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 Lord Damocles wrote:

 Gert wrote:

The people who fought the Empire have memories of a time when worlds were free from the grasp of tyranny and people could speak their mind.

Unless you're a slave, which the Republic was basically fine with...

Tatooine wasn't part of the Republic, it was owned by the Hutts. The Empire actually expanded into it, even though the Hutts remained very powerful

 Flinty wrote:
Maybe not galaxy wide, but there are individual systems and small networks that get bulldozered back into the Imperium that arguably provide a better individual level of experience.

Are there though? At the time of the Great Crusade maybe but by M41 separatist movements aren't formed because populations want to install a democratic system. Even the Nova Terra Interregnum was just about the Ur-Council having more power for themselves rather than wanting to improve the lives of their people.

 Overread wrote:
Heck when you consider the timeline of Starwars and all that the Prequels present, it really is also only a stone's-throw since the Republic was a thing. Meanwhile the Imperium wasn't so much a huge uprising as it was a defensive move that slid more and more into the Emperor's style of control. The whole "he dissolved the senate" part at the start of A New Hope is almost a throw away moment to explain how threatening the Deathstar is going to be, yet with the Prequel understanding you realise that its actually a massive thing that shifts the full control to the Emperor alone

Exactly, the Emperor had a little over thirty years to establish his place as ruler of the galaxy and he couldn't manage his crowning event without rebel groups immediately forming against him.
Those who opposed the Emperor from a point of political freedom rather than being Chaos or Xenos are long gone by M41.

 Gert wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Maybe not galaxy wide, but there are individual systems and small networks that get bulldozered back into the Imperium that arguably provide a better individual level of experience.

Are there though? At the time of the Great Crusade maybe but by M41 separatist movements aren't formed because populations want to install a democratic system. Even the Nova Terra Interregnum was just about the Ur-Council having more power for themselves rather than wanting to improve the lives of their people.

 Overread wrote:
Heck when you consider the timeline of Starwars and all that the Prequels present, it really is also only a stone's-throw since the Republic was a thing. Meanwhile the Imperium wasn't so much a huge uprising as it was a defensive move that slid more and more into the Emperor's style of control. The whole "he dissolved the senate" part at the start of A New Hope is almost a throw away moment to explain how threatening the Deathstar is going to be, yet with the Prequel understanding you realise that its actually a massive thing that shifts the full control to the Emperor alone

Exactly, the Emperor had a little over thirty years to establish his place as ruler of the galaxy and he couldn't manage his crowning event without rebel groups immediately forming against him.
Those who opposed the Emperor from a point of political freedom rather than being Chaos or Xenos are long gone by M41.

I actually think it would have been really neat to have films 7-8-9 be a lot sooner after the events of Return of the Jedi just so we could potentially see the political rebuilding of the Republic with all the in-fighting and arguments and the fact that when the Emperor died there were likely a lot of different rebel groups and systems that suddenly rose up overnight. Basically the full turmoil of trying to rebuild a galactic republic.

I may have skipped it in the thread, but wasn't there some kind of it with the Severan Dominate? I can't remember the whole lore around this for the life of me, but IIRC it was more or less along those lines.

Although it still was pretty much a petty head of sector deciding at the drop of a hat that zog it, I'm better off on my own and didn't turn quite as good as expected.

I'll check it on the internet.

Anyway I don't see human secessionists threatened by Chaos in the first place, I'm not sure they'd be at much more risk than the imperium and would just lack the sufficient ressources to crush a snowballing chaos cult. And that'd be their problem. To survive as fleshy humans in such a galaxy would be hard, most other big races from the setting would probably be able to wipe them out quickly and the imperium would laugh condescendingly.

But in the end while I can't imagine a whole race or faction, like official one, there's nothing stopping us from imagining our secessionist humans more or less successful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Severan_Dominate

It mentions the threat of rogue psyker that might be quite bad, I don't know how we can assess the chances they'd understood clearly the risk they represent and deal with them. Anyway there you go.

