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Author Topic: WH40K discussion thread: from Tyran's heart I stab at thee.  (Read 1043718 times)

Paxiecrunchle

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9105 on: September 19, 2017, 04:38:06 am »

Posting to watch, I'd like to see how people can justify actually caring about this universe where there seems to be no hope, everything is absolutely shitty and all the factions are almost equally evil.
Think of the average Imperial Guardsmen. He's been drafted from his planet into a giant cathedral in space, given some cardboard and a flashlight, and dropped on an alien planet, to fight magical super soldiers, giant bugs, or sick twisted murder-fuckers. The question posed is "Why does he stand and fight? Why not run, or cower, or join the enemy, or end his own life?"
Think of the average American in WW2. Why would he join the fight against the Nazi menace? Not just to serve his country, and to enact his duty, but to protect his family, to give them a life free from fascism. Take that logic, and scale it up to a galactic level. A guardsman isn't just standing between an Ork and his family; he's standing between that Ork and his entire species. Each second of humanity's continued existence has a carefully calculated cost, paid in the lives of Guardsmen.
The average Guardsman has only a glimmer of hope, and that can be enough. They might not miss, they might wound, they might dodge that explosion, they might make it through, they might come out on top, and give the trillions or quadrillions of other humans another moment of life. Don't forget, the only reason the Horus Heresy didn't succeed was because a single guardsman stood up to a demigod of war and hate, and took a blow for his Emperor, his God, but not before landing a single blow that enabled the Emperor to kill his favorite son. Each Guardsman who falls is Ollanius Pius on Horus's ship during those climactic moments, dying so that his Empire and Emperor could have but another moment to make things right.

Let's go over this point by point would that be fine?

As for your first question, he fights for survivial not a noble cause, if he runs he dies. Why doesn't he defect? Because the orks and tyranids don't really take prisoners at all, because you don't want to be taken by the dark eldar, because imperial propaganda probably leads him to think tau and other minor races would have the same policy.
Your third question? Does it really matter how long he fights if their is ultimately no way for him to ever achieve true victory.
Is the empire even the only place where humans can and do live, no not really, otherwise they wouldn't have had to go through their reconquestia stage of "liberating humanity" with  plenty of planets that I'm sure ruled themselves .the empire brings out the literal worst in humanity as far as I can see  anyway, as you just said he's not fighting willingly, nor will his death in all likleyhood even be remembered.

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9106 on: September 19, 2017, 04:58:54 am »

I'd like to mention that double-posting is generally frowned upon.
Better to -snip- your quotes and jam it all in the one.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9107 on: September 19, 2017, 05:12:43 am »

Why does it matter if fighting won't ever get you a full win? You don't fight for the final victory, you fight for all the little ones. If your choices are eternal misery for all but the absolute most powerful and misery for many but mundane happiness for many others of all natures and ranks is it not better to pick the latter?

To not fight the eternal war against Chaos and Xenos would be to let every man, woman and child be enslaved, devoured or worse. Were the lives lost in war, crushed in the cogs of military industry or burned by overzealous Inquisitorial pyres really spent in vain if they were the price for even a single child to grow up in peace and safety somewhere in the galaxy?

Our own universe is subject to entropy. We will all die, the stars will grow cold and our world will eventually be nothing more meaningful than dust. But that day is far away and here and now we can live, we can laugh and we can struggle onwards in the face of the inevitable end of all things.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9108 on: September 19, 2017, 05:25:42 am »

As for your first question, he fights for survivial not a noble cause, if he runs he dies.
Survival is a noble cause in WH40k.

Why doesn't he defect? Because the orks and tyranids don't really take prisoners at all, because you don't want to be taken by the dark eldar, because imperial propaganda probably leads him to think tau and other minor races would have the same policy.
Tau have the same policy, unless you really don't value your balls, and even then joining Tau and other minor races is ultimately bad, since they have no chance of survival (Tau especially), whilist Imperium does.

Your third question? Does it really matter how long he fights if their is ultimately no way for him to ever achieve true victory.
Maybe. Maybe not. In any case, Imperium is the one with highest chances of "true victory", at least from the races that can be considered good.

