As someone relatively new to warhammer 40k, I don't know much about the actual lore behind the game...

Some big red faggot didn't listen to his dad and now everything is fucked.

Too late.

Humanity has been in a dark age for the last 10,000 years.

The countless human inhabited worlds of the galaxy are united under the Imperium of Man, and by the worship of their leader, a godlike being known only the Emperor. The Emperor was once a man, but is now a skeletal husk clinging to life support. Even in this state, the Emperor's power is so great that he maintains the Astromicon, a psychic lighthouse by which ships navigate through the Warp.

The Warp is a dimension of emotion and psychic energy that makes FTL travel possible, but also gives rise to the evil Chaos Gods, whose daemon and mortal servants emerge to attack the Imperium. Humanity also must endure the assault of various alien races, and of traitors and rogues within the Imperium itself.

Nearing collapse, the Imperium manages to fight on by the might of it's ruthless inquisitors, it's vast fleets and armies, and by it's augmented superhuman warriors, the Space Marines.

Middle ages meets 80's hair metal in space.

Could you try and describe it like a culture I guess? What is a crusade? What are orks? What is the religion like? Laws? Like how you'd describe a modern culture?

That's a great summary of the setting! Many thanks user!

Alright well we'll start with bare bones and then I can elaborate as you ask questions.

Imperium first. It revolves around the God Emperor of Mankind. You've probably seen the artwork. Essentially the Emperor is an Immortal being that was made by a collection of shamans combining their souls through ritual suicide way back in the day.

He lived among us, silently observing and guiding man, until shit hit the fan. In a dark hour of barbarism he revealed himself and reunited the earth. With the cradle of mankind solidly under his control he looked out to the stars and mankind's former holdings therein. He started by reclaiming mars and joining it into his polity.

He planned a great crusade to reclaim the galaxy, and in order to do so he created twenty super human primarchs to lead his forces. However while the primarchs were still growing they were taken and scattered by the Chaos Gods. They all ended up on different planets. Emps had to start his crusade without them, though he kept an ear to the ground for stories that would lead him to them and reclaimed them as he went.

Eventually he recovered 18 of the twenty. Horus, the emperors favored son was made warmaster and put over his brothers, and Emps left the crusade in his hands so he could go back to Terra and work on a science project. Horus was displeased by this, and felt abandoned. He was later corrupted by the Chaos Gods. Lead by Horus half of the Primarchs and their legions turned on the Emperor. They were stopped, but not before the Emperor himself was wounded unto death. He was placed onto the Golden Throne, and is sustained by sacrifice.

With emps out of the picture the primarchs ran things for a bit, but eventually they all disappeared for one reason or another. Over thousands of years the Imperium changed and stagnated. The Emperor came to be worshiped as a God, something he had never wanted. Now humanity is beset on all sides by aliens and traitors.

Grandiose user! Many thanks!

Read the 40k wiki and then the 1d4chan wiki, divide one by the other, and that's about what a lot of people think is canon, or would like to be Canon. The "fun, meme-filled 40k," as it were.

Note that a lot of anons will hate on this... but it doesn't really stop the other anons from posting about it for nostalgia's sake.

Then take a look at all of the various AUs we've made over the years. 40k is really what you make of it. It's a long, rich story that begs the "What If..." out of every event.

Also watch TTS and treat it as the Robot Chicken of 40k Canon.

Everything I've said here is probably false, but also something a few of us believe.

To be honest... Canon's fucked.

youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

youtube.com/watch?v=cZc6cr6G2E4

>Everything I've said here is probably false, but also something a few of us believe.
In other words, don't be like this user.

>mfw I agree with everything on this list
I can't seem to be able to express my own emotions at the moment, have a cool pic

Imperial culture varies a bit world from world. Catachan is different from Cadia, which is different from Vostroya, which is different from Krieg. However all Imperial worlds have certain aspects of culture in common. They all worship the God Emperor, though the Imperial cult may take different forms on different worlds. They hate mutants, Psychers, and Xenos. Those are religious tenants.

Concerining law enforcement the Imperiums law men, the Arbites, are based on Judge Dredd. That should give you an Idea of what law is like. Quite frankly the Imperium is a Fascist and brutal institution, though many will say that is what is required to survive in universe.

