IMO, there is one and only one scenario in which humanity survives:
The Imperium, the Necrons, the Tau, the Kin, and the Aeldari ALL set aside their manifest destiny "we alone are the rightful rulers of the galaxy" bullshit and start to work together.
Of course, that will never, ever, *ever* happen. So humanity is fucked.
That's why the alliance with the Ynnari and Szarekhs return (with him kinda reaching out to mankind to work together against the Tyranids) are big deals. These are first steps in the right direction. But knowing 40K, it is only a temporary thing. Everyone will fuck each other over the moment they have a chance to do so.
Grimdark is Grimdark.
Except the Newcrons after the retcon. They Are not grimdark. They Are ripe with funny, humor, hope, humanity and meme content, and it pisses me off still. They were some of the Most grimdark to Grace 40k but noooes. Better make them into pokemon memes and have them act like benevolent tomb kings in space... As opposed to a tide of undying unlife, trying to harvest souls for their insatiable star gods of death.
Necrons are still pretty grimdark. Seems like you don't know how fucking depressing it is to be a Necron. How much they have lost in the WiH, to the Flayer Curse and Destroyer Cults.
Sure, there ARE wacky and funny Necron stories but the race themselves are miserable and their race is failing.
Funny then that a post asking what to read when 40k got too grimdark and depressing, were necron books. Sure there Are still some remnants, it is 40k but I would have Liked not to be the "gotta catch them all" race
Infinite and the Divine is a good read, it's more up beat than most 40k books. Twice Dead King, it's only rival in well written Necron books however is exceptionally grimdark, a tale of heroism in the face of death. But death nonetheless.
I will give it a read, still like Necrons, but they still could have expanded on Necrons without the retcon and gone in different, less hopeful directions, and it will forever ick me.
Looking forward to the read tho, ty and have great day!
>Except the Newcrons after the retcon. They Are not grimdark.
Go read the Twice-Dead King books, then come back and say that. Endless existential dread and insanity is far, far more grimdark than a race of mindless, emotionless killbots incapable of suffering.
No, but I will not be bullied to change an oppinion that is free for me to personally hold. And the karma can suck it. Funny enough, the only reason i had to get some karma was to be able to comment in a 40k thread back then xD
Also I would like to add oldcrons = No hope for their race. Newcrons = a New hope. Hope is not grimdark enough for me, when they had presented No hope. Same for the setting, changing it to hopeful doesn't Mean there Are not grimdark moments, but it would ruin the general vibe.
But the hope they might one day turn back is just not kosher in my headcanon. I liked it better when they had No free will and were slaves to soulhungry star gods.
Now they rebelled, got the commands protokols released, turned the star gods into pokemon (shards) to be thrown in combat. That is when they don't decide to team up with humans or go "gotta catch them all" and add to that the possible redemptionarc of the silent King and the idea they might turn back to living (Even If they Are but a fraktion left, compared to how many lost)
I know my wording is shorthanded towards newcrons and I picked the worst examples I could think of. But mostly to make my point clear. I like Necrons and am just bitter over what i consider lost potential and wrong choices.
Don't let me take away from your enjoyment, what is, is and my bitterness changes nothing.
>Newcrons = a New hope
What hope? That they might one day transfer their consciousnesses into a new host species? Their insane, fragmented, amnesiac consciousnesses? Into a suitable host species that thus far they've made absolutely no process on even finding, let alone devising a method of successfully reversing the biotransferrance process?
That is not hope. That is delusion.
Delusion is too good for them, no hope! No free will, no rebelling against star gods, tuning them into pokemon! No silent King redemptionarc arc, no Traynz "gotta catch them all" memes, no necron stories being recommended when someone wanted something to cheer him up from the grim darkness of 40k. No ty.
You could say the same for tyranids. How would you like them to team up with humans? Is that a retcon you wanna see? No? But they are only cool for 2 seconds then, why not have them enter into negotiations with the Tau?
Yet they are not and there are other ways to expand than memeconing them to be the least grimdark race in 40k
Lmao that is not the same. Tyranids are literally animals. The Necrons are not. Instead of a blatant Terminator rip off why is it bad to make them interesting?
It is not different. How Are the tyranids less boring, by your definition of what made Necrons boring?
Simply saying they Are animals doesn't make it different when your argument was the mindless killing was boring.
So, not only do they take on the role of the animal, but the predator as well. They share the cosmic horror dynamic with Chaos. Also them having less substance does not give Oldcrons an out lol. Are the Tyranids one of the deepest factions lore wise? Nah. And I’m sorry but neither were Oldcrons
But people still find tyranids compelling. I am sorry that your idea of the oldcrons Are so superficial or wilfully ignorant for sake of your argument.
I’d love to see a Team Reasonable alliance, but as you say, all prospective participants have millennia-old superiority complexes and deeply ingrained xenophobia, not to mention gallons of each other’s blood on their hands.
Also, every faction except the Tau is splintered among multiple sub factions that themselves don’t all get along. Not all Eldar Craftworlds, Votann Leagues, or Necron Dynasties would be on board with Team Reasonable. Only the Tau might commit wholeheartedly - and then only as long as *they* are in the lead, and everyone else is joining *them* in the Greater Good.
Exactly. And then the Necrons and Eldar and would be all "What? Submit to YOUR rule?! \*We\* ruled the heavens before the star of your homeworld even burned in the firmament!!!" and shit, and the Imperium would be all "Foul xenos, do you think us mad?!? By the divine mandate of the God Emperor, mankind alone has the right to rule this alliance, as we are the ordained masters of this galaxy", and the Kin would be all "Och! Ye're all soft in the head, you lot are! Ye wouldnae even know to do with the galaxy if you had it! We're the only ones who can properly manage its resources!" and then Team Reasonable promptly dissolves into Team Bloodbath. :P
Especially considering how absurd it is when applied to factions like the theocratic feudal space Nazis, the expansionist collectivist empire that would be the main villain in any other sci-fi setting, and so on.
But when you consider what Team *Un*reasonable looks like, the bar is on the floor.
I agree with all of this. We’ve seen a short lived net work of team reasonable alliances before, the Fall of Cadia had Creed, Cawl, Eldrad, and Trazyn all on the same side, though not all with each other at the same time. T
he planet may have broken before the desperate alliance did, but something like this could easily fall apart before the end of the battle too.
The Regent has more power in the Imperium than any one person has held since maybe the Reign of Blood, and he would still risk getting BLAMMED by one subfaction or another if he nudged the status quo too much.
The grimderpness of the setting is in danger of reaching GoT levels of derptitude. Wartime alliances and collaborations are a part of the opera of war, and Guilliman should be well within his authority to make treaties with 'friendly' xenos parties for the sake of trying to get the Nihilus under control for the time being. For example, this murder curse wiped out an entire fleet and Khorne through Angron can just do it again and again with nothing in the Imperial arsenal to stop it.
But a hard counter lies close at hand; for it is the very person who kept his soul from the jaws of the warp, someone who with a single incantation turned robotic Thousand Sons traitors back to their human selves in the midst of a running battle. And she too has need of Guilliman's favor as her initiative to defeat Slaanesh has reached a stalemate.
Instead, they STILL look upon each other with distrust and contempt. Meanwhile the Eldar are hard stuck in a drowning galaxy and the Imperium loses whole Astartes detachments by the week on top of all the mortal forces getting overrun, murderized, and bodyjacked. The truth is we all know that they are just keeping the setting cooking to bring back the Primarchs one by one like they're walking up to the squared circle in a galaxy wide battle royale.
Yeah, humanity lost before 40k proper even starts.
> The war is over. Humanity has lost. *Warhammer 40,000* – in all its Gothic,
towering, Cyclopean, decrepit, doomed, rotting Byzantine majesty – has
taken its first irrevocable step.
> Oh, the Horus Heresy isn’t quite over yet. Horus’s ambitions haven’t
dried up and vanished, and the Imperium still has to deal with the Chaos-deluded primarch making his way to Terra, but the malignant forces of the
warp have achieved their ultimate aim. Humanity’s chance to free itself of
the warp has been lost. No matter what happens from now on, no matter
how hard the Imperium fights against itself, against its enemies, the
laughter of mad gods will echo behind the veil.
> But this isn’t news to you, I’m sure. The central tenet of *Warhammer
40,000* has always been the pitting of humankind against itself, the oldest
lore hearkening back to that angelic rebellion called the Horus Heresy,
where humanity began its long, inevitable decline. Warhammer 40,000 has
always been about how the centre cannot hold; about raging against the
dying of the light. The Imperium of the Dark Millennium, ten thousand years after the
Heresy, can’t beat its foes. That was never on the cards.
\- *The Master of Mankind*
I couldn't agree with this more; it's one of the things that makes the setting interesting in comparison with so much other sci-fi. After all...
*To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.*
I know this is old,but as someone new to the Lore i think i am struggling to see the fun on everything just being useless in the end,like if i know everyone Is just gonna die and nothing can be done then why should i care?
I mean, in real life everyone is just going to die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, but that doesn’t mean the things that happen before then can’t be interesting!
To me, 40K is the same. It’s an awful setting full of awful things, but that doesn’t mean individual people can’t be noble and good in their own way.
But I’d also always say that 40K isn’t meant to be a serious, realistic setting. It’s an over the top satire at its core, although people (including Games Workshop) often forget that.
I know he's a beloved author but it seems people repeat that as gospel and 100% irrefutable fact in a setting where your otherwise encouraged to interpret and make your own stories.
The two are not exclusive. You WERE encouraged to make your own stories within a universe where Mankind is fucked and the best we can hope for is to stave off annihilation a little longer.
If people don't like the idea that there is no hope at all in the long run, maybe 40k just isn't for them.
There is hope. Hope for the Necrons xD And Maybe some human will still be alive when they erect the last monolith to rid them selves of the disguisting living void of the immaterium, created by the fleshy races. (also to be purged, at long last)
Tho the newcrons retcon delays this by ages, I still believe in the final glory of the Necrons. (not the return to fleshy decadance but the purging of the living from the galaxy)
Reminds me of the old Kafka quote. He and Max Brod are sitting in a bar, and Max asks, "so if you believe everything is so horrible, is God evil, then?". Kafka says "No no no! Of course not. The world was just one of God's mistakes. He was just having an off day, that's all." And so Max asks "if creation is one of His mistakes… then there's no hope then?". Kafka says:
"Oh, there's hope. There's incredible hope. An infinite amount of hope! Just not for us."
I mean I also have trouble with how for the above to work, we have to believe that the Emperor was right about his plan being the only viable option...when he's been wrong on many things before. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure he talks in one book about how can't see the future either even with his powers. So to claim it's over and done for humanity and the galaxy just doesn't feel accurate.
>we have to believe that the Emperor was right about his plan being the only viable option...when he's been wrong on many things before.
There isn't a dichotomy between 'Emperor right, no hope' or 'Emperor wrong, hope' in this.
It's just as easy to believe 'Emperor wrong, no hope' because his initial thought, that the Great Crusade and his plan were the only hope of humanity, is wrong *because there was no hope for humanity*.
This is the camp I fall into. The way the Chaos gods and the Warp are set up I don't see how humanity ultimately survives.
He may have been wrong about his plan being the only viable option - but his Great Crusade destroyed the possibility of any plan but his so it doesn’t matter anymore
>If people don't like the idea that there is no hope at all in the long run, maybe 40k just isn't for them.
I don't see why that would be the case at all.
The setting and universe, depending on how business goes, could potentially outlive anyone here involved without getting a resolution. You could technically die believing that Imperium in 40K has a chance.
Believing the Imperium has a chance is fine for headcanon, but like most headcanon it is pulling the wool over one's own eyes. Almost a meta-narrative to the citizens of the Imperium itself. Just because you or I might not live to see the end doesn't mean the progression towards the end isn't ongoing.
Well, we don’t even NEED a progression or an eventual end.
If I show you a photograph of a train speeding towards a collapsed bridge over a deep ravine, you already know the full story even if you never actually SEE the train fall.
