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The Chaos Gods are alien beings native to a dimension whose denizens cannot truly comprehend our reality.

 Melissia wrote:
The Chaos Gods are alien beings native to a dimension whose denizens cannot truly comprehend our reality.

Beings created from the mental energies and desires of mortal creatures in a literal netherworld of the mind, where dreams and nightmares are made physical reality

While each Chaos God may only understand a limited slice of the human experience, they are the total embodiment of that aspect, and taken together, they understand humanity very well. There's a reason Chaos is the greatest threat, and why so many, including Space Marines, fall to its power.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
The Chaos Gods are alien beings native to a dimension whose denizens cannot truly comprehend our reality.

Beings created from the mental energies and desires of mortal creatures in a literal netherworld of the mind

Not really. Slaanesh was created by the Eldar literally fething themselves too hard. The other three were born during the War in Heaven, which took place between Eldar/Orks/Old Ones and the Necron/C'tan. They were not created by human emotion. They feed upon strong human emotions that are similar to those which created them, but that does not mean they understand humans.

But this is getting off topic. Like I said, Space Marines are inherently unqualified to rule humanity well, as they are built and trained not to understand the human condition. Unless you wish them to no longer know no fear?

DorianGray wrote:

 Las wrote:
The whole point of the codex Astartes is to make sure that this entire thing could never happen again. The Imperial Navy alone could bitch slap the space marines right out of the stars.

Space battles are not really a big deal in the 40k universe. That's why Space Marines are so important and powerful. Most of the important decisive events and battles happen on the ground. The Navy can't do gak against Space Marines on the ground.

Wrong. They can.
The reason why the Navy just doesn't blow the crap out of everything is because there's no point in taking a world that's been reduced to ash.
However, the High Lords will remember the heresy, and will certainly authorize the Navy to throw everything they've got at the traitors.
A few dead world is a small price to pay, to prevent another Astartes uprising.

 saithor wrote:

DorianGray wrote:
Space Marines ARE made smarter, faster, and stronger than the normal humans.

Normal humans are obsolete and like monkeys. It is not some ironic recreation of the war in heaven.

If you were an Astartes it is NATURAL to think why should superior beings like yourself take orders from some human (like some Navy Admiral or Guard General). No one enjoys taking orders from inferiors. The adeptus astartes are bascially immortal GODs in the fluff compared to normal humans. They should be the ones in power over everyone. Everyone should submit to their will.

They don't even have an armored vehicle with an AV of 14 (probably even 13)!

Land Raiders, Vindicators + Siege Shields (Who doesn't take it?), Caestus Assault Ram, Ironclad/Siege Dreadnoughts...
I dont even think the AV of any of those has changed at all, certainly those I just listed are all at least Front AV 13.
BUY YOUR BOOKS, DO YOUR REASEARCH, GIT GUD.


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Also we have a REALLY bad Tyranid problem.

CrashGordon94 wrote:
Nevertheless I'm starting to suspect that this some elaborate way for Dorian to share his fantasy of being dominated by large bald men. I don't necessarily object (even if it's not my kind of thing), but it could do with being a lot less Nazi-ish in that case.

Like I pointed out earlier, have you not read The Picture of Dorian Gray? :p

Las wrote:
There's what, maybe 250,000 marines in the entire imperium? You don't even have to physically fight any of them. Blow up their fleets and strand them on quarantined worlds while they angrily wave their swords at the sky.

One million give or take casualty and recruitment variables, but yes.

Melissia wrote:Not really. Slaanesh was created by the Eldar literally fething themselves too hard.

Feth is one of the Tanith tree gods, not a... a euphamism for that! (autocensor, I know, but :p)

But this is getting off topic. Like I said, Space Marines are inherently unqualified to rule humanity well, as they are built and trained not to understand the human condition. Unless you wish them to no longer know no fear?

Many rulers in the history of mankind had no understanding of the human condition... George IV, for example... and many who did understand it all to well were some of the worst rulers in history (Nicholai II I am looking at you).

Having emotionally stunted weaponised sociopaths as dictators is NOT a good idea.

 ChazSexington wrote:
Having emotionally stunted weaponised sociopaths as dictators is NOT a good idea.

Some deweaponised ones might be helpful though. Those who do well in big business are those who discard any care for their subordinates' wellbeing beyond that which is logical to preserve for the sake of maintaining productivity.

