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 Tyran wrote:
Lovecraftian horror doesn't work with 40k as a setting, because 40k is an action setting.

Horror is a mostly low scale genre in which the protagonist is horribly out of their depth. Horror doesn't work when you have to represent a large scale strategic situation, and much less when the protagonists literally Know No Fear.

You can have a horror story set in a war, but you cannot have a horror story about war, if you understand the difference.

Well, before I give any counter argument I want to say that I think a lot of the writers for GW agree with you. I want to present an alternate take though.

Lovecraftian horror is about existential horror, not jump scares or anything like that. The idea that existence itself is horrific. And I think 40K fits into that perfectly. A horrendous universe of xenophobia and endless war and repression is existentially awful.
Even if I accepted that the Space Marines are the protagonists (I don't) then having them be transhuman monsters incapable of something so innately human as fear, monstrous brutes hyped up on stimms programmed to kill without question...still pretty horrifying.
So I think 40K can be a horror setting, but I think it's not really presented like that most of the time and particularly in recent times that presentation has gotten less and less important as they've airbrushed the marines into good guys and really gone hard on the angle that for the Imperium, the ends really do justify the means.

All of which is a great shame to my mind, but there's no doubt that the alternate viewpoint is valid and probably more popular.

Completely agree. 40k as a setting is full of horror for the common man, or the modern day viewer such as you or I. Even Space Marines are a form of horror, not the transhuman dread but the thought of modifying ourselves to that degree, shedding humanity to win wars.

Terrifying thought and part of what makes the kitchen sink setting so interesting.

 Da Boss wrote:


Well, before I give any counter argument I want to say that I think a lot of the writers for GW agree with you. I want to present an alternate take though.

Lovecraftian horror is about existential horror, not jump scares or anything like that. The idea that existence itself is horrific. And I think 40K fits into that perfectly. A horrendous universe of xenophobia and endless war and repression is existentially awful.

Lovecraftian horror is a type of existential horror, but not all existential horror is Lovecraftian in nature. Xenophobia and endless war and repression are not lovecraftian, because they are very human horrors we are at the very least historically familiar with.

Even if I accepted that the Space Marines are the protagonists (I don't) then having them be transhuman monsters incapable of something so innately human as fear, monstrous brutes hyped up on stimms programmed to kill without question...still pretty horrifying.

Even if they are not, Space Marines are the protagonists of Devastation of Baal.

So I think 40K can be a horror setting, but I think it's not really presented like that most of the time and particularly in recent times that presentation has gotten less and less important as they've airbrushed the marines into good guys and really gone hard on the angle that for the Imperium, the ends really do justify the means.

All of which is a great shame to my mind, but there's no doubt that the alternate viewpoint is valid and probably more popular.

You can have horror stories set in 40k, and such stories already exists. You can have very different stories set in 40k, doesn't change the issue the settings itself exists to sell games. If anything I would say the setting is at its best when it is very tongue in cheek than when it tries to be very serious.

Karol wrote:

Not Online!!! 799476 11164097 wrote:


Right now, what is described above, is a singular entry in a gakky outdated dex.
Chaos therefore is basically some 10'000 year old and some less old vets space marines without any insidiousness at all found in it.
Theres no delegitimising of imperial rule, no challange at all, no nothing. Beyond the GSC dex most of the dexes don't even show how abismal the IoM is and therefore how close to internal collapse it stands. By virtue of that most factions just look non threatening, especially chaos.

It took them 12 years to retake hundrads of planets, create hundrads of space marine chapters and reinforce alreayd existing ones. The wars of faith are beating back the enemy of men on all front, and even the hive fleet leviathan, who was suppose to be unbeatable by virture of size, was easily dispatched by Gulliman and his crusading space marine legions. Not saying that the Imperium of Men is not in trouble or besset by enemies, but to call it being in an abysmal state is a bit over an overstatement.

If you believe the propaganda.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
Lovecraftian horror doesn't work with 40k as a setting, because 40k is an action setting.

Spoiler:

Horror is a mostly low scale genre in which the protagonist is horribly out of their depth. Horror doesn't work when you have to represent a large scale strategic situation, and much less when the protagonists literally Know No Fear.

