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In the book there’s a recurring theme throughout and it’s even explicitly stated a few times how the afterlife works in 40k

A Word Bearer Apostle explains that everybody who dies, unless you walk the Eightfold Path, has their soul immediately destroyed by Daemons and a handful of Psykers can live on for longer tormented by Daemons. Veneration of the Emperor does nothing and the Apostle even goes so far as to say no single soul has ever protected.

Now I wasn’t sure if the author was going to do some of twist at the end. Given the utter roasting of the traitors in this book I was really sure we might see a counter point to the Word Bearer Apostles ideas. But given that he didn’t I am going to assume ADB isn’t being ironic and we as the reader should take that as read.

See I don’t think that makes a lot of sense:

Why is it scary to die twice? Once your soul is annihilated then that’s the end of your troubles. That’s not a scary revelation at all. If only a handful of psykers suffer eternal damnation and there is no afterlife; well that’s kind of missing the point. Hell works because your eternal soul will be punished for all eternity. The fear comes from there being no finality to death.Just being a quick snack for a Daemon reduces that down to them just being another predator.

How do you explain Saint Celestine, Saint Sabbat and the Legion of the Damned? In Titan Death we even get a full POV of a Princeps who dies and daemons begin to feed on her before a great golden light scares them away and she joins with the Machine God.

What was your take on that? Do you think ADB was presenting that as given, being ambivalent, or fully aware that the reader would know of other examples that don’t match the Apostles description?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why is it scary to die twice?

Because nothingness is itself scary.

Because once you die in the warp you go to an even worse hell.

Because you only hope he's right and you die instantly.

Because silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp. You are instantly consumed by demons, but it also takes a literal eternity of suffering for that consumption to happen. In fact, you're probably consumed in infinitely many ways by infinitely many demons, both simultaneously and sequentially. And don't think that once you've been consumed that's the end of it, there's still a lot more consumption to be done and all of it is going to be extreme suffering. You'll probably be eaten by demons that don't even exist yet, just to be extra thorough.

How do you explain Saint Celestine, Saint Sabbat and the Legion of the Damned?

The priest of a cult was preaching a false religion, just like every other priest in every other cult. I'm sure he believes how it works but he's simply deluded and reality doesn't care about what lies you believe or how passionately you preach them. Or maybe he's right and all those other characters are nothing more than lies told by other false prophets. Or maybe both sides are right, because, again, silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why is it scary to die twice?

Because nothingness is itself scary.

Because once you die in the warp you go to an even worse hell.

Because you only hope he's right and you die instantly.

Because silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp. You are instantly consumed by demons, but it also takes a literal eternity of suffering for that consumption to happen. In fact, you're probably consumed in infinitely many ways by infinitely many demons, both simultaneously and sequentially. And don't think that once you've been consumed that's the end of it, there's still a lot more consumption to be done and all of it is going to be extreme suffering. You'll probably be eaten by demons that don't even exist yet, just to be extra thorough.

How do you explain Saint Celestine, Saint Sabbat and the Legion of the Damned?

The priest of a cult was preaching a false religion, just like every other priest in every other cult. I'm sure he believes how it works but he's simply deluded and reality doesn't care about what lies you believe or how passionately you preach them. Or maybe he's right and all those other characters are nothing more than lies told by other false prophets. Or maybe both sides are right, because, again, silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp.

But that’s just it. ADB isn’t being ambivalent with the reader. We literally see many cases of souls instantly destroyed. He makes a clear distinction between the souls of the few who are tormented for eternity and the mere food which awaits a mortal. That makes it something very different than the eternity of suffering that makes hell terrifying. So in this story is just a second death.

Sleep isn’t terrifying.

Because the author shows us many examples to confirm the Priests belief. The counter points I list are from other novels under different authors. So I am not sure whether he’s calling our attention to this inconsistency or if his take on Chaos is that this is how it works. If he had wanted to be more ambivalent he would have introduced an instance that called to question the Priests belief. He does eventually knock the Word Bearer but not over this particular point.

We have novels where you have Celestine POV and people have had conversations with her and everything. So the character is no more made up than the Chaos Gods.

