>"Oh the Imperium is so grimdark and miserable, totally the worst regime ever!">Meanwhile all of the Paradise Worlds, Garden Worlds, Pleasure Worlds, Agri-Worlds, and Civilized worlds (which make up 99% of the Imperium) looking like pic related
>>96876906>(which make up 99% of the Imperium)Is that true?Also, are "generic" worlds really that nice? I'd expect them to be more or less like Earth, including all the pollution and deforestation.
>>96876936>Also, are "generic" worlds really that nice?Yes. Remember that the Imperium has some very advanced future technology, so they wouldn't need to pollute or deforest their planets for resources.
>>96876906>It is the cruelest regime imaginableThis is at the start of every single piece of every 40k media, including the ones that mention all the pleasure worlds and such. So either consider how these worlds might exist and the above is still true, or consider that you have been reading imperial propaganda. Lords of Silence shows the reader a realistic agri world that's a total hellhole. The whole world has been terra formed to support only a single crop, and doing so has made the world a toxic place for the people that harvest it.
>>9687696940k has long since moved away from the Imperium being a cruel place.
>>96876938Can you post examples of them actually looking like that? Even text would be fine, because as it stands, Ultramar has an average life expectancy of like 30 and that's supposedly the nicest section of worlds for the Imperium. And if that's the current canon, then we may have moved past things like unsullied Paradise Worlds or Agri-Worlds.
>>96877000Sure thing, here's a poster for Ultramar, as you can see it has a lot of its natural beauty preserved.
Bot thread
>>96877000>Ultramar has an average life expectancy of like 30You're thinking Holy Terra, which reasonably would be extended to every shrine world or production world.OP is wrong about about most of the Imperium being being calm pastoral life. Most of the imperium are Agri-worlds where farmers work 80 hour weeks to feed the rest of their sector and then live off of scraps.
>>96876906Aren't "garden worlds" an elder thing?And, seriously>Pleasure World>99 percent of the population are a slave caste of servants and janitors who live in crushing poverty to cater to the 1% of nobles who visit the planet. If you're lucky, you're a essentially a well trained sex slave.>Agriworld>You live in a tiny cubicle in a city block sized thresher, your lungs are cooked from breathing promethium fumes all day, you live on a watery gruel that is a byproduct of the production process, and your arm was torn off and replaced with a poorly functioning augmetic.>Civilized world>You work in a tiny cubicle inputting numbers from one column into another column. You don't know what any of these numbers mean. Your cogitator is essentially a fucked CRT monitor from hell that is slowly ruining your eyesight. You forgot your hood the other day and got caught in horrible acid rain that burned off all your hair. You hotbunk in a barracks with 10 thousand other functionaries who all do a similar thing to what you do.
I thought the majority of the total population lived on Hive Worlds, even if there's not as many of them
>>96877009>Artist's ImpressionNobody tell him.
>>96876906How did your last match go?Carr to post minis?
>>96876969>Lords of Silence shows the reader a realistic agri world that's a total hellhole.That would depend on the Planetary Governor. Some will go that way, some won't.
>>96877087Yup. Even IF the worlds OP described are as numerous as he claims (they are not), the majority of the population does live on hive worlds which have pretty bad living conditions.
>>96876938>so they wouldn't need to pollute or deforest their planets for resources.We have multiple examples of them doing just that, though. Plus fucming forge worlds.Imperial technology is all over the place. You have antigrav vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.
>>96877081>>Civilized world>>You work in a tiny cubicle inputting numbers from one column into another column. You don't know what any of these numbers mean. Your cogitator is essentially a fucked CRT monitor from hell that is slowly ruining your eyesight. You forgot your hood the other day and got caught in horrible acid rain that burned off all your hair. You hotbunk in a barracks with 10 thousand other functionaries who all do a similar thing to what you doWe see planets in Ciaphis Cain that are more-or-less normal places to live.
>this is a GRIMDARK setting>the most BLOODY and CRUEL regime IMAGINABLE>there is ONLY WARNah, lmao, actually most places arent event that bad yo, you can have a totally comfy life ;)
>>96876906You missed the general.
