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Ultimately competing conceptions for good make conversation about this topic difficult if two people don't already agree.
Is doing bad things for the right reasons ok? Well it presupposes we agree on what is good, and what is bad in the first place.
There are certain truths we generally agree to - murder is bad. Killing for the joy of it, or to cause suffering, is bad. The chaos gods cannot be considered good, because of their extreme perversion of basic truths.
Intent also has to play a role in this discussion. Good people can do bad things. Bad people can do good things. But intent is generally what separates them.
Galas wrote: I remember when Marmatag was a nooby, all shiney and full of joy. How playing the unbalanced mess of Warhammer40k in a ultra-competitive meta has changed you
Bharring wrote: He'll actually *change his mind* in the presence of sufficient/sufficiently defended information. Heretic.
Asmodios wrote: You can take that view if you aren't a human in the 40k setting.... but if you are human the Imperium is definitely the good guys. Hard times make hard choices
I think the ultimate irony of 40k is how effective it's been at showing just how much people buy into the fascist propaganda that the game was parodying.
A hard choice is when you make the sacrifice yourself, given the nature of aristocracy in 40k, we don't see that many of them in universe.
This, everyone is a hero in their own story. When well written, pretty much every faction has realistic motivations and goals. They usually just come at the expense of someone else, kinda like how the real world works a lot of the time.
Paraphrasing here, but Yul Brenner was once asked whether he liked playing good guys or bad guys in the movies he starred in. He said it didn't matter, both thought they were righteous.
Everyone faction in 40k thinks they are doing what is best for their faction. It doesn't mean that it is. I completely agree that the IoM is doing a heck of a lot of things that are actually counter to their continued survival while being quite evil, but the IoM is either too inept, corrupt, or otherwise lack the perspective to understand that. Even the non-Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain (I have a comical and serious background to my army) version of my Black Legion warband still believe they are fighting the oppression of the IoM even after ten millennium with Horus being completely justified and right in his actions. They believe their brutality and heinous acts serve the greater goal of freeing humanity from the Emperor's slavery and are completely necessary to do so. As an outside observer, I know for a fact that my warband is completely deluded and wholly evil as befitting the Chaos Space Marines. In my opinion, the IoM is exactly the same just not the same degree of evil that my warband is.
A lot of you guys on this thread are easy prey for brown shirts.
But that said.
Come away with us mortals, step though this door to a magical realm , escape the drudgery of your imperium, petty bureaucrats imposing their petty rules on you and telling you its for your own good. We offer a thousand experiences. Each more intense than the last. And true freedom, with out bounds or limits. Step through, step through, a magical city beyond the stars awaits.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/03/05 03:05:06
Paraphrasing here, but Yul Brenner was once asked whether he liked playing good guys or bad guys in the movies he starred in. He said it didn't matter, both thought they were righteous.
Everyone faction in 40k thinks they are doing what is best for their faction. It doesn't mean that it is. I completely agree that the IoM is doing a heck of a lot of things that are actually counter to their continued survival while being quite evil, but the IoM is either too inept, corrupt, or otherwise lack the perspective to understand that. Even the non-Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain (I have a comical and serious background to my army) version of my Black Legion warband still believe they are fighting the oppression of the IoM even after ten millennium with Horus being completely justified and right in his actions. They believe their brutality and heinous acts serve the greater goal of freeing humanity from the Emperor's slavery and are completely necessary to do so. As an outside observer, I know for a fact that my warband is completely deluded and wholly evil as befitting the Chaos Space Marines. In my opinion, the IoM is exactly the same just not the same degree of evil that my warband is.
Yep, everyone is a hero in their own story, even the most heinous villains. In fact, especially them.
Crimson wrote: I think this 'Imperium needs to be this brutal for the humanity to survive' viewpoint needs to die. No they don't; they think they do, but they're wrong. I am really not comfortable with thinking that basically is 'in some situations fascism is justified.' The Imperium is evil, and that's that, no need to pretend otherwise.
Yeah, saying that the Imperium is doing what it is doing to survive is not only missing the point and basically making justifications for it, is also plain wrong. We are in the year 40.000, the Imperium is only 10.000 years old, and humanity was alive for far longer. And it will be alive for much longer after the Imperium collapses. As it was shown, as it has been shown. And is presently being proven by all the human civilizations that survive outside Imperial influence.
Back to reality, wearing flowers in their hair will only make humanity more tasty for the ‘Nids.
Edited by ingtaer, lets keep real world politics out of it please.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/03/05 08:18:29
His pattern of returning alive after being declared dead occurred often enough during Cain's career that the Munitorum made a special ruling that Ciaphas Cain is to never be considered dead, despite evidence to the contrary.
