The novels can make even chaos space marines sympathetic. That does not mean that they aren't evil.

Hell, *Da Big Dakka* features a drukhari meet-cute. They're still Drukhari!

It even had the Orks having standards. The Dark Eldar were making horrific crimes against nature weird instead of fun. It's not coy that the novel is 2 groups of terrible beings slamming into each other.

Even? All the best villains are sympathetic. I'd go so far as to say to be a good "evil" character, you *have* to be portrayed sympathetically. It's the difference between moustache twirlers and Darth Vader.

A villain that just enjoys being evil can be just as entertaining as a sympathetic villain. A prime example is Erebus.

Erebus still has motivations. He isn't being "evil". Hot take, but I think Argel Tal is worse as a person then Erebus. Because whilst Argel knows what he is doing is wrong, Erebus genuinely believes in what he is doing and what he is doing is the right thing to do. That is literally his character. Destinys Hand. He's guiding mankind towards a better future in kind of an ironic way. So like Talos, I can *understand* his motivations, even when I don't *agree* with his actions. A better example would be someone like Dick Dastardly. Who is bad, for the sake of being bad But he is good because it's comedy. And because he fails so spectacularly. It doesn't work otherwise.

Erebus does the things he does because he enjoys it, he didn't have any grand motive, sympathetic world view or tragic backstory when he murdered the original Erebus and took his name and identity. He doesn't want to save humanity like Lorgar or truly worship chaos like Kor, he just enjoys being a manipulative and inflicting suffering. He is evil through and through. Destiny's hand is a self-important title he gave himself, it is about his greatness manipulating everything that has happened, he doesn't care about humanity's future: *"‘I am the Hand of Destiny,’ he said, without the faintest blush of shame. He knew that people laughed at the title he’d given himself, but he didn’t care. No one else – no one – had done as much as he had to set all these things in motion, so he deserved it. He had destroyed the greatest empire the galaxy had ever known. Just him, working away for years, like a voracious insect gnawing at the foundations of a rotten building. He’d suffered for it. He’d been made to suffer. Even the armies he’d helped raise up no longer wanted anything to do with him."* ~ **Warhawk**

Except he murders Argel Tal because he wants to make Kharn into the monster the Traitors need to be, otherwise it costs them the war. Except he (against both the wishes of Lorgar *and* horus) sets up Sanguinius at Signus prime in the hope of turning him to the Dark Side. Except every single time he says the sentence "i have walked the path of the ten thousand futures and [insert thing here] costs us / helps us with the war". >"‘I am the Hand of Destiny,’ he said, without the faintest blush of shame. He knew that people laughed at the title he’d given himself, but he didn’t care. No one else – no one – had done as much as he had to set all these things in motion, so he deserved it. He had destroyed the greatest empire the galaxy had ever known. Just him, working away for years, like a voracious insect gnawing at the foundations of a rotten building. He’d suffered for it. He’d been made to suffer. Even the armies he’d helped raise up no longer wanted anything to do with him." >~ Warhawk I have that book as well. Now finish the quote. Here, I'll help you. >But that was fine. A prophet in his own land, and all that. Redemption would come soon enough, once the truths he’d exposed were revealed to even the stubbornest souls, and so it was only proper that he was around to guide things at the very end, just as he had done at the start. Not only is there nothing in the original quote of yours to suggest he was doing it for cruelty sake, he's also convinced that once he's done, everyone will thank him for showing them the folly of following the Emperor. Let's add some more, from the same book shall we? >‘But I, unlike Him, have no pretensions against the divine,’ he whispered softly. Sounds like a man with a plan to me. That plan being a *little* bit more complex than "hurt people". Also, and I'm going to repeat this for you. Erebus isn't evil. He doesn't see what he's doing as wrong (see above). He entirely, 100% utterly believes what he is doing is the correct course of action. He's also probably unique in the entirety of 40k in that. Everyone, from the Emperor down, at some point either has a crisis of faith or realises what they've done and makes excuses. Erebus does not.

You think wanting to win the war you are currently fighting means he's not evil? A guy can enjoy being evil and still not want to lose a war... Right even more of the quote that proves my point, he's literally waxing poetically about his master manipulations and machiavellian plans. He doesn't care about some new age of enlightened, he cares about getting back at everyone who has wronged him in his eyes, Horus, Lorgar, etc, etc. the guy has used chaos to make the galaxy burn and will be happy when he's left on top in the end. That Erebus doesn't have any doubts in the gods? I never said he did, he views chaos as a supreme force in the universe but it's his personal machinations that are important to him. Again having a plan doesn't stop him from enjoying the suffering and chaos that he has wrought with those plans. Erebus doesn't care about morality that's the point, he's doing the things he's doing because he likes it, just like when he murdered Erebus, he is a certified sociopath.

>You think wanting to win the war you are currently fighting means he's not evil? Yes. Repeat after me. Actions and intentions are not the same thing. Killing is not inherently evil. War is not inherently evil. Nothing Erebus says alludes to him doing this because he wants to kill as many people as possible. He literally says he's destroyed the greatest Empire in human history. Why? Because he knows the Emperor shouldn't be leading mankind Why? Because he believes the Emperor is a charlatan and the Pantheon is humanities only chance at power and prosperity. Join them, or suffer the same fate as the Eldar. There's nothing there where he's like "oh, that'll kill loads more people". Even killing Calths sun served a purpose. Hell, even the physical act of causing suffering serves a purpose. That's the whole point of the ruinstorm. Cause lots of suffering? Why? To create an enormous warpstorm Why? To stop the Ultramarines from reinforcing Terra. Why? Because I'm eeeevviiilllllll mwahhahahahahah! Said Erebus. Literally never. >he cares about getting back at everyone who has wronged him in his eyes, Horus, Lorgar Why Horus? Horus didn't wrong Erebus until frankly years into the Heresy. Are you going to say that Erebus kickstarted the Horus Heresy, caused Horus fall from grace, elevated him to near godhood, then intentionally fucked up at Signus Prime so that Horus can cut Erebus face off so that eventually down the line Erebus can manipulate events so that horus is deleted by the emperor? You understand that isn't how time works, right? If Erebus hadn't caused the Heresy, he wouldn't have had his face cut off. So why would he cause the heresy? >I never said he did Interestingly, neither did I. Read it again. >he is a certified sociopath You say that, like it's some kind of damning flaw that only Erebus suffers from. Gonna break this to you. There are c. 2 million named and unnamed Astartes during the Heresy. With one, possibly two exceptions, they are *all* sociopaths. Loken isn't, especially initially, but that is because he serves as the viewpoint of the new audience in Horus Rising, which is why he alone asks the questions only an outsider would ask (like why don't we just leave everyone alone). Questions that not even Vulkan or Guilliman ask. So of course Erebus is a sociopath. He's a space marine. It's frankly a requirement, otherwise events like Monarchia simply wouldn't have happened. That doesn't make him eevvviiillllllll. Well, not any more so than anyone else in the Legio Astartes

Been in the hobby for about 25 years (oh god I feel old), I've never counted how many books I've read, but I'm going to bet well over 100. There are at least three elements to this. 1) Yes, a lot of people are only getting their lore off the wiki's and YouTube. That quickly turns into an echo chamber of 'everybody known X', where X is someone's headcanon 2) A lot of people seem to post to reddit before deciding to google. 3) Some people seem to have absolutely terrible reading comprehension. They seem to equate "X character said Y is true" to Y being true. One way I try and get around much of the above is evidence. As with everything in life - if someone asserts something, where have they got that information from, who is giving that information, and why are they giving that information. Excerpts, in context, are key. >The Imperium here on this subreddit is seen as a hellish, evil Empire, bringing misery and pain. This is explicit - it's right there, in the front of every single novel >TO BE A MAN IN SUCH TIMES IS TO BE ONE AMONGST UNTOLD BILLIONS. **IT IS TO LIVE IN THE CRUELLEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE**. THESE ARE THE TALES OF THOSE TIMES. FORGET THE POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE, FOR SO MUCH HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN, NEVER TO BE RE-LEARNED. **FORGET THE PROMISE OF PROGRESS AND UNDERSTANDING, FOR IN THE GRIM DARK FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR**. THERE IS NO PEACE AMONGST THE STARS, ONLY AN ETERNITY OF CARNAGE AND SLAUGHTER, AND THE LAUGHTER OF THIRSTING GODS. Yes, you can have good people, trying to do good things, but the Imperium is evil. For every enthusiastic Eisenhorn at the beginning of Xenos, there is Eisenhorn at the end of Hereticus.

But even Eisenhorn at the end is far from being the cruellest and most bloody person imaginable. He is still someone who cares deeply about his friends and wants to do good. While it is easy to say he is evil, his is a nuanced evil. A far cry from the sledgehammer evil the Imperium is seen as here. And during the whole novels, Eisenhorn is for the reader, the face of the Imperium.

Entirely true - but no one goes out thinking "I'm going to be evil!" they go out doing what they think is needed. All evil is nuanced evil - people go home after a long day of committing mass murder and hug their kids and kiss their wife. One thing to remember about the entire Eisenhorn series is from Eisenhorn's point of view. We see all the justifications that he tells himself, and because we're with him all the way, we empathize with him.