There are plenty of other examples of death not being the immediate end of existence - for example Grey Knights ghost knights, or the apparition from old Kill Team.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Sleep isn’t terrifying.

Sleep is temporary. A transitory existence between two conscious states.

Death as the cessation of existence and consciousness is not even slightly comparable to going to bed, get fething real.

Sleep should be terrifying. Our consciousness stops and nobody knows why! Every time you go to sleep there is a very real (small to begin with, and ever increasing) chance of you just not waking up.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Why is it scary to die twice?

Because nothingness is itself scary.

Because once you die in the warp you go to an even worse hell.

Because you only hope he's right and you die instantly.

Because silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp. You are instantly consumed by demons, but it also takes a literal eternity of suffering for that consumption to happen. In fact, you're probably consumed in infinitely many ways by infinitely many demons, both simultaneously and sequentially. And don't think that once you've been consumed that's the end of it, there's still a lot more consumption to be done and all of it is going to be extreme suffering. You'll probably be eaten by demons that don't even exist yet, just to be extra thorough.

How do you explain Saint Celestine, Saint Sabbat and the Legion of the Damned?

The priest of a cult was preaching a false religion, just like every other priest in every other cult. I'm sure he believes how it works but he's simply deluded and reality doesn't care about what lies you believe or how passionately you preach them. Or maybe he's right and all those other characters are nothing more than lies told by other false prophets. Or maybe both sides are right, because, again, silly mortal concepts of time and causality do not apply in the warp.

But that’s just it. ADB isn’t being ambivalent with the reader. We literally see many cases of souls instantly destroyed. He makes a clear distinction between the souls of the few who are tormented for eternity and the mere food which awaits a mortal. That makes it something very different than the eternity of suffering that makes hell terrifying. So in this story is just a second death.

Sleep isn’t terrifying.

Because the author shows us many examples to confirm the Priests belief. The counter points I list are from other novels under different authors. So I am not sure whether he’s calling our attention to this inconsistency or if his take on Chaos is that this is how it works. If he had wanted to be more ambivalent he would have introduced an instance that called to question the Priests belief. He does eventually knock the Word Bearer but not over this particular point.

We have novels where you have Celestine POV and people have had conversations with her and everything. So the character is no more made up than the Chaos Gods.

Don't make me tap the sign explaining that Black Library holds the position that all their books are subject to unreliable narration/"everything is canon, not everything is true", etc. Just because you read about these things happening, doesn't mean they "actually happened" within the context of the lore.

Plus there's Kharn and Sarrin wandering around the Conqueror, apparently dead.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
The counter points I list are from other novels under different authors.

Yep, and here you find the fundamental truth of 40k lore: it is full of contradictions and everyone has their own personal version of how it works. ADB is no more or less of an authority than anyone else on this subject.

I'm not sure having your soul destroyed is meant to be "scary" exactly. I mean, there's the whole existential dread thing and all that. But I think the point of souls being shredded away to nothing is that they add bleakness rather than fear. All those imperials going through so much pain and grueling toil and all sorts of nastiness because they believe that in the end they'll stand at the Emperor's side... And then it turns out they're just dust in the wind after all.

Eternal torment would probably be less pleasant for the dead, but it still has that metal guitar solo quality and maybe a glimmer of hope that their soul will somehow slip free eventually. (For in strange aeons, even death may die.) But be utterly destroyed? That's a sudden, anti-climactic quiet following all the metal music's buildup. That space marine you spent three novels following before he died is gone, and everything you saw him go through was ultimately pointless.

Fortunately, the setting has psykers/eldar who can suffer more or less indefinitely so you can also enjoy the eternal torment thing if that's what you're into!

I mean, the concern about eternal torment or having your soul consumed thing is really only a thing if people notice, which I'm not convinced that they do. As others pointed out, when you fall asleep your consciousness basically stops. I would assume the same when you die. If you have a soul... then you are completely unaware as to what happens to it and won't experience any of what happens to it. So if GWs writers want me to gasp in shock about souls being consumed by daemons or being eternally tormented or whatever, I'm just going to blink, shrug my shoulders, and say "ok", because its utterly meaningless tripe. I mean - I guess it *might* mean something for the psykers who are tormented for an eternity, simply because I guess being a psyker involves an expanded consciousness or something like that - so they *might* continue their consciousness into the afterlife, but for the vast majority its a big black nothing.

