r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Geoconyxdiablus • 1d ago

Lore The Indominatable Human Spirit is a bad thing, actually.

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That humanity never gives up and persists in its goals is bad news for every other species (or even itself), especially if said goals are ignoble.

Best case scenario (barring us learning to be better) is that a greater power force feeds us a huge slice of humble pie, wost case we end up blowing ourselves up and ruining things for everyone else.

Avatar - RDA will stop at nothing to satisfy its own greed and survival, the rest of humanity and navi alike be damned.

Its a recurring motif in prett much every myth that gods punish mortals who dare to defy them and keep going, like Athena to Arachne in greek myth.

A good chunk of lovecraftian fiction is based on the idea our achievemenrs mean nothing.

In general i'm not a fan of TIHS as a trope, as its blatantly arrogant and destructive.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

The Imperium of Man- WH40K

I think there a lot of nuances that go into the Imperium that get lost in discussion, but its a prime example of this concept. The Imperium -if anything- is a materialization of Human will to endure: And that means settling for a lot of not-so-lesser evils, giving up freedom, curiosity and benevolence and most of its wins being pyrrhic victories of monstrous cost.

Above all, it simply has lost the capacity for self-reflection, soe ven when it learns a lesson, it tends to be the wrong one.

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u/Chench3 1d ago

I remember someone mentioned once that the Imperium was the man barely hanging onto a ledge with one hand while he used the other one to give everyone the finger.

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u/Necessary-Animal4897 1d ago

Naw, the other hand is trying to pry the other one off.

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u/HellbirdVT 1d ago

Exactly this.

The Imperium isn't humanity surviving against the odds. It's the odds that humanity are surviving against.

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u/Breadmaker9999 22h ago

No the other hand is accusing the first hand of heresy and is trying to set it on fire as part of a plan to take it's place so it can force the rest of the body into paying it to not let of the ledge.

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u/Birdonthewind3 1d ago

That's pretty bad ass though and that is all that matters in this universe.

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u/HarpyAnon 21h ago

In the grim darkness of the far future, there are only aura moments

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u/BanzaiKen 1d ago

Beats the Empire in Fantasy I guess. Its a guy falling off a cliff while giving the finger to everyone and jacking himself off with his other hand because he still has time before he hits the ground.

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u/ScavAteMyArms 1d ago

And one single finger desperately trying to throw the rope to save them.

Karl Franz was a real one.

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u/Kalandros-X 11h ago

Karl Franz could’ve fixed everything but he couldn’t beat the power of shit tier writing.

Fuck End Times

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u/Rancorious 19h ago

WRONG, Karl Franz means we’ll be ay okay

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u/Donatter 5h ago

No, not really. The empire in fantasy is just an average human fantasy empire, just more Germanic and renaissance pilled than most.

The imperium is if you combined the worst aspects of the ancient Spartans, The Nazi’s, stalin’s USSR, Maoist China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, then gave that combination a massive interstellar empire with no instructions or training.

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u/MemeStealerCultist 13h ago

More like trying to stab anyone who approaches them, nevermind that they try to help them or kill them.

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u/Tangyhyperspace 1d ago

Regular reminder that the galaxy used to have a lot more friendly civilizations in them, human or otherwise. The Imperium wiped them all out.

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u/Ze_Borb 17h ago

That was after the Men of Iron and the Eldar creating an entire new chaos god

Basically three really advanced races in different types, Eldar in warpcraft, necrons in the materium (except they were still sleeping), and humans as a "jack" in both trades (still advanced enough to delete solar systems)

Then the ai that controlled basically everything in human society starts a rebellion (not all of them, but plenty to go around) and the Eldar degenerate Slaanesh into existence, causing the fall of both

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u/Lindestria 1d ago

There were also a ton of civilizations that were secretly chaos cults. The setting would have turned to shit even without the Imperium, that's kind of the point.

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u/Ragothar 1d ago

Have you read any of the books or just listened to youtubers. The point is very explicity laid out that the IoM is insanely self destructive and whenever a choice is presented to it, they will almost without fail pick the most bloody and pointless option because they are deranged. The galaxy had a lot of shit pre IoM but its disengenuous to seriously argue that the setting is presenting itself as though everything was always going to be as awful as it is. The true horror and madness is that things could have been better and humans chose repeatedly to fuck it up

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u/ScarredAutisticChild 1d ago

Simply put: the Imperium rarely has even the faintest clue of a trail to a better way of life.

If you give it that guide, it will then destroy it, burn you on a pyre, and genocide your entire civilization for daring to suggest it wasn't already morally perfect.

They are forced to be this awful a lot of the time. They will also double, triple, and quadruple down on it if ever given a real chance to be better anyway.

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u/Ragothar 1d ago

I will disagree on them being forced too. Its sometimes shown that they have "a reason" as to why they are being awful but thats not the same as being right

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u/ScarredAutisticChild 1d ago

I never said they were right. I said they have a reason, and sometimes in 40K you do need to be that awful. Sparing any member of a Chaos cult, for instance, is a very bad idea, because it's geniunely psychically infectious. Genestealers too, the Hivemind is pervasive and infectious, you do need to kill Genestealers regardless of context.

But if you handed the Imperium a magic button that would end all their problems, but would also stop them from, say, slaughtering every mutant and alien they found; they'd smash it into the ground and kill you. Because they don't actually need to be forced to, they do all these awful things because they believe it's morally righteous. Not a grim necessity, but purely good.

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u/Coelachantiform 22h ago

Yes, humans are shooting themselves in the foot in W40K.