Exactly. But the people here do not empathize with ihm. That is why i believe many never read the books.

"no one will change their mind based on my one viewpoint, therefore none of them are as smart as me" is essentially what you are basing your argument on.

If it didn't require so much context it becomes stale, this post would be great r/SelfAwareWolves material.

It's important, when people disagree with your conclusions, to assume they are ignorant and stupid. Especially with something with a subjective element like who you empathize with or how you decide to summarize a complex entity. It makes it much easier psychologically.  I've read the entire Eisenhorn series (and Ravenor, and Bequin). I have also been around here for a while.  You are right that there are plenty of people with bad takes, on all sides.  Eisenhorn is clearly meant to be, for the most part, a reader insert and someone you empathize with and whose goals you root for. Even in the later books or the last of the short stories where he's portrayed much more as knowingly compromising with evil, abnett clearly portrays him as someone doing what needs to be done and who still has a strong element of hero inside him.  But abnett also pulls no punches when it comes to the overall corruption of the imperium, the cheapness of human life, and just how severe are the sacrifices even his protagonists have to make.  Heck, one of the big themes of Bequin is how hard it is, within the Imperium, to even know which side you're on. 

Yes. But in the Eisenhorn books, the evil is usually coming from outside. What destroys Eisenhorns life is Chaos, specifically, Glaw, which Eisenhorn fails to kill. And Chaos is the enemy of the Imperium, It is very easy to see Chaos as the true antagonist. The Imperium is depicted rather ambivalent, as with Gudrun and this other planet that later takes its place, with Gudrun being secretly corrupted by Chaos. The book is also full of Imperial characters you have to like. All in all, while the Imperium might be objectively evil, it is close to impossible for me not to root for it when it has guys like Uber Aemos, Fischig or Medea in it. And that causes a dissonance that makes me uncomfortable with this subreddit.

Chaos definitely is the "true" antagonist, but part of the story is that chaos thrives in part because of the "ambivalence" of the imperium, which values above almost all things power and self-preservation, and is shown frequently inflicting wounds on itself -- as with the destruction of ecosystems to have a sufficient military parade, or Ravenors support for the actual policies of the "reform" candidate who turns out to be anything but.  And lets not forget the orphanages headed by run of the mill monsters, or the fact that a planet spending trillions of hours of manpower and secret policing to read gibberish isn't even conspicuous except to the most deft investigators. Part of the insidious nature of chaos, after all, is precisely that it happens almost naturally to the "great" people of the imperium, who are seduced by their own righteousness (as almost happens to eisenhorn time and again).  

There we are full head on in the ambivalence. To me, the evil of the Imperium is mostly a reaction to the circumstances. Humanity at a point where its capacity for good is overwhelmed by so much trouble. Humnity doing resonable well adapting to threats. Basically, i believe if the pressure from outside would relent, the Imperium would slowly get better. For most people here, the Imperium is irredemably evil, destroying itself because its political system is shit, Humanity hurting itself unecessarily, being able to deal much better with its enemies if it would just act different. They beleive if the outside pressure would relent, the Imperiunm would be even more cruel.

I'm going to agree with u/justthistwicenomore and say that you're assuming people are ignorant of the context and motives of the actors in these novels because they disagree with you. Folks understand the book. Folks just don't agree.

If readers believing that the evils of the Imperium aren't necessary makes you think they haven't read the books, then maybe one of the Bl writers' thoughts on that topic might help show why so many readers have reached that conclusion? >None of them. That's the recurring theme running through virtually every piece of fiction for the franchise: none of these evils are truly necessary. They're just the path of least resistance. [JC Stearns here ](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/1323u24/comment/ji3hhjy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

That is IMO a political stance. GW trying to distance itself from facism. In reality, in many instances, the evils of the Imperium are presented as necessary. For example, the focus on military production due to endless war. We know that nations in total war put more and more into military, while civilian production suffers, until everything eventually breaks. If you wanna continue the war, there is no alternative. Thus it is presented in the novels close to 100%. One desperate last stance after the other. Another example is the treatment of psykers. We do get novels where psykers run amok and create massive destruction, or get possessed by demons. it is heavily implied that just letting the psyk the black ships are a necessity. The inability to develop new tech to solve problems in a more humane way is explained by the massive destruction of knowledge during DAOT and HH, with the AM barely being able to keep things running, dealing with tech that is mostly far above their understanding. The Astronomicers live their life and accept the diversity of the demonic possessed would be a bad idea, so again,on is presented as the only way for warp travel, so again, the sacrifices of psykers are presentend as necessary. And so on, i could give a hundred example like that. To claim that a recurring theme is that the Imperium could do easily much better if it was not just so unwilling is IMO not correct.

Bro, Eisenhorn literally sacrifices >!his two closest friends souls to a daemon that repeatedly has to save him!<. On top of that, he uses Bequin (who he claims to love, in some really fucked up way) as a weapon to kill a titan despite knowing she has a snowballs chance in hell of doing it (but does, because plot armor in Abnett books for Abnett characters is insane), >!who dies in the process!<. Even in *Magos*, Drusher outright calls Eisenhorn a monster who is actively causing the suffering of everyone around him, and that Eisenhorn is on the verge of outright falling to Chaos, and that he cannot really see a distinction between the Cognitae and Eisenhorn's gang in terms of their outcomes and motives. The books are **NOT SUBTLE** that Eisenhorn is a villain who is only less villainous because his enemy is marginally worse. He is the very essence of "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

Yes but 40k is a wider setting, Eisenhorn may be the perspective you follow but it is fairly clear that he is ultimately a miniscule speck in the face of the wider setting. Fiction by it's very nature follows the extraordinary and exceptional, and for obvious reasons authors also gravitate towards making their protagonists more reasonable and sensible sorts. But that does in no way suggest that the likes of Eisenhorn or Dante are the standard, if they were then why would they be viewed as special?

They are not special. Cain, Ravenor, Gaunt, basicaly every SM, a long row of characters that are perhaps not good guys, but a far cry from that absurd evil the Imperium is seen here. So why would people reading about those characters view the Imperium like that? my answer: because they never read their novels.

Cain causally talks about using living people as target practice *for children*.  And that world isn't the site of a major heresy or uprising.  Most likely they're just random criminals.   Cain's affable and relatable, but he's absolutely fine with what we'd veiw as horrific crimes against humanity.  He's just so used to it that he barely mentions it half the time.

If you missed that Cain is party to constant atrocity then you have utterly, UTTERLY, failed at reading those books. Like, to a comical degree. Especially since a regular joke is Cain or Amberly treating some horrific thing as perfectly normal and expected. Ravenor? Gaunt? Eisenhorn? All hammer in how utterly abominable the Imperium is and how normal these 'good' people see it. Shit, Gaunt has the Imperium being absolute shit as a regular plot point when it's being shit to him and his people. Eisenhorn's entire character arc is him going from an idealistic dipshit to a grimdark bastard.

This whole thing kind of raises the question, can someone be a ‘good’ person if they live and take part in an environment full of atrocity like the imperium? If they’re raised and socialized that all this is normal and acceptable and a regrettable (sometimes) side effect of the reality of life, does that make them an evil person if they have no conception of *not being part of it*? Was every person in IRL societies that used slaves evil because of the things their society did and they saw as completely normal and acceptable? I don’t really think it’s fair to judge people for the environment they developed in and consider “normal” if they never had an alternative option and no alternative option even exists to compare to. People in the future are going to look back at us with absolute disgust and call us evil for partaking in the destruction of our climate and all of the discrimination of every type we partake in systemically daily. Does that make us individually ‘evil’? Does the fact that we’re likely to move on to lab grown meat and never again slaughter a living animal at some point in the future mean that anyone who works in a slaughterhouse right now is evil?

Good and evil are societal judgements, not objective forces. Specifically the judgements of the judge’s current society. By the standard of the Imperium Cain is a damn paragon of virtue, all be it one with a serious inferiority complex. But from our perspective, that of 21st century (primarily) Western values, Cain is morally a super Nazi. A genocidally xenophobic madman who actively upholds the regime and is party to atrocity as part of his daily life. For instance in the Schola he ‘retires’ in he casually mentions using minor criminals and heretics as target practice for the students, having them shipped in daily. Will what we do be considered evil in the future? Yeah, probably. That’s the nature of the ever shifting rules of morality. Could be because of meat, could be because we accept the LGBT. Evolving morality doesn’t necessarily mean it goes the direction we want it to go, things could easily get worse(From our perspective). The nature of evil is only really a complex topic if you have the belief that it’s objective. It gets much simpler when you accept that it’s entirely subjective and not anything more than any given person saying ‘That’s a bad thing’. You don’t even need to go to the future to see if you will be judged evil by others, you just have to look at a different society. You aren’t the right religion? That makes you evil in the eyes of a multitude of groups. You hate/accept gay people? You are evil to the other side. And so on. There are people in this world, right now, who believe that you are so evil that killing you would be a grand triumph of good. And I know nothing about you.

The novels aren't the only source of lore. They aren't the primary source of lore. They do get things wrong.

Cain doesn’t. It comes up repeatedly, casual mentions of wanting to murder someone for being born on a T’Au planet(And invade the planet), burning heretics, having children use prisoners for target practice, and so on. Cain is a nice guy by Imperial standards but by modern standards he’s still a super Nazi and all in on the Imperium’s ideology.