From what I can find the Dominate is no better than the Imperium it split from.
It maintains a version of the Imperial Cult to enhance the power of its ruler and has its own political enforcers to keep the people in line.
It's still a totalitarian state led by a despot who manipulated his way into power.

 Gert wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Maybe not galaxy wide, but there are individual systems and small networks that get bulldozered back into the Imperium that arguably provide a better individual level of experience.

Are there though? At the time of the Great Crusade maybe but by M41 separatist movements aren't formed because populations want to install a democratic system. Even the Nova Terra Interregnum was just about the Ur-Council having more power for themselves rather than wanting to improve the lives of their people.

It's fair to say that after ten millennia of totalitarianism and societal brutalisation you're not going to get popular uprisings seeking liberal representative government, a Nihilus revolt is more likely to start out as a matter of purely short term survival ("they're stripping our PDF bare, who will defend us from the next Drukhari slave raid?" or "our population is already starving and they've upped the grain tithe demands again!") rather than ideological differences. Once they've burned that bridge though, at some point there's going to be a moment where the ringleaders look around and say "okay, we said no to Terra so I guess we're all traitors ... what do we do now?", but this still being 40k their answer is unlikely to be "hold free and fair democratic elections".

Though, one of the fun things about the idea of depicting multiple rebellions stemming from the breakdown of Imperial control, rather than a single specific rebellion as a distinct faction, is that it sidesteps disagreements over "what does the rebel alliance think/do/look like?". If everyone can build their own to represent a different group within a wave of seccessions, there's no "wrong" answer.

 Gert wrote:
From what I can find the Dominate is no better than the Imperium it split from.
It maintains a version of the Imperial Cult to enhance the power of its ruler and has its own political enforcers to keep the people in line.
It's still a totalitarian state led by a despot who manipulated his way into power.

Yeah kind of, I agree.

It'd take it more as an example of decently sized human faction going on its own with some sort of success.

The thing is because it's contained entirely within one RPG sourcebook, it will never get expanded upon beyond "it exists at the given timeframe of the setting of this book", which is 779.M41.
There's no real way to know if it was actually successful but the book hinted pretty heavily that it wasn't going to last.

Can't know as of now yeah, I kind of sit on the fence whether I'd like an end to be written for it or if I'm satisfied with the fact it's stalled as of now. Doubt GW will ever care to further it anyway.

But that's still an instance of a relatively sizable secession, along with badad, but badad had space marines in good number so it not quite the same kettle of fish.

Anyway, I just thought about it and thought it could be interesting to discuss it a little in this thread.

 Crimson wrote:

 Gert wrote:
I agree but the point people seem to be making is that they don't want just a custom paint job with Imperial Guard rules.

If one wanted to give such a faction district identity from IG, they could employ some xenos technology and blend it with the imperial stuff.

A while ago I did some concept art for mercenaries I called "Fringerunners" that operate in the galactic eastern fringe outside the jurisdiction of the Imperium.



"Fringerunners are mercenaries that hail from the galactic fringes outside the control of the Imperium. They freely traffic with the xenos, utilise forbidden technologies and spread heretical ideals, and thus are considered extremely dangerous by the Imperial authorities."

These models would look good on a Stargrave table.

IMO chaos aren’t evil and they aren’t a rebel alliance. Choas is just just chaotic. Within chaos there are good, evil and neutral all but with all things in 40K it’s a matter of perspective.

The chaos gods just want more chaos, Khorne wants skulls which seems evil to us but not to members of a blood cult. And nurgle just exists because of entropy, can’t blame pappa for that.

Abbadon wants to rebuild the empire and hates the emperor and Horus equally and is t really a fan of the chaotic powers.

Fabius wants to complete the emperors work by replacing Homo sapiens with Homo Novus in the belief that they can truly create a human dominated galaxy. But if he’s got to make cloak out of your skin to do I then that’s what he’s gonna do!

The empire is just on rinse and repeat of sacrificing billions to maintain an empire that is falling apart at the seams and treats those willing to make a sacrifice with less than contempt.

But they all think they are morally correct

No the setting does not need and should not have that for several reasons.

