Based on many of the comments I hear on this forum and whenever I talk to fans of 40k in general, there is a tendency to view the forces of Chaos as the 'Bad Guys' and the forces of the Imperium as the 'Good Guys.' Some people on this forum approach BC like an 'evil campaign,' or a game in which characters are specifically cast as the villains. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm not rejecting or attacking the validity of this viewpoint. But personally, I never found it useful to view the setting this way, since it's a bit reductive and no-one in 40K seems like the Good Guys to me at all.

But I'm interested in what other people think. If people genuinely believe that one side really is morally good, or at least better, and their reasons are sound, I'll be impressed. So...

Can a case legitimately be made for the moral superiority of the Imperium over Chaos?

Can a case be legitimately made for the moral superiority of Chaos over the Imperium?

Maybe try to treat it as a thought experiment. What would you think if you lived in the 40K universe?

If you believe the Imperium has the moral high ground, how is it possible to justify things like the Great Crusade? Exterminatus?

People often claim that the Imperium is the 'Good Guy' because it is less evil than everyone else. But if Jack the Ripper, Pol Pot and Ivan the Terrible are sitting in a room together, does that mean that the least evil of them can legitimately be called good?

The Chaos gods demand slaughter in their name. The Emperor demands slaughter in his name. The war between both sides demands constant slaughter. If Chaos won, and mankind only had to satisfy the murderous demands of the Chaos deities, would the magnitude of suffering and death be less than the combined magnitude of suffering and death that exists in the current setting? If so, would such an eventuality be worthwhile and preferable?

If you have any other similar dilemmas, I'd be interested to hear them

In their treatment of Humanity, chaos is the ultimate moral defense of the Imperium. However badly the Empire of Man treats its subjects, at least they can make a fair claim that they need to be harsh and merciless, as the alternative is soo much worse. Exterminatus is the lesser evil...and if you are a strict Imperial it is the will of the God-Emperor, so it is good. But we are trying not to be too dogmatic here I believe. In each case, raw chaos would devour humanity and reduce the vast Empire to ruined worlds floating in the void, filled with madness and slaughter.

As such, the harsh and often inconsiderate treatment of man in the Imperium is often the smouldering fire from which heresy can erupt, sometimes with the best of intentions, but quickly perverted as soon as the Warp gets its hold on the minds of those who rebel against the God-Emperor.

In their treatment of Xenos, humanities moral position is more ambiguous. There are some races that are obviously intent on destroying everything they meet, so the waging of total war against Orks and Tyrannids is no more then logical. That is kill or be killed, and self preservation cannot be denied. Of course, in this quest for self preservation man has decided that all Xenos are inherently hostile and should die, or at the least be completely subjugated to the Imperium of Man. Which is morally ambiguous, to say the least.

In short, where the motives of those who fall in the hands of chaos might be pure, the cause they serve is inherently foul and evil, even if they might not consider it so from the start. And many of the worst excesses in the Galaxy happen for the pure cause of denying daemons humanity as a slave race.

Thus, I would say, the players are in this case 'bad guys' or at least serving the 'bad guys'. The latter is in my opinion the most interesting scenario, where good intentions go awry. I would rather play an idealist who in the cause of gathering knowledge to protect humanity delves to deeply, then a homicidal madman who is no more then a sick sociopath. Of course, this idealist might be so corrupted that the practical difference would become academic. As no one in this world or the Warhammer 40k Universe is as dangerous as an idealist. If you know you are right, everything you do for the good cause is right, isn't it........

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Primus, Heart of the Void

First of all in Warhammer 40k there are no good factions, at best there are good individuals. However, there are different grades of "bad" and Chaos is among the worst. Look at it, the Warp is what we would call Hell, where souls are devoured and/or tortured in all eternity. The lords of that realm don't give people power for nothing, they want something in return, like souls to torture, weakening the barriers of realspace so the Warp can expand into it, using the power to kill their enemies etc. Working for Chaos is essentially dooming the whole universe forever and hoping that when the end comes you have a nice cozy spot in the retinue of a Chaos God as demon prince if you know what you are doing.

The Imperium is sh*tty too, but at the same time it manages to preserve enough of humanity that it could be rebuilt into something better some day. If Chaos wins it's over.