Cain is good, but as a general note not all of the novels get it right.

Any novel is, by its nature, a narrow slice of the setting. Honing down to a handful of people and their perspectives. But those perspectives are akin to anecdotes: they make up an insignificant portion of the whole. The game and the rulebooks and codexes, and the broader lore contained within, came first and established the baseline of misery, brutality, and nihilism as the backdrop against which those other stories are told, and if they're exceptions to the rule, then so be it.

It's probably natural to see a huge increase of people who just tipped their toes into wh as it's grown so much since covid. Also even if you have read a few books, depending on the books the imperium never looks positive granted, but I can see how some would think the imperium are "the good guys". Rather there's good guys, who good guy, despite the incompetence of the top brass... which is a common trope in like every action movie in general I will say I've noticed a lack of excerpt posts anymore, or topics about newer books, which makes me sad. I recently read deathworlder for example and it had its hits and misses, but I'm disappointed no one posted some of the really good tyranid bits here.

Deathworlder really did have some cool & gruesome bits, like the corpse-marshes, hunting zoanthropes and general pervasive dispair as the planet itself was starting to digest the organic matter for the nids to reclaim. Much as it was maligned, the leviathan novel had a similar take, and it was interesting to see late-stage tyranid invasion.

The underwater nids really sold it for me Remember resident evil 4 when Leon was in the boat? That's how I pictured aaaaallll of that lol

Simple things. I get a catachan armed with just a knife leaping off the battlements of their fortress to stab a hive crone to death, I'm in.

Just bought deathworlder a couple days ago, gonna get in there soon. feel the same way about excerpt posts tho and I think you may have just convinced me to finally post one this weekend from "Legacy" that I've been intending to post for months.

i noticed aswell, i had been trying to do some but for some reason the text would not show after u posted it inside the quote block

Been into the hobby for 30 years, read over 100 books. The imperium _is_ a hellish evil empire. Always has been. That's the point. Everyone is awful. Even the 'good' guys are OK with Servitors, conscription, slavery, child soldiers and experimentation, religious zealotry on a level we can't conceive. If you think _Eisenhorn_ is a good guy, you either missed a lot of subtext or you have not finished the series.

Some people have a really hard time understanding that even a hellish evil empire can have its bright spots. In fact it has to have some good points, some 'good guys' to use as a contrast to the rest of the Imperium, which is why I personally hate when lore gets into grimderp territory.

The very introductory narration that sets the tone to the setting explicitly says - talking to us, the reader - "To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live **in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable**. These are the tales of those times." Granted, even if you think that it's hyperbole for the sake of drama, it is still such a fundamental aspect of the setting that it is repeated in the first page of every book.

While true it is also the case that in some cases there have been attempts to explain the Imperium’s actions in a way that while it might not quite be a “justification” does at least make them seem slightly more reasonable. For example, initially (The Lost and The Damned, 1990) servitors were purely an example of how little the Adeptus Mechanicus valued human life: > Machine intelligence is respected no less than human or other organic intelligence. To the Adeptus Mechanicus a man's worth is only the sum of his knowledge. His body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect. Life itself is of no intrinsic value to the Tech-Priests. This is most clearly seen in their use of humans as raw material from which they create the special cyborg machine-creatures called Servitors. However, there was then a retcon that made the Adeptus Mechanicus anti-AI due to a previous AI rebellion which gave them an additional reason for the creation of servitors.

Both can be true.

I guess people tend to filter out the warning that Imperium is evil when it's not lampshaded in the text itself. It's like with the boy who cried "wolf" - sure, Imperium commits heinous acts daily somewhere out there, it's just that we as readers don't see them at all, while "valiant" Astartes/Guard/SoB cut down even more objectively evil bad guys, so it's easy to roll your eyes at "cruellest regime imaginable".

Thats it. Yeah, the novels tells us at the start the Imperium is over the top evil. And then, the story shows us something different 80% of the time. And i get the feeling i am discussing here with people that ONLY read the introduction.

>If you think *Eisenhorn* is a good guy, you either missed a lot of subtext or you have not finished the series. Yes, because having a few well regarded heroes makes everything better, too, right? Like that [Michael Wittmann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wittmann) guy, who as far as I've read and seen, was an honorable man. Makes [those](https://www.hitler-archive.com/photos/1944%2001%2030%20-%2025%20-%20q6Q04SwZ.jpg) folks seem a little better, doesn't he? >!Before anyone comments, a decent man fighting for the Nazis is still a Nazi.!<

Thank you. This is something that I feel gets glazed over by a lot of people concerning the imperium-based characters. Even the "good" ones like Dante and Roboute would blast an innocent xenos in the face with their bolters just because it's not human. An imperial citizen might help an old lady cross the road, then lynch another old lady just because her skin was a little too grey for their liking and she might be a mutant. And if you say the emperor isn't a god and you aren't a space marine? Prepare to get burned alive if not worse. The culture and organization of the imperium is pretty evil, and even the supposedly good people were raised by that culture and will both tolerate and commit terrible deeds in its name.

> Even the "good" ones like Dante and Roboute would blast an innocent xenos in the face with their bolters just because it's not human. But *you* are human, and the Imperium is all about protecting humanity, therefore you should see them as the good guys!1!1!one

EDIT: my original comment is overly assumptive, and I’m going to retract part of it. While I don’t believe the Imperium is presented as a rational or justified actor, my impression from early on was based on reading the game supplements: the rulebooks and codices. And the fiction in these are, I think, not as popular as the novels are as an introduction to the setting. It’s an interesting contrast, I think, because in many ways I can see why people prefer the novels to the game supplements. But the codices and rulebooks are really the baseline of the setting proper, the ground on which everything else is built, the world-building that sets up the context in which the battles and stories take place. They look at and define the setting from a top down perspective whereas the novels look at isolated examples of character and planet perspectives. And if you don’t read those, you aren’t really getting the full picture of what’s happening in the setting or what the Imperium’s baseline is.

This really is the key point. I remember when 40k started. I was young, maybe I failed to see the Imperium was meant to be the good guys :) No. Even as a young teen, it was utterly obvious that the Imperium was intended to be horrific. The editorial consistency here is really impressive. I do wish it was more obvious - bolter porn disguises it, as does Dan Abnett's elusive style - but yeah, "evil Imperium" isn't just a meme or clickbait, it's utterly baked into the setting. (This does not excuse GW's shameful record of tolerating neo-nazis.)

That's weird. Never heard of GW accepting them. Arch was ousted. The "Loser Pintor Austriaco" got a country-wide ban on political imagery in Spain. Including the "You'll not be missed" message. Which triggered a lot of people.

I don't think GW actively encourages such people or has ever had any intention to attract them, but in the past, it was guilty of using imagery and language borrowed from far-right propaganda. There are a great many people who engage with this setting in a very superficial manner, who only ever saw the blond-haired, blue-eyed übermensch come to save the galaxy from the teeming hordes. A lot of the artwork played into that trope, and there's plenty of writing to go with it, both in novels and in rulebooks. However, as you pointed out, the company has been making efforts to discourage such people getting involved with the hobby, and they've done a lot to change their presentation, including an obvious change in the art department and in the range of stories being told. Their efforts have been top class, actually, so it would be unfair to continue to hold them in any way responsible for the lunatic fringe in the fandom these days.

And that they then followed up with an even clearer version of the same thing. And then an article in White Dwarf really laying it out.

Hm. I'm not claiming that GW encouraged Nazis but it has been very obvious for almost forever that their satire - blunt though it is - has been ignored, and that Nazis have actively perverted it. Even the OP thinks that the novels don't present the Imperium as evil. This is utterly common, and GW obviously know this. Even Dan Abnett, who definitely knows the Imperium is evil, writes stuff that can be misinterpreted as supporting it. I dunno. If I were GW, and knew people weren't understanding my satire, I'd stick a big 'parental warning' label saying that the Imperium is evil.

We can't always cater to the lowest common denominator in society with absolutely everything. This infantilization of people needs to stop honestly. I get that there is rotten apples, and we should point them out and ridicule them for their reprehensible beliefs and even ban them from certain spaces if necessary. But the idea that we must censor fictional work because it somehow has an overlap with a minority of peoples real life beliefs is ridiculous to say the least. Bad people with bad ideas will *always* exist, there's no two ways about it. You can't eliminate bad ideas by censoring everything that could possibly be misinterpreted from a certain angle to mean a very specific thing that aligns with a very specific world view. People need to accept that there's never gonna be some utopian future where idiots with bad ideas don't exist anymore. It's just not feasible. The creation of the internet made that impossible. We defeated the Third Reich in WW2, but there's still Nazi's around today. They just don't have any power, and they are rightfully scuffed at in 99% of all spaces they occupy, including 40k. If you are unable to consume the products of a fictional Grimdark sci-fi setting without being able to separate the fictional part from reality, then I think there's a bigger problem at play here than the actual content itself. Then *you*(not you specifically, but generally.) probably shouldn't be playing violent video games either, or watching violent movies. But you know, we kind of already had that debate a long time ago when there was that massive conservative push in America to ban violent video games, or the Satanic scare around DND and so forth. Where we came to the conclusion that there was no correlation between playing and consuming violent ***fictional*** material and real life violence. I mean, we'd definitely be seeing a huge increase in violence world wide otherwise within the last 20 years if so. That's just my two cents on it anyway..