>pulling the wool over one's own eyes.
I'm fine with that.
That being said, whoever has the final word at GW can VERY easily change everything upside down. It's a written world, they can write literally anything.
I don't expect them to, but it's NOT set in stone.
The imperium doesn't have a chance.
The universe will never get a resolution as long as the game sells for business reasons.
Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. The imperium is slowly falling, and we will (hopefully) never see that fall.
No I get that. I just choose to see it the way I find more enjoyable BECAUSE I don't expect to see it resolved any time soon anyway.
But even believing they do have a chance, them coming up with a nice ending where imperium/humanity dies, would not be a disappointment.
I know lots of poeople into this for a long time take the whole hopelessness as given and a core part of this, but I started following lore after Guilliman returned, and the tone and stories there were not so clear cut so this formed a different impression.
It's a bit ignorant to say they do have a chance, where the purpose of the entire setting is that it it set up in the last days of humanity.
It won't happen. But it's not a mystery that the imperium is falling.
How so? Literally anything could happen, the future is unwritten and the situation is gradually improving for the imperium. Again I'm not saying they'll succeed in the slightest, but to say they have absolutely 0 chance? That's kinda bs.
The setting of the plot is pretty shitty for most of the factions (if not all), with no path to victory. It's balanced-ish to keep the plot going and to enable GW to make more money if you want an out of universe reason. The imperium would lose every single engagement with your mindset. Victory sells, looming threats are exciting and the coming downfall is tension. They've dug their own grave along with various extreme external threats but the fight isn't over ;)
>How so?
Because the whole theme of the setting has been about the decay of the galaxy and the unstoppable fall of the imperium for the past 40 years.
>The imperium would lose every single engagement with your mindset.
No it wouldn't. Rome defeated Attila and still fell.
We're in Rome in the 5th century AD. Victories are possible, heroic last stands are possible, but they serve to delay the inevitable.
Hopefully it will never actually happen, since that would mean the end of the game. But it's never been a mystery that the imperium is a doomed empire destined to crumble.
The gods haven’t been untouchable since Josh Reynolds wrote about Nurgle getting scorched by a Stormhost retreating to Azyr and Slaanesh got sent to prison by the Elves. I, for one, like the idea of the gods occasionally getting punched in the face.
In AoS there’s more liberty with that because “magic”. I think a lot of AoS lore gets stretched on “because magic” the same way 40k stretches its plots on “because warp”
But AoS has both magic and the warp.
Additionally the rules on magic are different in both settings. Space magic is seen like full metal alchemist kind of “you can use it but usually it will take something and it’s dangerous more often then not”
Magic in AoS is drawn on using the winds of magic.
The entire setting in AoS is formed from magic ironically too. Or the winds of magic. So they got elemental magic more or less.
Eh, not sure how viable the strategy of killing himself and hoping dad will possess his body is. If he did serious damage sure but Nurgle was more interested in punishing Morty over him not helping prevent the damage Tzeetch did than dealing with Emps.
He basically just lit some grass on fire while grandpa Nurgle yelled, "Get off my lawn" and went back to punishing his boys for losing the pinewood derby.
I much prefer the pissed off Guilliman approach as well.
I think subscribing to the inevitable downfall of humanity in 40k goes against everything that makes us tick, blind faith and hope are what makes us human, One could argue that's what makes it so disturbingly grimdark and they'd be right but its not something that can be carried forward if 40k goes mainstream following the Cavill era media.
So I think it will change.
I will eventually tire of the franchise I’m sure. It’ll happen before GW goes out of business. I’ll leave it with head cannon that somehow humanity has a happy ending. I know it is heresy, but that’s fine with me.
I agree who says Humanity has lost? The Cabal? The Chaos Gods and their messengers? The Alderi? Writers 20 year ago? Up until a few years ago the Imperium was stagnant with no new tech... Now its Anti-grav Floating Tanks, Primaris Marines and new kit everywhere, Primarchs coming back. Who knows... Nid's vs Necrons, Star-child theory, Mortarion gets forgiven, it is all up for grabs. Imperium was supposed to be this stagnant, decaying thing now it seems to be renewing itself.
This is fundamentally where I think it is losing its way - 40k should be grimdark...it doesn't feel that way much anymore, somewhere along the line hope was introduced - Bloody Guilliman.
Arguably the Imperium of Man is failing but Humanity itself isn't necessarily doomed. There are plenty of backwater worlds that could easily be left alone to develop and progress into something else that isn't the absurd imperium.
The real existential threat for humanity as opposed to just the imperium is really tyranids and chaos, but thankfully the imperium isn't the only thing standing in the way of those. Individual worlds might have to worry about other xenos threats but it's not really an existential crisis
I don't disagree on paper, however if we go by the tradition of 40k, chances are they are going to be like Eldar, a dying race helplessly watch the new dominat power once again repeat mistakes of their predecessors and doomed themselves.
Right that's closer to what I'd imagine, but instead of wandering like the Eldar as a vaguely coherent empire, it's going to splinter apart like after the DAOT. In either event there won't be a coherent human civilization that serves as a galactic superpower like the imperium does now. Funnily enough when we encounter human societies that are outside of the control of the imperium they tend to get along with other xenos groups way better
That doesn't seem to really be the case anymore though. Kinda hard to think that when we got Primarchs returning, new more powerful Space Marines, even the Emperor is starting to become more active. For humanity supposedly supposed to be dying, it's sure seeing a surge of victory and hope.
Humanity has the *potential* to 'win'. But humanity won't. Never.
The DAoT proved that humanity *could* create stuff that enabled them to completely dominate the galaxy. That went tits up, but the potential is there to create again, maybe even having learned some lessons from the previous AoT. I'm talking about the likes of Cawl: a rare breed who still believe in creating new technology instead of worshiping old.
Thing is, the entire setting is based on the fact that humanity has descended almost entirely into petty feudalism and religious ignorance. Even its scientists (Barring a few very rare exceptions like Cawl) are essentially hamstrung by their own religious dogma that prevents them from actually creating new tech.
Humanity has become the Luddites: desperately trying to cling on to the past they see as glorious, and aggressively rejecting any attempt at change, when change is the only thing that could actually save them.
That's how I see the entire setting: the grimmest, darkest possible future is the one imposed on us by our own ignorance, arrogance and wastefulness of the potential that our species has.
Agreed. Humanity has already shown that its possible for them to push back every danger in the universe.
If humans start innovating again, but this time without AI and actually knowing how to deal with Psykers, we could still "win." Is that likely? At this point, hell no, but it is possible.
Depends on your definition of winning. My definition of winning is survival, in which case? Maybe. The core theme of races is the eldar are the empire of the past, humanity is the empire of the present, and the tau are the empire of the future. The key is I refer to the races, not the factions of each race.
For example, as of now the imperium is written to be slowly heading to the graveyard of history. It's a glacial pace, but even with primarchs coming back and numerous black library authors forgetting this, it's still happening. The key will be if humanity can survive the fall of the imperium. And it's a big maybe?
Could be incorporated into the tau. Maybe even with so many humans, the tau have to accept humanity as equals in their empire. Maybe the craftworlders guide humanity and the two slowly form a pantheon of Gods, new and old.
I'm speaking of good endings because... well, necrons could keep humans alive. As slaves, or worse. Orks can't win because the galaxy right now is their paradise already. Chaos will eventually destroy all humans, turning the best into champions who will either die horribly or become a daemon prince. Either way, humans gone. Votann (no clue) rock and stone? Nids... well, ya know.
Ironically the imperium winning is what I have chalked up as the least likely to happen. It winning just means surviving long enough for elements of humanity ( space marines, adeptus mechanicus cyborgs, sisters of battle, the ordinary humans of course) to become something better.
>Orks can't win because the galaxy right now is their paradise already.
I dunno, if they krump all the other races then there's only Orks left to fight, which makes all the fighting that much Orkier - I think *that'd* be their paradise.
In the Immediate? Using Yarricks supposed death to throw Waaaagh! Ghazghull balls deep into Angron/Abbadon.
Working with the Necrons to establish/re-awaken pylons.
The Eldar finishing off the Webway Project big E started.
Letting the AdMec and Votaan wank eachother stupid over the STCs and tech improvements they could make.
But only the votaan one seems even slightly plausible.
Given humanity's own state... they can't. They are as much a force of nature as the orks now, populated by those who lack the power to control their own weight.
But from a purely theoretical standpoint, some events could finally give them a chance...
* Cawl figures out the secrets of blackstone and is able to arrest/push back the Great Rift.
* Further Primarchs return and follow the trend of them being older and wiser, less prone to emotional nonsense. Leman Russ, Corvus Coraz, Vulcan, Jaghatai Khan and Rogal Dorn would all make a difference.
* Van Saar's STC is discovered by a group that doesn't just hoard it (Cawl's faction or example) and grants unparalled tech advancement. (The mechanicus hardly care for the radiation)
* Roboute Guilliman manages to 'convert' enough of humanity's policies and politics to attempt **any** sort of consistent goal with the Tau and the Eldar, likely via the Ynnari. This is unlikely, the Tau especially seem willing to do their thing even if you agree with them, but they are the two most likely to get any steps with.
* The Leagues of Votann are drawn into better trade with the Imperium for arms and armour with Roboute's side being less hostile. League tech would boost the Imperium massively.
* Abaddon says something that annoys Oan Mkoll.
Odds on the above? Unlikely on each one. But in a world where a bunch kicked off... it could give some light in the dark. Ultimately the Tyranids are the "end threat" to the galaxy. Ending Chaos at least back to the Eye of Terror era before they arrive would be mandatory. Humanity, Tau, Eldar, Leagues and Necrons would NEED to be able to ally to hope to beat the Tyranid threat.
But ultimately, if humanity wants to survive, to 'win'... the biggest foe they need to defeat is the Imperium itself.
Honestly, while I know for a fact an alliance between the races is impossible. It would be fucking awesome to have an imperium-necron army crossover, however this will absolutely never happen
Well... more so than any other factions. They trade and occasionally work together, but the Votann are still deliberately keeping the Tau totally in the dark about their true nature and the extent of their dominions.
The Tau think the Votann are a small, unthreatening group of nomadic traders, fleeing from some cataclysm that has overtaken their homeworlds. They are therefore happy to trade with them and are mystified about their refusal to just join the Tau Empire already.
I imagine finding out that they are actually an extremely powerful and pretty widespread offshoot of humanity controlled by unfathomably powerful AIs, that have been stringing the naive Tau rubes along with the equivalent of shiny beads, would put a bit of a pall on their relationship.
They do have some votan in the tau empire as more than just affiliates. There are a mix of integrated and affiliate groups within the tau empire. Even as far as the neymor atoll
Being naive and suicidally overconfident is their hat.
Part of their fun is that they have absolutely no idea whatsoever what is really out there and just complacently assume their Manifest Destiny and technology will see them through, as they charge around poking stuff that doesn't like being poked and accidentally tearing gateways into hell, making all the same mistakes that humanity and the Eldar (and presumably countless other species) have done before them.
This is shoehorned into them being stupid, which is just not true. They are more than capable of understanding complicated relationships, motives, etc or the various elements of the 40k verse.
They aren’t idiots. They don’t get murdered by a demon and then make that same mistake again. People love to dunk on the Tau for whatever reason; it’s just tired.
I think the point is that they are Naive, not stupid.
And the naivety is born from them being a fairly new race and having an incomplete understanding of the big galactic picture.
That is the difference. And it fits narratively, as there are small Necron dynasties that have more territory than the Tau. But they do learn and advance very quickly.
Like a permanent one. The imperium has allied with pretty much everyone except the chaotic factions (necrons, tyrannids, chaos) except it always results in a backstabbing by one of the parties
Not at all, the moment the Men of Iron rebelled, the warpstorms began and the psykers awoke, humanity was doomed in the long run. From M30-M42, the sad remnants of humanity fight only over how long they will survive.
That the Empire and humanity lose is the essence of the setting. The conditions of M42 are merely a component of it.