Orks are...interesting. I'm not gonna go into the whole backstory, because it's confusing, but essentially they were engineered to be used as soldiers by a race called the old ones. They actually grow from spores. They are fixated on violence. Their leaders are the largest and the strongest orks.

A crusade is exactly what it sounds like. The Imperium is a very religious institution to put it mildly, so they do declare holy wars.

40k is fantastic space (elves, orcs and evil wizards) gone maximum 80s. It robocop, judge dread, Dune, heavy metal and lord of the rings. The offical answer to Canon conflicts is "yes". It's about your dudes (your models and the flavor you make up) being as metal as possible. Some times it's edgier that a box of razors and some times it's dumb but fun.

Typically an evil action of a crazy person in a normal movie is a calm well though out plan in 40k. Burning planets and killing everything on it is sometimes the best course of action. The imperium is place of ignorance and blind devotion, anathema to contemporary society,these traits are invaluable to humanity's endurance.

Don't believe these posters both of their opinions are wrong. I want OP to keep a closed mind about everything.

"An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded "

Alright OP, any other questions?

While I do like the quote, and the wiki's are not necessarily trustworthy, it is a resource he can use to get started. As long as he takes them with a grain of salt and cross references they can help him get the gist of things. Though I will say that reading the fan works is a terrible idea. They are fun, but most definitely no good for understanding the setting.

That's an imperial thought process isn't it?

I mean, the standard boilerplate intro to nearly every 40k book is a good starting summary:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

What is thought process of imperials? I read somewhere that some guardsmen just act like regular soldiers, if not a bit religious, while others are full on wrath of God types, is there a certain line?

Since people have given already a bunch of Info about the Imperium, here's some basics on Xenos.

>Orks
already got the reason down why Orks are orky. They were engineered to for war not only on a physical, but on a mental level. Fighting is the only worthwile thing they can think of. Conquering is worthless, once there is no one to fight the Orks will either continue on to the next battlefield or switch over to infighting until another Waaghboss is able to unite them for the next large war.
Their talent for jurryrigged technology is not based on knowledge or understanding. Instead
some orks are outright born with rudimentary blueprints in their brains and the urge so salvage anything that can make weapons, vehicles, spaceships or anything else a proper army needs. From then on it's just duct tape and firm belief.
Orks reproduce from spores that infest the earth, drawing nutrients and growing squigs and grots first. Once those minor orkoids have prepared the area they will provide food and workforce for the actual fighting orks, who will concentrate on aquiring weapons and killing everything that's not an Ork. Once you kill a greenskin they release spores that will some day later on grow into new Ork-Fungi.
If you cleanse a planet of every last Ork, but miss even a single spore, you'll have Orks there again. Maybe not for 10 or 100 years, but some day there'll be a squig, then a grot, then an Ork and then a WAAAAAAGH! (which is both the warcry and name for large gatherings of Orks that leave their planet to go crump some gits)

There are many, many, many, MANY factions of imperials, and each of them has a slightly different worldview. You've got the frothing fanatics, the scared-out-of-their-wits dudes clutching their holy symbols tight and their lasguns tighter, the heavily brainwashed dutiful-to-the-death Krieg regiments, the techpriests who everyone pretends worship the Emperor but really just pretend that the Emperor is an aspect of the tech-god so that their alliance with the Imperium goes more-or-less smoothly, the Inquisitors (you can probably guess what they're like), the vast legions of bureaucrats, the desperate huddled masses hoping for the Emperor's protection and/or hoping they won't get stepped on by His servants, and everything in between.

1d4chan user here. I prefer the Pratchett version:
"The problem with an open mind is that people come along and try and put things in it."

But I'm also of the opinion that learning 40k Canon is really the first step in enjoying 40k lore. 40k is... well, it's literally a Miniatures setting. The story behaves much as a miniature does. There is technically a "Right" way to assemble the figure and paint it, and enjoy it as is, but there's also the fun of kitting it out and really making it your own, forging your own chapter and having fun with focusing on your guys. Sure, some paints needed to be thinned, and others haven't aged well with newer stuff... but it doesn't stop it from being ours.

Honestly, a good way to learn about the 40k setting in an afternoon is to go on a wiki-walk. Look up some faction or other on Lexicanum or 1d4chan, and go where the links take you.

