depends on which extreme you think is worse.