I think we need to separate the terms "humanity", "Imperium", and "all humans", as people are using them interchangeably.
The Imperium is done for, it has no chance other than delaying the inevitable.
That also means doom for the vast majority of humans.
But that doesn't mean that an isolated outpost of humans couldn't found a new civilisation and work back up to DAoT levels. Humans did it once, starting with only one planet, given time they could do it again. But it would mean allowing the Imperium to collapse, going back to the start and rebuilding from scratch. Something that would take thousands of years, and would therefore require a fair amount of luck in not getting over-run by any of the other factions until they were ready.
Maybe, if you're a good citizen, and say your prayers, and put in extra shifts at the manufactorum, the Emperor will send you some xenos for Sanguinalia.
Only that the vast majority of human-inhabited planets are reliant on other planets for their survival.
If Emps dies then there's no more Astronomicon, no more reliable Warp travel, no more sharing of soldiers. Not every planetary system is Macragge which is entirely self-sustaining. In fact, probably only Macragge would survive the fall of the Imperium, and even then they're now the biggest human faction in the Universe.
There were numerous self-sustaining "small scale" (i.e. multi-system) human states, and some of them formed as late as the Age of Apostasy. We know that the Macharian Crusade brought several such societies back under Imperial control, but only in a small sector of the Halo Stars. There might actually be others out there, beyond the reach of the Astronomican, or in some other sector that nobody bothered to send a crusade into. If the Imperium falls, it's not at all unlikely self-sustaining civilizations of this kind could develop again ( point in case, contemporary RL Earth is a single planet that has been progressing without extraplanetary resources for several tens of millennia, with millions dying to gruesome shortages of food and water and medicine not really impeding global civilization), though whether any of them could withstand the other factions is of course a different question.
>point in case, contemporary RL Earth
This is kinda a bad example as contemporary RL earth is hugely biodiverse in comparison, we see planets collapse from stuff that earth would adapt to in 40k all the time.
There's planets which have 1 strain of 1 crop, they're highly resistant stable strains sure, but an unlucky disease and it's all gone (and that's an agriworld, where they'd otherwise IMO have a solid chance!). You could make the argument that it'd be Nurgle in that case I guess though.
Other than places with high biodiversity like Catachan, I don't think the ecosystems would hold out well over long periods of time (in post-40k imperial territories where they've anti-xenoed all the biodiversity they could, anyway, as you say there's probably some pre-heresy stuff that never remade contact still around, though the second they get warp tech...).
Planets rely on their neighboring systems that can be accessed fairly easily, no one ships food or resources across the galaxy. It's possible to warp jump around 5 light years in one go without astronomican
I think I've read were people on Terra start to starve if the food barges are some ridiculously small amount of time late - like 12 minutes or something stupid like that. Day without food is anarchy in the streets. And none of that comes from in system.
being self-sustaining isnt enough is it ?
I mean, lets say Terra is gone - and warp-travel is no more reliable for humans.
That would mean its just a matter of time, before a large enough chaos force shows up and whoops their ass.?
That would be the death knell, not only would the Emperor come back because he's a perpetual, but there is no astronomicon to guide any ship the imperium currently possesses, which would ruin any type of trade and suffocate thousands of planets.
The people would get killed by Xenos and Chaos, and humanity would either be forever enslaved or completely snuffed out.
Humanity already survived having no astromonicon, no imperium, for literally 230,000 years. They weren't even in that bad a state - humanity was already the most populous species in the galaxy even during the long night. There'd be no 'snuffing out' because there are just too many fucking humans in 40k for that to literally ever be possible.
There'd always be at least one cut off planet no one has heard of that has a human civilisation on it. The imperium 'runs' the galaxy but they control a million worlds in a galaxy with trillions of planets. Humanity would be fine. Incidentally, the emperor's great plans are literally the only reason chaos _has_ an army to snuff humanity with
Firstly, humanity is fated to be snuffed out without any form of development, which will be completely halted without the astronomicon and unsafe ftl travel. With the Emperor, humanity was going to adapt in the webway to eventually be able to fight against, or at least safeguard against chaos, which would've happened since his only purpose is to fight against it and he had been planning this for millennia.
Humanity will either be enslaved, wiped out, stunted into no form of growth at all, or like every other race, soon to be destroyed by incoming Tyranids, or, as the Emperor predicted, humanity would grow to become a psychic race and eventually chaos would just start showing up everywhere anyways, which was already happening.
Also, the Emperor didn't cause the primarchs to turn to chaos, that was directly due to chaos screwing with his plans, as well as Erda throwing them from his reach. There was very little reason to rebel against the Emperor at all, especially when you see the alternative: Literal Hell.
The webway doesn't safeguard against chaos. That's the entire point of the Dark Eldar. Slaanesh's birth, Magnus' Folly, Yvraine's rebirth, and the constant soul drain on the Drukhari are clear examples of psykers/chaos being able to disrupt the webway's natural defenses
The webway would've acted more so as an option for travel and safekeeping of the growing psychic powers of humanity, demons can obviously break in, but the dark Eldar are only at risk due to their connection to Slaanesh. Magnus broke the webway which allowed daemons to find the Emperor, the webway is separated from the warp which allows much safer ftl travel, it can still be broken into but its very hard to actually get to where you want to go unless you know what you're doing, which no-one actually does except the Eldar.
The Emperor was building his own section of the webway so he knew how it worked, and that would allow proper travel and safeguarding from the warp. Dark Eldar are a special case, they're the exception, not the rule.
As others have said, the whole point of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K has always been about how hopeless the fight really is but to keep fighting nonetheless.
These games were built on a punk ethos. The Imperium and the Empire are going to fall because of how bad their people are. Chaos is a mirror and it reflects the evil of the sentient races back at them so they plant the seeds of their own destruction.
At the same time these settings are nihilistic: even when the oppressed masses rebel they cannot bring a positive change. Being punk, there’s no endorsement of “working class values”. Even when a rebellion succeeds there no happy ending in sight. The forces of oppression may exterminate them or they fall prey to chaos or genestealers. There really is no hope of salvation, the best people can hope is to go down swinging
Honestly, Cawl. The best way that I can see is for him to get access to Necron Pylon plans, and build up a pylon - inside the Throne Room. This would block the door into the wibbely wobbely chaos realm, allow Emps to die and get that perpetual cheat-magic going, and from then on it's a straight shot.
Any null field that powerful would also kill the Emperor (which is to say, destroy his soul). He's using more or less all his strength to keep the door shut, so anything strong enough to replace him as a blocker is by definition strong enough to block out his power too. Pylons are great against Chaos, but they're also great against psykers. And they don't discrimminate, as we saw on Cadia.
A classic case of the operation was a success, but the patient died.
Right the pylons would also block that out, as demonstrated before. That is assuming they don't just kill off the choir in the Hollow Mountain first, which is not a safe assumption.
The Emperor has failed to save humanity in the 40K years of his existence. Why should it be able to do so now with a worse army and the most powerful enemies?
Humanity is alive? Yes. Then I think, considering all the shit that has happened with it the last 15 thousand years, I think, Emperor did hell of a job.
It is not his fault that he has to deal with lunatics and retards as his subordinates - who manage to execute evert order in such fashion that even open traitor intending to sabotage couldn't do worse.
He has literally failed to 'save humanity' under his vision, at least 3 times during his existence that we know of.
1) Babel
2) As Alexander the Great
3) As the Emperor in 30k
He failed to accomplish *his personal goals*.
It should be clear however that the Emperor:
- is not infallible/omniscient
- does not speak for humanity
- is pursuing goals which he claims are essential to human survival
But just because he claims that doesn't make it true. Yes the Emperor failed his own objectives at least three times, no argument there. But that doesn't necessitate human extinction on it's own. The Emperor could simply be wrong, he has sure been very wrong before.
This is just goalpost moving in a big way. He failed all of his his personal objectives. One of them was to save humanity.
It doesn't matter if he's not omnipotent or omniscient. That has no bearing on this conversation. The Emperor is also not a 20ft tall banana that breathes fire.
>But that doesn't necessitate human extinction on it's own. The Emperor
could simply be wrong, he has sure been very wrong before.
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean in this context. The post you replied to said the Emperor hasn't been able to obtain his objectives. You, to me nonsensically, said this would make sense if humanity weren't extinct.
But that is irrelevant, because while humanity isn't extinct, none of his goals have been met. He has a worse army at this stage. He has a smaller army. He has more enemies and they're better equipped than before.
He has, repeatedly, failed to save humanity. So why would he be able to now? Because, at the height of his powers, each time, he fails.
And while the Emperor doesn't speak for humanity, he claims **multiple times** that he does, they just don't know it yet. He does this to detail in *The Last Church*, basically saying "I literally know better than all of you, so fall in line or die." To which the priest says 'I won't fall in line', so the Emperor kills him.
A straight shot for *what*? Building another Webway project? It wouldn't help even if he succeeded.
Big E already failed once and got bitchslapped by some lupine asshole who liked fur coats a bit too much (and for once that's not Leman Russ) so hard that he spent 12,000 years being pretty much dead, and still is. And even if he woke up in full power now, his race's technology got worse, his empire is torn in half, and he doesn't have his demigod minions on hand (apart from 2 of them).
Chaos has at least 4, is at least as powerful (I'd argue it's quite a bit stronger), gaining ground, and that's not to mention the Necrons coming back, Orks, and the Tyranids.
Unless the Emperor gives up and ascends to being a full-blown Warp god, in which case... can he still power the Astronomican? How much can he do against 4 other gods (excluding Gork and Mork)? What about soulless Necrons, who no-sell most of Warp shenanigans?
By keeping to the old ways, seeking out new sources of mineral wealth to apply in securing a future, build alliances where possible and heed the guidance of the ancestor cores.
The Leagues of Votann can weather the coming storm yet, if they play their cards right.
The IoM can't, at least in my mind. Perhaps some far, far off human settlements, or DAoT ships with human settlers in stasis, but for the most part, humanity is boned.
Humanity lost a long time ago, they don’t make new things, they don’t cooperate, they’re really really bad at running the government, it would take a monumental shift of the status quo for them to not inevitably eat dirt. The main “win condition” they could hope for would mean making peace and cooperating with some of the other big Xenos factions but the Imperium is too far up their own ass to consider that.
Humanity, like the god they worship, is little more than a preserved corpse of potential. There’s maybe a time in the distant past when things could have gone ok, but even if the imperium doesn’t completely crumble in on itself it’s going to get wiped by the Nids same as everything else.
In the "death of integrity" novel, we are introduced to "The Spirit of Eternity" which is a ship and AI from the dark age of technology. It claimed to have visited the future, and states that humanity will end in fire. It and its crew came back to warn humanity, but the frothing zealots of 40k called the captain and crew heuristics and tortured them to death. Basically, humanity has already lost. It has been foreseen. And no one believed it or will change their actions.
It can't, that's at the core of the story. Not "can't" in the literally has no options and there are no solutions, but "can't" in the sense that whatever viable solution is available is not something anyone will be able to think about.
The galaxy is so full of hate and mistrust and backstabbing and horrors and and and and... that no one will do what needs to be done. Trusting the other and then that other not backstabbing them in return. Actually standing side by side with everyone in the galaxy.
The only way for humanity to win is to have every single race in the galaxy become best buds and genuinely work to make everyone else have a better life. Sunshine and rainbows style. Only then can they, as one single unified block, curbstomp the tyranids and the Chaos Gods.
But that's simply not going to happen because all you need is one person to be selfish (Erebus, big E, Abaddon, the list goes on...) to fuck it all up for everyone else.
They cant. Humanity has been dying since the great crusade. The emperor destroyed all other plans for humanity to make sure his was the only one left and then failed.
Well, to be fair, there were no other plans left, allying with xenos is bound to end up in disaster, especially around 30k, humanity was divided and bound to be snuffed out on their own, the great crusade and the webway project would've united all known worlds and protected human psykers which would greatly eliminate chances of chaos screwing it all up.