I don't think it's 100% accurate, but the TTS history lesson episodes were pretty good for this. Start at 10:27 in the first episode for the actual history part. This proceeds to around 9:25 of the second episode.
youtube.com/watch?v=FyeoBm5QFnA&t=868s&list=PLyiDf91_bTEgnBN0jAvzNbqzrlMGID5WA&index=19
youtube.com/watch?v=UUAAM1WE3Ng&t=579s&list=PLyiDf91_bTEgnBN0jAvzNbqzrlMGID5WA&index=20

This video is also alright:
youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

NOWS DIS 'ERE GUY SPEAKS DA TRUD, WEE'B ORKS AN WEE'B DA BESTEST AT SMASHIN', KILLIN', DESTROYIN', PILLAGIN', LOOTIN' AN AWL DAT GUD OLE STUF. THERE'Z NUFFIN LOIKE CRUSHIN' SUM LIL' DUMB UUMIE WIF 'IZ OWN DUMB DAKKA'GUB FLASHLIGHT RIFLE OR SMACKIN' WONA DIM ELDARS OBA DA 'ED WIF A PIPE. AWL DEM DUMB IMPERIALS AN THEIR STOOPID TECHNOLOGISS IZ NO MATCH FER A GUD BEETIN' WIF A GUD TWUU BY FOURZ. WEEB ORKS RUUL DA OO-NEE-VERZ, AN WE'LL KEEP RULIN' UNTIL WE'VE SMASHEDED EBRY LAST LIL' PEACE LOVIN' DUMMY, AN DEN WE'LL KEEP RULIN' ON SUM MORE, WIF MORE DAKKA!

ORKAMUNGUS OUF!

>Eldar
Well, the space elves once rules the galaxy and were advanced to a point where there was no effort needed to survive. You might say they achieved Utopia.
Which is what fucked them over. Literally.
Because there was no struggle to survive they continued into more and more hedonism until their galaxy spanning orgy became their downfall.
As a race with innately great psychic potential their combined emotional echo spawned a new chaos god, good old Slaanesh. Who then decided to eat about 90% of eldar souls on the spot.
Their once great empire thus shattered the eldar split into several factions that somehow try to recover their former glory while shielding their souls from a hungry chaos god.

>Craftworld Eldar
The ones who still live closest to the way their ancestors lived these factions live on the titular craftworlds, giant spacefaring cities that mostly provide for the needs of their ocupants, leading to a very comfortable life. To prevent Slaanesh 2.0 those eldar created the system of the Paths. Instead of just eating, fucking, sleeping and snorting warpdust they decide upon one job. Those might be mundane things as baking, several kinds of crafting or any real job you can think of, but also the way of the seer, which focuses on developing you psychic abilities, and the ways of the warrior, where you dedicate yourself to one, and only one Aspect of war until you master it.
Once you master a path, you switch over to the next one. Being idle and not striving for perfection and hard work is what brought the fall, so it will not be allowed anymore.
Craftworld eldar retain most of their old technology and use soul stones, simple gems worn on their body that capture their essence upon death. Those stones will be returned to a Craftworld and stored in it's own curcuit of souls, creating an artificial afterlife until they find a way to free themselves of Slaanesh, who will nomnom on their soul otherwise.

>The Imperium is, without question, a fascist
state when taken as a whole
Fucking dropped
Whoever wrote this has no fucking clue what the definition of fascism is, it is a very specific form of government
>I'll take a read though
Don't bother with that trash
If you really want to get the lore, just dive into the Lexicanum wiki

>Exodites
Eldar that forsake even more of their old way of life and settle on a planet to try a fresh start.
They are usually Eldar that couldn't manage to live in a way that the Paths demand and instead lead their life by what's neccessary to survive in the wild rather than pure dedication to a single cause.
They usually lack technology since they no longer have craftworlds that build everything for them, but on the other hand have the ressources, a thing that craftworlds lack. This leads to a lot of trade between the two factions, who oftentimes ally with each other. This also leads us to the third faction:

>Corsairs
The spacefaring kind of knifeear might be roughly equivalent to the human voidborn, at least in their prefered terrain: outer space.
Corsairs are merchants that connect Exodites and Craftworlds, but vicous pirates and warriors when concerned with other races, though they won't say no to a profitable trade with radical imperials or other factions that can be reasoned with. Needless to say that's more of an exception.
Also they are still eldar, so they'll naturally think themselves above everyone else and try to fuck them over in some way or another. If Corsairs won't immediatly open fire on your sorry ass, they usually have something worse planned for you.
Their ships are fast and maneuverable compared to the slow behemoths of the Imperial Navy and while they don't have as many guns, they trump with quality.