What happens to your soul if you walk the 8 fold path

chaos0xomega wrote:
I mean, the concern about eternal torment or having your soul consumed thing is really only a thing if people notice, which I'm not convinced that they do. As others pointed out, when you fall asleep your consciousness basically stops. I would assume the same when you die. If you have a soul... then you are completely unaware as to what happens to it and won't experience any of what happens to it. So if GWs writers want me to gasp in shock about souls being consumed by daemons or being eternally tormented or whatever, I'm just going to blink, shrug my shoulders, and say "ok", because its utterly meaningless tripe. I mean - I guess it *might* mean something for the psykers who are tormented for an eternity, simply because I guess being a psyker involves an expanded consciousness or something like that - so they *might* continue their consciousness into the afterlife, but for the vast majority its a big black nothing.

To me, I think it's less about the individuals within the story and more about the impact on the audience. Complete oblivion isn't necessarily "scary" to the audience, but it does invite you to pause and consider how futile all these cranked-to-eleven happenings in the 41st millenium end up being. Which is kind of bleak and thus a nice seasoning for the setting.

In a setting of inherently unreliable narrators, I’d wager a Word Bearer Dark Apostle bad mouthing The Emperor is right up there among the most unreliable of unreliable narrators.

Also…how does he know? Like, truly know? All their Lore is derived from Daemonic advice.

If The Emperor is a potential or nascent god, wouldn’t you want to ensure the tub thumping lunatics were thoroughly lied to, just in case they have a change of faith?

It's ambiguous as to what happens to a soul after death.

We see cases of souls being devoured by daemons after death, but we also see cases of souls joining up with their gods after death(harlequins).

It's worth bearing in mind that we even have a case of a soul being devoured and torn into shreds after death by daemons, and then pieced back together before being brought back to life(Erebus brings Cyrene back to life in Betrayer, also written by ADB).

I would say what happens to the soul of a particular god varies depending on how that soul has served the god in question and how powerful the influence of the god in question is over the area the soul is in at the time of it's death(eg. If Nurgle is waxing in power over an area, he will have the ability to gobble up the souls that should be destined for other gods).

SideSwipe wrote:
It's ambiguous as to what happens to a soul after death.

We see cases of souls being devoured by daemons after death, but we also see cases of souls joining up with their gods after death(harlequins).

It's worth bearing in mind that we even have a case of a soul being devoured and torn into shreds after death by daemons, and then pieced back together before being brought back to life(Erebus brings Cyrene back to life in Betrayer, also written by ADB).

I would say what happens to the soul of a particular god varies depending on how that soul has served the god in question and how powerful the influence of the god in question is over the area the soul is in at the time of it's death(eg. If Nurgle is waxing in power over an area, he will have the ability to gobble up the souls that should be destined for other gods).

I basically agree with all that, but I'd also point out that what happens post-death seems a lot less ambiguous when it comes to eldar. Eldar souls are all made of tougher stuff than your average human, so they tend to stick around in the warp and suffer longer. It appears that being "in tune" with a given god or that god's purview can bring you straight to that god upon death. So a harlequin goes to Cegorach upon death because they're basically bound to the laughing god in a similar fashion to astropaths being bound to the Emperor or a chaos worshipper being marked by a god. The solitaire is in-tune with Cegorach by virtue of being a harlequin, but he's also very in-tune with Slaanesh by virtue of his role. Exarchs would presumably be very in-tune with Khaine, but Khaine got kicked out of the warp by Slaanesh. The entity in the warp most in-tune with eldar is presumably Slaanesh by virtue of originally being an eldar god and by virtue of her purview (excess) being something that the eldar psyche is extremely prone to.

tldr; the "rules" for the eldar afterlife seem pretty consistent and predictable. So harlies joining Cegorach upon death doesn't seem like it adds ambiguity to the situation.

mrFickle wrote:
What happens to your soul if you walk the 8 fold path

.. maybe, MAYBE you become a deamon prince.

