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Those servo cherubs are pretty bad... a lobotomized baby? that holds your feathered cyber pen?

Yea, real loyal there Mr Inquisitor...

Servo-skulls

We hate computers so much were just going to take your skull and brain here to calculate and control this piece of machinery.

Sometimes I think the Imperium's motto is "The beatings will continue until morale improves"....

Process of how one is made into an arco-flagellant.
Iron Warriors, processing the dead into nutrient paste.
Being 'working class' in a Mechanicum ship, cleaning plasma chambers.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
Aside from what you mentioned, the whole Genestealer cult thing. I'm pretty certain that it means they were just having... breeding... things happening down there, yeah.

It doesn't ever go into much detail about what happens when different generations crossbreed or genetic relatives crossbreed, but I'm pretty sure that's how you get the abominations.

That's kind of 'The Hills Have Eyes' and it creeps me out..

That's accurate - and described in more detail in the Deathwatch novel, especially since several characters - one of the them female gets captured by the cult. Its really very very unpleasant.

Things that disturbs me and havent been mentioned are:
1) absolute disregard of human life. Most of the goverments doesn't see you even as statistical number. You are literally nothing. You do not exist for them. It doesn't matter if you die, you are just tossed into the waste container, immediately replaced with another unlucky being and life goes on like nothing happend. You dare to protest to get at least some food? Eat lead.
You may be told that you are small cog in a a giant machine. Yes, microscopically small cog that doesn't matter. (I'm speaking in planet-wide, maybe even Hive-wide meaning. Not whole imperium)

2) Next thing is the fate of the Skitarii Vanguard units, that are so irradiated that they are basicly decaying from inside, waiting for death in their own coffin, that also works as personal armor.
Onager pilots (that are also Vanguards) get even luckier as they are hardwired into the machine.

Whatever the unknown Primarchs did must be pretty grim. I mean even Horus didn't have his records expunged.

Ermmmmmm

I mean

Probably the 'and I must scream'-esque things that 40k is packed with, especially Chaos/DEldar/Necron stuff.

Just about everything the Dark Eldar and Fabius Bile do for fun...oh and Honsou's Daemonculaba.

Other worthy mentions: Servitors, also that description of Fulgrim using a ton of naked, maddened human slaves as a living red carpet as he enters La'Fenice in Angel Exterminatus,

I'd say there are heaps of examples that you read about and think are seriously twisted but the one that sticks with me is the 'Screaming Gallery' which was the Night Lords main hall and Curze's throne room, it was essentially a room where the walls were made of naked human bodies all twisted and joined in undeath being kept alive in sufferance, but the floor is the bit that's worse, thousands of faces made the floor all screaming constantly kept 'alive' by tubes and electrical pulses. Can you imagine the marines stepping on that floor striding to a war table and planning attacks while surrounded by tortured humans!! Yeeeah!

Just going to leave this here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/666657.page

 Peregrine wrote:
Just going to leave this here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/666657.page

That's definitely not bad - err. in the sense of not bad at being quite sick...

The thing is... I'm fairly sure that kind of stuff happened for real on this planet.

Also, I'm also fairly sure it's not canon, is it?

 Peregrine wrote:
Just going to leave this here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/666657.page

That captures the grimdark of 40k amazingly well. Well written.

I think the most morbid thing isn't the Daemonculaba, but what happened to the rejects. Dumped into the wastes to fend for themselves, only to be "rescued" by Uriel and then become horrible monsters in the next book.

But the biggest thing that bugs me is how fleeting life is for anyone and everyone. You read a guard novel and blam, so and so you were conscripted with is blasted into goo or ripped in half by something bigger and meaner. No one exempt. Space Marines die in droves in the comics and books. Everyone has nothing to look forward to other than a horrible death.

There's no one morbid, awful thing. There is just 40k.

EDIT: Also, the Fifteen Hours book.

Fifteen Hours is a great read. Really captures the feel of what being a guardsman would be like.

That thing sitting on the golden throne is pretty grimdark and morbid.

Edit add: The whole veneration gig is the sickening part.

Being a psyker.

Through no fault of your own, you were born with a second sight, supernatural powers, mind-reading, etc. Awesome. Except people despise you, mistrust you, to the point where on many worlds, they would burn you at the stake for the crime of just being who you are. Not so awesome. Why, do you ask? Why would your friends and family and community be so ready to just murder you?

Because your party tricks as a fire-starter and a mind-reader attracts the attention of daemons, daemons which you see in your dreams every night, watching, waiting for the right moment to use you as a portal to the material realm and wreak havoc and use your souls for things incomprehensible to mankind.

Luckily for you, there are a few options to dealing with this horrid existence:

1) The population of your planet goes out on a pogrom to kill psykers like yourself.

2) You are picked up by the Black Ships and sent to Terra, where you will be sucked dry by the God-Emperor of Mankind so he can continue to keep warp travel possible.

3) The Astropathic Choirs recruit you, and you spend the rest of your days screaming in agony into the realm of nightmares to receive and transmit messages between the far-flung worlds of the Imperium.

4) The Navigator Guilds recruit you, and you spend the rest of your days screaming in agony into the realm of nightmares to chart a safe passage for your ship across said realm.

5) You are stong enough to be a Battle Psyker, fitted with dampening devices (read: horrible surgery), and sent out to fight the horrible enemies of man, including daemons.

6) If you are extremely unlucky, a Chapter of Space Marines takes interest in you, and you undergo the horrible process of recruitment, surgery, and indoctrination as described above to become a Librarian, destined to fight the enemies of man until you die a glorious (read: horrible) death.

7) You say, " it! I'm joining Chaos!" and take your chances with being a traitor to the Imperium, siding with the Lost and the Damned, and the insane spiky versions of space marines.

...And at any given point in any of these choices, the daemons of the warp might get through your flimsy psychic defenses and possess your body, your flesh mutated, your mind utterly shattered, and your soul consigned to a fate far, far worse than death.

If that doesn't make you curl up into a corner and bawl your eyes out, you are made of sterner stuff than I.

I gotta second Curze's gallery. The entire place is built out of living, writhing corpses and body parts that are being kept alive against their will, just so he can sit among them and enjoy the suffering. There's no point to it at all. It's just outright mass torture for the sake of suffering. There's a huge eww factor to it when you think about it.

That the IoM in this setting are considered the GOOD GUYS.

stop and think about that for a moment... that really is the most disturbing thing

BrianDavion wrote:
That the IoM in this setting are considered the GOOD GUYS.

stop and think about that for a moment... that really is the most disturbing thing

I mean, the armies of the Imperium are what keep Mankind from extinction (though they aren't really the "good guys" - I don't think there are any "good guys" in the setting, though don't tell the Ministorum Priest part of me I said that . . . )

They're human. Life might not be fantastic on most worlds of the Imperium (far from it) but we humans would be playthings to the Dark Eldar, slaves to Chaos, the Orks, and Tau, simply exterminated by the Eldar and Necrons.

Given the alternatives, there's not much choice really.

BrianDavion wrote:
That the IoM in this setting are considered the GOOD GUYS.

stop and think about that for a moment... that really is the most disturbing thing

In our setting, the US are considered to be the good guys.

We shouldn't discuss other fictional settings here.