Macabre Galatic wrote: The Imperium. Basically every human that thinks of the emperor in a good way is a brain washed nazi and the space marines are the worst of them. Here's an example - a random space marine chapter invades a new world, they are here to spread the word of the emperor. For the emperor! It goes something like this, join me and believe in my way of thinking or die. Simple as that, that's how they operate. It's the same way the Nazis tried world domination. The Imperium will set up death camps, all sorts.
.
But the imperium can't be nazi, the stand on religion and economics is totaly different. Even the race thing is drasticly different, same with the world domination, They weren't interested in it. Only communists were and even that was a very short 20s thing , the idea died very fast, as fast as Stalin could get rid of old communist guard .. As for justice, there is war justice. Anything your dudes do is ok, if you win. And everything the others do is bad, specially if you end up winning. That is why I like some w40k stuff, the specifics can be kind of a meh, but the world as a whole works and is very realistic.
The ENTIRE point of the 40k setting is that no-one is the good guys and that Humans are EXTRA DOUBLE CHOCOLATE SPECIAL not the good guys.
Most of the world would disagree. In most cases what ever your country does to win, specially if it does actually win or seem to be winning, is considered to be ok. Even in europe this was considered a thing vide Machiaveli, Matternich or Lenin. The whole part of how to be a good leader according to Conucian tradition is more or less that. Do anything possible, to hold power and keep peace and prosperity of the country, with community > individual. With only variations being the physical dispute if a single ruler is ok, or more precise when is a single rule ok, and when is collective governance better.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
One of the reasons Chaos is so strong is because the imperium is the worst place you can imagine (until you meet Chaos, probably). If the imperium wasn't the fascist craphole it is there weren't as many cultist uprisings, rebellions and what not. The Imperium makes it very hard for its citizens not to search for an alternative.
The unfortunate thing about the setting is that other alternatives usually have been brought down by someone with the bigger gun, or Chaos. And that Imperium fanboys didn't like that Tau weren't actually that evil in the beginning, so GW had to retcon them into evil insidious aliens . It's still better to live in the Tau empire than in the Imperium, but the tau empire is so small that it's hardly worth a footnote in galactic scale...
I think the very fact that the human faction(s) in the narrative are not good guys is crucial to the identity of the universe.
Too often in Sci Fi and Fantasy the humans fit neatly into the "Paladin" archetype. To an extent this is still true for the Astartes but their means and motivations are sufficiently murky.
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Necrons on the other hand just want their stuff back, to defeat Chaos and the Immaterium and repel the Tyranids. They take prisoners, have honorable codes of combat, sometimes warn those living above a waking tomb world and give them the option to leave.
Indisputably the good guys of 40k, change my mind.
I'm amazed that with all that "anything is justified because it's a fight for survival" apologism for Imperial ways of things nobody mentions Eldar as the best guys out there - they are actually fighting to not go exctinct right now, not in some distant and hypothetical future as Imperium excuses itself. Most of freaking Iyanden have even died once already.
That above was of course sarcastic, but in all seriousness, Exodites are probably the most peacefull established faction in the entire lore, they are just herding their dragons and fending off greedy Knight Houses invading their safe heavens and only ever conduct defensive wars, not even trying to reestablish galaxy dominance. This does not prevent the mighty Imperial "good guys" inhabiting myriads of worlds to feel so insecure by their existence to want to eradicate them on their few remaining and insignificant planets.
Yeah, Imperium are most definitely the good guys of the setting
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/03/05 12:12:18
Dark Eldar are more of a murdercracy. It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, but if you are capable of killing the previous eldar on the job.
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
There is an ancient race, a technological supremacy, who mastered the power that eluded the Emperor. They are cursed to a fate worth than death, an eternity of horror at the hands of a great force of dire malevolence at the heart of a realm of chaos and madness. To elude this fate, their dark burden is to enact these cruel horrors on other beings, to rejuvenate themselves. The Dark Eldar are hardly evil per se, but cursed.
Thinking about it from a purely utilitarian standpoint killing a person who won't suffer infinitely and eternally after death is better than letting a person who will suffer infinitely and eternally after death die, because infinity and eternity are pretty much the biggest things. So the total amount of suffering in the universe is actually decreased every time the DE abduct and torture somebody to death. (looking at this from the timeframe of eternity not just "right now")
And really, they often do the torturing and killing in arena settings so it's not even a 1-to-1 exchange. They can get a lot of years/community of DE for each year of torture victim.
