Chaos is the inevitable winner everything sucks. Why is this a bad thing?

Inevitable destruction from a primordial annihilator isn't bad 40k is just written badly.

But it's not a primordial annihilator. It's a petulant psychic child. Retarded 'nulore aside, it's always been a reflection of the psyche of the mortal races. All two of them. Elves did Horny, and humans contributed strongly to if not made AIDS and Angry. While in the fucking dark ages. Somehow.
Wizard is the only one not accounted for, but he probably came about when an eldar prank got out of hand or something.
They don't work as promordial supergods at fucking all.

Because chaos is boring as fuck.

It's a very nice coincidence, since I first heard of the Night Land on Veeky Forums, and now I can come back to share my thoughts on it. Anyone else here read the through some of the fan stories? I found the vast majority of them supremely entertaining and captivating, mostly by how they found a way to paint a wider picture of the fantastic setting given by the original story. My favorite creature of the Night Land is actually one that was never part of its canon, the Mashonyaggers.

Basically it's how you arrive, ultimately, to Chaos' ultimate victory and the destruction of everything that is good or bad. Being grimdark, Warhammer is founded on the notion that things are bad, and that they are also going to get worse. It doesn't mean there can't be heroic victories against evil, but the overall tone should still point towards doom. Chaos and Tyranids and Orcs can be handed x-amount of conquered worlds, and the galaxy can even be torn asunder by warp-storms, but what are the consequences? You can't ever really destroy anything in Warhammer because that would mean taking away people's armies. Magnus won and ruined Fenris but the Space Wolves are still a chapter. Cadia was blown apart but Cadians and Karskins can never all disappear.

Maybe the plot was never meant to be moved forward? Chaos can't infinitely advance without ramifications or consequences. Eventually 40k would be exploded like Fantasy was. Who wants that?

Since when is Chaos the inevitable winner? Don't both the Necrons and the Tyranids have the ability to wipe out all life capable of feeding the warp?

Daily reminder

My favourite idea about the Night Land is that nobody knows as much as they think they know in the Great Redoubt.

The "Earth Current" is just geothermal heat and the reason that it is failing over the ages is because the slow march of geological activity is making it shift position away from the Redoubt.

The sun isn't actually dead, but the Earth's rotation has stopped with it well, well over the horizon and you can't leave the valley because of the thin atmosphere and heat.

Possibly millions of years ago an expedition could have been launched to find the sun, maybe some were, but that was so far back that it's long been forgotten about and then a whole new batch of oh God what moved in and now nobody can make another expedition.

Or there is some sort of global or maybe even solar dust shrouding event taking place.

The living shapes are possibly aliens, extra dimensional or otherwise, or possibly chimeric organisms and a self contained ecologies in their own right that are drawn to the Redoubt by instinct more than intent due to it being a high energy source. They mover ridiculously slowly due to efficiency reasons and the Redoubt isn't going anywhere. The light shining in the eye of one of them and halting it is a left over millions of years old defence laser that it stood on an activated by accident. It isn't harmed by the laser but is absorbing the energy and so sees no reason to move anymore whilst it works.

Not that the last true humans know barely any of this. They have it all written down somewhere but there are millions of years of records and written word to get through before you find the information you want.

Because it lacks creativity while being edgy.

Because, OP, when people read a codex for the first time they realise "oh! It's written from the bias of that faction, and all battles go in their favour!"

Except chaos fags don't, and don't read any other army book or lore that doesn't make them out to be manifest destiny winners.

Another great feature about the Night Land is how spiritual or even magical beings and effects are so scientifically handled by the inhabitants of the Redoubt. Even though they know things like Watchers and the Silent Ones and the many unnamed "malevolent beings" can cause madness and death just by their attention on a particular person, the Monstrowuccans persist in categorizing and doing the best they can to define the properties of these almost inexplicable monsters.

I do like your theory. It allows for more than just this last refuge of goodness all alone in the entire universe. The idea of humanity surviving and adapting to ever harsher conditions, even until the death of our own planet is, if unlikely, fascinating.