>>96877548You totally can! As long as you're an insanely cruel and bloody-handed local dictator whose actions technically align with the needs of the Imperium. Only War won't feed itself!
>>96877587Have you ever read the books? Plenty of people lead normal lives.
>>96877537You know, except for the lobotomized, and then robotically mutilated slave caste that is totally accepted and recognized as “normal” on every human world in the galaxy and who’s mere existence causes horror in other species.
>>96877884"Plenty" is relative. The number of people living normal lives might be high in absolute terms but it is 0.0001% of the Imperium's population.Agriworlds suck shit. They have to, do you have any idea how many pesticides are needed to keep up with the food needs of hiveworlds?Mining worlds are canonically full of slaves.Civilized worlds might be "fine" ignoring the baseline shit that suck like servitors and the religion, but they're still in the minority compared to all the others.Pleasure Worlds are good FOR THE RULING CASTE. They are paradises for THEM. Everyone actually born there is a janitor or a sex slave.
Why is everyone so insistent in trying to ignore the base concept of this settting?
>>96878009The grimdark stuff is what the other factions are for.
>>96878015CRUELEST AND MOST BLOODY REGIME IMAGINABLE
>>96878019It hasn't been that way since the earliest editions, every other faction is crueler than them.
>>96877890>You know, except for the lobotomized, and then robotically mutilated slave caste that is totally accepted and recognized as “normal” on every human world in the galaxy and who’s mere existence causes horror in other species.OP assumes he wouldn't be one of the lobotomized.
>>96878026Not really no. Life as an Eldar is actually pretty good, life as a Tau isn't nearly as bad as life as an Imperial because they have food to eat and it has actual flavors on it The average Imperial is a hiveworlder who had to kill 4 people by the time he was 11 and whose diet consists of rat bones and sawdust. This is what the setting is like, it fuckin sucks. Ultramar is explicitly noted as one of the best places to live in and it has a lower life expectancy then Somalia.
What is this retardation? The core books say that the majority of civilised worlds are hellholes. Each and every one of the main rulebooks of each edition said that the overwhelming majority of the people in the Imperium are overworked and live short lives of grind and suffering. All to sustain the Imperium.By the way, civilised worlds doesn't mean "Earth but in 40K". The core books count feudal worlds, hive worlds, et,c into that category.
>>96878038>Life as an EldarYour soul is doomed to eternally be tormented by Slaanesh, even if you get put into a soulstone eventually one of the other factions will destroy it as your race shrinks ever smaller and you will live in eternal agony in the end.>TauYou have to serve alien masters who pretend to care about you by offering you better living conditions, but in reality they only want what you can offer their evil empire, and the better treatment is basically a bribe to get you to betray your race
>>96878053Under the T'au you get more freedoms than the Imperium. Your living conditions are way better. You get to live alongside the T'au, in the same high-tech and orderly near-utopian cities. You are not betraying your race by joining the T'au since the T'au are not out there in the galaxy to eliminate humanity, but to replace the Imperium as the ruling hegemony. Humanity will survive and even prosper under the T'au.
>>96878052According to OP the imperium isn't bad anymore. His source? His asshole, probably.
>>96878053>Your soul is doomed to eternally be tormented by Slaanesh,Unlike the average Imperial, who will be tormented in the Warp by some other entity because the Emperor won't bother saving him.>eventually one of the other factions will destroy it as your race shrinks ever smaller and you will live in eternal agony in the end.you mean like everyone else but Orks?>You have to serve alien masters who pretend to care about you by offering you better living conditions,As opposed to human masters who don't even bother and don't care about you either and who will happily let you die in a factory accident to use your corpse to make more gruel or lobotomize you to make a new slave.>but in reality they only want what you can offer their evil empire, As opposed to the other evil empire who doesn't even care about what I can offer beyond slave labor.>and the better treatment is basically a bribe to get you to betray your raceI will happily take it because my race is the objectively shittiest one after the Dark Eldar.
>>96878065Any empire that doesn't have humanity in charge and aliens beneath them is not working in humanity's best interest.
