Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion

[MrDarth151]

It is what it is.

 

It is hilarious. If I get reincarnated as a Rogue Trader, I'm totally investing in grapes.

 

It's just... the sheer ludicrousness of it. Dropping an equivalent of Michigan lake (at the very least) from another star system every day and distributing it amongst population of quadrillions? Doable.

 

Greenhouse with grapes? What, are you insane, mate? That is beyond Imperial capabilities.

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s an oversight. Hydroponics facilities on Terra have been mentioned before in BL literature

[b1soul]

Some aspects of Grimdark are, on their face, quite silly...but it does give the setting much of its zany flavour

[Sothalor]

It's less a matter of "we can't grow grapes on Terra" than it is a matter of "look, I can import fresh fruit from across half of the galaxy, have them held in cryo-stasis, and serve them at banquets." It's a display of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious wealth.

 

It's like how we have such things as 24 karat gold fleck pills so people can literally :cuss out sparkling turds, or how you can get $5000 dollar burgers at Las Vegas and they'll send you a certificate of authenticity in the mail afterwards.

 

It's not about the practicality, it's about rubbing in how extravagant you can live. Humans have done it since time immemorial, and humans will always do it.

[Ascanius]

Plus, the Imperium is an unfree society. Having the right to grow grapes would be enough of a status marker.

[Karthak]

It's less a matter of "we can't grow grapes on Terra" than it is a matter of "look, I can import fresh fruit from across half of the galaxy, have them held in cryo-stasis, and serve them at banquets." It's a display of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious wealth.

 

It's like how we have such things as 24 karat gold fleck pills so people can literally out sparkling turds, or how you can get $5000 dollar burgers at Las Vegas and they'll send you a certificate of authenticity in the mail afterwards.

 

It's not about the practicality, it's about rubbing in how extravagant you can live. Humans have done it since time immemorial, and humans will always do it.

On as up a world as Terra, wouldn't it be an even greater display of ostentatious wealth to have your own indoor orchard?

 

Edit: I guess it's just my Bachelor's Degree in Horticultural Production that gets me really annoyed at stuff like this. :P

[Sothalor]

I dunno dude, I think "I literally make people fly through Hell to bring me grapes for my dinner parties" is pretty hard to top when it comes to making it known you're the 0.001%.

[Sandlemad]

Richard Branson could set up a personal hydroponics-based vineyard in a spare wing of his mansion and it still wouldn't erase the prestige and wider cultural cache that comes with a bottle of Dom Perignon. Substitute that with 'his own fish farm' and 'beluga caviar', or whatever brand of high-end 1% conspicuous consumption you'd like. It's not an oversight, hell, it's not even out-there grimdark. It's a very mild 40k-ification of one of the more disgusting aspects of modern life.

 

Wraight put it into context pretty well when he had the chancellor look around the high lords and consciously dwell on how this level of luxury, this level of OTT material waste is good and appropriate because they deserve it, it befits their status and the importance of their role within the imperium, even if it's costly. Change the goods and the names and it could be a 21st century CEO or UN dignitary thinking about their yacht.

[bluntblade]

There is no water on Terra. No farmable soil.

It's a blasted irradiated desert, being fed by daily by cargo ships.

And most worlds rely on agri-worlds for the bulk of their sustenance. Which would favour the most bog-standard foodstuffs.

 

It has also been established that a small apartment on Terra costs about the same as entire continents on other worlds.

[Marshal Rohr]

If a small apartment on Terra costs the same as a continent on another world, where do all the workers live?

 

Do you see why that kind of throw away line in a story is hyperbolic and not meant to be truly indicative of housing markets?

[bluntblade]

That's a fair point.

[Jarl Kjaran Coldheart]

The worker live in massive slab complexes which is taken out of their pay.

 

Therefore each day they live there they end up owing money to their overlords. They work themselves further into debt.

[MrDarth151]

If a small apartment on Terra costs the same as a continent on another world, where do all the workers live?

 

Do you see why that kind of throw away line in a story is hyperbolic and not meant to be truly indicative of housing markets?

 

Dunno, considering GW's track record regarding scale and how societies actually function, I would not be surprised in the slightest if that was meant literally.

[Marshal Rohr]

The worker live in massive slab complexes which is taken out of their pay.

 

Therefore each day they live there they end up owing money to their overlords. They work themselves further into debt.

I️ don’t think they could have a functional economy like that. Personally, the best practice is to assume the fundamentals of real life wouldn’t change even with space ghosts and demons, because otherwise its so far out of the lines it’s not even good escapism.

[MrDarth151]

 

The worker live in massive slab complexes which is taken out of their pay.