This guy gets it. Winners that are super doods in blue sell more than badguys, but the goodguys have to have overwhelming odds to defeat to seem super. Its basically like pro wrestling where everyone jobs to blue marines. Gotta hype the threat but everyone knows its not real. People who pick one faction as their favourite thus the best are still going to complain no matter what because they're faggots.

It doesn't matter what the inevitability is, anything that is inevitable is by default boring.

nah

If the only way you can enjoy a story is by being constantly surprised by what comes next, then you are probably some form of retarded child-man.

What's this? Night Lands art I didn't have yet?

Thanks!

Shit! I was enjoying this tragedy until everyone died in the end. This is just like the time I was reading a mystery story and I had to put it down because it was painfully obvious the detective was going to solve the crime and reveal every step of what happened. I mean what's the point? It's like reaching the point in a romantic comedy where you can tell the lead characters are going to get together - you might as well switch off there because the movie clearly has no respect for your time if it's making things this obvious.

Chaos eventually consuming the world in Warhammer is like the sun going out in the Dying Earth stories. It's a piece of background that helps set the tone, but it's not the action of any story worth telling in that setting.

Nobody likes Chaos and everyone wants them to suffer. If they said the Universe would eventually die to Entropy, they'd be much happier.

I just always liked that they use giant pizza-cutters as weapons.

It's probably the most realistic attitude humanity would have to weird shit. Retreat to a safe place and try and make sense of it, don't have to understand how it does to categorize what it does.

Even in Lovecraft the Eldritch beings are not all powerful nor singleminded. That's how Chaos was before the End Times fucked up both Fantasy and the 40k settings by removing any personality, motivation, cause, or nuance to Chaos and making the Chaos Gods a bunch of edgelord retards who rule everything everywhere unchallenged and could kill you if they wanted to but they don't because "they're bored so fuck you eat my dick limp bizkit 4ever bitches linkin park i hate my dad."

Can we make this a Nightlands thread?

Would you play a game set in the land out side the great pyramid.

>Maybe the plot was never meant to be moved forward?

You're absolutely correct. 40k wasn't even supposed to have a 'plot'. It's a setting, not a story - a canvas for people to tell their own stories within. It's very evident when you look at the Black Library novels, which originally were almost exclusively devoted to characters which didn't have tabletop models or stats. They acted as a window into the universe, an example of the sort of "your dudes" that could exist. These days, however, the vast majority are tied into the in-game Special Characters and their various wacky adventures, who coincidentally happen to be getting giant £30+ plastic kit releases as well.

What's Nightland? These pictures are triggering my inclination towards dark fantasy, gothic horror and Lovecraft.

40k just seems so much shittier after reading some Michael Moorcock. In Moorcock's work Chaos and Order are always struggling, if chaos gets too powerful things become too unstable and random to support life and if order gets too powerful everything becomes to static to support life.

40k is a wargame setting and they essentially wrote out one of the potential armies and decided the other one would win in the end no matter what, chaos is inevitable is just boring.

AOS seems to tune this back surprisingly with Grand Alliance Order and Grand Alliance Chaos.

>AOS seems to tune this back surprisingly with Grand Alliance Order and Grand Alliance Chaos.

A half-assed solution to a problem GW itself made. In the Storm of Chaos there was the Banner of Order and the Banner of Chaos, and Order won. You also had Gods of Law who could contest the control of Chaos over the world.

The Grand Alliance shit is a step in the right direction, but AoS is too far gone and anything they do at this point is just trying to fix a massive pile of shit that they themselves brought into existence and remedy problems they themselves caused.

Totally true, i think aos is shit but i mentioned the grand alliances to contrast with how 40k completely missed the source material.

It's a book published in 1912 by W. H. Hodgson.

You know how in Time Machine by H.G.Wells when the protagonist goes so far forward that the sun is fixed to the horizon because the Earth rotation has stopped and it takes up a quarter of the sky and is red and it's cold as shit and there is no visible indications of complex life?

It's based on that. But further. Way fucking further. Earths rotations is a thing only remembered by record keepers as distant to them as dinosaurs are to us. The sun went past the red stage and faded away millions of years ago.