>>96878068He is a moron. Post-8th ED, BL and GW's mission statement was to highlight how grimdark the Imperium is.
>>96878083Humans aren't in charge in the Imperium either, it's a warp entity, genetically modified supersoldiers and corpses with more juvenat then blood.
>>96878090The Emperor knew that humans are still shit-flinging hairless monkeys that needed an iron fist to push them to greatness.
>>96878101Well he sure wasn't up to beig that particular iron fist lol
>>96878083>>96878083The Tau, in their generosity, is offering humans a spot at their side as they pursue their manifest destiny. The fruits of the collective labour of the Greater Good are theirs and their descendants. Humanity's best interest is to abandon a dying, rotting Imperium and join the rising sun of the T'au Empire.
>>96878123Your race is your uniform. If you're not willing to kill an alien just because they're nice to you and have helped you, then you're not a person who can be trusted.
>>96878053I thought the Taus whole "thing" was that even thought they have good living standards and technology they are hopelessly tiny compared to every other faction in the setting and basically they only continue to exist because they are both too insignificant and too costly to wipe out for the other factions for all the difference it would make.
>>96878155Why would I kill someone who is nice to me and helps me?
>>96878161They were at that midpoint where they're both too costly to wipe out and not enough of a threat to be worth wiping out but then the galaxy was sawn in half, so I have no idea if that's still the case.
>>96878163Because they're an alien. Good or not, every alien's life is, fundamentally, a threat to humanity. Even if not today, can you guarantee that they won't be a threat to humanity in 10,000 years? Or a million years? And even if you could guarantee that they would never become a threat to humans, every home occupied by an alien is as home that could be occupied by a human. Every bit of wealth and food they have and eat is wealth and food a human could've had instead. Aliens are a waste of space.
>>96878174Humans are already a threat to humans and massacre them by the million every day, so I'd rather have the aliens that might one day become a threat then the Imperials who already are one.
>>96878178No individual human's life is important. The only thing that matters is the survival of the species as a whole. Humans killing humans is okay, because they replace them with more humans. But if aliens kill a human, they get replaced with aliens. This is why they must die.
>>96878174Based hatemonger
>>96878174Sometimes I wonder why there isn't a skaven faction in 40k but then I remember it actually does exist, it's the imperium.
>>96876906>>96876938>buy into a franchise marketed specifically as hopelessly grimdark >NOOOOOO WHY IS IT SO GRIMDARK NOOOO I WANT HECKING HUGGY WUGGY ADVENTURES NOOOOOO HERE'S PROOF THAT IT'S ALL ACTUALLY REALLY NICE AND FUZZYI don't understand faggots like you.
>>96878188I don't see why an alien and a human's life have different worths at all. It's all the same honestly.
>>96876906>agriworlds>entire worlds dedicated to monoculture that is then exported off planet>not hellish>inb4: noooo there are agriworlds that engage in small-scale subsistence agricultureOkay, bro.
>>96876906>Agri-WorldsAren't these the hellholes where people fight for the scraps of food while surrounded by oceans of it?
>>96876906And what does any of this have to do with playing the game?
>>96878456op has never even seen a warhammer mini in his life. "he" just watches lore tik toks and pretends to be a fan on /tg/. "Why" you ask? I simole do not know.
>>96878009Because grimdark everywhere means it's all meaningless.You need good to make evil feel evil. You need hope to make hopelessness. The lack of this contrast is harmfulI don't agree with the idea that worlds are all rainbows and sunshine and perfect, but at the same time considering there are professions like taxi drivers, gardeners, bartenders, etc in civilized worlds it cannot be totally impossible to live a relatively comfortable life everywhere in the IoM.
>>96878844>Because grimdark everywhere means it's all meaningless.No, that's not what grimdark means. Grimdark means everything sucks forever and there's no hope. If it'd not hopeless and near universally terrible, and the few people who try to do good only get crushed, it's not grimdark.
>>96878844It's perfectly possible to live a comfortable life in the IoM, just be born a noble. That's already left very clear.