Is the empire even the only place where humans can and do live, no not really, otherwise they wouldn't have had to go through their reconquestia stage of "liberating humanity" with  plenty of planets that I'm sure ruled themselves
And Great Crusade also makes a point that many of these places would crumble in hours against any real threat, or have already fell in some form or shape to Chaos cults. Perhaps some of them could initiate their own Great Crusade and unite humanity again, but they didin't. After all, remember that Imperium isin't shit by choice - Humanity already tried the "all-good nice Sci-Fi Republic/Federation" where everyone is happy and life is nice, and there is democracy, and such... and it failed.

.the empire brings out the literal worst in humanity as far as I can see  anyway, as you just said he's not fighting willingly, nor will his death in all likleyhood even be remembered.
And that is why Imperial Guardsmen, heck, most Imperials are better human beings than you. Is this really everything in life? Recognition, fame, glory, being a servant to your own vices and desires?
That is the easy way. The path that Humanity took before, the path Eldar took even longer ago, and the path that Chaos Gods offer you. Disregard your duty, serve only yourself, take what you can and give nothing back. Plunge the Galaxy in the Grim Darkness of Far Future... after all, why should you care? Why not just lie down and die, since nothing has a meaning anyway?

Because you're human.
We are all human.
And we have purpose.

The Imperium is to a degree evil, but it's not selfish evil. It's the kind of evil that you commit to save your family, the evil you regret, but have no choice but to commit it in hope of brighter future. You're human. Your family, great, great family is whole mankind. Humanity united under one banner, together strong enough to defy literal Gods! The whole Galaxy is hell-bent on our destruction, yet, humanity prevails! Every single one of us, Guardsmen, Navy crewmen, Space Marines, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Sisters of Battle, the Inquisition and all factory workers, farmers and other humans, united in the one true purpose of forging a better future in stars through fire and blood. They may not realize it, but that's the truth... and it's our only hope.

And heck, even if at the end of the day it's not enough, and we will not prevail, at least we will be able to smile and say that we had a good run.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9109 on: September 19, 2017, 06:22:04 am »

I would not describe the sacrifices made by guardsmen, manufactorum labourer's or really any of the low grade meat that gets ground up in the Imperial war machine as nobly sacrificing. They lack the capacity to sacrifice themselves, the decision was made for them and they live in cultivated ignorance so the people who are making that sacrifice can keep them cowed.

If the average guardsmen knew what an ork was like rather than the propoganda that tells him they're even more pitiful than gretchin the amount of bolt shells it would take to keep a regiment of drafted cannon fodder in line would be astronomical. If the average citizen knew that Chaos existed then the amount of cultists on any given world would increase drastically. Indeed such is common, few mortal men can actually stand against the horrors of the galaxy, most die gibbering and mad, trying to cram organs back into broken bodies or bleeding from the eyes as their minds erode before unamed terrors.

The normal citizenry are cattle, cowed and branded and fed into the slaughterhouse to preserve order and peace on scales no normal mind can comprehend. In the Imperium someone has sat down and reduced every conscript, every hive labourer and every child into numbers and statistics and worked out who is worth sacrificing. The sacrifice made by the ordinary is not a conscious choice, it is a decision made by the Inquisition, the Administratum, the Mechanicus and the other forces that govern the lives of mortal men. It is no coincidence that these groups are all more inhuman as you rise through the ranks, nor is it coincidence that the Astartes are inhuman.

In the 41st millenium the true tragedy isn't the lives of soldiers lost in war, it's not the mangled bodies broken by munitions factories, it's not the lobotomised servitors shuffling after uncaring masters, it's not the innocent burning alongside the guilty. It's the loss of humanity in everyone involved. The reduction of men into meat and numbers, the callous indifference it takes to reduce them to that level, the stunted personalities and broken minds of Skitarii and Space Marines, the cold and blackened hearts that are able to kill an entire world to save another rather than fight to the last to try and save both. It is that humanities defenders and those that forge their weapons and shape their armour had to abandon the very thing they protect, their humanity, and that the choice to do so wasn't even theirs to begin with.
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Kot

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9110 on: September 19, 2017, 07:14:05 am »

I would not describe the sacrifices made by guardsmen, manufactorum labourer's or really any of the low grade meat that gets ground up in the Imperial war machine as nobly sacrificing. They lack the capacity to sacrifice themselves, the decision was made for them and they live in cultivated ignorance so the people who are making that sacrifice can keep them cowed.
Does that make their deaths less worthy? Does that make the cause not worth fighting for?

