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Recently, I've come across several threads in 40k discussion about how the 40k universe is nowhere near as grimdark as it is supposed to be.
And this has left me thinking... [ OH GOD, NOT THE THINKING!!! ] ... Can anyone here at dakka do any better with the fluff and armies?

So here's the challenge:

Pick something in 40k that is not grimdark enough, and write a short story about it that would give even the most hardened battle-brother a reason to fear it... Good luck ;-)

_________________________________________________________
And as Damian stared out into the void, a creature stared back.

The image of death itself whispered to him of the end of a world; how it's inhabitants died screaming and writhing in horrible agony, as the souls were slowly, and deliciously painfully, torn from their minds until they were but a shadow of their former selves.
But the vision was not to end there...

The soulless, tortured remains of these people were further pulled down the pact they had made with the gods, as they were sent to cross fields of ash, as their clothes burned, and the dying star high above cast agonising beams of cancerous radiation on their now skinless bodies.

The gaunt wretches dragged themselves slowly to the only place of safety left on the planet, a hole in the world, filled with green flame, seeking to give something much worse than death. The dying people entered the cold fire, but soon realised their mistake, because high above, the Deciever laughed as each person's flesh and bone became ice cold metal, slowly travelling up from the frozen burn marks left form the flames. To suffer everlasting death.

- - They once hated you for your life, now they hate you for your death. - -
- - - Let The Galaxy Burn - -

Ubrik Ragan wrote:Recently, I've come across several threads in 40k discussion about how the 40k universe is nowhere near as grimdark as it is supposed to be.

...seriously? Sorry to not contribute, but this is pretty much the opposite of my experience. Am I missing a joke perhaps?

I've been looking at posts under grimdark, so is not "dakka-recent", more of what I have seen recently. Sorry for confusion..
Still, there is a lot said about lack of grimdark.

EDIT: the whole point of this is because pretty much everywhere I go I hear/read complaints about how the fluff should be more grimdark, but nobody actually bothers to do anything about it...

Good lord. That's completely the opposite of what I've tended to see. I've mostly seen people complaining about the loss of humour at the expense of grimdark and, ahem, 'MOAR SKULZ.' Well, there you go.

OK, enough of this. I'll leave this thread to progress naturally now.

Grimdark isn't necessarily scary... The whole concept of there being no hope, only war, etc is grim. And dark. If anything, I'd say people need to let things slide with it, at least, in regards to personal armies. Although something kinda scary could be cool.

Shame they un-scary'd the necrons to make Ward's newcrons..
Always wanted to have a full-power nightbringer....

Maybe I'll just create a new ruleset for it...

Does it really need to be any more grimdark than it already is?
Every time I come home after spending a good night at my friend’s house playing RPG Dark Heresy, I suddenly feel like I’m the worst person on this planet.

To tell you the truth, it is quit depressing…

htj wrote:

Ubrik Ragan wrote:Recently, I've come across several threads in 40k discussion about how the 40k universe is nowhere near as grimdark as it is supposed to be.

...seriously? Sorry to not contribute, but this is pretty much the opposite of my experience. Am I missing a joke perhaps?

Meh, I noticed that a lot, people saying that they hate the comedy aspects of the fluff and want everything to be grimdark. It is really quite depressing. Granted I made up fluff for much of my IG army (I run it as a part of an army group, with several different regiments all with different fluff) and its fluff is hell as depressing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Redcruisair wrote:it is quite depressing…

Really, what are the odds that the person that posted right before me would use the same phrase?

Well, compared to other franchises, 40k still is decidedly grimdark. I, too, did notice that various writers have "scaled back" a few aspects, however. For the Sisters' new minidex, I noticed that Repentias suddenly have a chance to actually survive their ordeal and be accepted back into the ranks of their old squad. Something I won't adopt into my own interpretation of the 'verse.

Such details seem to be influenced heavily by the individual writers working on a given product, so perhaps it is less a matter of the franchise deliberately becoming less grimdark, but more that a new generation of writers and designers have joined the fold, whose ideas naturally end up influencing the portrayal of the whole. As ADB once said, everybody views the setting differently - including individual writers publishing stuff under its label.

On the other hand, it could also be an intentional drive to make it a little more "kids friendly" (see also old Daemonettes <-> new Daemonettes).

It the reason people reserve so much displeasure towards the Tau and Ultramarines (among other things), they're too "optimistic" in feel and therefore dont quite "fit in". I personally think you cant have EVERYTHING grim-dark as there would be no "comparison" for how terrible everything in 40k actually is. Its hard enough to read the horus heresy series without constantly having to remind yourself not to get too attached to any one character as they probably will die horribly some time later.

I play DA.

Try. I dare you to try.

Well I do have some fluff surrounding my Imperial Guard regiment. It is usually based off of what happens on the table top. Here a few examples.

My regiment is a co-ed combined arms regiment. As such marriages are allowed (see the series written by Richard Williams for reference). Haha, I know that's grim dark. That's not the grim dark about it.

Think on that for a brief moment. Cool, you're married to someone in the regiment. You have the opportunity to watch them possibly die in any number of ways. Yeah great way for the troops to go insane (and a great way to bring on the battle rage). Commissars are there of course to maintain order.