Mjoellnir said:

I don't think if the Chaos would be defeated (if such thing is possible), the imperium would relax. I think they will continue burning heretics, mass murdering xenos, and repressing any free thinking citizen, as usual.

Yet somehow it's the only logical answer to such an hostile Galaxy.

The Great Crusade was designed to bring unity and enlightenment to Mankind. It didn't work very well (I mean, the "enlightenment" part), but the goal was OK, wasn't it?

But here we have some issue: relativist moral. One may argue (more or less the Eldars' point of view) that Mankind is some kind of "accident" in the Galaxy's history, that it shouldn't have expanded that much, and that it is its presence that brings Chaos into reality - or at least that it empowers Chaos. From that point of view, it wouldn't be silly to accept that Mankind be wiped out in order to deny Chaos its followers and ints means of existence (see Legion, it's more or less the Cabal's theory). OTOH, one could say this is complete BS

So...I'd still say the Imperium are the "good guys". Of course, they murder those who want free speech, and they use the Exterminatus (scarcely, but they do)...But you have to keep in mind that the Imperium is in a constant state of war for its survival, against the rest of the universe. It has to use extreme means because its situation is extreme.

But Chaos surely isn't the absolute evil that will wipe out all that's good. They're the excess of freedom, the excess of anything typically human. Terrible and frightening.

I don't think Chaos or the Imperium can really be said to be more or less evil than the other. Both are essentially so far down the abyss that you need binoculars to see them gaze back, so it's pretty much just a matter of degree. As for deriving the morality of chaos followers by its ultimate goal... I don't know. Would you say that a woodcutter is evil because life on earth would die if all trees were cut down?

van Riebeeck said:

Thanks for the response. What you have to say here sounds a lot like the pro-imperial propaganda we get in the codices!

Some thoughts -

Using Chaos as the ultimate moral defense of the Imperium has limitations. You can certainly argue that many of the abhorrent things the Imperium does - such as the use of the Black Ships and the elimination of rogure psykers - are born of necessity. Most of us are aware of some of the appalling decisions that leaders are forced to make during wartime in order to gain an overall strategic advantage and thus serve the greater good as they see it.

Yet many of the abhorrent things the imperium does are completely unnecessary to combat Chaos, and derived entirely from their own fascist ideology, which is entirely contingent in terms of the war on Chaos. For example - the use of servitors. Giving someone a partial lobotomy, cutting off their legs, and grafting them to a Thunderhawk because they don't believe in the divinity of the Emperor is not necessary to combat Chaos. But the imperium does it anyway, because of its ideological motivation to repress and punish heresy in the most sadistic possible ways. This kind of behavior, which involves the most grotesque enslavement and violation of human beings, is simply gratuitous, and there are numerous other examples to draw upon.

To use a historical parallel - many of the actions of the Allies during WWII, such as Hiroshima and Dresden, were arguably justified by necessary. Yet if the allies started horrifically mutilating anyone who didn't worship Churchill and grafting them to tanks, they would have lost the moral high ground.

So no, the alleged evil of Chaos does not justify the atrocities of the Imperium or its repression of individual thought and freedom. In fact, since diversity of thought leads to greater innovation and sophistication, stamping out individuality is actually counterproductive, and worsens the Imperium's chances of success. So not only is the Imperium's over-the-top fascism unnecessary to counter Chaos, it is also a crippling weakness.

Also, why is most of imperial society run by aristocrats, theocrats and oligarchs, and the common man is little more than a slave? This type of heinous social structure is not necessary to combat Chaos. The imperium could be Democratic or Socialist and still combat Chaos just the same!

I think its fairly obvious that the extermination of all alien life - which is the imperium's stated objective - is as moronic as any absolutist policy which ignores context. Hypothetically, the peace-loving aliens whose only concern is manufacturing popcorn should not be exterminated.

Mjoellnir and Lord Ork:

I have to agree that Chaos, as a metaphysical realm made up of the psychic energy of sentient beings, can't actually be destroyed.

In terms of degrees of evil - it all seems to be about perspective. Personally, I can't see much of a difference between living in the Eye of Terror or in the fascist dictatorship of the imperium, and I fail to see how anything Chaos could do to humanity would be worse than what the Imperium has and is doing.