First from a gameplay perspective it’s very likely this army would play like the guard, squats, or Tau. If it’s within the imperium it will absolutely mirror the imperial guard since that material will be the most available. A quick conversion project quickly turns a guard army into a rebel force. If you want more advanced technology for your open minded rebels then the Tau or squats are a good template. For the uprising feel used genestealer cults either without the more Tyranid units or convert them to abhumans and mutants rising against their oppressor. Frankly any of these armies can be converted to that ascetic. If the game adds more it should be a new Xeno faction or expanding the Tau alliance beyond just the kroot and vespids.

From a lore perspective I don’t think that idea really works in the setting. It’s not an issue of ideology either or how brutal the universe. The problem lies in the Imperial Navy. The Imperial Navy is essentially a direct rip from 18th and early 19th century European navies. Most notably though this means that the ships are run by the officer corps who are brought up in deep tradition and tend to be from wealthier parts of society. It’s telling that very few revolutions or revolts get started by navies until the 20th century. These fleets are stationed away from their home systems as well lessening the chances of sympathy for a revolt. The lack of naval support will isolate any rebellion to a planet that can either be ignored or felt with later. If they somehow got the local battlefleet on board they will still struggle unless they somehow seized a shipyard. Such a system is unlikely to be left lightly defended or left to its own devices.

Even if they have the navy to hold and expand, the second issue becomes resources. The imperium is not setup for independent planets. Production worlds require raw materials form outlying planets and sectors. Hives depend on food brought from the outside worlds as well. Success would require near simultaneous and decisive revolts that seize all the required assets with minimal damage.

The feudal nature of the Imperium makes revolt from within nearly impossible. Success at the planetary level may work but the immediate isolations poses a difficulty. The rebellion will also be against the basically universal human religion. Furthermore there is nothing for these rebels to restore. The imperium is 10000 years old. Any pre imperium tradition might as well be made up for most. Rallying mass support without a unified idea of what comes next would be difficult.

Frankly I don’t think you need a “good” faction. Just because some idiots unironically lionize the imperium, doesn’t mean we need to undercut the entire narrative.

Well okay, all of those reasons apply to the Imperium at it's height, but in an environment like Imperium Nihilus they start to fall apart.

- The Imperial navy can't crush a thousand rebellions and chaos warbands and Xenos incursions all at once, particularly when entire branches of it's own logistic support network have functionally ceased to exist. It's going to have to pick and choose what it responds to and what it allows to continue. In many cases (because the Imperium is not a logical rational organisation) it's going to choose badly and make things worse rather than better by squandering resources on lost causes or ignoring something that later turns out to be critical.

- All the issues of resources you bring up, whilst true, apply just as much to loyalist worlds in Nihilus as potential seccessionists, if not more so, because loyalists are still bound into the system that is failure cascading around them. If your hive is no longer getting supplies from the usual agriworld, and the Imperial authorities are too preoccupied with a trillion other things that are currently on fire to solve that issue, you either sit there peacefully like a good little subject until you and everyone else starves to death, or you take matters into your own hands. And if that means some administration official a zillion light years away has to get out his red ink and stamp your file then so what?

- You don't need a coherent and fully formed competing ideology to start a revolt against the status quo. Many revolts don't start with anything of the sort beyond "the established authority is failing us" and in an environment like Nihilus that's going to be pretty self evident to all but the most devoted Imperial cultist.

- As I said earlier, a secessionist movement against Imperial control doesn't have to be "good guys". They can find a vast range of new and innovative ways to be just as utterly awful as the regime they're trying to supplant.

The part of your post I agree on is that we've got very little chance of seeing this as an official codex faction any time soon, and that there are existing army list templates we can use to bring the secessionist concept to the tabletop using counts-as principles (my ongoing 40k army project is exactly that). But GW clearly wrote the Great Rift/Nihilus setting into the timeline for a reason so they must have some reason for explicitly cooling off Imperial control over half of the galaxy. Asking how the humans of Nihilus respond to that change is an interesting question and it's pretty obvious that one of the potential answers to it would be that some of them go it alone.