I mean, when you add in the fact that you have this massive overpopulation problem in the galaxy (Hive Cities, Space Fungus, Evil Bug Swarm, etc) you can kind of see the Dark Eldar as less malevolent force but more like the big cats of the African savanna, or the wolves of the American West. They keep populations in check. With overpopulation comes starvation, comes disease, comes overburdening of the land, etc etc. You need predators like the DE to ensure that this does not happen.
When you think of it, the DE are like a force of nature in the W40K universe. And nature isn't really evil. As humans throughout history have recognized, the true power of this world is the force of nature, whether personified in God, or a lesser "gaia", or in some flow of spiritual force/forces like Dao or Chi, or recognized by the Buddah as a sort of web of existence, or many other interpretations. Can we really call this force evil?
Thinking about it with a clear head after this chain of argumentation, we can see that DE are really the "good" guys as much as you can have good guys in a morally ambiguous universe like W40K. They are a personification of a force of nature, and nature is what is "good" simply because it is not evil.
In addition, they operate daily to reduce the total amount of suffering that will happen in the lifetime of the universe. Therefore they are not simply "not evil' they are actually unambiguously good.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2019/03/05 14:36:36
Headlss wrote: A lot of you guys on this thread are easy prey for brown shirts.
But that said.
Come away with us mortals, step though this door to a magical realm , escape the drudgery of your imperium, petty bureaucrats imposing their petty rules on you and telling you its for your own good. We offer a thousand experiences. Each more intense than the last. And true freedom, with out bounds or limits. Step through, step through, a magical city beyond the stars awaits.
Dude. It's a game. You're like my mom telling me I'm going to get possessed by demons for playing D&D.
EffervescentAvocado wrote: There is an ancient race, a technological supremacy, who mastered the power that eluded the Emperor. They are cursed to a fate worth than death, an eternity of horror at the hands of a great force of dire malevolence at the heart of a realm of chaos and madness. To elude this fate, their dark burden is to enact these cruel horrors on other beings, to rejuvenate themselves. The Dark Eldar are hardly evil per se, but cursed.
Thinking about it from a purely utilitarian standpoint killing a person who won't suffer infinitely and eternally after death is better than letting a person who will suffer infinitely and eternally after death die, because infinity and eternity are pretty much the biggest things. So the total amount of suffering in the universe is actually decreased every time the DE abduct and torture somebody to death. (looking at this from the timeframe of eternity not just "right now")
And really, they often do the torturing and killing in arena settings so it's not even a 1-to-1 exchange. They can get a lot of years/community of DE for each year of torture victim.
I mean, when you add in the fact that you have this massive overpopulation problem in the galaxy (Hive Cities, Space Fungus, Evil Bug Swarm, etc) you can kind of see the Dark Eldar as less malevolent force but more like the big cats of the African savanna, or the wolves of the American West. They keep populations in check. With overpopulation comes starvation, comes disease, comes overburdening of the land, etc etc. You need predators like the DE to ensure that this does not happen.
When you think of it, the DE are like a force of nature in the W40K universe. And nature isn't really evil. As humans throughout history have recognized, the true power of this world is the force of nature, whether personified in God, or a lesser "gaia", or in some flow of spiritual force/forces like Dao or Chi, or recognized by the Buddah as a sort of web of existence, or many other interpretations. Can we really call this force evil?
Thinking about it with a clear head after this chain of argumentation, we can see that DE are really the "good" guys as much as you can have good guys in a morally ambiguous universe like W40K. They are a personification of a force of nature, and nature is what is "good" simply because it is not evil.
In addition, they operate daily to reduce the total amount of suffering that will happen in the lifetime of the universe. Therefore they are not simply "not evil' they are actually unambiguously good.
Exodites, Harlequins and Craftworld Eldars also suffer the same fate at the time of dying .And they aren't as jerks about it.
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
Asmodios wrote: You can take that view if you aren't a human in the 40k setting.... but if you are human the Imperium is definitely the good guys. Hard times make hard choices
I think the ultimate irony of 40k is how effective it's been at showing just how much people buy into the fascist propaganda that the game was parodying.
A hard choice is when you make the sacrifice yourself, given the nature of aristocracy in 40k, we don't see that many of them in universe.
The number 1 guy in charge sacrificed himself to the most horrible fate imaginable which is an eternity on the golden throne that is slowly ripping his soul apart all so he can stop literal hell from spilling out and killing/enslaving all of humanity.
Asmodios wrote: You can take that view if you aren't a human in the 40k setting.... but if you are human the Imperium is definitely the good guys. Hard times make hard choices
I think the ultimate irony of 40k is how effective it's been at showing just how much people buy into the fascist propaganda that the game was parodying.