>>96878885>Be born a noble>Parents both die during a warp jump>Get shipped off to british space boarding school ultrahellThere is no end to the suffering
>>96878448They get to eat all of the broccoli leaves that the can sneak while harvesting the tops for the elites, and before the machinery uproots the stem and the stems and roots and all are processed into ration packs for the Imperial Guard and the factory workers in the manufacturium world nearby. The workday is 18 hours with 3 10 minute breaks, two to pray to the mobile chapels that circle the nation sized monocrop fields, and one to choke down a spirulina bar with a dipper’s worth of electrolyte drink. They wear rough cord kilts because there are no bathroom breaks in the 18 hour/day 7 day/week schedule, and when they are too infirm to keep ahead of the city sized combination harvester/processor/plow/planter/fertilizer that they trudge in front of picking the best of the produce by hand before the grinding maw of the combine arrives, it rolls over them like the juggernaut and the combine processes the worker into corpse starch packs and nitrogen to return to the soil in the fertilization step.They all have crop-lung from working in the dust of neighboring combines and the droplets of pesticide and herbicide laden water from the sprayers that range ahead of the combines to keep the giant fields of monocrop safe from all pests.
>>96876938>so they wouldn't need to pollute or deforest their planets for resourcesThey SHOULDN'T, but again, GRIMDARK!!!>>96876969>Lords of Silence shows the reader a realistic agri world that's a total hellhole.And this is exactly where it goes full GRIMDERP, because even the Imperium is going to run out of planets by killing them after only a century of hyper industrial farming.This is what happens when your Wargame Setting has been teetering on catastrophic collapse for a Millenia in-universe and half a century out.>>96878155>If you're not willing to kill an alien just because they're nice to you and have helped you, then you're not a person who can be trusted.If you end up killing everything that doesn't look EXACTLY like you, you end up being the insane fucker no one else can trust.>>96878844>Because grimdark everywhere means it's all meaningless.>You need good to make evil feel evil. You need hope to make hopelessness. The lack of this contrast is harmfulEXACTLY!Grimderp just produces ennui, where hapless husk don't even fight because they've got nothing worth fighting FOR!
>>96879082>And this is exactly where it goes full GRIMDERP, because even the Imperium is going to run out of planets by killing them after only a century of hyper industrial farming.The alternative is to kill their planets now, because hiveworlds and forgeworlds require cartoonish amounts of food to exist.
>>96879111Or, you know, have integrated nutrient reclamation, we know the Imperium isn't hurting for Energy Generation and I would expect the Admech to have some kind of protein synthesizer.
>>96879846If they did, they wouldn't be using corpse starch to feed their soldiers.
>>96879945As Onions Green originally showed us, you have to be beyond fucked if you need to eat your own people.
>>96880127Yes? That is the entire point. That is the *idea* of corpse starch.
>>96880146But that's also the problem; Your civilization is at the point of immediate collapse, where it's not even going to last another Generation thanks to the self cannibalization.
>>96876906>thwy look like a globohomo propaganda commercial for fucking yogurt GrimDark, even
>>96877015>You're thinking Holy TerraNk, he's thinking of Ultramar. Ultramar is noteworthy for having the HIGH life expectancy of 30
>>96879082Isn’t the point of the Tau that they’re the non-grimdark faction to contrast the edginess of the Imperium
>>96878009They're americans
>>96880327>Isn’t the point of the Tau that they’re the non-grimdark faction to contrast the edginess of the ImperiumPart of it, yes, but while the Tau can be a little sinister, so too does the Imperium need to not be a complete hell to give it plausibility.
>>96880327Least grimdark*The dramatic irony of the tau is that in any other setting they'd be the objective villain faction (the Combined Army in Infinity is LESS evil than tau, for example) but because the scale is so skewed in 40K they come across as noble paragons
>>96878188>Humans killing humans is okay, because they replace them with more humans. But if aliens kill a human, they get replaced with aliens.You're not gonna like where this logic leads.
>>96878188Why should I intrinsically care about someone solely on the ground our genetics are similar?
>>96880681Because if you don’t put blood first the Imperium will fucking kill you and your entire family
>>96880724Yes, that makes the Imperium evil and the Tau good.
