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Recently, there've been a number of threads discussing the purpose and effectiveness of the 'Fear' USR and how it impacts game.

However, I want to discuss the logic behind why some units actually (according to GW) would cause fear. The so-called "fluff reason" to why the actual unit has the Fear USR. The reason for this, is that some times the reasoning seems rather stupid, to say the least, and I've been pondering about some of the explanations for quite a while.
On some units it seems perfectly logical that they would inspire dread and terror. Take a unit like Flayed Ones. I mean, having to face a menacing looking robot, with long claws and draped in skin, sounds like something most people would gak bricks over. Or Harlequins, having mask that actually reflects your worst fears seems like an entirely legit excuse for a unit to cause fear.
But then there's the thing that perplexes me the most: silence.
I have no idea why GW insists that "silence" is such a "unnerving" and "dreadful" thing to face. I mean, by the Emperor, they constantly bang on about how "dreadful silent automatons" like LotD are. How "unnerving" it is to fight a Necron force because they march in silence. There's a masque called 'The Silent Shroud', who fights in utter silence and I quote "Needless to say, this disorients and unsettles the masque's foes..."
There's a lot more of these examples and this isn't even exclusive to 40k. In WHFB, the Phoenix Guard cause fear to other units, because they fight in "utter silence". Like seriously there's a quote saying this: "While their stony quiet is unnerving to foes, the aura of fear that surrounds them is far more horrifying.."

So yeah, what the hell is up with GW's issue with silent armies? This honestly leads me to conclude that GW's fluff writers thinks that everyone in 40k are screaming morons, who are so hell bent on constantly shouting warcries or simply just going "AAAARRRRGGGHHH" for the entire duration of a melee encounter, that any encounter with anyone who goes against the tradition of screaming their lungs out, are so utterly alien and unnatural that surely they must be a dreadful being.

PS. To any one with combat experience. Would you say that you'd actually care about an enemy being silent? I know that sounds can be an effective tool to break morale but silence?

There's something I ran into with videogames recently that actually makes a bit of sense of this. In a FPS it's hard to make a gun feel like it's a gun. They have to balance out the sound, the recoil effect on the screen, and even the knockback on your target in order to actually make the user feel like the weapon they are using has an effect. If not you'd just select item # 3 in your inventory and hold down the fire button as you watch the health meter count down.

So it can make sense to me that facing an enemy that's deadly silent, makes no noise when wounded, and just seems to stare past a target like it's so insignificant that it's not even worth treating like it's a threat that it will be a little terrifying.

Now that's not to say it's always justified, but I can see it in some cases. Seeing an enemy not react to a weapon, or not acting even remotely human, has an entirely eerie feeling about it and could be just enough to loosen morale.

War is a very loud place. Not only with the rumble of machines and the banging of weapons, but with the screams of the dying and the shouting of commands.

As a soldier, you are totally expecting the enemy to be yelling and screaming back at you, and making war cry like noises. This is a totally natural thing to do after all.

It becomes unnerving when you are expecting one thing, and get something totally different. Silence on the battlefield would make it appear like the enemy you are fighting are so prepared for warfare and the horrors it brings that they are not emotionally moved enough to even utter a noise. There have been armies and units historically that have fought silently (some units in the Mongol armies for example) and it has always been described as unnerving and really scary.

If a crazy screaming berserker is charging headlong into you it surely would be scary. But not unexpected. If that same berserker was charging saying nothing and had no expression on his face it would be terrifying. What about this person or thing is causing it to act so unnaturally? It's an entirely different frame of mind at that point.

Think about it. What makes a graveyard at night scary? Or being deep in the woods? Silence.

 Ignatius wrote:

Think about it. What makes a graveyard at night scary? Or being deep in the woods? Silence.

This is where I disagree.