If the Emperor Has a Talk to Text Device does a good job explaining lore bits if you remember its a fantasy wish fulliment and the only things canon are what is referenced in the past tense.

I mean if you want to be amused it has some good jokes in it.

>Dark Eldar
And now there are those guys...
This faction of eldar discovered that you can fend off the soulthirst of chaos by inflicting pain on other species. Thus they evolved into a loose conglomerate of independend subfactions, called kabals, that specialized in lightning fast raids on other sentient species. Their primary target is both the rush of combat during the raid, as well as slaves for long term torture and workforce.
Their society is absolutely ruthless and backstabs itself even more often then any of their prey species. If you want to lead a kabal you should be prepared to fend of assasins even before taking your morning dump, because whoever killed you takes all your shit, followers and slaves.
Due to seeing their innate connection to the warp as the primary reason of the Great Fall they have completely outlawed the use of psychic powers and thus lamost completely lost their potential for space magic. On the other hand they gained far more skill at arms, poisons and obscure techno-arcane medicine that can extend lifespans, produce soldiers and even more.
They are a dark, violent parody of the utopian society they once were, refusing to accept that they fucked up but instead of clinging to their old legacy and slowly searching for a solution to their problems they turned turbo nightcore and decided to live on borrowed time forever.

>Eldar Harlequins
A minor Faction in terms of numbers, but a major one in terms of lore. The Harlequins are a jolly bunch of battle clowns that guard the most ancient secrets of the eldar and at the same time are the very spearhead in the fight against the forces of chaos.
They appear rarely and are sometimes even an unreadable mystery to their fellow eldar, but they always follow some sort of plan that's supposed to benefit their whole species, regardless of their faction.
When you meet a Harlequin Troupe hope you have the same goal as they do. Otherwise get ready to have your last laugh.

>The Tau Empire
The Tau are a curious little race. Instead of the other factions that are spread accross the milky way they can be found in a little speck of the eastern galatic fringe only, living in an empire that's miniscule and insignificant compared to everything else.
When first discovered they were a species of primitive cavemen and their homeworld scheduled for routine cleansing so that imperial settlers could establish a colony. Due to reasons unknown a 6000 year long warp storm prevented that from happening and the Tau emerged as a technologically advanced, unified Empire.
They can spread only slowly because their FTL, while still FTL, is slow as fuck. On the other hand it's safe compared to Imperial technology.
And the reason why they still exist, now that it's possible to purge them again, is because the Imperium of Man has so much other shit to deal with that they simply can't muster the force needed to get rid of the blueberry weebs.
They are organised in five castes:
Fire, which are their police and military force.
Earth, which handle engineering and science.
Water, which are diplomats and buroeucrats.
Air, navigators and pilots.
And last but not least, the Ethereals, which are some sort of mystic space ghandis that unified the Empire and controls political decisions.
Physical labor is mainly handled by robots. (cont.)

>Tau part 2
This caste structure is enforced with a little 1984 style, and while utopian on the outside their society is based around eliminating any non-conformities in a silent way that won't get the attention of the broad masses.
The Ethereals preach about "The greater Good", a philosophy that will allow each and every Tau, even all the different races of the universe, to find a just and usefull place in live that will serve the developement of a perfect galaxy.
Thus they already incorporated a multitude of other species into their society, giving each a single main task for which they deem the species most fit.
Everyone who refuses to join will be confronted by an assault of the fire caste though. Tau military doctrine is based around combined arms strategies and surgical strikes, relying on coordination and timing instead of raw numbers.
Their warfare-technology is top knotch, sometimes even rivaling what the eldar or necrons have in store, and rapidly developing further. Though this barely makes up for the fact that the Tau-body itself is a lackluster tool for warfare, often outperformed by even human conscripts with little to no combat training.

>Necrons
'Cron lore is complicated, especially since there are two versions of it, though both have some things in common:
- They are one of the oldest races in existence, almost as old if not older than the Eldar, and thus locked in rivalry and conflict since their first contact. Go look up the War in Heaven if you want to know more.
- In their current form they have abandoned organic bodies long ago and are now a bunch of killer robots with ancient technology that's outright better then everything else there is, only a few remaining eldar artifacts excluded.

