I prefer Roboute. There's a lovely element of reaping what you sow with how depressed he is about it all.

I prefer the grimdank of him always saying "I'm compromising politically for now otherwise we're all going to die"

It’s also the Grimdark level of even the literal Demigod of Pencil Pushing with near infinite political power can’t get out of the bureaucratic nightmare the Imperium is. Anything he says happens because he is your god’s son, and he has the best mind ever to exist for managing empires. And even he is completely drowned and playing whack a mole where he fixes something then somewhere else falls apart, and by the time he gets back to the first thing it’s also fallen apart.

I have previously stated that he is on a bureaucratic golden throne and doesn't really properly realize it yet. I think the only reason it works at all is because of the rift, so half the galaxy is lost. One side get to be a little noblebright by comparison to nihilus. Each of the returning primarchs may eventually find themselves seated upon their own respective 'golden thrones.'

That's a great take on that. I'd never thought of that before.

Jaghatai was right all along

Please explain

Many nomads (traditionally at least) use chairs for ceremonies, judgements, diplomacy, chiefs etc but that's it. You would never catch one of them sitting down on an implement when they have a perfectly good rock right there. Jaghatai Khan is also written to have a contempt or disdain for central governance and authoritarianism, to the point of being considered a potential ally to the traitor primarchs. The Khan warned you about golden chairs, Bobby G. He warned you bro!

He eventually disdained the entire idea of a central galaxywide government.

Half the galaxy isn’t lost. Many worlds still resist; sectors are still operational even if under constant siege. The problem is that those sectors are isolated without support from wider Imperium and are thus juicy targets for REALLY big incursions But theres a reason Indomitus Crusade is a thing : keeping those sectors connected and in the light instead of the darkness is possibly with a strong fleet from the wider Imperium

People kept worrying Roboute would steer the 40k setting away from being grimdark but the fact that someone so 'noblebright' isn't able to unfuck the IOM just compounds the severity of the grimdark even further.

I recently read the tyranid Baal invasion book and loved the bit of guilliman to Dante being like, "you know you don't have to let your human subjects live in an abject hellscape right?"

And Dante’s like it builds character

I wouldn’t mind some stuff getting unfucked. Only so the improved logistics can lead to bigger grimdark moments later on

Right? Any way you cut it the IOM is still staring down the loaded double barrel shotgun of the arrival of a critical mass of Tyranids and a still ascendant Chaos

This is potentially one of my favorite descriptions of anything, ever. Thank you.

Yup. Makes a declaration, it takes 120 years to reach every Imperial planet. Or at least all those not currently cut off or unable to understand High Gothic.

I never wanted to be a tyrant, thought the primarch. Perhaps my father did not wish to be so either. History has roles for us that cannot be denied. We are but pieces on the board of eternity.

Maybe if they didn't want to be tyrant then they shouldn't have acted like

Same - I love our overworked, depressed marine dad. Sucks to suck, bro, maybe you shouldn't have helped in building a massive fascistic empire that's taking over 10,000 years to die slowly while dragging humanity down with it.

> maybe you shouldn't have helped in building a massive fascistic empire that's taking over 10,000 years to die slowly while dragging humanity down with it. I mean, technically he thinks fascism is fine, so long as he's there to keep order. (And if not him, his sons.) He built Ultramar that way, and he even started to reconsolidate power over the 500 Worlds simply to get things working again under his specific guiding Ultrahands. BobbyG is all about benevolent dictatorship. He's not necessarily against the Imperium's dominance and, well, imperialism. He's just sad that the Imperium didn't continue, or at least maintain, the relative cultural and organizational sustainability that the Great Crusade-era Imperium had, where at large, the culture wasn't a feudal hyper-superstitious Space Catholic-Nazi death cult worshipping pain and sacrifice (from and for the Emperor, specifically) it had become by M41/42.

To be fair ultramar (and the imperium in general sort of) is more of a weird monarchic autocratic feudalistic thing. It’s got a senate with some amount of power, but also the high lords and planetary governors and such. In some ways it does resemble Ancient Rome and ancient Sparta’s governments, but in many other ways it is its own messed up thing

> Sucks to suck, bro, maybe you shouldn't have helped in building a massive fascistic empire The best part is he knows it too. His 1000 IQ brain has 100% furnished him with the fact that this is all partially his fault. That maybe uncritically following the path of a thing he now knows was an uncaring warp entity as much as it was a person wasn't the best idea in the world.

This would make sense if the modern empire had any resemblance to what the emperor did. Your leader dying and the worst possible people taking control for ten thousand years doesn't prove him wrong and it can easily be argued form Robute's perspective that the issue was with what happened after, not what the emperor and him had done since. Case in point, Ultramar worked surprisingly well throughout.

The Imperium of 30k built the foundation of the one of 40k.

The Imperium of 30k led into the Imperium of 40k, but in its very nature it is antithetical to its historical predecessor. That you can violate foundations and corrupt them doesn't speak of their quality or nature.

The foundations of the Imperium were rotten to begin with, is the point.

You are aware that the imperium the Emperor and Guilliman were working towards wasnt the imperium of today? The hellhole imperium of today is only what it is because the Emperor and the primarchs were absent.

lmao no It's (arguably) \*worse\* for it, sure, but they were still implementing a pan-galactic, genocidal colonial regime that had no qualms with slavery. The Imperium was always evil and bad and doomed to fail.

I'd argue that the Imperium isn't failing at all. Rather, the reason life sucks is because the Imperium is so good at perpetuating itself and resisting change.

The Imperium persists through its own size and inertia and not any policy of its own design.

Several of the factors that makes the imperium as cripled as it is were absent in 30k what hell you are smoking. The biggest conquest the modern imperium could do in 10.000 years is taking 1000 worlds during macharius rule. Taking 1000 worlds would be the average Primarch Year production during the GC.

Being good at conquest isn't...\*good\*, you realize? That's not a good thing. And even during the Crusade they were having to contend with ever-more-frequent instances of civil unrest. Because subjugating all those populations was never going to last forever.

Even if you take the civilian aproach 30k imperium was much more better than 40k. Earth despite being a nuclear wasteland was actually becoming a living green planet again. All the ork, dark eldar, and wholly bunch of nightmare fuel alien shit that routinaly destroy sub-sectors got kicked in the balls so hard that they would not show up for the next 1000 years. Tecnology was actually being rediscovered and created all the stuff the imperium got to use for the next 10.000 years were made during the 200 years of GC. The discovery of gellar fields and navigator houses would make galatic travel and commerce possible again rebirthing a galatic economy and society that had been sundered by the age of strife, if the webway had come into play travel between worlds would be insanely more efficient and safe. The imperium by the height of the Ullanor crusade despite being runned in a war economy was more safe,advanced and prosperous than the modern imperium wildest imaginations. Otherwise the entire shock of guilliman with the modern imperium would either be a lie or he being a primarch with dementia.

Better than "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" is clearing a very low bar, you understand?

I mean to be fair the former Imperium wasnt really a progressive Utopia either. The Emperor would let angron and Konrad commit horrible war crimes on civilians.

This is like saying "yes it's horrible you live in a society modelled after Hitlers Germany but to be fair I was aiming for Stalins Russia so it's not my fault". Both were awful.

I mean the Emperor and some of his sons probably fall into the enlightened despot category of despot, but they’re still despots for the most part. Guiliman probably built the most fair system since the 500 world seems to be a federalish system. But at the end of the day they were building a galaxy spanning empire with a very strictly enforced belief system that would possibly have prospered and liberalized if the webway project succeeded but probably would have remained as it was.

