What if 40K had good guys?

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

But the Imperium in 30k, prior to the Heresy, was also not able to eliminate the Orks or the Eldar.

 

They didn't even fight the Eldar. Eldar were already a shattered culture, and the Orks had their backs broken at Ullanor. 

[Orange Knight]

5 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

They didn't even fight the Eldar. Eldar were already a shattered culture, and the Orks had their backs broken at Ullanor. 

 

And the Orks had their backs broken again during the war of the Beast. But they're still around.

 

There is no lore that supports a claim that the Rangdan are more powerful than the Necrons.

 

The Necrons literally defeated the old ones.  Up until recently their limitation has been a slow awakening and a lack of assets in space that they could muster. Following recent lore developments, that is no longer the case.

 

The Rangdan are more mysterious and as a result more interesting, but they aren't more powerful. 

 

Edited 16 hours ago by Orange Knight

[Scribe]

Dude, I already said 'So Necrons and Nids are it.'

 

Meaning, OK, sure, those are the extinction events for the Imperium.

[Orange Knight]

4 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Dude, I already said 'So Necrons and Nids are it.'

 

Meaning, OK, sure, those are the extinction events for the Imperium.

 

And how are the small independent civilisations going to survive against them?

 

In 30k even races like the Rangdan didn't operate all over the galaxy. The necrons actually do, meanwhile the Tyranids can attack from any axis on the galactic plane.

On top of everything the whole galaxy is split in two by a warp rift that drives you mad if you look at it.

 

So again, 40k is a more dangerous setting than 30k. That is the point I'm making.

If the Imperium is struggling, no other independent human faction has a chance.

Edited 15 hours ago by Orange Knight

[Scribe]

3 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

And how are the small independent civilisations going to survive against them?

 

Brother, they aren't!

 

You seem to be under the impression that the Imperium and Humanity should endure, that it's a noble thing. 

 

I assure you, I do not believe villains should win.

[Orange Knight]

Just now, Scribe said:

 

Brother, they aren't!

 

You seem to be under the impression that the Imperium and Humanity should endure, that it's a noble thing. 

 

I assure you, I do not believe villains should win.

 

When did I say they will endure forever?

 

I simply said they are far more powerful than any alternative and offer some level of protection from the horrors of the galaxy.

 

I think you should go back and read what I actually wrote.

[ThaneOfTas]

9 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

You have a very strong, anti-human centiment if that is what you actually believe.

Saying that human life is not inherently more valuable or worthwhile than any other sapient life is not an anti-human position, and it is infact a human supremisist position to say that human life is inherently more valuable than alien life. Now here in the real world, humans are most likely the only sapient species around, so holding human supremisist views is a reasonable default. 30/40k is not such a world, there are thousands of other sapient species which have just as much inherent right to exist as humanity does. Which means that if the only way for a species to survive is to wipe out and inflict suffering on other species, then that species probably shouldn't survive. The biggest difference between humanity and the Orks and Nids is that humanity could theoretically be better, but they choose to be as violent and destructive as the rest.

[Marshal Rohr]

53 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

Guilliman himself, whilst fighting the Necrons in the recent lore, was not suffering from any such limitations.

 

He had fleets bigger than what the Legions operated, and had huge numbers of Astarter under his command.

That’s quite literally impossible in the context of their own lore. More ships were lost during the Heresy than the Imperium can command in 40K. More titans died on Beta-Garmon than are functional across all of the Titan Legions now. That’s straight from an interview with Andy. 

[Orange Knight]

14 minutes ago, ThaneOfTas said:

Saying that human life is not inherently more valuable or worthwhile than any other sapient life is not an anti-human position, and it is infact a human supremisist position to say that human life is inherently more valuable than alien life. Now here in the real world, humans are most likely the only sapient species around, so holding human supremisist views is a reasonable default. 30/40k is not such a world, there are thousands of other sapient species which have just as much inherent right to exist as humanity does. Which means that if the only way for a species to survive is to wipe out and inflict suffering on other species, then that species probably shouldn't survive. The biggest difference between humanity and the Orks and Nids is that humanity could theoretically be better, but they choose to be as violent and destructive as the rest.