>Oldcrons
Killer robot slaves that fight at the whim of powerful beings known as C'tan.

A common mistake that you will want to know is that the imperium, while incredibly religious, is actually very flexible.

Unlike any modern church, the Imperial Cult has countless deviations that are accepted as long as you accept three key points.

The Emperor, is, beyond all doubt, the greatest being the universe has ever created and is a inspiration to us all.

The Xenos is, without exception, treacherous scum and can not be trusted. Alliances can be made but only if they serve the goals of the imperium fully. Tau may be bargined with ONLY in order to defeat even more detestable foes of the imperium such as the tyranid menace.

3. The Heretic is the singular worse thing that anyone can ever be. To turn your back on the Emperor, either to the Great Enemy or to Xenos tech-sorcery, is a act of treason that can only be paid with the most merciless vengence. Those who willingly turn from the Emperor's light do not deserve his mercy. Those forced into it must be killed swiftly lest they not stain their soul further away from the Throne on Terra.

The Ecclisarchy, which is the Imperium's holy priesthood, work to spread the word of the Emperor but are not necessarily all adherrants of one Cult Doctrine and their main job involve making sure the different idealogies do not turn into internal warfare. Occasionally they fail.

The Imperium is INCREDIBLY dark, but if you read through a bunch its not THAT bad.

The C'tan are star- and life-devouring entities that are anathema to the chaos gods and vice versa, representing the material universe and the warp respectively and both seeking to get rid of each other. As one might guess I'm not to big on necron lore.

>Newcrons
Instead of having no personality whatsoever and working for the C'tan the Necrons were once fucked over by those so called Star Gods and forced into slavery, their organic bodies lost and replaced with metal.
Most necrons didn't make the transition that well, truly loosing their sense of self and becoming nothing that machines awaiting orders. The royal houses and others with a stronger will made it with some personality intact and one day led their subordinates into a rebellion against the C'tan, shattering them into countless shards. Each such shard is still a force comparable to a greater Chaos Daemon, but still only a matchstick compared to the roaring sunfires they once commanded. Damaged and weakened the Necrons went to their tomb worlds to sleep and gather strength, and slowly more and more of the awaken, hellbent on reconquering the galaxy and finding a way to return to proper bodies made from flesh.

>Tyranids
Your common alien locust swarm, with a pinch of eldritch horror mixed in.
Tyranids are something more akin to a giant symbiotic life form rather than a singular species.
They hail from outside the galaxy and are focused on eating every last gram of biomass they can find, multiplying the swarm and pressing onto the next planet, devouring whatever they find.
They consist of specialised bioforms, from basic field soldiers to living artillery and tanks, spaceships and breeding organisms, all controlled by an overarching psychic entitiy known as the Hive Mind, which is so powerful it blots out daemons in the warp like a dense swarm of birds blots out sunlight.
Specialized synnapse organisms broadcast this mind onto lesser, expendable creatures and guide them.

Without this connection most tyranids devolve into animals, their instincts switching over to survival until a new hive ship arrives and re-establishes control.
An exception are the genestealers, so called vanguard organisms that travel far infront of the swarm to find and weaken suitable worlds by infecting the populace with tyranid DNA and acting a beacon on which worlds to devour first.
This way the genestealers create cults around the hive mind that will begin to fight whoever controls the world from within while hive ships drop their own forces to conquer and then devour a planet.

And that's it really. Those are the major players on a galactic scale, there is way more shit but it's not as omnipresent.

What do you mean >blots out daemons?

The Tyranid Hivemind is present in the warp, hindering or outright preventing daemons from manifesting when the swarm is dense enough and makes it difficult for non-tyranids to use psychic powers.

It basicly is on a similiar psychic powerlevel as the chaos gods, but bound by physical location. If the Warp is an analogue overlay of the physical world, wherever a synapse-tyranid wanders in reality, there is a black shadow of alien thought in same place in the warp.
Since Chaos Gods work of the emotion of non-tyranid races this essentially denies them power over that spot.

I'll just leave this here

>all glory to the imperium
>imperium comes first at the sacrifice of individual citizens
>hostile to outsiders and generally unwilling to work with others
>common citizen taught to shun the outsider
>regular pogroms against various groups

They're textbook fascists, dude. You can make arguments for the necessity of that fascism given the state of things, but they are without a doubt fascist.