The earth is, for the most part, dead. The air is too thin to breathe and too cold to endure at surface level. The only "inhabitable" (if you want to be very generous) place left is the Great Valley, heated by geothermal warmth and full of unfathomable malevolent or unthinkingly hostile shit.

If you are going to read it go for The Night Lands Retold version. The author wrote it in the manner of a 17th century gentleman but was unfortunately not very good at doing so. It turns the book into an endurance test from which pleasure can only be gained retroactively. Retold version fixes this.

That sounds pretty fucking cool, user. That kind of grim stuff is right up my alley, so I'll definitely check it out.

Just grit your teeth and persevere through chapter 1. It gets better I promise

The Nightland is a science fiction book by William Hope Hodgson

Basically it's year several million, the sun is dead. At some point man started exploring other dimensions, Half-life style, but alerted some higher malevolent forces to our whereabouts. Now the last millions of humanity live in a 1000+ floored pyramid with a city on each level, besieged by giant cyclopean beasts, surrounded by unending darkness, and waiting for the earth-current (the semi-sentient energy fueling everything from the force fields to their weapons) to run out. The sameness is so monotonous that they get ecstatic when one of the beasts ever so slightly moves it's head or some simaler event every 10 or so thousand years.

The book was published in 1912 so the science is old and outdated. The author died in fourth battle of Ypres other writers have written storys set in the same world.

nightland.website/index.php/background/timeline

Here is an Audiobook version I should worn you it's written in a rather old stile.
archive.org/details/nightland_1501_librivox

Sounds like something straight out of a Zdzislaw Beksinski painting, anons

But Lovecraftian horrors don't really have it out for mankind, we don't even register on their radar. We're the ants they step on by accident. Chaos is very active and has goals for reality, interacts with people, etc. And so far the stories I've read only has the great things as potential threats that are usually dealt with (or they just fuck off) for now, but it's not possible to say what will happen in the future.

I personally like Chaos a little more contained. I hate the stupid "primordial destroyers that are everywhere and nowhere and who are all powerful yet can't do shit because of The Game." It's a contrived threat with an everything proof shield of "fuck you, I didn't lose." I want there to be multiple threats, not one big one and a whole host of little annoyances. I want C'tan to be a threat in their bid to separate reality from the warp. I want tyranids to be a threat as they nom the galaxy. I want Orks to be a threat with Ghazghkull whipping up the boyz to a bigger and bigger WAAAGH!s. I want aliens like Tau and Eldar to be a threat as they slowly gnaw at the weak spots of the Imperium. And I want Chaos to be a threat as it constantly undermines the Imperium from within.

As it stands, it's either Imperium or Chaos. Nothing else matters.

What heat is making the High lands dangerous?

I always found that part of the fun of WH40K was the competition between the main 'evil' faction over who gets to fuck everything up first. Setting a designated winner just takes all the fun out of that.

And personally I was always a fan of seeing the galaxy down in Gauss flames. Fuck the Newcrons.

The land above the Great Valley has a lack of heat because no sun.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. The "upper world" is a frozen wasteland due to the loss of sunlight. Down in the valley, there are geothermal vents everywhere, and in some areas they are concentrated like volcanoes. The areas with fire are supernatural effects.

You are mad wow.

It has a lack of air as well.

>The "Earth Current" is just geothermal heat

The description of it does not sound like geothermal energy to me.

And what about the moon and stars? I don't remember there being much description of those, though I might be wrong.

The sky of the Night Land is pitch black. I believe when Hodgson described the transition from modern day to night land future, he wrote that the stars began slowly winking out in the sky, like swathes of them were being "eaten"

>nightland.website/index.php/background/timeline

I hope those are available as audio books...

they are fan stories published years ago on a comatose fan website, I do unfortunately doubt it

They were consumed, millions of millions of years ago by things unknown. Or by natural processes, but the language used hinted that astronauts and astronomers suspected their consumption by the same nightmares that now haunt the Nightlands.

Because it falls back on itself and eventually becomes law which eventually collapses, becoming chaos, over and over again.