 

Can you name one of those species that doesn't consider itself superior to humanity? In this particular setting?

Because according to the official lore:

 

The Eldar would "sacrifice the entire human race if it meant a single Eldar would gain an extra day to live."

 

The Tau want to control other races but only the Ethereals can be in charge of their Empire. They enslave or manipulate species they see as lesser (all non Tau). Some Tau factions believe the empire should be pure and free of the taint of other species.

 

The Dark Eldar torture sentient species and literally eat their suffering. They see humanity as a resource to consume.

 

The Necrons think they are superior to everyone else and will enslave or destroy everyone they encounter.

 

The Votann think they are superior to the humans.

Edited 15 hours ago by Orange Knight

[Orange Knight]

4 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

That’s quite literally impossible in the context of their own lore. More ships were lost during the Heresy than the Imperium can command in 40K. More titans died on Beta-Garmon than are functional across all of the Titan Legions now. That’s straight from an interview with Andy. 

 

Is that actually in the official lore?  These things get changed all the time.

I believe he may interpret some information this way but is that same information currently relayed by Black Library and Games Workshop?

Recent lore states that the Imperium has been churning out new patterns of ships en masse.

I don't believe they can't rebuild the numbers in 10 millennia. 

[ThaneOfTas]

11 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

Can you name one of those species that doesn't consider itself superior to humanity?

No but that has absolutely nothing to do with my point. Humanity being just as bad as everyone else doesn't make them default to good, nor does it make them any more worthy of life than any of those other races, who as you point out, are no better or worse than humanity.

[Robbienw]

23 minutes ago, ThaneOfTas said:

No but that has absolutely nothing to do with my point. Humanity being just as bad as everyone else doesn't make them default to good, nor does it make them any more worthy of life than any of those other races, who as you point out, are no better or worse than humanity.

Equal worth by what metric/moral system, judged by whom?

Edited 14 hours ago by Robbienw

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

 

Is that actually in the official lore?  These things get changed all the time.

I believe he may interpret some information this way but is that same information currently relayed by Black Library and Games Workshop?

Recent lore states that the Imperium has been churning out new patterns of ships en masse.

I don't believe they can't rebuild the numbers in 10 millennia. 

Yeah, the talked about it in a White Dwarf and old Twitch interview. 

 

1 hour ago, Robbienw said:

Worthy to what metric/moral system, judged by whom?

You still have yet to outline what rational, ethical framework you’re using here, and instead have seemed to cherry pick different, mutually exclusive positions and hand waved away attempt to define what exactly is your argument besides “the Imperium is good because” slop take. 
 

 

Warhammer is inherently a deontological morality story. Space Marines are doing inherently moral things in service to an inherently immoral system. They’re sacrificing their lives to stop aliens from wiping out a city, but the city is filled with hyperrich aristocrats and essentially slaves. That juxtaposition is what makes Warhammer compelling, and is rooted in the cynicism and nihilism of Britain in the post-war world order. You go to work that sucks and feed your family because it’s morally correct. You deal with posh dweebs because those are the rules. On and on. You have no concept or appreciation for the context in which the art you enjoy was created. 

[Scribe]

38 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

 

Is that actually in the official lore?  These things get changed all the time.

I believe he may interpret some information this way but is that same information currently relayed by Black Library and Games Workshop?

Recent lore states that the Imperium has been churning out new patterns of ships en masse.

I don't believe they can't rebuild the numbers in 10 millennia. 

 

They couldn't. That new lore is only due to the post 8th lore desecration. 

 

30 minutes ago, ThaneOfTas said:

No but that has absolutely nothing to do with my point. Humanity being just as bad as everyone else doesn't make them default to good, nor does it make them any more worthy of life than any of those other races, who as you point out, are no better or worse than humanity.

 

Humanity remains worse, because we are doing the same evil to ourselves.

 

Can one honestly blame a Daemon? A bug? A murder robot?