The background for souls and the warp has been around for ages.

Only the eldar have souls powerful enough to retain consciousness after death, originally floating around in the warp until they reincarnated in a new body.

All other species' souls on death dissipate into the warp, not able to hold onto consciousness. They exist in the warp, but aren't conscious so can't be tortured. They just merge back into the warp energy. There is no afterlife. Sure chaos god could probably keep a soul conscious specifically to torture it in their realm, but that's the exception not the norm.

Any references to 'ghosts', saints etc are psychic projections or manifestations born from the faith of humanity. This is also true of the chaos marines. Their only true salvation is to attain daemon princedom.

I don't think princeps merge with THE machine god (if it exists), they can sometimes merge with a much more local machine god... their titan.

Imperial titans can have a sort of mini soul pool, like a not as good version of the soul pool in an Eldar titan.

Imperial Titans are sometimes described as being a bit like daemons. In Master of Mankind they behave in some similar ways, like going into battle shouting their names.

In Echoes of Eternity, titans are sometimes referred to as godlings. Angron, with his Daemonic sense of the world, sees titans as 'false-godlings', i.e. collections of soul-stuff, something somewhat like the chaos gods in miniature.

There are interesting twisted reflections in the Siege series. What we see play out in Echoes of Eternity is both imperial and heretic titan crews merge with their titans. But on the chaos side it happens while they're alive, against their will/consent, and is also a physical merging.

With Titans, that’s more a side effect of the Mind Impulse Unit, the control system by which the Titan, with sufficient training, becomes an extension of the Princep’s own body.

It’s all technological, but as the data flows back and forth, impressions are left. So you get a data ghost of a sort, which remains entirely technological. Echoes of the thoughts and memories of previous Princeps, merging with the very basic AI of the Titan (Warhounds encoded as pack predators, Warlords and I think Reavers as Bears).

The same is true of the Throne Mechanicum in Knight suits - though perhaps more worryingly, that piece of tech actively affects its pilot, enhancing their loyalty.

As for souls in the warp? It’s any sufficiently powerful soul that can carry over consciousness, not just Eldar. Lesser souls just dissipate, becoming part of what I suppose one could call the primordial soup of the sea of souls.

If we go right back to some of the very earliest Eldar background, that transition was part of the Ynnead plan, and the reason behind Waystones, Soulstones and Infinity Circuits. Short version is with the Infinity Circuits as full as possible, when the last Eldar died, the Craftworlds would merge their Infinity Circuits, and translate to The Warp as one.

With all those souls United, a new god would be birthed there and then. And the Eldar called that Ynnead.

I’ll need to brush up on the current Ynnead, as I think some bits changed, but I can remember what and how much. I do of course recall Eldrad was trying to advance things somewhat and if went a bit wrong. Or at least, not exactly to plan,

 Hellebore wrote:
The background for souls and the warp has been around for ages.

Only the eldar have souls powerful enough to retain consciousness after death, originally floating around in the warp until they reincarnated in a new body.

All other species' souls on death dissipate into the warp, not able to hold onto consciousness. They exist in the warp, but aren't conscious so can't be tortured. They just merge back into the warp energy. There is no afterlife. Sure chaos god could probably keep a soul conscious specifically to torture it in their realm, but that's the exception not the norm.

Any references to 'ghosts', saints etc are psychic projections or manifestations born from the faith of humanity. This is also true of the chaos marines. Their only true salvation is to attain daemon princedom.

See I think that’s a bad bit of story.

Take the idea of the soul from Christianity. If you believe that your soul is immortal, that places an enormous weight over what happens when you die. You could be cursed to suffer an eternity of hellfire and damnation if you lived a life of sin.

It’s odd that the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium has a much tamer and kinder version of Hell. Where oh you just sink into the primordial soup immediately like a warm bath and forget yourself. That’s not terrifying. That’s not scary at all. No more than a normal death.

Celestine has normal conversations with Greyfax. She isn’t just a simulacra person. Again, it’s more interesting if the character is who they say they are instead of just some kind of illusion.