Stormast:

Re the Great Crusade - uniting humanity in a common struggle for greatness amongst the stars seems noble, but exterminating everything that doesn't agree with you and killing everything different from you is pretty morally indefensible. For a modern parallel - the Imperial Japanese army went on a 'Great Crusade' across the Pacific about 70 years ago, on the command of their Divine Emperor, and those guys aren't in the history books as the good guys.

Re the argument that the imperium are the Good Guys because they are in an extreme situation, see my response to van Riebeeck above.

I do like your conception of Chaos as the embodiment of excessive freedom and general excess.

Cifer said:

I don't think Chaos or the Imperium can really be said to be more or less evil than the other. Both are essentially so far down the abyss that you need binoculars to see them gaze back, so it's pretty much just a matter of degree. As for deriving the morality of chaos followers by its ultimate goal... I don't know. Would you say that a woodcutter is evil because life on earth would die if all trees were cut down?

Basically the same as my view. It's always nice when someone agrees with me

Thanks again for the interesting responses.

*chuckles* Yes, the Scholae have been good to me.

I fully agree the Imperium is a monstruous bulging entity with a callous disregard for human life and dignity. Still, you just have to take a short look at Daemon Worlds to hasten back to your hab zone and praise the God-Emperor that he allows you to live your miserable life in His enduring service. Where the slave labour of indentured miners is nothing short of ghastly, it is nothing as bad as the Eye of Terror. We had a comparable problem in Warhammer Fantasy RP, but quite soon we all agreed that where some inquisitors were exceeding their prerogatives and not much better then chaos champions, the institution of the Inquisition was vital. Burning witches in the Warhammer world is utterly logical once you have seen a daemon materialise from the charred corpse of one wretched victim. Burning witches in our world, well, another one we can chalk on christianities negative conto.

A short note though about the servitors. They are not so much a response against chaos, as the Imperial answer on the dangers of artifical intelligence. Thinking machines once nearly destroyed humanity, so are an anathema to the Adeptus Mechanicus. That a servitor (even if vat grown) is a hidious profanation of a human being is of course without a doubt.

On the whole, the only party with a reasonable claim on moral ground seem to be the Tau. But I wonder if they have what it needs to fight chaos, espcecially once they get a larger (renegade) human population in their Empire. Will they have what it take to keep the human psychic volatility in check?

FvR

WatchCaptainGothicus said:

@ Great Crusade: yeah, but isn't it because the Japanese lost ? I mean, "the winner writes history", and such...I'm all for relative morale. Therefore I'd agree with the view that Chaos and the Imperium are evils, hardly comparable. I - personally - would nevertheless tend to say that the Imperium is slightly "less evil", because its means are just as horrible, but its goal is more or less noble. Whereas Chaos does not aim at providing freedom, it's its means of recruitment.

But that's where things are about personal interpretations. And if I am to play BC (and I'm eager to!), I'll surely play characters who are definitely sure that Chaos acts for the good of the Universe

Well, if we go for real world comparisons, we might compare Nazi Germany with Stalin's Soviet Union. Both of them horrible Empires, but at least communism has an ideology that you can defend with rational and moral arguments.

I fear we just will have to go wih the lesser evil. If we wish to fight on the side of the good guys, there is just one way to go, defect to the Tau Empire and hope they will not have their Iron Men or Chaos infiltration soon. Problem is, they are idealists, and on the long run, idealism can be so **** dangerous...

FvR

I think we must be careful with real life examples. I don't want to deviate from topic, but stating that volatize an entire city population is a necessary evil for a good cause is quite revolting (to me).

About the Tau, it's possibly the less evil of all the major known species of the galaxy. Even with that, the chaste system is represion.

It is revolting. In our 21st century morals.

I think the situation in the 41st millenium is quite different in the setting. When you are under such great threats, things tend to have different values.

No specie is trying to destroy the Earth at any cost.

I'll take the example of the Tyranids, because it may be the most straightforward: if a planet falls to them, it will make them stronger, so mechanically they will eat more planets (etc...). And the Nids want/need to devour anything that is alive. You can't deal with them, you can't even frighten them or convince them to go look somewhere else for their food...So obviously, you may change your mind about wiping a planet if it weakens them or even only cap their power.