You can have a horror story set in a war, but you cannot have a horror story about war, if you understand the difference.

Well, before I give any counter argument I want to say that I think a lot of the writers for GW agree with you. I want to present an alternate take though.

Lovecraftian horror is about existential horror, not jump scares or anything like that. The idea that existence itself is horrific. And I think 40K fits into that perfectly. A horrendous universe of xenophobia and endless war and repression is existentially awful.

Spoiler:

Even if I accepted that the Space Marines are the protagonists (I don't) then having them be transhuman monsters incapable of something so innately human as fear, monstrous brutes hyped up on stimms programmed to kill without question...still pretty horrifying.
So I think 40K can be a horror setting, but I think it's not really presented like that most of the time and particularly in recent times that presentation has gotten less and less important as they've airbrushed the marines into good guys and really gone hard on the angle that for the Imperium, the ends really do justify the means.

All of which is a great shame to my mind, but there's no doubt that the alternate viewpoint is valid and probably more popular.

I am with the Boss.

To my mind, the Lovecraftian elements are to be found in the richest aspects of the setting, which had nothing to do with conventional battlefields and everything to do with culture wars, struggle for control of the fate of humanity and the Universe. It is the sort of pressure that makes people mad, might make it seem OK to graft a head onto a levitating life support system rather than code an AI to do similar work, for interesting reasons. This was home. Then, there are tyranids, and genestealer cults... worshipping primordial beings and then there is chaos, from other literature but sure... all of these tropes were spilling around smoky basements with cheap acid and whammo... an amalgam of a cross section of sci-fi fantasy. Of course, this is Lovecraftian. Lots of things were, at that time perhaps more than now.

And, I do not think of 40k as an action setting. This is not GI Joe, honest about his steroid use. Perhaps it has become that, in part because this might be what people expect to see (when held against contemporary blockbuster tacticool action films and video games) and because GW delivers to these expectations in a self-reinforcing feedback-loop that results in marines who aren't marines with magic sniper rifles that don't need line of sight and floating tanks as big as a necron's...

Problem with horror of the unknown is that we know, because we've all read it before. The Tyranids aren't unknowable, mysterious threat that does things we puny humans can't comprehend. It's just a big angry wasp nest that eats things and displays human-level intelligence by avoiding necron worlds cause they're hard to digest. Chaos could be that, but instead it's just howling pack of sore losers from 10,000 years ago and cartoon demons.
The chaos boys are scary not because of their inscrutable goals, but because they'll torture you for hours or days and then feed your soul to their god to be devoured. Scary, but not unknown or unknowable.

The second layer of Lovecraftian horror was also humanitys impotence to stop the inevitable. We were doomed, and that's the scary part. in 40k, we're told humanity is doomed in the end too, but not because a god will wake up and send us all into cannibalistic, orgiastic spasm of destruction as we gleefully carve out eyes of people we love, but because orks and tyranids will eat us. scary, but guns work pretty well on orks and tyranids and theoretically, if you have enough of them, you could even win.

So yeah, the horror of 40k is purely slasher horror of not wanting to be eaten or tortured, nothing much deeper, and if you're armed enough, you could kill the slasher.

 Tyran wrote:
Lovecraftian horror doesn't work with 40k as a setting, because 40k is an action setting.

I would argue that Lovecraftian elements can still work in an action setting, so long as they're not a core part of the action.

e.g. there's a difference between space marines fighting tyranids and space marines fighting the hive mind itself.

I never got "unknowable horror". If it's unknowable why is it horror? What if the Elder Gods want to give me a cake? What if Cthulu just wants to hang out and watch tv?
Is it fear of the unknown? Isn't that just general fear?
Is it just something inexplicable? If so is that not just fear of the unknown?
I'm not being rude but it kind of doesn't make sense to me.

 vipoid wrote:

I would argue that Lovecraftian elements can still work in an action setting, so long as they're not a core part of the action.

e.g. there's a difference between space marines fighting tyranids and space marines fighting the hive mind itself.

It still isn't Lovecraftian, because as noted above you don't fight the Lovecraftian.

Lovecraftian stories can work in 40k, but they cannot be the core of 40k, because the core of 40k is people, aliens and demons trying to kill each other.