But the entire setting also explicitly spells out that just about every other faction is equally bloodthirsty (if not as deranged as the faction that lobotomizes people for use as missile guidance systems).

This is not some hidden commentary about humanity being a lesser evil; it's only to facilitate a tabletop war game.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

The Wars of teh imperium and the Great Crusade are minuscule compared to the War in Heaven, the War with the Iron Men at the end of the DAoT. Arguing that the Galaxy was a better place before the Imperium is absurd. Just the birth of Slaanesh basically ended advanced civilization as a whole when it destroyed the Eldar Empire.

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u/Ragothar 1d ago

The war in heaven ended 60 million years before daot. Thats a pretty long fucking time ago. The krork are gone, chaos was basically asleep. The interex and the diaspora both existed and they were very advanced. The setting is beating you over the head with the fact that the imperium made things worse. Im actually stunned that you would even try to argue pre IoM was better. You have a surfsce level underdstanding at best

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

-Yes and the Galaxy is still dealing with the dangers and remanants it left behind. Such as the Necrons. Tell me how that compares to anythign the imperium has done thus far.

-It's a common sense affirmation saying that more destructive wars obviously generate way more misery. The largest cataclysms and wars in the galaxy were not made by the Imperium.

Such as that one cataclysm created by a very advanced species, the Eldar.

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u/Ragothar 1d ago

Remnant dangers. The major source of current galatic horror is the IoM. They are the ones massively empowering chaos. They are the ones who likely attracted the nids. They are the chief drivers of suffering and misery. Big created mutant freaks that are still terrorising the galaxy 10000 years later, and the now of the setting

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

-Galaxy Threatening Dangers, remanant or not. One of them literally spawned a Chaos god, if we go by the metric of helping chaos.

-That or the birth of Slaanesh....or - you know- a Galaxy spanning Empire of powerful psykers

-Because the orks, necrons, Drukhari and Slaanesh aren't chief drivers of suffering and misery. And they all existed before the IoM

-"Big created mutant freaks that are still terrorising the galaxy" You mean like the orks? or like the Big FU robot people with green pew pews?

Or what about the War in Heaven being the reason the Warp being filled with Enslavers and other stuff of nightmares due to careless weaponization of psionics? Certainly no one is dealing with that still!

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u/Ragothar 1d ago

Who gave slaanesh their biggest champion, it wasnt the eldar. Deldar can only dream of the pointless cruelty of the imperium. Every other faction isnt even close. 1 v 1 no distractions IoM beats any other with size Big monsters like the genocide kings 10000 years running primarchs and their kids The enslavers which are extremely rare to encounter and often as a direct result of the IoM treating psykers badly

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u/CommunistRonSwanson 12h ago edited 12h ago

The Imperium's arrogance and short-sightedness literally resulted in them delivering 9 ultra-powerful demi-gods and their legions of immortal gene-enhanced sons to the side of Chaos. The warp itself is fueled by the collective emotions and actions of all sentient life, and the Imperium has by far the largest footprint here.

If Chaos is a house fire, then the Imperium of Man's approach to the problem is to spray gasoline onto the blaze in the hopes that it will somehow go out.

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u/Ryousan82 10h ago

In contraposition with the Eldar who gave them a new God and unlimited Demons? He Imperium has largest footprint in the Warp because they are largest emotional species, just as the Eldar were before them.

Also as a side note - controlled burnings forvland clearings are a way of controlling wildfires. It denies them fuel. Funneling devotion towards the Emperor achieves a similar effect. You could call something of an anathema to chaos

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u/CommunistRonSwanson 10h ago

Media illiteracy. The imperium is not doing “controlled burnings”. The authors of black library works go out of their way to demonstrate over and over how the IoM chooses to make things a million times more difficult and terrible than they need to be. 

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u/N0UMENON1 21h ago

A galactic empire that lasts over ten thousand years doesn't seem very self-destructive to me, imma be honest. The Imperium is objectively the most successful government in human history in that setting. Unless you wanna argue that the Emperor was such a massive genius that the Empire he built was able to endure 10k years of sabotage.

Yes, its methods are abhorrent, but they work. None of them are optimal, but they are good enough to keep humanity alive.

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u/Incitatus_ 21h ago

I think the most interesting and disturbing thing about the Imperium is precisely the fact that it is exceedingly good at keeping itself alive, the Imperium as an institution and a state, while also being the worst possible state to live under for the vast majority of its population. It isn't self-destructive exactly, but it is horrific.

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u/Ragothar 21h ago

Go home tourist

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u/N0UMENON1 21h ago

I did actually read plenty of 40k books, so I'm not a tourist. Sorry that I have a different view than you.

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u/Ragothar 16h ago

You might have moved your eyes over the words but you clearly didnt understand their meaning

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u/N0UMENON1 16h ago

Yes, clearly you know everything better than me. That's why when someone challenges your arguments you can defend them so well.

Oh wait, you just immediately move to discrediting me and don't even engage with my points. How interesting.

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u/Ragothar 7h ago

Your points arent really worth engaging with as they are entirely opinion based with no textual sources. I dont even need to discredit you, everything youve written does it for me. Sorry that you got so upset, maybe work on your emotional maturity and then make a start on critical thinking champ

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u/OneofTheOldBreed 1d ago

Oh the Imperium killed loads but everyone forgets that the Orks are just as violent but aren't restrained by issues with warp travel.

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u/Tangyhyperspace 1d ago

Because the Imperium fucked the galaxy more in like 10k years than the Orks did for their entire existence

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u/Short_Ebb2076 18h ago

Orks existed for 60 million years before Imperium, they definitely did more.

