Progressive for an Imperial

As a long time Dark Heresy player & lorefag about to go into Ascension i want to ask your opinion Veeky Forums. In the grimdarkness of the 41st millennium how can you be actually progressive though not heretically so?
If you would joke answers & serious answers at the same time.

In what respect? There are planets that are fairly similar in some respects to modern day Earth in regards to their social and governmental systems but otherwise are aware they are just part of a greater whole that is the Imperium and as long as they pay their taxes, give up their psychers, and be ready to put up an army at a moments notice then the Imperium gives fuck all how you run the planet sometimes even perferring certain situations if it means higher yields.

Well each planet can absolutely be "progressive" with its own social system, problems only occur on a larger scale

Be humane.

This here is the answer. Your planet can be a utopia but in the grand scheme of things must submit to the imperium. As you know, open dissent (like trying to progress empire-wide values hint hint) results in shit getting completely fucked up, so I would say that empire-wide progressivism simply isn't possible

Besides, what sort of progressive ideas would you try to push to the greater imperium?

"Hey guys, what if we tried to actively make peace with the Xenos?"

"Oh hey, I didn't remember hiring anew secretary but good to meet you! Looking forward to your help on my new peace treaty with the Tau!"

Well to clarify i mean for a sector or the imperium at large. On a small scale it's easily achievable but for larger organizations & unions it seems that it may not be the case. Many marine chapter for example vary wildly in their own treatment of worlds within their domain, though that would be owed to the deference that they are given. Perchance in an entire sector of imperial space?

Though ultimately it seems that perhaps if it doesn't contradict the words of the high lords & Emperor nor paint a target upon your back perhaps that's the limit.

You also have to remember that such organizations as the Mechanicus and the Ecclisarchy will also deeply influence the culture of an entire sector in many ways. Really this goes for any Organization that has an over representation so enacting change will usually have to go through them or against them

If you tried to pull that off in my campaign, I'd have you burned at the stake pretty quickly.

More akin to subjugating alien species as workers and slaves as opposed to killing them outright. Or perhaps working to better equip forge world workers with protective gear so that a larger portion of skilled workers grows instead of sending more nude illiterate fools to lift molten slag with their bare hands. That sort of thing. Progressiveness mayhaps more in forms of efficiency than "plays nice". Instead of wasting all these human lives on pointless honor based executions we could send them into the maws of our enemies as human waves as IG substitutes to regain their honor while preserving the numbers of trained soldiers.

Well Cawl built an entirely new weapon.
Have power, and you can do whatever you want really.
Look at Planetary Governors. The fluff specifically states that as long as they pay their tithes, they can do whatever they want. So that already allows progress. There's even planets which do that in the fluff, like some techno-savvy guys I forgot the name of.

So are you looking more for a progressive as in making everything more noblebright or more efficient and less grimderp. Unfortunetly the setting is mired in such a backward slide you pretty much aren't allowed to make a change unless you're a high lord or an ultra smurf commander.A theme of the setting is endless gridlock & decay, mankind always failing more & more while being directly contradictory every update or so. The best you can hope for is making things slightly better for the locals & then be assassinated because some noble's wine was 3 seconds late.

In the distant past we grew idle and let the thinking machines do our fighting for us and what did we get for our troubles? What makes you think enslaving Xenos will bring about a better result.

While men can fall to ruin and turn traitor ultimately a human is a billion times more trustworthy than a Xenos of any sort. There is nearly nothing that can't be accomplished with faith and training and only a human could understand and appreciate the honor and sacrifice of the Emperor and seek to emulate it.

Well Cawl can do it because, like you said, he sits at the top of the power structure for the Mechanicus. Point of being is they don't disallow innovation but don't allow it to run rampent because 1) What you are doing the ancestors did already 2) Go to hard and to fast and you get demons.

Derp it can't only suffering & all actions can only be worthless in 40k.

The real answer though is to essentially build influence on individual planets most powerful houses & have imperial planetary goveners of similar viewpoint appointed. As long as planets keep paying their tithes to the imperium & aren't hosting & inviting heresy they're pretty much free to run on their own. The issue is really that so many completely grim for the sake of being grim worlds exist is that reason exactly.

The Imperium at large can't give a shit about a few billion mewling slaves being fed into a human meat powered generator if it gets the tithe paid & isn't heretical.

>Or perhaps working to better equip forge world workers with protective gear so that a larger portion of skilled workers grows instead of sending more nude illiterate fools to lift molten slag with their bare hands.

Where was that ever a thing?

> Instead of wasting all these human lives on pointless honor based executions we could send them into the maws of our enemies as human waves as IG substitutes to regain their honor while preserving the numbers of trained soldiers.

Ships are precious and scarce. Why waste transports and escorts moving untrained cannon fodder to a distant war zone when there's already a lack of ships for moving trained and equipped soldiers and supplies?

Still Planetary Governors legit allow anything.
The Imperium gives no shits-as long as tithes are paid.
Get as progressive as you want, baby!

>The Imperium at large can't give a shit about a few billion mewling slaves being fed into a human meat powered generator if it gets the tithe paid & isn't heretical.
>if it gets the tithe paid & isn't heretical
>tithe paid & isn't heretical
>human meat powered generator
>isn't heretical
>isn't heretical
>ISN'T HERETICAL

I would say that it's PRETTY FUCKIN' HERETICAL SON

The dude wants way more than a single planet

Hrrm.....
Systems can occasionally get system governors.
However, this makes the place a bit more of a target to check over soooo.......
At that point it really depends.
The galaxy is HUGE, so I'm sure there's entire minor sectors doing their thing.
But keyword is minor.
OP won't have luck on a major scale.
At that point, you need Cawl/High Lord/Major Inquisitor/Big Chapter Master/Lord Solar Macharious levels of power to have progress without another inquisitor screeching "HERESY"

>Ships are precious and scarce. Why waste transports and escorts moving untrained cannon fodder to a distant war zone when there's already a lack of ships for moving trained and equipped soldiers and supplies?

>Implying Penal Legions aren't already a thing.

>Implying Penal Legions aren't already a thing.

Penal troopers are trained.