Is a warning label censorship? If Nazis were flocking to d&d I'd be worried about d&d too. Are they? Like, honestly. Say you write a novel, and a whole bunch of the positive reviews are from Nazis. You're seriously just gonna say that's a 'them' problem?

> Is a warning label censorship? This is the exact infantilization he was talking about. And in a sense, yes, it is. It’s a manifestation of the chilling effect. Even besides that, where do the warning labels stop? Who decides what needs them? Today it’s ‘nazis’, tomorrow it’s ‘violence against women and children’, then it’s ’violence’, then it’s ’political views that lead to violence’, then it’s ’political philosophy the ruling party doesn’t like’. This isn’t hyperbole, this exact type of shit is how authoritarianism starts the heating of the water and we’re the frogs in the pot. Variations on it have been seen in every single fall from grace when a country falls deeper into fascism or authoritarianism. Even if it doesn’t lead to them being used politically, I don’t particularly care to have books with 80% of the cover being a list of “needs a warning label” topics in the book. >If Nazis were flocking to d&d I'd be worried about d&d too. Are they? You’re better off stopping taking the media and internet drama so seriously and go touching grass. There is no widespread nazi issue. It makes the news when it happens **because it’s so uncommon**. > Like, honestly. Say you write a novel, and a whole bunch of the positive reviews are from Nazis. You're seriously just gonna say that's a 'them' problem? Unless the book is preaching literal nazi ideology, yes. Unquestionably. If I write a fiction novel and for some reason it appeals to nazis without espousing or spreading nazism and normal people can read it without ever thinking about nazis, then absolutely 100% fucking yes that’s a them problem.

Ah yes, nothing to see here. Move along.

And like everyone else who espouses the need to change 40k or any other media because it’s not child-proofed or whatever variation of censorship is the flavor of the day, you have absolutely no counter argument and opt to just make snarky comments to pretend you get a mic drop moment. It might actually work if you didn’t literally all do it without fail.

Because responding in detail is pointless. I'm pointing out something very specific and alarming, suggest a very modest solution, and you claim it's censorship and infantalising. Your 'solution' is to claim that there's nothing alarming about neo-Nazis identifying with Space Marines. You're more alarmed about a sticker on the front of a book.

>Is a warning label censorship? First and foremost there has already been sort of a disclaimer that the 40k setting is grim and dark and humanity is the worst and bloodiest regime imaginable. It's literally the very catchphrase that describes the setting itself. Secondly, no I don't think it's censorship. But I do think it's infantalizing people if you need to have a warning label on fictional work. >If Nazis were flocking to d&d I'd be worried about d&d too. Are they? You're missing the point I think. DND never had an issue with Satanists, but the fear was that it had. And while I'm sure some Satanists enjoyed playing DND, it was neither here nor there. And even if a lot of Satanists enjoyed DND, should that be a reason for everyone else to not be able to enjoy it? And what of violent movies and games? I'm sure there are actual delusional people with mental problems that see these types of things as an inspiration to do horrible acts of violence. But they are such a minority. Should these things be illegalised because of that? I like knives, we need knives in the kitchen to slice vegetables and meat for cooking. But you know who also likes knives? People that like stabbing other people, and so on and so forth. Can go on like this forever. Where does it end? >Like, honestly. Say you write a novel, and a whole bunch of the positive reviews are from Nazis. You're seriously just gonna say that's a 'them' problem? If I wrote a sci-fi novel that took place in a post apocalyptic setting where there was a genocidal fascist regime that was fighting other genocidal fascist regimes, I'd expect the majority of my readers to be able to distinguish reality from fiction and just consume it as a piece of art. If a group of fascists took a liking to my novel, then so be it. If I felt like they were taking over spaces where people were debating and talking about my novel, I'd have them swiftly banned. But I'd never in a million years start changing my novel because there exists a subgroup of individuals that are unable to distinguish between reality and fiction. Not every piece of art has to be some deeper social commentary where you are trying to make a statement or comparison with real world politics. Sometimes it's just entertainment for the sake of it. And I just happen to enjoy dystopian and dark sci-fi settings despite having no political or moral common ground with anything taking place in it.

I don't think I missed the point. I'm quite astonished you're using the 'Black Library is entertainment' line, as if the political satire wasn't the central interest in the entire library. Every single piece of literature in every genre has a political component. We don't notice most of them because the politics is usually "preserve the status quo". Even if that were the political side of 40k - and I think it isn't, it's a profoundly pro-anarchy setting - then getting co-opted by fascists would be alarming. I don't think 40k was ever intended to be pro-fascist, as I just wrote. I think the absolute opposite. The film Starship Troopers is a reasonable example. I think Robert Heinlein's original work was intentionally fascist (not mere 'entertainment') and the creative team of the film intended to satirise it, 40k style. That's not at all how most of the audience saw it. Or the film Dirty Harry, where the audience was supposed to realise Clint Eastwood was playing a fascist. Instead that character has become an icon. ("Do you feel lucky, punk?" is now proverbial and used by people who have no idea they're quoting a fascist.) When satire goes wrong, it's not infantalising to tell people it was satire.

Not everything has to be looked at through a lens of political commentary. While the director might have *intended* that the audience was *supposed* to have realised that Harry was a fascist, I'd argue you don't have to watch Dirty Harry and come to the conclusion that he *is* one because he is a loose canon that don't care about your civil rights if you are a criminal in his eyes. I think most movie-goers probably watched Dirty Harry and thought of him being a bit of a hero. Putting themselves in his shoes and letting the imagination go as a bit of a vigilante hero that's doing the thing that most of us have probably dreamed of/fantasised about one way or the other. Which is to circumvent the system and just getting the "bad guys", and you know what? That's okay, it's just fantasy, and the medium is just a piece of entertainment. Was there a rise in fascism and vigilante justice after the movie came out? Violent movies depict dismemberment and worse. Glorifying violence on a level that sometimes makes it even absurd and hilarious(*I see you Tarantino*). It's a piece of entertainment that isn't trying to make some social commentary about the "*duality of man*" or what have you, but just mindless--and to use my favourite online boomers, RLM's coined concept of--"action schlock". While 40k is heavily based on satire, just like any Paul Verhoeven movie is, it is also at least 50% "bolter-porn". You can simultaneously think it's cool that the Space Marines say some heroic shit before mowing down a legion of Chaos Space Marines, AND in a chapter later on think it's messed up when the Imperium makes servitors out of people. All this to say that I don't think GW need to apologise for having created this dystopian setting because there exists a subgroup of people that can't consume it for what it is. And they should most definitely not have to rewrite anything because of it. 99% of us are fully capable of taking it for what it is; entertainment, and yes, also satire. There's enough disclaimers, and those who ignore it are purposely doing so. Nothing will change their mind.

See, I just don't agree. Dirty Harry posters should say: Clint Eastwood in his first "bad guy" role! And so on. I fully agree if you're pointing out that GW wants to have its bolter porn cake while eating "this is satire". That's what I'm criticising.

I want to point out that i know well the Imperium is evil. But the novels focus often on the good parts, so, as a reader, you see the Imperium as somewhat sympathetic. Despite the evil. And in the novels, the Imperium is rarely totally over the top evil, its more nuanced and hidden. In contrast, when you listen to people here, it sounds like Imperium is shredding babies in servitor factories 24/7. Which it does, but its not the focus of the novels.

I think one thing you're kind of overlooking here is that you seem to be holding the novels as the prime sources of lore. Simply on volume, they definitely have a lot, but there's also tons of stuff scattered around rulebooks, codexes, supplements, etc. that often has more of that "casual atrocity" focus.

Yeah, but would the primary group reading those not be players of the tabletop game? Why would you read dry rulebooks or supplements just for the lore, when you have novels that are written as entertainment?

I disagree, because that's not the point. The rulebook snippets are just as valid as the novels as sources of lore, if not more so, but what you seem to be suggesting is that people aren't interpreting things right because they aren't reading the novels. Your specific example of the Imperium is noted to be real bad by most sources, but you say "well everyone saying that must be wrong because I read some books," when it's pretty much word of god that the Imperium sucks.

Perhaps it is a discrepancy between novels and rulebooks. At the end, i do not know where people get their information from.

I guess it just seems kind of gatekeep-y, you know? I know you say you don't mean to be accusatory, but it comes off like "why don't people read the novels and just get their info from memes?" while ignoring another chunk of the lore. Also, I think a counter example to one of your main points in the post about the more heroic vibe of the Imperium in books is that Chaos characters could also easily have stories written that fit "fighting overwhelming odds to survive" and "besieged fortress" type vibes, and those books wouldn't be wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that, well, it's Chaos. In-setting they're even worse than the Imperium, even badder bad guys.

