Re: the point about Chaos have some populations of relatively stable, free humans (by 40K terms): So do the Impies. On a vastly larger scale.
That's the thing people forget when they talk about the Imperium. You hear about Tomb Worlds here, genestealer cults there, Ork incursions fuckin' everywhere... because that's what makes for "exciting" plots. The Imperium is fucking gigantic. For every world that's being shit on, there are scores or hundreds that are at relative peace, where the citizens 'only' have to deal with the generic problems of the bureaucracy.
... generic problems of the bureaucracy that can and do regularly kill people, often horrific living conditions, backbreaking and often lethal labor, regular conscription/press gangs, corruption everywhere (that kills and maims and impoverishes and etc.) even when there's
not chaos/genestealer/etc. cults, so on, so forth. For a
lot of those so-called free humans, a daemon world wouldn't exactly be a downgrade, especially with some nice chaos blessings to offset the various issues.
Chaos can't really sustain itself in the long run against such forces as the fully awakened Necrons or the Tyranids in full force, since either of those would destroy or scour clean the Warp.
Neither can the impies :V
Hell, they're reliant on the warp
and the astronomicon -- that's a whole 'nother point of existential failure, right there.
Though hell dude, the 'crons and the 'nids could straight up take everything else in the galaxy except the orkz if they got their shit together. Chaos not being able to manage it solo doesn't say much, heh.
Not sure if Ogryn or Orcs are dumber.
Orkz are actually pretty damn smart, they're just operating under a different paradigm of what reality is -- and them being them, they're
right in relation to orkz. Humies and whatnot are the idiots in relation to orkyness. And the reverse isn't even true, since there's plenty of boys that can actually work with and reverse engineer non-ork tech and methodology. They just
don't, 'cause the orky stuff legitimately works better from their point of view (which is, again, fully accurate in regards to how orkz work and what their goals are).
It's not really idiocy when stuff like painting yourself purple to turn invisible (
'cause oo evah 'erd of a purple ork?)
actually works.