If the average guardsmen knew what an ork was like rather than the propoganda that tells him they're even more pitiful than gretchin the amount of bolt shells it would take to keep a regiment of drafted cannon fodder in line would be astronomical.
Ironically enough, average Guardsman probably knows, mainly because the ones that don't know die very fast, and the veterans make sure the fresh recruits realize what they're against. There's a reason why Imperial Guardsman Uplifting Primer is considered to be toilet-paper level stuff even in-universe.

If the average citizen knew that Chaos existed then the amount of cultists on any given world would increase drastically.
Possibly, although the average citizen isin't in such bad position, and while it's not up to me to question the Emperor's choice of witholding such information from humanity at large, populations which realize what Chaos truly is usually tend to fare better off, since they actually know that it's bad idea to deal with it.

Indeed such is common, few mortal men can actually stand against the horrors of the galaxy, most die gibbering and mad, trying to cram organs back into broken bodies or bleeding from the eyes as their minds erode before unamed terrors.
And yet they do. The mere mortal men stand against the horrors of Galaxy, despite being the same as men who die gibbering and mad, trying to cram organs back into broken bodies, or bleeding from the eyes as their minds erode before unnamed terrors.

The normal citizenry are cattle, cowed and branded and fed into the slaughterhouse to preserve order and peace on scales no normal mind can comprehend. In the Imperium someone has sat down and reduced every conscript, every hive labourer and every child into numbers and statistics and worked out who is worth sacrificing. The sacrifice made by the ordinary is not a conscious choice, it is a decision made by the Inquisition, the Administratum, the Mechanicus and the other forces that govern the lives of mortal men. It is no coincidence that these groups are all more inhuman as you rise through the ranks, nor is it coincidence that the Astartes are inhuman.
But who are the Inquisitors? Who are the Administratum? Who are Mechanicus even? Are they some heavenly forces that cannot be percieved? No. They are human. Every single one of them.
The Inquisitors are the ultimate individual, they think freely and they do as please, with their every action bordering heresy, because sometimes the only way is to fight fire with fire, and only the strongest amonst us can stare in the abbys and not fall.
The claim that Administratum is inhuman is laughable, for they are probably the most regular grey folks as there can be. In a way, they also sacrifice their lives to uncountable counting for uncountable decades, just so that Imperium doesn't collapse and every food shipment finds it's place.
Mechanicus become inhuman due to purely human reasons. Their Quest of Knowledge is one of most human undertakings in whole Imperium. They sacrifice parts of their own humanity on the altar to machines, just so that humanity might be triumphant one day.
Astrates aren't inhuman. They are more than human. They have passions, hatreds, feuds and live on larger scale than mortal men. Where they walk, earth shakes. They are god-touched, like false deities from an old opera, they boom and thunder. Every emotion is magnified, every weakness spreads into a catastrophe, every strength is almost overbearing. They can be poets and tacticans and great leaders of men, but they must fight if Imperium is to survive. They are inhuman in that way they are beyond humanity, they are the ultimate we should struggle to be.