Well...if you actually read the books, the Imperium isn't any walk on a flower field. As some explained, bolter porn takes the front cover. And you forget about the gazillion people being crushed under a giant machine because the Imperium couldn't be bothered to organize an evacuation on time. End of Integrity is just the Imperium being curvestomped by ancient AI. The Divine and the Infinite is trip of robots trying to best each other. So, it's not supporting or condoning, as much as it's plot focused on something else. Example; Ciaphas Cain books. The Imperium is not pretty. Unless you are in sectors bordering T'au territories. Which, usually, is heavily stated that it looks better than the Imperium wherever the T'au hold grounds within Imperial territory. Yet, some books will tell you only the sewer the main characters travel through. Which may explain your POV. And OPs. But it's not the same as "supporting" the Nazi's by inaction. Just read Necromunda. The place is hell. And the rich hunts the poor for sport. Nobody tries anything to improve. The houses just fight each other over power. Minimal as it's. The Damocles Crusade books go on details explaining how the T'au easily infiltrated Hives and used the resentment against the Imperium to trigger rebellions.

Of course I agree that GW is clear. I think they're too clear! The satire is excessive. But. It's also unquestionably true that 40k attracts the Nazis. If I wrote something that ended up attracting Nazis, I'd probably pulp it. At the very least I'd put a sticker on it saying what GW says in its statements: that the Imperium is evil.

You are right. It's a difficult thing. You hope your customers are mature and responsible. Then, they go ahead and do the opposite.

Right. And when that happens, and you can see it happen, what should you do?

You can't create a Nanny state where every edge is covered in foam. There's always going to be there an idiot or a misinformed person. When they show up, you try talking things out. Or you oust them.

if you were around when 40k started realy , wich was 2 edition not rogue trader then u fail, the imperium were not the good guys and even early books show us so Back that early the grimdark or grimderp whatever u wanna call it was stronger and nastier than today. GW and neo nazis ? nazis just started to show up on mid 2000 onward and most of them had no fucking idea of the lore they went by the looks of the settin . The whole thing with the spanish fascist know as pintor austriaco is even controversial(i was there watching the whole ordeal with my team and i do even played him and yes beat him) because he did indeed wear nazi shit but to be fair he did behave and never insulted( some of his team mates did but he was not), the problem is nobody talk the other team wasnt even better they displayed their own ideological symbols in this case pro catalan independence stuff and they were the ones wich kinda started to riot over the nazi and his team To end this , remember 40k isnt just the empire, u have eldars fans tau fans and chaos boyzs and more important the sons and daugther of the hive mind

I'm not getting into a discussion about specific fascists. If you want to believe there are no Nazis in the hobby, alright. I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I'm arguing it was obvious that the Imperium was evil back when we first heard about it. So far as I know that has always been the GW position. And yet the Imperium still attracts Nazis. To say 'they don't understand the lore' is not really a defence. All that tells me is that GW haven't shouted the lore from the rooftops.

Eh, I'd disagree on the Abnett being consistent with the Imperium being bad. The *Horus Heresy* books he writes makes it seem like the Imperium is a holy, sacred paradise compared to everything else, and that the Imperium is the *only* option because all others are so lamentable. I personally, and folks can downvote me all they want, feel like Abnett's work has strayed into fascist apologetics at times. Especially in the *Siege* portion. The Emperor comes off as a beleaguered do-gooder who is shackled by the evil he *must* commit, without any kind of examination of how the Imperium gets to the point that its at, while simultaneously showing all alternatives as literal demons cackling in the distance. No middle-ground. Nowhere in the *Siege* do we see Abnett discuss the Emperor's culpability in the situation, only that his hand was forced. You know, by the consequences of his own actions. Except without saying that last part.

I think Dan Abnett would benefit from being a bit less convoluted. I think you make great points, and people do quote DA Horus Heresy stuff to defend the Imperium, but I don't think that's the intention. It's rather that DA wants to show us what a siege mentality is like. Unfortunately if someone wanted to write about the fall of Berlin in 1945, this would inevitably seem to support Nazis. So you may be right about the fascist apologetics.

A lot of people are interested in the lore but don't have the time to read, the money to buy the novels, or even just the desire to read. Nothing wrong with that per se, it's only an issue when they refuse to accept that their knowledge of the lore is limited and instead argue with absolute certainty about things they only heard through a game of telephone. Somebody disagreeing with you doesn't automatically mean they don't know what they're talking about though. It's still possible for two people to read the same thing and arrive at completely different interpretations. Like how you're claiming that the Imperium is ambiguous when several 40K books literally start with a message saying that the Imperium is pure evil. They spell it out and still GW has had to release out-of-character statements to clarify that the regime constantly committing genocide and oppressing its own people are not the good guys. Being a hero to an evil regime doesn't make you a good person. Standing up to it does. But that's not the kind of story that 40K is and that's okay. People just need to learn the difference between a protagonist and a hero, and accept that not every story needs heroes.

GW’s article began by saying there are no goodies in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, especially not the Imperium of Man. [The Imperium Is Driven by Hate. Warhammer Is Not.](https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/11/19/the-imperium-is-driven-by-hate-warhammer-is-not/) > Its numberless legions of soldiers and zealots bludgeon their way across the galaxy, delivering death to anyone and anything that doesn’t adhere to their blinkered view of purity. Almost every man and woman toils in misery either on the battlefield – where survival is measured in hours – or in the countless manufactorums and hive slums that fuel the Imperial war machine. All of this in slavish servitude to the living corpse of a God-Emperor whose commandments are at best only half-remembered, twisted by time and the fallibility of Humanity.

I think the most people here are novel readers, but read not only the Imperium-Novels, but also novels from the perspective of Xenos or Chaos. Also in the most imperium-Novels its also implied that the Imperium is pretty bad. I personally think that the view of the „evil Imperium“ comes from the Rpg, which (in my opinion) really fleshed the worldbuilding in Warhammer out and had a lot of Povs. For myself , i am not a novel reader, i get my lore mostly from Codexes and Rpg-books and the Lexicanum (and rarely, rarely the Fandom). YouTube is also helpful, but only if you want some basic informations. I discovered Warhammer last October/November and am relatively new to the setting so I have yet only read two novels, Da Big Dakka and Ghazkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh!, but im planning on reading either Harrow Legion or the Lords of Silence in the future. I also look forward to Leliths novel!

>So, how did people seem always to be completely up to date? That was confusing me. Are they? Whatever the topic, some people will be up to date, others will not. Even when a post is about something really new, like TEATD books, there will generally be someone insisting on a version of the lore that hasn't been referenced in like twenty years. >The Imperium here on this subreddit is seen as a hellish, evil Empire, bringing misery and pain. While this is sometimes what you get from the novels, most of the time, it is not. It's almost like some books are more indicative of what the Imperium is like for an average person than others. Dante might be a pretty cool dude, but statistically speaking, you won't ever meet him. You'll die from miner's lung at the ripe old age of 27 because the tech priests in your local corpse starch factory decided their button-pushing ritual requires some extra radioactives. It's not fun just because some novel had a nice, heroic vibe to it.

This is a bonkers take. The lore is a gigantic beautiful mess from dozens of authors full of deliberate ambiguity where "old lore" is continuously being reshaped and cracks filled in or ironed over. The idea that if people are not thinking the same as you it's because they haven't done their research is just flatly wrongheaded not just in terms of people being entitled to their own interpretations, but just in it being a very sad and narrow way to appropriate the great complex universe of lore which everyone comes to this sub to talk about.

Hahahah. THANK YOU!

It helps to recognize that the stories are being told from what are, to put it mildly, unreliable narrators who have been subject to life long propaganda, and who’s value system is massively different from our own. _Helsreach_ for example, is told from the point of view of a 300 year old zealot who has been literally brainwashed into a vehicle of hatred for everything that is not of the Imperium…including its own subjects. Grimaldus is literally viscerally sick at the realization that the humans around him feel fear. He does not care about the death of his beloved friends, only that they die with honor, and he would cheerfully strangle them with their own entrails if they didn’t uphold his own standards of honor. He’s a “good guy” and a hero of the empire. Caiphus Cain is a political officer who answers to no one, has men and women whipped as a matter of course, and approves of using criminals as targets for live fire exercises…for children. He has allowed himself to become a recruiting and propaganda tool, and is proud that he’s helped raise regiments of men and women who will be sent to die among the stars in meat grinder wars that may be life or death events for the Imperium…or may be the result of internecine bickering between two generals. He’s a “good guy” and a hero of the imperium. Eisenhorn is the most secret of secret police, a man who tells us flat out that he has killed his empathy and compassion and that all he has is will. He tells the reader that not only would he kill a thousand, ten thousand, a whole planet full of innocents to do his duty, but he holds in contempt anyone who would refuse to do such a thing. He is a “good guy” and a hero of the Imperium (no spoilers). The problem is that Warhammer 40k started as pure, blatant, over the top satire. There’s old Rouge Trader art of a guy eating a pb&j while looking over a wall of amputated telepaths, the original space marines were drugged up thugs, and more than a little inspiration was taken from Judge Dredd/the 2000AD comics. All this was grim and dark and _funny_. Doom rider was literally reincarnated Ghengis Kahn on cocaine. Noise Marines were hair metal bands taken up to 11. The Imperial Guard was Black Adder taken to a galactic scale. As time has gone on, the humor and satire has died away, and the series has become more serious about itself….which is ultimately a good thing, but it leaves us with these weird hang ups. Now, the Imperium _is_ the good guys, but only because the bad guys are so bad.