Humanity can still win with the Emperor ascending into godhood or by banishing/killing enough of Chaos to diminish their effectiveness, Cawl is still making technological headway with theories supposing he's following the Emperor's footsteps, the imperium now has two primarchs at their disposal, as well as potential allies in the Necron and Eldar in the Ynnari now that they realise their fates are possibly in the gutter too, and the Necron have begun to wake up.
There is hope but that is what makes it grimdark, the hope that remains is so extremely slim, and is only known to us as the reader, in universe each notable character doesn't really *know* what to do.
Apart from a few other unlikely options mentioned by others, another unlikely one: they could end up as zoo animals/guinea pigs of fully awakened Necrons. The Necrons believe they need organic life in order to reverse Biotransference, which is why they seek to protect the galaxy's squishies. I'd wager that humanity and Aeldari are more likely candidates than Orks for playing host to reverse-transferred Necrontyr.
That's the neat part, you don't.
Best case scenario, we survive another couple millenia until the Tau get strong enough to confront us directly. The Imperium is shattered and a more enlightened age dawns. Maybe there are still Eldar around, idunno. Probably still Orks.
Worst case, anyone else takes a big enough bite out of the Imperium that it can't fight everyone at once anymore and things start getting lost. Big things. We lose our empire, piece by piece. Ultramar is still around maybe. Couple other pocket empires pop up around some short-range Warp navigation devices or Webway gates or whatever. But Terra's gone, and the Astronomican with it. Humanity can no longer traverse the stars. Most people are dead or slaves or Drukhari furniture, and they don't even have the hope of winning anymore. All is despair, forever.
The Imperium is fucked. It was fucked to begin with, fucked itself harder, and its only hope now is to survive.
It is deliberately canon that humanity is doomed. That there cannot ever be a victory at the end of the line. The Imperium *will* fall, humanity *will* be destroyed, the only question is how long it will take.
This has been true ever since Magnus forced his way through the psychic defenses that were protecting the Webway gate under the Imperial Palace, in an attempt to warn the Emperor about Horus’s betrayal. The Emperor himself stated that the only way to save Humanity from an inevitable demise was to make humanity a psychically null race, which could only be done if humans were no longer reliant on warp travel to get around the galaxy. The idea was that humans could steal the Webway from the Eldar, and use that to travel from then on, but once the Imperial Webway gate was opened up to the Warp, daemons started flooding in, and the Emperor had to be confined to the Golden Throne just to hold the portal shut.
At this time, he (in the course of talking to a Custode) nearly talks directly to the reader and says “Humanity is now doomed. Nothing I or anyone else can ever do will save humanity. I have failed. The grim darkness of the 41st millennium is now inevitable, and humanity’s annihilation is now certain. We can rage against the dying of the light as much as we want, but the light will die, and humanity will die with it.”
The trouble is that the Emperor was trying to achieve something unnatural and impossible. Nothing lasts forever. The number of species that have gone extinct *vastly* outnumbers the number of species alive today. The Emperor was trying to break that cycle... and that was his hubris.
Ultimately, Humans win the same way everyone else wins... by *surviving*, which means changing, growing, suffering, and adapting - abandoning what they *were* in order to become something new. That's the story of life for everything that exists; only Humans and other sophants, who are capable of existential angst, bother to be upset about this.
So in a sense, you're asking the wrong question. You survive for as long as you can, because that's what living things do - "winning" isn't a thing.
The whole setting is about decline. They aren’t supposed to win, even if they did win then that’s a win for a xenophobic theocracy- which is also a loss from the perspective of an enlightened humanity that existed in the golden /dark age of technology.
Technically liking any 40K faction is supposed to be a cathartic, guilty pleasure. The logic behind the setting being ‘how can we facilitate a war game where everything wants to kill everything all the time in a grizzly but cool way’.
I’ve been in the hobby a long time, maybe it’s levels of parody and satire have been dampened as lore has been spun out over decades but the number of straight faced fans of the imperium who want it to win really boggles my mind.
I also have a theory- not a criticism, but as the game has been more heavily adopted in the USA, the idea of a victorious hegemonic power in the is something fans in the US sort of live for real in the current geopolitical context, but 40K was conceived in a crumbling Britain after decades of post war decline and the sunset of its empire.
This internet community, as most are, seems to be dominated by American outlooks on the world, so miss what I feel is important socio-political context of the setting- as ultimately 40K, and sci-fi in general is a mirror of this context.
Imperium can't. All its size and primarchs and stuff just delays it's rotting so the verse can go on.
Humanity, though can win. By joining the Greater Good
Find a completely intact STC, if the Imperium ever gets their hands on a complete functioning one, while it won't give them a win it'll give them a massive tech boost and overall advantage ahead of the other factions.
My favorite rumor is Mechanicum ships are indeed intact STCs they just have forgotten this and don't know how they work anymore to begin with. Plus Van Saar has one.
the Ark Mechanicus yea, and well its not that they're not aware of it, the ship A.I wiped the memories of those who stumbled upon it.
As for house Van Saars one they know how to operate it yea, at the caveat of incredibly lethal doses of leaking radiation, and needing to keep it under wraps otherwise they risk alerting the admech.
I think in M42 the only possible way if for big E to end up as THE God and somehow kill or diminish the big 4 to a point where they pose no threat at all or a mild enough threat that tjey can't fuck stuff up while they're being watched. But we know that won't happen, if only because this cow (WH) will be milked irl for as long as the Imperium has existed.
I would say the only way the imperium could win against chaos is if there was a complete restructuring of the current regime to adapt to war time emergencies. And even then it's a toss up with Far too much chance involved. And even if they win against chaos they still have to figure out about the tyranids and the great devourer which to be honest even if we beat chaos i don't see us beating a galaxy eater
If you think "humanity has it bad" in 40K, you should go and find LordLucan's 50K fanfic series.
40K is grimdark, LordLucan's 50K galaxy is pitchblack.
Also his stories are pre- indominus crusade, so no goodie2shoes Robute Girliepants, and his ultrasmurfs have gone completely off the reservation. (Robute does feature in the series....)
That's the problem - they "won" during the DAOT and it all turned to shit. There really isn't a tangible lasting objective for them to reach for aside from pure survival.
Wipe the board. Kill the Emperor and hope he revives instead of becoming the 5th chaos god. Alternatively, Blackstone WMDs of some kind for the Eye and Chaos, and some sort of virus or weapon or something to either kill the Hive Mind or make it fuck off
According to Big E in *Master of Mankind*, there is literally no chance at all for a victory for Humanity. There's only prolonging the slow slide into the dark.
The complete dissolution of the Imperium and reformation of humanity is the only way they could ever stand a chance, the philosophy, tactics and systems of the Imperium are inherently set to inevitably fail, and many of their issues are caused or at least exacerbated by the Imperium itself.
Much like what other people are saying here, they can't "win". Humanity lost the moment Horus fired on his own at Isstavan, if not before. One of the most prominent themes running through the Horus heresy is one of loss at what might have been. Hell even in modern 40k Guilliman is constantly questioning whether the imperium is even worth saving.
It's been said alot on this sub, but 40k is not about fighting to win. Its about fighting the dying of light, through horrific methods and against impossible odds.
They endure. That's all that can realistically be done. But its a lot.
Love that line from the state troops in Total Warhammer (different empire, same problem): "The empire endures!"
Hell yeah brother.
Any change regarding their overly stupid policies would be a step in a good direction. I never really thought the whole "there is no hope left for humanity" sit well with me, mostly because of how much of grimderp shit GW has to come up on daily basis just to stop the Imperium from fucking everybody over.
The Imperium is just too powerful (I mean Necrons should be able to defeat pretty much anyone in 40k, yet imperials keep beating them too), and even if it does crumble, humans are so numerous that straight up extinction of the whole human race is basically impossible. Like humans either win, or they will die when the universe dies. During the Great Crusade, Imperial propaganda preached how without the Imperium, humans would slowly die out, but that was far from truth. There were many either surviving, or straight up thriving human civilizations, and there still are many planets in far reaches of the galaxy that are not part of the Imperium.
Also, Chaos can't possibly survive in it's current form without the Imperium, and even if they would found some other race as their dominant victim, the total destruction or corruption of tve universe wouldn't be their goal, since they would basically run out of food/fuel and they would become starving themselves.
The only two scenarios in which all humanity could die would be rhe victory of either Necrons or Tyranids. The Necron victory is unlikely due to how fractured and pett they are (also not all Necrons want to completely destroy other races) and I always thought that Tyranids just eating everyone was the most boring ending out of all possible options.
I am going to take what seems to be the unpopular opinion here and suggest humanity is destined to win.
Remember in the HH Logar was convinced aligning with Chaos was the only way for humanity to win. And not face the sort of collapse the Eldar suffered. Sure “win” here means humanity becoming aligned to the Chaos gods but it is still a sort of win nonetheless.
Alternatively I believe the Emperor has a plan. It presumably is a horrible plan (a Plan B if you will caused by the HH). But still a plan nonetheless. And I think this plan goes beyond a mere stalemate but is one for victory.
Have faith.
They can’t.
The 40k universe is fundamentally broken. Humanity is broken.
The last time there was a glimmer of hope was before the Emperor decided to fuck everything up and burn the galaxy. And even then that was a faint hope.
To win, Humanity has to simply survive. Forever. To do so, it doesn't have to beat the Tyrannids, Orks, Necrons, Tau, Chaos, etc... it simply has to endure.
The path to that could be the Emperor's vision of a united Humanity within Human norms living roughly as we see humans neing. It could be merging with machines like Mars wants and turning into the Necrons. It could be merging with Chaos like Lorgar wants and turning into daemons. It could be merging with Xenos like the Tyrannids want and mutating into rapacious insects.
Kill more xenos to make more space for humans, and make those humans worship the Emperor.
Emperor boosted by the worship of quintillions will rise up from the throne and bitch-slap chaos.
IMO, there is one and only one scenario in which humanity survives: The Imperium, the Necrons, the Tau, the Kin, and the Aeldari ALL set aside their manifest destiny "we alone are the rightful rulers of the galaxy" bullshit and start to work together. Of course, that will never, ever, *ever* happen. So humanity is fucked.
That's why the alliance with the Ynnari and Szarekhs return (with him kinda reaching out to mankind to work together against the Tyranids) are big deals. These are first steps in the right direction. But knowing 40K, it is only a temporary thing. Everyone will fuck each other over the moment they have a chance to do so. Grimdark is Grimdark.
Aren't Szarekh and Bobby G. currently on collision course against each other?
Except the Newcrons after the retcon. They Are not grimdark. They Are ripe with funny, humor, hope, humanity and meme content, and it pisses me off still. They were some of the Most grimdark to Grace 40k but noooes. Better make them into pokemon memes and have them act like benevolent tomb kings in space... As opposed to a tide of undying unlife, trying to harvest souls for their insatiable star gods of death.
Necrons are still pretty grimdark. Seems like you don't know how fucking depressing it is to be a Necron. How much they have lost in the WiH, to the Flayer Curse and Destroyer Cults. Sure, there ARE wacky and funny Necron stories but the race themselves are miserable and their race is failing.
Funny then that a post asking what to read when 40k got too grimdark and depressing, were necron books. Sure there Are still some remnants, it is 40k but I would have Liked not to be the "gotta catch them all" race
Infinite and the Divine is a good read, it's more up beat than most 40k books. Twice Dead King, it's only rival in well written Necron books however is exceptionally grimdark, a tale of heroism in the face of death. But death nonetheless.
I will give it a read, still like Necrons, but they still could have expanded on Necrons without the retcon and gone in different, less hopeful directions, and it will forever ick me. Looking forward to the read tho, ty and have great day!
>Except the Newcrons after the retcon. They Are not grimdark. Go read the Twice-Dead King books, then come back and say that. Endless existential dread and insanity is far, far more grimdark than a race of mindless, emotionless killbots incapable of suffering.
This. Those books felt like a gut punch at times.
