Are Loyalist Space Marines too nice?

[Ascanius]

Servitors are one thing - a horrific and terrible thing - but there are plenty of non-mindwiped people in the Imperium (30K and 40K) who are permanently wired into their duty stations and/or surgically modified to make it more convenient for them to do their work.

 

If you believe they're all volunteers, I have a palace in Himalaysia to sell you.

 

Defending any of this as "it just makes sense because it's efficient" or "they're criminals and poor people anyway" is exactly the kind of fascist horror that underpins everything in the setting.

[Marshal Rohr]

The use of convict or debtors Labor is not exclusive to fascist regimes. It’s not even remotely a fascist idea. It was used in every human society on earth. The Imperium is not fascist and calling it fascist is an ignorant assertion influenced by the flustercuckery of our current world.

[Robster The Lobster]

I do think that its actually a tough road to walk, and probably at least some authors spend time tho.king about.

 

I mean, When you have a setting that it's inherently grim, it can be too much to constantly be reminded of it.

 

Like if you have something that is in itself funny; it becomes cheesy if you start making joke after joke about it. When it's funny just by existing.

 

With that said I would like to see some other sides of "the good guy". Like is the Salamanders truly humanitarian or are they just stoically following their creed. Or, are the Ultramarines truly the defenders of humanity or are they the defenders of the Imperium. Those questions interest me, and don't necessarily take away the good guy quality. Well, at least in the 40k sense.

[Calas Typhon]

Please do not bring up fascism in 40k because it will bring out a lot of :cussposting. Servitors are a necessity in the period wether you like it or not mostly for the reasons stated in my post earlier.

 

No one in 40k is a volunteer, everyone is a part of the imperial machine or they are rust ready for removal. Shipbound crew are 9/10 times put to an oath, I would imagine removing legs and wiring them to the craft would be a part of that, unless you are a chaos faction. Good luck then.

 

 

It's the grim dark future, If you dont like that, warhammer is not for you.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Edited to remove off-topic political talk.

 

Instead, I'll just comment that the books that tend to show the Space Marines as the "Nice Guys" tend to come from the earlier years of Black Library, where a lot of the authors were really coming to fully understand the setting and what it meant. There seems to be a growing amount of authors highlighting the psychological disconnects between the Astartes and humanity. Even in recent cases of Nice-Marines, like Zephon, there still seems to be a detachment from humanity, a recognition that the Astartes are "Other".

Edited December 18, 2017 by Lord_Caerolion

[Marshal Rohr]

In the context of the 40k universe, fascism cannot exist because it requires a centralized state that cannot exist with the imperiums technology level. That is why the rulebooks have always said each world is largely autonomous and simply pays fealty to the Imperium in tithes. It isn’t managed from terra the way Italy or Germany were managed from their capitals.

 

 

Again, it’s ignorant to apply the modern paradigms of right and wrong on a universe where people are measurably more valuable and empirically superior to other people.

[Calas Typhon]

Pls tho no fascism discussion before the mods bathe us in promethium like the dark angels nerds they are!

 

Salamanders are a bit of a weird one for me still. I get that they are in place to defend the common man, I don't get why in some cases as pointed above, they seem to migrate towards the nearest bunch of humans to guide them out of trouble. Salamanders it is said were supposed to be the unbreakable line, it does not ring true in the books.

 

Hell the only real decent piece I have seen about space marines caring enough for humanity, yet not being stupid are the flesh tearers in blood in the machine. Flesh tearers are better salamanders than salamanders. (Ignoring all the berserk murder and bloodbathing when they go all mental)

[Iron Father Ferrum]

=][= Yes, listen to Kroeger. Drop the political talk. =][=

[mc warhammer]

I do think that its actually a tough road to walk, and probably at least some authors spend time tho.king about.

 

I mean, When you have a setting that it's inherently grim, it can be too much to constantly be reminded of it.

 

Like if you have something that is in itself funny; it becomes cheesy if you start making joke after joke about it. When it's funny just by existing.

 

 

 

 

bit of a tangent, but i think the grimmer the setting, the more room for effective comedy

[Ascanius]

The use of convict or debtors Labor is not exclusive to fascist regimes. It’s not even remotely a fascist idea. It was used in every human society on earth. The Imperium is not fascist and calling it fascist is an ignorant assertion influenced by the flustercuckery of our current world.

 

I mean, if you like I can explain why I describe the Imperium as fascist, which is informed by actual fascist movements.

 

But if you don't like the F word, how about "nightmarishly totalitarian"?

[Marshal Rohr]

Start a new thread, sure. IFF said no more in this one.

[Phoebus]

I’m sorry to be rude, but the idea that servitors are “necessary” strikes me as lazy. The use of servitors - or any number of the horrific practices the Imperium engages in - serves as evidence of the fear and ignorance that underpins man’s use of technology in these ages. It’s the idea that people have to spend their lives as quasi-machines because Abominable Intelligences went horribly wrong, and it parallels the notion that people need to live squalid lives of slavery to satisfy the needs of a bureaucracy so bloated and insatiable that it often doesn’t even know why it requires the countless masses of its ranks to do what it is they do.