 

Therefore each day they live there they end up owing money to their overlords. They work themselves further into debt.

I️ don’t think they could have a functional economy like that. Personally, the best practice is to assume the fundamentals of real life wouldn’t change even with space ghosts and demons, because otherwise its so far out of the lines it’s not even good escapism.

 

 

Being fair. I think that ship has sailed the moment we got "Quadrillions" mentioned within the context of the population of Terra. With all of the food and water being brought off world the idea of proper distribution of it amongst planet wide city is insane.

 

It's basically classic Imperium: Combination of comic ineptness intertwined with impossible hyper-competence that makes most efficient countries we know of look positively stupid by comparison. As Grimdark/Story demands.

 

It's best not to think about it too hard. It can really sour your enjoyment of the universe. Speaking from experience.

[SpecialIssue]

I don't find it hard to believe the housing/economy structure. A comfortable Terran apartment is the price of a continent on a backwater world, that is true - the workers and peasants live communally in massive dorm-slums that stretch for miles into the "sky" and "underground" (what do those concepts mean on Terra anyway), packed in like sewer rats that overflow out into corridors, into streets, outside, etc. And nearly the entire planet is like that.

 

The economy is essentially a centralized subsistence one, ignorant of the needs of any one individual, kept going by centuries of inertia and institutional bloat. It dictates the necessary reality that everything is imported from the highly-developed worlds close to the cradle of humanity in Segmentum Solar, the heart of the Imperium, along well-known warp-routes reliably illuminated by the proximity of the Astronomican. Thus Terra is one of the few places where it is possible for trillions, if not quadrillions of tonnes of imports to reliably arrive daily on titanic and ancient bulk carriers that dwarf Navy battleships, the orbital lanes a busy mess of traffic. Ancient Rome did something similar relative to its tech and scale - importing massive amounts of grain on huge ships from Africa and Egypt to be given for free to the lower classes, without which the city would not have been sustainable in the least.

 

Apart from this basic 'grain dole' subsistence, the rest of the planet's economy is on the private and uncontrolled 'black/grey market', of the teeming masses bartering, doing favors, and even the exchange of coin sometimes for the lucky few. Nothing is controlled here, and non-subsistence goods are few and far between. They survive on the basis of the planned economy's imports, and the population is always dying due to the sheer inefficiencies of such a program (sometimes there's too much, sometimes there's too little) - but it matters not, as the influx of millions of pilgrims every hour, who have traveled for years from every corner of the galaxy to catch a glimpse of Holy Terra, always ensures steady replacement. This is much like medieval European cities - the death rate from disease and poverty far eclipsed births, and the only thing that kept them growing/stable was the constant influx of people from the countryside.

 

The necessities have been centralized for production on a mind-boggling industrial scale over thousands of years (yes, including disposal of bodies), while the sheer scale of the whole thing ensures that inertia keeps it going. Massive die-offs of millions or even billions to inefficiencies mean nothing, and are either disposed of en masse by gargantuan corpse-processing infrastructure ('bring out your dead!') or in exceptional circumstances entire areas are simply abandoned to disease and death and allowed to 'lie fallow' for years, even decades - even till they are forgotten as the surrounding areas are built up and over and around.

 

W40k is described as an age of insanity for a reason. For so much of it, remove 'modern' beliefs in how things could/should work, and replace them with sheer scale, and it works. Paradoxically it doesn't work when you try to scale back and mitigate to sound more reasonable to modern eyes. The ineptitude of the bureaucracy is only a small facet of it, and in fact only comes into play in exceptional circumstances.

[mc warhammer]

It's best not to think about it too hard. It can really sour your enjoyment of the universe. Speaking from experience.

pull at the thread of any fictional universe and watch it unravel. there’s not many that make real world sense and would hold up to that level of scrutiny. the marvel universe, star trek, lotr or walking dead simply can’t exist or function as described (their central conflicts can often be solved by application of real world logic). sometimes they even contradict their own in-universe logic and lore

 

let’s not even get into the simpsons

 

and somehow audiences accept all the above. somehow, against all odds, people even find a way to enjoy these universes

 

scapegoating “teh grymderk” is just silly billy sillinessnessness

 

thankfully art and creativity are about much more than the erotic joys of irl logistics

[Marshal Rohr]

I don't find it hard to believe the housing/economy structure. A comfortable Terran apartment is the price of a continent on a backwater world, that is true - the workers and peasants live communally in massive dorm-slums that stretch for miles into the "sky" and "underground" (what do those concepts mean on Terra anyway), packed in like sewer rats that overflow out into corridors, into streets, outside, etc. And nearly the entire planet is like that.

