The Return of Hope in the 42nd Millennium

[Skaorn]

Anyone ever have a conversation with someone in hospice care? For all we know, the Emperor thought he was talking about Sanguinas and kept talking about possible assault plans to take Mars if they didn't fall in line with his consolidation of the Sol system (and yes, I know the Primarchs weren't there at that time). Bobby, who's done things like force loyalists to except his book and create a back up empire, could very well have gotten a bunch of nonsense and decided to do his own thing and told everyone the Emperor told him to do it since dad was not a god but a rational being who'd probably approve of being used like that, given the situation.

[Urriak Urruk]

Anyone ever have a conversation with someone in hospice care? For all we know, the Emperor thought he was talking about Sanguinas and kept talking about possible assault plans to take Mars if they didn't fall in line with his consolidation of the Sol system (and yes, I know the Primarchs weren't there at that time). Bobby, who's done things like force loyalists to except his book and create a back up empire, could very well have gotten a bunch of nonsense and decided to do his own thing and told everyone the Emperor told him to do it since dad was not a god but a rational being who'd probably approve of being used like that, given the situation.

 

Yeah from Dark Imperium it seemed pretty obvious they did talk, and that the Emperor did not say nonsense. He behaved essentially like a god commanding a faithful follower, and Guilliman seemed pretty upset by that.

[Skaorn]

It actually detailed the scene where they talked together? Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with the idea that the Emperor having gone insane from his time in the chair and mass worship, abandoning his ideals, believing he is a God now, and slowly being primed to become the Chaos God of fear and ignorance at humanity's fall (suck it Malal). Without being in the room though, we don't know what really happened though we don't know what is really is troubling Guilleman or what he says happened is really true. Maybe he doesn't know a good place to get a cheeseburger like the Emperor asked him too.

[Ascanius]

Here is the relevant passage:

 

Coldness. That was the defining sensation of his meeting with the Emperor. Infinite, terrible coldness.

 

He had approached the meeting with dread, fearing what he would find. Would his father be dead? Would He be insane? Would they even be able to talk? When he had been admitted to the throne room and approached the Golden Throne, he had done so as he had approached his foster father Konor’s funeral, willing it all to be right, drowning in certain grief. Between the time of the Emperor’s ascension to the throne and Guilliman’s own death, the Emperor had spoken to no one. How could anything have persisted for ten thousand years, he had thought. There was the wizened corpse surrounded by banks of groaning machinery, His sword upon His knee. Sorrow suffused everything. The sacrifice required to keep the Emperor alive sickened the primarch. If He were alive. He appeared dead. Guilliman had expected nothing.

 

But He spoke.

 

With words of light and fire, the Emperor had conferred with His returned primarch, the last of His finest creations.

 

...

 

The Emperor greeted Guilliman not as a father receives a son, but as a craftsmen who rediscovers a favourite tool that he thought lost. He behaved like a prisoner locked in an iron cage who is passed a rasp.

 

Guilliman had no illusions. He was not the man who brought the rasp; he was the rasp.

Also:

 

'Thousands of years,' he said. 'And look what has become of them. Of us. Idolatry. Ignorance. Suffering and squalor, in the name of a god who never desired the title.'

 

...

 

'We failed, father,' said Guilliman, his words tired and leaden with sorrow. 'You failed your sons, and we, in our turn, failed you. And now, to compound our arrogance and vainglory, we have failed all of them, too. Did Horus not say that you sought godhood? He built a rebellion upon that claim. How he would gloat, to see the Imperium now.'

 

...

 

'Why do I still live,' he snarled. What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they've made of our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than live to see this.'

 

He then goes on to find a reason to hope, and lays the blame for this misery at the foot of those who serve Chaos, but still!

[Schlitzaf]

As I said before I think 40k is defined by what hope it does have. Epitomize by the Space Marines and the Adeptus Astartes, why by extension something like Necrons imho were innately wrong.