>>96876906Any such arguments are stupid because everyone at GW simply interprets things like this one way or the other as they see fit at any particular moment. You all should do the same
>>96876906I hate how people argue about 40k like this.The fiction is paper thin, there's not an ounce of consistency or any hard rules.Half the things players think about it are narratives formed through anecdote.Its just junk, how are you inhabiting it so much that you can fanboy for a faction as if you're part of it? Without any kind of detachment?This shit does not stand up to a second of scrutiny and yet you have these writhing masses of retards constantly arguing about it as if its some kind of hard scifi setting that doesn't change its mind about everything every other second.
>>96880227>Citing a literal marvel comic
>>96878844This. Ignore the other low IQ responses.If the imperium is essentially worse for humanity than total extinction (which it is) then any of the heroism present in the story becomes limp and meaningless.40k has always been about being over the top. That means over the top heroism, over the top tragedy, etc. You need contrast otherwise it becomes bland and hard to care about.
retardo. it's a board game setting
>>968837954>>96883158retardo.
>>96878027But he already is.
>>96883152This nigger gets it. Those retards are acting like they're reading peak literature but it's always one of these:>herp derp I LoVe ThE cHaRaCtErSBut it's just DragonBall-tier "nu-uh, primarchs can totally solo a dozen custodes" power wank. >hurr durr mUh PhIlOsOpHyBabby's first moral dilemma "Oh, no. Everyone has to compromise their ideals. Wow. So deep."Seriously when people say they're reading Black Sloprary I just know beyond any shadow of a doubt they're delusional about their own mental capabilities *and* maturity.
>>96883797The 30 year lifespan figure LITERALLY comes from a marvel comic
>>96876906What is it with retards like you that try to whitewash the Imperium into being somehow a "nice place to live" on average when the explicit fucking point of the Imperium is that it is a fucking tyranical shithole where human life has zero value beyond the utility the imperium can squeeze out of them be it as soldiers or as workers in it's industries?
>>96880681Lmao. Heat map meme in gaming. Leftists really aren’t human.
>>96884124Its a weird thing where someone clearly doesn't like core themes of the game, setting, fluff, etc. but wants to change it into something they do like instead of finding other thing that is more to their liking. I don't get it but there's a consistent amount of autists that approach warhammer wanting to make it nicer instead of going to any of the entire rest of fantasy and scifi. It does admittedly seem to correlate with anime posters and taufags. I can see that as a reaction to people going over the top with larping or projecting onto the imperium too hard but its not a great response.
>>96884827Wouldn't Taufags be the ones that would go out of their way to point out how shitty the imperium is to contrast it with the arguably far more livable and nice society Tau empire at least on the surface is?
>>96884857I mean it more in the way they want their favourite faction to be immune to the fundamentals of the setting as a more general note about people wanting 40k to be pleasant is weird.
I just read 15 Hours and found it amusing the main character was just from space Kansas and was suprised by the grimdark once he joined the guard. His home was a lovely wooden farmhouse with his ma and pa where they grew wheat. There was a picture of the Emperor over the fireplace but otherwise it was literally just the midwest. Good book by 40k standards, would recommend.
>>96884873I see. Yeah a lot of taufags do seem to view tau trough rosy tinted glasses.
>>96884888its a literary device. If there exists a nice place in 40k, its only purpose is to either get ravaged and destroyed extra hard, or to to hammer home the horror of the setting without lube, once it penetrates your anus. The function of "nice comfy place" in 40k is never to last or bring relieve, only to enhance to horror
the average imperium world is a paradise compared to the average Xianxia setting
>>96884896Taufags aren't making comparing the Tau Empire to the Star Trek federation or any sort of utopia like that, just to the Imperium. Put it this way, on the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs, the Tau fulfill your physiological and safety and security needs. Anything more than that and you're on your own to fulfill those. The Imperium doesn't even fulfill your physiological needs. You're fighting just to survive. The Tau certainly aren't perfect and have a lot of shady elements, but realistically any person who answers "where would you want to live as a human in the 40k universe" is going to answer the Tau Empire.