In the 41st millenium the true tragedy isn't the lives of soldiers lost in war, it's not the mangled bodies broken by munitions factories, it's not the lobotomised servitors shuffling after uncaring masters, it's not the innocent burning alongside the guilty. It's the loss of humanity in everyone involved. The reduction of men into meat and numbers, the callous indifference it takes to reduce them to that level, the stunted personalities and broken minds of Skitarii and Space Marines, the cold and blackened hearts that are able to kill an entire world to save another rather than fight to the last to try and save both. It is that humanities defenders and those that forge their weapons and shape their armour had to abandon the very thing they protect, their humanity, and that the choice to do so wasn't even theirs to begin with.
It is easy to disregard everyone in the Imperium, think they're just mere numbers... after all, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic..." but every one of those million deaths is also a single one. Behind every damn number, number of men, soldiers, number of deaths, servitors, number of births, lies a human life. A human life that adds up to a beautiful choir of life, of human life. It is a tragedy, but it's also beautiful, because on first glance what you state is painfully obvious. Everything is broken, humanity abandoned... but if you look closer, you will notice it. Every Guardsman had his family which he hopes is safe. Every factory worker comes back to his wife and children every day, after long, long hours of work. Every basically enslaved crewmember of the giantic cathedral ships cruising through the abbys of space dreams of his homeworld. Every Inquisitor carries the weight of the sentences he issued. Every Space Marine fights arm to arm with his brothers. Every Techpriest values his knowledge and hopes that whatever he discovers will make things better. Every Korpsman cries when it's raining. The list goes on.
The Imperium might lack humanity, because it's an organization that is the sad result of every bad decision and screwup combined. But Imperium in it's core is human, because it's humans who make it up, and they haven't lost their humanity. Not yet.

Also, after all... did you have any choice? Have you really chose to be born in the family you were born in? Did any of the conscripted soldiers in many wars choose to take part in it?
Does that make them less human?
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9111 on: September 19, 2017, 07:57:05 am »

Posting to watch, I'd like to see how people can justify actually caring about this universe where there seems to be no hope, everything is absolutely shitty and all the factions are almost equally evil.
That's how I see the world right now so it's pretty easy for me

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9112 on: September 19, 2017, 09:03:43 am »

The main theme in several of the novels, and the rulebooks on occasion, is that humanity is not protected by humans anymore, nor even by beings who can remember humanity. Two of my favorite black library quotes that sum up the situation are 'Be the Emperor's monster' and 'If these are humanity's defenders, then we have already lost.'

Astartes are children torn from their homes and pitted into deadly trials for stakes they cannot understand, emotionally stunted and physically misshapen. They are weapons forged from children who have known suffering and hardship, robbed of any chance to ever truly grow and entire facets of their minds ripped from them.

The guard are mostly tribal savages and illiterate gangers plucked from lives of poverty and flung into the stars that they thought were gods to fight and die against inhuman monsters they were told did not even really exist. For every one that lives to rise through the ranks a million more die in agony and terror, their deaths presided over by distant commanders who have shorn themselves of regret and mercy. They are steered and shepherded into war by grim figures who rule through fear rather than loyalty.

The Mechanicus literally excise their humanity and replace it with cold logic and cruel steel. They sacrifice countless beings who were once thinking and feeling flesh and blood merely to gain data on how to better expend the next wave of lost souls.

Ecclesiarchs rise through the clergy on the power of fanatacism and the demonstration of piety through the castigation of the impure and pure alike. In their name humans beat one another to death in howling mobs for fear of divine retribution, they cast out their own for fear of corruption and fall to bloody knees to pray for the extermination of the outsider.

Psykers are imprisoned in a ship of howling torments and dragged from their worlds to be burned and scoured by psychic rites until the yawning portal to hell that exists in their soul is shackled enough to make them usable tools, their minds and bodies forever changed by the trauma of their sanctification.

What humanity exists in the Imperium does so in spite of it's defenders. They are a shield against the nameless terrors, but one that rots the purity it protects.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9113 on: September 19, 2017, 09:19:15 am »

Posting to watch, I'd like to see how people can justify actually caring about this universe where there seems to be no hope, everything is absolutely shitty and all the factions are almost equally evil.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9114 on: September 19, 2017, 10:21:38 am »


Astartes are children torn from their homes and pitted into deadly trials for stakes they cannot understand, emotionally stunted and physically misshapen. They are weapons forged from children who have known suffering and hardship, robbed of any chance to ever truly grow and entire facets of their minds ripped from them.
 