 

Now, can you blame your neighbor?

[Antarius]

7 hours ago, Orange Knight said:

I've already spoken about these small, isolated empires or civilisations.

 

They have no chance of surviving the 40k galaxy. They get snuffed out or conquered by a tiny fraction of the total military power of the Imperium. 

 

There are alien threats that the Imperium can't defeat. If the Imperium can't defeat them, what chance do these small pocket empires that get snuffed out by a small number of Imperium forces have of surviving against them? Absolutely none at all.

 

This is what we are shown and told in great detail in official lore.

 

And maybe they might remain hidden. Maybe they can't. 40k is a far more dangerous setting than 30k was anyway. There are no Necrons or Tyranids eating entire systems in 30k.

I think you make some good points and I am with you a portion of the way, but if we're talking about morality, surely the possibility (or even fact) that a smaller human civilisation can't survive on their own is no justification for the Imperium exterminating them (and expending resources that could have been spent on protecting humanity instead -even assuming that the Imperium is somehow morally justified in subjugating and killing everyone else, it seems counterproductive if the goal is to preserve mankind). 

I think it's pretty clear that these stories of other human civilisations being exterminated by the Imperium are supposed to make us think "well, maybe we shouldn't believe everything the imperials tell us about their glorious crusade" - not that I think it's about sending a moral message, so much as it's a way of creating nuance and setting up the traitors as something more than just comic book villains, but that's probably another story 

Flash forward to 40k and it's pretty clear that the Imperium isn't doing these things because it's actually smart or necessary, but because they believe it to be necessary. There are plenty of alien races that would obviously be better allies than enemies, but the Imperium can't do that, because it has spent over 10.000 years convincing themselves that they must all be purged. 

[StratoKhan]

15 hours ago, Robbienw said:

 

A key point.  As anyone familiar with heresy lore will know, the alternatives (and there were a lot of them) were tried and tested - they failed hard.  

I had this really good cake, and I ate it, it’s gone now. The solution is to never eat cake again.

 

btw considering that from the existing GW sources we have, we know very little about pre-GC human society, and even less about pre-Age of Strife human societies, it’s very hard to draw any clear conclusions - there is a distinct lack of information so saying the alternatives failed is assigning your own values/criteria to this. I would say there is nothing undermining the assumption that the Imperium too, would have failed and splintered if it had existed pre-Age of Strife, and been put through the birth scream of a Chaos God.

 

In our own human history, civilisations have declined or failed due to things like disappearance of water sources, invasion, earthquakes, mass nomadic migration etc. It doesn’t really mean that their particular way of governing society was bad or less good. I would argue it’s just a consequence of no society being able to face the vast and ever changing array of challenges forever.
 

Your argument seems to boil down to the fact that the Imperium is good because they’re the ones in charge now. So whatever new human empire or collection of empires that comes along next to replace it, are going to be the next ‘good guys’. And the Imperium would be the next attempt that ‘fails hard’, to quote from you.
 

It just seems so utilitarian as a position that ironically there’s nothing distinguishing your stance from that of an actual in-40k universe character.

[Robbienw]

2 hours ago, StratoKhan said:

Your argument seems to boil down to the fact that the Imperium is good because they’re the ones in charge now. 

No this is obviously false and a misrepresentation of my position.

 

What an incredible take though.

 

You think after having read all the fluff from the black books/heresy novels/other heresy and 40k lore on the topic, that its a good idea for mankind to retry an AI/machine led society again and it was just unfortunate circumstance that led to its demise, for example. 

 

I’m sure they’ll be no problems with that again, absoloutely no reason why makind banned AI and has a terror based genetic memory of it that has caused them to treat all machinery with superstition and fear, just must have failed by a random circumstance like some water supplies disappearing or something.

 

Or maybe let’s retry a Star Trek style federation, with loads of happy alliances with xenos again.  I’m sure it will be all right treating the warp and demons like a science problem.  The nice little aliens totally won’t turn on humans again when things go a bit wrong and start slaughtering/enslaving/eating humans en masse again.  Just won't happen this time because reasons and stuff.  Mankind totally is not justified being a bit xenophobic after millenia of genocide and enslavement and mistreatment.