Like how ADB says at multiple points in the novel that the Daemon Primarches are just Chaos spirits masquerading as exaggerated versions instead of actually being corrupted versions of the Primarches. Indeed he implies that all Chaos Worshippers are like this. Well:

1) That’s not very interesting as a story. It’s better if the Primarches fell to the Dark Side instead of just being an illusion or Daemon impersonating them.

2) That would mean everything the Imperium does to Chaos worshippers is justified because they’re just immortal Daemons impersonating people and puppeting their corpses for fun.

I just think it’s a better story if the soul is immortal and souls corrupted by Chaos aren’t just Daemons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In a setting of inherently unreliable narrators, I’d wager a Word Bearer Dark Apostle bad mouthing The Emperor is right up there among the most unreliable of unreliable narrators.

Also…how does he know? Like, truly know? All their Lore is derived from Daemonic advice.

If The Emperor is a potential or nascent god, wouldn’t you want to ensure the tub thumping lunatics were thoroughly lied to, just in case they have a change of faith?

Oh it’s not just him. You get numerous examples like Angron seeing souls swallowed up in rivers of blood. It’s also not just a one time thing. You have the big speech and then numerous examples as he runs through the novel. There’s also not really a counterpoint or example made to challenge this. So I got the impression you’re just meant to accept that. It’s not like at the end of the novel Keeler dies her spirit joins the Emperors Golden Host and she becomes a Living Saint etc etc

You see this is the issue. I love the idea of something being ambiguous in a story as it creates drama. Will Daenerys go full mad queen or save Westeros? But then, you realise that GRRM is a bastard who wants to make the reader suffer, a Burkean Conservative and a cynic. So of course she’s going to go mad and it’s a waste of time to invest in the issue.

40k I think is the same. You have the intro which says that “there is no hope in the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium.” So by definition, there can be no hope in 40k; which is boring. Without hope there is no struggle and without struggle there is no drama. If Keeler or a Sister of Battle says that the Emperor loves us and will protect our souls in the afterlife; that character is just a fool and not ambivalence on which the reader can speculate or to create narrative tension.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Like how ADB says at multiple points in the novel that the Daemon Primarches are just Chaos spirits masquerading as exaggerated versions instead of actually being corrupted versions of the Primarches. Indeed he implies that all Chaos Worshippers are like this. Well:

Wow, all the dumb gak you're saying about how death isn't scary and then you drop this bs? ADB is a fething hack, and people seriously consider this idiot the best BL writer?

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Like how ADB says at multiple points in the novel that the Daemon Primarches are just Chaos spirits masquerading as exaggerated versions instead of actually being corrupted versions of the Primarches. Indeed he implies that all Chaos Worshippers are like this. Well:

Wow, all the dumb gak you're saying about how death isn't scary and then you drop this bs? ADB is a fething hack, and people seriously consider this idiot the best BL writer?

I am not just bringing it up. Look at the topic title very closely, squint if you have to. It’s a specific discussion of what’s in the book Echoes of Eternity by ADB. So of course I am going to bring up what happened in the novel.

It’s not that death isn’t scary in of itself. It’s that being tortured by Daemons for eternity is vastly more scary than a brief pain followed by nothingness. There is a reason many religions hold this over people and focus so much on it. An eternity of pain is much worse than sleep. If you don’t think so please enlighten me as to why you’d rather Daemons torture your soul for eternity?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
You see this is the issue. I love the idea of something being ambiguous in a story as it creates drama. Will Daenerys go full mad queen or save Westeros? But then, you realise that GRRM is a bastard who wants to make the reader suffer, a Burkean Conservative and a cynic. So of course she’s going to go mad and it’s a waste of time to invest in the issue.

You definitely don't understand GRRM if that's your take, and he's never claimed to be deep.

While I find the Imperial Faith played straight to be generally bad storytelling, ADB's take is just one guy. The 40k afterlife is oftentimes mysterious, despite the fact that we know that souls reside in the Warp.

Hecaton wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
You see this is the issue. I love the idea of something being ambiguous in a story as it creates drama. Will Daenerys go full mad queen or save Westeros? But then, you realise that GRRM is a bastard who wants to make the reader suffer, a Burkean Conservative and a cynic. So of course she’s going to go mad and it’s a waste of time to invest in the issue.