I understand the unnerving nature of silence in some scenarios.
Take Hollywood Ninjas for example (because why not, Ninjas are awesome). Sure, it's scary when you friend next to you dies in silence and you have no idea where the enemy is. But that's because you can't see your enemy. General human nature is that we fear what we cannot see and if something in the dark picks your squad off, one by one, you'd be prone to panick, because you cannot see what kills your squad and thus you cannot react to it.

Really, the human mind and imagination is the worst enemy. Take The Predator (the movie, not the tank). You have a creature that you can't see, skins and mutilates its enemies and every time you hear that clicking sound, you'll gak your pants and immediately associate the sound with rapid pictures of mutilated victims and you'll start inducing yourself into a state of panick.
This is well known to every scary movie maker, ever, and more often then not, the most scary parts is the parts where the human mind assumes something bad happens and starts picturing all worst case scenarios. Which is why it's quite often much less scary when you actually see the monster.

The graveyards and deep woods (at night) aren't actually scary because they are silent. They are scary because you can't identify the sounds you hear and your mind assumes the worst.

Trust me.. Silence is a very fearsome thing.
Lets make an Experiment.
How many rooms do you have at home?
In the evening, take a chair, set the chair in the doorway to another room, a small chamber or sleeping room makes most sense.
Switch the light in this room of. the room where you sit is illuminated.
Sit there for 10 Minutes and dont do anything, you are not allowed to have any sources of noise like tv or radio switched on.
After 30 seconds you know what i mean...
warning... not for the fainth hearthed.
This method is used as torture.
now switch the light of in both rooms...
have fun and you know... you will listen to every sound...

I personally like that my Deathwing Knights can get Fear. No, not because they're hulking machine men with giant maces and creepy hoods. It's because they have a toddler wearing power armor carrying around a fancy sword behind them.

Another thing to consider with silent DE/Harlies Necrons is that apart from the sheer alienness of it, it also puts the focus on your own allies. You hit one of them, they say nothing, they don't cry out or yell defiance. They hit one of your guys, you therefore hear every sound he makes as his skin is flayed atom-by-atom (Crons) or poison does its work through his veins. When the only sound you hear is your guns (seeming to have no effect) and your guys dying grusome deaths, I can see that being pretty alarming.

And, of course, in space, no one can hear you scream....

 Zewrath wrote:

 Ignatius wrote:

Think about it. What makes a graveyard at night scary? Or being deep in the woods? Silence.

This is where I disagree.

The graveyards and deep woods (at night) aren't actually scary because they are silent. They are scary because you can't identify the sounds you hear and your mind assumes the worst.

Fair enough. I get what you're saying but I still say it's most often the silence. Like you said, you assume the worst. In silence your imagination is allowed to fill in the gaps that are created by the lack of sound. Most often this means creating an image of what's making the noise. In this case it would be more like what is wrong with this thing.

Silence to us is just wrong in some situations. Hearing no noise come out of something charging down yours squad and butchering your friends just offends the sense of what we thought we understood about war.

The thing is that you will only hear your friends being murdered. It is one thing to hear the screams of pain and moans of the dying from both sides, and quite another to only hear the butchering happening to your friends. Outside your immediate field of view, you have no idea what is actually happening...

...except that one of your buddies is getting brutally, agonizingly, cut/shot apart.

 winterwind85 wrote:
Trust me.. Silence is a very fearsome thing.
Lets make an Experiment.
How many rooms do you have at home?
In the evening, take a chair, set the chair in the doorway to another room, a small chamber or sleeping room makes most sense.
Switch the light in this room of. the room where you sit is illuminated.
Sit there for 10 Minutes and dont do anything, you are not allowed to have any sources of noise like tv or radio switched on.
After 30 seconds you know what i mean...
warning... not for the fainth hearthed.
This method is used as torture.
now switch the light of in both rooms...
have fun and you know... you will listen to every sound...

You need to, like, go on a camping trip or something.

GW just uses 'silent' as a fill-all buzz word.
Like 'fell'

There needs to be a drinking game for every time Fell is written in a warhammer book.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The thing is that you will only hear your friends being murdered. It is one thing to hear the screams of pain and moans of the dying from both sides, and quite another to only hear the butchering happening to your friends. Outside your immediate field of view, you have no idea what is actually happening...

