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Inspired by the Necrons good/bad thread, I ask you this: are there any good guys in 40k? Face it:
Marines are like modern day Islamists, fighting and killing everything they see with religion as an excess. They're also space racist.
Cadia is a militarian state which forces almost everyone into their army just to get killed.
Tau are space commies
Chaos is... Well, Chaos
Necrons are robots wanting to kill everyone

Tyranids

No entire faction is "good" but there are good people among IoM, non-dark eldar and tau as well as other groups and species not represented on the table top.

Good is a point of view, Anakin.

War isn't about who's wrong and who's right, it's about who's left at the end.

There are certainly good guys. But no good factions..
I think the best might be Tyranid, I see them as True Neutral.
That's because they are not intelligent enough to be good or evil.

Let's look at Wikipedia:
LG: A Lawful Good nation would consist of a well-organized government that works for the benefit of its citizens.
NG: A Neutral Good character is guided by his conscience and typically acts altruistically, without regard for or against Lawful precepts such as rules or tradition.
CG: A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well.

Do you think any WH40k works by those standards?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kangodo wrote:
There are certainly good guys. But no good factions..
I think the best might be Tyranid, I see them as True Neutral.
That's because they are not intelligent enough to be good or evil.

Let's look at Wikipedia:
LG: A Lawful Good nation would consist of a well-organized government that works for the benefit of its citizens.
NG: A Neutral Good character is guided by his conscience and typically acts altruistically, without regard for or against Lawful precepts such as rules or tradition.
CG: A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well.

Do you think any WH40k works by those standards?

D&D uses objective alignment. The Eldar are subjectively LG from their cultural standards (weight the lives of our own over anyone else), they're objectively dicks.

There is no good and bad. There are those who die or live on the battlefield, and the weak, and the strong. Good is a point of view. If I were to thoroughly believe that Chancellor Palpatine is right, and the Jedi are wrong, does that make Palpatine good, and the Jedi evil? No, it does not.

From my point of view the Jedi are evil!

Bad movie lines aside, I think the only 'good guys' are Renegades and Rogue Traders. Renegades in the 'anti-Imperium' sense, not 'pro-Chaos'. It's only in the reaches of the Segmentum Obscura that aliens are not killed instantly, people aren't burned for having bad dreams and overall the bureaucratic apathy of the Imperium is nothing but a distant and irrelevant concept. Good guys aren't something for the Tabletop though. It's more of a fluff thing.

The Imperium of Man. To hell with anyone else.

 jreilly89 wrote:
The Imperium of Man. To hell with anyone else.

Yay, space nazis!

HOLD ON EVERYONE, IM GOING IN DEEP!


There is no good, there is no bad. All there is are our actions and the events that are reactions to those actions.

/Dropsmic

For real, though, you can find good and bad in every single faction. Pretty silly question to ask, who is the good guy. So, to answer your question, no, there are no white knights.

I think it's one of the best things about 40K, that you can look at the different factions and go "Mmmyeah, they're all freaking horrible. But I like those guy's way of genocide more than those other guys, so those are my pick."

Seriously though, 40K is about desperation to me, and how desperate times call for relative morals and deeds so henious, nothing can really support it - Because we're far beyond the point where you need morals. More importantly though, it makes the few morally complex and steadfast characters and factions in the universe seem so much stronger for defying the norm.

There are no good guys in 40k. The imperium absolutely evil but believes everyone else is evil. Eldar are the most arrogant race in the galaxy that think nothing of the other races and want to restore their empire. Dark eldar are the same but they never try to hide it or pretend its something its not. Tau definatley are not good guys as they practice systematic genocides and eugenics by banning all interspecies mingling and cleansing any undesirable elements and also by ritualisticly brainwashing entire species to serve their oligarchy. Necrons seek to restore their living bodies so that they can be free from their curse and will annihilate anything that stands in their way. Chaos only wants to corrupt and costume reality. And finally orks only know how to figt and will fight at any given opprotunity

I personally think Chaos are the morally strongest. Sure, they ARE Chaos, they feth up planets and all that, but they're not Space Nazi's, they're just influenced by the wrong religions.

Every race has some good guys. As an example, I ran into Vargard Obyron in Dublin and he was a really nice soft spoken Necron. Oby is a big Tron fan.