You definitely don't understand GRRM if that's your take, and he's never claimed to be deep.

While I find the Imperial Faith played straight to be generally bad storytelling, ADB's take is just one guy. The 40k afterlife is oftentimes mysterious, despite the fact that we know that souls reside in the Warp.

Man has a lot to say for somebody who claims he’s not deep.

He did an interview where he actually laid out his political leanings during the Vietnam War. I am paraphrasing but it was along the lines of: “some people wanted to tear the whole system down but I just thought if we voted some good people in things would get better”. That’s is conservatism. Suspicion and gaslighting of protesting for change. Excessive belief that the system can be worked with if left alone. So it’s very clear, Dany is the danger because she wants to upset the status quo and everything would be better if left to the top men. She should just stay in Essos and the world will look after itself. Her trying to be a saviour will only get people killed. If you know that’s George’s beef then you can just infer the story and it’s not interesting or suspenseful.

No I disagree. If the Imperial Faith has some truth behind it then that creates more questions. Your characters can have crisis of faith. They can doubt. It creates drama. To go back to A Song of Ice and Fire. I know George is an atheist and there is an anti religious undertone to the work. So, do I just mentally switch off and assume every religious character is cray cray. Or, are you supposed to wonder if there is something to this mystery. Is there something to all these prophecies and all the magic. That, again, it draws the reader in and makes them engage with the source material.

Take another example. Dune. I had not seen the OG film, but I had watched Quinsideas on Youtube where he did the philosophical breakdown of the whole thing. So watching the new movie I had zero empathy for the characters and was like okay, fascist imagery etc etc he’s a fake chosen one who’s going to doom the galaxy to pain and misery. But I was just struck how spelt out all that was. None of it is a twist. Like I didn’t think there was anything to it. Was very beautiful film but it’s spelt out to you that he’s just a fraud and you have no reason to like Paul Atriedes. He’s a witch and his whole family are monsters. Why should I care about this guy? I am not saying it doesn’t have a message but that’s not the same thing as being engaging or interesting.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Man has a lot to say for somebody who claims he’s not deep.

He did an interview where he actually laid out his political leanings during the Vietnam War. I am paraphrasing but it was along the lines of: “some people wanted to tear the whole system down but I just thought if we voted some good people in things would get better”. That’s is conservatism. Suspicion and gaslighting of protesting for change. Excessive belief that the system can be worked with if left alone. So it’s very clear, Dany is the danger because she wants to upset the status quo and everything would be better if left to the top men. She should just stay in Essos and the world will look after itself. Her trying to be a saviour will only get people killed. If you know that’s George’s beef then you can just infer the story and it’s not interesting or suspenseful.

Wow, you totally misunderstood his viewpoint. You also misunderstood GRRM as being anti-protest.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
No I disagree. If the Imperial Faith has some truth behind it then that creates more questions. Your characters can have crisis of faith. They can doubt. It creates drama. To go back to A Song of Ice and Fire. I know George is an atheist and there is an anti religious undertone to the work. So, do I just mentally switch off and assume every religious character is cray cray. Or, are you supposed to wonder if there is something to this mystery. Is there something to all these prophecies and all the magic. That, again, it draws the reader in and makes them engage with the source material.

ASOAIF does a good job of putting religion into that nebulous category. Melisandre's religion is wack as feth but she has some real powers granted via her faith, apparently.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Take another example. Dune. I had not seen the OG film, but I had watched Quinsideas on Youtube where he did the philosophical breakdown of the whole thing. So watching the new movie I had zero empathy for the characters and was like okay, fascist imagery etc etc he’s a fake chosen one who’s going to doom the galaxy to pain and misery. But I was just struck how spelt out all that was. None of it is a twist. Like I didn’t think there was anything to it. Was very beautiful film but it’s spelt out to you that he’s just a fraud and you have no reason to like Paul Atriedes. He’s a witch and his whole family are monsters. Why should I care about this guy? I am not saying it doesn’t have a message but that’s not the same thing as being engaging or interesting.