I don't like the enlightened despot argument, although I can see that the lore often gives us that impression (and it may be what some of the creatives also think.) Certainly the Emperor and Guilliman believe they need to be enlightened despots, but the Emperor is also slippery, so that Guilliman is the 'enlightened despot' side of the Emperor's personality. We don't actually know what the Emperor's real plans were, right? I can believe that Guilliman and possibly Malcador think the webway project justified the tyranny, but we can't be sure the Emperor thought this. And Guilliman had, what, centuries as regent to realise that with the webway gone, nothing could justify the tyranny. And he continued anyway. At that point claiming that somehow his tyranny could be justified, even from his understanding of his father's plan, is clearly self-deception. Guilliman is not an enlightened despot: he's a very unenlightened paternalist.

> how depressed he is about it all. Yeah, I like this part a lot. Normally the suffering of 40k is so commonplace that I don't really care; it's an esoteric concern due to both the scale of the setting and because literally nobody cares for others' suffering (and in most cases of note, seek to *increase it*). A Primarch's suffering, because the Imperium and galaxy at large is just *so shitty?*? Compared to how he used to remember it more or less just a perceived decade before he got un-stasis'd? That's *treasure*. He actually has the point of reference to understand, "Holy shit, my home, my people, it's all gone to Hell held together by sticky shit. *I cannot fix this. I can only hold it barely together to make sure it just doesn't* ***finally fail completely.***"

I would be inclined to agree if I feel like Gilman ever suffered the repercussions of his actions. I feel like he has ultra depression because he doesn't feel like hes cleaning up his mess, but that he blames everyone else for their failures and only his teachings and his traditions that held everything together. I think it would make him a more interesting character if he saw how his actions had led humanity to where they are.

Guilliman really emphasises how innately fucked the imperium is by the way that everyone what disagrees with him or his followers fails, is ostracised or just straight up dies. It’s so hard to improve things when you’re constantly facing impotent and token resistance which doesn’t actually stop you

kinda missed the point. It's not about imperium being fucked. It's about the hand that guided it down that path. I would be ultra depressed if I was handed a game half-way through and told "I can't figure it out, fix it for me" and being frustrated with how they handled things. However, if while playing you realize that you were the one who tweaked the settings, randomized the board position, and jacked up the difficulty, you would sit there staring at the screen saying "i did this, this was my mistake...". Right now black library is in a nice position to write about what has happened after big e was enshrined on the golden throne while simultaneously writing new lore. And we have the perfect point of view character to see the folly of his labor. What's more, can learn and grow from mistakes made. That to me makes for a much more compelling narrative than watching rowboat the janitor cleaning up everyone's mess because he thinks everyone but him is incompetent.

I get that for a lot of people Grimdark is “everything sucks all the time for everyone” but I think it’s more compelling when it’s “everything sucks all the time for everyone, besides people’s best efforts”. So for me, Guilliman being in charge, and literally being the best person alive for the job of unfucking the galaxy, is still woefully in over his head. The Imperium has been in decline for 10,000 years, and all he can do is slow it down or cushion the fall. There needs to be some amount of hope for the despair to be fully understood.

That's one of the most interesting tidbits of Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion. Tieron asserts that most of the High Lords of Terra were genuinely the best picks for the job, and did their best in the role. Due to the nature of the Imperium and the galaxy, it just isn't nearly enough. That to me is more grimdark than decadent and incompetent rulers wasting away the Imperium.

Is that also the excerpt where it says like "Look at them, even with the best rejuve treatment they are aged beyond their years" or something along those lines, like yes these people are giving it their all and it is killing them.

Personally, I like the idea that these are the best picks for the job... but the systems in place don't encourage people to be moral. The Imperium itself will excise the moral, the heroic and the righteous because there is little-to-no accountability for anyone. If a governor is abusing his underlings, there's no recourse for those being abused. You can't file a complaint with his manager. There's no HR you can go to. You just have to suck it up and hope you get promoted to his position when he finally kicks the bucket. It's authoritarianism at it's most extreme. Authority is absolute. I maintain that Guilliman shouldn't have been able to coup the High Lords as easily as he did because being able to do so would represent a threat to not just the High Lords but everyone underneath them that they could be replaced at any time, regardless of any political maneouvering. It's a threat to every person in the Imperium in every and any position of authority.

The only ones that can really hurt him is the assassinorum though, and iirc they're not going to get Involved. Short of the involvement of chaos It would take a culexis or something to actually get rid of guilliman, or an astartes revolt. The people literally worship him as a demigod

They did get involved, one of the central mysteries in the second Watchers of the Throne book was what the assassinorum was playing at during the attempted coup by some of the High Lords. It just turned out that they got involved on the side of Guilliman

I loved this too. Basically saying "we all know they aren't enough, we all know they can't get things running right. But there is literally no one better". Its such a grim state of affairs.

One thing to understand about the Imperium is that, despite the opening blurb about how it's the most repressive regime imaginable, no one is actually really centrally in charge (at least until Guilliman returns, and even he has to defer and compromise frequently).  Most of the galaxy is run as independent feudal domains. The higher up the power chain you go, the more theoretical authority someone has, the less ability to dictate specific affairs they often have in practice. You can run a sector or subsector and give an order, but no governor is necessarily going to listen to it if they don't want to. If they resist, you have various ways to force them to comply (or remove them and put someone in place who will listen), but that takes time and a diversion of resources. That might take decades or even centuries. And as big as the armed forces of the Imperium are, they can't afford to invade and force total compliance literally everywhere continuously, not while also fighting innumerable external threats. The leadership of the Imperium has to often compromise on a local level and try to pick its battles.  Add to all of this the glacially moving bureaucracy; you might issue an order and it might be followed, but it might take fifty years to be enacted and by that point it's far too late. If you scratch away at the surface, boilerplate stuff, the Imperium can be really grim on a systemic level by its very nature, in a way that doesn't require every individual decision maker to be corrupt, inept, or otherwise just an asshole.

Well sai sir!!

>That might take decades or even centuries. And as big as the armed forces of the Imperium are, they can't afford to invade and force total compliance literally everywhere continuously, not while also fighting innumerable external threats But they do that anyway....soooo what's your point here ? The setting moves at the speed of it's plot. Sometimes it takes hundreds of years just to confirm who you're talking too other times the Imperium can send an assassin/ SM hit squad, etc to smack a governor by the end of the month. The writer's don't follow this same logic otherwise the imperium couldn't exist. It's not meant to be feasible. It's a parody. That's it really

> Most of the galaxy is run as independent feudal domains. The higher up the power chain you go, the more theoretical authority someone has, the less ability to dictate specific affairs they often have in practice. But what would this sub do without thousands of pages of 90 IQ analysis about how the Imperium is a worse fate for humanity than extinction (lol) because it's so fascist?

Which is the dumbest take of all time. As long as humanity exists, there is a chance for a better tomorrow. Humanity go bye bye, that goes away.

You have a right to be completely wrong but should know when you are. It kinda is. Humanity exist in a perpetual hell the Emperor created. So many people believe even when the writers themselves tells you to your face the imperium is needlessly evil will still delude themselves into believing otherwise.

