Confusion over the “Grim darkness”

[Rowland]

Folks, I’m confused, and perhaps missing something…

So, I’ve seen the whole painting your minis in a grimdark stylee (It’s not for me anymore).  I’ve also heard lengthy podcast/youtube videos about not allowing hope into your homebrew faction because, you know…grimdark…

And yet I’m reading Eisenhorn and he travels all over, to fayres, pleasant estates, he even travels on a holiday train through a ski resort (sort of), he has pleasantly furnished accommodation and so on.

I’ve also read (most of) Oaths of damnation, which is, indeed grim and dark and I didn’t enjoy it AT ALL.  None of the characters were likeable and it was just very dark.

I’ve even heard that there are animals bred for the production of leather, suggesting farmers and dare I say milkmaids (LOL).

I get that the fighty bits are grim but what is it?  
The future is either Grim and dark or you can go on holiday and have a jolly good time.

[DemonGSides]

40k is a grimdark universe in that there are plenty of things that are just bad for the sake of being bad; so many things the imperium does are done not because they are the best way to do something, but because its a way that works, and that way often tends to be horrific.  They do things not because they are right, but because they get the job done; sure it would make way more sense to have your artillery guns on a spaceship automated, but they have chain gangs that haul giant shells around because human life isn't precious and it's gnarly and gnarly is cool.

 

The flipside is that you NEED something that isn't so despondently bad at all times, otherwise the setting becomes a caricature.  Most of the literary treatments of the 40k universe will involve plenty of things that aren't 'grim', and the reason why is two fold; 1) non-stop grim is boring, and 2) the imperium is so large that there is simultaneously farm planets that are choked with the off-gassing of the plants that make it almost impossible for the workers on the planet to live long fulfilling lives as they are forced to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week in air unfit for breathing, and then there's also a farming planet that is 'feudal', which mostly means low tech or regressive tech, that hasn't been bothered in millenia and people have existed in more or less peace and coexistence with their planet, making their tithe while also not devolving to the 'grim' the rest of the universe seems to be dunked in.

Then that planet will get eaten by the tyranids without a defender around, and without anyone really noticing.  It'll only be remarked a thousand years later as the slow cogs of bureacracy finally realize that their tithes have gone un-fulfilled and dispatch a reclamation force to figure out why.  Only to find a barren wasteland.


The glory of 40k is that really any story can exist, and there's room for almost all of them.  Very few things are 'impossible'.

[Rowland]

Excellent answer DGS and this balance makes a nonesense of the “it must be grim and dark - there can be no hope” brigade.

[Valkyrion]

To supplement @DemonGSides excellent appraisal I feel I must disagree with your second post, @Rowland

There is hope on a personal level, on a social level, on a planetary level.  There is no hope on a galactic scale. Humanity is doomed to die and it's only because we are good at fighting and have proliferated ourselves across the galaxy that we can't be easily rid.

That is the grim darkness bit, IMO. No matter the good our great detective Eisenhorn does, no matter how mighty Guilliman is, no matter how pious the Sororitas, no matter that Cadia stands, no matter how well we live our lives, it is ultimately hopeless.  That's why there is 'mostly' war.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Rowland]

Valkyrion,

Yes, point taken.  I’m at a point where I’m realising that theres a tabletop wargame and an entirely separate “art piece”/lore/canon that is 40k.  I say separate because the lore doesn’t intrinsically affect the playing of a game outside of the abilities of those factions e.g. I know there’s an Ork buff/strategy/ability where you can make guns more shooty but they come with a hazardous keyword and the whole Hazardous use of the warp by the weird boyz etc which, to me sounds like great fun.

I suppose I’m feeling out how deep I want to go and what to expect from things like the literature.

For whatever reason I find the fluff in the Core rules book (10th edition) really pointless.

ATM I’m making a Combat Patrol of Orks (Godrangs Gitstompers).  After my experience with reading about Exorcists (and the Chaos marines) I thought Orks sounded like a bit of crazy fun.  So I decided on a mad idea for the painting and went with it.  I don’t think the idea breaks Orks.

So I’m now redoing my Exorcists, mostly because I’m unlikely to get to play any 1000+ point games so I want a homebrew chapter to play the various SM combat patrols (please note my adherence to lore even here where I wasn’t comfortable having Exorcists playing as Imperial Fists or White scars (good grief! LOL)).