Hmm never realized how much this sounds like dwarven child care before.
So if these are are defenders then we have already lost, and losing is fun, then this is the path to victory in the name of the big A.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9115 on: September 19, 2017, 10:29:16 am »

The main theme in several of the novels, and the rulebooks on occasion, is that humanity is not protected by humans anymore, nor even by beings who can remember humanity. Two of my favorite black library quotes that sum up the situation are 'Be the Emperor's monster' and 'If these are humanity's defenders, then we have already lost.'
And it's also a theme in several of the novels, and the rulebooks on occassion, that there is still humanity amongst the supposed monsters. You being right doesn't make me wrong.

Astartes are children torn from their homes and pitted into deadly trials for stakes they cannot understand, emotionally stunted and physically misshapen. They are weapons forged from children who have known suffering and hardship, robbed of any chance to ever truly grow and entire facets of their minds ripped from them.
Whole Horus Heresy is both a proof that this isin't true. They certainly aren't most stable, and have a lot of problems, true, but that is mostly because their traits are blown out, overplayed, more prominent.
And not every chapter is literally Marines Malevolent. For some becoming a Marine is a honour to be earned, and not ever chapter literally throws their recruits into death matches to check which are the best.

The guard are mostly tribal savages and illiterate gangers plucked from lives of poverty and flung into the stars that they thought were gods to fight and die against inhuman monsters they were told did not even really exist. For every one that lives to rise through the ranks a million more die in agony and terror, their deaths presided over by distant commanders who have shorn themselves of regret and mercy. They are steered and shepherded into war by grim figures who rule through fear rather than loyalty.
Cadians.
Mordians.
Vostroyans.
Elysians.
Harakonis.
Praetorians.
Phantines.
Scintillans.
Maccabians.

The Mechanicus literally excise their humanity and replace it with cold logic and cruel steel. They sacrifice countless beings who were once thinking and feeling flesh and blood merely to gain data on how to better expend the next wave of lost souls.
The Dark Ages of Technology were times of cold logic and cruel steel. Guess how that turned out for them. They have replaced cold logic and cruel steel, dictating them that nothing has a purpose, and mathematically their lifes are meaningless, and everything will either die to Chaos Gods, Tyranids or just to good old goddamn Entropy, and replaced it with faith, one of most human things that exist. They believe that universe can be comperhended, they believe that everything can be solved, and they believe that the Quest for Knowledge can be completed.

Ecclesiarchs rise through the clergy on the power of fanatacism and the demonstration of piety through the castigation of the impure and pure alike. In their name humans beat one another to death in howling mobs for fear of divine retribution, they cast out their own for fear of corruption and fall to bloody knees to pray for the extermination of the outsider.
Ecclesiarchy is one of the hardest to defend organizations, since they originate from literal Chaos heretic book and in general are pretty shitty, but they're about as organized as a lot of other things in Imperium. Ecclesiarchy varies from planet to planet, but corrupt Ecclesiarchs are more often than not victims of heresy accusations themselves, and as insane as that sounds, Ecclesiarchy provides some aid like modern times churches, although usually in more... militant and backward way.
And, to be honest, when compared to whatever Chaos offers, Ecclesiarchy is really not that bad.

Psykers are imprisoned in a ship of howling torments and dragged from their worlds to be burned and scoured by psychic rites until the yawning portal to hell that exists in their soul is shackled enough to make them usable tools, their minds and bodies forever changed by the trauma of their sanctification.
Then there are Astropaths, which, after the whole Soul Binding, start singing praises of The Emperor because they experienced literal fucking heaven. It's a genetical roll of dice. Would you blame government about trying to control people who are genetically human version of tactical nukes and could pretty much single-handely destroy a planet just because they weren't controled right? What do you think they should do with them, leave them to cause perils of the warp freely? You realize that is the last nail in the Dark Ages Of Technology humanity's coffin, after the Iron Men and such?