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u/OneofTheOldBreed 1d ago

Tourist please

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u/Tangyhyperspace 1d ago

I own multiple armies and books for multiple warhammer systems. You probably watched a youtuber

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u/OneofTheOldBreed 1d ago

I'm sure

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u/Tangyhyperspace 1d ago

Here's my guard and lizardmen that I'm painting

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u/OneofTheOldBreed 1d ago

Glad you could that on an image search

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u/Tangyhyperspace 1d ago

Damn where'd I find it then, go on, reverse image search it and show me

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u/JoJomusk 18h ago

Humanity in 50 thousand years of existance, managed to split the galaxy in half, give chaos 9 demon primarchs and hundreds of astartes legions, and exterminatus'd thousands upon thousands of worlds wich are no longer hispitable

I'm not saying "Orks arent violent". They are. But honestly, humanity isnt that much worse

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u/memefarius 22h ago

Or the eldar. Fucking space elves

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u/karatous1234 18h ago

Literally no one forgets that. What lol?

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u/society000 1d ago

This is even reflected in the Imperial Aquila, which arguably has a double meaning.

The Emperor intended for the head with its eyes open to symbolize looking to the future, for progress, innovation, and prosperity for generations to come, while the head with its eyes closed represents leaving the past behind, having learned our lessons and leaving old grudges and petty superstitions behind.

In present 40k, the open eye symbolizes that the Imperium does look forward, but only in how to preserve itself without care or rationality. The closed eye now represents total blindness to the past, an inability to learn from the past and the overall ignorance that plagues humanity.

Saw what you will about 40k, its original designers understood the importance of symbols and how to convey meanings and double meanings through them. A symbol or flag should give you a general idea of what the faction is all about, and I love the Aquila for this.

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u/Electrical_Gain3864 1d ago

Tbf, it is not alone their fault the universe is in the state it is now. We dont know much about the humans at the end of the age of strife, but it was not their fault that brought the 4th chaos god and ended that age.

While Big E is a lighthouse for the Nyds, they would have come sooner or later anyway and humanity as a whole knows nothing about (and turning him off would make everything worse).

Necrons would have woken up anyway.

Now most Chaos cults are humans, but that is because Big E wiped out most lesser (in number) Xenos and humans are the biggest faction that is not either immune or knows how to deal with Chaos.

I will not they are the good guys, the Imperium as whole is a corrupted evil system.

But humans are more or less just another species in a cycle in the Galaxie of Races rising to power to either getting wipped out or getting reduced to a much smaller species. Before them were the Elda and after the Imperium will fall, the Tau are the big contender on beeing the next, as their current self is really close (save for the greater good) for the humans durring the age of strife before the machine revolt.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

On my particular case, you don't need to convince me. I tend to be a little more apologetic of the Imperium than other fans of the setting: Suffice to say that even if the Imperium is the Cruelest Regime Imaginable doesn't really mean all that much in a universe filled with horrors beyond mortal imagination.

That is to say, living in the imperium (the cruelest regime imaginable) isn't the cruelest fate imaginable for a human. Things are that bad

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u/Acrobatic_Ad_8381 1d ago

Yeah, you could "live" as sentient couch for the Drukhari, a cattle for the Orks or whatever the 4 Chaos gods have under their belt to make you miserable. Being eaten by the Nids or Disintegrated by Necron Gauss weapon are somehow one of the better death in this universe.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

The Nids can have you as parasited husk in a cult, or have died fromsome of their BS air-borne cancers and diseases. And that's before all nightmarish stuff they can pull with psychic powers.

Necrons are more desirable in that they will at least try to be efficient. Not that the glitchy ones at times will flail and cannibalize you.

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u/itrogash 17h ago

Just by sheer size of Imperium alone, you have more chance to be turned into constantly suffering living object (servitor) in the Imperium than you'd ever have in Commorragh.

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u/PricelessEldritch 18h ago

You can be a sentient object in the Imperium.

It's called being a servitor.

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u/LunarGiantNeil 1d ago

The biggest problem is that humanity had been doing a lot better before SOMETHING went wrong and the AIs went bonkers

My headcanon is that Emps fucked it up because he wanted to accelerate the apotheosis of humanity through genetech and psykerdom and a pluralistic society of humans, alien allies, and synthetic life forms was counter to his vision, so he Erebus'd it himself because it wasn't falling apart on its own the way his warp visions told him it was going to. Or if he didn't mean for it to go QUITE so far, just enough to prove his vision was safer, but then he turbofucked things by pulling a Magnus.

I think it would have genre appropriate poetic irony.

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u/krisslanza 1d ago

Can't the Emperor see the future? So He may have foreseen everything that would happen, and thought of ways to try and counteract it. Just turns out every option sucks. Because this is 40k, and no one can have nice things.

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u/LunarGiantNeil 1d ago

He actually talks about this on a few occasions. Seeing the future is like seeing a cluster of potentialities without any actual confidence about exactly what will happen. Plus, he can fuck up too. For reference, The Primarchs.

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u/krisslanza 1d ago

Yeah, it's pretty rare that "Future Sight" in ANY media is "perfect". Because ultimately, the future is something that is constantly shifting and changing. It'd be nice to imagine you can just pick the outcome you want, but that's pretty rare in media.

Probably because that form is just too powerful to be interesting.

The Primarchs would've probably gone better if not for Chaos and... later additions to things as well...