Not op, but i was wondering: so if the emperor is keeping chaos at bay psychically, does that mean if and when he dies, the entire universe is given up to chaos? If that's so, why door all the aliens (aside from maybe orks, necron and dark eldar) suck the imperiums dick? What's stopping the imperium from saying "if you let our god king die, yall are fucked. Period. Better start sucking our D's pronto

Tau don't use the warp and have virtually no signature within it. It's a non-issue for them.

And the Eldar are our Elf stand-ins. Their sheer snobbery and the fact that they use the webway prevents any of that.

Any other races are eradicated on principle.

It's theoretically an issue for the Tau since once Chaos floods reality they'll be fucked too, but there's little reason to suggest the Tau even know this, they know very little about the Warp and Chaos at all.

Exactly. "Hey, these unfathomable horrors you have to deal with? It'd be a lot worse without us. We won't help you, we want to eradicate you, and we'll probably nuke a planet if it's the local commisar's birthday, but you should still totally worship us."

>liking the worst chapter

Seems a lot closer to socialism or communism than fascism. Then again fascism and socialism/communism are absurdly close ideologically/politically.

I recommend you watch this starting at 8:26ish and the following episode after the other anons here fill you in. It's roughly 40 minutes of amusing but pretty decent general 40k history youtu.be/FyeoBm5QFnA

Oh looks like I overestimated the time by quite a bit

Communism is just a command economy. Which has, historically, almost always ended up as fascist because it relies on forcing people to do shit so the government gets more authority and consolidates and so on.

In terms of ideology, socialism and communism are all about helping the little guy--though they tend to end up hurting him--and there's no inkling of that in the Imperium.

it's basically ancap (or whatever the planetary government wants) until ancap hurts the state/tithe and then its FUCK YOU EXTERMINATUS

Out of sheer curiosity, what is that makes it seem closer to socialism than to fascism?
I agree that the Imperium resembles Stalinist regimes about as much as it does fascist ones, but I don't get what made you interject that it was socialism.

Butthurt race of aliens meet cool aliens. Butthurt aliens try to conquer them, they fail, and they make pacts with sun eating monsters for awesome tech secrets for favors later. Cool aliens develope biological weapons to fight them. Bio weapons are called Eldar and orks. It wasn't enough, they lose and are wiped out. Sun eating monsters cash in on the favor and attempt to eat all of the galaxy alive with the help of Butthurt aliens who are now unyielding robots because favors are favors. They wipe out nearly everything, but pause to allow the universe to repopulate. Eldar get way too freaky and hedonistic, bad things happen. Monkeys evolve and conquer the galaxy thanks to this guy called the emperor. Bad stuff happens, the emperor is in acoma, most of the imperium is cracking under the weight of its own infrastructure. Some faggy zerg like aliens show up and start eating everything. The robot army has reappeared and these traitor humans won't give up on finishing off humanity.

>it's basically ancap (or whatever the planetary government wants)
A devolved government has nothing to do with being ancap you fucking idiot, especially when "local" means "an entire world". Almost every empire functioned like that and it's the origin of many feudal systems. It's a necessity for any state that has overreached its tech level (and the Imperium is very low tech for a galactic empire.)

The American libertarians making the utterly irrelevant state vs fed division of power into a core issue always baffles me.

>Out of sheer curiosity, what is that makes it seem closer to socialism than to fascism?
he likes fascism and dislikes socialism, so things he doesn't like must be socialist

Wha? Sorry if I didn't explain myself properly.

Planetary governments in the Imperium are allowed to do whatever they want so long as they:

1. Pay the tithe
2. Give all the psykers to the Black Ships/kill all the psykers
3. Kill all the mutants/send them to be cannon fodder
3. Don't attack bigwig Imperials (Marines, Inquisitors, Guard commanders) unless they're heretics

Their planet can be medieval warring factions for all the fucks the High Lords give.

For the grand majority of Imperial citizens, life is a constant, wild swing between authoritarian hammering and murderous anarchy.

>be citizen
>live in massive hive city that consumes whole planet like most planets
>get robbed/attacked by gangs, police are nonexistent or don't care
>can basically do whatever you want but everyone else can murder you
>every few months or years the hive aristocracy goes on a purge and you might die in that accidentally
>if you're lucky you're a little higher up and get to work in a factory
>or you get drafted

Alternative variations include feudal world peasant, feral world barbarian, forge world factory bitch, agri-world peasant, shrine world sacrifce, void-dwelling rat/factory bitch. Pretty much all of those are state-of-nature, ultra-fascist, or pingponging between.