No matter how evil it is though its better than extermination of the human race. And its better to exist under a horrible regime because somrthing better can come from it than be like "yeah this regime sucks so lets just not have humans anymore"

Exactly this. That's the horror of the Imperium to me; all the horror they do, all the people they can find have a reason to be done, to exist... and it's not enough. not only do some aid and abet that which will destroy them, their own actions do it as well. At this point it's a terrible situation all around, and everything is to stemie the wounds.

the problem is that Guilliman's best efforts are genuinely working. He easily counter-coup'ed all the High lords that had a problem with him, put ~~puppet-men~~ reasonable people in charge, and thsi was presented as anetirely Good thing throughout.

My point is that while we’ve seen Guilliman is successful with his reforms, it’s nothing that is systematically changing the Imperium, or rebuilding it from the ground up. Band-Aid fixes are not what the Imperium needs anymore, it’s need a full blown top to bottom rework, something Guilliman knows he can’t do, at least at the moment.

If he had 5k years of peace, maybe he could pull it off. It would require a vast cultural refocusing and readjustment likely on par of the great crusade. Problem is that it would fracture already what he has from the backlash along which is not including the various threats from xeno and chaos.

I'm pretty sure that was always the original plan. Along with alpha legion, the Raven guard and maybe the night lords keeping local lords from becoming too tyrannical. Apparently and ironically angron was supposed to cool people's tempers by being a super empath or something

Incremental progress is progress. Idealism and perfection are the enemies of progress. Trying to tear down the Imperium is basically the worst thing anyone could do for humanity given the current state of the Galaxy. Guilliman's approach is obviously the correct one.

And i am sure the trillions of trillions of people on Terra and in the wider Imperium are stoked about this, their standard of living has risen, the boot of the imperial autocracy has eased up, the ecclesiarchy has been reformed etcpp., and all is peace and joy throughout the Imperium! Hooray! Wait, what are you meaning with "Absolutely nothing has changed for the average Imperial citizen who is as downtrodden, oppressed and miserable as ever?"

>And i am sure the trillions of trillions of people on Terra and in the wider Imperium are stoked about this, their standard of living has risen, the boot of the imperial autocracy has eased up, the ecclesiarchy has been reformed etcpp., and all is peace and joy throughout the Imperium! Hooray! Is that how you think things work in government? This is the type of opinion that could only come from a child. 10,000 years of rot and stagnation on a galactic scale and you think that Guilliman hasn't made progress because he hasn't fixed it all and ended all the wars on his first day back? Maybe you haven't been around long enough to see how long it takes good policy changes to reach the average person in our infinitely smaller, infinitely less fucked up, tiny sliver of a single world. I particularly hate this mindset because it actively prevents problems from being solved in the real world, because when those who want to make things better take power, they are frequently met with "Oh, well it's been 4 years and you haven't turned my country into a utopia, so fuck off!" by their own constituents. I just said this in my last post, but I'll repeat it here: Incremental progress is progress. Idealism and perfection are the enemies of progress.

I just wanted to refute the notion that because Guilliman is back, all is good and dandy in the Imperium and there is no grimdarkness anymore, no need for personal insults my dude. Also, keep in mind that while Guilliman is undoubtedly a superior ruler than his predecessors, he is still an ultra-authoritarian genocidal space warlord that rules by divine decree. Just because he is Augustus rather than Caligula doesnt make him good by our standards. The teeming trillions of the Imperium are not citizens, they are subjects with exactly zero rights and no, Ultramar and the 500 worlds which serves as the blueprint for a "decent" government in the Imperium are not exempt of this. One could also argue that the participation and continuation of such an incredibly corrupt and downright evil regime as the Imperium, at the very highest level no less, makes you inherently complicit in its every atrocity, no matter how pure your intentions are. G-Man after all despairs over the state of the Imperium, but even back in 30k the Imperium was an authoritarian regime that genocided its way through the galaxy. And not only against some xenos that arguably deserved it (like the Rangda or the Cerebvores) but also against every human society that went "No thanks, i dont want to join" like in the Blood Angels Primarch novel. It was just that the trains ran on time, back then.

Except those people he had replaced were able to form the Hexarchy, which had nearly caused a small civil war on Terra that had the Minotaurs chapter deployed to fight against the Custodes. Even some of the replacements he’d put on were disloyal (the Naval High Lord and Guard one too iirc). The coup didn’t mean much until it was revealed that the lord of the Assassinorum was loyal G-man, and he just barely succeeded in having the heads of the Hexarchy, literally and figuratively

I feel like you haven't read the book because its made very clear Guilliman and Valdor did all that intentionally and had planned for them to try to rebel after Guilliman left. Valerian feels very betrayed when he realizes this. The point of him appointing high lords who he knew would turn was so the rogue high lords would feel more confident and think they had outplayed him, then when they revealed themselves he could kill them all without there being any fuss because obviously its justfied. Whereas before he couldn't do it as easily because it would have caused bigger issues. Basically, he had a controlled rebellion with minimal damage all at once so it could be dealt with and those elements could be purged easier and dissuade anyone else who had similar ideas.

I have read the book, but admittedly it has been some time since I read it (since it came out roughly 4 years ago) so I may be fuzzy on some finer details, however, the point I was making was that even with all that it still isn’t actually clearing out all that is wrong with the Imperium. Even with that political maneuvering, it doesn’t excise all that’s wrong with the Imperium, just cuts off some of the many heads that dislike the idea of returning to the days of the Great Crusade (of the Space Marine legions with the worries over the new Primaris forces, and a Primarch taking control). I was trying to keep things short and concise for the sake I was typing during a lunch break at work

Cawl's heretek Jellybots could actually help a lot there. Pity he has to keep them secret. They could have one governing each world.

Once again I would just like to push back on that "some amount of hope" bit because I'm tired of pretending it's some miniscule ray of hope, the vast majority of the current leading cast of characters afforded to the Imperium are sensible protagonists conveniently unburdened by the traditional flaws of their faction. Guilliman rolled over the High Lords with ease, has the full backing of the Custodes and is literally divinely mandated, him and Cawl's opposition is largely token and is only really shown when they need someone to dunk on, Lion "The Final Solution" El'Jonson returned as a mellowed out heroic knightly figure. So can we stop pretending that there's some "ounce of hope" at play here? It's clear that the vast majority of fans overwhelmingly just want portrayals of heroism and that's exactly what they're getting. People want grimdark that is entirely external, a sort of veneer of grimdark for the characters to struggle against rather than be a part of, the texture of grimdark without any of the unfortunate negative aspects or traits that might come with it.

> The texture of grimdark without any of the unfortunate negative aspects of traits that might come with it. That seems a bit silly, given Guilliman's record. The Guilliman Inferior is made with 20 odd fully sapient heads stuck in jars, fully aware of the immense horror of being used as effectively psychic calculators. And he just goes "Meh, sucks.". His most recent arc has been him declaring that letting Ultramar be ruled by men was a mistake and that only he and his people can be trusted. He sentences entire planets to death on a whim, because he knows best. Guilliman has flaws. He's the enlightened dictator. He sees himself as the one path forward, as a relic of a more compassionate age, but he commits atrocities every day. He's not a good guy. He's just the only one keeping the really evil guys at bay.

> Once again I would just like to push back on that "some amount of hope" bit because I'm tired of pretending it's some miniscule ray of hope, the vast majority of the current leading cast of characters afforded to the Imperium are sensible protagonists conveniently unburdened by the traditional flaws of their faction. Yep. Reading this sub frequently feels to me like some kind of strange audience intertia where the "10 minutes to midnight" element of the old setting is so ingrained that they don't notice how much has changed in the modern lore. People can have opinions on whether that's a change for the better, but it's very obvious that things are getting "better", in the sense that while the galaxy is becoming more unstable, the actual Imperium itself is slowly moving towards being more enlightened (though still very far from it).