So my dusky purple and white SM’s look like they could have come from an ice planet that has sunsets and sun rises and have become the “Rising Sons” (see what I did?) but I stopped there.  I would like a back story for them but don’t have the seemingly vast knowledge of lore to not break something.

In a search for making a homebrew chapter I found a podcast (linked below) where, in chapter seven, they discuss breaking the atmosphere and hope seems to be a key feature.  They describe hope (as we have discussed above) having to be there but always being brutally taken away.

The introduction of Edition 2 has the line: “Only the Imperium and its mighty forces can possibly save humanity from destruction,…”. There’s a possibility…

I’m also reminded of the Mitchell and Webb sketch “Are we the baddies…” in other words Orks and other factions think they’re the “good guys” LOL although a rats anus could make a great Pauldron badge!

 

Astartes Anonyhttps://youtu.be/qeGR0-_ivvw?si=sHNljVU-PaFIC5SYmous

 

 I think the fact that there are people who adhere to these lore rules is somewhat amusing and I’m scared I might become one!

Please take all of this with a pinch of humour…and I think that’s perhaps what I’m not getting.  It seems to me that Warhammer came from a sense of irony and fun, the ideas are bonkers, where did that all go?

[Grotsmasha]

I think it's important to note, that all "Lore" should be taken with salt, the Codecies, although presented as fact, are often (and should be) seen through the lense of the unreliable narrator.

Let's take the 2nd Ed. Dark Angels and Space Wolves Codecies. Both presented the story of The Lion and The Wolf, each presented as fact each story skewed to favour the faction of each book.

Take the Codex Astartes, it states each chapter changes is squad, company and rank badges for each new campaign to confuse their enemies.

And yet the squad, company, specialist, and rank badges have been set in stone for 10 editions now.

This is all to say there's much more wriggle room in the Lore than would immediately apparent.

[Grotsmasha]

5 hours ago, Rowland said:

Please take all of this with a pinch of humour…and I think that’s perhaps what I’m not getting.  It seems to me that Warhammer came from a sense of irony and fun, the ideas are bonkers, where did that all go?

 Do yourself a favour and hunt down Codex Imperialis from the 2nd Ed launch box. It is one of the most fun Lore books I've ever read.

[Blissful Brushes]

From a story telling perspective I think it’s very difficult to make a set of protagonist characters that are grimdark because to most of us they’re inherently unlikeable and usually borderline psychotic (at best) looking through our lens.
 

On paper your average space marine will just mow through xenos, chaos and civ-pop with the same ferocity but it’s very difficult to write a novel when the main characters have just wiped out a bunch of civilians with zero remorse. Some level of dichotomy is ok, I think at heart most of can identify with the hero making the best of a bad situation - think Gaunt trying to preserve the Tanith on one hand and abandoning an entire planet on the other, but the key is that it tore him up inside even though it was objectively the correct choice. Khârn and Argel Tal, are really well written characters in this sense (by ADB in any case), they knows what’s happening around them isn’t quite right but are caught up with mixed loyalties, trapped by circumstances and despite committing unspeakable acts, there’s remorse that grounds them.

 

Ultimately I think that Grimdark is a setting that needs a good author to be compelling and there’s a lot of dross in the BL that can make it very flat. ADB - Betrayer, First Heretic are very good examples of grimdarkness, the Gaunt’s Ghosts series are too. Evil and good mixing in a balanced blend of heroism and callousness that makes for a good read.

 

As far as the setting itself goes, it’s a sliding scale I think. On one end you’ve got the planets untouched by war which up until the most recent canon is probably most of them. In the middle are the more populous planets with the industry and the bottom end are the war torn zones. It’s just like Earth really which makes it relatable in a weird way. You’ve got the White House on one end, most of us here somewhere in the middle and then the likes of Ukraine/Russian front lines or things like the various famines and civil unrest in Somalia/Sudan etc on the other end( sorry for generalisation there) but you get the idea. 

[Rowland]

1 hour ago, Blissful Brushes said:

From a story telling perspective I think it’s very difficult to make a set of protagonist characters that are grimdark because to most of us they’re inherently unlikeable and usually borderline psychotic (at best) looking through our lens.
 

On paper your average space marine will just mow through xenos, chaos and civ-pop with the same ferocity but it’s very difficult to write a novel when the main characters have just wiped out a bunch of civilians with zero remorse. Some level of dichotomy is ok, I think at heart most of can identify with the hero making the best of a bad situation - think Gaunt trying to preserve the Tanith on one hand and abandoning an entire planet on the other, but the key is that it tore him up inside even though it was objectively the correct choice. Khârn and Argel Tal, are really well written characters in this sense (by ADB in any case), they knows what’s happening around them isn’t quite right but are caught up with mixed loyalties, trapped by circumstances and despite committing unspeakable acts, there’s remorse that grounds them.