 

The Space Marines represented, an answer, the answer to what “goes bump in the night”. No longer does man cower from that which goes bump in the night, and no longer does a hurricane stand for what the undefeatable, No longer. The Astartes in a sense represent that we can fight back.

 

Pacifica Rim 1 opening speech about Jeagers could also be applied to the Adeptus Astartes. They represent human potential. Even back in late 4th when I started, I often said that it wasn’t 40k was hopeless, but instead by why it did have hope.

 

I guess all I am saying is that I think the title is wrong, hope had never left

[Ascanius]

As I said before I think 40k is defined by what hope it does have. Epitomize by the Space Marines and the Adeptus Astartes, why by extension something like Necrons imho were innately wrong.

 

The Space Marines represented, an answer, the answer to what “goes bump in the night”. No longer does man cower from that which goes bump in the night, and no longer does a hurricane stand for what the undefeatable, No longer. The Astartes in a sense represent that we can fight back.

 

Pacifica Rim 1 opening speech about Jeagers could also be applied to the Adeptus Astartes. They represent human potential. Even back in late 4th when I started, I often said that it wasn’t 40k was hopeless, but instead by why it did have hope.

 

I guess all I am saying is that I think the title is wrong, hope had never left

 

Back in the wild and woolly days of USENET, or at least the tail end of them when I was first getting online in the Nineties, the normal response to a post like this would be something like, "Hmm, interesting. Tell me, what colour is the sky in your universe?"

 

Seeing Space Marines as the heroic fulfilment of human potential is certainly similar to how the Imperium sees them - but the Imperium's monstrous, and Space Marines are monsters. They're pubescent-at-best boys, many of whom are not given a meaningful choice if they have one at all, turned into genetically and surgically mutilated, hypno-indoctrinated, drug-fuelled fanatics who live for little other than to fight and die on behalf of people who they can never genuinely relate to.

 

The whole (self-defined) point of the Imperium is that it's as awful as it is because that's the only way for humanity to survive in such a dangerous galaxy. Even if you take that on face value - and you really shouldn't - that means it's the slight lesser of two evils . . . but it's still evil.

[Schlitzaf]

I mean sure, that is how the Imperium sees them and in the end that is what defines if their is hope or not? No?

[Eddie Orlock]

Here is the relevant passage:

...

Coldness. That was the defining sensation of his meeting with the Emperor. Infinite, terrible coldness.

...

 

So, of course it's cold. See, what you're missing here is the much more seldomly published fluff that during the duel with Horus the Emperor rended his own soul. All that was good and pure and would have been irrevocably tainted by the slaying of its own son was isolated and cast adrift in the warp as the Star Child, a potent core of positive mental energies large enough to not be pulled apart by the tides of the immaterial. Large enough to begin to gather the latent good will of all man kind to itself.

 

Which means, that what remained in the shell of the Emperor was the portion of the soul was that driven by indomitable duty. The portion of the Emperor's self that understood sacrifice and could grapple with killing his own beloved son. It is when the Emperor did this to himself that the chaos gods realised that they'd lost, that the Horus gambit was not the sure win they'd planned, that they abandoned their pawn and in the last moments of his life Horus got to know remorse and allowed his father to vanquish him lest he be possessed again.

 

So, of course the half that slew his own son and sat vigil for ten thousand years feeding on duty and sacrifice is a cold god. It yearns though, it yearns for release to rejoin with its compassionate aspects, but it can only justify that when it has succeeded and mankind has worked out how to resist its own dark natures for itself.

 

To free the Emperor from his suffering all mankind must do is figure out how to be excellent to one another. The whole setting works out once you embrace the Star Child.

[Ascanius]

We'll see if that is still considered accurate soon enough, I suppose.

[Urriak Urruk]

 

Here is the relevant passage:

 

Coldness. That was the defining sensation of his meeting with the Emperor. Infinite, terrible coldness.