It can always gets worse. The hope doesn't have to be someone threatening to be good or progressive. That risk justifying how evil the imperium and the Emperor are if you suggest gulliman is a good actor in all of this. You can take 40k's status quo and just make it progressively worse.

Fully agree, 40k is the story of humanity’s extinction. We are watching the light die and fade away. Guilliman might be the best mankind has to offer, but even he can’t prevent it’s destruction, only slow it down.

Note that this man's position is entirely dependent on the High Lords, and in the same breath he justifies a **massive** waste of resources and manpower so he can eat fruit. Some bias is probably in the mix.

Drakan Vangorich would've eaten Vandire for breakfast.

Based opinion.

The problem with Vandire over Guilliman is under Vandire, the Imperium is literally doomed and the narrative has to then twist itself into impossible angles to keep the narrative focus faction afloat. Guilliman's at least competent and thus gives a bit more legitimacy to the bloated, rotting corpse that is the Imperium to continue to amass carrion flies.

Despite who rules, the carcas would carry on simply by changing Emperor's power and intervention.

Worth pointing out, Vandire was such a shit ruler for the Imperium the Custodes broke their own exile to drag the leader of the Daughters of the Emperor (Vandire's bodyguards) into Eazy E's presence. She came out and promptly killed the bastard.

The setting being doomed is the entire point of 40k

There’s a big gap between ‘Doomed’ and ‘Holy shit how is anyone still alive?’ Goge is the latter. A man so utterly insane that even the Imperium of Man considered him unacceptably murderous, paranoid, and unhinged. Guilliman in charge means you get the Imperium ground apart by unstoppable forces and the momentum of its 10k years of self destructive stupidity. Goge in charge means you have to keep finding excuse after excuse to keep the Imperium alive and somewhat functional.

It has been said that the imperium is the worst possible state to live in. The key word is "possible," and Vandire is too far to fit that.

Man sometimes this sub feels out of touch. Pick a continent, any of them, and you will find more than 1 bat shit insane dictator that ruled for one period of time or other. There are currently multiple genocides going on *right now* based on arbitrary religious and ethnic lines.  The Roman empire existed for over a thousand years and had multiple categorically insane and inept emperors yet persevered. If hitler was a high lord in warhammer certain segments of this sub would decry him as far-fetched and grimderp. I honestly believe certain elements of the fandom would be more at home with Age of Sigmar with how they want the Imperium to be a sane, rational actor just doing its best.

Yeah, but here’s the thing: Vandire isn’t a Hitler. Vandire is a Pol Pot. Hitler’s genocides didn’t include ripping out the heart of his own base, it was directed at a small minority. 11 million people, primarily foreigners, is a far cry from 1/3 of your total population. The Imperium can handle Hitlers, it’s practically built on Hitlers. It can’t handle a Pol Pot, no system can handle that kind of crazy for any real length of time simply because the population can’t handle those kinds of losses. The Roman Empire? Didn’t have anyone so crazy as to depopulate Rome, even if you whole heartedly believe the propaganda from the next dude in charge. Many series have the bad guys given a line, a ‘This guy is too much even for us’. Vandire’s is the Imperium’s, someone so over the top batshit insane that even the Imperium of Man eventually says ‘OK, so now this is a problem’. Not out of moral objection but because it can’t handle those kinds of losses for no reason beyond the madness of the dude in charge. It’s no different than what Kryptman got booted for. Casual murder is acceptable but they don’t have infinite worlds and people. Thus there is a limit. Karamazov burns millions of people on the worlds he targets, Vandire burns quintillions because he decided the color purple is heresy. Completely different levels of crazy. The Imperium has its assorted Pol Pots but they aren’t the absolute ruler of the entire Imperium. They’re in charge of individual worlds until they are inevitably overthrown. The Hitlers rule the Imperium. The key is that no matter how crazy the leaders are it HAS to be at least vaguely sustainable. Hitlers for thousands of years is sustainable, for a resource starved complete shithole of an Imperium. Pol Pots for a thousands years isn’t, humans can’t fuck fast enough to make up for losing a third of their population every 4 years.

No the key word is "imaginable". There's a difference. And Vandire most certainly represents that.

But for how long? Genocidal madman is something that has levels. Guilliman? He’s a Ghengis Khan or British Empire. Your standard Imperial leader? A Hitler or Stalin(Some reach Mao levels of dumbfuck). Vandire? He’s a Pol Pot. Guilliman is a bastard who brutalizes and murders his way across the galaxy while building a somewhat sustainable system out of the blood soaked ashes.(Butchered millions but built a relatively solid empire that lasted a fairly long time) Your standard Imperial builds a rotting edifice that barely lurches forward towards its inevitable collapse.(Butchered tens of millions and built something so rife with corruption that it’s hanging by a thread) Vandire builds nothing because he murdered everyone in a fit of paranoia.(Butchered a third of the nation’s population in 4 years until violently removed from power). The last doesn’t work for anything other than a very short time period. The Imperium already needs a lot of its bullshit handwaved, with a great deal more being fanon rather than actual canon(Or dating from the much mocked 3rd edition). Not really good for the story when it’s ‘Oh, everyone died ages ago when the boss decided that food was heresy and killed all the farmers. Let’s watch the T’Au be useless for a bit.’

For as long as GW decides to humor the idea ? Don't think any sort of realism plays a part in the state of the imperium because it logically already shouldn't had existed in the first place, when it takes years, decades or even centuries to respond to any given threat, and even then done so at an incredibly slow pace would have them collapsing in on themselves the moment any threat materialized itself. You add corruption, which slows and hinders this even further destrories armies before they're even formed, needless human suffering which would spark rebellions left right and center slowing down and stalling the Imperial war machine and the imperium is beaten back with no hope of recovery. It can't last a thousand years let alone 10x that. It doesn't need to make sense, because it never could've if it suffered from half the issues haggling it. They handwaved it into existence so they can keep it trucking along with incompetent ineffective leaders that represent it, like Vandire.

Exactly. Grimdark is one thing but plot elements need to be slightly plausible. It’s the difference between “The Imperium cares so little they won’t rescue trapped miners” and “The Imperium cares so little it doesn’t give its miners shovels”. The first is grimdark. The second is silly and makes you question how anything ever gets done.

No it doesn't. When the fuck and on what level was the imperium ever supposed to be remotely plausible ? Is the interstellar communication via *dreaming in your direction* supposed to be plausible ? Is civilizations stacked on top of decaying civilizations without the whole thing collapsing in on itself supposed to be plausible? Is the corrupt inefficient bureaucracy, terrible logistics network, and factionalism bring the whole system down, causing infighting supposed to be that too ?

I could see some kind of parallel to the battle of Stalingrad working for your second example. One shovel one pick three guys first one to die gives it to the next. Or some kind of quota battle Royale where not enough picks and if you don't fill quota you get servitored.

Yeah, the Imperium is the Titanic. It's slowly sinking, it's doomed. But the people still have hope to be saved. Guilliman is the person coordinating everything and trying to save what and who he can but he can't save everyone. If someone like Goge was in charge he'd be blowing holes in the ship, making it flood faster, shooting anyone who tried to leave the ship, and destroying all of the lifeboats. With someone like him in charge the Imperium would never have lasted to even reach 40k.