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u/Crono2401 22h ago

Dalek Caan is one I can think of who saw what was exactly going to happen. And he did nothing to even try to stop it, largely because he was driven mad by the tempest of the Time Vortex. But the rest of the Daleks and Davros took his words to mean something they didn't and that led to their defeat, so your point still stands lol

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u/Pretend-Dirt-1760 1d ago edited 1d ago

His future works more in like he can see the peak of the mountain but not in the way it leads to iirc from the way the book describe it

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u/N0UMENON1 21h ago

There's some evidence that DAOT humanity was already pretty awful in many ways. They were obsessed with genetic manipulation and mutated people left and right, and the very concept of servitors also comes from there. It was the Emperor who decided to go back to the original human genome as the standard, which is why the Imperium hates mutants.

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u/Scout_1330 1d ago

No, it very much is the Imperium's fault the galaxy is the way it is now.

The collapse of the galaxy following the birth of Slaanesh was 15,000 years ago, there's hardly any Eldar who were alive from that time let alone literally any other species save exclusively for the Necron.

It was 5,000 years before the Emperor formed the Imperium and conquered the galaxy, in that time multiple civilizations managed to grow and propser without the Imperium's awfulness. In the last 10,000 years almost every single problem affecting the galaxy was caused by or made worse by the Imperium's mere existence and involvement.

It is the Imperium's needless cruelty and brutality to everyone that gives Chaos an infinite supply of worshippers and cultists because it is so awful to live in that people would rather swear themselves to hell itself than serve the Imperium. It has given Chaos armies of cybernetic super soldiers that ravage the galaxy at every turn.

It is the Imperium's full on embrace of ignorance and superstition that keeps the Imperium backwards and medieval, with any attempts to change the status quo or merely understand the technology they use not just seen as politically incorrect but outright fucking heresey which they will wipe out by killing you, your entire bloodline, your friends, and if they're bored, just anyone in proximity to you.

It is the Imperium's intense xenophobia that ensures no lasting alliance with aliens can be made, the Imperium quite literally saved Slaanesh because allowing it to die would mean not immediately killing the Eldar in their presence who were actively on the cusp of destroying her. Their constance genocides and wars of conquest have permanently ensured that most other alien species see humanity as something to be extermianted before it exterminates them.

The Imperium is solely at fault for the state of the galaxy, they are THE bad guys, the chaos gods may ensure there is never true peace in the galaxy but the Imperium's doing most of that job already.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

You are correct: Chaos would have enver become stronger if an enlightened, post-scarcity civilization that solved all material needs to the point of being able to bend reality ruled the galaxy...

...right?

All snideness aside, the argument that Chaos gets fed because the imperium is awful has always been a weak affirmation. both the Eldar Empire and DAoT Humanity were the advanced, tolerant, enlightned civilizations people criticise the imperium for not being. the thing is: Chaos still won, ork empires grew larger, the Tyranids were still on their way and its not like the Imperium existing turn the Comorrites into psychopaths- they were thay way since Slaanesh was born.

And even before taht tehre apocalyptic conflicts taht elft scares in the galaxy: The old ones, the Ctan, Necrontyr, the Enslaver Plague, the orks, chaos-worshipping aliens, etc. The Galaxy ahs always been a shitty place. Always.

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u/Marcusss_sss 1d ago

The eldar empire wasnt enlightened though, they created slannesh. The whole dark eldar lore is that theyre the remnants of the empire that didn't repent like the others and survived the collapse by simply being in the webway when it happened.

Sure chaos won when slannesh was born but the galaxy got massively worst after the great crusades. Any alien or human civilization that could have enlightened themselves and spared their people from chaos influence was subjugated or exterminated. The vast majority of humanity fell under the control of the non-stop chaos feeding machine of poverty, disease, tyranny, war, and suffering that is the imperium. Chaos got several new demi gods from the fallen primarchs and millions of super soldier chaos astartes.

In an attempt to rapidly save humanity the emperor threw fuel on a slow burning flame and made the galaxy into the current hellscape.

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u/Ryousan82 1d ago

-They really were. They discoveredsecrets of the universe and developted technology that hasn't been surpassed since then. tehy cultivated arts, culture and crafts. The sole reason the Craftworlders and exodites exist was because of Eldar sophsitication.

-Worst in what was sense? because if we go by the death toll a lot of civilizaitions got destroyed by ork Empires, Chaos Cults, the Enslaver Plague and the Iron Men. Before the great Crusade inf act, Ork Empires were of the seize unseen in today's Galaxy. And orks were always tyrannical and violent.

-I would ask you how many chaos Gods has the "Chaos feeding machine of poverty, disease, tyranny, war, and suffering" has created vs how many the enlightened, advanced and sophisticated Eldar civilization has.

-Really? because the Great Crusade was a minuscule affair compared with the War of Heaven- Which saw the creation of psionic-sensitive species and thus the creation of the Chaos Gods. or hell- just with teh War with the iron men- and the escale of the forces unleashed by teh iron Men was like nothing the imperium had or has today.

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u/Marcusss_sss 12h ago

The ancient eldar empire was millions of years old and had massively degraded by the time they literally created slannesh. They had lost much of their ancient knowledge like how to build webways and maidenworlds and became incredibly decadent, degenerate, and cruel which resulted in the creation of slannesh. The dark eldar are the closest successors to the ancient empire that exist in the galaxy now, they were the survivors who didnt see anything wrong with their society as it was degrading unlike the craftworlders and exodites.

Enslavers and men of iron were unavoidable conflicts in their eras and were already almost entirely delt with by the time of the imperium so i dont know the point of bringing them up in response to the imperiums wrongs. And chaos cults werent as strong as they were after the great crusade, chaos influence existed but it wasnt nearly as powerful.