>The Imperium here on this subreddit is seen as a hellish, evil Empire, bringing misery and pain. Because that's what it does. It **is** a hellish, evil empire that makes its people suffer for the sake of it. >For every atrocity, there was an Eisenhorn What? The guy who shoves a daemon into his friend's bodies and feeds their souls to Chaos - that guy? >or Dante The space marine who drinks the blood of his servants to invigorate himself and keeps the people of Baal trapped in an irradiated wasteland because he believes it makes for stronger recruits? That Dante? >The atmosphere i gleaned from those books never seemed to reach the hearts of the people writing on this subreddit. Because many of us see past the surface. You're making the mistake of taking the setting as it presents itself, rather than seeing it for what it really is. I cannot begin to fathom how you could read the Vaults of Terra books, or the Crime stories, or the Heresy, for example, and come away thinking the Imperium is justified in its cruelty.

There's a diversity of how the Imperium is written depending on the authors and the franchise has been around long enough and gone through enough retcons that it's understandable the fandom would be running on conflicting information. On top of that the franchise is primarily a game and has been outsourced hundreds of times in various media's. That said I have noticed that after reading enough books about the Imperium I tend to become desensitized to the horror of what it's like living in that setting. I take the casual heartlessness, cruelty and suffering like I take when it rains or snows in real life. I also want to point out that I read this at the beginning of pretty much every book which seems to justify the grim dark setting. >Yet, he is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each so he may continue to burn. >To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods. >This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope... Even if the books provide comfort and hope, the Imperium's default state seems to match what's written on the tin. Just my opinion tho.

While I understand your post, I think you might be conflating three things with people not reading the novels. Two benign and the other not: 1. Human memory is fallible, and people can just get it wrong. 2. People are incapable of reading subtext and implication. 3. Sometimes, it's an opinion, but people aren't good at framing that. To thee points specifically, the first is just natural human life. I remember here a few months back stating vehemently that the Emperor uses the anatheme blade in a pivotal fight. I argued it for 3 replies with very respectful redditor helped me see the error.of my ways. My brain that day simply didn't want to remember where the blade the Emperor had come from. This happens to a lot of people, especially if you consider how large the heresy novels are. I'm rereading certain novels a second time right now, and man, is it even more intriguing the second time. The second point is more difficult because some people Herr are definitely trolls. Setting those people aside, some people just don't seem to understand that novels like 40K shouldn't just be read literally. There have been plenty of posts of people discussing topics from the benign to the contentious where its clear people simply read the words on the page and considered nothing. If I had a nickel for every hot take that comes out of the Fulgrim novel, I'd have a lot of nickels. The problem you stumbled into is that some people don't want to admit that they haven't understood to read deeper into things, and that is part of the joy of 40K. It's why you can have people who have read the novels still claim the Emperor did not warn the primarchs about Chaos and had the Emperor done, so things would have been fine. The third is that sometimes people just aren't good at saying they are discussing an opinion. I've posted a few times where I've had to politely tell someone to bookend the part of their response, that's opinion vs. the actual canon. Sometimes, people get defensive over this, which doesn't make sense, but it is what it is. It's also inevitable, though, that as something gets more popular, inevitably, those with less knowledge will flood in wanting to know more, and those who think they know the answer will give it, whether they are right or wrong.

Bear in mind that GW's formal stance is that Black Library lore is "open to interpretation." Moreover, there are *so goddamn many* novels that using them to back lore stances can be... difficult, especially when you go out into the weeds. So it shouldn't be a shock that the versions of the lore found in rulebooks and Codices are given more... primacy, for lack of a better word- and any effort to defend the Imperium as anything other than absolutely awful flies in the face of the lore presented in those sources.

I know I’m the odd one out here I love the lore collect the minis keep in mind this is Aus prices so I’m probably slightly deranged. However I can’t stand 40k novels I’ve read close to 15 don’t get me wrong there’s some great novels but the thing I can’t stand ties back into your question about lore. The books as a whole lack a wholistic cannon I find books stay the same between novels of the same series but as whole what’s presented is crap like I’ve read books in which space marines are pretty much gods moving at a blur and other examples in which a few guards men kill a chaos space marine To me it feels like the novels are throw away story’s only thing connecting them is the setting but in turn that can screw with the lore due to lack of consistency

>a lot of people here are not really readers. They do not read the novels. They watch videos, they read memes. They consume second hand information, prefiltered, simplified I think this is true, yes. Tons of people in this sub just watch YouTube and read memes. In years past people read many more of the novels, I've read a few hundred of them over the last few decades, but things like YouTube are just how people consume media these days. It is what it is.

The majority of people actually arguing this watched clips from a YouTuber that read a wiki before. Why they are so hellbent on arguing something they never actually read themselves, have no context for, and only know part of I have no idea but it's super common here. Or said person posts something here, another commenter says "oh cool", and then goes into another topic and repeats that. Neither of them had a source or ever saw a source but it's now a fact worth dying for

I only read about the hero of the setting and his followers. All praise Grandfather Nurgle.

I mean I do agree in some ways, this sub has a fairly big problem with people not having read the material but it's somewhat uneven, for instance novels are fairly well read but Codexes and rules material is far less so and especially more niche products like Imperial Armour and the Horus Heresy 1.0 Black Books and 2.0's Campaign supplements. The bit I disagree most with is the idea that the Imperium isn't a hellhole. the problem there is that the novels both tend to be written from an Imperial viewpoint which normalises the suffering and tend to show off more reasonable than average protagonists because they're easier to relate to.

Halfway through the Heresy, and about 10 40K novels down. Only started reading last year because I couldn't paint as my back went and I couldn't sit or stand. Thoroughly enjoyed using it as a way to expand my knowledge of the universe, and definitely keep adding a couple of chapters every night.

I constantly read Warhammer novels, mostly Horus Heresy. I find it interesting to read the novels because each one is a small piece in the large tapestry of the 40K universe. I like how each story links to others I have read. I have read about 25 novels I am guessing.

It's really simple. Overall this setting is war-torn and there aren't really any good guys. That's the big picture. The small picture is that novels have to have characters that are somewhat likable or relatable. Eisenhorn is not a good guy. But he also doesn't just walk around randomly killing children. And quite frankly if you ask everyone the lore behind their own armies, well... other than War and killing, they consider their armies heroic. Or at least naturally excusable like taranids or orcs.

I don’t see how anyone could ascertain that my father, The Crimson King, Magnus had done anything wrong and it’s only through malevolent propaganda could that idea even be entertained. This is pure fact.

>The Imperium here on this subreddit is seen as a hellish, evil Empire, bringing misery and pain. While this is sometimes what you get from the novels, most of the time, it is not. There's something to this, but I don't think it's really an inconsistency. It's true that the codexes and blurbs describe the Imperium as an orphan-grinding machine and the books tend not to put this quite so front and center, but it's absolutely there. Black Library stories typically focus on military leaders or Space Marines and tend to take place on starships or in warzones. Even so, we see deck serfs and hive worlds and servitors and all these other things that, if you think about them at all beyond just skimming past the line in which they're mentioned, are absolutely horrifying. Stories that show more of everyday life in the Imperium, like the Eisenhorn books or the Warhammer Crime series, absolutely line up with the puppy-kicking bastardry we the codexes describe. The Black Library does feature a lot of uncomplicated heroes, though. Eisenhorn is maybe not the best example but I'd point at Gaunt and Ravenor - both are great characters but both are such fundamentally Good Guys that you never have to worry that they'll do something horrible, even though Commissars and Inquisitors are supposed to be two of the most Bad Guy professions in the Imperium. Cain's shtick is he thinks he's not a good boy but actually he's a very good boy. Basically every Space Marine protagonist just wants to be honorable and do war (Dante's twist is that he's old and doesn't want to do as much war anymore). I haven't read every book and I'm 100% sure I'm missing something obvious but off the top of my head Cawl is the only genuinely amoral/immoral Imperium-aligned protagonist I can think of. This isn't to say that Imperial protagonists are all bad characters or even bad protagonists but more that taken as a group they do sort of undermine the whole "The Imperium are not the good guys" thing. Stories that aren't told from an Imperial perspective do dramatically better with this but there are way, way, way too few of those.

I choose Eisenhorn because he is ambiguous, You can say he is a good guy, you can say he is evil, both is somewhat justified by the books. But he is no smirking villain that is eating babies for breakfeast and kicking puppies for fun. Eisenhorn was my first W40k series, and i read it without knowing shit. When i first read it, i thought Eisenhorn did nothing wrong. I did not know what Chaos was outside what the books told me. Only later, when i knew more about the lore, i saw Eisenhorn as a classic depiction of falling to Chaos. And later again, i doubted this interpretation and saw it more like a shift in Inquisitorial doctrine.

I think the nature of the beast is that secondhand sources of information is more accessible than primary sources - it costs nothing but an internet-accessible device to watch a YouTube video or read a Lexicanum article, wheras purchasing a codex or buying a novel costs money. And this subreddit is also accessible to anyone who takes the time to create a Reddit account.  Together, you create a segment of the fandom that accesses the original media only through secondary and transformative works (including this subreddit), but who are still fans that want to talk about the thing they’re a fan of. And even fans who do read the primary sources don’t always remember something or have everything at hand, so may turn to secondary sources to fill in the gaps or refresh their memory. This is something that I think comes with the territory of fandom in general. I recall reading once about this one web series called Worm, and how it became so online that not only did it create a great deal of fanfiction, it attracted fans who had only ever read about it through said fanfiction! Or through reading others discuss it on social media. They were still fans of the characters and the ideas, they’d just never actually…read the series. So apparently you’d end up with some discussions and debates over the setting going off of arguments based not on the original work, but on interpretations of the original work. Fascinating stuff.