Is your take that Dune is pro-fascist? So you received this uncritically from a youtube creator and now can't formulate your own opinion?

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
The background for souls and the warp has been around for ages.

Only the eldar have souls powerful enough to retain consciousness after death, originally floating around in the warp until they reincarnated in a new body.

All other species' souls on death dissipate into the warp, not able to hold onto consciousness. They exist in the warp, but aren't conscious so can't be tortured. They just merge back into the warp energy. There is no afterlife. Sure chaos god could probably keep a soul conscious specifically to torture it in their realm, but that's the exception not the norm.

Any references to 'ghosts', saints etc are psychic projections or manifestations born from the faith of humanity. This is also true of the chaos marines. Their only true salvation is to attain daemon princedom.

See I think that’s a bad bit of story.

Take the idea of the soul from Christianity. If you believe that your soul is immortal, that places an enormous weight over what happens when you die. You could be cursed to suffer an eternity of hellfire and damnation if you lived a life of sin.

It’s odd that the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium has a much tamer and kinder version of Hell. Where oh you just sink into the primordial soup immediately like a warm bath and forget yourself. That’s not terrifying. That’s not scary at all. No more than a normal death.

Celestine has normal conversations with Greyfax. She isn’t just a simulacra person. Again, it’s more interesting if the character is who they say they are instead of just some kind of illusion.

Like how ADB says at multiple points in the novel that the Daemon Primarches are just Chaos spirits masquerading as exaggerated versions instead of actually being corrupted versions of the Primarches. Indeed he implies that all Chaos Worshippers are like this. Well:

1) That’s not very interesting as a story. It’s better if the Primarches fell to the Dark Side instead of just being an illusion or Daemon impersonating them.

2) That would mean everything the Imperium does to Chaos worshippers is justified because they’re just immortal Daemons impersonating people and puppeting their corpses for fun.

I just think it’s a better story if the soul is immortal and souls corrupted by Chaos aren’t just Daemons.

1: just because the metaphysics of 40k works that way doesn't mean ANYONE understands it. It's a conceit from fantasy writing that I absolutely hate - in an ignorant setting people somehow actually know with high accuracy exactly how the universe functions? Our modern world is full of fantastical beliefs on the formation of the universe and how it functions and science has barely scratched the surface of an evidence-based understanding of reality. Yet somehow jeff the crazy understands the universe in a world with swords and peassants?

If you treat 40k like the real world where lots of competing beliefs exist, then you can understand how the metaphysics works without it taking away from how people FEEL/believe about their souls and the afterlife. To use RPG parlance - it's player knowledge, not character knowledge.


2: If ADB is actually apologising away the daemon primarchs and taking away the consequences of their decisions by saying it's not really them doing bad things, then GW have well and truly jumped the shark in their attempt to keep their primarchs as superheros to sell toys....

That is quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard, and I already really hate the concept of perpetuals. They're really doing their damnedest to undermine the original concepts Rick Priestley developed, remove the pathos and tragedy of the deaths of primarchs and the disaster of the Heresy....

Hecaton wrote:

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Man has a lot to say for somebody who claims he’s not deep.

He did an interview where he actually laid out his political leanings during the Vietnam War. I am paraphrasing but it was along the lines of: “some people wanted to tear the whole system down but I just thought if we voted some good people in things would get better”. That’s is conservatism. Suspicion and gaslighting of protesting for change. Excessive belief that the system can be worked with if left alone. So it’s very clear, Dany is the danger because she wants to upset the status quo and everything would be better if left to the top men. She should just stay in Essos and the world will look after itself. Her trying to be a saviour will only get people killed. If you know that’s George’s beef then you can just infer the story and it’s not interesting or suspenseful.

Wow, you totally misunderstood his viewpoint. You also misunderstood GRRM as being anti-protest.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
No I disagree. If the Imperial Faith has some truth behind it then that creates more questions. Your characters can have crisis of faith. They can doubt. It creates drama. To go back to A Song of Ice and Fire. I know George is an atheist and there is an anti religious undertone to the work. So, do I just mentally switch off and assume every religious character is cray cray. Or, are you supposed to wonder if there is something to this mystery. Is there something to all these prophecies and all the magic. That, again, it draws the reader in and makes them engage with the source material.