The Great Rift exists because 40k had been at 1 second to midnight for like 20 years and it was getting beyond tedious. There are only so many big bad things to introduce before something new needs to happen.
Adding the Rift gave sufficient narrative reasoning for certain things to happen such as Custodes getting back in on the action because the Imperium is desperate or bringing Squats back as the Leagues of Votann who have been pushed out of their holdings at the Galactic Core which was torn apart by the Rift.
Without that, it would just be "Oh yeah no they were here all along but nobody saw them" which is trash.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:
No the setting does not need and should not have that for several reasons.

First from a gameplay perspective it’s very likely this army would play like the guard, squats, or Tau. If it’s within the imperium it will absolutely mirror the imperial guard since that material will be the most available. A quick conversion project quickly turns a guard army into a rebel force. If you want more advanced technology for your open minded rebels then the Tau or squats are a good template. For the uprising feel used genestealer cults either without the more Tyranid units or convert them to abhumans and mutants rising against their oppressor. Frankly any of these armies can be converted to that ascetic. If the game adds more it should be a new Xeno faction or expanding the Tau alliance beyond just the kroot and vespids.

From a lore perspective I don’t think that idea really works in the setting. It’s not an issue of ideology either or how brutal the universe. The problem lies in the Imperial Navy. The Imperial Navy is essentially a direct rip from 18th and early 19th century European navies. Most notably though this means that the ships are run by the officer corps who are brought up in deep tradition and tend to be from wealthier parts of society. It’s telling that very few revolutions or revolts get started by navies until the 20th century. These fleets are stationed away from their home systems as well lessening the chances of sympathy for a revolt. The lack of naval support will isolate any rebellion to a planet that can either be ignored or felt with later. If they somehow got the local battlefleet on board they will still struggle unless they somehow seized a shipyard. Such a system is unlikely to be left lightly defended or left to its own devices.

Even if they have the navy to hold and expand, the second issue becomes resources. The imperium is not setup for independent planets. Production worlds require raw materials form outlying planets and sectors. Hives depend on food brought from the outside worlds as well. Success would require near simultaneous and decisive revolts that seize all the required assets with minimal damage.

The feudal nature of the Imperium makes revolt from within nearly impossible. Success at the planetary level may work but the immediate isolations poses a difficulty. The rebellion will also be against the basically universal human religion. Furthermore there is nothing for these rebels to restore. The imperium is 10000 years old. Any pre imperium tradition might as well be made up for most. Rallying mass support without a unified idea of what comes next would be difficult.

Frankly I don’t think you need a “good” faction. Just because some idiots unironically lionize the imperium, doesn’t mean we need to undercut the entire narrative.

I can certainly see many rebellions in Imperium Nihilus, and not necessarily in the sense of being directly "Down with the Imperium" though I'm sure there would be many of those. There would be many systems, sub-sectors, or whole sectors cut off by the Rift and warp storms from the wider Imperium. Supply chains would have been disrupted. Planets dependent on food or other imports for survival would either starve...or would have to take matters into their own hands which may include getting the necessary goods or services from another world at gunpoint.

While the Imperial Navy in theory is independent of any one world, their officers are often drawn from the nobility of certain worlds, and their postings to a ship or sector may be effectively lifelong. They may start to develop local loyalties and again like the planets themselves, may seek to take matters into their own hands once they are cut off from the wider Imperium.

While some may indeed try to carve out their own pocket empires, I could see some rebellions or secessions using the excuse of "restoring law and order" to the local area in the name of the Imperium, awaiting the day when the Imperium returns. They might even believe it. Then I could see such autonomous regions getting into clashes with each other, as they all claim to represent the Imperium. Sector A demands resources from Sector B in the name of the Imperium. Sector B refuses and rejects Sector A's authority to demand such things. Sector A claims Sector B is secessionist and refusing to aid the Imperium. Sector B accuses Sector A of damaging Imperial interests by demanding ruinous additional tithes that would cause economic dislocation or starvation. Both sectors and their associated fleets go to war, each claiming to be acting in the interests of the Imperium. The Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Mechanicus of both sectors may both either stay neutral or side with their local interests because victory would mean more resources for them.