...except that one of your buddies is getting brutally, agonizingly, cut/shot apart.

I always pictured it as more of a ringing silence, like after a loud explosion and for a brief while everything is muffled, you just hear a ringing in your ears....

 Zewrath wrote:

 Ignatius wrote:

Think about it. What makes a graveyard at night scary? Or being deep in the woods? Silence.

This is where I disagree.

I understand the unnerving nature of silence in some scenarios.
Take Hollywood Ninjas for example (because why not, Ninjas are awesome). Sure, it's scary when you friend next to you dies in silence and you have no idea where the enemy is. But that's because you can't see your enemy. General human nature is that we fear what we cannot see and if something in the dark picks your squad off, one by one, you'd be prone to panick, because you cannot see what kills your squad and thus you cannot react to it.

Really, the human mind and imagination is the worst enemy. Take The Predator (the movie, not the tank). You have a creature that you can't see, skins and mutilates its enemies and every time you hear that clicking sound, you'll gak your pants and immediately associate the sound with rapid pictures of mutilated victims and you'll start inducing yourself into a state of panick.
This is well known to every scary movie maker, ever, and more often then not, the most scary parts is the parts where the human mind assumes something bad happens and starts picturing all worst case scenarios. Which is why it's quite often much less scary when you actually see the monster.

The graveyards and deep woods (at night) aren't actually scary because they are silent. They are scary because you can't identify the sounds you hear and your mind assumes the worst.

Silence is still quite capable of being scary. When something normally doesn't something, but then it does something else it is unnerving. Everyone has a natural aversion to unnatural things, anything which violates our normal perception.

An army is normally a noisy loud thing. When that thing suddenly is replaced with absolute silence it is unnerving.

Silence is also a very odd thing. You never notice all the small sounds which are constantly around you, but you will notice their absence. Even being out in the middle of the forest isn't silence, there is still the ambient sound.

If you ever have the chance to go into a sensory deprivation chamber you should try it, even just a couple minutes. No sound at all. Its absolutely terrifying.

Silence is pretty unnerving though. The issue is the whole fear thing is handled rather crappily to begin with though.

I think the idea of silence, or deep quiet, being frightening is very dependent on the person. I am one of the people that enjoys quiet, the less noise the better. Put me out in the middle of a dead quiet forest and I am happy. Put me in the middle of an incredibly noisy, congested sidewalk and then I get nervous.

But I don't buy that an opponent that doesn't make noise is frightening enough to shake battle hardened troops, ever. Most of the weapons in 40k are terribly loud, even lasguns make quite a racket. A couple of squads with some armor support blasting away at an enemy just isn't going to notice if an enemy isn't making noise.

An enemy that has no visual reaction to being shot, and shows no concern as its fellows are slaughtered around it, as it steady moves forward killing your teammates. That is frightening, because of the relentlessness, but that doesn't have anything to do with it being silent.

Suppose a "ringing silence" might be unnerving, if it blankets out all other sounds.

 n0t_u wrote:
Silence is pretty unnerving though. The issue is the whole fear thing is handled rather crappily to begin with though.

Its not that Fear is the problem, its that half the codices in the game are immune to it.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
Silence is pretty unnerving though. The issue is the whole fear thing is handled rather crappily to begin with though.

Its not that Fear is the problem, its that half the codices in the game are immune to it.

That's the problem I'm talking about.

I think silence can be terrifying in certain ways, but I also think I get where you're coming from.

On a battlefield, there's going to be lots of noise "other" than the completely silent unit advancing along. If I can see them/shoot them and with all the other noise going on around me at the time, the fact that "their unit alone on the field" seems to be walking silently won't have any affect on me at all.

Now if silence worked in a way that the unit actually projected around them, for instance dampening out all the normal sounds around us... that would be unnerving. But in descriptions it's never revealed that way.