What humanity exists in the Imperium does so in spite of it's defenders. They are a shield against the nameless terrors, but one that rots the purity it protects.
No. You should actually think of it as ultimate sacrifice - the defenders of humanity might take away parts of their own humanity, just so that the others, now and future, might retain it. If that isin't noble, then nothing is.
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9116 on: September 19, 2017, 10:48:48 am »

Hmm never realized how much this sounds like dwarven child care before.
So if these are are defenders then we have already lost, and losing is fun, then this is the path to victory in the name of the big A.

There are similarities behind the mindset of the Imperium in some of the novels and DF players.

It doesn't matter if everyone is a toothless cripple living on pain relief and sleeping in filth, it doesn't matter that the children are burying the corpses of their own parents, it doesn't matter that a werebeast is living in perpetual torment in a featureless stone room. The fort endures, both because of and despite the horrors within, it endures.

Also the horrible stuff is more entertaining.

No. You should actually think of it as ultimate sacrifice - the defenders of humanity might take away parts of their own humanity, just so that the others, now and future, might retain it. If that isin't noble, then nothing is.

Nobility would have been dying while still human. Becoming a monster and making others become monsters in the name of being human is tragic, not admirable. That it takes a thousand lives of suffering to buy a single person a reasonably happy life is horrific, that someone actively made the choice of who suffers and who gets happiness is morally unthinkable.

The Imperium basically faced three choices long ago. Die, eat some babies or eat all the babies. They chose to eat some babies rather than die, while the chaos forces (mostly) chose to eat all the babies. The right choice would have been to eat no babies, fix bayonets and go with honour and dignity into oblivion unsullied by immoral deeds or inhuman taint. An ending worthy of song rather than a slow decline into darkness. The daemons like to say they won long ago, they're probably correct.



That said, with the return of Guilliman and what is basically shaping up to be Great Crusade/Horus Heresy 2 there is a chance humanity can fix what it broke long ago and maybe make it all actually worth it. Though considering even Guilliman hates the Imperium and despairs over what it has become I'm not so sure he thinks he can fix anything.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9117 on: September 19, 2017, 11:04:14 am »

No. You should actually think of it as ultimate sacrifice - the defenders of humanity might take away parts of their own humanity, just so that the others, now and future, might retain it. If that isin't noble, then nothing is.

Nobility would have been dying while still human. Becoming a monster and making others become monsters in the name of being human is tragic, not admirable. That it takes a thousand lives of suffering to buy a single person a reasonably happy life is horrific, that someone actively made the choice of who suffers and who gets happiness is morally unthinkable.
It's not for a single person. It's for the whole humanity.

The Imperium basically faced three choices long ago. Die, eat some babies or eat all the babies. They chose to eat some babies rather than die, while the chaos forces (mostly) chose to eat all the babies. The right choice would have been to eat no babies, fix bayonets and go with honour and dignity into oblivion unsullied by immoral deeds or inhuman taint. An ending worthy of song rather than a slow decline into darkness. The daemons like to say they won long ago, they're probably correct.
So lay down and die. Perfect. Just what every enemy of the humanity wanted. If everyone dies, then it will never be better... and they had no choice. That's the point. The Grim Darkness of Far Future isin't simply shit because everyone globally decided to make it shit, it's shit because all the bad decisions, corruption, shit planing and literal shit stacked ontop each other so hard the only choice now is to row across the sea of shit, which will stink wether you want it or not. You have to realize that they actually tried all the "good" options. They tried being nice, they tried being reasonable, they tried everything, but it didin't work, and we simply cannot just lay down and die. We're humans, for fucks sake, we're survivors!

That said, with the return of Guilliman and what is basically shaping up to be Great Crusade/Horus Heresy 2 there is a chance humanity can fix what it broke long ago and maybe make it all actually worth it. Though considering even Guilliman hates the Imperium and despairs over what it has become I'm not so sure he thinks he can fix anything.
Guilliman whose current choices shape up to Great Crusade/Horus Heresy 2 perfectly, because the risk of losing everything is about the same as potential for gaining anything... and to be honest, Guilliman hates everything apparently, including things which he helped to be brought to life, like the Primaris Marines.
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Kot finishes his morning routine in the same way he always does, by burning a scale replica of Saint Basil's Cathedral on the windowsill.