Then there is another example I remember (back when sisters could be taken as allies) when I had a full of squad of sisters. I was fighting Tau and sadly the ladies in armor failed combat against a bunch of kroot. They failed to run away...

Instead of "oh well, they died by getting shot in the back" oh no my bastard friend described it as a large group of sisers were being eaten alive like they were crab. Cracked open power armor and their best parts eaten to improve that particular kroot squad. Best part is I had a squad enroute to help them in the combat. Once I saw 15 kroot were left to fight a ten man squad and it was my turn next I opted to run my men away for better cover. I mean what guardsman wouldn't freak out when zealots of the Emperor are eaten right in front of them? Yeah there is now a mandatory "shoot on sight" order among the regiment when Kroot are involved. I won't risk having that humiliation again.

Or how about the Dark Eldar? Yeah poison, rape, torture, slavery. Don't need to really go on do I?

Let's also not forget about what is essentially a death sentence in my army. Melta guns. I've established fluff that if a guardsmen is issued a melta gun his squad is essentially given a suicide mission. As such 5-10 people are pretty much told they are going to die on that mission (I seldom run melta guns outside of a single squad).

I have other examples of my own grim dark, but yeah that's what I have the time to write now.

All around him. Sy'xal looked at the gaunt shells that once where people on his operating table. A pale purple light glowed from the ceiling. Sy'xal's nimble deft fingers inserted a syringe into the barely noticible veins of his subject. A sickly green fluid was injected to it's bloodstream. The subject opened it's hollow eyesockets and screamed inhuman sounds that rang in the otherwise dead silence of the Haemonculi's operating table. "Through pain we gain power...." The demented scientist cooed The subject's limbs began to swell and expand, dark purple strech marks that oozed dark red blood as the subject began to mutate. "Could it be? I've replicated the process the Imperium uses for their Space Marine's?..." The Haemonculi's jet black eyes were saucers with a glimpse of pride swelling through his entire being.

The subject began to scream more, until it was wet gurgling. It fell onto the operating table, mutating rapidly. Daemonic faces formed on it's flesh, and with a disgusting 'pop' it was split in two. The torso, what was left of it screamed for the mercy of death. The bottom stood up right, and worm like growthes reached for the Haemonculi. Sy'xal simply stared and pressed a small buttom on his wrist. Two Kabalite warriors rushed into the labaratory and shot the monstrocity to death with needles full of neurotoxin's.

"It appears...I used too much...."

vodo40k wrote:It the reason people reserve so much displeasure towards the Tau and Ultramarines (among other things), they're too "optimistic" in feel and therefore dont quite "fit in". I personally think you cant have EVERYTHING grim-dark as there would be no "comparison" for how terrible everything in 40k actually is. Its hard enough to read the horus heresy series without constantly having to remind yourself not to get too attached to any one character as they probably will die horribly some time later.

I don't hate that they aren't grimdark, it is just that it contrasts so much with the setting. Comparing the Tau to the rest of the 40K universe is like a flashlight in a pitch black room, it just stands out so much it looks wrong. I wouldn't mind Tau being the same, so long as the rest of the universe was less grimdark, which is the direct it seems to be heading.

As for my personal Imperial Guard forces, I run a portion of an army group, so I have an army with about 8 different regiments, with the tanks and artillery being part of separate regiments, while the infantry of all types are from different regiments.

Storm Troopers: An entire regiment of grenadiers, they are made up of children drafted immediately after birth, and trained to fight. Many are also children given up by their parents immediately after birth, so you might have been chosen to fight and die as a baby, you might have parents that cared so little for you that they decided to send you into the Imperial Guard as an infant.

My Horde Infantry (not many models yet): Come from a massive hive world where anyone who can't outrun guys tasked with catching anyone they can to be drafted into the guard is caught and sent to die with almost no training. In fluff (and when I have enough the tabletop) they fight by simply throwing bodies at the enemy until they die.

My Melta Vets: You are drafted into the Guard and given good equipment, but in order to join the unit you have to kill another guardsmen in individual combat. Generally the guardsmen chosen to fight are friends in order to desensitize them to death.

My Artillery Crews: Think of their homeworld like Catachan on steroids. People don't live in the jungle, they don't even go near the jungle. Cities are made by bombarding the area from orbit until the area is cleared of flora and fauna, and setting up a city before the jungle closes back in (which can be a matter of hours). Then in order to keep the jungle back they fire thousands of artillery shells a day in order to keep their fortified cities from being overwhelmed by the jungle.

My Light Infantry Vets: Come from the same world as the artillery, but are made up of highly trained men and women who travel into the jungle (lots of them die on their missions) in order to harvest several rare plants used in the production of combat drugs.

Your planet sounds crazy impractical lol. Like it.

Hikaru-119 wrote:Your planet sounds crazy impractical lol. Like it.

The idea (for the artillery and light infantry) partially came from the Vietnam war (fire bases and the daisy cutter which made clearings in the jungles) and an article I remembered reading on Lexicanum about a world where the Imperium let warlords fight over a planet and pick rare plants that cannot be farmed because it was more efficient than conquering the world just to have guys wander around picking flowers.

Death Korps of Krieg, no need to grimdark it.

Grimdark is shyte. Bring the light!

BrightHammer?