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This was not my original idea for a topic, but found this same thread on warseer.com

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?377491-What-disturbs-you-in-the-40k-background

It starts off good but towards the end starts to lose focus so I hope here it can generate other opinions. For me, the most disturbing thing in 40k is the cloned test-slaves that are made for space marines organs. Living for 50 years, aware of everything but cant move or talk, only to have organs removed from you then thrown away probably. Not an expert on 40k background so i am interested to here what other people find disturbing. But as I read some of the opinions in this thread I thought it might be interesting here. If this has already been asked before then I apologize

Pretty sure anything in the Dark Eldar lore trumps that.

The whole DE torture and soul-siphoning is horrific D:

That SM always get to win.

Phyrric victory sometimes, but with all the threats out there ...

Or the grey knights shooting down an entire civilian fleet with hundreds of thousands of people on them to, hopefully, kill the Changeling

The sheer inhuman lunacy of the administratum and the inquisition takes the cake.

A chaos warband could save so much effort by just scheduling brief mutated or demonic appearances and a with media spectacle in each system they are interested in.
Getting their panties in a twist, the inquisition would then promptly go all WTF! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE, like the one dimensional lunatics they are.

The above is even second to blindly without a second of cogitation following orders of the line-officer, high-muppet or whatever, since that person could never ever be wrong or malicious.

 Dantioch wrote:
Or the grey knights shooting down an entire civilian fleet with hundreds of thousands of people on them to, hopefully, kill the Changeling

Who they know damn well can teleport, and even if you kill his physical body in the materium it doesn't hurt him a bit..

Those silly silver psychos

The Inquisition and the Dark Eldar. The two most disturbing "entities" in 40k. But there's a host of disturbing events... to name a few:

1. IoM virus bombing the Kroot worlds during the GC.
2. Istvaan III and V
3. Purging whole populations just for maybe knowing about Chaos.

Chaos.. How it is steadily taking over the imperium of man... I just finished reading the first heretic... Not realy reassuring if 40k were ever to come true :p. That would mean every soul that dies goes to the warp for eternal torment :p. Or the fact that some daemon can enter your body, mature, and the melt with your body/mind and take over if it wishes....

That award goes to Dark Eldar for their somewhat unsetteling style of keeping alive, but honorable mentiones goes to the Adeptus Mechanicus, The Inqustion and Death Guard

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.

 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.

It's obviously the angry ghost of an Old One telling the new kids on the block they're doing it wrong.

What disturbs me the most about 40k lore is when people take it too seriously and miss the inherent satire. This includes some of the writers, unfortunately.

Wow thanks for the responses. I have to agree with most of the votes for Dark Eldar. Reminds of "Event Horizen" or the mutated monsters from "Serenity". Truly depraved stuff!

Grey Knights also bother me because of the "kill everything and mind wipe (if lucky) the rest" business model.

Nurgle and his followers also creep me out due to the fact they all seem "happy" and "love Nurgle like a father." Truly horrifying to think a small disease filled goblin infecting you while at the same time smiling and laughing about it!

This is a tough one. Everything is disturbing, when you think about it.

But for me, it's what has become of humanity. Sure, chaos and xenos do worse stuff than the IoM. But xenos are, well, aliens. Chaos is deamons and e ven the mortal servants of the dark gods pretty much give away their humanity membership card when they dedicade themself.

But the Imperium is humans. People like us, in the end. They take adolescents and turn them into psychotic super soldiers. At time entire populations are eradicated, just to be sure. Not to forget the treatment of psykers. Daily millions of confused children, scared teens, outcasts and old men and women who had a life of hardship are abducted, incarcarated on black ships and transported to Terra, where horrible turtorous trials await, at the end of which most are sacrificed by having their soul ripped from their bodies to feed the Astronomicon and their god. I could go on all day, at least.

There is no humanism in the IoM and no human rights. Not even as theory. Free will, individuality, personal ambitions aren't even allowed for most humans. The widely spread official idea of a Morality is made up of back breaking and mind numbing service, paranoia, xenophobia and hate.

WH40k paints a humanity that is in every sense of the word utterly inhuman. And just to make it worse is completely justified in being like that.

I personaly can think of no thought more disturbing than that. That is cosmic horror at its best (worst).

Thankfully there's also a lot of dark humor and silly over-the-top fun, if you're willing to see it. This makes WH40k morbidly fascinating fun, instead of soul crushing horror.

The Void Dragon is one of my top contenders because of how insidious it is. Despite being forever imprisoned on Mars it continues to drain the souls of uncounted billions, literally anyone connected to the Mechanicus is actually being slowly consumed. The Void Dragon also supposedly is where the POTMS comes from. (In the lore basically every vehicle , device, or weapon has a Machine Spirit, not just Land Raiders)

The Inquisition and all that they do.

 Talore wrote:
What disturbs me the most about 40k lore is when people take it too seriously and miss the inherent satire. This includes some of the writers, unfortunately.

Agree, and may I add "fanboy haters" too... It would be a lot nicer if people were more relaxed when dealing with the setting....

Who shielded the Tau behind a millennia-long mega-warp storm, hyper-accelerated their evolution and technological capacities, and put them under (almost absolute) the gene-engineered command of the (suddenly appearing) Ethereals? Who? And Why?

Idle Hands wrote:
This is a tough one. Everything is disturbing, when you think about it.

