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Upfront, as all the following text concerns information derived from images that occured to me during a dream, some of it is going to sound weird/out of place.

In a nutshell I had a dream about a suprisingly coherent dramatic narrative for a 40k film/series/video game


Our main character is normal human male, either a senior commisioned officer in the Imperial guard on the Imperial Navy (my brain wasn't on clear on this one, more on that later).

The start of the story was the most unclear, it does however concern a chaos invasion on an Imperial world/worlds (crucially, the chaos forces are largely not marines, think the Sabbat World Crusade, only with chaos on the offense)

As the plot progresses, the military situation for the Imperium deteriorates, our main character is confronted numerous times by indviduals, both civilian and military, who more or less tell him that surrender might be preferable to annhilation. During one such an encounter, he unintentially gets information regarding an upcoming chaos fleet attack in another subsector. (during this scene he, or actually I, also got electrocuted, by an aquatic animal).

So now comes the big shock moment, (while most images came from a guard point of a view, the next scene makes more sense from the perspective of a navy officer) As the officer begins to plans the defense of the subsector, all Imperial navy elements in said subsector are being wiped out by a chaos fleet that outnumber them in every encounter (the feeling I got during the scene was that of playing a really tense RTS match and being in a losing position - no coincidence as I played Battlefleet Gothic: Armada the previous evening).

It's a bit unclear on what happens next exactly, but our officer reluctantly surrenders his forces to chaos. A grim scene follows as those that refuse to denouce the Imperium are executed on mass by firing squad, the officer proclaiming the sentence is on the verge tears, but dutifully reads from a long list of deficiencies for wich the loyalist are sentenced to death. (Also in this scene is a subplot regarding a teenage boy inducted in a guard regiment who along several others plans to assasinate a crazy NCO for personal grievances, this plot goes awry and they boy is executed).

At this point our main character is convinced of the military superiority of Chaos and thinks there is no more hope for the Imperium. He is repeatedly approached by people who offer his soul redepemtion if he fights for the Emperor one last time (notice a pattern?). A personal friend and an officer from a different regiment who' fights a guerrilla war against chaos is the last one who makes him such an offer, every single time our main character denies.

In the finale, the massive chaos fleet is routed as the Imperium deploys a superweapon (I have no idea what this it is, it could be the Macragge's Honour or the Phalanx, but my brain only remembers that it is a 'space laser'). Our officer is send to kill a high value enemy who, of course, turns about to be his former friend and guerrilla fighter (strangely it could also have been an inquistor or acolyte, who also had a prior relation to the main character).

Now things get a little a muddy, our main character has twice been totally defeated, the Imperial agent he faces (again either a friendly former officer/inquistor/acolyte) obivously won't accept a simple 'sorry' so our main character pulls out his final trump card...His newborn child. In an emotional breakdown he reveals want's to see his wife and child one more time (his wife is actually supposed to play a major role in the story but she appeared in my head for first time at the very end, there could even have been a love triangle, with another female character). Anyway, the Imperial agent offers spare him if he fades into obscurity. The Implication being that he and his family live out the rest of their lives as simple farmers.


So that's it, a dream almost entirely about 40k. most of the detailed have already slipt from my mind, but the notion of a high ranking commander plagued by doubt about his loyalities and the twist about his child are still very sharp. It's good to notice that our main character never actually gets corrupted by Chaos, he just submits to their military superiority and subsequently joins forces, because he's a soldier and fighting is what he does. More importantly the main character was for the largest part me, his emotions were mine emotions, and I distinctly remember the feeling of dread of fighting a losing war, more than anything else that is what stuck with me.

The similariaties between the main character and Mabbon Etogaur from Gaunt's Ghost's series also occured to me.

As a final side note, the guardsman who appeared during the dream wore the uniforms of the East India trading Company from pirates of the Carribean, these guys.