 

He had approached the meeting with dread, fearing what he would find. Would his father be dead? Would He be insane? Would they even be able to talk? When he had been admitted to the throne room and approached the Golden Throne, he had done so as he had approached his foster father Konor’s funeral, willing it all to be right, drowning in certain grief. Between the time of the Emperor’s ascension to the throne and Guilliman’s own death, the Emperor had spoken to no one. How could anything have persisted for ten thousand years, he had thought. There was the wizened corpse surrounded by banks of groaning machinery, His sword upon His knee. Sorrow suffused everything. The sacrifice required to keep the Emperor alive sickened the primarch. If He were alive. He appeared dead. Guilliman had expected nothing.

 

But He spoke.

 

With words of light and fire, the Emperor had conferred with His returned primarch, the last of His finest creations.

 

...

 

The Emperor greeted Guilliman not as a father receives a son, but as a craftsmen who rediscovers a favourite tool that he thought lost. He behaved like a prisoner locked in an iron cage who is passed a rasp.

 

Guilliman had no illusions. He was not the man who brought the rasp; he was the rasp.

Also:

 

'Thousands of years,' he said. 'And look what has become of them. Of us. Idolatry. Ignorance. Suffering and squalor, in the name of a god who never desired the title.'

 

...

 

'We failed, father,' said Guilliman, his words tired and leaden with sorrow. 'You failed your sons, and we, in our turn, failed you. And now, to compound our arrogance and vainglory, we have failed all of them, too. Did Horus not say that you sought godhood? He built a rebellion upon that claim. How he would gloat, to see the Imperium now.'

 

...

 

'Why do I still live,' he snarled. What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they've made of our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than live to see this.'

 

He then goes on to find a reason to hope, and lays the blame for this misery at the foot of those who serve Chaos, but still!

 

 

I especially liked the parts where Guilliman yelled "HE IS NOT A GOD!" and uses his own stupid Ultramarine logic to try and disprove he's a god, and fails.

 

For a second it made me like Guilliman.

[Scribe]

As I said before I think 40k is defined by what hope it does have. Epitomize by the Space Marines and the Adeptus Astartes, why by extension something like Necrons imho were innately wrong.

 

The Space Marines represented, an answer, the answer to what “goes bump in the night”. No longer does man cower from that which goes bump in the night, and no longer does a hurricane stand for what the undefeatable, No longer. The Astartes in a sense represent that we can fight back.

 

Pacifica Rim 1 opening speech about Jeagers could also be applied to the Adeptus Astartes. They represent human potential. Even back in late 4th when I started, I often said that it wasn’t 40k was hopeless, but instead by why it did have hope.

 

I guess all I am saying is that I think the title is wrong, hope had never left

 

Interesting interpretation of the setting.

 

Hope never left? Hope never existed! The Astartes are not an answer to what goes bump in the night, they are the armoured fist, reaching out to bind humanity to one will, the Emperor's, they are what bumps in the night, the Monsters humanity needed to fight other Monsters.

 

I've kept up on most of the 40K stuff since this all tuned sideways, and this concept that its a 'more hopeful place' has never stood with me.

 

Grimdark lives, and its never left.

[Huggtand]

Hope never left? Hope never existed! The Astartes are not an answer to what goes bump in the night, they are the armoured fist, reaching out to bind humanity to one will, the Emperor's, they are what bumps in the night, the Monsters humanity needed to fight other Monsters.

 

That statement is is not true.

 

From the first rulebook, Rogue Trader, there was always the hope of big E's plan. Of a future where mankind is evolved psychically and strong enough to withstand the dangers they face. And what I know, GW has never retconed this. We also have hope of the Emperor's return in different hints scattered in different sources. Especially in lore concerning the inquisition.

 

The Astartes have always been described as being heroes for the common citizens and are regarded as the hope for mankind across the Imperium. So in universe they indeed are a beacon of hope regardless what we as readers think of them.