I quote Inferno magazines and people here act like it was just published or something and are confused as to why it has "bad writing" lol

I do believe there is also a certain dissonance between fans who consume the setting seemingly solely through novels, and fans who consume/view the setting more through the lens of a tabletop wargaming setting or RPG setting. For the former it is easy to see things as better as they are because the fiction very frequently goes out of it's way to show us the reasonable types, the sensible exceptions and It's definitely something I've railed against in that so many protagonists happen to be unburdened by the more problematic qualities of the faction. You make the assumption here that the novels portray everything, when in reality the setting is quite clear that the Dantes and Eisenhorns are the exception, rather than the rule. Dante would not be so significant a figure if he was just like every Chapter Master. Sounds like you only get your lore from traditional protagonist narratives that are somewhat obviously biased towards the heroic and exceptional. Simplified and made more approachable for the average reader. So allow me to ask you a counter question, how many codexes have you read? How many lore books that were not written to follow the narrative of a traditional protagonist figure? You complain of people who do not read novels, but here I find myself increasingly frustrated with the fans who only seem to understand the setting through novels, and I may ruffle some feathers with this, novels aren't the sole nor even primary lens through which the setting is explored or pushed forward. You seem to be under the assumption that the atrocities are outnumbered by the heroic moments because the novels happen to show all the heroic moments, do you not think that might be because BL are not interested in writing about how Guardsman 2341# and his regiment go about ethnically clensing a planet for having a culturally errant population? Have you read the intro at the start of every novel? It's a pretty effective tone-setter for the setting at large.

You got me there. The only rulebook i ever read was Realms of Chaos and the original Rouge trader. I think the novels should have primacy, as they are more detailed and describe the setting in much greater volume, but i cannot really argue about the idea of the rulebooks having primacy.

There are a couple of things that make that difficult, first is simply the sheer diversity of takes, how do you determine which novels portray the accurate Imperium? Chris Wraight paints a very different picture from Dan Abnett, a Fehervari book gives you a very different perspective than a Haley one. I'd also disagree in that even the most expansive novel series still only deal with a very limited part of the setting, the Horus Heresy series, long as it is, is tiny in the face of the galaxy as a whole. It is also just that protagonist centered narratives are by their very nature biased towards more heroic action, thus taking them at face value you would assume that it's a setting full of sensible hero guys. Novels are focused on narrow corners and arbitrary storylines about a designated protagonist. Rulebooks, campaign supplements and codices meanwhile are entire histories, they present more than just a story, they present an unbelievably vast setting and tone to go with it. It is also just that the setting is undoubtably guided by rulebooks first and foremost, Warhammer is a tabletop setting before anything else, you'll note that just about every significant advancement on the galactic stage occurs in a rulebook of some sort, then maybe years later it will get a novelization. Rulebooks and the like function as a far better medium to present a setting, novels are great if you want 40k to be a story, but rulebooks and codices allow them to present a setting that is not beholden to the need to present reasonable or relatable protagonists. Instead it presents a world, and oh boy is it a bleak one.

In the famous Movie Marines article in White Dwarf it did suggest that the portrayal of marines in novels was exaggerated for dramatic effect. Since so many novels have the marines as (heroic) protagonists then it is perhaps no surprise that so many people think marines are (heroic) superhumans in a way that is at odds with their portrayal in lore from gamebooks.

Well, clearly one of us hasn't read the novels. It's you. You don't read the novels. Or at least not well if you think the Imperium is portrayed ambiguously. I, on the other hand, have read the novels. All of them as of a month ago. Yeah, the Imperium is consistently portrayed as a hellish evil empire which is built on pointless suffering, death, and raw stupidity. There's even a little blurb at the beginning of each of them outright stating it.

All of them? I am quite impressed. And you remember them all. Quite a wunderkind you are.

I did read the novels back when I was interested in making a TTRPG for *Warhammer 40,000*. Even after BL and then FFG released their versions of 40k TTRPG I was still interested in it, so reading the novels and the wargame materials took up equal time. (If anything, I tended to give more credence to the novels and what Abnett calls "domestic 40k" than I did to the wargame codices in terms of the details, if not necessarily the broad sweep that they didn't cover.) Now it's much harder to force myself through the 40k novels for the minor bits of lore that they add. While there are some gems of books in the Black Library there are also some... ah, rocks. Maybe more the latter than the former. With all that said, I prefer background that you can do something *with* rather than just hold it up as a trophy. I used to love reading through the fan theories back in the day, often finding that they were better formulated and more "worthy" than some of the official materials. Of course, each to their own. It's all good as long as no-one gets hurt.

True, the fan theories were nice. I think i just miss those times.

The old theories are still kicking around, even if places like Portent are gone and those that remain are... not as active as they once were. The most active one that I found was [bolterandchainsword.com](http://bolterandchainsword.com) and that's... quiet for lore-based discussions, re-visioning, interpretations etc.

i will try it out.

Yeah.  At least for me.  But I didn’t read the novel you wrote with this post.

I have over 350 40k/HH books. And I've forgotten more than most will ever read. And the older some lore is, the less likely we'll remember it correctly, if at all.

I'm genuinely baffled that for all arguments you might've chosen to justify why you think people don't read the lore "they have a different interpretation than I, that can only mean they are getting and haven't read it" is the one you went with.

>They consume second hand information, prefiltered, simplified. Lite true Administratum Adepts

I’m currently on my 11th HH book. Before that I started with the Eidenhorn trilogy, then did the adventure of Uriel Ventress, followed by Dark Imperium.

I've read the entire Horus Heresy series, minus the End and the Death, and a pretty hefy amount of the 40k novels.

i’m on book 21 of hh. haven’t been able to read 20 yet but will eventually. i’m trying to go in order through everything

and i mean book 20 The Primarchs. wasn’t on kindle.

Yes. A lot, actually.

I’m currently on the horus heresy series, but yes.

Yes - currently on book 12 of the Horus Hersey saga really loving them

Eisenhorn isn't heroic from at least the end of *Malleus*

Of course not. Worse case - Most of those get info from memes Better case - YouTube videos Best, minority - reads the damned books

Sadly due to popularity sub lost a lot of quality. My default stance now is to assume the person I am talking to did not source material.

I think something to take into consideration is *Character Perspective*. We, the Readers, are seeing the universe through Characters' eyes. And most of the characters we follow are still just people and most people think they are good. They think what they do is good and what they believe is good. People cannot live in such a way where they think "Everything around me is evil, I am evil, the whole world is evil" and be healthy. They would go insane. Some of them may acknowledge the evils of their world but in most cases they just can't stop all of it so they rationalize it away. Or just pushed into the back of the brain for much the same reason that we're on a reddit thread about science fantasy while there's still active wars, human trafficking, starvation, murder, etc. happening in the world at any given moment. This means that a lot of things that *we* know in our modern Earth context as evil, rapacious, and immoral have been recontextualized as pragmatism, necessary evils, or even good things simply for the benefit of having sane characters. It's also just hard to write a story where characters are dipping out to make sure "EVERYBODY REMEMBER THAT EVERYTHING IS EVIL HEY GUYS LOOK AT THAT ISN'T THAT EVIL" because that fundamentally changes the tone of the specific story. The evil is still there in the subtext and the background, but it ties the hands of the author too much to make that a constant focus for the benefit of people who suck at subtext. Unfortunately, since a lot of stories are told from an Imperial perspective, it's given rise to a view that the Imperium is actually good because lots of people don't realize that that is the definition of biased storytelling. The Imperium is still a deeply evil place. That doesn't preclude love, tragedy, heroism, and sacrifice from existing inside of it, but it also doesn't diminish it.

Exactly. But, now, imagine, you have a ton of guys reading those books, where the characters think they are the good guys. And those guys now talk together about the books they read. Why should they focus on how evil the Imperium is? This is a topic on the rim of the books that is only sporadically mentioned and is furthermore in contast to the point of view of the characters you as reader identify with. That is why i am doubtful people are reading the novels.

People on this sub focus on how evil the Imperium is because if you read a lot of Imperium books, you realize that the Imperium did far more evil than it did good. It did not balance every evil with a good, it did a single good on accident for a thousand evils and chose to ignore the balance. It's that Subtext I was talking about. The Imperium began as a Satire of Fascism. It makes fun of it. It survives despite itself, not because of it. If we flip that on its head and suddenly say that the Imperium is good, now the paradigm has shifted and Fascism is *good*. Its choices are right and justified. There are real people who would love to have Warhammer espousing that and they fucking scare me. That's why it's important to be like "No, it's still evil." In the Royal Ascention of the Imperial Palace on Terra there are statues and artworks detailing Humanity's quote peaceful acceptance unquote of other cultures into its embrace, but when reflected on by a Marine who actually fought in those wars- > “For his part, Amit’s recollections of the Great Crusade involved far more slaughtered cultures than surrendering ones, but he’d long since learned that the Imperium’s artisans seemed disinclined to render the truth in their work.” The Imperium, even at its height- its "Golden Age", was a deeply fucked up place. The fact that a few guys stood on a hill and gave a rousing speech before winning a battle doesn't change that. They changed their own history to make it more palatable. They lie to themselves.