>>96884932No some of them entirely gloss over the orwellian and eugenics oriented part of the tau greater good and cast system. Its a mirror of larping as hyf imperials, just in the other direction.
>>96884827i have a buddy that is extremely pro-imperial, and he constantly preaches that he, and i quote>hates complexity in mediaand also>loves shonen tropes like winning a logically unwinnable fight by just yelling and powering up he thinks 40k's setting would be more interesting if all the loyalist primarchs came back and started winning with emperor-energy powerups like guilliman in dark imperium
>>96884952>some of them entirely gloss over the orwellian and eugenics oriented part of the tau greater good and cast systemWell we're humans. We don't care that much about the caste system because...we're not in it. So it might suck for some of the Tau but it's not something we really think about much.And the Orwellian stuff is bad sure but it comes back around to the comparison. The Tau have a Brave New World type of thing going on. They're authoritarian but they tend to rule through pleasure and comfort rather than pain and fear. You're part of a well-oiled machine and you have to play your part, but your alternative is the Imperium, so it's not exactly a difficult choice.
>>96884969yeah, like this fag. All non-tau are in the cast system you idiot. They're lower than the Tau in their cast system. This is clearly addressed in the fiction and fluff. Discussion with this anon is impossible, they're the aforementioned stereotype.
>>96884953>hates complexity in media >wants simplified anime stroylines I don't get it but I see it sometimes too. Its not like 40k is that deep or complex, its bubblegum for the imagination with occasional highlights if you want to read into them, but wanting to shrimplify it even more is a weird thing to watch.
>>96884857To be honest I, and many other tau fans, enjoy our faction as genuinely misleading assholes that show themselves off as better but really aren't THAT better in the long run. The tau are still fucking dickheads with the ones living in their empire who don't have a choice of lifestyle, constantly suffer severe punishments and are activly watched 24/7, not to mention how auxilliaries, many of which are basically colonized and enslaved, are basically just menial laborers for them. The tau empire contrasts to the imperium because they are a realistic and sensible regime with a long history of interventionism, senseless violence and so on while painting themselves as the big dick goody two shoes, they really do take sensible decisions that would be grounded in real life logic in a serting full of lunatics. The fact they are the least bad and arguably better to live in alternative doesn't make them morally sound or good, it just makes the rest of the galaxy seem like a complete irrational assholes, which most of it is. The tau empire is not an inherently anti 40k thing, if anything the idea that the only sane looking faction is outright malicious with some weird cultural practices like blood sacrifices making them not that different from everyone else is pretty on point for a setting supposedly without hope>>96884827GW appeals to said demographic because they're ultimately better and more lucrative customers. 8th edition was when the major shift of SMs as super heroic happened. They were way more brutal and irrational before that, than it became those bullshit sermons about honor and brotherhood no one who has actually stepped on a battlefield in human histort has ever given a flying fuck about. "Muh humanity doing bad things to ensure it's survival" appeals to chuddy fascist minded people, sure, but it appeals to idiots who enjoy comic books where the main heros just repeat their current moral values as well and we all know those make for perfect cash cows
>>96884981>They're lower than the Tau in their cast system.That's not how that works at all. Every Tau caste is below the Ethereals, but the auxillaries are equal to the other Tau caste except for the Ethereals. We see this in the Elemental Council book. Auxillaries are able to achieve positions just as high as any Fire/Water/Air/Earth caste and frequently do.