 

There seems to be a trend nowadays to say that grimdark must mean certain extinction of mankind but that were not the meaning when it was coined. Grimdark was just a description of a very dystopian future.

[Scribe]

I should have said *since 3rd edition*.

 

Nothing in the more modern setting, has ever spoken of hope, but I would argue, duty.

 

You do not hold the line for hopes sake. It was duty.

 

I mean when I think if 40k since what, 99? What are your key themes?

 

Hate

Vengeance

Duty

Honour

Loss

Ignorance

Faith (misplaced!)

 

I'm sure if we go back to when we had half Eldar Ultramarines...well yeah maybe the thread wasn't as well woven? :)

 

I gave the new fluff an open mind, and I'm glad I did, because the setting remains true to its 3rd edition self.

 

Everything is still doomed.

[Eddie Orlock]

I should have said *since 3rd edition*.

 

Nothing in the more modern setting, has ever spoken of hope, ...

Circa 2001, about four years after 3rd edition was released, Gav committed Inquisitor into print. In that work there is some near explicit mention of the possible path to redemption and hope for all mankind in the setting as implied by the Star Child. What was fought over was how to find the way. The Ultimate Hope was, is, and remains, an integral part of the setting.

[Scribe]

I love the Star Child fluff, but its a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of an obscure cult, that is also subverted by Tzeentch in the 3rd edition rule book I believe, in the back?

 

Its the exception that proves the rule. This is a hopeless setting.

 

Things can change, after all some people thought 8th edition changed things, and people can certainly read whatever they want into anything. 'Loose Canon' and 'well I think X' makes any interpretation valid, to that person.

 

So I guess I'll just end my involvement here, because I have yet to see anything that actually changes the core tenets of the setting as defined by 3rd Edition-8th Edition. This is not a hopeful setting, and has never* been a hopeful one.

 

To be a man such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most blood regime imaginable.

 

...

 

Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity.

Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

 

But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens you will not be missed.

 

That is not a message of hope, and enlightenment.

 

*since the setting was redefined in 2nd/3rd reboot.

[Sete]

"Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity.

 

Forget the promise of progress and understanding"

 

Shame GW forgot this bit.

[Scribe]

Cawl is an issue, but it's not a fatal wound. :p

[Schlitzaf]

What is hope? (I am being slightly pedantic here) But it’s dictionary definition is:

Noun- A belief or expectation for certain result

-or an expectation of being saved

Verb- A want or desire for an expected (good) result

 

Now for me a Hopeless Universe/version of the 40k Verse is Lovecraff and his Mythos. In that universe humanity and by extension all mortals are meaningless. Ultimately nothing we do matters, and once you realize that you expect nothing but misfortune or worse.

 

The Old Ones, Elder Entity, or whatever god-like being you prefer, in Lovecraft are not that inherently different from the Chaos Gods or the Mortal spawned Equivalents. Being whom are capricious and have motivations beyond our basic understanding. And all powerful. Except there is one big difference;

 

Lovecraftian Gods and their monsters cannot be beaten. Only delayed. There is no sense that you can achieve a real victory. Only prevent a defeat. That is the definition of hopelessness atleast for me personally, is that you aren’t fighting to live your fighting to not die.

 

40k, the Eldar are fighting to not die, so to be consumed by Slaanash. And lost hope of ever truly returning to their former majesty. But the Imperium, it doesn’t fight to not lose, it fights to live. The Astartes, quote only in Death Does Duty End, welcomes Death as we would welcome retirement. They fight so they can live.

 

An Astartes Duty is Life. And even in Death they can still fight as is the case of Dreadnoughts. It is seen as the greatest honor to continue to live and fight for the glory of the Imperium. And further it goes beyond, the sense of inevitable Imperium death.