The only Astartes I'd say could possibly "rule humanity" are the Primarchs - and even then, only a few of them. And they're not available. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, the dumbest fluff idea I have ever read.

 Melissia wrote:
The Chaos Gods are alien beings native to a dimension whose denizens cannot truly comprehend our reality.

What? The whole entire Imperium is committed to shackling humanity to an ideal that nobody, except for a remaining SW dread, has seen for 10,000 years. Planets, Astartes Chapters, even history itself is expunged on a whim to meet the needs of perpetrating that ideal.

The Chaos Gods are human reality, distilled down to the purest form.


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 Furyou Miko wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Having emotionally stunted weaponised sociopaths as dictators is NOT a good idea.

Some deweaponised ones might be helpful though. Those who do well in big business are those who discard any care for their subordinates' wellbeing beyond that which is logical to preserve for the sake of maintaining productivity.

That job is already taken (Adeptus Mechanicus).

Alternatively. If you think you got the balls to be a merc in Commorragh and won't die off like a fruit fly in a week.

jwr wrote:

What? The whole entire Imperium is committed to shackling humanity to an ideal that nobody, except for a remaining SW dread, has seen for 10,000 years. Planets, Astartes Chapters, even history itself is expunged on a whim to meet the needs of perpetrating that ideal.

The Chaos Gods are human reality, distilled down to the purest form.

Not really. Can you imagine - put yourself in the shoes - of a two-dimensional existence? Can you truly comprehend what it would be like living with no 'up' or 'down', only 'left', 'right', 'forwards' and 'back'?

Now try limiting that eve further. Can you imagine yourself in a world where there is only 'forward' and 'back'? Where the very concept of 'beside' is as impossible as time travel is to us?

That's what it's like for the Chaos Gods to try and understand humans.

jwr wrote:

That job is already taken (Adeptus Mechanicus).

If only...

 Furyou Miko wrote:

jwr wrote:

What? The whole entire Imperium is committed to shackling humanity to an ideal that nobody, except for a remaining SW dread, has seen for 10,000 years. Planets, Astartes Chapters, even history itself is expunged on a whim to meet the needs of perpetrating that ideal.

The Chaos Gods are human reality, distilled down to the purest form.

Not really. Can you imagine - put yourself in the shoes - of a two-dimensional existence? Can you truly comprehend what it would be like living with no 'up' or 'down', only 'left', 'right', 'forwards' and 'back'?

Now try limiting that eve further. Can you imagine yourself in a world where there is only 'forward' and 'back'? Where the very concept of 'beside' is as impossible as time travel is to us?

That's what it's like for the Chaos Gods to try and understand humans.

The Chaos Gods don't have to understand humans...they represent humanity at the base level of the sentience that sustains them. They are the essence of humanity.

Chaos Gods do not represent humanity. You have a very human-centric view of 40k...

 Furyou Miko wrote:

CrashGordon94 wrote:
Nevertheless I'm starting to suspect that this some elaborate way for Dorian to share his fantasy of being dominated by large bald men. I don't necessarily object (even if it's not my kind of thing), but it could do with being a lot less Nazi-ish in that case.

Like I pointed out earlier, have you not read The Picture of Dorian Gray? :p
.

Who wouldn't want to be dominated by Indrick Boreale and his sexay voice? "The codex astartes calls this maneuver steel rehn..."

"Vohte Bohrealhe, fohr the Emprah and stehl rehn!"

The notion of humanity bending their knee to the marines sounds entirely compatible with Horus's goals during the Heresy.

Had the traitor legions succeeded and held Terra, we can assume a future where regular humanity is enslaved to their Astartes masters, which increasingly would look more and more like your average demon world.

In the modern timeline, the Imperium has taken great steps to ensure exactly this does not happen - the Astartes are limited in number to comparatively minute chapters, such that ambitions like these among one chapter or family of chapters can be contained by naval, guard, Ad Mech, and other Astartes.

However, there are two possibilities to play with:

First, nothing in the fluff makes me think the Imperium would care if an individual chapter treated humans on their own chapter worlds in this fashion. So long as adequate defenses are maintained, and tithing proceeds in an orderly fashion, the Inquisition would likely turn a blind eye to it until it descended into something darker. They already ignore blood-thirsty marines, marines who degenerate into wolves, and marines who keep little short guys in robes in their dark places, so a little "worship us, humans!" doesn't strike me as bothering them.