 

Ultimately I think that Grimdark is a setting that needs a good author to be compelling and there’s a lot of dross in the BL that can make it very flat. ADB - Betrayer, First Heretic are very good examples of grimdarkness, the Gaunt’s Ghosts series are too. Evil and good mixing in a balanced blend of heroism and callousness that makes for a good read.

 

As far as the setting itself goes, it’s a sliding scale I think. On one end you’ve got the planets untouched by war which up until the most recent canon is probably most of them. In the middle are the more populous planets with the industry and the bottom end are the war torn zones. It’s just like Earth really which makes it relatable in a weird way. You’ve got the White House on one end, most of us here somewhere in the middle and then the likes of Ukraine/Russian front lines or things like the various famines and civil unrest in Somalia/Sudan etc on the other end( sorry for generalisation there) but you get the idea. 

Yes, that’s exactly how I felt about Oaths of Damnation.  It was actually a bit where the Chaos marine (who I felt was actually a more sympathetic character somehow) just killed himself.  Neither of the Exorcists were at all compelling as characters to follow.  
I really enjoy Sci-Fi as a genre and am pretty widely read.  I’m enjoying Eisenhorn greatly (I’m at a bit where it’s all coming on top for him, having suffered major loss) and, having watched a “Top 10” YT vid was going to move onto The Noght Lords Omnibus which the guy said was possibly some of the best Sci-Fi not just BL he’d read.  I fancied the whole Horus heresy but after OoD maybe not.

Thanks for the other recommendations.

[Lord_Ikka]

"Grim Dark" can be very much nuanced, to both the individual narration and the overall setting. It is one of those things that gets constantly argued about online, especially when something comes up to make the universe seem less dark. Such as:

 

The introduction of the T'au into the 40k scene - Seen by many at the time, and on-and-off persisting to this day, as a "happy/goody-goody" faction that wasn't really appropriate for the universe as a whole. Through the next twenty years of lore however, we've seen that the T'au, and especially the Ethereal caste, are not nearly as pleasant as their propaganda claims. Second-class citizenry for humans/other aliens within their empire, disturbing "compulsive" acts by the Ethereals, and other hints of a much darker side to the T'au have made them a fitting addition to the lore overall.

 

Ciaphus Cain - Beloved book series now, but there was quite a bit of online grumbling about a "cowardly" commissar and a book that was full of humor in-between battles when the first book initially came out.

 

Gulliman's return/Indomitus Crusade - Viewed by some as an attempt to make the current lore more "noble dark" than "grim dark", there are plenty of stories set in the current era that are quite grim and work well (look at Wraight's Vaults of Terra and Watchers of the Throne for excellent examples). 

 

Overall, grim dark all the time is just not fun and makes for both boring and unlikeable stories. Injecting humor, or hope, or even just normal human emotions is needed at times (and with some delicacy) to make the universe something that people want to keep coming back to. Yes, the cause of humanity is ultimately futile, but that doesn't mean that they can't go raging against the dying of the light. After all, the game universe was originally created very much as a satire of 80s-era British and USA policies/outlooks. It should be slightly off-beat.

[Rowland]

I’m not against Grimdark, a great deal of fiction is similar and that’s kind of what I was expecting, 1984, Blade Runner most of the 2000AD stuff, The Nikopol Trilogy, but in Eisenhorn I wasn’t expecting Holiday destinations.  I thought it had all gone tits up looking at the artwork and not, as Blissful Brushes suggests more balanced (Which does appear to be the case).

I thought it was, as a child who grew up during the cold war, a more bleak apocalyptic setting.  And then Orks for light relief!  Lol.

I didn’t realise that the universe was so expanded allowing for these fairly “pleasant” places, which seems to be a result of the literature.

[Lord_Ikka]

Not everything need be grim, but there will always be a hint- even in the most pleasant setting, war is never far and the tithe to the Imperium must be paid in resources or manpower. To the upper levels of Imperium power, be it societal/military/political- which an Inquisitor definitely fits into, there will always be advantages. In this case, it may be a life lived to an excess of mortal years through rejuv treatments, catered accommodations far from the seat and toil of the laboring class, or even entire worlds set aside as relaxation/resort spots. Underneath that facade however, is an Imperium running on the backs of billions of indentured workers/serfs, the blood of countless soldiers, and the iron grip of a religious bureaucracy so vast it is unimaginable to modern readers.   