But for me, it's what has become of humanity. Sure, chaos and xenos do worse stuff than the IoM. But xenos are, well, aliens. Chaos is deamons and e ven the mortal servants of the dark gods pretty much give away their humanity membership card when they dedicade themself.

But the Imperium is humans. People like us, in the end. They take adolescents and turn them into psychotic super soldiers. At time entire populations are eradicated, just to be sure. Not to forget the treatment of psykers. Daily millions of confused children, scared teens, outcasts and old men and women who had a life of hardship are abducted, incarcarated on black ships and transported to Terra, where horrible turtorous trials await, at the end of which most are sacrificed by having their soul ripped from their bodies to feed the Astronomicon and their god. I could go on all day, at least.

There is no humanism in the IoM and no human rights. Not even as theory. Free will, individuality, personal ambitions aren't even allowed for most humans. The widely spread official idea of a Morality is made up of back breaking and mind numbing service, paranoia, xenophobia and hate.

WH40k paints a humanity that is in every sense of the word utterly inhuman. And just to make it worse is completely justified in being like that.

I personaly can think of no thought more disturbing than that. That is cosmic horror at its best (worst).

Thankfully there's also a lot of dark humor and silly over-the-top fun, if you're willing to see it. This makes WH40k morbidly fascinating fun, instead of soul crushing horror.

Hit the nail on head with that one. Even when the Big E was around, he acted in-human to everyone and everything. What really scares me is how "realistic" the future can seem. I have always thought the universe would weep the day humans could travel to other stars. Come on, we would invade, kill who we want, justify with religion or politics, take anything of value, enslave or eradicate the survivors, and then thank God/Emperor. We have always done that, so maybe the most depressing thing about 40k is nothing has changed, except the weapons and enemies we face. Besides I think it's every gun-loving person's wet-dream to find a new alien species we can kill and conquer.

Musselman wrote:

Idle Hands wrote:
This is a tough one. Everything is disturbing, when you think about it.

But for me, it's what has become of humanity. Sure, chaos and xenos do worse stuff than the IoM. But xenos are, well, aliens. Chaos is deamons and e ven the mortal servants of the dark gods pretty much give away their humanity membership card when they dedicade themself.

But the Imperium is humans. People like us, in the end. They take adolescents and turn them into psychotic super soldiers. At time entire populations are eradicated, just to be sure. Not to forget the treatment of psykers. Daily millions of confused children, scared teens, outcasts and old men and women who had a life of hardship are abducted, incarcarated on black ships and transported to Terra, where horrible turtorous trials await, at the end of which most are sacrificed by having their soul ripped from their bodies to feed the Astronomicon and their god. I could go on all day, at least.

There is no humanism in the IoM and no human rights. Not even as theory. Free will, individuality, personal ambitions aren't even allowed for most humans. The widely spread official idea of a Morality is made up of back breaking and mind numbing service, paranoia, xenophobia and hate.

WH40k paints a humanity that is in every sense of the word utterly inhuman. And just to make it worse is completely justified in being like that.

I personaly can think of no thought more disturbing than that. That is cosmic horror at its best (worst).

Thankfully there's also a lot of dark humor and silly over-the-top fun, if you're willing to see it. This makes WH40k morbidly fascinating fun, instead of soul crushing horror.

Hit the nail on head with that one. Even when the Big E was around, he acted in-human to everyone and everything. What really scares me is how "realistic" the future can seem. I have always thought the universe would weep the day humans could travel to other stars. Come on, we would invade, kill who we want, justify with religion or politics, take anything of value, enslave or eradicate the survivors, and then thank God/Emperor. We have always done that, so maybe the most depressing thing about 40k is nothing has changed, except the weapons and enemies we face. Besides I think it's every gun-loving person's wet-dream to find a new alien species we can kill and conquer.

This and the fact that the Tau seem to be the most human race, more so than well humans.

Nothing compares to DE, it makes my skin crawl.

 Traejun wrote:
The Inquisition and the Dark Eldar. The two most disturbing "entities" in 40k. But there's a host of disturbing events... to name a few:

1. IoM virus bombing the Kroot worlds during the GC.
2. Istvaan III and V
3. Purging whole populations just for maybe knowing about Chaos.

Can I get a link on #1?
I would like to read about that.

 kinratha wrote:

 Traejun wrote:
The Inquisition and the Dark Eldar. The two most disturbing "entities" in 40k. But there's a host of disturbing events... to name a few:

1. IoM virus bombing the Kroot worlds during the GC.
2. Istvaan III and V
3. Purging whole populations just for maybe knowing about Chaos.

Can I get a link on #1?
I would like to read about that.

Agreed that does seem like an interesting read

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.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
I say Honsou takes the cake for the 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.

Yeah that was very disturbing. Though to me the 40k universe as others have said humans are the really disturbing ones. The DE at least have a very good reason (good as in they have a real need to) slaanesh. Humans seem to do cruel things just cause they can. inquisition anyone

Being an Imperial Guards man>

Talos and those night lords. Because they showed honor, humanity, fear, and then did horrendous things without even a shred of that honor. The fact that they were so easy to relate with until those points and even afterwards, made them feel more at a loss for control than a berserker.

When it comes to 40k I simply turn my conscience off, it makes things easier, and more enjoyable.

Matt ward fluff.