Food for pious thought...

By Graey, in Only War

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'Borrowed' from teh Warhamemer 40k Quotes FB page. Thought it's worth sharing for those who haven't seen it.

"The real picture of the Imperium, taking entire 40k lore into account:

'The Imperium of Man is a HUGE galactic civilization and empire that contains the vast majority of humanity in the tabletop game Warhammer 40K. It is a xenophobic, bigoted, amoral, gargantuan, militaristic, merciless, stratified, theocratic, paranoid, dystopian, totalitarian, oppressive semi-police state and hellishly oligarchical bureaucracy.
It is hilarious that outside of popular perspective, the Imperium of Man can actually be a pretty nice place to live depending on where you actually live. Although, that description does apply to nearly every hive-world. Sure there are ****-holes like Catachan, but because of its size and extreme variety, you also have a higher chance of being born in places that ***** all over any modern first world country which are then lead by people better than Gandhi. And really, is it that plausible that atrocities happen constantly in the Imperium? Okay, given its size, it might be, but that doesn't mean that everyone is always doomed. This is hilarious once you figured out that the "Tough, oppressive, xenophobic, racist Empire" is actually more multicultural and diverse then the "Noblebright, neo-communist, Trekkie style" Tau...
Unfortunately being Games Workshop, they decided to ignore this aspect since it is not Metal enough...more about the Imperium's variety can be further explained below... Actually, this guy has a point. Nearly every-single grimdark example in the fluff occurs on hive-worlds. Of which, there are only like thirty-two thousand and something hundreds. Out of over a million worlds, I'll take those odds quite happily. Well, unless you're in the Imperial Guard, then you are slapped with the worst of the grimdark daily. Or the Navy, yeah, being "crew" on any Imperial ship sucks to no end.
The Imperium, despite looking like a merciless and oppressive empire, is in fact a confederation of several powerful organizations and million(s) planets. Each 'normal' planet in the Imperium (of course beside specially classified planets like Forge Worlds, Fortress Worlds, Death Worlds...) has its own laws, Government, culture and social order that can be exactly of differ from one another A LOT. Now just like today's countries some have merciless dictators (North Korea) and some have democracy to an extent where citizens can choose their own planetary governor (USA). To say that the Imperium is like a single superstate is quite false, the Imperium is more of a "Protectorate" system like the Roman Empire, which allowed local governments to exist as Protectorates as long as they venerated the Emperor, or British-Empire-era India where locals were granted Protectorate status as long as they paid taxes and lip service to Britannia, or today's UN (only grimdark of course and with true military power).
Planets are actually quite independent to extent where they can have their own armed forces and even wage their own civil wars. The Imperium only cares when some serious **** happens (like Chaos taint, xeno invasion or when a Planetary Governor decided to declare himself an Emperor), and giving that this is 40k, these kinds of things happen on regular basis. So basically the Imperium really consists of several thousand worlds with all other being member worlds. Of course, declaring independence is HERESY but most Governors don't do this kind of thing because they know what's out there and that the Imperium is the only thing that can protect them, and also because the God-Emperor of Mankind and the system of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica provide a cheap system of FTL and Communication through the horrors of the Warp. So basically, if a Planet declares independence, he loses the right to FTL and that's bad for Hive Worlds that need Agri-Worlds in order to survive. Therefore, their loyalty to the Imperium was never out of an ideological obsession to stamp out HERESY, but simply of mere pragmatism in order to survive in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, as Protectorates. Think of the Soviet Union and China allying with the US, despite their ideological antagonism, just to survive the onslaught of Nazi Germany which is worse. This was only in the few thousand years between the Great Crusade and the Dark Millennium (41st). During the Great Crusade, most worlds were extremely loyal to both the Imperium and the Emperor because it rescued them from all sorts of indescribable horrors that had plagued them for the thousands of years of the Long Night (Age of Strife). After the Great Crusade, the Imperium remained (mostly) cohesive as a whole due to both a remaining sense of loyalty to their savior and for mutual survival in the face of a severely ****** up galaxy. After a few thousand years of that, the Imperial Cult had gained sufficient strength that the reasons for remaining loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor shifted from just mutual survival to a shared religion and extreme fanaticism in their belief that the Imperium is holy and to stray from it is the path to damnation (which is, ironically, completely true).
In addition to that, the Imperium is decentralized into powerful sem-autonomous Corporate entities, that pledged allegiance to the Emperor himself rather than the State. The Inquisition (most vicious in stamping out Heresy), the Adeptus Mechanicus (which worships the Emperor as another pagan Machine-god called the Omnissiah) and the Adeptus Astartes (mutants who do not worship the Emperor as a God but as an exemplar of humanity) might just as well declare each other's ideologies as HERESY but each of them are personal Protectorate vassals to the Emperor himself, and need to work together lest Humanity as a whole goes extinct. The Imperium is not a centralized superstate, but more of a Feudal Confederate empire.
To top it all off, to give you an idea of how truly massive this empire is, the most conservative estimates place its population at four quadrillion. Estimates that take into account the huge number of what are essentially cramped apartment-building planets? Now we're talking upwards of TEN quadrillion.
It's not ENTIRELY sh*tty, though- even if there are 100,000 worlds under attack at any given time (due to xeno invasions, Chaos, or simple rebellion), there are 900,000 worlds that are not. Some lucky planets may have never known war since the Great Crusade. Also, most hive worlds need agri-world crops to feed their population and raw materials from mining worlds to make stuff, which means that enough supply ships make their trip on time without Warp mishaps or raider attacks. Again, this isn't talked about because unless the world in question is about to be attacked by something nasty, it would be a very boring setting for a wargame.
They're apparently the protagonists of the franchise. If it wasn't for that and the indestructible plot armour that it confers to them they would have been owned years ago by Chaos, the Orks, the Tyranids, the Necrons, or themselves. Of course, if they weren't purposely pants-on-head retarded just to create grimdark, all those enemies would have been roflstomped by the Imperium already, so the plot armor works both ways. Furthermore in every fanfiction that is created starring them, their solemn demeanor, zealous nature, and Holy piety are thrown out the window so that they may seem more approachable to the common user of the internet. This is more acceptable for stories featuring the Imperial Guard as Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain shows (though it all depends on the regiment), but not so much for say, the Sisters of Battle, as for the Space Marines ... it all depends on the Chapter.
Almost everything 40K related and homebrewed on this **** awesome website is a sterling example of /tg/ taking creative liberties with what the Imperium stands for. These include, but are not limited to, the Angry Marines, Commissar Raege, Commissar Fuklaw, Pretty Marines, Reasonable Marines.
Truly, anonymous delivers!'
Thanks for 1d4chan for this ( actually, I literally made this part of the article and they decided to keep it because it is true ).
~Coa (page admiin)"
Edited by Graey
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I was just talking with my gaming group last night about how The Imperium of Mankind Lacks Humanity . It's an interesting sentiment.

