OK I inagine this has been asked over and over but I got here late and likely missed a lot of the board's high activity period, to my regret.

But how far do you take the grimdark in your 40k games?

I mean we know how grimdark 40k bg is. Children being turn from their parents and taken by the Inquisition to feed to the emporer,whole populations of loyal citizens who fought for the inperium being enslaved and worked to death to keep them from telling the truth about what they saw, loyal soldiers murdered in masse after vicTory at an inquisitors whim, the massacres of elder and tau civilian populations including children, etc.

How far do you take the grimdark in your games? Mass murder of civillians, 'culling' hive world populations that have reached in sustainable levels, etc?

Absolutely, especially when it comes from the player characters. I want my player to know the full consequences of their actions, and it helps to show the moral values prevalent in the Imperium so that in future events they can act accordingly. Censoring or hiding aspects of imperial life is something I strive not to do, it detracts from the roleplaying experience if you aren't exposed to things your character would consider acceptable. If that means describing in detail what cherubim really look like, or servitor creation, alongside mass executions and arco-flaggelations to name a few examples then so be it.

The full experience.

And even with all that the Imperium is still the lesser evil.

Full blown GrimDark is the best GrimDark.

We crank it up to eleven, and then I describe the even worse alternatives out there.

Pretty dark. Sometimes there are no good options, and it becomes a case of who or what they want to *try* and save. Better options are possible but difficult and have no guarantee of success. But there are ways to at least improve things locally for the near future (save a world here, prevent an apocalypse there).