 

The Imperium believes it can. It believed it can win, and it will fight for every inch, with every able bodied man, women and even children. Not to stave off death, but so it can continue to live. The Astartes represent that 40k has hope, because we can say “The cost to make an Astartes is deplorable.”

 

What is an Astartes? The Emperor’s Finest, his Angels of Death. If something goes bump, they care not. They stand forever vigil. But what makes them naturally hopeful, is they are the Emperor’s Finest and not the Emperor’s only. Imperium has warriors who fight in every battle front and every war zone. The lowest PDF to the most Decorated Gaurdsman.

 

They can fight and they can win. And win. The Grey Knights while fighting truly unwinnable war, can claim true victories. From sealing Deamons into Xenotech, depleting if only a minuscule amount the Gods forces. The Astartes have conquered the Galaxy against Xenos every way our better.

 

The reason for this tangent is that the reason I called 40k defined by hope, is not same kind of hope, that is more common in fiction, the hope for a miracle of some kind. But the Hope that lets someone wake up in the morning. That causes us to go onto the breach one more time. The Astartes like Jeagers, give us the answer why we do so;

 

Because We Can Win.

[Ascanius]

The Imperium believes it can. It believed it can win, and it will fight for every inch, with every able bodied man, women and even children. Not to stave off death, but so it can continue to live.

 

For me, though, this line of thinking evades the real question, which is "At what price survival?"

 

I've mentioned before my disagreement with the attitude that Guilliman's return and the introduction of Primaris makes the current state of the galaxy any better, or that the Cicatrix Maledictum/looming threat of the Hive Fleets/inevitable awakening of the greater proportion of Necrons/et cetera means the current state of the galaxy is any worse. The new threats that worsen humanity's position are countered by the new advantages that have developed.

 

Imagine two feuding neighbours listening to different music on a hot night with the windows open. One turns the volume up to 7, so the other turns the volume up to 8, so the first turns it up to 9, et cetera.

 

Likewise, the developments in 8th Edition don't represent a shift in the balance of power in the galaxy, which is always going to remain fairly static if for no other reason than that Games Workshop is in the business of selling models for wargames.

 

One of the many reasons why World War II games are so popular in gaming is, or so it seems to me, because the Allies and the Axis were relatively "balanced" in the larger picture of the war, or at least there's a perception that was the case. The other reason would be that there were so many different "factions" involved, so many different theatres of war, and so many different kinds of fighting being done.

 

I think Games Workshop is aiming for the same sort of thing: each faction is viable to play in the game regardless of how the big picture looks for their survival, each is distinctive or at least variations upon a theme, and there's lots of different ways to play the game.

 

So, in a Doylist sense, the Imperium of Man isn't doomed to destruction or fated to emerge victorious, because nothing's going to fundamentally change in the galaxy. It's a product setting, as rich as it is, and a certain status quo has to be maintained in order to properly exploit the IP.

 

To return to the original point:

 

If the Space Marines bring hope to the Imperium, it can only be a real hope from the perspective of people in the setting - and those people can be wrong. We can't stand back from a fan perspective, which is much better-informed than anyone in the setting could ever hope to be, and say that they represent a hope that the Imperium will "win" its wars, in the sense that they will be able to stop fighting, because a) we know about the enormous looming threats that cast a very real doubt over the Imperium's survival, and b) we know that Games Workshop will not alter the setting to let the Imperium exist in peace. Also, arguably, c) if the Imperium no longer had to fight its current enemies, it would find a new enemy to fight, because that's the pathology of Imperial thought.

 

So, then, Space Marines mean that the Imperium can "win" in the sense that it can avoid being destroyed, live to fight another day, et cetera.

 

So, again, at what price survival?

 

For me, at least, the point of the setting is that all of the brutality, fanaticism, and terror of the Imperium is a fate worse than death. The Imperium believes it's all necessary to keep the species from extinction - but even if they're right, it's an insane price to pay. The patriotism of the Imperial citizenry is the patriotism of the xenophobic fanatic who wants all other nations extinguished from the earth or serving under their nation's lash. The safety of Imperial citizens is preserved through the terror of witch hunts and genocides. The brotherhood of the Space Marines is the camraderie of the death squad.