 

I normally don’t like it when people tell other people “they’re doing it wrong” because they happen to have differing ideas about a fictional setting. If you’re under the impression that the dystopian horror that informs the Imperium of Man comes down to simple necessity, you’ve kind of missed the point. The “eternity of carnage and slaughter” perpetuated by “thirsting gods” certainly drives the mindset of the people inhabiting this fictional galaxy, but if you want to get technical, concepts like servitors, etc., exist because people in power stopped valuing human life like you and I do.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Phoebus

[DogWelder]

This thread brings up an interesting question.

 

When was the last time any of the 'hero' characters in the Imperium-POV books did something genuinely morally reprehensible? I don't mean something done out of necessity (putting recruits through death trials to create more space marines, destroying a planet so tyranids/chaos couldn't use it etc.) but like something completely unnecessary and cruel for the simple sake of being cruel?

[Marshal Rohr]

Talos skinning everyone he came across.

[Calas Typhon]

Lazy it might be, a servitor missing a limb won't stop to scream and halt in its current orders if for whatever reason your bridge gets clipped and half your crew are dead. They also won't need sleep or time to eat during days upon days of combat.

 

A servitor won't make a mistake in sleep deprivation on a fortress world under siege to allow what could potentially be a hostile from entering a secure hold.

 

Humans are fantastic, but when repetitive tasks or important functions that need 100% focus for days on end are needed to be done, they just can't cut it. Servitors are a necessity.

[MrDarth151]

This thread brings up an interesting question.

 

When was the last time any of the 'hero' characters in the Imperium-POV books did something genuinely morally reprehensible? I don't mean something done out of necessity (putting recruits through death trials to create more space marines, destroying a planet so tyranids/chaos couldn't use it etc.) but like something completely unnecessary and cruel for the simple sake of being cruel?

 

I don't recall.

 

Which I like, to be quite honest. See, what people don't seem to get that often: Evil is stupid.

 

We are not evil, because we are pragmatic. If the Imperium actually wanted to live up to "The worst regime imaginable" tagline, not only would it have up it's acts of cruelty to never before seen degree, it would also not survive a millennium, much less ten.

 

I want Imperium to be pragmatic. Not good. Pragmatic. I want them to be amoral, ruthless and Machiavellian. And you know what? Good is often pragmatic. It just as often is not. So be pragmatic.

 

I like pragmatic Imperium. Pragmatic Imperium is interesting, because we don't see that kind of political entities often. We don't see utilitarians actually being right. We don't see authoritarianism being the actual correct choice.

 

Good empires are dime a dozen. So are the evil ones. Imperium has managed to be somewhat successfully unique in terms of it's politics, morality and history, and I would like to keep it that way instead of turning them into stereotypical evil empire that is just plainly boring by comparison.

[mc warhammer]

i don’t know if the imperium is evil, but i always thought the wilful ignorance, slavish devotion to ritual and religious tradition and denial of progress didn’t win it any awards in the pragmatism dept.

 

sure, the imperium has made excuses for this sorry state of affairs; a nightmare of conservatism x nth. it probably tells itself its being pragmatic

[Scribe]

i don’t know if the imperium is evil, but i always thought the wilful ignorance, slavish devotion to ritual and religious tradition and denial of progress didn’t win it any awards in the pragmatism dept.

 

sure, the imperium has made excuses for this sorry state of affairs; a nightmare of conservatism x nth. it probably tells itself its being pragmatic

 

Well...when Robots once threatened humanity with Extinction, and Hell is Real...I can see why they would think conservatism is pragmatic...and would they be wrong?

[mc warhammer]

 

 

i don’t know if the imperium is evil, but i always thought the wilful ignorance, slavish devotion to ritual and religious tradition and denial of progress didn’t win it any awards in the pragmatism dept.

 

sure, the imperium has made excuses for this sorry state of affairs; a nightmare of conservatism x nth. it probably tells itself its being pragmatic

Well...when Robots once threatened humanity with Extinction, and Hell is Real...I can see why they would think conservatism is pragmatic...and would they be wrong?

i wasn’t just talking about a.i but really, astartes also threatened humanity with extinction and they’re still in use. in fact, they just rolled out the iphone x of astartes

 

we can probably tease apart a list of ultra conservatist things the imperium does and grade them on a scale of nuts to pragmatic. i’m not suggesting that every element is equally as dogmatic as the next

 

but, guilliman wanting to throw up in his mouth a little , every time he opens his eyes in the dark millennium, has to come from somewhere

[Scribe]

Well step one would be 'God-Emperor of Mankind'.

 

That alone, has to be the biggest departure from the Imperial Truth, and the Great Crusade. I mean...Ultras, Word Bearers...

[mc warhammer]

Well step one would be 'God-Emperor of Mankind'.

 

That alone, has to be the biggest departure from the Imperial Truth, and the Great Crusade. I mean...Ultras, Word Bearers...

one of many

 

but

 

guilliman is presented with plenty of reasons to re examine his father in that light

[Scribe]

Thats all  in Dark Imperium yes?