Behind the scenes, the Inquisition's factions may also be at each other's throats. The Recongregator faction would be inspiring revolts in order to sweep away what they see as the old rotten edifice of bureaucracy in order to rebuild and reform. The Amalatheans want to preserve it. The Istvaanians may support both sides, since a good intense conflict will strengthen the victor whoever it may be and thus the Imperium and humanity as a whole.

The Ecclesiarchy can have its own actual heresies boil over such as the Temple of the Saviour Emperor coming out of the woodwork and saying "See! We told you so all along that faith is the most important thing and the Imperium must be ruled by faith! No more separation of Ecclesiarchy and Administratum!". With warp phenomena, madness, and daemons all over the place post-Rift opening, they may even be right.

There is lots of potential story potential in such human vs human conflict where neither side can be easily dehumanized and dismissed as dupes of Chaos or aliens.

Gameplay-wise I agree though that most of secessionist rebellions could already be represented using some existing variety of army such as the Imperial Guard or Genestealer Cults.

Imperium Nihilus is kind of an interesting one.

Thinking about it, it can’t be all that different from the worlds rediscovered during the Great Crusade.

By skill or luck some worlds and systems might’ve Carried On Regardless. And as such they might well question whether they really want to rejoin the Imperium proper. Others might see a Crusade Fleet and know only relief that they’re no longer alone.

There is drama, intrigue and background revelations to be found there.

For instance, if a given Forgeworld considered itself truly alone? Maybe it started dabbling in Things Normally Frowned Upon, because it’s not as simple as orthodox and heretek in outlook and approach.

One world so isolated may have taken the risks and started producing Automata which may or may not be AI. Provided said AI hasn’t rebelled? That’s a decent defence force.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Imperium Nihilus is kind of an interesting one.

Thinking about it, it can’t be all that different from the worlds rediscovered during the Great Crusade.

By skill or luck some worlds and systems might’ve Carried On Regardless. And as such they might well question whether they really want to rejoin the Imperium proper. Others might see a Crusade Fleet and know only relief that they’re no longer alone.

There is drama, intrigue and background revelations to be found there.

For instance, if a given Forgeworld considered itself truly alone? Maybe it started dabbling in Things Normally Frowned Upon, because it’s not as simple as orthodox and heretek in outlook and approach.

One world so isolated may have taken the risks and started producing Automata which may or may not be AI. Provided said AI hasn’t rebelled? That’s a decent defence force.

I think the main difference is that the great rift has allowed forces from warp space to take more ground-so there should be more planets occupied by demon overlords, cults and the like. Where as during the crusade choas was a bit more low key

Systems bordering the rift itself - on both sides - are likely to be getting saturated with chaotic energy and become more susceptable to daemonic activity, warp cults, etc, just like the land on the banks of a river is likely to become waterlogged.

Deeper into Nihilus and further away from the rift that effect is lessened, but cutting off that half of the galaxy from Terra created a power vacuum since the full resources of the Imperium's military can't just trivially sledgehammer down on anyone stepping out of line any more. That works to the benefit of Chaos followers too, but it also gives breathing space to develop and grow for xenos races, genestealer cults and tau diplomatic overtures, and (the part that we're taking about here) anti-imperial rebellions.

The Baddab Wars where such a rebel alliance.

That the leader fell to chaos several years later is just a bi product.

One could argue the leagues of Votan is a rebel alliance.

 Niiai wrote:
One could argue the leagues of Votan is a rebel alliance.

How?

A human and a cohesive force. They do offer a way beyond the Imperial Way.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A human and a cohesive force. They do offer a way beyond the Imperial Way.