 

Always a good idea to repeat the same things over again and expect a different result, particularly when it’s only the survival of humankind at stake yeah 

 

I really think there is some fundamental misunderstanding of the 40k and 30k background here, as to why the Imperium came about and why it is the way it is.  Its so clear in the background that traditional hopeful sci-fi models of governance/civilization are tried, tested and completely done for, never to be repeated.

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Robbienw

[Teetengee]

Tau, Orks, Eldar, and Necrons can all be negotiated with. Necrons it's certainly more complex, but not impossible. And in older lore even nids had negotiators in the zoats. Theoretically, GW could bring back zoats alongside an exploration of what happens to nids cut off from the hive mind beyond just those like the malstrain. I doubt there's any interest in it, as nids are much more narratively useful as force of nature style enemies than as a separate culture, but there might be pockets of it. I do think threat of nids is a useful thing to negotiate a solution to, and one that at least Eldar and Tau would likely be amenable to.

 

The orks and eldar at their height fought well against Necrons, add humans to the mix and necron's current lack of unity, and it might tip the scale to allow for victory, or at least an uneasy draw. The necrons of old were controlled by a single mind and driven by singular hatred and purpose. But now their old enemies are gone, the singular control is broken, and they too are an empire struggling under 10s of thousands of years of decay. Necrons of 40k aren't the Necrons which defeated the Eldar+Krork, and Ghazghul is increasingly moving the Ork toward their past heights.

No one group has the strength to defeat everyone, but by working together there would be hope.

Of course, 'working together' and 'hope' are tonally inconsistent with the setting and while likely necessary for introduction of a good faction, I still don't think I would actually want that. I like that the possibility is there but no one is taking it because of their own prejudices and traumas; it's why the setting got to where it is, and continuing that way sort of fits. The imperium is the worst possible future precisely because they reject every chance of being better.

[Teetengee]

48 minutes ago, Robbienw said:

No this is obviously false and a misrepresentation of my position.

 

What an incredible take though.

 

You think after having read all the fluff from the black books/heresy novels/other heresy and 40k lore on the topic, that its a good idea for mankind to retry an AI/machine led society again and it was just unfortunate circumstance that led to its demise, for example. 

 

I’m sure they’ll be no problems with that again, absoloutely no reason why makind banned AI and has a terror based genetic memory of it that has caused them to treat all machinery with superstition and fear, just must have failed by a random circumstance like some water supplies disappearing or something.

 

Or maybe let’s retry a Star Trek style federation, with loads of happy alliances with xenos again.  I’m sure it will be all right treating the warp and demons like a science problem.  The nice little aliens totally won’t turn on humans again when things go a bit wrong and start slaughtering/enslaving/eating humans en masse again.  Just won't happen this time because reasons and stuff.  Mankind totally is not justified being a bit xenophobic after millenia of genocide and enslavement and mistreatment.

 

Always a good idea to repeat the same things over again and expect a different result, particularly when it’s only the survival of humankind at stake yeah 

 

 

you realize there are other options like....
hey, last time we went all in on AI, that didn't work, so let's be a bit more careful about where and how we use machines. There's choices between luddism and machine apocalypse.

Similarly, the mistake with treating warp and daemons (not demons) as xenos is that they're not. Daemons are in the 40k universe, largely human subconscious and psychic energy run wild and caught in self-enforcing feedback loops (the chaos gods are just psychic feedback loops, basically the metaphysical equivalent of a prion disease). Now that the humans in 40k understand what chaos, the warp, and daemons are, they wouldn't handle them the same way they handle xenos, but that doesn't mean the actual aliens you can't treat like a people that they are.

You seem very absolutist on this and also incapable of accepting that maybe people try something similar but learn from the fatal mistakes so they don't fail the same way again. (again, I understand that learning from mistakes isn't exactly the imperial forte here, but a human faction certainly could do it).