It's still disgusting, but it's what I would call and conceive as a "necessary evil".

Of course, if I were to do that, I probably couldn't push the red button. But I can totally see how a WH40k character can do it without a thought.

I think it's funny my old room mate knew more about the lore then I did and hated the God Emperor. His Ego, his sense that he was right, and the way after his death he became the focus of a stagnate cult. She never played a character that wasn't a radical. Her tech priests worshiped The Void Dragon, her Arch Militant was a Recongregator who actively pushed three lost colonies away from The Emperor, and her Sanctioned Psyker was a follower of Tzeentch from the second game with a dark pack that only did two things, remove the suicide conditioning and hide her "corruption".

None of these character where what you would call "evil" each had a world view that was different from the Impirium, but their motives where clear and just to them and could be understood by most people. In all chases the pursuit of knowledge, the desire to turn mankind away from an inevitable slow death, and the betterment of mankind as a unit. We both, me as a GM and her as a player, longed fro better rules for these situations often flying by the seat of our pants. She also fully accepted that from the POV of the games she was playing that she was the "Villain " but she never saw herself as such or even play her characters as such.

Even if her character where "Evil" and this is quite subjective, very few people are villains in their own mind.

While her characters where chosen for a world view, she understood, she also understood the world view of 40k and I would love to run further games with her and hope that Dark Crusade gives us the chance to explore such characters. I don't agree so much with the random troupe format presented int he first game, you will find that like minded people will cluster, but the idea of a group of people dedicated to the same cause of chaos, looking to further their agendas seems quite promising.

Thinking about it, I think the key is that in wh40k, the chaos is evil and the imperium is good... only from a medieval, christian mindset. If you translate this mindset to a futurist setting, all has sense.

In the Middle Ages the christians (imperium) felt as surrounded by evil threats. You had the infidels, majoritary the muslims (aliens). And you had Satan and his demons who disguised, misguided and corrupt the mortal men (chaos). Many heresies arised, guided by evil beings treating to weaken the faith in the Lord. Many sorcerers worshipped Satan trying to get power.

All of this was in the medieval mind, (because it was useful to people in power). In wh40k, those threats are more real. The response to them is evil in our mind, but from a medieval mindset it's not bad at all.

Hi,

Loving this thread, interesting philosophical presentations abound.

I cant help but see a strong similarity between the Imperium, the Nids and the Orks. The Orks expand out from planet to planet, waging war on, and eating, anything they find (or even themselves). Possibly driven by a genetic priming to get themselves blown up on a new planet and spread their spores. Thereby expanding the Ork nation to new boundaries.

The Nids travel from planet driven by a biological need to consume other life forms to renew and develop their own species. Nothing worse than simple hunter-gatherer instincts?

The Imperium of man looks to expand out from Terra, colonise new worlds, and kill anything they think may get in the way irrespective of any possible alliance. In a strange parallel to the Nids, humans reproduce like bunnies till they have the manpower to completely exploit the planet of all resources, then leave it as a polluted industrial wreck. Throughout this the few at the top will subject those beneath them to barbaric levels of abuse and injustice (like orks?)

I'm not saying the Imperium is worse than chaos, but along the galactic scale of goodness they must surely rank behind the Tau and the Eldar as a genuine hope for a user friendly galaxy for the future...

Hey even the Nids dont seem to have millions of their own race looking to shaft each other for money/sex/bitter resentment/etc.

Lord Ork said:

The problem with that mindset is the middle ages church belived that in their faith and through their god, they would win. The Imperium of man holds no such delusions. They know they are just staving off an inevitable demise. Knowing this and yet holding on so tightly to stagnation is truly perverted thinking, from a psychological standpoint t The Impirium becomes evil, Even more so by The Christian definition of evil. Most people, especially in power or authority, must believe what they are doing is right and just. Given that the 40k verse is written from the POV of the Impeirium and they are the ones in power, they become the good guys. Of course Chaos is just as perverted in their works, defeating themselves as much if not more then the forces of the Imperium.