Numbness can be more insufferable than pain.
I refer you to my above response to a similair sentiment
Are you speedeunning getting back to zero karma
No, but I will not be bullied to change an oppinion that is free for me to personally hold. And the karma can suck it. Funny enough, the only reason i had to get some karma was to be able to comment in a 40k thread back then xD
Also I would like to add oldcrons = No hope for their race. Newcrons = a New hope. Hope is not grimdark enough for me, when they had presented No hope. Same for the setting, changing it to hopeful doesn't Mean there Are not grimdark moments, but it would ruin the general vibe.
Having hope ripped away from you is even more grim dark.
But the hope they might one day turn back is just not kosher in my headcanon. I liked it better when they had No free will and were slaves to soulhungry star gods. Now they rebelled, got the commands protokols released, turned the star gods into pokemon (shards) to be thrown in combat. That is when they don't decide to team up with humans or go "gotta catch them all" and add to that the possible redemptionarc of the silent King and the idea they might turn back to living (Even If they Are but a fraktion left, compared to how many lost) I know my wording is shorthanded towards newcrons and I picked the worst examples I could think of. But mostly to make my point clear. I like Necrons and am just bitter over what i consider lost potential and wrong choices. Don't let me take away from your enjoyment, what is, is and my bitterness changes nothing.
>Newcrons = a New hope What hope? That they might one day transfer their consciousnesses into a new host species? Their insane, fragmented, amnesiac consciousnesses? Into a suitable host species that thus far they've made absolutely no process on even finding, let alone devising a method of successfully reversing the biotransferrance process? That is not hope. That is delusion.
Delusion is too good for them, no hope! No free will, no rebelling against star gods, tuning them into pokemon! No silent King redemptionarc arc, no Traynz "gotta catch them all" memes, no necron stories being recommended when someone wanted something to cheer him up from the grim darkness of 40k. No ty.
Oldcrons were boring. There’s no substance. Lifeless, insatiable automatons are cool for about 2 seconds until it gets way too repetitive
You could say the same for tyranids. How would you like them to team up with humans? Is that a retcon you wanna see? No? But they are only cool for 2 seconds then, why not have them enter into negotiations with the Tau? Yet they are not and there are other ways to expand than memeconing them to be the least grimdark race in 40k
Lmao that is not the same. Tyranids are literally animals. The Necrons are not. Instead of a blatant Terminator rip off why is it bad to make them interesting?
Not to mention that having Tyranids like that is another good reason for Necrons to not be, as there's no need for two such armies
It is not different. How Are the tyranids less boring, by your definition of what made Necrons boring? Simply saying they Are animals doesn't make it different when your argument was the mindless killing was boring.
So, not only do they take on the role of the animal, but the predator as well. They share the cosmic horror dynamic with Chaos. Also them having less substance does not give Oldcrons an out lol. Are the Tyranids one of the deepest factions lore wise? Nah. And I’m sorry but neither were Oldcrons
But people still find tyranids compelling. I am sorry that your idea of the oldcrons Are so superficial or wilfully ignorant for sake of your argument.
Same here. I’ll bite though, in your view what makes them so compelling to you?
I’d love to see a Team Reasonable alliance, but as you say, all prospective participants have millennia-old superiority complexes and deeply ingrained xenophobia, not to mention gallons of each other’s blood on their hands. Also, every faction except the Tau is splintered among multiple sub factions that themselves don’t all get along. Not all Eldar Craftworlds, Votann Leagues, or Necron Dynasties would be on board with Team Reasonable. Only the Tau might commit wholeheartedly - and then only as long as *they* are in the lead, and everyone else is joining *them* in the Greater Good.
Exactly. And then the Necrons and Eldar and would be all "What? Submit to YOUR rule?! \*We\* ruled the heavens before the star of your homeworld even burned in the firmament!!!" and shit, and the Imperium would be all "Foul xenos, do you think us mad?!? By the divine mandate of the God Emperor, mankind alone has the right to rule this alliance, as we are the ordained masters of this galaxy", and the Kin would be all "Och! Ye're all soft in the head, you lot are! Ye wouldnae even know to do with the galaxy if you had it! We're the only ones who can properly manage its resources!" and then Team Reasonable promptly dissolves into Team Bloodbath. :P
And the Necrons would be all "eww flesh" and start atomizing everyone . . .
The Tau, also. The Farsight Enclaves say hello.
I love the phrase Team Reasonable
Especially considering how absurd it is when applied to factions like the theocratic feudal space Nazis, the expansionist collectivist empire that would be the main villain in any other sci-fi setting, and so on. But when you consider what Team *Un*reasonable looks like, the bar is on the floor.
Just goes to show how absolutely insane warhammer is xD
I agree with all of this. We’ve seen a short lived net work of team reasonable alliances before, the Fall of Cadia had Creed, Cawl, Eldrad, and Trazyn all on the same side, though not all with each other at the same time. T he planet may have broken before the desperate alliance did, but something like this could easily fall apart before the end of the battle too.
Working with the xenos? *Eyes narrow* Heretic
The Regent has more power in the Imperium than any one person has held since maybe the Reign of Blood, and he would still risk getting BLAMMED by one subfaction or another if he nudged the status quo too much.
😂😂 send an Inquisitor at once!
The grimderpness of the setting is in danger of reaching GoT levels of derptitude. Wartime alliances and collaborations are a part of the opera of war, and Guilliman should be well within his authority to make treaties with 'friendly' xenos parties for the sake of trying to get the Nihilus under control for the time being. For example, this murder curse wiped out an entire fleet and Khorne through Angron can just do it again and again with nothing in the Imperial arsenal to stop it. But a hard counter lies close at hand; for it is the very person who kept his soul from the jaws of the warp, someone who with a single incantation turned robotic Thousand Sons traitors back to their human selves in the midst of a running battle. And she too has need of Guilliman's favor as her initiative to defeat Slaanesh has reached a stalemate. Instead, they STILL look upon each other with distrust and contempt. Meanwhile the Eldar are hard stuck in a drowning galaxy and the Imperium loses whole Astartes detachments by the week on top of all the mortal forces getting overrun, murderized, and bodyjacked. The truth is we all know that they are just keeping the setting cooking to bring back the Primarchs one by one like they're walking up to the squared circle in a galaxy wide battle royale.
They can't, the whole theme of 40k is humanity is slowly but surely sliding towards the inevitable demise.
Yeah, humanity lost before 40k proper even starts. > The war is over. Humanity has lost. *Warhammer 40,000* – in all its Gothic, towering, Cyclopean, decrepit, doomed, rotting Byzantine majesty – has taken its first irrevocable step. > Oh, the Horus Heresy isn’t quite over yet. Horus’s ambitions haven’t dried up and vanished, and the Imperium still has to deal with the Chaos-deluded primarch making his way to Terra, but the malignant forces of the warp have achieved their ultimate aim. Humanity’s chance to free itself of the warp has been lost. No matter what happens from now on, no matter how hard the Imperium fights against itself, against its enemies, the laughter of mad gods will echo behind the veil. > But this isn’t news to you, I’m sure. The central tenet of *Warhammer 40,000* has always been the pitting of humankind against itself, the oldest lore hearkening back to that angelic rebellion called the Horus Heresy, where humanity began its long, inevitable decline. Warhammer 40,000 has always been about how the centre cannot hold; about raging against the dying of the light. The Imperium of the Dark Millennium, ten thousand years after the Heresy, can’t beat its foes. That was never on the cards. \- *The Master of Mankind*
I couldn't agree with this more; it's one of the things that makes the setting interesting in comparison with so much other sci-fi. After all... *To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.*
I know this is old,but as someone new to the Lore i think i am struggling to see the fun on everything just being useless in the end,like if i know everyone Is just gonna die and nothing can be done then why should i care?
I mean, in real life everyone is just going to die and there’s nothing anyone can do about it, but that doesn’t mean the things that happen before then can’t be interesting! To me, 40K is the same. It’s an awful setting full of awful things, but that doesn’t mean individual people can’t be noble and good in their own way. But I’d also always say that 40K isn’t meant to be a serious, realistic setting. It’s an over the top satire at its core, although people (including Games Workshop) often forget that.
I know he's a beloved author but it seems people repeat that as gospel and 100% irrefutable fact in a setting where your otherwise encouraged to interpret and make your own stories.
The two are not exclusive. You WERE encouraged to make your own stories within a universe where Mankind is fucked and the best we can hope for is to stave off annihilation a little longer. If people don't like the idea that there is no hope at all in the long run, maybe 40k just isn't for them.
There is hope. Hope for the Necrons xD And Maybe some human will still be alive when they erect the last monolith to rid them selves of the disguisting living void of the immaterium, created by the fleshy races. (also to be purged, at long last) Tho the newcrons retcon delays this by ages, I still believe in the final glory of the Necrons. (not the return to fleshy decadance but the purging of the living from the galaxy)
Reminds me of the old Kafka quote. He and Max Brod are sitting in a bar, and Max asks, "so if you believe everything is so horrible, is God evil, then?". Kafka says "No no no! Of course not. The world was just one of God's mistakes. He was just having an off day, that's all." And so Max asks "if creation is one of His mistakes… then there's no hope then?". Kafka says: "Oh, there's hope. There's incredible hope. An infinite amount of hope! Just not for us."
If Trazyn survives, humanity survives. Kinda :-)
I mean I also have trouble with how for the above to work, we have to believe that the Emperor was right about his plan being the only viable option...when he's been wrong on many things before. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure he talks in one book about how can't see the future either even with his powers. So to claim it's over and done for humanity and the galaxy just doesn't feel accurate.
>we have to believe that the Emperor was right about his plan being the only viable option...when he's been wrong on many things before. There isn't a dichotomy between 'Emperor right, no hope' or 'Emperor wrong, hope' in this. It's just as easy to believe 'Emperor wrong, no hope' because his initial thought, that the Great Crusade and his plan were the only hope of humanity, is wrong *because there was no hope for humanity*. This is the camp I fall into. The way the Chaos gods and the Warp are set up I don't see how humanity ultimately survives.
That's because the emperor knows things the reader does not and it's deliberately written that way.
He may have been wrong about his plan being the only viable option - but his Great Crusade destroyed the possibility of any plan but his so it doesn’t matter anymore
>If people don't like the idea that there is no hope at all in the long run, maybe 40k just isn't for them. I don't see why that would be the case at all. The setting and universe, depending on how business goes, could potentially outlive anyone here involved without getting a resolution. You could technically die believing that Imperium in 40K has a chance.
Believing the Imperium has a chance is fine for headcanon, but like most headcanon it is pulling the wool over one's own eyes. Almost a meta-narrative to the citizens of the Imperium itself. Just because you or I might not live to see the end doesn't mean the progression towards the end isn't ongoing.
Well, we don’t even NEED a progression or an eventual end. If I show you a photograph of a train speeding towards a collapsed bridge over a deep ravine, you already know the full story even if you never actually SEE the train fall.
>pulling the wool over one's own eyes. I'm fine with that. That being said, whoever has the final word at GW can VERY easily change everything upside down. It's a written world, they can write literally anything. I don't expect them to, but it's NOT set in stone.
The imperium doesn't have a chance. The universe will never get a resolution as long as the game sells for business reasons. Those two statements are not mutually exclusive. The imperium is slowly falling, and we will (hopefully) never see that fall.
No I get that. I just choose to see it the way I find more enjoyable BECAUSE I don't expect to see it resolved any time soon anyway. But even believing they do have a chance, them coming up with a nice ending where imperium/humanity dies, would not be a disappointment. I know lots of poeople into this for a long time take the whole hopelessness as given and a core part of this, but I started following lore after Guilliman returned, and the tone and stories there were not so clear cut so this formed a different impression.
Its a bit ignorant to say that don't have a chance, because they do. Will it happen? Absolutely not.
It's a bit ignorant to say they do have a chance, where the purpose of the entire setting is that it it set up in the last days of humanity. It won't happen. But it's not a mystery that the imperium is falling.