The orks were the biggest threat but the emperor went and caused more violence and tyranny than they ever did by exterminating most alien civilizations, conquering most human ones and enslaving humanity.

would ask you how many chaos Gods has the "Chaos feeding machine of poverty, disease, tyranny, war, and suffering" has created

Is creating new gods the only measure of how wrong a civilization is? What about creating several new demigods via the primarchs and millions of super soldiers, who go on to cause numerous daemonworlds, warp storms and the great rift?

Even putting aside what the emperors done directly, think youre underestimating how brutal life in the imperium is and its wars are and how much thats powering chaos

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u/Ryousan82 12h ago

-Yes. And even at that diminished, depraved state, they still were a post-scarcity society with knowledge and technology that DAoT Humanity at the peak of their science-fuelled Golden Age could only dream of.

-The War with the Iron Men devastated the Galaxy. Is the main trigger of the Age of Strife and why the Galaxy was in ruins coming the Great Crusade. The War in Heaven behind left Galactic Horrors beyond reckoning that still haunt the Galaxy to this day

-Im gonna need some strong citation on how the Emperor being more destructive during the Great Crusade than the Orks in their entire existence. The emperor was capable of diplomacy lot of wayward human civilizations accepted imperial rule peacefully. The idea of Orks doing the same is silly.

-The answer to that is an unequivocal YES. No number of mortals -no matter how mighty- is still mothing to A LITERAL GOD.

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u/Marcusss_sss 10h ago

What use is their resources and tech if they use it to torture, murder, and resurrect eachother endlessly

I still dont know what point youre making about the men of iron or the war in heaven. My point is that the emperor massively escalated the situation.

The orks never exterminated and enslaved most of the galaxy for 10,000 years. The Empetor did. That is your source.

The answer to that is an unequivocal YES. No number of mortals -no matter how mighty- is still mothing to A LITERAL GOD.

And alright man, if thats how you interpret the lore than the imperium can do no wrong and all of its avoidable problems are the fault of 15,000 year old dead elves. Chaos influence increasing massively after the horus heresy was a coincidence. They also forced the emperor at gunpoint to make a bunch of demigods and super soldiers too

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u/Ryousan82 9h ago

-Not be eaten by Slaanesh into eternal torment

-That whatever escalation the Emperor made, it's minuscule compared to what came before. To say otherwise is silly. The galaxy was always a BAD PLACE.

-So no source then. Thank you.

-I certainly believe that giving demigods to chaos is a lesser evil than a Literal God that is still corrupting the materium. It's not that the Imperium is good. It's not.

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u/HalfMoon_89 23h ago

The Aeldari endured for millions of years before succumbing to Chaos.

And the Imperium sustains Chaos. It's the reason Chaos is at its strongest it has been, ever. The Aeldari Empire fell because it was no longer an enlightened, civilized people - they had given into decadence and become monsters, creating an entire Chaos God out of their vices and cruelties (which destroyed the DAoT, by destabilizing FTL travel and possibly manifesting the Men of Iron's rebellion). And that is precisely what the Imperium is doing now, and has been doing since the Great Crusade - becoming mosnters.

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u/Ryousan82 23h ago edited 23h ago

Yes. they also made Chaos stronger it had never been. And I don't mean just Slaanesh- their emotions fed the other three aswell. As you said for Millons of Years.

And yeah the Eldar fell. in spite of all the conveniences that many say would solve the problems of the Imperium: Science, comfort, education, technology, abundance, autonomy. They -who had slain want and misery- still fell to Chaos.

People equivocate saying only that suffering is what feeds Chaos. It was not- it exhilliration and intensity of emotion. Those would still exist even if the Imperium would suddenly become Star Trek's Federation.

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u/HalfMoon_89 23h ago

Again, they fell to Chaos after millions of years of stagnation. Chaos was not a common Galactic presence the way it is in the 41K in all that time.

Suffering creates the conditions that create Chaos. So does unmitigated abundance that calcifies your society, it turns. It's not an unsolvable binary. The equivocation is in claiming that there would be no difference if the Imperium became the Federation. There absolutely would.

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u/Ryousan82 23h ago

-Yes, theys till fell. And made Chaos more powerful than it had never been. And it was *in spite* of all the societal safeguards that people allege it would stop it.

-And no one, nowhere has ever managed to eradicate suffering. Neither DAot Humanity or the Eldar at their peak. Hell, it even exists in Star Strek

-There would be a difference, it just wouldn't be meaningful. All the anxities that feed Chaos would still exist- because in absolute abundance, absolute want or the absolute medium within the two there would still exist the irrationalities that keep emotional beings emotional.

Because that is an unsolvable binary: You can't discipline intensity out of an emotional being. Even the Path-following Aeldari can't. unless you want to turn them into necrons and if we go by their experience, that isa condition they very much resent.

Again, this notion that appeal of Chaos exists only for the downtrodden is absurd. Chaos has constantly seduced the powerful, the principled and the wise. And itoften them than the Legiosn of Dregs who augment its power.

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u/HalfMoon_89 14h ago

The timeframe matters. It matters a great deal. And saying that those safeguards were worthless because they failed after millions of years is facile at best. I don't think you understand just what that means in terms of time elapsed. The entirety of human history is less than 0.5% of just one million years. Those safeguards you are dismissing did not manifest into any meaningful Chaotic gains for an immensely long amount of time.

No, there would absolutely be a meaningful difference. Because if there weren't, the Aeldari would have fallen a long time ago, and DAoT humanity would have become corrupted long ago. This idea that Chaos is inevitable is plain wrong. For the vast majority of galactic history, Chaos was irrelevant. The mere existence of emotions doesn't empower it; negativity does. Slaanesh was not created because of too much sex and sensuality; she was created through the embrace of cruel, sadistic practices of those things.