 

Of course, seeing all the facets of the universe makes it much more appealing than just seeing the horrible bits. Lore in codices tends to focus on what the players care about- warfare and everything surrounding it. The literature gets to expand on the setting and has to actually craft full narratives that those who aren't players can also enjoy, thus we get a broader look into the lives of those who may not actually be fighting.

[Blissful Brushes]

There’s a million lists of good/bad HH reads but my favourites have always been the slightly more grey ones:

- Horus Rising

- Legion

- First Heretic

- Betrayer

- Prospero Burns

- Know no Fear

- Scars

- Unremembered Empire

- Master of Mankind

 

theyre probably my favourite of the bunch. I’m not quite as current these days, adulthood and parenthood etc etc

 

weirdly Prospero Burns reads a little bit like Gates of Fire (Thermopylae) and if you’ve not read that book, I would highly recommend as pretty much the absolute best novel I’ve touched on Sparta/Xerxes 

[Rowland]

12 minutes ago, Blissful Brushes said:

There’s a million lists of good/bad HH reads but my favourites have always been the slightly more grey ones:

- Horus Rising

- Legion

- First Heretic

- Betrayer

- Prospero Burns

- Know no Fear

- Scars

- Unremembered Empire

- Master of Mankind

 

theyre probably my favourite of the bunch. I’m not quite as current these days, adulthood and parenthood etc etc

 

weirdly Prospero Burns reads a little bit like Gates of Fire (Thermopylae) and if you’ve not read that book, I would highly recommend as pretty much the absolute best novel I’ve touched on Sparta/Xerxes 

Yes, I have read Gates of Fire (so my Kindle says) I recall the tests and some maternal stuff perhaps.  I do like a good series to het my teeth into.  Much of this stuff reminds me of red rising which I enjoyed.  Prospero burns sounds like an expanse novel lol.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

The elite having cushy lives and access to resorts and all adds to the grim dark because random Joe imperium will either die in poverty, in war in or out of the guard, or end up as a lobotomized servitors.

 

like the gilded age but dialed up to 1,000,000

[SpecialIssue]

The closer you are to power in 40k, the more grim dark it is - that is the general rule. It allows for absolutely massive room across the galaxy to have normal life, to see goodness and hope. As said before, across the Imperium it is a norm as many people are far from centres of power and / or have no power.

 

But:

 

The closer to centres of Imperial government admin / war effort, the more tyrannical.

 

The better and more efficient in combat on the battlefield you are, the more inhumane.

 

At its core, this universe has generally constructed its characters and their abilities by balancing the power they have with extreme trade-offs to their morality, humanity or fortune.

 

The powerful are monsters, whether they are human or not. And this is their age.

 

Which is why the increasingly bland and unambiguous Space Marines and Guiliman are increasingly hollowing out the setting's core themes and point of differentiation. Guilliman in particular breaks this; he is a figure granted all the martial / admin power and acumen with absolutely no tradeoffs to his character. He gives us hope and sympathy to the Imperium's reprehensible power, structure and vision.

 

Before, the only symbolic and thematic avatar of the Imperium's power to players was a literal mangled corpse wired to a throne. What damage has been done to the thematic structure of this IP (i.e. grimdark) when that has been replaced (or forced to share with) a laurel-wearing, stoic rational genius demigod wielding a flaming sword?

Anyways; feel free to create normal, hopeful, good or nice people or even worlds or powers in 40k - there is so much room for them to be and even thrive away from power. But anytime there is an intersection with power, there should be a tradeoff or consequence; whether it be moral or physical.

[Rowland]

42 minutes ago, SpecialIssue said:

The closer you are to power in 40k, the more grim dark it is - that is the general rule. It allows for absolutely massive room across the galaxy to have normal life, to see goodness and hope. As said before, across the Imperium it is a norm as many people are far from centres of power and / or have no power.

 

But:

 

The closer to centres of Imperial government admin / war effort, the more tyrannical.

 

The better and more efficient in combat on the battlefield you are, the more inhumane.

 

At its core, this universe has generally constructed its characters and their abilities by balancing the power they have with extreme trade-offs to their morality, humanity or fortune.

 

The powerful are monsters, whether they are human or not. And this is their age.