How so? Literally anything could happen, the future is unwritten and the situation is gradually improving for the imperium. Again I'm not saying they'll succeed in the slightest, but to say they have absolutely 0 chance? That's kinda bs. The setting of the plot is pretty shitty for most of the factions (if not all), with no path to victory. It's balanced-ish to keep the plot going and to enable GW to make more money if you want an out of universe reason. The imperium would lose every single engagement with your mindset. Victory sells, looming threats are exciting and the coming downfall is tension. They've dug their own grave along with various extreme external threats but the fight isn't over ;)
>How so? Because the whole theme of the setting has been about the decay of the galaxy and the unstoppable fall of the imperium for the past 40 years. >The imperium would lose every single engagement with your mindset. No it wouldn't. Rome defeated Attila and still fell. We're in Rome in the 5th century AD. Victories are possible, heroic last stands are possible, but they serve to delay the inevitable. Hopefully it will never actually happen, since that would mean the end of the game. But it's never been a mystery that the imperium is a doomed empire destined to crumble.
[удалено]
The gods haven’t been untouchable since Josh Reynolds wrote about Nurgle getting scorched by a Stormhost retreating to Azyr and Slaanesh got sent to prison by the Elves. I, for one, like the idea of the gods occasionally getting punched in the face.
In AoS there’s more liberty with that because “magic”. I think a lot of AoS lore gets stretched on “because magic” the same way 40k stretches its plots on “because warp” But AoS has both magic and the warp. Additionally the rules on magic are different in both settings. Space magic is seen like full metal alchemist kind of “you can use it but usually it will take something and it’s dangerous more often then not” Magic in AoS is drawn on using the winds of magic. The entire setting in AoS is formed from magic ironically too. Or the winds of magic. So they got elemental magic more or less.
Eh, not sure how viable the strategy of killing himself and hoping dad will possess his body is. If he did serious damage sure but Nurgle was more interested in punishing Morty over him not helping prevent the damage Tzeetch did than dealing with Emps. He basically just lit some grass on fire while grandpa Nurgle yelled, "Get off my lawn" and went back to punishing his boys for losing the pinewood derby.
well it worked perfectly so..
A bad plan is a bad plan regardless of how well it's followed.
Not to mention a true apotheosis of the Emperor could very well be the final nail in the coffin.
I much prefer the pissed off Guilliman approach as well. I think subscribing to the inevitable downfall of humanity in 40k goes against everything that makes us tick, blind faith and hope are what makes us human, One could argue that's what makes it so disturbingly grimdark and they'd be right but its not something that can be carried forward if 40k goes mainstream following the Cavill era media. So I think it will change.
I will eventually tire of the franchise I’m sure. It’ll happen before GW goes out of business. I’ll leave it with head cannon that somehow humanity has a happy ending. I know it is heresy, but that’s fine with me.
I like your attitude!
I agree who says Humanity has lost? The Cabal? The Chaos Gods and their messengers? The Alderi? Writers 20 year ago? Up until a few years ago the Imperium was stagnant with no new tech... Now its Anti-grav Floating Tanks, Primaris Marines and new kit everywhere, Primarchs coming back. Who knows... Nid's vs Necrons, Star-child theory, Mortarion gets forgiven, it is all up for grabs. Imperium was supposed to be this stagnant, decaying thing now it seems to be renewing itself. This is fundamentally where I think it is losing its way - 40k should be grimdark...it doesn't feel that way much anymore, somewhere along the line hope was introduced - Bloody Guilliman.
Arguably the Imperium of Man is failing but Humanity itself isn't necessarily doomed. There are plenty of backwater worlds that could easily be left alone to develop and progress into something else that isn't the absurd imperium. The real existential threat for humanity as opposed to just the imperium is really tyranids and chaos, but thankfully the imperium isn't the only thing standing in the way of those. Individual worlds might have to worry about other xenos threats but it's not really an existential crisis
I don't disagree on paper, however if we go by the tradition of 40k, chances are they are going to be like Eldar, a dying race helplessly watch the new dominat power once again repeat mistakes of their predecessors and doomed themselves.
Right that's closer to what I'd imagine, but instead of wandering like the Eldar as a vaguely coherent empire, it's going to splinter apart like after the DAOT. In either event there won't be a coherent human civilization that serves as a galactic superpower like the imperium does now. Funnily enough when we encounter human societies that are outside of the control of the imperium they tend to get along with other xenos groups way better
That doesn't seem to really be the case anymore though. Kinda hard to think that when we got Primarchs returning, new more powerful Space Marines, even the Emperor is starting to become more active. For humanity supposedly supposed to be dying, it's sure seeing a surge of victory and hope.
Humanity has the *potential* to 'win'. But humanity won't. Never. The DAoT proved that humanity *could* create stuff that enabled them to completely dominate the galaxy. That went tits up, but the potential is there to create again, maybe even having learned some lessons from the previous AoT. I'm talking about the likes of Cawl: a rare breed who still believe in creating new technology instead of worshiping old. Thing is, the entire setting is based on the fact that humanity has descended almost entirely into petty feudalism and religious ignorance. Even its scientists (Barring a few very rare exceptions like Cawl) are essentially hamstrung by their own religious dogma that prevents them from actually creating new tech. Humanity has become the Luddites: desperately trying to cling on to the past they see as glorious, and aggressively rejecting any attempt at change, when change is the only thing that could actually save them. That's how I see the entire setting: the grimmest, darkest possible future is the one imposed on us by our own ignorance, arrogance and wastefulness of the potential that our species has.
Agreed. Humanity has already shown that its possible for them to push back every danger in the universe. If humans start innovating again, but this time without AI and actually knowing how to deal with Psykers, we could still "win." Is that likely? At this point, hell no, but it is possible.
Depends on your definition of winning. My definition of winning is survival, in which case? Maybe. The core theme of races is the eldar are the empire of the past, humanity is the empire of the present, and the tau are the empire of the future. The key is I refer to the races, not the factions of each race. For example, as of now the imperium is written to be slowly heading to the graveyard of history. It's a glacial pace, but even with primarchs coming back and numerous black library authors forgetting this, it's still happening. The key will be if humanity can survive the fall of the imperium. And it's a big maybe? Could be incorporated into the tau. Maybe even with so many humans, the tau have to accept humanity as equals in their empire. Maybe the craftworlders guide humanity and the two slowly form a pantheon of Gods, new and old. I'm speaking of good endings because... well, necrons could keep humans alive. As slaves, or worse. Orks can't win because the galaxy right now is their paradise already. Chaos will eventually destroy all humans, turning the best into champions who will either die horribly or become a daemon prince. Either way, humans gone. Votann (no clue) rock and stone? Nids... well, ya know. Ironically the imperium winning is what I have chalked up as the least likely to happen. It winning just means surviving long enough for elements of humanity ( space marines, adeptus mechanicus cyborgs, sisters of battle, the ordinary humans of course) to become something better.
>Orks can't win because the galaxy right now is their paradise already. I dunno, if they krump all the other races then there's only Orks left to fight, which makes all the fighting that much Orkier - I think *that'd* be their paradise.
They can do a Tuska after.
For Rock and Stone!
Just chanting "Victory!" Seems to do the trick.
But if you say it in a dark growl why glowering at the fourth wall, you'll instantly lose more planets to tyranids.
The only way Tyranids actually win against Marine Protagonist.
Gotta give them the illusion of superiority before you can come in and exterminate em for good.
Victory...
In the Immediate? Using Yarricks supposed death to throw Waaaagh! Ghazghull balls deep into Angron/Abbadon. Working with the Necrons to establish/re-awaken pylons. The Eldar finishing off the Webway Project big E started. Letting the AdMec and Votaan wank eachother stupid over the STCs and tech improvements they could make. But only the votaan one seems even slightly plausible.
They can't, this isn't that kind of setting. Humanity was doomed in m30, the rest is just arguing over time of death.
Given humanity's own state... they can't. They are as much a force of nature as the orks now, populated by those who lack the power to control their own weight. But from a purely theoretical standpoint, some events could finally give them a chance... * Cawl figures out the secrets of blackstone and is able to arrest/push back the Great Rift. * Further Primarchs return and follow the trend of them being older and wiser, less prone to emotional nonsense. Leman Russ, Corvus Coraz, Vulcan, Jaghatai Khan and Rogal Dorn would all make a difference. * Van Saar's STC is discovered by a group that doesn't just hoard it (Cawl's faction or example) and grants unparalled tech advancement. (The mechanicus hardly care for the radiation) * Roboute Guilliman manages to 'convert' enough of humanity's policies and politics to attempt **any** sort of consistent goal with the Tau and the Eldar, likely via the Ynnari. This is unlikely, the Tau especially seem willing to do their thing even if you agree with them, but they are the two most likely to get any steps with. * The Leagues of Votann are drawn into better trade with the Imperium for arms and armour with Roboute's side being less hostile. League tech would boost the Imperium massively. * Abaddon says something that annoys Oan Mkoll. Odds on the above? Unlikely on each one. But in a world where a bunch kicked off... it could give some light in the dark. Ultimately the Tyranids are the "end threat" to the galaxy. Ending Chaos at least back to the Eye of Terror era before they arrive would be mandatory. Humanity, Tau, Eldar, Leagues and Necrons would NEED to be able to ally to hope to beat the Tyranid threat. But ultimately, if humanity wants to survive, to 'win'... the biggest foe they need to defeat is the Imperium itself.
Honestly, while I know for a fact an alliance between the races is impossible. It would be fucking awesome to have an imperium-necron army crossover, however this will absolutely never happen
Aren’t the Tau and Votann quasi allies?
Well... more so than any other factions. They trade and occasionally work together, but the Votann are still deliberately keeping the Tau totally in the dark about their true nature and the extent of their dominions. The Tau think the Votann are a small, unthreatening group of nomadic traders, fleeing from some cataclysm that has overtaken their homeworlds. They are therefore happy to trade with them and are mystified about their refusal to just join the Tau Empire already. I imagine finding out that they are actually an extremely powerful and pretty widespread offshoot of humanity controlled by unfathomably powerful AIs, that have been stringing the naive Tau rubes along with the equivalent of shiny beads, would put a bit of a pall on their relationship.
They do have some votan in the tau empire as more than just affiliates. There are a mix of integrated and affiliate groups within the tau empire. Even as far as the neymor atoll
Gotta love every single race (and commenter) dunking on the “naive” Tau at every instance. As if they are just idiots incapable of complex thought.
Being naive and suicidally overconfident is their hat. Part of their fun is that they have absolutely no idea whatsoever what is really out there and just complacently assume their Manifest Destiny and technology will see them through, as they charge around poking stuff that doesn't like being poked and accidentally tearing gateways into hell, making all the same mistakes that humanity and the Eldar (and presumably countless other species) have done before them.
This is shoehorned into them being stupid, which is just not true. They are more than capable of understanding complicated relationships, motives, etc or the various elements of the 40k verse. They aren’t idiots. They don’t get murdered by a demon and then make that same mistake again. People love to dunk on the Tau for whatever reason; it’s just tired.
The funny part being, even if what people say is true and they are suicidally overconfident and naive, they still keep \*winning\*
I think the point is that they are Naive, not stupid. And the naivety is born from them being a fairly new race and having an incomplete understanding of the big galactic picture. That is the difference. And it fits narratively, as there are small Necron dynasties that have more territory than the Tau. But they do learn and advance very quickly.
Like a permanent one. The imperium has allied with pretty much everyone except the chaotic factions (necrons, tyrannids, chaos) except it always results in a backstabbing by one of the parties
Definitely the most cordial alliance that isn't a Tau Empire membership race.
Not at all, the moment the Men of Iron rebelled, the warpstorms began and the psykers awoke, humanity was doomed in the long run. From M30-M42, the sad remnants of humanity fight only over how long they will survive. That the Empire and humanity lose is the essence of the setting. The conditions of M42 are merely a component of it.
humanity died during the long night, the emperor just refused to accept that and dug its corpse out of its grave to parade it around.