Not to outsiders though, even after being forced out of the Galactic Core from the Great Rift, they're very insular and tight lipped to those not seen as Kin even when working as mercenaries. The fact they're all created via gene skeins and their kindreds are batches of clones made at the same time means the rest of humanity wouldn't be able to intermingle them and would likely form a second-class citizen at best if they were somehow allowed to live as protectorates for the Votann. So you basically have to born as Kin from the Ancestor Cores or you're gak out of luck.

Also, Votann can't really be seen as a rebel alliance because they have nothing they want to restore or rebel against, they were never part of the Imperium, were an offshoot from the DAoT and that human confederation died a long time ago after Old Night and they clearly have very little knowledge of that time to actually want to bring humanity back on that level. With how they're willing to commit planetary destruction with people on it to gain resources, regardless of whose still there on the surface, you can't see them as "good" either. I don't see them as a viable alternative for the teeming masses of humanity when they're basically an exclusive in-club that's pretty isolationist and effectively is a master race away from humanity on a larger scale and independence than space marines.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
A human and a cohesive force. They do offer a way beyond the Imperial Way.

They're not rebels though. At all. They're a full civilisation.

 Gert wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
One could argue the leagues of Votan is a rebel alliance.

How?

At one point they where standar human no? All of that was on board. I don't know weather it is before or after the creation of the imperium, I am not all up on the timeline. But now they are not clasified as humans, but that is just how the imperium have ruled it. They could easaly be clasified as human. And they are a huge network of induviduals who hide how strongly connected and organised they are from the imperium and other races. Essentially free people declearing their independence from the imperium and thriwing.

I am sure others have tryed to do the same, but has not gained enough of indepence to survive and thriwe as well as the Votan has. And certanly not to the same scale they deserve their own faction in a galaxy spanding setting like 40K. The votan er fething rebels man.

The Leagues are believed to be the descendants of the Men of Stone, a species created by humanity during the Golden Age and used as a clone labour force.
The race predates the Imperium by thousands of years.
There were holds that had allied with the Imperium but the wider Leagues aren't affiliated beyond ancient history with humanity as a race, rather than the Imperium as an entity.

 Niiai wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
One could argue the leagues of Votan is a rebel alliance.

How?

At one point they where standar human no? All of that was on board. I don't know weather it is before or after the creation of the imperium, I am not all up on the timeline. But now they are not clasified as humans, but that is just how the imperium have ruled it. They could easaly be clasified as human. And they are a huge network of induviduals who hide how strongly connected and organised they are from the imperium and other races. Essentially free people declearing their independence from the imperium and thriwing.

I am sure others have tryed to do the same, but has not gained enough of indepence to survive and thriwe as well as the Votan has. And certanly not to the same scale they deserve their own faction in a galaxy spanding setting like 40K. The votan er fething rebels man.

Buddy, I think you need to read up on Votann lore more clearly because like Gert and I have said so far, but they are a completely separate independent confederation that can't really be called human except in the loosest sense of ancestry and have never been under the rule of the Imperium. Can't be "fething" rebels if there's nothing to rebel against.

It might help to think of the Kin as Americans are to Britons or other Europeans

Yes, many can trace their lineage back to the British Isles (or indeed other European countries), but the USA is now a culture and society in its own right.

I don't think there's any actual real-world comparison that works because the Leagues aren't Human, they're Kin.
They look like stockier slightly smaller Humans but they aren't, even if some Cloneskein DNA hold enough similarities to be considered Abhuman.
It's not just a cultural difference but a genetic one.
Throw in the fact that the Leagues pre-date the Imperium and the American-European analogy doesn't really work.

 Gert wrote:
The Leagues are believed to be the descendants of the Men of Stone, a species created by humanity during the Golden Age and used as a clone labour force.
The race predates the Imperium by thousands of years.
There were holds that had allied with the Imperium but the wider Leagues aren't affiliated beyond ancient history with humanity as a race, rather than the Imperium as an entity.

Where did this little nugget about them being the descendants of the men of stone come from?

The men of stone made the men of iron which makes sense with the LOV AI’s but wasn’t the war between the men of stone and men of iron. Not the men of gold which I assume in this scenario must be humans?

It’s an implication from their background, rather than something outright confirmed.