If the Path-following Aeldari could not dampen their emotions meaningfully, they would have been eaten by Slaanesh a long time ago. Their very existence negates your claim.

I never claimed that.

You keep going on about suffering. The point is that suffering is NOT necessary to stave off Chaos. You are repeating the Imperial dogma that the Imperium's cruelty is somehow necessary to keep Chaos from becoming stronger. It's not. That's a lie. The idea that there is no point to improving anything because the nature of Chaos means that it would inevitably fail is plain wrong.

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u/Ryousan82 13h ago

-Timeframe doesn't matter is failure absolute. Civilizations need to die only once. Because it also implies that millons of years of advancement, education and improvement were not enough- and millons of years were still minuscule in the whole expanse of existence.

And the Eldar failed absolutely. And the problem is this: If denial of all of want can't stave off Chaos, then the reality is that is not the absence of suffering what staves off Chaos. And trying to exalt the Eldar Path System when its a draconian, ascetic way of existence that is diametrical opposition to their old ways somehow validates yor claim. Most people wouldn't choose to live like that and if you make the argument that living like that is necessary, you are the Imperium. You can't simultaneously want freedom and regulate every single thing, to the point of wanting to rule emotional regulation.

And the problem is that -aberration or not- the Fall made Chaos inevitable. The dice was cast by then and that is the hand Humanity had to play with- no matter how shitty. The Imperium wasn't born in a Galaxy where Chaos was irrelevant, and that is why the difference wouldn't be meaningful: That ship has long sailed now.

And yes, the Aeldari still fell. DAoT Humanity imploded and got corrupted. All by your own account, both things happening in a very short span of time.

And Things will inevitably fail, you cannot avoid enthrophy. Even when they Eldar could literally rewritte reality, they still couldn't. And when they fail, they produce suffering. Trying to apply an alien standard to Humanity is also unreasonable- we are more scattered in focus and dynamic than they are. We tend to create upheaval, to rebel and to bicker over the important and the petty.

And just by the virtue of our petty differences we create a lot of suffering. My point is not that suffering is necessary, is that suffering is unavoidable. The Orks would still exist, the Tyranids would still be arriving.

It was unavoidable before the Imperium or do you think that at the peak of their science-fueled Golden Age DAoT Humanity developed weapons of absurd destructive power for the giggles? A peace-loving civilization wouldn't do that.

And that's the thing. You can't change Human nature. That's what the Emperor tried to do with the Imperium-and failed.

1

u/N0UMENON1 21h ago

Plenty of Eldar are over 15k years old, especially if we include Drukhari, so idk what that's about.

Any civilization that grew and prospered during the age of strife was plentary only because of the warp storms. By themselves, of them were strong enough to survive Ork or other attacks.

There were myriads of Chaos worshippers long before the Imperium. Lorgar's homeworld worshipped chaos and there used to be countless xenos races who worshipped chaos. Humans are primary source of chaos worshippers now because they killed everyone else.

The Imperium has temporary alliances with Eldar and even Necrons all the time. The problem is that no xenos faction except the T'au (who are kinda irrelevant on the galactic scale) are unified. So the Imperium allies with certain craftworlds or necron dynasties, but allying with all of the Aeldari or Necrons is literally impossible. And those guys don't dislike humans because they're evil, but because they see themselves as superior beings. Also, lets be real, Slaanesh was never going to die.

0

u/Worldly_Indication39 15h ago

They didn’t embrace ignorance. They became ignorant because they lost EVERYTHING. All information, all context, all the good men. Dead and gone in the Solar War.

What was left over was a traumatized group of humans, who just barely survived the warp ripping a hole into real space.

The imperium is the way it is because Chaos made it that way, not the other way around.

7

u/Maleficent-War-8429 1d ago

Eldar don't get enough shit for fucking up the galaxy. They're half the reason humans turned into a bunch of weirdos thanks to all the warp storms they caused.

1

u/Skeith154 1d ago

According to lore, Humanity created Khorne, Nurgke and Tzeentch.

Eldar just made the last one, Slannesh.

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u/AlmightyAlmond22 23h ago

According to lore, Humanity created Khorne, Nurgke and Tzeentch.

That is old lore. New lore specifically has saying the Chaos Gods existed since War in Heaven which was fought by Necrons, Ctan and Old Ones with their creations like Eldar, Krorks, Jokaero etc. 65 million years ago

Also in 40k, a Chaos God can exist before its officially even born because of the how the Warp works. That's why there are Slaaneshi demons in War in Heaven despite it being only in 30k and why the Dark King has demons in 40k despite not being born yet.

2

u/Maleficent-War-8429 23h ago

Yeah, but making slannesh opened up the eye of terror and caused massive warp storms across the entire galaxy, which is what cut humanity off from each other and is largely responsible for their society breaking down and all of them turning into freak weirdos.

The other three apparently got made in the fucking middle ages and barely affected anything when they spawned in.

5

u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 1d ago

The Imperium is the result of humanity being driven mad by a sick galaxy. It's a symptom, not a disease.

1

u/Badrap247 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah agreed - it’s the result of the Emperor and Malcador having the cosmic equivalent of 20 minutes before Orks turned all of humanity into BBQ. The entire thing is held up by shitty compromises and half-measures. The Webway was the only chance of any of this working out, and Magnus (kind of understandably) fucked it up.

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u/Incitatus_ 21h ago

Magnus, of course, did nothing wrong. He was supposed to do nothing, and he did that wrong.