As for mischaracterizing your position, that is inevitable when you refuse to detail it, so you may want to do so if you don't want to be mischaracterized.

[Antarius]

I'll admit that I was one of those who felt things went a bit off the rails when the Blood Angels allied with Necrons. That just doesn't seem in line with the tone of the setting to me (plus it seems like it goes against some of the fundamental "Necronness" of the Necrons) and neither does the Imperium allying with e.g. the Leagues of Votann (although it would be way less jarring).
But not wanting that to come to pass because of narrative reasons doesn't change the fact that an alliance would absolutely be the smarter move - if nothing else, it would be useful to have alien allies as a sort of buffer zone (i.e. cannon fodder). But this is the Imperium of “He who allows the alien to live shares its crime of existence", which clearly is not supposed to be taken as a reasonable, measured view based on an objective analysis of the situation.

[Orange Knight]

It sounds to me like some people want to make big sweeping changes to the tone of the setting.

Remember, the Imperium is a religious technocracy.  The same religion that preaches hatred of the alien is the very glue that holds it all together.

 

No one is arguing that any of the outcomes in 40k are good. It's the worst possible timeline - and that is why people enjoy it.

[Teetengee]

11 minutes ago, Orange Knight said:

It sounds to me like some people want to make big sweeping changes to the tone of the setting.

Remember, the Imperium is a religious technocracy.  The same religion that preaches hatred of the alien is the very glue that holds it all together.

 

No one is arguing that any of the outcomes in 40k are good. It's the worst possible timeline - and that is why people enjoy it.

Yeah, I mean, the point of this whole topic is "what if 40k had good guys?" and the fact that it doesn't (per OP's definition for good) is kind of part of the setting, so necessarily any discussion would be about big changes to it. I'm not sure anyone here is advocating for actually making the changes we're thinking about, but just considering the what if which was posed by @Inquisitor_Lensoven

Some folks in this thread have stated that there are good factions though, but have largely been very vague about what definition of 'good' they're operating under (clearly not OP's).

[Teetengee]

1 hour ago, Antarius said:

I'll admit that I was one of those who felt things went a bit off the rails when the Blood Angels allied with Necrons. That just doesn't seem in line with the tone of the setting to me (plus it seems like it goes against some of the fundamental "Necronness" of the Necrons) and neither does the Imperium allying with e.g. the Leagues of Votann (although it would be way less jarring).
But not wanting that to come to pass because of narrative reasons doesn't change the fact that an alliance would absolutely be the smarter move - if nothing else, it would be useful to have alien allies as a sort of buffer zone (i.e. cannon fodder). But this is the Imperium of “He who allows the alien to live shares its crime of existence", which clearly is not supposed to be taken as a reasonable, measured view based on an objective analysis of the situation.

I've always assumed all the weird allies/weird enemies stories exist purely to justify you and your buddy playing a game as a team against some other person(s) using whatever ally rules are currently available (if any). GW is in the business of selling minis, not writing compelling stories in their own right, after all.

[Robbienw]

Imagine how the discussion on the topic of alliance with Xenos went between the Emperor and Malcador 

Edited 4 hours ago by Robbienw

[Antarius]

43 minutes ago, Teetengee said:

I've always assumed all the weird allies/weird enemies stories exist purely to justify you and your buddy playing a game as a team against some other person(s) using whatever ally rules are currently available (if any). GW is in the business of selling minis, not writing compelling stories in their own right, after all.

Yeah, that's probably part of the reason. I guess the most difficult part has always been justifying Space Marine on Space Marine action outside of 30K (other imperial factions are easier - I've played more than a few games against IG armies from planets that had committed the horrible treachery of electing their own leaders, wanting to think for themselves and/or stopped paying their tithes).

As for changing the tone of the game, I certainly don't want that (actually I guess I might ideally want it to change back to pre-Guilliman times, but I'm not so delusional that I think this is a real possibility outside my own gaming circle). We're just talking about what the Imperium hypothetically could do if they were smarter/wanted to be better.