>>96885030Blatently incorrect>Gue'la aren't allowed to pilot any type of suit in lore, suits are generally a mark associated with a given Shas'O's ranking, you get a suit the higher you go up in the hierarchy with only Darkstrider not taking any out of fundamentalism. If humans can't have suit that implies they also can'r go up in their military hierarchy>The tau never send actual human ambassadors in their diplomatic envoys, though they have used them before during negotiations with the imperium, likely as just a useful idiot type tool >I have never seen, in any tau media whatsoever, a human in the positions of any other caste such as a pilot, engineer and so on, hell not even in Battlefleet Gothic>In Ethereal Council they hold chair positions in local representative groups but the voice of auxilliaries seems to be more of a pity position rather than anything of value as their take is not as considered >Plenty of passages where tau characters are openly agains't human culture and customs, I would be too since they are imperial customs but still>Aun Va's argument with Farsight in the Blade of Truth novel reveals he doesn't really particularly care about auxilliaries' lives beyond their use>Captcha: WHK442
>>96885094>Gue'la aren't allowed to pilot any type of suit in loreWell gue'la certainly aren't, but gue'vesa are, we've seen gue'vesa battlesuit pilots (as seen in Broken Sword)>a human in the positions of any other caste such as a pilot, engineer and so onThere are humans in leadership positions in Elemental Council, second only to the Ethereals themselves>Plenty of passages where tau characters are openly agains't human culture and customsBut we've also seen the Tau become heavily influenced by human culture. Smiling has started to spread amongst the Tau and that's a purely human idea.
>>96878174>>96878188The mechanicus is literally a bigger threat to humanity than xenos or chaosThey can just decide to raid your planet and turn the entire population, including you and your family, into servitors just because they felt like it.Wanna try to fight back? Boom, there goes your supply of weapons and technologyLiterally nobody can hold them accountable, not even the emperor of mankind, because theyre more machine than human and don’t give a shit about humanity in the slightest
>>96885094In the codices it is outright stated that non-Tau can raise to positions of "relative importance". Bigger deal, we also know that individuals can become personal servants and advisors to Ethereals, which makes you stand above 99% of population by default. So yes, it's not "Tau above all" it's "Everyone beneath Ethereals". Frankly, Tau Empire is a expansionist, collectivistic police state with oligarchic upper caste who's individual members might be selfish assholes who simply know not to kill a goose that lays their breakfast eggs or semi-benevolent overlords who truly believe in being guides and teachers to their 'lessers'. Tau Empire is a dystopia, just infinitely better than Imperium and you really don't need to add space racism to point out the fucked up parts.
>>96885782Yeah in a lot of other settings (I won't say 'any other setting' since 40k isn't even that grimdark by the standards of many other settings desu) the Tau would be bad guys. They're an expansionist, collectivist empire that actively assimilates the cultures they absorb (through conquest or diplomacy) into the greater empire, using the unique talents of each race in service of the empire. They're almost like a less dark version of the Combine in that way.Really, another anon put it best. The Tau are orthodox fascists (before the racism stuff was added) with Japanese aesthetics and NATO military doctrine.
>>96876976getting press ganged onto a void ship because some asshole saw you walking home and stealing away your comfy life on an agri world seems pretty cruelthe imperium in the 41st millenium is a complete shithole
>>96876906>Paradise worlds, Garden Worlds, Pleasure Worlds,only exist for nobles to enjoy, and are run by keeping a population of 99% slaves who suffer backbreaking labor for the noble houses to enjoy endless prosperity and pleasure. Slaaneshi cult breeding grounds or inevitable slave rebellions to Khorne, pick your poison> Agri-WorldsAre literal hellscapes of laborers forced to pick and sow crops while having to dodge the industrial machinery tilling the soil because OSHA doesn't exist in the Imperium, the soil of Agri-Worlds are not just metaphorically but literally fertilized by the blood of dead farm serfs caught in machinery or who died working under the electro-lashes of the planet's overseers>Civilized worldsAre shitholes that just haven't tipped completely over into becoming hive worlds from overbreeding, uncontrolled pollution, and resource over-extraction. Armageddon and Necromunda are the long-term result of the Imperial rule of worlds just like this.