 Gert wrote:
I never got "unknowable horror". If it's unknowable why is it horror? What if the Elder Gods want to give me a cake? What if Cthulu just wants to hang out and watch tv?
Is it fear of the unknown? Isn't that just general fear?
Is it just something inexplicable? If so is that not just fear of the unknown?
I'm not being rude but it kind of doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn't work for everyone. I would argue that growing up watching Discovery Channel (and similar media) pretty much immunizes someone against Lovecraftian horror, because such media creates a love for the unknowable.

Lovecraft is after all a product of a dying worldview, mostly as a reaction of the reason based worldview that replaced it.

 Gert wrote:
I never got "unknowable horror". If it's unknowable why is it horror? What if the Elder Gods want to give me a cake? What if Cthulu just wants to hang out and watch tv?
Is it fear of the unknown? Isn't that just general fear?
Is it just something inexplicable? If so is that not just fear of the unknown?
I'm not being rude but it kind of doesn't make sense to me.

It's horror based on the idea that your existence is insignificant and meaningless. It's not for everyone!

Sounds like bar work.

I do wonder how many true Lovecraftians remain. That is, people that are genuinely afraid of the unknown, and how many Lovecraftians these days are just people that confuse fear with fascination.

I mean, personally, the idea that the universe is immense and I'm insignificant reassures me, all my feth ups do not matter on the real scale of existence. Even more, it fascinates me. If anything, the real existential horror is that I will not live to see more wonders of existence being discovered, that I will never have the full picture, only an insignificant part of it.

Going back a few arguments, yes the whole "emotions" thing was disappointing, but it had nothing to do with Lovecraft. The sheer opposite in fact.

 Gert wrote:
I never got "unknowable horror". If it's unknowable why is it horror? What if the Elder Gods want to give me a cake? What if Cthulu just wants to hang out and watch tv?
Is it fear of the unknown? Isn't that just general fear?
Is it just something inexplicable? If so is that not just fear of the unknown?
I'm not being rude but it kind of doesn't make sense to me.

Its doesn't mean unknowable in the sense that you go "I don't know what that thing is", it's mean in the sense that even though you are exposed to something your simply cannot process how to comprehend what you're being exposed to. Like if the fluff of 40k says "The Imperium consists of millions of worlds" can your brain actually visualise that many individual worlds or does it just think of "lots of world"?

And this is kind of the problem with Cthulhu being depicted so much in the modern day, people assume hes just a big green tentacle thing with wings, nothing scary about that. How we know him to look is based on the closest description the narrator could provide AFTER his brain was driven insane from the mere sight of him. Its the most sense that the characters brain could make of what it was looking at, but the truth is we have no idea what he saw because Cthulhu was so incomprehensible to his limited human brain that it broke trying to simply understand what it had been exposed to.

Take Azathoth for example. Can your brain really comprehend what a nebulous being that created humanity via a dream would really look like? Or does it just make a close enough approximation and call it a day?

 Gert wrote:
I never got "unknowable horror". If it's unknowable why is it horror? What if the Elder Gods want to give me a cake? What if Cthulu just wants to hang out and watch tv?
Is it fear of the unknown? Isn't that just general fear?
Is it just something inexplicable? If so is that not just fear of the unknown?
I'm not being rude but it kind of doesn't make sense to me.

Have you ever been in a wood, at night 10-20km from nearest human village, with the closest thing to a weapon being a a knife and with full knowladge that against stuff like boar herds, bears, wild dogs or smugglers it amounts to nothing? Because I can tell you that you feel terror, if that happens to you. Also if humans are bad to each other, the chance of something not human being good to a human is statistically improbable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:


Its doesn't mean unknowable in the sense that you go "I don't know what that thing is", it's mean in the sense that even though you are exposed to something your simply cannot process how to comprehend what you're being exposed to. Like if the fluff of 40k says "The Imperium consists of millions of worlds" can your brain actually visualise that many individual worlds or does it just think of "lots of world"?