A hard choice is when you make the sacrifice yourself, given the nature of aristocracy in 40k, we don't see that many of them in universe.
The number 1 guy in charge sacrificed himself to the most horrible fate imaginable which is an eternity on the golden throne that is slowly ripping his soul apart all so he can stop literal hell from spilling out and killing/enslaving all of humanity.
If you are trying to portray the Emperor as a good guy not only most people here but even GW will disagree with you.
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
I think a lot of people pushing the “it’s the only option!” angle probably need to familiarise themselves a bit better with typical, real-world fascist rhetoric, then come back to this discussion.
Asmodios wrote: You can take that view if you aren't a human in the 40k setting.... but if you are human the Imperium is definitely the good guys. Hard times make hard choices
I think the ultimate irony of 40k is how effective it's been at showing just how much people buy into the fascist propaganda that the game was parodying.
A hard choice is when you make the sacrifice yourself, given the nature of aristocracy in 40k, we don't see that many of them in universe.
The number 1 guy in charge sacrificed himself to the most horrible fate imaginable which is an eternity on the golden throne that is slowly ripping his soul apart all so he can stop literal hell from spilling out and killing/enslaving all of humanity.
If you are trying to portray the Emperor as a good guy not only most people here but even GW will disagree with you.
Not a "good guy" as a mortal would think of it because the emperor operates on a scale that is beyond mortals. But look at his overall goal (to expanded humanity to the stars and permanently destroy chaos). Once again the alternative is allowing space elves to bring about literal hell on the entire universe all so they can have fun on a Saturday night.
40k is a cosmic horror story. The setting sucks because of the boundary conditions of the universe; there are endless unstoppable entropic forces out to destroy everything, and any attempt to build a stable civilization inevitably sinks into a morass of atrocity and barbarism in a desperate scramble to survive.
Any "good guys" exist to pull out Greek-tragedy tropes about doomed heroes struggling in the face of fate/inevitability, not to make a point about what's "good" or "bad", or about what fascist atrocities are justifiable, or any of the other things people who misunderstand the nature of the story accuse people who like it of.
40k is, by its nature, monstrously dystopian. Little about the Imperium is admirable. It's not even really supposed to be realistic. The Imperium does terrible things because it must (or believes it must) and usually is forced into doing so because it is so inherently poorly managed and unable to rise above its lowest common denominator after the fall from grace, that's a core part of the setting.
It's all gone to pot and there are no subtle, easy, or nice answers to anything, it is a crazy universe left to the insane to run while being assailed from all directions by the unimaginable, a ten thousand year dark age of madness.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Vaktathi wrote: ...it is a crazy universe left to the insane to run while being assailed from all directions by the unimaginable, a ten thousand year dark age of madness.
And because it was written by the British it's also there to make snarky remarks about itself.
"In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide. In an age of madness, trust to the madman to lead the way."
"Only the insane have the strength to prosper. Only those who prosper may judge what is sane."
Exactly. The grimdark really lays out the mental hoops the Imperium has to jump through to justify its actions and views, and when faced with literal daemons and terrifying gribbly aliens it becomes just understandable enough to make the setting work.
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
nou wrote: I'm amazed that with all that "anything is justified because it's a fight for survival" apologism for Imperial ways of things nobody mentions Eldar as the best guys out there - they are actually fighting to not go exctinct right now, not in some distant and hypothetical future as Imperium excuses itself. Most of freaking Iyanden have even died once already.
That above was of course sarcastic, but in all seriousness, Exodites are probably the most peacefull established faction in the entire lore, they are just herding their dragons and fending off greedy Knight Houses invading their safe heavens and only ever conduct defensive wars, not even trying to reestablish galaxy dominance. This does not prevent the mighty Imperial "good guys" inhabiting myriads of worlds to feel so insecure by their existence to want to eradicate them on their few remaining and insignificant planets.
Yeah, Imperium are most definitely the good guys of the setting
Asmodios wrote: At the end of the day the Imperium does what it has to do to secure the survival of the human race. Sometimes you have to put a population to death to make sure that space demons don't kill an entire sector. Sometimes you have to force men and women to do lives of hard slave labor to have the tools you need to fight these threats. It's grimdark and over the top the way it should be but if you are a human then the Imperium is definitely the good guys
If the Imperium is justified in its cruelty then all you've got is expensive fascist propaganda because that's exactly how fascists think.
. It's still better to live in the Tau empire than in the Imperium, but the tau empire is so small that it's hardly worth a footnote in galactic scale...