So once again I repeat, no one is a villain in their one minds. So everyone from the most devote acolyte of the Impirium, to the greatest Radical working to the most vile Chaos lord, sees themselves as the bad guy, it is just from where the narrative is written. I think going to Dark Crusade thinking "Okay now I'm playing the bad guy." Is a good way to lead to very short and unsatisfying games.

I disagree.

I think most people in the Imperium do believe they will win with the help of the Emperor. Do they not regularily defeat the enemy? It's a war, not a tournament to decide who is the rightest. They do believe they are right and they do believe they are the good guys. And you have a lot of cults who say that the Emperor will come back to save humanity, etc, etc...

I really like Lord Ork's vision of it, I think it really depicts the situation quite well.

And I will definitely go to BC thinking "I'm going to play the bad guys". That doesn't mean my character will think that way.

The Imperium has still hope. As it is now, it can basically go three ways.

Or the Tyrannids win, and humanity (and all the other races and species) in the Galaxy becomes a nice snack.

Or mankind falls like the Eldar, succombing almost completely to chaos. But where the Eldar gave birth to Slaanesh and the birth pangs of this new Chaos God ripped open the bounderies between the Warp and the material world (creating the Eye of Terror amongst others), the vast swirling numbers of humanity will ensure that the birth of a new Chaos power will shatter the bounderies between the materium and the immterium completely, destroying both our species and the galaxy.

Or, the Emperor is reborn as the Starchild, with some help of the Illuminati and Sensei, inauguring the birth of psychic man, and following this by pacifying the Warp with the untold psychic energy of humanity. Obviously, for mankind, this is the best solution, and the whole goal of the God-Emperor is to make this possible, all 'necessary' cruelty is aimed at making this happen.

Still, this won't be too much of a consolation when you find your world is considered irrideemably lost and destroyed by orbital bombardment....The greatest fun of BC will indeed be getting those ambiguous characters, selling their souls to Darkness to do Good.

FvR

A majority of Imperial citizens likely buy into the idea that they will emerge victorious under the God Emperor's rule. The truth is a little more complex. Remember, most Imperial citizens don't have the luxury of education beyond what is directly necessary for their assigned work. And it usually is assigned, either by bureaucracy or family tradition.

Sure, the Imperium could be run more efficiently and more humanely, but only to a point. A government simply can not allow total free speech in a universe where reading the wrong book can literally turn you into a doorway to hell. Psykers have to be rounded up, since so many are too weak to resist the horrors of the warp and will **** the worlds they are on, as happened during the Age of Strife. Servitors are necessary for roles robots would fill, since abominable intelligence can easily end up turning on its' masters. Democracy is a threat since the masses will always vote for more ease and comfort if they feel they have any choice in the matter. And if they don't, why bother with the pretense of voting?

I suspect the best that could be hoped for is to more rigourously check the competence of those in charge than is done. *If* humanity ever develops psychically to the point of relative safety from the warp and the xenos threats are smashed, then *maybe* a less utilitarian and cruel society could emerge.

In how this relates to BC characters, a character could have the very best of intentions and still **** the universe if they suceed in achieveing them.

While I in no way want to say that the Imperium is the "good guys", I most definetly see Chaos as the "evil guys". Well, at least some of the chaos gods and its followers.

Basicly, the Imperium is a pack of wolves in a forest with to little game. They are not just going to give up and die, they are going to do whatever they need to to survive. A few wolves will die, but the pack will survive. So, even though the Imperium does some very inhumane things, and is the worst kind of fascist society, they have a higher purpose, the survival of mankind.

I dont percive tyranids as "evil", they are simply mindless beasts. The hive mind may be smart, but in the end, it is driven purely by the most basic of insincts, Survival. So they are the imperium, but less organised and civilized.

Khorne, however, is a diffrent matter. Him, I percive as a being more aware then the hive mind, Khorne can actually understand concepts such as freedom and suffering and pain. But still, he wants blood. Lots of it. And that would be fine, the Imperium wages war all the time, but Khorne has no purpose beyong bloodshed (at least as far as I know, correct me if I am wrong). So, he is smart enough (a.e, he isnt driven purely by instinct) to understand the suffering he causes (unlike the tyranids, suffering is to "alien" a concept for them) and yet he has no higher goal with it.

