After years of learning the lore of this setting piece by piece from random threads and posts...

After years of learning the lore of this setting piece by piece from random threads and posts, I decided to actually read some lore on it. I gotta say, this is the most nihilistic look at existence I've ever seen. The entire premise of the universe is a pointless struggle with the inevitable, and it effects all parties. Nobody will ever win, nobody will ever lose, and even the people who it seems you're supposed to cheer for are merciless, hopeless, and joyless machines of infinite repetition in the face of clear obsolescence, toward an end that nobody has any way of actually seeing through. When I started, at the beginning appropriately, things seemed alright. I can get behind the Emperor, he seems to have been a cool guy. But then the Heresy starts, a concept that before now I thought was just a humorous jab at the motives of humanity being idealistic and fueled by feverish dogma, and boy was I wrong. Everything goes to shit, and what's worse is that it's a clearly unavoidable step in the history of any species within the 40k universe as evidenced by the Eldar, and no doubt eventually by the Tau. Not the worst of all is that it's pretty much just Tolkien fantasy re-skinned again, but with Dwarves swapped for Tyrannids. All that said, I see the appeal of a universe flooded with endless war between heavy metal album art mixed together with 1980s sci-fi aesthetic, and I guess if you want to keep a series going indefinitely, the only way to do it is to set things up so that nothing changes, and nothing ever will. If anyone can think of a bleaker universe to want to imagine yourself in, please give it a shot.

PS, there's like a hundred something known chapters of the Space Marines, and only like four of them are cool.

Orks are the only one that have fun. The galaxy was made for them.

Did you not get the whole GRIMDARK thing?

>Dwarves swapped for Tyrannids
They had dwarves. They were called squats. Then they got erased.

Tyranids are their own thing.

>Dwarves swapped for Tyrannids
Please explain. Please.

>but with Dwarves swapped for Tyrannids
Is this an attempt at swapping discussion for (you)s?

Yeah I'm not getting this, either.

>Nobody will ever win, nobody will ever lose

That's because Warhammer 40k is a setting, not a story.

/thread/

It's definitely skewed grim-dark in the past decade or so but I always really liked the imperium as a representation of future humanity. When 40K started sci-fi was dominated by a view of humans having somehow matured a shed away all of our worst failings. Star Trek is the best example with the humans seeming to have gotten past ignorance and prejudice and where even their soldiers stop to argue moral philosophy in the middle of battle.

40K is taking all of the worst of humanity and turning up to 11. A galactic theocratic totalitarian fascist feudalism that practices eugenics that only stays united due to wild xenophobia for all things non-human and only survives because of their willingness to subject the vast majority of people to brutal serfdom or simply burn them up as just another strategic resource (men must die so that man endures)

This is the reason I always find it hilarious when people complain that there are no female space marines. Of all the horrible things the Imperium does the biggest complaint is that their genetically engineered child soldier warrior monks are an all boys club?

Less obvious than some, but still a troll thread.

Troll threads can be fun when done right

The real world as imagined by those who believe in ghosts, possessions and demons.

Holy Christ, what a horrifying universe to live in. At least in 40K possessions, ghosts and demons are rare and 0.00000000001% of the population ever experience them, but for the real world it's every fucking month with relatives fucking haunting you and psychotic spirits taking control of meat puppets to kill and stalk the living for no fucking reason.

In 40K, your soul is usually destroyed once it enters the warp, but apparently here it lingers for all eternity in a permanent, hellish purgatory surrounded by the living and endless march of time, which evidently drive you mad.

In the 40K universe, every dead guardsman is working towards something that ultimately benefits every other sapient being in the universe, but on Earth, there is no reason. We are born, live, experience needless pain, then die and achieve nothing in the grand scheme.

Real life is far more nihilistic, depending on your point of view/delusions.

That's the joke.

I feel that you are not at all familiar with Warhammer in general.

Also: the entire setting is a parody or an irony of the whole fantasy concept. Most fantasy settings have these various "good" race fighting these various "evil" races, but the good races getting along for little reason while the evil races just being senselessly evil. Warhammer mixes it up by having the good races butcher each other as much as the others, while the evil races are civil enough to actually live among the rest.

And then there is the Chaos, which is there to fuck everything over.

Most of Warhammer is intentionally over the top, just to revel in the silliness of the whole thing. There are no really "good guys" and no real happy ending. That's the point. It's a parody of the whole "good races get along and have a wonderful kingdom" trope.

Warhammer 40,000 is much the same, but IN SPACE and with the constant "War, war never changes."

You mean a big circle-jerk of showing the guy who was intentionally wrong how wrong he was? Or when you successfully troll a bunch of retards?

Death of soul isn't a mercy, I'd rather endure eternal torment then not exist

Are you an extreme masochist?

I mean, you say that now likely as the average muddle class fa/tg/uy who has had little understanding of torment behond running out of hotpockets and having to face the bright sun.

Orks reproduce by dying, so of course a galaxy full of war is as enjoyable as a big sex orgy for them.

Both when people are actually funny

>Any thread I don't like is a troll thread

It's a setting for a miniature wargame, you're supposed to tell your own story in it. It's not and never will be a narrative.

I stopped at 'boy was I wrong'...

They're actually constantly reproducing, they just let off an extra huge load when they die.

There was a time when they really did only reproduce at the end of their lives, but GW seemed keen to move past this fluff. For some reason.

>and only like four of them are cool
Which ones

...

>Orks are the only one that have fun

U wot m8?

Not OP but blood angels,minotaurs, exorcist, and legion of the dammed

Wait this makes no sense. The way this is written, the population of Orks would be declining constantly

He looks like a strapping lad

Experiencing time from an unending perspective is by far one of the better forms of eternal torment. If you had your genetalia constantly mutilated then regenerated for all time, then yeah, I would rather just not exist

When you get down to it, as the setting is right now, Chaos is one of the only ones winning because their only goal is eternal war, suffering and strife. As long as they don't go full retard and end the Long War (which Abaddon might actually be close to doing if he ever takes Cadia), they're set.

The Orks are also in the same boat.

Yeah, imagine how many babies each oldboy would have to be popping out to make up for it.

>The Snake-Bite Orks suffer the birthing urge more than any other clan, and are prone to wandering off into the wilderness to give birth. They produce large litters of whelps who are toughened by the strange initiation rites of the clan.

It didn't coin the term grimdark for nothing.

Then they got put back
You could use 30k imperial army rules with appropriate options to represent

Pretty much this. Abby talks a big game but if they ever do conquer their way to Terra, shit will fall apart pretty quick. Imagine being the guy that has to tell the World Eaters that the long war is over and they don't have enemys left to fight.

This. 40k ain't got nothing on the world as seen by Jack Chick.

Don't think even chaos can override GW want to push out the same shit. They are not going to AoS 40k because of how much of a loss it was

Crimson Fists, Carcharodons, Grey Knights, Legion of the Damned

>psst
>hey
>you didn't hear it from me but
>I heard Khorgorax Goreblood called you a faggot

Not him, but I feel the same way. Existing in any sense is a far better deal for me, no matter what torture I might go through. Then I'm just done, gone, permanently, forever. I don't ever get to think or feel or just be ever again.

Citation needed