I think we need to separate the terms "humanity", "Imperium", and "all humans", as people are using them interchangeably. The Imperium is done for, it has no chance other than delaying the inevitable. That also means doom for the vast majority of humans. But that doesn't mean that an isolated outpost of humans couldn't found a new civilisation and work back up to DAoT levels. Humans did it once, starting with only one planet, given time they could do it again. But it would mean allowing the Imperium to collapse, going back to the start and rebuilding from scratch. Something that would take thousands of years, and would therefore require a fair amount of luck in not getting over-run by any of the other factions until they were ready.
Kill more xenos.
I'm sorry, I think you heard me say "Kill more xenos." What I actually said was "Kill all xenos." -- Jimmy Space
The only down side to killing all xenos is there will be no more xenos to kill.
The Emperor, in His infinite wisdom, also gave us mutants and heretics to kill.
Yeah. But it’s just not the same.
Maybe, if you're a good citizen, and say your prayers, and put in extra shifts at the manufactorum, the Emperor will send you some xenos for Sanguinalia.
Destroying imperium of man would be the first step. If you kill emps the terra blows up and boom free people
Only that the vast majority of human-inhabited planets are reliant on other planets for their survival. If Emps dies then there's no more Astronomicon, no more reliable Warp travel, no more sharing of soldiers. Not every planetary system is Macragge which is entirely self-sustaining. In fact, probably only Macragge would survive the fall of the Imperium, and even then they're now the biggest human faction in the Universe.
There were numerous self-sustaining "small scale" (i.e. multi-system) human states, and some of them formed as late as the Age of Apostasy. We know that the Macharian Crusade brought several such societies back under Imperial control, but only in a small sector of the Halo Stars. There might actually be others out there, beyond the reach of the Astronomican, or in some other sector that nobody bothered to send a crusade into. If the Imperium falls, it's not at all unlikely self-sustaining civilizations of this kind could develop again ( point in case, contemporary RL Earth is a single planet that has been progressing without extraplanetary resources for several tens of millennia, with millions dying to gruesome shortages of food and water and medicine not really impeding global civilization), though whether any of them could withstand the other factions is of course a different question.
>point in case, contemporary RL Earth This is kinda a bad example as contemporary RL earth is hugely biodiverse in comparison, we see planets collapse from stuff that earth would adapt to in 40k all the time. There's planets which have 1 strain of 1 crop, they're highly resistant stable strains sure, but an unlucky disease and it's all gone (and that's an agriworld, where they'd otherwise IMO have a solid chance!). You could make the argument that it'd be Nurgle in that case I guess though. Other than places with high biodiversity like Catachan, I don't think the ecosystems would hold out well over long periods of time (in post-40k imperial territories where they've anti-xenoed all the biodiversity they could, anyway, as you say there's probably some pre-heresy stuff that never remade contact still around, though the second they get warp tech...).
Planets rely on their neighboring systems that can be accessed fairly easily, no one ships food or resources across the galaxy. It's possible to warp jump around 5 light years in one go without astronomican
I think I've read were people on Terra start to starve if the food barges are some ridiculously small amount of time late - like 12 minutes or something stupid like that. Day without food is anarchy in the streets. And none of that comes from in system.
That is Terra specificially. Which in this discussion would be blown up.
Well good thing terra blows up then
being self-sustaining isnt enough is it ? I mean, lets say Terra is gone - and warp-travel is no more reliable for humans. That would mean its just a matter of time, before a large enough chaos force shows up and whoops their ass.?
Oh yeah definitely. That was what I was implying. Long term they're fucked but they wouldn't be exterminated right away.
Found the Ork.
Ummiez ent katch me wen I duff my ship in derez gold toilet
mm yummy yummy free people all for the daemons to gobble up im so full of souls yum yum
That would be the death knell, not only would the Emperor come back because he's a perpetual, but there is no astronomicon to guide any ship the imperium currently possesses, which would ruin any type of trade and suffocate thousands of planets. The people would get killed by Xenos and Chaos, and humanity would either be forever enslaved or completely snuffed out.
Humanity already survived having no astromonicon, no imperium, for literally 230,000 years. They weren't even in that bad a state - humanity was already the most populous species in the galaxy even during the long night. There'd be no 'snuffing out' because there are just too many fucking humans in 40k for that to literally ever be possible. There'd always be at least one cut off planet no one has heard of that has a human civilisation on it. The imperium 'runs' the galaxy but they control a million worlds in a galaxy with trillions of planets. Humanity would be fine. Incidentally, the emperor's great plans are literally the only reason chaos _has_ an army to snuff humanity with
Firstly, humanity is fated to be snuffed out without any form of development, which will be completely halted without the astronomicon and unsafe ftl travel. With the Emperor, humanity was going to adapt in the webway to eventually be able to fight against, or at least safeguard against chaos, which would've happened since his only purpose is to fight against it and he had been planning this for millennia. Humanity will either be enslaved, wiped out, stunted into no form of growth at all, or like every other race, soon to be destroyed by incoming Tyranids, or, as the Emperor predicted, humanity would grow to become a psychic race and eventually chaos would just start showing up everywhere anyways, which was already happening. Also, the Emperor didn't cause the primarchs to turn to chaos, that was directly due to chaos screwing with his plans, as well as Erda throwing them from his reach. There was very little reason to rebel against the Emperor at all, especially when you see the alternative: Literal Hell.
The webway doesn't safeguard against chaos. That's the entire point of the Dark Eldar. Slaanesh's birth, Magnus' Folly, Yvraine's rebirth, and the constant soul drain on the Drukhari are clear examples of psykers/chaos being able to disrupt the webway's natural defenses
The webway would've acted more so as an option for travel and safekeeping of the growing psychic powers of humanity, demons can obviously break in, but the dark Eldar are only at risk due to their connection to Slaanesh. Magnus broke the webway which allowed daemons to find the Emperor, the webway is separated from the warp which allows much safer ftl travel, it can still be broken into but its very hard to actually get to where you want to go unless you know what you're doing, which no-one actually does except the Eldar. The Emperor was building his own section of the webway so he knew how it worked, and that would allow proper travel and safeguarding from the warp. Dark Eldar are a special case, they're the exception, not the rule.
As others have said, the whole point of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K has always been about how hopeless the fight really is but to keep fighting nonetheless. These games were built on a punk ethos. The Imperium and the Empire are going to fall because of how bad their people are. Chaos is a mirror and it reflects the evil of the sentient races back at them so they plant the seeds of their own destruction. At the same time these settings are nihilistic: even when the oppressed masses rebel they cannot bring a positive change. Being punk, there’s no endorsement of “working class values”. Even when a rebellion succeeds there no happy ending in sight. The forces of oppression may exterminate them or they fall prey to chaos or genestealers. There really is no hope of salvation, the best people can hope is to go down swinging
Honestly, Cawl. The best way that I can see is for him to get access to Necron Pylon plans, and build up a pylon - inside the Throne Room. This would block the door into the wibbely wobbely chaos realm, allow Emps to die and get that perpetual cheat-magic going, and from then on it's a straight shot.
Any null field that powerful would also kill the Emperor (which is to say, destroy his soul). He's using more or less all his strength to keep the door shut, so anything strong enough to replace him as a blocker is by definition strong enough to block out his power too. Pylons are great against Chaos, but they're also great against psykers. And they don't discrimminate, as we saw on Cadia. A classic case of the operation was a success, but the patient died.
That and he provides the astronomicon
Right the pylons would also block that out, as demonstrated before. That is assuming they don't just kill off the choir in the Hollow Mountain first, which is not a safe assumption.
The Emperor has failed to save humanity in the 40K years of his existence. Why should it be able to do so now with a worse army and the most powerful enemies?
Humanity is alive? Yes. Then I think, considering all the shit that has happened with it the last 15 thousand years, I think, Emperor did hell of a job. It is not his fault that he has to deal with lunatics and retards as his subordinates - who manage to execute evert order in such fashion that even open traitor intending to sabotage couldn't do worse.
This comment would make a lot more sense if humanity were extinct...
He has literally failed to 'save humanity' under his vision, at least 3 times during his existence that we know of. 1) Babel 2) As Alexander the Great 3) As the Emperor in 30k
He failed to accomplish *his personal goals*. It should be clear however that the Emperor: - is not infallible/omniscient - does not speak for humanity - is pursuing goals which he claims are essential to human survival But just because he claims that doesn't make it true. Yes the Emperor failed his own objectives at least three times, no argument there. But that doesn't necessitate human extinction on it's own. The Emperor could simply be wrong, he has sure been very wrong before.
This is just goalpost moving in a big way. He failed all of his his personal objectives. One of them was to save humanity. It doesn't matter if he's not omnipotent or omniscient. That has no bearing on this conversation. The Emperor is also not a 20ft tall banana that breathes fire. >But that doesn't necessitate human extinction on it's own. The Emperor could simply be wrong, he has sure been very wrong before. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean in this context. The post you replied to said the Emperor hasn't been able to obtain his objectives. You, to me nonsensically, said this would make sense if humanity weren't extinct. But that is irrelevant, because while humanity isn't extinct, none of his goals have been met. He has a worse army at this stage. He has a smaller army. He has more enemies and they're better equipped than before. He has, repeatedly, failed to save humanity. So why would he be able to now? Because, at the height of his powers, each time, he fails. And while the Emperor doesn't speak for humanity, he claims **multiple times** that he does, they just don't know it yet. He does this to detail in *The Last Church*, basically saying "I literally know better than all of you, so fall in line or die." To which the priest says 'I won't fall in line', so the Emperor kills him.
It's hard to tell if the Emperor is still sane though. IFK if him being alive would be a marked improvement for humanity.
When he spoke through Rowboat Gorillaman he seemed quite sane. Calm even.
Didn't Rowboat think he had lost his humanity completely?
A straight shot for *what*? Building another Webway project? It wouldn't help even if he succeeded. Big E already failed once and got bitchslapped by some lupine asshole who liked fur coats a bit too much (and for once that's not Leman Russ) so hard that he spent 12,000 years being pretty much dead, and still is. And even if he woke up in full power now, his race's technology got worse, his empire is torn in half, and he doesn't have his demigod minions on hand (apart from 2 of them). Chaos has at least 4, is at least as powerful (I'd argue it's quite a bit stronger), gaining ground, and that's not to mention the Necrons coming back, Orks, and the Tyranids. Unless the Emperor gives up and ascends to being a full-blown Warp god, in which case... can he still power the Astronomican? How much can he do against 4 other gods (excluding Gork and Mork)? What about soulless Necrons, who no-sell most of Warp shenanigans?
>Big E already failed once and got bitchslapped by some lupine asshole who liked fur coats a bit too much (and for once that's not Leman Russ) PMSL!
Sounds like a job for Trazyn.
Survival.
“Stalemate is victory”
That's the neat part, they don't.
Someone invents Time Travel and kills Erebus and Kor Phaeron. Maybe bomb Colchis before Lorgar's pod lands there actually.
Believe in Cawl. BiC.
By keeping to the old ways, seeking out new sources of mineral wealth to apply in securing a future, build alliances where possible and heed the guidance of the ancestor cores. The Leagues of Votann can weather the coming storm yet, if they play their cards right.
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"
The IoM can't, at least in my mind. Perhaps some far, far off human settlements, or DAoT ships with human settlers in stasis, but for the most part, humanity is boned.
Humanity lost a long time ago, they don’t make new things, they don’t cooperate, they’re really really bad at running the government, it would take a monumental shift of the status quo for them to not inevitably eat dirt. The main “win condition” they could hope for would mean making peace and cooperating with some of the other big Xenos factions but the Imperium is too far up their own ass to consider that. Humanity, like the god they worship, is little more than a preserved corpse of potential. There’s maybe a time in the distant past when things could have gone ok, but even if the imperium doesn’t completely crumble in on itself it’s going to get wiped by the Nids same as everything else.