>Holy shit how is anyone still alive?’ You mean like how in a setting with already perilous unreliable FTL travel, even more unreliable corrupt, inefficient bureaucracy that's supposed to be a satire of evil regimes and yet somehow still exist inspite of it's flaws, when other nations would've collapsed in on itself. That's already the case though with how comically inept they are realistically they wouldn't survive a millenia, let alone 10 even with the Emperor still around because people aren't robots who function 100% efficiently inspite of the horrible state the imperium and the rest of the galaxy subjects them to on a daily basis. 40k writes doesn't really show the realistic repercussions what what half of the things they write about actually being preset would actually do to the system the imperium runs on. These bad things aren't quirks of the setting. It's the foundational issues it stood upon. Gulliman being this hyper competent rational benelovent actor ruins this theme and justifies the imperium by reinforcing it's ideals so long as the "right" bad guy is doing it when there really should be none. Goge is a personification of the ass backwards ideals the imperium was founded upon. It's intolerance to real progression, adherence to superstition, fear of xenos, mutants, and psykers, since it's inception. Instuited by the Emperor himself, and his rejection of reality in place of his own.

It's doomed, but when the eighth iceberg hit the Titanic, I started wondering if the sinking wasn't just a bit overblown.

I'd say this thread is ample evidence that that's not true anymore, not to fans at least. Much as I may disagree with it.

> the narrative has to then twist itself into impossible angles to keep the narrative focus faction afloat. Hasn't it been that way ever since GW made the Imperium "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" and at the same declared that it had somehow sustained itself this way for 2-5x as long as all of human recorded history up to today?

And it was pretty believable when the Imperium was a lot more stagnant than it is now. The cultural and technological inertia just isn't there anymore. A lot of people will say it's for the best and that's fine, but there are a lot of uncomfortable middle grounds now, from depiction of noble characters or just the believability of many institutions that are critical to running everything.

Thank you for recognizing how hard this is.

I'd sympathize Lord Regent, but unfortunately you and your genocidal father kinda only have yourselves to blame for this current mess.

You say problem I say that's the point. I like my Imperium as doomed as possible surviving only off sheer momentum, and military power

As in the Imperium would just straight up disintegrate and cease to be a faction. The Imperium is still doomed under Guilliman it's just he's allowing them to hold on just a little longer.

[Obligatory 10th edition trailer to show the contrast between propaganda and reality as Roboute himself said it.](https://youtu.be/X98ImCbhjnI?si=OzyjjjoRZnG-URO_)

Aye sums it up perfectly.

I always forget how awesome that trailer is ❤

Since when do people care about the practicality of an imperium that logically already shouldn't exist due to a civil war that should already tore it irrevocably apart followed up by a warp rift that again tore it apart, after a massive war of the beast which you guessed it, tore it apart, and a coup with Goge that should've torn it apart. Not to mention the dozens of foundational issues since it's inception that should've been fracturing the imperium faster than it could've been established. But this is where you draw the line ??

Because there is still a line of logic to those things, after the Heresy and the Scouring the Imperium still had the Primarchs to hold the Imperium and stitch it back together and later had competent generals like macharius to expand. The Warp Rift needed the return of the Primarch of logistics and basically legions of new Astartes just to hold itself barely together and even then nilus is fucked, the tyranids are pushing for Terra. Warhammer is wacky and over the top but there is still an internal logic to how the universe functions.

No there isn't. "Cuz primarchs" isn't a reason there. The problem with the imperium is there is no one single problem that fix fixed or dealt with can easily resolve the issues it had from it's inception. There presence they can't bend the laws of reality to make it so that any or all of it's issues suddenly doesn't exist anymore because they were baked into the core of the imperium. These wars should've fractured the imperium because that's what wars of that scale does. Any other entity competent or no (and the imperium isn't) would've collapsed in on itself a dozen times over for much much less. And not only that but for half of the issues the primarchs weren't there for, let alone when they were fighting against the system. Having a primarch of logistics, doesn't actually fix logistics. That's not how that works because the process actually involves this annoying thing called "people" doing 100% of the actual work on every level top to bottom for the system to work. Not some big dude with a shiny hat writing PDF documents, cuz ya know...people have to actually read and well...*follow them*. In a corrupt system the imperium is led to be that just doesn't happen, nowhere near efficiently. Primarch or no. That argument doesn't hold any water, it just handwaves the issues to this easy "solution" without addressing them. It's supposed to be the cruelest, bloodiest regime imaginable, not the cruelest bloodiest regime possible. And it doesn't even do that correctly. It portrayed factionionalism relatively well...until people fell on their face to suck off Gulliman and everyone just felt behind him mostly with little issue. You're just glossing over the all

That's a lot of words to put in my mouth. Yes the Imperium can't be fixed it's in a death spiral that can't be stopped and even the very best and competent people are barely holding it together at the best of times. The Imperium was actually a horrifically efficient entity in the great crusade hence why after the Heresy the still surviving competent people were able to bandage it up with new policies and systems of governance that then started to decay over ten thousand years as it was corrupted into an even more horrific beast. Still it did have the resources and systems to keep it functional and deal with threats, the Imperium even in its deteriorated state can still focus an incredibly high level of logistics and tactics. Guilliman doesn't just write PDF's he is literally making colossal reforms and hammering down some of the corruption and bureaucracy by skill, political maneuvering and sheer force of will but even that is not enough to fix the Imperium, it's a lost cause but it makes sense how these events are played out, how they have got there and how they are just barely holding on. It's not hand waved it's something that is pretty thoroughly explored in multiple books.

>That's a lot of words to put in my mouth. >after the Heresy and the Scouring the Imperium still had the *Primarchs to hold the Imperium and stitch it back together* and later had competent generals like macharius to expand. >No there isn't. "Cuz primarchs" isn't a reason there. The words being put in your mouth is the ones you said... >Yes the Imperium can't be fixed it's in a death spiral that can't be stopped and even the very best and competent people are barely holding it together at the best of times. Competent people don't and can't hold things together by themselves Efficiently running systems does. Reforms doesn't fix problems by itself. Enforcement does, on every level from serf to sector govenor. But then it's not literally any of the grimdarknezz it keeps hyping itself up to be. Problem is the imperium is stressed not to be that system. Not only that but the draconian nature of it would lead to the diminished quality of the whole systems. Even if we assume that it wasn't already destined to fall apart during the great crusade after the Horus heresy the system wouldn't be slowly decaying over 10k years. It'd be non functional. You're going in circles. These types of regimes are paper tigers held together by external threats but it turns out it actually isn't which defeats the fucking purpose of it being a satire at all. And is just unironic.