 

None of that means that oppressiveness and horror needs to hang over the setting at every moment. I'd say it's more effective when these elements are ever-present but not often highlighted - one casual reference to someone being turned into a mindless servitor for failing to keep up with production quotas due to illness is worth a dozen didactic lectures-as-exposition about how bad it is to live in a Hive city - but it's also important to keeping the flavour of the setting alive.

 

To be honest, it'd be more 40K if Guilliman's attempts at reform* were confounded simply by the impossibility of guaranteeing that any changes he decrees will be implemented "on the ground" - think of the failure of institutions depicted in The Wire. You can implement a policy, but you can't stand over the shoulder of every general, commissar, clerk, tech-priest, ecclesiarch, and Space Marine to see it done, and there's 10,000 years' worth of tradition and culture standing in your way.

 

* Not that his version of the Imperium would be that much better - he's still the man his father made him to be.

[Panzer]

I don't think the price of survival can ever be too high unless it :cusss with future generations forever (like dunno, living in literal hell because chaos has won for good or whatever).

The ones who paid for it, decided they have to pay it and/or were alive at that time might disagree heavily but countless generations after that time will be thankful for having at least a chance to live.

[Brother Captain Achilles]

ITT: "No YOU'RE subjective interpretation of a back story is wrong!!!!" 

 

I think the perception of existence or the continuing perseverance of  "hope" in the Imperium can be traced to the Imperial Faction you first gravitated towards.  For myself this was the Ultramarines. I was immediately drawn to their egalitarian and disciplined nature. There is a lot of inherent hope that rings true in most "Ultramarine" stories. Since his portrayal in "Know no Fear" Guilliman as a character typifies this in most of his teachings and the end logic behind anything he does. "Humanity can, should, must be 'better.' It is why I exist and if I beathe I will do everything I can to make it so."  

 

This colors the way I look at the Imperium and "Humanity" and helps helm what I personally consider the Imperium to be, a broken, horrendously misguided, failed state. Can it be fixed? Yes! Is it now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth? Not in the slightest. I am a big fan of the current arc of Guilliman as the Lord Commander being a stabalising element in Imperial history and giving humanity a chance to "right the rudder" so to speak.

 

But! that just happens to be my little slice of fluff cake that I gravitate towards. Others have MOUNTAINS of perfectly valid examples that can paint my interpretation as nothing more than "childish, naive, useless optimism." There are PLENTY of examples of "Imperial" actions that would make the faction wholly irredeemable morally. I mean running the Astronomicon alone is a vile genocide against the psykers used to do it. However I think that's one of the great things about 40k fluff. It has all the colors of the moral rainbow that we as humans have in real life. Sometimes a person that is in total opposition to your own morals is a staunch ally when compared to the greater evils you both face. Hence why even a son of the Emperor is doing everything he can to fix the system from within rather than simply declare "Imperium Secundus 2.0" I am a big fan of most of the fluff coming from GW and the BL this past decade. It might not be "Tolstoy" or "Wilde" in the kinds of stories it tells or parables it throws around. But it certainly isn't Dr. Seuss or Clifford either and we have come a long way from every story, book, and army book being nothing more than "Bolter-porn". 

 

To quickly and succinctly answer the question of the thread: I truly enjoy that a number of Imperial Characters are striving to be "better" and those characters currently having arcs like that are the kind that I gravitate towards. But I don't think its a consistent or even common view point in the Greater Imperium. Dark Imperium does a great job showing for all his reforms and attempts to unify the fractured Imperium Guilliman is having to fight tooth and nail at every step to do so without becoming a dictator himself, and in some ways; he is failing.

 

TL:DR, Kinda?