What is it with older sci-fi that makes it so interesting compared to a lot of modern stuff? Is it the fantastical view they have of the future? That they conjured it up themselves rather than having it imagined for them like we have many times over?

Like a future history viewed through a mythical lens in which the intricacies of technology are irrelevant, with their great impact on the human race being the focus. They become these constants in human existence; something as integral to them and their lives as the Sun or the seas are to us.

Less science, more fiction. Now you can't call it "scifi" if it doesn't adhere to modern understanding of science, physics, and shit.

That's primarily modern sci-fi though, especially of the hard kind. The genre arguably developed (though it wasn't defined by name until later) when our understanding of the sciences were considerably lesser than they are today. The idea of science wasn't as entrenched in people's minds either; to us it's quite mundane, but to them the advances in medicine, chemistry, and physics were something wondrous.

Could just call it "speculative fiction" either way, as that's essentially what sci-fi is, without excluding things like The Night Land which is considerably more fantastical in nature, though it still poses questions about our future based on then-contemporary scientific speculation (ie; the sun having a best-before date)

I always considered scifi to be more about the impact of a thing on the world, rather than the thing itself. It's less "this is how you solve our energy problems with SCIENCE!" and more "if we had X, how would that affect our lives?" Who cares if X is "scientific", its effect on the world is. Like imagine a story where we have a serum that can bring you back to life. How does it work? Who cares! Point is how it affects the world.

But because I don't explain how the serum works, it's magic and thus not "real" scifi.

Yeah, I think that's the bit that bores me a lot about SOME modern sci-fi. It's much more about the thing itself rather than how it affects humans and society. In older sci-fi they were rarely concerned with how it worked; but more about its impact on humanity. The line between harder sci-fi and simply making shit up for the sake of the plot is quite a thin one though, so to me the real art lies in balancing it. In the case of the latter you end up with the sci-fi equivalent of Harry Potter, in which spells are seemingly made up on the spot by the author so that the characters can move past yet another obstruction in the story.

Anyone wants to share thoughts or ideas about the wider Night Land setting? My favorite sub-story is this
nightland.website/index.php/stories/night-land-stories/the-days-of-darkening/46-delight

followed closely by this
nightland.website/index.php/stories/night-land-stories/the-days-of-darkening/11-narcissus

I really like imagining the whole process of how human societies must adapt to a changing earth over the slow dwindling of the sun. While not mentioned in these, the stories about the Road Makers are also interesting because while the people of the Redoubt viewed them as more powerful and advanced, they were much more like ragged survivors trying to make do with the adapting conditions of life in the great valley.

It always helps to have rules for the thing and to abide by those rules. That means taking PC logic into consideration ("If I can combine X with Z and cause a several megaton explosion, why isn't it the go-to WMD in the world?" etc.)

Internal consistency remains as relevant as ever!

>Because the fun of grimdark is to have potential hope no matter how dark things get

No it's fucking not you stupid fucking cock. I'm glad you like optimistic things but goddamn enjoy some grim fucking shit.

>Chaos is just boring.

It's not about fucking Chaos. It's about the people who are part of Chaos and the people Chaos effects.

Jesus fucking christ it's like you've never actually read a story.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Why are you caring about the macro story?

Because it's boring.

Because the other existential threats should have just as much chance at wiping out humanity and ruling the universe.

There's no point to tyranids or necrons or orks if we know Chaos is just gonna win. It makes the setting seem kinda pointless window dressing.

Because it invalidates everything. Every single non-Chaos army becomes completely pointless if Chaos is the designated winner, so why would you buy them? Why would you care? They're just going to die and be soulfucked and eaten by Chaos for the rest of ever.

Who cares, that's a Night Land picture. That's more interesting than anything you actually wrote in your post.

You could write that book with call of cthulhu

People citing Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos in defense of chaos is kind of bizarre.

Not only does Warhammer exist in a completely different genre, but the Chaos Gods themselves are the diametrically opposed to everything that the Old Ones / Outer Gods stand for in Lovecraft's work.

"Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large."

Compare: The fucking chaos gods who are going to dominate and eat the universe are literally spawned from human emotion and belief.

Chaos is a ladder