Being morally strongest has nothing to do with being good or bad. Morality is the stuff of religion and control. For someone to be the "good guy" you should only look at their operational belief system, otherwise known as actions.

Chaos are the true good guys, showing humanity the truth behind the veil. Better to live the truth than cower behind the emperors lies

 changerofways wrote:
HOLD ON EVERYONE, IM GOING IN DEEP!


There is no good, there is no bad. All there is are our actions and the events that are reactions to those actions.

/Dropsmic

I think I've hated that ridiculous meme the first time I saw it. And it's getting old.

In an unstoppable war of total destruction, the only ethical choice is to be on the winning side.

Or to be orks.

 koooaei wrote:
Or to be orks.

Yeah. Orks.

 nwns wrote:
Tyranids

Exactly, they just want to eat.

 Matthew wrote:
Tau are space commies

Not really.


Anyhow, Sisters of Battle, of course. They will burn you for heresy, but it is for your own good!

Orks, Orks, Orks, Orks.

They are not vindictive, they are not evil. They are simply... boisterous.

 Charles Rampant wrote:
Orks, Orks, Orks, Orks.

They are not vindictive, they are not evil. They are simply... boisterous.

Ya exactly, all the other races will lie and cheat to win. Orks just want to have a good time!

Tyranids.. not exactly "good" but closer to neutral by far, than any other race

I was thinking the other day that Dark Eldar might just be Chaotic Good guys.... Why do they do the things they do? Because they don't want Slaanesh to eat their souls of course! Their continued existence in their opinion relies on them doing what they do, they just happen to enjoy it! Doesn't make them bad, but definitely doesn't make them good.

The part that makes them good is that they quite often help people! Mind you they want something for kit but they do just come out and help. Eldar being rekt by Tyranids? Here comes Vect to save the day! Tau being rekt by Tyranids? Here comes a random Haemunculous to save the day! They're always just randomly helping Eldar and leaving. Odd time they help other races too, sure in the grand scheme of things they're jerks, but they do it out of necessity. Sort of.


Point being; I think they're one of the "good" factions in that they do out aside their desires and what not to help the lesser beings once in awhile, even if they do want something in return. They could have simply just taken it. I would toss it up that Dark Eldar have the abilities to even take Terra and destroy t if they wanted, but they must not if they haven't bothered! (Before hate comes flying at me, DE steal suns. It wouldn't be a huge deal to them to open a big webway portal above Terra and launch a sun at it.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But then again I guess even Necrons randomly help people sometimes, like the Tau and Blood Angels, meh, in a galaxy of A**Holes, who do you decide is the best?

We are talking about the universe where "there is only war". Every side believes they are the good side how else can you justify all those dead bodies, with out turning your gun round and blowing your brains out.

 Matthew wrote:
I personally think Chaos are the morally strongest. Sure, they ARE Chaos, they feth up planets and all that, but they're not Space Nazi's, they're just influenced by the wrong religions.

that excuse holds for chaos but doesn't hold for the Imperium of man? psst your bias is showing
Honestly the IoM are hardly space nazis anyway (the IoM could never be that centralized even if they had to) and I think this is where people grow confused. the IoM is pretty lose handed on their people as a whole. worship the emperor, and contribute to society are really the only requirements. you also have the psyker round up, but there's more then sufficant evidance that it's the lesser of two evils. and THAT is what 40k is about. not good vs evil but "whom is the lesser evil" and the IoM for humanity at least proably IS the lesser evil. which is the terrifying thing.

From an ideology standpoint - Tau (while the current ethereal motives are not known)

From a broad standpoint - Tyranid. They are just a natural force of consumption. No greed, no envy - just the need to feed.

Orks fall into a similar spectrum of Tyranid, however they are driven by the base need to fight. This need does not determine their survival, so as such is classified more on the "evil" spectrum.

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to say tau. Go ask any chinese person what they think of "co-prosperity" and you'll see why the only difference between tau and the imperium is what language they choose to use in their propaganda.

Anyways, as said above, the only good guys in the galgaxy is the faction that you're a part of. The Imperium may be awful, but if you're a human it's your best shake at life. If you're eldar, you may live a life of aescetic slavery, but at least your soul isn't eaten. If you're orks, you live in a super-violent dystopia, but at least you're guaranteed to die doing what you love, etc. etc.