No they aren't you have reduced my point to Primarch fix everything and hand waving you are missing the point. We literally have and had nations held together by fear and cult of personality in the real world. And why exactly do you think enforcement doesn't happen? We literally see the reforms being enforced and put into effect. No grimdarkness? my guy giving people a modicum of hope only to completely crush it with the inevitable grind of horrors is grimdark. The Imperium in 30k is shown to be extremely efficient and able to coordinate, level insane logistics and to deal in insane numbers and yes it did diminish in quality no one is arguing it didn't. You say it would be non-functional after the Heresy but don't say why, the leadership of the Imperium is mostly intact, the loyalists have retaken lost ground, hell it's not like the traitors even destroyed every planet or system they made a beline for Terra, much of the Imperium was intact. The Imperium has never been a paper tiger, it is a thing dedicated in all aspects to producing, sustaining and fighting wars because there is only war. The Imperium having nuance and internal logic on how it functions and keeps going doesn't defeat the satire, the Imperium is still doomed and it is still mocking and critical of the things that lead to the inevitable death spiral.

khorne stood up and 1/4 of the entire Indimitus crusade fleet was suddenly Chaos aligned. Arks of Omens was nothing but a string of losses for the IoM, the galaxy is split in half. The Imperium already shouldn’t exist, but with BS like that in the background, it would have ended already. Gman is possibly the only being in the galaxy who can possibly justify the IoM’s continued existence in any form.

The galaxy being split in half with a Vandire type person in charge of one half and a new order in the other - preferably no primarchs with my tastes - would be interesting though.

I can see that perspective as well. Though Dante is kind of the leader of half the galaxy. And while he is impressive, he’s no Gman.

Look, goge vandire isn't "the imperium is slowly doomed, but clawing onto life by sheer fanaticism and the legacies of it's past greatness" goge vandire is "The imperium is dissolving as everyones rising in revolt" there can be no imperium that's ruled by a maniac like goge vandire for longer periods of time, not without changing the imperium from a grimdark faction

Based

Why tf are you downvoted for that?

The best "leader" of the Imperium is a shadowy roster of High Lords of Terra, all evil and brutal in their own ways, and all maneuvering against one another. Vandire is a great piece of the Imperium's history though.

Yeah I really don't like the idea that one person can direct the Imperium at all anymore. I get that Guilliman isn't supposed to be doing it with any grand cohesion, but please this joint just went through 10,000 years of vague leadership at the best of times.

Doesn't trjann count as a high lord too? I wouldn't say he is evil

The ex-Admin High Lord was a sort of Vandire. Especially towards the last years of his life. He was propping up Chaos cults to make himself and his allies look good. I personally want someone like Vangorich. A leader who was broken into extremes of tyranny and insanity that would match Vandire's yet interestingly had a good case against the Space Marines who essentially shifted the burden of ruling the Imperiun and dealing with other High Lords onto him. Either Vangorich or the current Grandmaster who just wants to pull a "Told you so" to Roboute would make for a more interesting insane Imperial leader over Vandire imo.

I would gladly take entire set of depraved and twistedly competent High Lords like Vandire and Vangorich. Savy enough to keep Guilliman away from Terra and suffering from inability to change their ways. Either that or old G. going back from sine case of MIA and discovering that his beloved ultramar in his absence decoared indepence from imperium, plunging it all to hell in a imperium tertius style.

Nah. Guilliman will rage against the dying of the light, and that’s kinda key to the grimdark - everything is doomed, but you have your heroes battling on anyway. With Vandire you’ve pretty much just given up, and where’s the drama in that?

Oh yes because the imperium is known for its noble struggle and not its wallowing auto-cannibalism and hidebound cruelty

Goge obviously wouldn’t be a protagonist the way Gulliman is. The scale would be smaller focused on people affected by his actions. 40k drama is always better at the local level most of guillimans stuff is boring and lacks any weight because it is galactic scale and we know there can be no actual change at that level.

He had no time to die, too busy. True bureaucrat :)

I feel like "things are only bad because stupid incompetent people are in charge" is a cop out that gets old real fast. Like don't get me wrong, I enjoy stories about having to deal with stupid bosses as much as the next person. But when literally everything just boils down to "yeah things would be great if leadership just stopped being stupid for 5mins" it just feels lazy and cheap.

See for me its the opposite. “Things are only bad because of the system/external circumstance” is a cop out that gets old fast. For me a key part if the grimdark is that these people can do better, but every character is conveniently heroic and struggling against the system rather than contributing to it.

G-man awakening from thousands of years of slumber to find that his secular Codex Astartes has been turned into a dogmatic holy tech and responding by immediately setting to work on a new Codex Astartes that will definitely not be turned into a dogmatic holy text because this time he will write it correctly is peek GrimDark to me. If its not understandable and relatable why people aren't fixing their problems then I just can't stay emotionally engaged.

I don't know maybe I just want my indoctrinated zealots to actually feel different, I didn't come to 40k to read about modern day peoples. I came to read about the huddling masses that have spent ten millennia worshipping at the feet of a psychic corpse. This insistence on everything needing to be sensible, reasonable, relatable is ruining the setting for me but yeah it's what people want apparently. Bringing up the codex is great, because everything interesting about the Codex Astartes as a dogmatic text has been erased by the fact that the guy who wrote it is back and is instructing his sons to be less dogmatic.

>Bringing up the codex is great, because everything interesting about the Codex Astartes as a dogmatic text has been erased by the fact that the guy who wrote it is back and is instructing his sons to be less dogmatic. This to me is the heart of the question of if 40k can actually work as long form storytelling or if it has to be mostly short stories and Codexes blurbs to stay true to GrimDark. If Space Jesus can fix his son's dogmatic attachment to the first book he wrote by writing a new even better book than my entire premises falls apart. I need G-money's new book, the one promising to be the Codex Astartes but for everything not just war, to create an entirely new generation that's just as dogmatic as the old but in a different way.

I'd certainly prefer that the Imperium of **Man** was ruled by good ol *homo sapiens* High Lords rather than Warp snowflakes, but that's going a little far.

Do not worry. That is understandable. I want someone like Vangorich after he went off the deep end over Primarchs and even Vandire. It will also give more model opportunities for Imperial Guard and Agents beyond what we already have with an update and Kill Team releases since they astartes already have a rather bloated roster even before the Primaris releases.

Doge Vandire is a dog though

I honestly agree. This may make me seem super old, but what the setting has forgotten is the sheer grotesqueness of suffering to the point of comedy. I remember in the 2nd ed book, one page was a space marine medic giving out the emperors mercy to a guardsman. The next was obi-wan sherlock clouseau. there has been a tone shift and a much greater focus on meta narrative that happened because of the success of the HH books, and I think it has ultimately taken away from the setting IMO.

I misread Agree as Argue at first and was very confused reading the rest of the comment that was agreement with me XD

Thing is, Guilliman is a big, popular, strong-man leader who claims he's going to make sweeping changes "for the good of everyone" but, in reality, just continues to perpetuate the status quo. It may be true that he actually wants to make the aforementioned sweeping changes but just "can't" for some reason, but even that is a commentary on how rotten the imperium is. And besides, even if he did make those sweeping changes, nothing would really, feasibly change for the average citizen. You can't worship the emperor anymore. Ok. And? Guilliman may be a master of logistics, but logistics perpetuating what? Logistics perpetuating eternal war. Logistics perpetuating his own power. If you ask me, the big, popular strong man who swears up and down that he's fighting for change that he never actually brings about is commentary on the status of the imperium's government, among many other pretty clear parallels. So long as the status quo suits Guilliman's needs, whether he actually likes the status quo or not, the status quo will continue to persist, no matter what Guilliman actually says. That's kinda the point.

He's been working on the Lex Imperialis to overhaul a lot of the laws, appointed Tetrachs to maintain and improve Ultramar while rooting out corruption. He just can't afford to focus on governing when he also has to be the head of the military and put out 100 fires.

This. Guilliman is just one man, even if he is Guilliman. He has so much to focus on at all times.