[mc warhammer]

affirmative

[MrDarth151]

i don’t know if the imperium is evil, but i always thought the wilful ignorance, slavish devotion to ritual and religious tradition and denial of progress didn’t win it any awards in the pragmatism dept.

 

sure, the imperium has made excuses for this sorry state of affairs; a nightmare of conservatism x nth. it probably tells itself its being pragmatic

 

It doesn't, really? I mean, let's just tackle things that you brought up.

 

Wilful ignorance is pragmatic, in that it makes cults harder to form, in universe where even relatively small cults (like 0.0000000001 of planetary population) can bring about wildly spread destruction. I will note that we have seen many cults that were either murderous or self-destructive in our world, and our demons and evil deities are not nearly as willing to intervene on their follower's behalf, even if you think they actually exist.

 

Slavish devotion to ritual and religious tradition? Well, for starters: Your God is real, and actually protects you from Daemons and evil magic. We are not being hyperbolic here, this is explicitly the case. Faith has real and beneficial effects in 40k. It is also not as slavish as you make it out to be: Cult Mechanicus has explicitly many different branches, and Imperial Cult is a state religion that supports the notions of political fealty to the Imperium, while having actually very little in terms of set ritual, because it likes to appropriate local religions and basically replace God A with The Emperor of Mankind.

 

Even Adeptus Mechanicus rituals can be seen as pragmatic. If you read the instructions and manuals for many different pieces of equipment, you will notice a lot of them read in ritualistic manner, like "Do A, B, C in that order, or the marker D will show the wrong values, and you will get wrong results on check out.". It's procedural action clad in mysticism, which might actually make it easier to remember. By applying religious mysticism to procedurals you add more pressure on your people to actually follow the proper procedure, which spares time, and adds additional incentive for them to actually get it right. It has practical and positive consequences.

 

Denial of progression is hard to judge, and very writer dependant. Hell, I've cases where it was contradictory within a single book, like for example one of Imperial Armour books mentioning explicitly that Mechanicus does no research, and then adding in entry of the Lighting that they only made it work through research. Not to mention that Chaos Gods like to screw with R&D, and so does war. Hell, we, as in actual humans on Earth, have managed to lose research and inventions in peace time, much less the nightmare that is 40k, and 40k is still more advance than we could ever hope to be. They already do stuff that is borderline physics breaking, implying that improving on that would be easy seems somewhat misguided, especially since we don't have that many things that could actually be realistically improved upon, in universe. Generally, it's not really worth the effort. Cawl is an exception, but Cawl also has the excuse of actually being dedicated to nothing but his research, and when you take the fact that he spend ten thousand years on it, it isn't really that impressive a feat. Mechanicus has quotas to make. Cawl does not.

 

I mean, it's all doable as actually making sense, it just depends whatever you want to or not.

 

 

but, guilliman wanting to throw up in his mouth a little , every time he opens his eyes in the dark millennium, has to come from somewhere

 

 

Eh, that's because he is judging them by the standards to Ultramar, the wonderful land where the rules don't apply? Roboute's personal dominion is the best place to live in the entire 40k by a wide margin. So wide, in fact, that it's bordering on ludicrous.

 

And with the recent trend of making pre-HH Imperium steadily worse, I'm not really sure what he is pining after. Like when he arrives on Terra and is visibly disappointed, and I'm here going like "Dude, you guys had a crime ridden slums just outside the Imperial Palace, your main water supply got stolen because Emps decided that doing nothing about a known traitor was a good call, and it was roamed by bands of murderous remnants that considered Custodes to be acceptable targets. Glass houses, Roboute, glass houses.".

 

Roboute is not a good example. Roboute could have visited basically any part of the Imperium bar Ultramar in the Great Crusade and be just as disappointed.

 

Though I suppose you might call that a failure on the part of Black Library to properly present what the Imperium was like before HH happened.

[mc warhammer]

yeah, like i said, the imperium will be able to justify all those things, as you've beautifully illustrated. from memory, rick priestly called space marines and the imperium "self deceiving"
i don't know if you can still get sent to a penal colony for filling out your tax form incorrectly in modern day 40k, but if you can, i'm sure there's a dogmatic superstitious "pragmatic" reason for it within the imperium.

is guilliman a deluded fool for thinking that ultramar is an example to follow instead of realising that it's the exception that proves the rule? or does he have a point? is the way of 40k imperium the only way, or just the way they chose/forced to go?

it's fun to explore.

the disconnect for readers seems to come from 40k's muddled growth from its satirical roots. as conceived, it was an ott and ridiculous lampooning of organised religion, bureaucracy and politics. the more "realistic" its (arguably) become over the years, the more the creatives have to work at coming up with (somewhat) viable context and explanations for these ironic excesses. some of it works better than others. ​it's messy, but i like messy

40k will never completely divorce itself from those foundations: the imperium has no chill and needs to sit down and have a good think about itself.