Though, during the discussion, I was also quick to point out that there are worlds inside the Imperium that probably have little to no idea they are part of the Imperium , and go on their merry way, believing they are alone in the universe.

Its on these worlds that i feel you'll see the most human of the Imperium's citizens, because they aren't pants on head crazy.

Edited by Alrik Vas
Posted at

Whoah, wall of text!

Well, with the fluff being as malleable as it is, of course everyone is free to make up their own vision of 40k - including less "grimdark" ones where the oppression, abuse and horror the setting is known for are almost or entirely absent from many places. However, to criticise GW for focusing on this aspect, and to entirely ignore what the studio has delivered in terms of absolutes and explanations as well as simple human nature, seems somewhat arrogant.

We are talking about an entity that enforces significant tithes from its member worlds, both in resources as well as people, and whilst the number of its edicts that actually affect daily life is comparatively small, it does demand absolute subservience when it comes to enforcing them. Whether or not the people on a given world agree is of no consequence - the Imperium demands significant portions of a planet's production to fuel a war machine that has been running for ten thousand years and which exists to fight off enemies on all fronts and in-between, as "Imperial space" is not an uninterrupted zone of worlds but rather a patchwork collection of colonies connected by stable Warp routes, with a lot of unknown and/or hostile areas in-between.

Planetary governors are expected to fulfil this hungry beast's demands or they have forfeited their lives, which ultimately means that a planetary government will "pass on" the pressure it suffers from the Administratum to its citizens, and end up using force to keep order. The alternative? The planet reneges on paying its taxes and the Imperium sends a war fleet to collect, the entire situation going from bad to worse.

And this is before we have even touched upon the effects of the Imperium's state religion on the everyday lives of people, from neighbourly denunciation, to full-scale pogroms against people who were born with mutation or who may lend them succour, to the establishment of authority and submission as matters of faith.

Now, can there be worlds that are less affected by these 10,000 years of war? Absolutely. However, for this to apply, these worlds would very likely have to be fairly insignificant so as to justify a lower tithe rating and less direct intervention by the various Imperial adepta. As far as I can imagine, this could only refer to backwater Feral and Feudal Worlds, and whether or not people truly live happy lives there ... well, I suppose it comes down what you compare it to, right? It's not like people in our own real world history would have all considered themselves unlucky, in spite of the risk of famines, untreatable illnesses, low life expectancies and widespread violence. Compared to our own cosy lives in the modern western world, however? Wow, I sure am glad I've been born today rather than a thousand years ago. ;)

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I have indeed seen something that did say that for some in the Imperium, that is the case- they see so little of the influence that they don't really care if they are Imperial or not. But I wouldn't venture so far to say that the planets with heavy ties and Imperial pride are crazy. Some, yes, but that's just by averages. It lacks humanity in our general context, but it's important to see what the consequence is/was- The Emperor launched the Great Crusade to bring together a fractured humanity. In the post-heresy times, the Ecclisiarchy's primary mission is to keep people off Chaos worship, and to keep the Emperor's efforts in the minds of the people. The use of even a small level of unified ceremony, scientifically, helps dissimilar people and groups bond. But the alternative for most people would be conquest by Chaos internally, and xenos externally. The Imperium serves mainly as a method to try and assert a large scale sharing of defense and resources.

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I agree. Humanity is in it together, whether they like it or not. That's the Imperium.

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I was just talking with my gaming group last night about how The Imperium of Mankind Lacks Humanity . It's an interesting sentiment.

Though, during the discussion, I was also quick to point out that there are worlds inside the Imperium that probably have little to no idea they are part of the Imperium , and go on their merry way, believing they are alone in the universe.

Its on these worlds that i feel you'll see the most human of the Imperium's citizens, because they aren't pants on head crazy.

That's one thing I do like about Black Crusade; you get to see the Imperium from 'outside'. I love the little touch that in wildspace worlds, the more social Xenos races often hire Human bodyguards, because our species has a reputation as violent, xenophobic thugs (essentially orks with table manners).