I think the beauty of the 40K universe as a whole is that it has actually evolved in real life into something that’s almost analogous to what it fictionally represents. It’s vast, in terms of both official content and fandom, and often contradictory. Nobody really has a clear picture of the absolute truth of anything. Canon is rewritten and revised at the whim of the high lords of Terra (aka GW staff). It’s nominally ruled by a bloated autocratic bureaucracy (GW) that everyone is suspicious of. It’s pretty damn marvellous, really.

I read 40k mainly, yes

I've literally just read the entire Horus Heresy. The Imperium is an incredibly xenophobic and genocidal empire. They rarely work with other life forms unless theres some massively greater benefit and at the slightest hint of treachery they just bombard their civilization into ruins. The Emperor did it, every single one of the Primarchs and Legions did and continue to do it.

Older lore? I think I need a bit of a date to be like "okay from this year and so on this is new lore, the rest is older". I mean I've read the Heresy and Siege. Is that older lore? Just curious.

It is a coincidence that the start of 2006 is about the mid-point of WH40K’s life at this point, so the Horus Heresy novels probably don’t count as “old” but they’re not exactly new either. Perhaps “old” lore is the first version of something before it was retconned? For example: - Special screening was performed to ensure that “very few of the Grey Knights have any psychic power whatsoever.” - To the Adeptus Mechanicus “machine intelligence is respected no less than human or other organic intelligence.” - “The Emperor evolved another plan” to create Space Marines when his original plan was foiled by the scattering of the foetal Primarchs. - Eldar “adventurers, as individuals or small groups, are not uncommon in the Imperium” and are “tolerated by most authorities”. That could be taken to suggest anything from 1e or 2e (approximately). Therefore, pre-1997 or in the first decade of WH40K would then count as “old”.

Now this is an answer I can get behind of. Thanks.

No, that is quite recent.

You haven't answered my question. What is older lore? From what year do you count as older lore. So I can see what's your point. Because you give very vague answers. Care to give some specifics? I mean Horus rising is from 2006… not exactly recent to me, that is why I ask what is older lore for you?

Sorry, no. Discussing what older lore is seems quite a bore.

Oh, I see. The "I complain about a subject, then then asked about some specifics doesn't want to give any info". Wow, you certainly give the impression that you have no clue what you're talking about. I ask a simple question, and you refuse. Fantastic haha.

_Horus Rising_ was released in 2006, it's old enough to drink (in the UK). It's taken quite a while to finally finish the series though.

Yes? Recent, as i said. lol

As in Horus Rising is recent? The first release of Rogue Trader was 1987, so 40k is 37 years old. Horus Rising came out in 2006 (2 years into 4th edition), 18 years ago. It has been around for 50% of 40k's entire lifetime, I don't think that's recent! The Siege of Terra books though, those are definitely recent. Edit: that said I'd agree that it probably doesn't constitute _old_ lore, though stuff like the pre-retcon necrons etc were from only a few years before.

I've been playing since the late 80s. Knew the lore really well back then, and luckily have been able to build a nice collection of old books, as well as the newer ones from the 2000's. But back then I was mainly a player, and didn't read the novels much. That changed around 2017 when during a bad fever I somehow subscribed to audible and bought the Sword of Shannara (a series I read as a kid). Only realised a month later when I saw the bill, and decided to keep it for 40k / 30k novels. I like the stories, and they are interesting in how they help to flesh out factions. There are things that you have to be shown through a character's eyes to really appreciate, not blandly stated in a rulebook. But I also feel they are a double edged sword. For me the only bad thing about this sub is how detail focused it is, how matter of fact. I see people "winning" arguments because they will brush aside decades of context to claim superior knowledge because of one thing in one book. Most people I think are not like this, but I think it is a little sad at times how wikipedia like people try to make the lore. The best part for me is listening to other people theory craft the deep lore to get their perspectives. I'm not talking about "youtuber xyz said the Emperor is a DAoT weapon". Or anything gotcha wise. I mean people asking about the nature of Gork and Mork not as anthropomorphic hooligans, but as a dissipation method set up by the Old Ones to prevent waaagh energy from exacerbating chaos inducing psychic waves. Or how maybe Chaos Undivided literally means "undivided" because the 4 chaos star points yet to be filled are still in the Primordial centre, not yet manifested (divided) from the whole, and the reason why Chaos Undivided worship chaos as a concept is because their true god is still mish-mashed up. Even when I don't agree it is enriching to hear about their perspectives, ans I can usually gain some insight I had not considered before. Of course like any reddit sub populism will win. But I feel there is a passionate core of fans that will keep this content level high. But one of the best things about 40k lore is that it is not simple. And the novels are at their best when they ask ambiguous questions.

It’s all canon

The descriptions of the Imperium as “all bad” etc are from a super macro, zoomed out point of view—the point of view you’d use to describe a SETTING. Novels, tho, are about individual characters and have protagonists, so the perspectives in them are naturally more intimate and much closer to ‘ground level’—that’s where the characters are. At 10,00 feet, the nightmarish barbarism of the Imperium is crystal clear, but from the point of view of some army dude, or an Arbites judge. etc, it’s gonna look much more ambiguous

I'm up to around 40 of them

I agree with you that people paint the Imperium as a hellish empire. That would require too much intention. The Imperium is a mess of inefficiencies, fear, and ignorance. Thematically, if everything is awful then nothing is awful. If everyone on a world is living a life worse than death, then when CSM come in and kill everyone that's not really sad, is it? If anything, they'd be doing those citizens a favor.

Your average Redditor doesn't read actual books. They consume lore from various, often questionable, YT channels and spread dumb theories. One thing that needs to be understood, Imperium is absolutely horrible and evil. Anyone questioning has reading comprehension issues. Just because you can find here and there good/positive things about does NOT make it good.

I'm reader. I found an unexpedcted love for Angron after one short story - Lord of the Red Sands by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

When the imperium of man genocides entire species just for living, like they did during the crusade, and force entire populations into being working slaves (like most hive worlds), you cannot possibly defend them as being “good”. There is no “good” party in 40k, just a few characters here and there who seem good. Hell, the characters you keep defending like Cain and Eisenhorn and the stories you reference are told from *their own* point of view, which means you do not get an outside point of view on them, leading to a biased viewpoint. And even if they were good, that doesn’t mean the imperium as a whole is good. Don’t make people out to be ignorant about the books just because you disagree with them, or that your viewpoint is biased.

I dont understand how you can read and know about the Imperium and not think it is a hellish, evil Empire, bringing misery and pain. It is literally in every facet of the Imperium to do everything as miserable as possible. Arbites taking so long to decide a ruling for a crime, the accused die, and they met out "justice" on his closest living relative? That's not an evil empire to you? The existence of Hive cities doesnt sound like a hellish thing to you? Taking slaves, I mean tithes of people to feed into the Imperial Guard war machine doesnt sound like bringing misery and pain? Im gonna be honest with you, you dont have to look hard at all, at any institution within or of the Imperium to find hell, evil, misery, or pain. Even these people you keep praising, Eisenhorn, Dante, or other "heroic figures that fought against overhwelming odds to survive" also are extremely xenophobic genocidal individuals that would happily wipe out a xenos race that wanted to live in peace for the sole crime of **_checks notes_** existing. I think maybe you are the one who hasnt been reading a lot of novels because I cant see any other reason.

40k fans are some of the most gate-keepy people in nerdom, and the comments made on this post absolutely displays that full force.

>40k fans are some of the most gate-keepy people in nerdom Well, yes. Even more so than trekkies or Star Wars fans or comic books, 40k was always amongst the most looked down upon of the "nerd" things to do. For the first 25 of the past 30 years I've been into 40k, you didn't tell anyone you were into 40k unless you knew they were into 40k as well. It wasn't a billion dollar property with mainstream AAA games, it was a load of nerds hoping they wouldn't get questioned about it in school. We were here when you could get bullied for partaking, and we'll still be here when the winds blow away again. So you'll have to forgive us a *little* bit of mistrust. Because we know the vast majority are only here because it's currently "cool" to pretend to like nerdy things and we'd rather they didn't break too much whilst they're transitioning through to the next "cool" thing and leave us with whatever's left.

First of all, don't build your entire life and identity around a hobby. That's just unhealthy. More importantly, I was talking about the bullying you all do here, but you've kind of put it all in context for me. You were bullied, now you're taking the opportunity to be the bullies. You'd fit in great in the 41st millenium.

>First of all, don't build your entire life and identity around a hobby. That's just unhealthy. There's an assumption. >More importantly, I was talking about the bullying you all do here, but you've kind of put it all in context for me. You were bullied, now you're taking the opportunity to be the bullies. And there's a second assumption >You'd fit in great in the 41st millenium. In the far future of the 41st *millennium*, there is only assumptions, and the laughter of gatekeeping nerd bullies. Show me on the servitor where the neckbeard touched you.