 

Which is why the increasingly bland and unambiguous Space Marines and Guiliman are increasingly hollowing out the setting's core themes and point of differentiation. Guilliman in particular breaks this; he is a figure granted all the martial / admin power and acumen with absolutely no tradeoffs to his character. He gives us hope and sympathy to the Imperium's reprehensible power, structure and vision.

 

Before, the only symbolic and thematic avatar of the Imperium's power to players was a literal mangled corpse wired to a throne. What damage has been done to the thematic structure of this IP (i.e. grimdark) when that has been replaced (or forced to share with) a laurel-wearing, stoic rational genius demigod wielding a flaming sword?

Anyways; feel free to create normal, hopeful, good or nice people or even worlds or powers in 40k - there is so much room for them to be and even thrive away from power. But anytime there is an intersection with power, there should be a tradeoff or consequence; whether it be moral or physical.

Not a fan of Guilliman then…(winky smiley face).

[Rowland]

Slightly de-railling the thread, but on a similar vein, when did 40k become so uptight?

Over on the release thread there is a load of stuff about you can’t field such and such a Primarch because they’re dead, as someone who is making a homebrew chapter I’m amused by all the fluff.

Before I started 40k I thought I’d enjoy it, I recalled it being bonkers space wargaming.  I’ve recently been looking onto the beginnings of 40k and watched an interview with Rick Priestly who thought it was whimsical and anarchic.  There was another thread about “missing the sandbox”.  I think I’m now understanding this a bit more…

I think having different factions with rules and abilities is great but all this “lore” and history…because of the books and other media, why should this have any effect on the game?  Why doesn’t every faction have a Bog boss?

An example of how ridiculous this seems is that if you play one game and you remove a space marine, do you ever place that marine on another table?  Of course you do.

 

In addition to this it makes it incredibly difficult for a newcomer to get into.  For starters you choose a race, then theres all the factions, then all the strategies.  I’m enjoying the simplicity of Combat Patrol for this reason and it’s why I’m making a homebrew really.  Another reason for going homebrew is that your chapter doesn’t have to have a vast background and I don’t have to know all this fluff.

Edited June 17 by Rowland

[Antarius]

I think there's always the tendency, as a setting becomes more established, for some people to focus on what's canon and "real" in the setting and some people to be more freeform with it (realistically, it's a sliding scale and we're all somewhere along it in either direction).

You see it a lot with historical wargaming too and it's one of the main reasons it doesn't interest me at all; I paint and collect in order to use my imagination, so I don't want to play a game where I need to paint all the feathers in my cavalrymen's hats an exact shade of this or that colour or be told off. But at the same time I can see why historical accuracy appeals to some people and honestly, I do have some points when it comes to 40K/30K where I'll think "that's a bridge too far" if people mess with it. Still, I think it's a universe that's big enough that it can include almost everything, even hope (as long as you don't get any on me, yuck)!

I also think one of the fun things about the setting is that it allows you to create monstrous characters that are still possible to identify or even sympathise with. My own recurring characters include a more thoughtful and traditionally heroic Space Marine captain, but he's still going to do terrible things along the way, because that's the world he lives in. Another character or mine is a Chaos Space Marine warlord, who's more obviously and immediately monstrous, but at the same time, he's actually a pretty good boss and he genuinely believes he is doing the right thing. If they ever meet, there will certainly be more parallels between them than either will want to admit.

That's the kind of characters I find interesting in both 40K and 30K and while similar characters could exist in other universes, I think the grim darkness of the far future is just particularly fun and appealing in that regard.

[Rowland]

2 hours ago, Antarius said:

I think there's always the tendency, as a setting becomes more established, for some people to focus on what's canon and "real" in the setting and some people to be more freeform with it (realistically, it's a sliding scale and we're all somewhere along it in either direction).

You see it a lot with historical wargaming too and it's one of the main reasons it doesn't interest me at all; I paint and collect in order to use my imagination, so I don't want to play a game where I need to paint all the feathers in my cavalrymen's hats an exact shade of this or that colour or be told off. But at the same time I can see why historical accuracy appeals to some people and honestly, I do have some points when it comes to 40K/30K where I'll think "that's a bridge too far" if people mess with it. Still, I think it's a universe that's big enough that it can include almost everything, even hope (as long as you don't get any on me, yuck)!