If you're in an exceedingly lucky group you get to live on a garden world and be a noble.

So I shouldn't say "ancap" so much as "the government is smashing you to bits or your neighbors are."

And "planets get to do whatever they want." Which generally means the average sucker is cockslapped either way.

Also this:

>The ones who still live closest to the way their ancestors lived these factions live on the titular craftworlds
WROOOONG
those are isolationistic hippies who thought they were too good to hang around
they developed a culture based around repressing their emotions to avoid falling to chaos
that is NOT how shit was done before the fall.

He could mean that Craftworlders kept doing what they were basically already doing before the Fall. They weren't like the rest of the Empire to begin with.

Sounds like Mennonites to me.

NOT OP.

But i am looking exactly what this fag is looking for but for the Fantasy version, im looking for novels/audio books that explain or tell tales for the lore, can someone help me out with this? I just want to know more about Ulric, Sigmar, The Lady, Karl Frank and stuff. I've seen the Realmgate Wars but what the fuck is that all about and where does it start?

This is fairly accurate

One final and all important piece of advice OP. Never trust Chaos fags. Everyone will dank their own faction, that's just the way of things. The Tau player won't shut up about their moral and technological superiority, the Eldar player goes on about their superior skills and psychic powers, the nid players brag about their unstoppable numbers, and necrons bitch like the salty old people they are, but Chaos fags are the worst of the worst. Trust nothing they tell you about how shit everything else is, or about their inevitable victory. Their heads are lodged firmly up their own asses, a state made possible by their pathetic spineless nature.

Where there is someone who is the worst, there has to be someone who is the opposite. Who are the best bro-tier racefags then?

Ork players.

We're just there to have a giggle at everything that gets fucked up.

Are you retarded?

Fascism, at its core, is an authoritarian power with a centralized government.

The Imperium is ruled by a fucking council with barely any direct power. The Imperium is decentralized as all fuck and as far from authoritarian as you can get. The Imperium is a confederation of feudal states, similar to the Holy Roman Empire but with a God-King for Emperor who never is elected.

Also be nice to tyranid players, they're very depressed.

>spoonfeeding a newfag
We all lurked and read the books to learn about the setting, and OP should too.

See:The ideology promoted in the Imperium mimics fascist ideology very closely.

In the actual execution of their government, they swing back and forth between space feudalism and authoritarian domination when someone disobeys the state. The High Lords seek at all opportunities to strengthen and consolidate their power, swinging the hammer at anyone that steps out of line.

They are autocrats whenever they can be. When the government is running optimally (see Great Crusade or other moments of prolonged peace post-HH), they actually act fascist. When it's not, the central government is moving towards fascism.

They are also close in the regard that neither of them were real so far...
What you mean is Stalinism or "real existing socialism".
Those are in some regards close to the socialism as envisioned by Marx and Engels, in others not even remotely.

It's close to fascism, but leans more into proper oligarchism. A few decide what's gets done.
Also it has large quantities of a theocracy, as every iota of the imperium is to some extend influenced by it's faith and the church(es) have massive power.

A brief history of everything.

Long ago there were the Old Ones. They were masters of magic bioengineering. Back then the Warp, an alternate dimension make of the emotions of every living being, was calm and benevolent.

Then there were the Necrontyr. They lived short, shitty lives full of cancer and sunburn, and they hated the Old Ones for having immortality and refusing to share, so they started a war. This is known as the War in Heaven.

The Necrontyr were losing. The Old Ones created servant races to fight for them; the Eldar and the Krork. The Necrontyr found a powerful space ghost thing eating their star and built a metal body for it. This was the first of the C'Tan. They found other C'Tan and the war turned in their favor. The C'Tan tricked the Necrontyr onto stuffing themselves metal bodies, becoming the soulless Necrons.

The Old Ones started to get desperate, and weaponized the Warp. In the process they died off and the Warp became the screaming hellhole it is today. The Necrons looked at the state of the galaxy and decided they'd take a nap until shit was unfucked.

The Krork were unfinished when the Old Ones died and degenerated into Orks once the Brain Boyz died off. The Eldar, now alone, founded a massive empire and became so successful and decadent that they fucked the Chaos God Slaanesh into being, which killed 75% of them and created the Eye of Terror, a giant gaping hole in reality where their empire used to be. At some point in the interim Humanity had reached the stars and entered the Dark Age of Technology, which despite the name was the high point of their history.