Why try to comprehand a non human in a face to face met up? Do I need to know what a pack of wild dogs or herd of boars thinks when it come near me? Do I have to do an indepth analyzys of their feelings? No I don't, 200k years of evolution gave every human enough genetical knowladge to know how to act in such situation. And I would say the majority of encounters with the unknown are best solved by killing the unknown with fire.

Meanwhile in real life, people that spend their time working in the wilderness have some very good tips to how to survive such encounters, and no, "burn everything with fire" is not it.

Even if 40k, humanity is always attempting to comprehend its enemies, because fighting what you don't understand is a sure way to lose.

Existential horror implies that existence has meaning … and that this meaning can be lost.

Thats not really unknown though is it. That's very real fear of very real threats you know are in the woods. Animals tend to attack humans when humans go into their territory, its not random.


Again, animals don't attack for no reason unless they have a disease. You've wandered into their territory and represent a threat to them if they've attacked you.
The only people that know the Hive Mind is a vast intelligence capable of some emotions are the Blood Angels, maybe Tigirus and some radical Imperial scholars who got executed for daring to say Xenos might be intelligent.

 Tyran wrote:
I do wonder how many true Lovecraftians remain. That is, people that are genuinely afraid of the unknown, and how many Lovecraftians these days are just people that confuse fear with fascination.

I mean, personally, the idea that the universe is immense and I'm insignificant reassures me, all my feth ups do not matter on the real scale of existence. Even more, it fascinates me. If anything, the real existential horror is that I will not live to see more wonders of existence being discovered, that I will never have the full picture, only an insignificant part of it.

Going back a few arguments, yes the whole "emotions" thing was disappointing, but it had nothing to do with Lovecraft. The sheer opposite in fact.

I doubt there's that many. While the works are evocative, he was living at the very brink of age of science, where there were far more question than answers and where human knowledge expanded from "this is the one world that was given to us" to "we are one of myriad worlds in this universe" and from "we're made of...stuff" to "we're made of tiny tiny stuff you can't see". Literally turned the whole universe upside down more than heliocentrism. His writing is very much of the time (and with large heaping of RacismTM) and I don't think the same sensation can be replicated in a world where we take cloning for granted and have recordings of an actual reality-shattering explosion in the shape of a a nuke dropped on Hiroshima.

The closest you have is thalassophobia.

 Tyran wrote:
Lovecraftian horror doesn't work with 40k as a setting, because 40k is an action setting.

Horror is a mostly low scale genre in which the protagonist is horribly out of their depth. Horror doesn't work when you have to represent a large scale strategic situation, and much less when the protagonists literally Know No Fear.

You can have a horror story set in a war, but you cannot have a horror story about war, if you understand the difference.

I am not a Lovecraftian scholar, and I only took one literature course in university.

The first few books of the HH do seem, to me, to have horror elements in them with the Marine protagonists feeling the horror. Samus is here. When Gavriel's team encounter Chaos there is definitely horror. When Saul's team find the purpose of trees on Murder there is a feeling of horror.

So are these horror stories set in a war?

Yes, because the focus there is the horror of the characters, the war becomes the setting for that horror.

This is why I feel like Fantasy works better when the ordinary little squishy under-dog humans are fighting a battle and somehow win. It's why I prefer WHFB and Lotr to 40k and Aos.

I still think in some ways Space Marines ruin 40k for many. The imperial guard should more frequently be the focus of the story. A puny human and his buddies standing against hopeless odds against so many different horrors of the galaxy with no clue about the greater purpose of the mission if there is one and against great unknowably intelligent and malicious or benevolent entities that probably care as much for their puny human life as I do dropping a penny and forgetting to pick it up.

If 40k was like warhammer fantasy then space marines wouldn't exist, sisters would either not exist or be few and far between and same with custodes. Admech could fulfill a fantasy "good guy" faction like dwarfs or elves.

I will point out that even with the IG stories, the protagonist is usually some absurdly competent veteran. I mean, even Cain has some godly levels of luck backed by superhuman levels of skill with the chainsword and laspistol.

"Random guardsmen is exposed to the hell of 40k" stories do exist, but sadly as rare as the guardmen usually dies. Horror is best in short doses, but GW wants long running series because those are the most profitable.

TBF the whole point of Cain is that his entire life is a lie and pretty much every heroic thing he does is dumb luck.

