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Melissia wrote:Codex: Sisters of Battle and Codex: Witch Hunters makes it clear that the Emperor grants visions, miracles, and etc to the faithful.

No, the Ecclesiarchy believe that he does. Excuse me if I don't hold the religious zealous fanatics as the best source of information on the subject!

Melissia wrote:Codex: Daemons makes it clear that the Emperor fights off the powers of the warp to protect humanity from the worst of the depredations of Chaos.

Codex: Daemons is purposefully contradictory. It also states, pg24, "It is impossible to say for how long the Emperor can survive in this condition, or even if he has survived at all."

Melissia wrote:Codex: Sisters of Battle makes it clear that the Emperor met in person with Alicia Dominica (technically the other way around, but it's clear that he communicated with her somehow) in mid M.36.

No, it doesn't make that clear. She went into the Emperor's throne room, but that's it. To quote the Witchhunter codex, pg4, "The Custodes took [Dominica] before the Emperor, though what occured there remains unknown."

For all we know they showed her a very dead Emperor and explained that it was important that people believed he was still alive, to keep the Imperium united. Or they killed her and replaced her with a Callidus assassin, at the throne room where they would be assured no witnesses to the battle.

Rube wrote:No, the Ecclesiarchy believe that he does. Excuse me if I don't hold the religious zealous fanatics as the best source of information on the subject!

By that argument, I could say the Imperium BELIEVES that Astartes exist, but they don't really. Or that Chaos crazies BELIEVE the four chaos gods exist. I hold chaos fanatics at an even lower end of the reliability spectrum than I do Imperial zealots.

Which is a silly argument, ant therefor I ignore it.

Rube wrote:

Melissia wrote:That depends on whether or not you consider psyker status biological. Because as a psyker, the Emperor is quite clearly still alive...

How so?

The Astronomicon doesn't count. The Imperium thinks it's caused by the Emperor, but there are example in the background of psykers detecting when other psykers die from a distance (kind of like 'I sense a disturbance in the force', only with more insanity). Maybe the Navigators can see Terra in the warp because they can sense all the hundreds of psykers getting slaughtered there daily. They avoid the Eye of Terror for similar reasons.

While it is a totally different game/time period, in F.E.A.R. Alma (who is a very powerful psychic) gets killed when she is 18, I beleive, and your fighting/getting raped by her when she is in her late twenties. As Snake Fist says in the second game, "Not many people can refuse to die." I'm not saying that this is the case, but it is kinda beleiveable, once you bring in daemons, psychics, and everything else.


Still, having to sustain himself on 1000 psykers per day is not exactly a "good" diet. But then, that's not really his fault when people blindly throw themselves into his mouth....

Melissia wrote:

Rube wrote:No, the Ecclesiarchy believe that he does. Excuse me if I don't hold the religious zealous fanatics as the best source of information on the subject!

By that argument, I could say the Imperium BELIEVES that Astartes exist, but they don't really. Or that Chaos crazies BELIEVE the four chaos gods exist. I hold chaos fanatics at an even lower end of the reliability spectrum than I do Imperial zealots.

Which is a silly argument, ant therefor I ignore it.

The Witchhunter codex says that visionaries claimed that the Emperor guided them, not that the Emperor actually did. It states that Sororitas gain their powers through their great faith in the Emperor, not that the Emperor personally manifests only to Sororitas in every single battle they have. It doesn't deny or confirm anything.

In the Tau codex I believe it's said that the Tau don't really believe in Chaos Gods and Daemons, but that doesn't mean the Tau codex is confirming that the Chaos Gods and Daemons don't exist!

So? Only the Chaos crazies really believe in the chaos gods. The other sides just use them to determine the general type of craziness the Chaos crazies have.

Obviously.

Your argument is still kinda silly, and fails the Occam's Razor test...

Melissia wrote:So? Only the Chaos crazies really believe in the chaos gods. The other sides just use them to determine the general type of craziness the Chaos crazies have.

Obviously.

Not really, no. I think you're not understanding where I'm coming from...

The Witchhunter codex states that Sororitas do exist.

The Witchhunter codex states that The Emperor does exist.

The Witchhunter codex states that Daemons do exist.

The Witchhunter codex states that visionaries believe the Emperor guides them.

The Witchhunter codex does not state that The Emperor actually guides visionaries.

Melissia wrote:Your argument is still kinda silly, and fails the Occam's Razor test...

Occam's Razor does not apply to fiction where the most complicated solution typically is the answer. Occam's Razor works because an event in reality is subject to certain natural laws, and we can posit the most likely outcome of those laws. Fictional events are not controlled by those natural laws.

Actually I was referring to the fact that your argument leads to may hilariously bad conclusions when taken to its logical extreme...

Melissia wrote:So? Only the Chaos crazies really believe in the chaos gods. The other sides just use them to determine the general type of craziness the Chaos crazies have.

Obviously.