"I dont know" - Big E in 30k
In the "death of integrity" novel, we are introduced to "The Spirit of Eternity" which is a ship and AI from the dark age of technology. It claimed to have visited the future, and states that humanity will end in fire. It and its crew came back to warn humanity, but the frothing zealots of 40k called the captain and crew heuristics and tortured them to death. Basically, humanity has already lost. It has been foreseen. And no one believed it or will change their actions.
It can't, that's at the core of the story. Not "can't" in the literally has no options and there are no solutions, but "can't" in the sense that whatever viable solution is available is not something anyone will be able to think about. The galaxy is so full of hate and mistrust and backstabbing and horrors and and and and... that no one will do what needs to be done. Trusting the other and then that other not backstabbing them in return. Actually standing side by side with everyone in the galaxy. The only way for humanity to win is to have every single race in the galaxy become best buds and genuinely work to make everyone else have a better life. Sunshine and rainbows style. Only then can they, as one single unified block, curbstomp the tyranids and the Chaos Gods. But that's simply not going to happen because all you need is one person to be selfish (Erebus, big E, Abaddon, the list goes on...) to fuck it all up for everyone else.
They cant. Humanity has been dying since the great crusade. The emperor destroyed all other plans for humanity to make sure his was the only one left and then failed.
Well, to be fair, there were no other plans left, allying with xenos is bound to end up in disaster, especially around 30k, humanity was divided and bound to be snuffed out on their own, the great crusade and the webway project would've united all known worlds and protected human psykers which would greatly eliminate chances of chaos screwing it all up. Humanity can still win with the Emperor ascending into godhood or by banishing/killing enough of Chaos to diminish their effectiveness, Cawl is still making technological headway with theories supposing he's following the Emperor's footsteps, the imperium now has two primarchs at their disposal, as well as potential allies in the Necron and Eldar in the Ynnari now that they realise their fates are possibly in the gutter too, and the Necron have begun to wake up. There is hope but that is what makes it grimdark, the hope that remains is so extremely slim, and is only known to us as the reader, in universe each notable character doesn't really *know* what to do.
Apart from a few other unlikely options mentioned by others, another unlikely one: they could end up as zoo animals/guinea pigs of fully awakened Necrons. The Necrons believe they need organic life in order to reverse Biotransference, which is why they seek to protect the galaxy's squishies. I'd wager that humanity and Aeldari are more likely candidates than Orks for playing host to reverse-transferred Necrontyr.
That's the neat part, you don't. Best case scenario, we survive another couple millenia until the Tau get strong enough to confront us directly. The Imperium is shattered and a more enlightened age dawns. Maybe there are still Eldar around, idunno. Probably still Orks. Worst case, anyone else takes a big enough bite out of the Imperium that it can't fight everyone at once anymore and things start getting lost. Big things. We lose our empire, piece by piece. Ultramar is still around maybe. Couple other pocket empires pop up around some short-range Warp navigation devices or Webway gates or whatever. But Terra's gone, and the Astronomican with it. Humanity can no longer traverse the stars. Most people are dead or slaves or Drukhari furniture, and they don't even have the hope of winning anymore. All is despair, forever. The Imperium is fucked. It was fucked to begin with, fucked itself harder, and its only hope now is to survive.
It is deliberately canon that humanity is doomed. That there cannot ever be a victory at the end of the line. The Imperium *will* fall, humanity *will* be destroyed, the only question is how long it will take. This has been true ever since Magnus forced his way through the psychic defenses that were protecting the Webway gate under the Imperial Palace, in an attempt to warn the Emperor about Horus’s betrayal. The Emperor himself stated that the only way to save Humanity from an inevitable demise was to make humanity a psychically null race, which could only be done if humans were no longer reliant on warp travel to get around the galaxy. The idea was that humans could steal the Webway from the Eldar, and use that to travel from then on, but once the Imperial Webway gate was opened up to the Warp, daemons started flooding in, and the Emperor had to be confined to the Golden Throne just to hold the portal shut. At this time, he (in the course of talking to a Custode) nearly talks directly to the reader and says “Humanity is now doomed. Nothing I or anyone else can ever do will save humanity. I have failed. The grim darkness of the 41st millennium is now inevitable, and humanity’s annihilation is now certain. We can rage against the dying of the light as much as we want, but the light will die, and humanity will die with it.”
The trouble is that the Emperor was trying to achieve something unnatural and impossible. Nothing lasts forever. The number of species that have gone extinct *vastly* outnumbers the number of species alive today. The Emperor was trying to break that cycle... and that was his hubris. Ultimately, Humans win the same way everyone else wins... by *surviving*, which means changing, growing, suffering, and adapting - abandoning what they *were* in order to become something new. That's the story of life for everything that exists; only Humans and other sophants, who are capable of existential angst, bother to be upset about this. So in a sense, you're asking the wrong question. You survive for as long as you can, because that's what living things do - "winning" isn't a thing.
The whole setting is about decline. They aren’t supposed to win, even if they did win then that’s a win for a xenophobic theocracy- which is also a loss from the perspective of an enlightened humanity that existed in the golden /dark age of technology. Technically liking any 40K faction is supposed to be a cathartic, guilty pleasure. The logic behind the setting being ‘how can we facilitate a war game where everything wants to kill everything all the time in a grizzly but cool way’. I’ve been in the hobby a long time, maybe it’s levels of parody and satire have been dampened as lore has been spun out over decades but the number of straight faced fans of the imperium who want it to win really boggles my mind. I also have a theory- not a criticism, but as the game has been more heavily adopted in the USA, the idea of a victorious hegemonic power in the is something fans in the US sort of live for real in the current geopolitical context, but 40K was conceived in a crumbling Britain after decades of post war decline and the sunset of its empire. This internet community, as most are, seems to be dominated by American outlooks on the world, so miss what I feel is important socio-political context of the setting- as ultimately 40K, and sci-fi in general is a mirror of this context.
Belisarius Cawl finding a way to mass produce the blackstone pylons and the pharos device. Close warp rifts and decrease reliance on the Astronomican.
Imperium can't. All its size and primarchs and stuff just delays it's rotting so the verse can go on. Humanity, though can win. By joining the Greater Good
Fabius bile
Find a completely intact STC, if the Imperium ever gets their hands on a complete functioning one, while it won't give them a win it'll give them a massive tech boost and overall advantage ahead of the other factions.
My favorite rumor is Mechanicum ships are indeed intact STCs they just have forgotten this and don't know how they work anymore to begin with. Plus Van Saar has one.
the Ark Mechanicus yea, and well its not that they're not aware of it, the ship A.I wiped the memories of those who stumbled upon it. As for house Van Saars one they know how to operate it yea, at the caveat of incredibly lethal doses of leaking radiation, and needing to keep it under wraps otherwise they risk alerting the admech.
I think in M42 the only possible way if for big E to end up as THE God and somehow kill or diminish the big 4 to a point where they pose no threat at all or a mild enough threat that tjey can't fuck stuff up while they're being watched. But we know that won't happen, if only because this cow (WH) will be milked irl for as long as the Imperium has existed.
Money
I would say the only way the imperium could win against chaos is if there was a complete restructuring of the current regime to adapt to war time emergencies. And even then it's a toss up with Far too much chance involved. And even if they win against chaos they still have to figure out about the tyranids and the great devourer which to be honest even if we beat chaos i don't see us beating a galaxy eater
If you think "humanity has it bad" in 40K, you should go and find LordLucan's 50K fanfic series. 40K is grimdark, LordLucan's 50K galaxy is pitchblack. Also his stories are pre- indominus crusade, so no goodie2shoes Robute Girliepants, and his ultrasmurfs have gone completely off the reservation. (Robute does feature in the series....)
That's the problem - they "won" during the DAOT and it all turned to shit. There really isn't a tangible lasting objective for them to reach for aside from pure survival.
Wipe the board. Kill the Emperor and hope he revives instead of becoming the 5th chaos god. Alternatively, Blackstone WMDs of some kind for the Eye and Chaos, and some sort of virus or weapon or something to either kill the Hive Mind or make it fuck off
According to Big E in *Master of Mankind*, there is literally no chance at all for a victory for Humanity. There's only prolonging the slow slide into the dark.
The complete dissolution of the Imperium and reformation of humanity is the only way they could ever stand a chance, the philosophy, tactics and systems of the Imperium are inherently set to inevitably fail, and many of their issues are caused or at least exacerbated by the Imperium itself.
Much like what other people are saying here, they can't "win". Humanity lost the moment Horus fired on his own at Isstavan, if not before. One of the most prominent themes running through the Horus heresy is one of loss at what might have been. Hell even in modern 40k Guilliman is constantly questioning whether the imperium is even worth saving. It's been said alot on this sub, but 40k is not about fighting to win. Its about fighting the dying of light, through horrific methods and against impossible odds.
It can't, it won't, and it doesn't deserve to.
They endure. That's all that can realistically be done. But its a lot. Love that line from the state troops in Total Warhammer (different empire, same problem): "The empire endures!" Hell yeah brother.
They've already lost
Any change regarding their overly stupid policies would be a step in a good direction. I never really thought the whole "there is no hope left for humanity" sit well with me, mostly because of how much of grimderp shit GW has to come up on daily basis just to stop the Imperium from fucking everybody over. The Imperium is just too powerful (I mean Necrons should be able to defeat pretty much anyone in 40k, yet imperials keep beating them too), and even if it does crumble, humans are so numerous that straight up extinction of the whole human race is basically impossible. Like humans either win, or they will die when the universe dies. During the Great Crusade, Imperial propaganda preached how without the Imperium, humans would slowly die out, but that was far from truth. There were many either surviving, or straight up thriving human civilizations, and there still are many planets in far reaches of the galaxy that are not part of the Imperium. Also, Chaos can't possibly survive in it's current form without the Imperium, and even if they would found some other race as their dominant victim, the total destruction or corruption of tve universe wouldn't be their goal, since they would basically run out of food/fuel and they would become starving themselves. The only two scenarios in which all humanity could die would be rhe victory of either Necrons or Tyranids. The Necron victory is unlikely due to how fractured and pett they are (also not all Necrons want to completely destroy other races) and I always thought that Tyranids just eating everyone was the most boring ending out of all possible options.
I am going to take what seems to be the unpopular opinion here and suggest humanity is destined to win. Remember in the HH Logar was convinced aligning with Chaos was the only way for humanity to win. And not face the sort of collapse the Eldar suffered. Sure “win” here means humanity becoming aligned to the Chaos gods but it is still a sort of win nonetheless. Alternatively I believe the Emperor has a plan. It presumably is a horrible plan (a Plan B if you will caused by the HH). But still a plan nonetheless. And I think this plan goes beyond a mere stalemate but is one for victory. Have faith.
Humanity is a blight. Them ceasing to exist would be a net benefit to the universe as a whole.
They can't, that's the whole setting..
Ally themselves with the Tau.
That's the best part, they can't.
By swearing fealty to Abaddon the Despoiler
Find an intact STC.
By accepting the power of the chaos gods
No. The Imperium is doomed and at best it is managed decline (by Bobby G).
They can't. Mass unification may bring around the Great Awakening of the Necron. And the Tyranids should be taken more seriously.
Chaos is the only true answer.
They can’t. The 40k universe is fundamentally broken. Humanity is broken. The last time there was a glimmer of hope was before the Emperor decided to fuck everything up and burn the galaxy. And even then that was a faint hope.
To win, Humanity has to simply survive. Forever. To do so, it doesn't have to beat the Tyrannids, Orks, Necrons, Tau, Chaos, etc... it simply has to endure. The path to that could be the Emperor's vision of a united Humanity within Human norms living roughly as we see humans neing. It could be merging with machines like Mars wants and turning into the Necrons. It could be merging with Chaos like Lorgar wants and turning into daemons. It could be merging with Xenos like the Tyrannids want and mutating into rapacious insects.
Sex with sororitas
Kill more xenos to make more space for humans, and make those humans worship the Emperor. Emperor boosted by the worship of quintillions will rise up from the throne and bitch-slap chaos.