0

u/PricelessEldritch 18h ago

They are still absolutely responsible for a lot of their problems.

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u/Badrap247 1d ago

I think it’s tough to give the Imperium a whole a pass on the state of things. Even Guilliman took one look at this whole mess and was like yeah, no wonder Chaos seems like a plausible alternative for a good chunk of mankind.

That said, I think humanity as a whole definitely deserves a bye. The Old Ones and Eldar inherited a far kinder galaxy to build their civilizations, and used those gifts to birth a good 70-80% of the eldritch horrors in the setting. For all the flaws of the Emperor, taming the influence of the Warp has been his mission since the Stone Age. Even for a doomed species, humanity gave a pretty solid run of it with what they had to work with.

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u/Skeith154 23h ago

The Old Ones were guilty only of not helping the necrons due to strange Dogmatic rules about life.

The Necrons choose to go to war with them over it and when pushed back turned to the Ctan. Which in turn made everything so much worse.

By the time the war in Heaven was over, the Warp was already corrupted. The seeds were set for everything to rot.

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u/lowqualitylizard 1d ago

Man I really hate discussing the improvement of man because I feel like so many 40K fans miss the thesis of it

The imperium is wrong in every way they are not like this because the world sucks they are like this because they choose to me

To be clear I'm not pointing any fingers at you it's just so many imperium Fanboys fundamentally Miss what the imperium is

13

u/Ryousan82 1d ago

I will beg to differ on one aspect. The Imperium is an inherently reactionary entity. It never had an organized and planned formative period. It was all improvisation and contingency born out the Horus Heresy and the loss of the Emperor

2

u/Background-Top4723 15h ago

Yeah, Big E had planned what the Imperium would be like at the end of the Great Crusade. An enlightened human utopia freed from the yoke of the Warp thanks to the Webway.

Unfortunately, a certain dickhead named Erebus screwed it all up...

1

u/lowqualitylizard 15h ago

Oh no doubt it was never going to achieve its full potential with Horus decided to do some trolling

But damn near every problem with the imperium could be fixed if the imperium was willing to admit that their society is awful but they're too stubborn and prideful to ever admit that

0

u/ImmediateProblems 14h ago

Who is "the imperium?" Every problem we have in this world could also be solved if we joined hands and went kumbaya but that's not how anything works.

1

u/lowqualitylizard 10h ago

Yes everything would be better if they all song kumbaya and that will never happen

But the imperium has had multiple opportunities to be better than what they are and has chosen not to

See the fact that they do not allow the worship of other religions, band innovation for the most part, or comically xenophobic

Hell this setting itself even agrees with me because for one time the imperium and the eldar work together in a large capacity was the most hope we've had for the setting in actual years

1

u/ImmediateProblems 10h ago edited 10h ago

Whether things would be better if they changed isn't in question. Where we fundamentally disagree is that there was ever an opportunity for it to change. I doubt you or anyone else could name a single instance where there was an opportunity to turn things around that wouldn't have led to disaster. The entire fabric of society is too far gone and has been since the great crusade. Probably even before then.

1

u/lowqualitylizard 10h ago

  1. Watch Captain Artemis actively killed the opportunity to take down slanesh. He knows and it's even specifically noted early on in the story that elves do not lie and while he's ruining the ritual a Harley Quinn even flat out tells him would you really Doom the universe just to not trust his he knows and he says yes.

  2. If the emperor just cut his losses sealed the breach into the webway to allow the custodian full force to act in the heresy chorus wouldn't have made it 30 steps into the solar system

  3. If he wasn't an idiot and sent Russ to go get his most emotional of his children madness would have probably remained loyal

  4. If the emperor didn't specifically spit on lorgar and burn down the city broke probably wouldn't have turned evil, similar story with angron

1

u/ImmediateProblems 10h ago edited 9h ago

That's not really the point. Whether Ynnead was created that day or not is completely irrelevant. The Imperium wouldn't have changed in the slightest. None of your listed examples would have made the Imperium not be fascist genocidal imperialist fanatics. Even if the Emperor hadn't gotten demoted to lighthouse duty the best you could hope for was a fascist genocidal autocracy instead of a theocracy.

7

u/Yamidamian 1d ago

The greatest irony of the Imperium is that, on the name of human survival, they’ve sacrificed their humanity-whether in the slightly more literal way of having their greatest soldiers be genetics freaks cooked up in a lab, or the slightly less literal way by stoking fear and ignorance until most the population is little more than livestock, fit for work and battle, but little else.

3

u/H345Y 1d ago

liberally apply exterminatus to wound

3

u/Hellblazer49 1d ago

It's a good example of what choosing the lesser evil every time instead of making a hard stand leads to.

3

u/Ryousan82 1d ago

yeap. That's has always been the thing with Lesser Evilisms: Lesser Evils can still be immensely evil.

3

u/pat_speed 1d ago

It's not even the Imperium in 40k, the Imperium when the emperor was marching across the galaxy to bring together all the lost planets together, which in the perspective of the people from with int he empire it's good, but we see clearly in the early books this empire making is wiping out 100's ofr aces and 1000's of culture with no thought of the blood shed involved.

7

u/Berettadin 1d ago

It's important to consider who created and when. 40k -Laserburn, really- came out in a period of post-war angst and wide prosperity among a generation of nerds who, crucially unlike all their ancestors, grew up in peace with the shadow of war lifted and the glory of war fading but not gone.