Second, far more horrifying to the Inquisition and the high lords, would be the heretical notion of female space marines. Sure, we debate if they could or could not exist for days on forums like these, but imagine if the Space Marines were not a race that had to be created, but one that could reproduce normally as humanity does, without the corruption of chaos. If this were to become possible, through modification of the geneseed or other technomagical explanation, you would have two separate species, and the Marine's reliance on the crude process currently used to create marines would be at an end. Loyalty would be hard to maintain, if protection of normal humanities families conflicted with protection of their own.

^Given that what makes Marines Marines is a manual bio-mod rather than anything genetic, it would seem that if a male Marine and female Marine boinked, the offspring would just be an ordinary human.
Whether or not they'd be concerned with mixed-gender Marines making an allied Guard Regiment out of their kids would be another issue.

You guys don't get it. Everyone is beneath the space marine. Eugenics is the future. Biologically superior beings rule and dominate.

The sheer gap between an Astartes and a normal human is so vast that the latter is like another species. Astartes have zero attachment to normal humanity only the super-humanity deserves to lead. Superman over everyone.

The Astartes should just take over the Imperium today because that is what is right and natural. Think of the modern humans and Neanderthals - we killed them all because they were so ugly. Ideally enslaving them would have been better. Humans should serve the Astartes.

They're so different that they're another species is precisely why they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near any position of control in the Emperium

CrashGordon94 wrote:^Given that what makes Marines Marines is a manual bio-mod rather than anything genetic, it would seem that if a male Marine and female Marine boinked, the offspring would just be an ordinary human.
Whether or not they'd be concerned with mixed-gender Marines making an allied Guard Regiment out of their kids would be another issue.

There is genetic manipulation involved in making a Marine - the gene-seed not only provides the code for the implants, it also modifies the body of the recipient to reduce the rate of organ rejection and so on.

DorianGray wrote:You guys don't get it. Everyone is beneath the space marine. Eugenics is the future. Biologically superior beings rule and dominate.

No. You don't get it. Space Marines are not biologically superior to humans. They are flawed in multiple ways, not the least of which is their inability to reproduce independently.

They are physically superior to humans. Yes. But know something? So were neanderthals. They were stronger, larger, and had more complex brains than humans.

They didn't fail as a species solely because we killed them. They failed as a species because the design, while more powerful, was crippled on efficiency grounds. The difference in how much more food they needed was larger than the difference in how much more food they could acquire.

DorianGray wrote:
You guys don't get it. Everyone is beneath the space marine. Eugenics is the future. Biologically superior beings rule and dominate.

Me thinks the troll has come out from under his bridge...

DorianGray wrote:
You guys don't get it. Everyone is beneath the space marine. Eugenics is the future. Biologically superior beings rule and dominate.

The Astartes are not capable of reproduction. That makes them biological failures.
It doesn't matter how big and tough your species is, if you can't reproduce your race is doomed.

DorianGray wrote:
You guys don't get it. Everyone is beneath the space marine.

You keep saying this, but are ignoring literally every argument that says this is nto true.

Eugenics is the future. Biologically superior beings rule and dominate.

Jawohl Mein Furher!

The sheer gap between an Astartes and a normal human is so vast that the latter is like another species. Astartes have zero attachment to normal humanity only the super-humanity deserves to lead. Superman over everyone.

We've gone over this before, and you refuse to actually address any counter-arguments and instead just re-parrot this statement. Astartes are physically superior to humans, but not mentally.

There is nothing about them that makes them superior rulers. They almost always fail as rulers. Likewise, they're outnumbered unfathamable billions to one by mundane humanity. They're irrelevant.

The Astartes should just take over the Imperium today because that is what is right and natural. Think of the modern humans and Neanderthals - we killed them all because they were so ugly.

Your knowledge of archaeological history regarding Neanderthals is...shockingly bad.

Humans should serve the Astartes.

Aside from "they're able to bench press more", why? In the overwhelmingly vast majority of instances they've had to prove themselves able rulers, they give very poor performances, and you're refusing to address this point.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
The Chaos Gods are alien beings native to a dimension whose denizens cannot truly comprehend our reality.