 

The economy is essentially a centralized subsistence one, ignorant of the needs of any one individual, kept going by centuries of inertia and institutional bloat. It dictates the necessary reality that everything is imported from the highly-developed worlds close to the cradle of humanity in Segmentum Solar, the heart of the Imperium, along well-known warp-routes reliably illuminated by the proximity of the Astronomican. Thus Terra is one of the few places where it is possible for trillions, if not quadrillions of tonnes of imports to reliably arrive daily on titanic and ancient bulk carriers that dwarf Navy battleships, the orbital lanes a busy mess of traffic. Ancient Rome did something similar relative to its tech and scale - importing massive amounts of grain on huge ships from Africa and Egypt to be given for free to the lower classes, without which the city would not have been sustainable in the least.

 

Apart from this basic 'grain dole' subsistence, the rest of the planet's economy is on the private and uncontrolled 'black/grey market', of the teeming masses bartering, doing favors, and even the exchange of coin sometimes for the lucky few. Nothing is controlled here, and non-subsistence goods are few and far between. They survive on the basis of the planned economy's imports, and the population is always dying due to the sheer inefficiencies of such a program (sometimes there's too much, sometimes there's too little) - but it matters not, as the influx of millions of pilgrims every hour, who have traveled for years from every corner of the galaxy to catch a glimpse of Holy Terra, always ensures steady replacement. This is much like medieval European cities - the death rate from disease and poverty far eclipsed births, and the only thing that kept them growing/stable was the constant influx of people from the countryside.

 

The necessities have been centralized for production on a mind-boggling industrial scale over thousands of years (yes, including disposal of bodies), while the sheer scale of the whole thing ensures that inertia keeps it going. Massive die-offs of millions or even billions to inefficiencies mean nothing, and are either disposed of en masse by gargantuan corpse-processing infrastructure ('bring out your dead!') or in exceptional circumstances entire areas are simply abandoned to disease and death and allowed to 'lie fallow' for years, even decades - even till they are forgotten as the surrounding areas are built up and over and around.

 

W40k is described as an age of insanity for a reason. For so much of it, remove 'modern' beliefs in how things could/should work, and replace them with sheer scale, and it works. Paradoxically it doesn't work when you try to scale back and mitigate to sound more reasonable to modern eyes. The ineptitude of the bureaucracy is only a small facet of it, and in fact only comes into play in exceptional circumstances.

I️ can appreciate the point of exaggeration in a literary context, to set the mood and give a sense of scale. But the system your describing would guarantee conflict and war. It’s as certain as gravity or the speed of light. Human ecosystems cannot exist that far out of balance.

[Carach]

You say that but 20 thousand years later who knows what is considered the societal norm when we consider how far we have come in the last 4000.

 

We have already seen how readily people gave up their freedoms in the aftermath of 9/11 in the US Patriot act. Life now is quit a bit different to life merely 20 years ago. let alone 20,000

 

As said - don't think of it too much. Consider it like a hybrid of Ancient Rome back in its highest days (where it relied upon the imports of grain from multiple places in North Africa to stop a mindbogglingly high population for the time from starving - and indeed starve they did on a few occasions when war and famine interfered with the trade) combined with somewhere like Hong Kong where people actually live in places no bigger than a human cage for ridiculous costs  

 

Especially in the case of the latter, i don't find it too hard to believe that Terra in 40k works like it does. 

[Marshal Rohr]

It can’t work like that, because what you’re describing is an apocalyptic living condition where the slightest disruption would result in immediate break down of all public services. You’d have mass riots and total war for resources constantly, and that’s not possible because we know Terra doesn’t have that.

[Blood Angel Scout]

Isn't that point made in the novel this thread is discussing?

 

Pretty sure this is covered by the characters, might be the custodes around the time he grabbed the speaker for the inquisition to interrogate or by the chancellor in the chapters after the chaos assault/before RG shows up, would need source to hand to confirm but fairly confident it's referenced.

 

Specialissueammo and Carach gave several real world comparisons where this type of situation applies, whether ancient or modern times plus even in the news today, large body of scientists have published work that address concerns regarding limited resources in this day and age, so if you factor in appropriate exponential calculations relating to population growth and run it over 10k period, would be surprised if it wasn't even worse than how the writers have presented it

[Marshal Rohr]

That doesn’t account for the homeostatic trends of human population growth patterns over time. Population centers grow just enough to sustain themselves with the appropriate input of resources. For example, modern day New York City would last approximately three days before riots break out after power loss, because three days is the mean amount of days a person can stretch the dry goods in their pantry and drink the water reservoirs in large buildings. What your saying is that for reasons of grimdark, small sections of the planet can experience similar conditions and not react the same way (which is the same way humans reacted in ancient times in cities of a few thousand). These small sections, also by the way, have larger populations than the current population of all of planet earth.