Still, he is just one of the gods. Tzeentch, and Slaanesh, may very well have higher purposes, Tzeentch especially, and Nurgle seems to really love his subjects, and belives he is being kind to them by infecting them with various dieseases.

But if we leave the gods, the followers of chaos I think fall into two categories: 1, the idiot who simply wants to kill and do his gods bidding without a seconds though. And 2, the strategist who does just as many bad things as category 1, but he/she has a higher goal.

And, in the midst of all this contradiction, I think it boils down to: Chaos, near black. Imperium, slightly less black. Tau, greyish. But they are idealist, and havent been challenged in the same way as the imperium, when reality smacks them on the nose, I belive they will become more fascist as well.

Khorne, however, is a diffrent matter. Him, I percive as a being more aware then the hive mind, Khorne can actually understand concepts such as freedom and suffering and pain. But still, he wants blood. Lots of it. And that would be fine, the Imperium wages war all the time, but Khorne has no purpose beyong bloodshed (at least as far as I know, correct me if I am wrong). So, he is smart enough (a.e, he isnt driven purely by instinct) to understand the suffering he causes (unlike the tyranids, suffering is to "alien" a concept for them) and yet he has no higher goal with it.

That's a claim I'd dispute. Khorne, just like the other Chaos Gods, is the essence of an emotion - in his case, rage. He embodies this emotion (and its brethren like bloodlust, valor and pride). It is literally impossible for him to not let it tint his every action because rage is what he is , what he's made from. Asking him to view violence as a means to an end that is not more violence is like asking you to please stop being so carbon-based.

Cifer said:

While I dont dispute that claim, and also kind of agree with you, I view the chaos gods as a bit more "self-aware" then a beast or a Nid. Still, you are probobly right in the essence that he can't not require bloodshed, and in a way, the rage and killing is what is keeping him alive... ****, oh well, I concede, everyone is just out to survive, and only does what they need to do.

I don't think it's a matter of survival. It's a matter of essence. Khorne is not evil. It's evilness.

Nightsorrow said:

How do you define self-awareness, sentience or sapience for an entity that exists as a diffuse extradimensional coalescence of all mortal rage that is, was and ever shall be, that exists within a realm where time and space are meaningless concepts?

The Chaos Gods are all alike in this regard: singular emotional coalescences that exist out of all mortal context. Khorne doesn't possess a 'self' in any way that we can effectively comprehend, because it exists in a place that strips from a being all the ways by which he might define himself. Khorne's anger exists without restraint, without thought or cause, forever unhindered by other emotions.

Khorne is as alien to mortal existence as the Tyranids are, but in a very different way. The Tyranids are animal instinct driven to the furthest extreme. Khorne is every moment of anger you and every other creature in existence has ever experienced and will ever experience, yet divorced from all the things that gave that rage context or meaning.

Chaos in itself is neither evil nor good. It's the same with gods of chaos. They are shaped by the thoughts, desires and basic urges of nearly all sentient species in the univers, which means they only reflect "us".

Khorne demands slaughter in his name because humanity (I'm gonna focus on humanity for simplicitys sake) makes him do so with their endless wars. They inflict suffering and misery upon each other and and in the process they create a way for Khorne to feed of it, but they are also responsible for actually creating and sustaining Khorne because of it.

I subscribe by the thinking that the chaos gods are merely the most powerful (at least that we know of) warp entities and not real gods per se. They have enourmous individual powers and can do things that nothing else in the universe can do, but their existence is tied to that of humanity (or sentient beings in general) so their goal is not the total annihilation of the human race. That would mean the end of the chaos gods, but the warp would still be there, waiting for something new to shape it.

So what about the followers of chaos?

Many, probably most of them, are evil, but i doubt that most of them see themselves that way. They probably know that the path they are on are one that will lead them to ascenscion or damantion by conquering, killing and enslaving others. They do these thing, some with joy and others with regret, but I think it's important to consider that most of them didn't want to go down that path. For most it was forced upon them, either by others or as a consequence of their own actions and choices.

So in my mind, it's possible to play a game of Black Crusade without thinking that the players are evil. They may have different methods of achieving their goal, but they are just as righteous in their own minds as the characters from any other FFG game. Then again, I'm not saying that they're good either...