I also think one of the fun things about the setting is that it allows you to create monstrous characters that are still possible to identify or even sympathise with. My own recurring characters include a more thoughtful and traditionally heroic Space Marine captain, but he's still going to do terrible things along the way, because that's the world he lives in. Another character or mine is a Chaos Space Marine warlord, who's more obviously and immediately monstrous, but at the same time, he's actually a pretty good boss and he genuinely believes he is doing the right thing. If they ever meet, there will certainly be more parallels between them than either will want to admit.

That's the kind of characters I find interesting in both 40K and 30K and while similar characters could exist in other universes, I think the grim darkness of the far future is just particularly fun and appealing in that regard.

Wholeheartedly agree.  I don’t mind people nerding out on the lore, just more surprised that GW don’t make a whole range of models.  I do mind it if someone tells me I can’t do such and such because on a video or in a book someone decided this happened.  Fortunately no one has said that yet.

I’ve found homebrewing quite rewarding.  I’m trying to be whimsical and anarchic but not upsetting the essential theme.  I’ e just received a copy of the Codex Imperialis from 2nd ed unfortunately it’s in Italian.  However the last line on page one is that that bit about no one missing you.

I will always go for the grimest of dark, but in an ironic, daft way.  Hope, what’s that?

Also I love the idea that the baddies think they’re the goodies, which is the way.

[Rowland]

The question remains though.  Rick Priestly mentioned that his successor asked how the economy worked. He was bemused and just passed it off as faith, or belief that it worked. I guess he hadn’t thought about it and why should he. 
so how does it come to pass that a character dies and we can’t use them?

[Antarius]

If you’re talking about the dead primarchs, I think it’s more that they’re backstory, not characters that were ever alive in the “current” setting, if that makes sense. The ones that are still around are either immortal daemons or they’ve basically been in a magic coma for 10.000 years (personally, I don’t think it made a lot of sense to bring the non-daemonic ones back, so maybe I’m not the right guy to ask). So it’s not like “this space marine is dead, so you can’t use him in your next game”, so much as “this guy is a historical, maybe even mythical, figure that is said to have died 10.000 years ago, so he’s not around in the present”. I guess it’s like, you can’t take Julius Caesar as your army leader in a WW2 game, to draw a historical parallel.

But obviously, you can always create your own alternate setting, where some of the other primarchs are still around/have returned. It’s just a big divergence from the “regular” setting.

People have done greatly detailed alternate timelines before (usually set in 30k and revolving around the question “what if some other legions had been traitors/loyalists), so it’s perfectly doable. Just be aware that it’s slightly more non-standard than inventing your own space marine chapter.

 

In my gaming group noone’s crazy about the new space marine lore, so we simply ignore it. That’d be another example of a quite non-standard take on the setting, but we can still play the game with others, we’ll just have to gloss over the differences in lore for that particular game. But reasonable people tend to be quite “live and let live” about these things.

[Xenith]

On 6/9/2026 at 7:49 PM, Rowland said:

I’m reading Eisenhorn and he travels all over, to fayres, pleasant estates, he even travels on a holiday train through a ski resort (sort of), he has pleasantly furnished accommodation and so on.

 

Dont forget that Eisenhorn has almost limitless funding from an inquisition stipend, multiple large estates on vineyards o multiple planets, with a literal underwater base, while he gallavants around with a coterie of hired guns. Eisenhorn should not be taken as an example of the average experience of the imperial citizen, he is ultrawealthy with effectively limitless power, probably the equivalent to an uphiver/planetary governor's existence compared to the average underhive dweller. 

 

On 6/9/2026 at 7:49 PM, Rowland said:

The future is either Grim and dark or you can go on holiday and have a jolly good time.

 

Much like today, there are those working multiple backbreaking jobs, and there are those on inherited wealth who live cushy lives, with no idea of real life. I recall Maria Carey in an interview being adamant that electricity was free in the US, as she never had to pay a bill in her life. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 6/17/2026 at 3:02 PM, Rowland said:

The question remains though.  Rick Priestly mentioned that his successor asked how the economy worked. He was bemused and just passed it off as faith, or belief that it worked. I guess he hadn’t thought about it and why should he. 
so how does it come to pass that a character dies and we can’t use them?

Tbf faith is how the real world economy works. It’s the most orky thing in the real world 

[Scribe]

On 6/9/2026 at 12:59 PM, Rowland said:

Excellent answer DGS and this balance makes a nonesense of the “it must be grim and dark - there can be no hope” brigade.

 

No, you just miss the point, and scale.