 Tyran wrote:
It still isn't Lovecraftian, because as noted above you don't fight the Lovecraftian.

You know Cthulhu (by far the most famous Lovecraftian horror) was rammed by a boat and killed*, right?

Yes, fighting the Lovecraftian monsters isn't the point but it's not as if it never happens.


*Temporarily, but still.

Karol wrote:
Have you ever been in a wood, at night 10-20km from nearest human village, with the closest thing to a weapon being a a knife and with full knowladge that against stuff like boar herds, bears, wild dogs or smugglers it amounts to nothing? Because I can tell you that you feel terror, if that happens to you. Also if humans are bad to each other, the chance of something not human being good to a human is statistically improbable.

I read this and all I could think of was this:

 Tyran wrote:
Yes, because the focus there is the horror of the characters, the war becomes the setting for that horror.

So how then is 40K (or 30K) not a setting suitable for horror? We have fearless, transhuman, power-armoured killing machines feeling fear and horror. I recall, as a reader, feeling horror as Loken leads his troops into that fortress with Samus is here whispering on the vox. I felt horror when Belial led the Deathwing into a trap of a Chaos-world.

What kind of ethereal horror dies to a boat. Cthulhu has just lost all my respect.


Now that you've pointed it out it all makes sense. Thanks I hate it

TangoTwoBravo wrote:

So how then is 40K (or 30K) not a setting suitable for horror? We have fearless, transhuman, power-armoured killing machines feeling fear and horror. I recall, as a reader, feeling horror as Loken leads his troops into that fortress with Samus is here whispering on the vox. I felt horror when Belial led the Deathwing into a trap of a Chaos-world.

I think I should have clarified more. You can definitely have horror stories set in 40k. But in those cases you have to refocus the narrative.

There is a two fold problem:

When you go to the large scale, with armies and fleets and worlds and sectors, there is no horror in that. In part because the scale is too large (one dead is a tragedy, a million a statistic), in part because the forces involved are well known (we know what a Hive Fleet is, what an Ork Whaaagh is, what a Black Crusade is).

When the protagonist in question is an heroic figure that you know is going to survive no matter what the author throws at them.

So horror stories in 40k have to be small scale, following a protagonist that isn't going to try fist-fight the devil and win.
Thus my point is that horror doesn't work with 40k when you take it as a whole, but you can have horror stories set in 40k.

Now Lovecraftian horror? that is even harder to make work because as noted above, plenty of things in 40k are well known quantities, and Lovecraftian horror is the horror of the unknown.

 Gert wrote:

What kind of ethereal horror dies to a boat. Cthulhu has just lost all my respect.

Cthulhu was never ethereal, though. The Old Ones and Elder Gods having actual physical form in the real world has always been a thing in Lovecraft's literature. That's part of the horror is that these beings are even able to exist on the physical plane. Even Azathoth has a massive corporeal form at the center of the Milky Way, though whether it's solid, liquid, or nebular gas surrounding his Super Massive Black Hole-esque maw is the real guess.

 vipoid wrote:
I read this and all I could think of was this:

Spoiler:

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is.....why Chaos sucks more in 40k than fantasy?

And you made me pause High on Fire to listen to that Vipoid. Cuuurrsssee youuuu!

 Platuan4th wrote:

Cthulhu was never ethereal, though. The Old Ones and Elder Gods having actual physical form in the real world has always been a thing in Lovecraft's literature. That's part of the horror is that these beings are even able to exist on the physical plane. Even Azathoth has a massive corporeal form at the center of the Milky Way, though whether it's solid, liquid, or nebular gas surrounding his Super Massive Black Hole-esque maw is the real guess.

I was meaning ethereal in terms of spooky/scary. My point remains though, Cthulhu is this terrifying nightmare beast that drives people mad just trying to comprehend it, then it gets taken out by a boat. Literally beaten the same way as a Disney villain.

 Gert wrote:
[spoiler]

 vipoid wrote:

You know Cthulhu (by far the most famous Lovecraftian horror) was rammed by a boat and killed*, right?

Yes, fighting the Lovecraftian monsters isn't the point but it's not as if it never happens.

well... it built him a very nice house