The gestation of Slaanesh through the Warp into a mess and blocked FTL travel, leading to the collapse of the unified human empire into scattered pockets. After it was born, the Warp stabilized and FTL was possible again. A dude called the Emperor unified Earth under his rule and launched a Great Crusade to reconnect the remains of humanity throughout the stars.

He made the Space Marines to serve as the backbone of his armies, and the Primarchs to lead them. Fast forward ten thousand years or so and the Crusade is winding done as the Imperium of Man covers a significant portion of the galaxy. Much of the knowledge from the DAoT has been lost, but a good deal has been recovered by the Adaptus Mechanicus, a group dedicated to the worship of Machines, who are mostly mad scientist cyborgs with very picky taste in what counts as holy tech vs heretech.

Then Chaos subverts one of the Primarchs, who turns some of the others, and long story short a full half of the Imperium's military rebels against the other half, smashing fucking everything to bits. This is the Horus Heresy. The Emperor is left maimed and is put on life support, unable to directly rule. Mankind once again loses most of its technology as Mars, the home of the Mechanicus, is ravaged. Humanity rebuilds over the next 10,000 years, but once again come out worse across the board. Meanwhile the forces of Chaos lurk in the Warp and sometimes pop out to wreck shit, the Orks are still around doing Ork shit, the remaining Eldar are manipulative dicks, and half the time the Imperium is fighting against itself due to an impossibly byzantine bureaucracy that can take centuries to realize a planet blew up. Also the Necrons are waking up again, giant space bugs from who the fuck knows where are invading the galaxy, and some baby race called the Tau are trying to make a name for themselves without the slightest understanding of just what the hell is going on outside their corner of space. Everything is awful all the time.

very neat

>without the slightest understanding of just what the hell is going on outside their corner of space
This isn't really true

He wants to get his friends into it though. Best ways for introducing more people to the hobby and the games is valid Veeky Forums discussion, you mongoloid.

Try ArchWarhammer's 'introduction to 40k' on Youtube. Also, everyone telling you to use If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech device as a source aren't to be taken too seriously. ITEHATTSD is a parody and a lot of outdated/silly lore is included.

Are you gonna start autisticly screeching about the Tau being a super important hyper-uber power because of an off hand mention in some codex?

user messed up: THESE GUYS are the closest to pre-Fall Eldar you get (although pre-Fall Eldar were more general hedonists that obsessed with pain and torture)

>The Heretic is the singular worse thing that anyone can ever be.
INCORRECT. Thought for the day: The heretic can be forgiven, for he sins in ignorance. The traitor cannot, for he sins in arrogance.

Ever played Starcraft?

If so, think of StarCraft, but, with the Earth allegiance led by an emperor that is mostly dead, whose essence is used to keep people from going crazy when they travel via FTL.

Now, add to this there are factions trying to run the Empire of Man, but each has its head up its own ass, and most of them fight with each other, as much as with their enemies.

Oh, and the Empire of man is Xenophobic - they will basically annihilate everyone else in their way.

Now, you have the other human faction - those that dabbled in the forbidden, and worked with the chaos god. You can guess how well that turned out by how axe-crazy the lot are. They still have a xenophobia thing going, but also a hatred for their less insane brothers that they had split from.

Now, it gets "fun" You have a giant bug hive roaming through space looking for food.. and they find our galaxy. Yum.

The tau are a race of blue people that have been brainwashed into the philosophy that everything they do - no matter how horrible - is for the "greater good". Think of socialists on crack, and you are halfway there.

Next are the Necrons. Think T1000 terminators from, well, terminator, and you're mostly there. Now add in an egyptian theme and bizzarre politics closer to rome than egypt, and insanely advanced technology. I don't know about anyone else, but I have always thought of them as "what IF skynet happened, but instead of subjugation right off, they left to build up their armies?" That's probably just me, though.

And then there are orcs. Stupid. Violent. Basically mobile fungi, when you think about how they reproduce. Great lot, though - they believe the color Red makes things go faster and, unsurprisingly, it does. All their tech is made form garbage, luck and this bizarre belief system.

Now, take all this information, put them all against one another, and that's the whole game universe in a nutshell...