Beings created from the mental energies and desires of mortal creatures in a literal netherworld of the mind

Not really. Slaanesh was created by the Eldar literally fething themselves too hard. The other three were born during the War in Heaven, which took place between Eldar/Orks/Old Ones and the Necron/C'tan. They were not created by human emotion. They feed upon strong human emotions that are similar to those which created them, but that does not mean they understand humans.

We're talking a nether-realm where time does not hold the same meaning as the material universe, where things can enter said realm at one point in time and return to the material universe at an earlier point in time. In fact, Doombreed, a human warlord, was one of Khorne's first servants, and Khorne was the first Chaos God to awaken fully.

 Melissia wrote:
Chaos Gods do not represent humanity. You have a very human-centric view of 40k...

In a game written by humans, for humans, where humans are the most represented group with multiple factions, where a human empire is the ruler (albeit badly) of the galaxy?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Astartes are physically superior to humans, but not mentally.

I do not agree with Dorian, but here you are actually wrong, Vaktathi.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marines

Read the last sentence of the very first paragraph on the page. This is not something new - it's been repeated in pretty much every SM codex since.

And it says that without justification . None of the genetic implants the Astartes receive make them smarter than the average human.

As a result, Marines are no smarter than the average educated human.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
We're talking a nether-realm where time does not hold the same meaning as the material universe

No matter how hard the writers try, they've never been able to manage to actually effectively write the Immaterium without cause and effect. The Chaos Gods have a definitive cause, and as a result, they are bound by time.

 Melissia wrote:
And it says that without justification . None of the genetic implants the Astartes receive make them smarter than the average human.

As a result, Marines are no smarter than the average educated human.

I'm not sure it really needs to be justified. It only needs to be said.

However, I'm of the impression that this mental acuity isn't boosting the marine to genius-levels of intellect, it is merely helping him reorganise his cognitive function into something better which can react and think faster by removing things like redundant memories or emotional responses.

I'd also like to say that I think Marines would make terrible rulers of humanity. How can you have a leader who cannot understand you? The only successful Astartes that could do this in my opinion are the Salamanders (humanitarianism) and Ultramarines (Ultramar is pretty swell this time of year), and neither of them would want to become the supreme leaders of the Imperium.

Even if they were smarter than humanity, what gives them the right and more importantly the ability to somehow overthrow the High Lords and the rest of the established government of the Imperium?

It's wrong, implausible, impossible, and even stupid.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
And it says that without justification . None of the genetic implants the Astartes receive make them smarter than the average human.

As a result, Marines are no smarter than the average educated human.

I'm not sure it really needs to be justified. It only needs to be said.

This. Not everything has to be spelled out and explained.

The intense hypno-conditioning and the like seems to at least play a role, though. It's possible the brain implants (like the catalepsean node) may be responsible as well - it is after all stated that the organs also have various secondary roles, not all of which are explained.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Astartes are physically superior to humans, but not mentally.

I do not agree with Dorian, but here you are actually wrong, Vaktathi.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marines

Read the last sentence of the very first paragraph on the page. This is not something new - it's been repeated in pretty much every SM codex since.

What "Intense indoctrination and conditioning strengthens the recruit's resolve and increases mental capabilities, honing them into dedicated and merciless warriors."?

That's an extremely nebulous statement, giving zero specifics, and purely within the context of "dedication" and being a warrior, and such techniques/equipment/etc are available to non-astartes as well, there's nothing in the Gene-seed that has anything to do with this, none of the Geneseed, anywhere, is described as having any effect on intelligence as far as I can recall.

It doesn't say it makes Space Marines smarter, more intelligent, or wiser. From the Space Wolf trilogy (the only place I remember it going into even minor detail), it basically "educated" them, like taking many years of school and learning, within a few hours, that sort of thing, not actually enhancing their brains in any way.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
We're talking a nether-realm where time does not hold the same meaning as the material universe

No matter how hard the writers try, they've never been able to manage to actually effectively write the Immaterium without cause and effect. The Chaos Gods have a definitive cause, and as a result, they are bound by time.

I would posit that this is more a matter of narrative choice on the part of GW's writers than a fundamental proof that the Chaos Gods are fully bound by the same cause-effect bubble that the material universe is, much like the how they consistently fail to really grasp the size of the galaxy setting that 40k often takes place is, as they wrote the wars for armageddon as some galaxy shattering conflict with fewer imperial guardsmen present than WW1's western front did