Not quite true. Eldar fully beleive in Slaanesh.

Well yes, but they're Eldar. They're always a bit squirrely.

Melissia wrote:Actually the Emperor isn't a dictator. That's the Ecclesiarch and the High Lords of Terra. The Emperor doesn't actually personally run the Imperium, not for thousands of years.

In fact, it was the Emperor whom freed the Imperium from the oppression of Goge Vandire, by having Alicia Dominica summoned to him and giving her a vision which caused her to slay Vandire, and then form the Sisterhood.

Good point Melissia. I forgot about that. One of the main reasons for The Great Heresy was the Emperor was in the process of turning authority over to a civilian goverment. Horus and half the Primarchs could not stand the idea of being ruled by mere humans who hadn't even fought in the great crusade. Legion points out that Horus would have been the most brutal despot ever.

Melissia wrote:Actually the Emperor isn't a dictator. That's the Ecclesiarch and the High Lords of Terra. The Emperor doesn't actually personally run the Imperium, not for thousands of years.

In fact, it was the Emperor whom freed the Imperium from the oppression of Goge Vandire, by having Alicia Dominica summoned to him and giving her a vision which caused her to slay Vandire, and then form the Sisterhood.

LOL are you fething serious? What the frakk have you been smoking? Because I want some.

The Emperor (the one you do not believe is a dictator) went on a 200 year "unity run" called (I don't know if you've ever heard of it from the looks of things) "The Great Crusade". On this Crusade he not only stomped out a gak ton of benevolent and possibly peaceful xenos species but he also stamped out literally MILLIONS (if not billions) of human lives on worlds that were found "non-compliant".

If you could please define your version of dictator so that I may laugh at it, it would be greatly appreciated.

The Emperor wasn't just A dictator...he was THE dictator to end all dictators (like literally in the case of mankind...see your own reference to Vandire).

Unlike a couple of people here, I do think that the Emperor is still alive in his eternal struggle to keep humanity afloat. The man eats souls for feth's sake (unless you want to argue otherwise in which case, those arguments will be duly ignored). However, given the perspective from "The Inquisition War", in which the main character is actually talked to by the psychic emanations from the decaying corpse-god himself, he still seems to hold this tyranical belief that only his way is right and only his way can guide the Imperium. One way or another (even if that means letting the masses worship him).

Henners91 wrote:
Don't start assuming that Continentals fought for FREEEEEDOOOOM... More likely it was simple tax avoidance and the fact that all their friends were going

When it comes down to it, we won the war. Just saying. ((you can keep Benedict Arnold ))

You can't really compare the Emperor to any earth dictators, because guys like Hitler or Stalin killed millions of people for power/the evulz/being bat-crap insane. The Emperor killed millions because the alternative was for humanity to be vaporized off the face of the map.

Also, Horus was far worse. He wiped out all life on Earth just because he was mad at his daddy (they bombarded Earth so hard the crust cracked and the planet became uninhabitable save for just outside of the Emperor's palace, probably killing any humans or native animals on Earth that weren't bacteria). Now THAT is a bonafide jerk.

The Emperor wasn't a saint but he was usually the lesser of 2 dozen evils. The same could be said of Imperium.

Yeah, I'm not sure 'at least he wasn't as bad as Horus' really clears him of any dictatorship accusations. Granted it's true, but it still leaves a lot of room for being evil!

The Emperor may have acted like a mass-murdering totalitarian evil dictator because the alternative would've been worse, but that still makes the Emperor a mass-murdering totalitarian evil dictator!

Duh, everyone's evil in 40k. Tau are effing evil, too. Forced sterilization programs on humans in order to control the population, for example. Eldar are also effing evil, they would gladly see an entire subsector wiped clean of life just to save a single Eldar world. Chaos needs not be spoken for, they spread disease, death, and pain as a matter of course. Same with Dark Eldar. Necrons are murderous jerks, too. Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

Melissia wrote:Duh, everyone's evil in 40k. Tau are effing evil, too. Forced sterilization programs on humans in order to control the population, for example. Eldar are also effing evil, they would gladly see an entire subsector wiped clean of life just to save a single Eldar world. Chaos needs not be spoken for, they spread disease, death, and pain as a matter of course. Same with Dark Eldar. Necrons are murderous jerks, too. Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

I'd change single eldar world to single eldar life. Yes, the whole point of 40K is you gotta pick your poison. Pure Evil or just kinda evil.

Melissia wrote:Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

Which would make them not evil, neither are tyranids. Both are forces of nature, behaving in the way they were designed to do. Neither is bothered with a concept of evil or are breaking their own moral codes. If they are evil, so are venus fly traps, ants, great white sharks and badgers...

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Melissia wrote:Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

Which would make them not evil, neither are tyranids. Both are forces of nature, behaving in the way they were designed to do. Neither is bothered with a concept of evil or are breaking their own moral codes. If they are evil, so are venus fly traps, ants, great white sharks and badgers...