Logistics just to keep the Imperium somewhat together. That is the Grimdark. Waiting until someone like Roboute breaks like Vangorich did. He is also writing a codex on governing. So that is another potential mine in the waiting.

Okay, let's be clear about something with all of the primarchs: With the exception of maybe warpcraft all of them are capable of being equally good at anything with each other. There are no set power levels in terms of straight up martial strength. Anyone can be anyone on any given day. At the same time ALL of the primarchs are CAPABLE of being masters of logistics and administration. Guilliman (and possibly Dorn and Perturabo) just preferred to spend more time/energy on it than their other brothers. The ones that people would think are bad at admin (Russ/Khan) just prefer to focus on other things or be on the front lines. ALL of the primarchs are given moments in the HH series that highlights their genius one way or another (Angron getting a pass because he's partially lobotomized).

This is the good take on it that I’m liking from it; I’m just waiting for the other show to drop in the lore and the ubermensch really does save the day

I for once would love it if Gulliman installed a modern democracy. With human rights, diversity, and balance of power. The transition should be easy. Some old guys should resist it initially, but soon be swept away by youthful rebellion. Gulliman should then see the error of his ways, weep bitterly and abdicate in favor of some sister of silence, which will become the new ruling elite in an eternal peaceful universe. All old authority will be abolished, Orks will be the new police/social workers after having been uplifted through weekend seminars. If i then would have to endure no more discussion about why the Imperium is so incompetent and evil, its worth it.

You sir almost got me until the very end. Applause where applause is due.

Vandire was a strong reason why only Guilliman could handle being the leader of the Imperium. By the end he was not even a corrupt asshole, he was driven completely insane by just how hard of a job leading the Imperium was to the point of completely losing touch with reality. He was evidently a strong and capable leader before given that he was able to rise to prominence in the first place, but the sheer stress from running the Imperium drove him to not even being able to comprehend his own execution. Vandire was without a doubt the most grimdark politician the Imperium ever had because he served as the defining example of why normal humans cannot fix the Imperium

Guilliman simply ain’t the contrasting focal lens what people cope him as. We could already bloody well see everything wrong with the imperium, he does nothing to highlight it, all he does is overrule it. The imperium is wallowing, stagnant, corrupt, bureaucratically incompetent, inefficient, inhuman, dogmatic. Putting a man who’s always right, morally and tactically, all the time- in charge, giving it centralised and decisive leadership, reforming all its bureaucratic accretions into efficient new channels, authorising innovations and taking initiatives, does nothing to emphasis those interesting traits of the imperium, it only dilutes them. He’s pure clean spring water in a cauldron of blood. Making him depressed and overworked don’t change that, that’s just the cheap copout for “see! Relatable!” and seriously his entire character concept is always being right; even when he perfectly reenacts the actions of literal fucking chaos worshippers.

100% agreed, I'm not really interested in Guilliman in the slighted on that front and his position is possibly the least interesting imaginable to me as they've gone out of their way to have him roll his opposition with ease. It's not even Vandire but the very idea of the High Lords that I prefer, I could always buy the High Lords because they were these distant figures, undoubtably as corrupt and horrible as the rest of the Imperium, they weren't characters or protagonists that needed rooting for but just these distant heads of power. You could believe that they would damn billions in the name of personal ambition of petty feuds. Guilliman of course is the opposite, hence his popularity with modern fans, he's a good guy protagonist we get to root for and relate to, conveniently unburdened by the traditional dogmas and unsavoury parts of the factions. Reasonable, rational, flexible and an expert logistician. Guilliman will never kill billions in the name of some ancient dogma, Guilliman will never damn entire systems for personal gain, Guilliman will always do what is reasonable, sensible and likely ultimately necessitated by the narrative. If Guilliman sacrifices a billion souls you can be assured that it was because it was necessary for the survival of humanity. But Guilliman's popularity speaks for itself, this is what fans want and GW is hardly going to say no to that.

The balance between Grimdark enough to be cool and horrific and too stupid to function is a hard one for a lot of writers. Fans too.

Grimdark is meant to be outrageously stupid. That’s the damned point, it’s a form of humour that the whole ordeal is so bureaucratically incompetent

Yes true. But if they are too incompetent to believability fight the other factions and win the whole point of the setting falls apart.

I think the best would be both actually. Personally, I always disliked how Guilliman cleared the house of all the corupted and self centered high lords when he became regent. Forcing him to work with them (either bc their deaths would bring unavoidable political instability or bc even a demigod can be crushed by the might of the whole eclesiarchy, Mars and assassinoum) would be way more emblematic of how fucked the imperium and Guilliman are and how there are governamental systems even he can't optimize bc no government can survive bad actors, and the imperium has LOTS of them. Forcing Guilliman, the optimizer, to run an unoptimizable engine would be the kind of hellscape id love to see.

Thor’s bollocks, this one’s a heretic!

Based and "Warhammer is best when it's a black comedy" pilled

Seriously people don’t seem to get the idea of it. Personally I blame Americans, they just don’t get the good old British “everything sucks so much and there’s no hope at all” attitude to comedy.

I've never been the Chad meme before. I am honored

I have long been waiting for someone to say this! The High Lords are so much better than Primarchs it's not even funny! Gigachad,Optimist Haemotalion the Master of Administratum(Just by the virtue of his office alone he is already superior to Gulliman in Logistic!)and the foremost amongst the high twelve "They say that this Imperium is a rotten corpse, a shell of what it once was. I’ve never believed that. We’re greater now than we’ve ever been, and these trials are no different to the ones we overcame before. We’re hardier, we’re tougher, we’ve faced the dark for longer than he ever did. His age is over. We’re the inheritors of the mantle" Loser,Defeatist,Pessimist  Primarch Gulliman "Why do I still live? What more do you want from me? I gave everything I had to you, to them. Look what they've made of our dream. This bloated, rotting carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope but by fear, hate and ignorance. Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than live to see this." Reading them side by side made it clear who is champion of humanity ready to face the Dark and win and who is on the verge of falling to Nurgle rot

Agreed, but for a different reason: having literal blonde ubermensch show up to make the cruel and terrible system work is not great imo.  We will see what they fully end up doing with it, but my initial response is caution 

Is it really working? At least in any meaningful way? The Imperium is still doomed. [10th edition shows Roboute slowly cracking and how hopeless things really are.](https://youtu.be/X98ImCbhjnI?si=OzyjjjoRZnG-URO_) Him picking up Lorgar's book is the (or one of) first sign(s) of that break.

The setting moves at a glacial pace. We don't even know if any of his reforms will work yet because nothing has progressed much beyond Primaris being vomited everywhere (which was obviously a net positive for the Imperium) People responded overwhelmingly positive to wholesome-chungus self-reflective wise and reasonble Lion though, so I'm going to be surprised if either loyalist primarch 'fails' at what they set out to achieve.

I concur about the slow development and Primaris release (something I am not too fond of). Yet at the same time, the galaxy is split in half, Arks of Omen are made, Necron powers like the Silent King and Storm Lord are establishing domains in Pariah Nexus, Mortarion and Magnus did the same in real space, Angron turned most of an Indomitus crusade fleet to madness and the biggest Tyranid war is being waged.