ASOAIF does a good job of putting religion into that nebulous category. Melisandre's religion is wack as feth but she has some real powers granted via her faith, apparently.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
Take another example. Dune. I had not seen the OG film, but I had watched Quinsideas on Youtube where he did the philosophical breakdown of the whole thing. So watching the new movie I had zero empathy for the characters and was like okay, fascist imagery etc etc he’s a fake chosen one who’s going to doom the galaxy to pain and misery. But I was just struck how spelt out all that was. None of it is a twist. Like I didn’t think there was anything to it. Was very beautiful film but it’s spelt out to you that he’s just a fraud and you have no reason to like Paul Atriedes. He’s a witch and his whole family are monsters. Why should I care about this guy? I am not saying it doesn’t have a message but that’s not the same thing as being engaging or interesting.

Is your take that Dune is pro-fascist? So you received this uncritically from a youtube creator and now can't formulate your own opinion?

No, that’s him saying that he hated the more confrontational elements of the civil rights movement. You don’t focus on that unless you are a reactionary who’s more concerned about people losing their cool than addressing actual problems. Dany is clearly intended as a stand in for Napoleon and the French Revolution. Just as Edmund Burke said at the time, something perhaps we’ll intentioned that the mob and ambitious men took advantage of to destroy society and cause untold damage. If Dany had simply let things be then everything would have worked out.

Not really. Melisandre is not being mysterious at all. She and Stannis are set up as satirical critiques of things George does not like in fantasy. Once you know the authors agenda it’s very easy to predict that her faith and religion is a problem getting in the way of rationally dealing with things. It’s another form of hubris that George contrasts to the sober, rational and essentially atheist Starks. Who, you know, he never acknowledges are complete hypocrites for expecting to rule half a continent as absolute monarchies and upon the backs of peasants. But you know, it’s only Dany and Stannis who get this criticism.

ADB take isn’t mysterious either. He states, openly, a nihilist position that the reader is in no position to challnge. Compare that to say Gaunts Ghosts where the conclusion of a trilogy ends after a long period of doubt with Saint Sabbat showing up. That creates a climatic moment for our character and lends weight to their struggles because it surprises you when despite their doubts their faith is rewarded. It’s only at the very conclusion of the story that the doubt and mystery gets removed. It’s just there have been that many 40k stories since then that you get problems instead of a one and done.

Dune is clearly and explicitly anti fascist, anti religion and anti “hubris”. It’s animal farm in space. I am not sure what made you think otherwise since I am saying that makes the characters unsympathetic card board cut outs. Paul Atreides is not the hero and is a cautionary against the cult of personality. He’s established in the opening segment as being a conjured up fraud to manipulate the simple minds by creating a false messiah. Thus, it’s leaning into centuries old critiques of religion being a means of social control. There is nothing new or interesting here and I didn’t understand what people could find original or compelling about this.

I did watch the video which did colour my view but I was just surprised by how spelt out that all was throughout the film. No effort is made to trick or fool you into thinking Paul and the Atreides are nice people who aren’t for using lied to get what they want.It seemed to just assume that you would still like Paul Atreides after they do nothing to make you like him and tell you he’s a witch created to manipulate everyone. But to me, such a story is: “okay the author has stated his thesis he is now going to present a series of situations that validate this”. But this was already done in Animal Farm so it had nothing to add and frankly AF does it more succinctly. It’s not a story where you can relate or like the characters. It’s a piece of political satire that’s outdone by a childrens story. You don’t actually want or care about the Atreides because they’re just scum.

BrianDavion wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
What happens to your soul if you walk the 8 fold path

.. maybe, MAYBE you become a deamon prince.

So it’s ascension or annihilation? No other choices?

mrFickle wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
What happens to your soul if you walk the 8 fold path

.. maybe, MAYBE you become a deamon prince.

So it’s ascension or annihilation? No other choices?

yup.
and even if you ascend you're essentially becoming a shard of a god of the warp anyway and if that happens... how much of you is left?