Badgers = Satans Hamsters.
I'm off to find some toy badgers to super glue khorne symbols and chainaxes to!

Orks have been created to fight, it's what they do.

Melissia wrote:Duh, everyone's evil in 40k. Tau are effing evil, too. Forced sterilization programs on humans in order to control the population, for example. Eldar are also effing evil, they would gladly see an entire subsector wiped clean of life just to save a single Eldar world. Chaos needs not be spoken for, they spread disease, death, and pain as a matter of course. Same with Dark Eldar. Necrons are murderous jerks, too. Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

It's not evil to sacrifice another species to save your own species. We kill cows so that humans might live, that isn't evil. The Eldar or Tau aren't morally obligated to care about humans, anymore so than we are to farmyard animals.

If the Craftworld Eldar or Tau were murdering, torturing and enslaving their own people they'd be evil, but they don't. I don't think the Emperor is an evil dictator because he killed aliens, I think he's an evil dictator because he killed humans who looked a bit funny (or looked at him funny), and enslaved the rest into a tyrannical Imperium that would institutionally crush their culture, brainwash them, torture any dissenters, and supress independant thought and freedom.

That might not've been the worst possible situation humanity could've ended up in, but it's still far from the best. The Eldar and Tau both have better systems, albeit not perfect. Even the humans during the Dark Age of Technology had much better standards of living, by all accounts. When they weren't being killed by robots.

I'm sure the other species disagrees.

Rube wrote:

Melissia wrote:Duh, everyone's evil in 40k. Tau are effing evil, too. Forced sterilization programs on humans in order to control the population, for example. Eldar are also effing evil, they would gladly see an entire subsector wiped clean of life just to save a single Eldar world. Chaos needs not be spoken for, they spread disease, death, and pain as a matter of course. Same with Dark Eldar. Necrons are murderous jerks, too. Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

It's not evil to sacrifice another species to save your own species. We kill cows so that humans might live, that isn't evil. The Eldar or Tau aren't morally obligated to care about humans, anymore so than we are to farmyard animals.

If the Craftworld Eldar or Tau were murdering, torturing and enslaving their own people they'd be evil, but they don't. I don't think the Emperor is an evil dictator because he killed aliens, I think he's an evil dictator because he killed humans who looked a bit funny (or looked at him funny), and enslaved the rest into a tyrannical Imperium that would institutionally crush their culture, brainwash them, torture any dissenters, and supress independant thought and freedom.

That might not've been the worst possible situation humanity could've ended up in, but it's still far from the best. The Eldar and Tau both have better systems, albeit not perfect. Even the humans during the Dark Age of Technology had much better standards of living, by all accounts. When they weren't being killed by robots.

That's all conjecture. The Imperium did not end up being what the emperor wanted. Ironically it may have ended up being the complete opposite.

Mr. Burning wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Melissia wrote:Orks are violent psychopathic technobarbarians who have no societal concept of peace.

Orks have been created to fight, it's what they do.

This is very true. The Old Ones created Orks to fight off the C'Tan and their Necron "allies".

Believe they were called "Zorks" or "korks" ((I looked it up, it is "krork")) or some such. Isn't it scary to think that back then, the orks were a controlled fighting force? And still they lost to the C'tan.


Anyways, yadda yadda yadda: I agree with Rube. Survival of the fittest is not evil.

Which is why Necrons are the ultimate evil (and my favored fighting force). They do it for the souls. feth yeah.

By the way, there is relative good and evil. Your good and your evil may not be the same as someone elses good and someone elses evil. How you look at someone doesn't mean that's how they are. They may just be working on their best idea of how to go about their own good or their own evil. Do you think any of the chaos gods sit and think "oh now that we are evil we must go do our evil things" no because they are your perspective evil. Or vice versa with the SM. There is no good, or evil. Just how you see someone in reaction to your belief of good and evil.

Oh, there is good and evil, it's just that generally the standards for "good" are much, MUCH lower in 40k.

Melissia wrote:Oh, there is good and evil, it's just that generally the standards for "good" are much, MUCH lower in 40k.

Even then, they are thousands and thousands of years in the future. Society's good and evil can change in those years.

Snowman90 wrote:

Melissia wrote:Oh, there is good and evil, it's just that generally the standards for "good" are much, MUCH lower in 40k.

Even then, they are thousands and thousands of years in the future. Society's good and evil can change in those years.

Having said that, bombing entire planets is still pretty well under "Evil".

Slarg232 wrote:

Snowman90 wrote:

Melissia wrote:Oh, there is good and evil, it's just that generally the standards for "good" are much, MUCH lower in 40k.

Even then, they are thousands and thousands of years in the future. Society's good and evil can change in those years.

Having said that, bombing entire planets is still pretty well under "Evil".

Not if there is that one pesky cockroach(tyranid) on that planet. I think bombing a planet to kill the swarmlord is pretty much worth it.