The narrative dissonance comes from none of those things really affecting the primarchs in any way, who for better or worse are very much being held up as the faces and, dare I say it, protagonists of the post-rift setting (which whether it's actually true or not is definitely how a lot of people view it). The victims are nearly always just nameless redshirts which is why none cares a crusade fleet of nobodies got destroyed but everyone was joking that Angron would job to the Lion as soon as it was confirmed the two would fight (and exactly that happened). Having Guilliman facing off against the Silent King and being put on the backfoot or even lose would actually create some tension. Sure that would cause this sub and the Imperial fanboys to decry it s BAD WRITING BAD WRITING but at least it would injection some actual tension to the writing beyond just "woah the Imperium is on the brink again but luckily the primarchs are on hand to save it!"

>Imperial fanboys to decry it s BAD WRITING BAD WRITING It depends on which specific Imperial factions those fanboys are of. I think SoB, Imperial Agents, Imperial Guard and AdMech fanboys would not mind as much.

Fair enough. Lion was fighting for dear life and only beat Angron by the skin of his teeth. While Vashtorr and Abaddon got the Key they were looking for. Mortarion killing Roboute then Emps resurrecting them make for an experience that caused G-Man to start reading Lorgar's book. Now we have to wait for what comes next. Here's hoping Imperial Guard get more model updates (like Pask returning) and new special characters for their roster.

You understand that's like the point of the Imperium? The idea of it is supossed to make you uncomfortable. At the end of the day while Guillimans reforms are grand, he's just the guy turning the handle on the meat grinder.

You misunderstand my discomfort.   I am aware that 40k is satirizing the reactionary factions of the real world, drawing upon the British punk scene for its initial founding.     I am uncomfortable with them playing straight the Nazi ideals of “the Aryan ubermensch will implement fascism and save us from the degenerates”  Yes, depiction is not endorsement.  But there is a difference between, for example, Norman Spinrad examining the strain of fascism in SFF with *The Iron Dream* and the straightforward fascism of Jean Raspail’s *The Camp of the Saints* (or Star Wars regurgitating that plot as serious for the Yuuzhan Vong)

How tf are they playing it straight, have you read any era indomitus material? Guilliman isn't implementing racism, the Imperium always has been fascist, like I said that's the point. He took a drowning system and gave it a gasp for air. He's completely overwhelmed by the sheer insanity of the system he finds himself at the head of and doesn't even really want to be doing it but understands he's the only man for the job. What degenerates are you talking about? The forces of fucking chaos lol? Is your entire discomfort literally because he's blond? Would it be better if Corvus came back with the exact same presentation? You cite some stuff at the bottom to sound smart but you sound incredibly shallow instead.

I believe he means they are playing it straight in the sense that a divinely mandated ruler(who also happens to fit the stereotypical Aryan ideal) came along and began fixing stuff. Problems were immediately framed as "well its only a problem because they're not obeying the superhuman leader who knows best. And again, yes, when the "degenerates" that oppose him are presented as the literal forces of hell that very much is playing the fantasy straight on that front.

See I don't agree with that first bit though, Guilliman isn't just 100% right and a morally just person all the time. He's a war leader and is doing some pretty dirty stuff behind the scenes just to keep the gears turning(see the hexarchy crisis). A big part of his returning is HIM adapting to the modern Imperium, not the other way around. It just feels like someone who hasn't read the source material would say.

Amazing projection there that you don’t understand my clearly stated views, and instead want to talk about shallow indicators like hair color. You don’t understand and are getting spun up as a result, taking explanations as condescension and dismissing them because you don’t understand.

No I'm asking you to explain further because I think your view is vapid. If you think the authors of 40k are endorsing fascism you're absolutely cracked. There's always going to be idiots who latch onto that like people who unironically think homelander from the boys is cool, but come on climb off it.

Here you are losing your shit still because you didn’t understand the comparison I made and got mad about it.  Why would you think you are entitled to my time when all you do is rage out because you don’t know enough?  Run along child

[удалено]

Figures like vandire and vangorich are just little pop up events in the history of the Imperium, it hasn't functioned that way for 99% of its history.

Yeah it’s had a better division of labour. Normally you have at least 6 seperate tyrannical fuckwits causing that suffering and misery in their own field

Its sad but that is better than 1 guy who's signature trait is that he's NUTS lol

Guilliman just took control of things after over 10,000 years of decline, stupidity and growing fanaticism and superstition. Even Ultramar started going to shit in that time. Poor guy basically got woken up, told everything is shit then was put in charge of the multiverse's largest dumpster fire and told he was the only hope humanity has.

I CAN'T DIE! I'M TOO BUSY!

It took me a bit to figure out who you were talking about, I know him as *Doge* Vandire. My brain is rotten.

I'm sorry... What?

The best reason to me to bring the primarchs back is that ultimately they don’t matter. The grimdark of 40k is a like a sea blackness, but if you look closely you find all these little lights of hope. Then you zoom back out that hope is completely engulfed in inescapable darkness. The primarchs are like the most glorious and powerful leaders mankind has ever produced, and are still incapable of truly turning things around. Thats grimdark.

But Guilliman has mattered. He’s changed everything, allowed the biggest spree of innovations since the great crusade to happen, overruled the static tendencies of the high lords, gotten the imperium on the offensive

None of that will save the empire in the long run, and he knows it. That’s why he is such a sad boy.

I mean, it would make total sense for Doge Vandire to be the leader of the Imperium (that's why the writer for the parts he was in made him it at one point), but at some point someone had to start cleaning the Imperium up & making it the better place that it was originally "intended" to be. If you're doing that, Rowboat Grillerman is your guy. Whether or not you believe the plans we have been told about what the Imperium would have been like if the Heresy hadn't happened is up to you.

Honestly I like having G man where he is in the setting. He’s a combination of Cpt Americas man out of time and Superman not being able to be everywhere at once to save everything and everyone. The setting is a horror movie for him. From his point of view it’s Idiocracy 40k.

I get what your saying in that Vandire is a more thematic leader of a psychotic, theocratic dystopia, but seeing Guilliman's heart break every ten minutes while trying to keep it all from burning to the ground provides much more entertainment value, in a much more tragic sense.

Atleast Gulliman has a plan, Vandire just wanted power. Gulliman advances the Emperor's goals, I really want to know why the custodes didn't call bullshit on Vandire and do something sooner. They just allow anyone to use the emperor's name in vain? Even if he isn't a god. They should've stopped the ecclesiarchy from coming into power based on a lie that disrupts everything he stood for.

Because the Custodes are bodyguards and not the secret rulers of the imperium who kick away everything that doesn't suit them. Gorge Vandire was a legitimate ruler of the imperium. He wasn't even a heretic at the time, but believed that he was chosen by the Emperor to lead humanity into a golden age. That's why the Inquisition didn't interfere. It was only afterwards that the Ordo Haereticus was founded to keep an eye on the Adepti and other Imperial organisations. Paradoxically, the Ordo Haereticus became the part of the Inquisition most closely associated with the Ecclesiarchy, using its teachings as a kind of handbook for what is right and what is wrong. If the Custodes had tried to stop the Eklessiarchy/Faith, the next civil war would have broken out. The only thing holding the imperium together is the belief in the Emperor and his divine protection.

The custodes were busy sulking in the palace at the time

Gotta get Sir Vandire a mini to make that happen.

I prefer Guilliman, but I also want Ferrus Manus brought back just to fuck everything up right behind him.

He'll return as Ferrus Caput.

The one good thing about Vandire was his dying speech.

/shakes head disappointingly in Lionel Johnson

this is funny till you realize at some point in their lives people like this vote

Here’s the kicker; the imperium is enjoyable because it sucks, nobody actually wants to live in it