 

 

It doesn’t work, and because it doesn’t work, it should be taken as hyperbolic.

[MrDarth151]

and somehow audiences accept all the above. somehow, against all odds, people even find a way to enjoy these universes

 

I've known people that unironically enjoyed Serbian Film. It means nothing to me.

 

I don't begrudge people enjoyment of any works of fiction, but neither do I feel obliged to like something just because other people do.

 

I overall enjoyed the Watchers of the Throne. I still find specific elements of it stupid. The forum serves to facilitate discussion and sharing of opinions on fiction. To lie about my subjective feelings would rather defeat the point of me being here.

[Dagoth Ur]

It doesn’t work, and because it doesn’t work, it should be taken as hyperbolic.

This is the single most ridiculous statement one can make when analyzing fiction, especially Fantasy and SciFi. The same argumentative line might as well be applied to all the technology and factions in the Warhammer 40k universe. Warpdrive, sorcery, demons, chaos gods, the emperor, psykers, primarchs, space marines etc. all defy common science and logic. Should we now take all depictions of space marines, their physical capabilities and their technology as hyperbole merely because it is impractical/illogical/impossible from our perspective? No, we suspend disbelief and accept it as pillars and foundations of the given universe. Now, one might be able to suspend disbelief in certain areas and in certain others not, and that is fine and quite common.

But to believe that certain aspects simply must work by our reality's logic, and everything else is hyperbole because it does not fit into one's own logical narrative, is unfathomable to me. Sure, from our perspective and from the lense of our reality, the logistics presented to us are impossible and illogical, but, and this is a big but, they are stated as fact and observation of the fictional entity that we are dealing with. Similarly, we do not have a parallel, immaterial dimension that consists of emotional turmoil and reflections, where biblical demons manifest and teeth rain from bloodsoaked skies, but the 41st Millennium does. To make the argument that this parallel universe is a hyperbolic hallucination induced by a spontaneous, galaxy-wide case of schizophrenia, merely because it would not work in our world, goes against the whole point of the setting. The logistical elements are completely bonkers, they are completely illogical and impossible, but they do not operate by our standards and laws, both those of nature and society, but are a cornerstone of a fictional reality.

To defy the possibility of such things being a reality in a fictional world, is to deny one of the main points and appeals of fiction: The exploration of what cannot be or is not. By denying this, many fictional works loose their potency, works such as the Legendarium, Time's Arrow, the Cthulhu Mythos, the Dune Saga, the Witcher books, Kafka's Die Verwandlung, Goethe's Faust and so on and so forth. Pillars of literature and culture are rendered to ashes and irrelevancy merely because something impossible is part of a non-real, fictional construct that has no reason to adhere to specific standards of reality, unless an author chooses to have it do so. One might not like what is written in fiction and what is law in impossible narratives, and one might certainly lament it and demand something else, but to decry it as hyperbole merely because one is unwilling to suspend disbelief, well...

Let me put it this way: One might denounce the idea that the Silmaril in Tolkien's Legendarium are the light of the Sun- and Moontree encased in crystals as hyperbole or myth, because such things are impossible, but the reality is that in the given narrative such a thing is fact, and not hyperbole or meta-fictionality or mystification, no matter how much one insists otherwise.

[Marshal Rohr]

That’s simply not the case at all. The Silmaril is indeed a very important artifact, but it could be the light of the Sun or it could be an element that exists in Tolkien’s Universe that emits radiation. Magic could be a inter dimensional force, manipulation of gravity, or whatever they need it to be.

 

But you can’t have a billion starving people and not have mass, crippling violence. You can bring in millions and billions of gallons of water from asteroids in the Solar System, but it isn’t doled out like Fury Road. It goes into reservoirs filled with water from months or years before. That grape might’ve been a precious commodity grown on the only world in the Imperium with the exact climate as Wine Country in our own time, and that’s whatever. But the idea an apartment costs as much as a continent? Not possible. Indentured servitude in the way describes previously in this thread? The planet would burn in constant revolution. The science of the homeostatic trends of society must be followed, even if it’s described as mind boggling. If you described Mumbai to a person born in 3,900 B.C. It would sound like the way Wraight describes Terra, but that doesn’t make Mumbai impossible. The reality of it is the human brain of even an inquisitor couldn’t understand the full breadth of just how a planet like Terra functions anymore than you or I️ can describe every facet of how New York isn’t a pile of ashes, but those underlying immutable laws of population equilibrium are permanent and eternal.