Grim Portent

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9118 on: September 19, 2017, 11:11:06 am »

Humanity never tried being nice, they never tried anything but warmongering and slavetaking even in the days before the Imperium. They used the Men of Iron as slave soldiers, they turned entire planets into prisons and threw people away to forget they existed. That's a huge chunk of why so many worlds were, are and will be terrible in 40k.

The entire reason that humanity in 40k is so messed up is because they're human. Their humanity, their nobility, indeed every admirable quality they have is personified in one of the four gods of Chaos. The Imperium struggles because it is human and it is struggling against itself. Not just the bad parts, but all the parts of humanity.

The Galaxy is shit because every single decision ever made by humanity was made by... well humans. Like the Eldar before them humanity is it's own destruction made manifest, struggling only makes it worse but to struggle is itself human.
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There once was a dwarf in a cave,
who many would consider brave.
With a head like a block
he went out for a sock,
his ass I won't bother to save.

Kot

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Re: WH40K thread: No Such Thing As A Free Bolter, But Heresy's Everywhere!
« Reply #9119 on: September 19, 2017, 11:33:29 am »

Humanity never tried being nice, they never tried anything but warmongering and slavetaking even in the days before the Imperium. They used the Men of Iron as slave soldiers, they turned entire planets into prisons and threw people away to forget they existed. That's a huge chunk of why so many worlds were, are and will be terrible in 40k.
Their technology was literally higher than 40k Eldar technology (not pre-fall Eldar mind you, just the post-fall Eldar), they had shit like Panacea, and more, and Men of Iron being slaves... well, in that case you consider Skynet being the good guys, right?

The entire reason that humanity in 40k is so messed up is because they're human. Their humanity, their nobility, indeed every admirable quality they have is personified in one of the four gods of Chaos. The Imperium struggles because it is human and it is struggling against itself. Not just the bad parts, but all the parts of humanity.
Chaos Gods are good, Imperium is evil.

The Imperium struggles with every part of humanity as much as we do right now, because, yeah, that's human. It's human thing to do, but it doesn't deny it. That's probably the difference between Imperium and what we have now.
Quote
Christ tells you that you are sinful beyond redemption through no fault of your own.
The Emperor tells you to be proud.
You are human, perfect in form, perfect in mind.
Nothing on the face of the world compares to you.
Your love, your joy, your anger, and yes even your hate, is to be human.
It is to be true to your nature.
Christ offers you shame.  The Emperor offers you pride in who you are.
 
Allah expects mere obedience, yet what does he offer in return?
Nothing, except sparing us his lash as long as we continue our obeisance.
The Emperor asks for your loyalty, but only in his cause - that of all Mankind - to build a better future.
For that future he gave everything.
What has Allah sacrificed?
 
What of the Hindu and Buddhists?
They tell us the world is suffering.
That to abandon hope and desire is the best a man can achieve.
Lies.  Every word.
 
These established religions tell you that you are weak and sinful and shameful.
The Emperor tells you that you are blessed and holy and powerful.
Look at the wonders of Mankind, how together we can create miracles.
Join together in brotherhood and unity instead of division.
Join together with strength and honor in our Humanity instead of shame.
Look to the heavens, and the light of a million stars.
This is our destiny.
To come together and walk amongst the stars.
And to tame them.
 
And there shall be no fear, for The Emperor protects.

The Galaxy is shit because every single decision ever made by humanity was made by... well humans. Like the Eldar before them humanity is it's own destruction made manifest, struggling only makes it worse but to struggle is itself human.
>The Galaxy is shit because Humans made it shit
>What is War in Heaven
>What is literally all the shit that went on before we even got down from the tree that made Warp literal hell leaking into reality, which is probably main reason as to why everything is so fucking horrible

I know that sometimes I tend to warp (hue) things a bit to portray humanity as being better than it is, but at this point your whole argument got reduced to "humans are bad hurr durr".
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Kot finishes his morning routine in the same way he always does, by burning a scale replica of Saint Basil's Cathedral on the windowsill.
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