>>96878844>Because grimdark everywhere means it's all meaningless.Yeah, that's the fucking point dumbfuck. The war is lost, the Imperium has been holding for 10,000 years of one very long, very desperate last stand, bleeding worlds from all sides to xenos invasions and Chaos revolts. It is on the verge of collapse and gets closer every day, barely clinging to existence by its own bloated, rotten momentum of bureaucratic oppression and the unrewarded faith of uncounted quadrillions of humans who believe in the God-Emperor but all face the same eternal damnation of the Warp after their death. Chaos has fate itself on its side because time is meaningless to it, it has the power to set events as predetermined such as the rise of Erebus to become an Astartes and his eventual corruption of Horus using the Anathame. The Tyranids are an impossibly enormous alien threat that the Imperium would need to devote 100% of its population to fighting it just to stand the smallest chance of victory. The Necrons can, at any moment, decide to flip the table, pinch Terra between their fingers in the Celestial Orrery, and the planet ceases to exist, along with the Imperium that relies on it to remain functional. Every ongoing narrative is one last grasp at holding the line against not just one unstoppable threat but dozens bearing down on the empire from all directions. There is no hope. 40k is the story of humanity's inevitable downfall. The resistance is futile, inherently meaningless, and Guilliman only had one shot at reversing this with the Indomitus Crusade which only pushed back Chaos temporarily, while half the Imperium is now without the light of the Astronomicon.
>>96876976Those very same novels still emphasize the Imperium is a broken bureaucratic nightmare that even Guilliman can't sort out. He literally gave up on reforming the corruption and uprooting the rot. It's impossible to fix the Imperium without causing a gigantic civil war that would accelerate its destruction by other powers.
>>96883210>hen any of the heroism present in the story becomes limp and meaningless.That's the point, yes. All those heroic guardsmen dying by the billions from horrific magic diseases are dying to defend their children who will be born on a production line, half of which will die from industrial fumes and will be chained to work on the same machines as their mothers when they turn 6.
>>96877527>You have antigrav vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.If you're referring to Escher jetbikes, Escher has DAoT level tech in their archives. Nobody but them and Van Saar are able to produce such vehicles. House Escher is as old as the Imperium itself, and Van Saar has a literal STC.
>>96877884Shira Calpurnia is the best novel series for showing what the 'average' planetary life is like in the Imperium and it's still bleak and miserable as all fuck.
>>96878009Because they're children who just want a gay power fantasy with rainbows and unicorns rather than wanting to enjoy humanity bringing about its own downfall and reaping the consequence of its sins, represented by Chaos itself.
>>96876906There are indeed nice places to live in 40k that give the Imperium a reason to fight in the first place, but that number is grossly inflated.
>>96876906Apparently they film huge amounts of interspecies porn on these worlds, especially Genestealers fucking Sisters of Battle. Sounds pretty grim dark to me.
>>96885591>because theyre more machine than human and don’t give a shit about humanity in the slightestIncorrect, they care about humanity a lot which is why they offer the conversion process to begin with. They're basically the setting's version of Borg or Cybermen who think making everyone dependent on Cybernetics is the next step of human evolution, but are (usually) savvy enough to know jamming a radio into someone's skull without their consent is a bad look.No, the Mechanicus has the patience to wait for you to become desperate from either an outside threat or a need to improve your performance before they offer their gifts. Maybe they might engineer a raid by a third party of bandits or something to get the ball rolling, an accident where you lose a limb and need a cybernetic replacement, but rest assure...They're only here to help.
>>96876906>Falling for the propaganda this hard
>relatively normal and familiar, not unthinkably bad, relatable, worth defending evenHere’s your best bet and point of reference
Brazil (1985) is life as a citizen of the imperium to a tee
>>96876906>Paradise Worldsresort planets for the ultra wealthy, most of the population are slaves to serve the few "guests">pleasure worldssee above, except with more hookers>agri worldsa ring of hell as managed by monsanto>civilized worldscyberpunk dystopia except with less social mobility, sex, or cool technology.
>>96876906>which make up 99% of the Imperiummore like 0,001% of the Imperium, but yes there are some relatively nice planets; Macragge is the closest thing to an actual utopia that the Imperium can manage to produce, Balhaut is basically space Germany and Tanith was a lush, green temperate planet with pretty good living standards before Chaos blew it up
>>96878009So they can sell it to younger children without offending their mums with the usual high PG rating? GW goes through occasional cycles of this, those god awful games in the 90s, the fuck awful books with kiddes as 40k heroes in the 90s, etc. Indocrinate them into followers while young and they are yours for life.
>>96885940No that is not the point. In fact 40k doesn't even have a point, its too incoherent and directionless for that.
>>96886660There is no propaganda retard.