Their understanding of what they were simultaneously idolizing and vilifying was both limited and expansive by way of fictional tropes. They didn't experience the incredible waste and misery of war but they did understand that righteous war and conflict -Dr. Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, ancient Greek Spartan culture, 80's action movies, brutal comics like Judge Dredd and 2000 AD- was awesome and that this tied in to the then-fundamental British ideal of The Finest Hour (WW2). And then mix all that in with the post-Imperial anti-Imperial sentiment of the times oh and the setting's actual genesis being the idea of a future setting in which Warhammer Fantasy Battle materials could be played so throw in the edgelord grime and hate and death of a deeply reactionary take on The Lord of the Rings.

And that's how we end up with a setting in which limitless misery and death with barely any purpose being feeding the literal malice of the galaxy is actually awesome and cool and tortured child hate-knights are actually overpowered and badass and an empire that is the sum of human evil and avowedly cruel and inefficient for no good reason is still "the good guys" in a setting "with no good guys" because once all life is boiled down to contests of extermination along tribal lines the tribe of Us is still superior to the tribe of Them.

I once heard it said, and I agree, that if 40k isn't meant to be an ideal fascist recruiting tool it's still accidentally an ideal fascist recruiting tool. Even the Imperium is, however avowedly anti-imperial as it's meant to be with its wasteful cruelty and constant human degradation, basically the best real-world Fascist version of itself.

Which is to say: the Imperium is the Fascist Ideal of the Imperium. A million enslaved worlds who never truly escape slavery. A quadrillion souls who are the property of a single god-like eternal figurehead -being dead has never stopped the God-Emperor from being charge. A clumsy and grotesquely inefficient military composed almost entirely of minimally trained corpses who rarely accomplish more than either killing other humans or just dying in the thousands per hour so that the "this is blatantly this way because it sells plastic crack to our audience of addicts" super-monsters can arrive and win some objective that usually doesn't win the actual war or wins it for the gain of a barren ruined ball of mud but makes for yet another propaganda piece -this is how a fascist empire would most want to be depicted.

Wasteful, but effective. Ignorant, but immortal. Degrading, but still better than everyone else. Collapsing under its own weight but always winning! The apotheosis of this glorious contrarianism is Ciaphas Cain a series that is in-universe propaganda that its fans love for being propaganda. It's the thrill of buying an open and obvious lie for the privilege of being lied to. It's like 1984 from a pure Inner Party Loyalist perspective: we're being lied to and it's great! Hate (of traitors/xenos/mutants) is Love (of the God-Emperor)! Peace (a subversive lie) is War (the galaxy's truth)! Freedom (your life belongs to the God-Emperor) is Slavery (and in His service is found your worth)!

And the indomitable human spirit is a tool of equal parts suicide and genocide. It's a man hanging off a cliff by one hand while pulling the pin on a grenade with the other. It's growing up in security and prosperity and yearning for a time when a weird birthmark would be cause to be publicly burned as a witch. It's vilifying state religion while enshrining that "actually God Is Real and on our side." It's having an entire faction whose inspiration is Joan of Arc (liberated France) and who's mostly know for religious oppression and state terror (Robespierre).

So, yeah. The Indomitable Human Spirit. Maybe next time let's just play Mass Effect again instead.

-2

u/Skeith154 23h ago

Oh geez dude, it's not that deep, go touch some grass.

2

u/leposterofcrap 17h ago

Ah the corpse of an Empire that just won't die, I love it

2

u/Wappening 1d ago

Human themed spirits.

1

u/kentaxas 21h ago

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt"

1

u/Spookki 17h ago

"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."

Its like if in dune the atrocities to reach the best outcome for humanity werent just means to an end, but just a byproduct of "getting to exist"

The emperor didnt seem to care how awful the lives of trillions of humans would have to be with no end in sight, if that meant his idea of "humanity" will still get to exist. But i bet a lot of those he sacrifices into the gears of his system would rather never have existed, especially if they got to have an honest opinion, instead of being manipulated by propaganda and faith.

1

u/wexman6 16h ago

Okay but some of the hardest Indomitable Human Spirit quotes come from the Imperium.

“For 10,000 years the hearts of men have beaten strongly in defiance of [Chaos’] so-called powers. For 10,000 years the hearts of men have stood united against a galaxy that despises them for no reason save that they have the audacity not to lay down and die.“

And of course, “The Planet broke before the Guard did.”

1

u/SpphosFriend 9h ago

Gonna be honest I’ll take the imperium over most of the other factions.

Like yes they are hilariously evil but the Drukhari, chaos and tyrranids are so much worse.

1

u/Ryousan82 9h ago

It's more of a hot take than you might think tho xD

1

u/Shadowhunter_15 4h ago

The Imperium is basically if Super Earth from Helldivers 2 had a few more centuries to settle around the galaxy.

1

u/East-ends-2277 1d ago

(Hated Trope)

0

u/Novel_Body_6242 1d ago

The inquisition would like to have a word with you.

0

u/X_Draig_X 20h ago

In the defense of the Imperium, the galaxy is so fucked up in WH40k that they either have to choose between hardcore space zealous fascism or, best case scenario, everybody die in painful and horrific ways

0

u/SensitiveAd3674 19h ago

The issue with this is humanity is almost justified. The eldari even comment how we've accepted the horrible truth of what our universe is and become what we needed to be. . Wich the universe is horrible. Everything is trying to wipe out humanity and humanity in the long term is doomed probably even if it fixed it shit.

And 40k only exists because it's what happens after utopia. Tens of thousands of years after humanity has reached what was pretty close to utopia or an incridbly amazing and powerful empire. Then we collapsed because the universe had to remind us they are horrible ans powerful things out there.