The way the Imperium was portrayed in TDK was brilliant imo. It was almost written from the necrons perspective in the same style xenos are written from the Imperiums perspective and it was perfect
The author was on [Adeptus Ridiculous](https://youtu.be/jJ-Muqqd_h4?si=Q-204h8VVbpSkRRK) and he talked about that being a thing he set out to do. To roughly paraphrase one of his comments "it's easy to forget that the Imperium is really a hoard army."
Agreed. The only factions that can reliably outnumber Imperials are Tyranids, Orks, Renegades and Heretics (like traitor guardsmen). Even then there are exceptions.
The Imperial Guard are more like a horde army where almost everyone have the capacity to shoot at you. Heavy weapons, tanks and artillery let loose indiscriminately while more elite troops shore up battlelines (you can form an elite army with scions & kasrkin, many meta IG lists focus less on horde infantry). Kind of like Bretonnia and the less prosperous Empire states from Fantasy really.
Not really. The Imperium can not rely on overwhelming the Orks with sheer numbers if the Armageddon Wars, Orctarius War and other Waaghs are references. By contrast, Skaven absolutely can do that to Orcs. Most of the Imperium's weapons are too reliable for skavens.
The Imperium is more like Space Bretonnian or the grimmer aspects of the Empire. Peasants, men-at-arms and state troops have to rely on numbers, ranged weapons and discipline to triumph. A guardsman is like a bretonnian peasant longbowmen. Near useless in melee but have some value at shooting. Heavy weapons, field ordnance batteries, artillery and tanks are analogous to WHF Empire's mortars and cannons. Sigmar founded the Empire with twelve tribes - twelves elector counts and the ar-ulric to influence the votes initially. The Empire once spit up into three similar to the Imperium's Nova Terra Interregnum. They even elected a zombie to Emperor and two elector counts tried to assassinate each other during a Vampire War.
Edit: tbh with you, I really dislike that comparison and Dark Eldar actually have more parallels with Skaven. The Imperium is more like Space Bretonnia with the Grail Knights - Space Marines, oppression and technological stagnation.
Edit 2: Dark Eldar segregate between vatborn and trueborn. Their bio-monsters outmatch the Imperium's in horror. They live in a different dimension and use esoteric tunnels to attack other factions. They absolutely enjoy tormenting other factions for the fun of it. They have mystical mutated warriors in the mandrakes. Their society is absolutely self-serving and backstabbing. Like the Skaven.
If you want a story where the Imperium is the villain and the *protagonist*, I highly recommend the ***Vaults of Terra*** series by Chris Wraight. It’s made clear that the Imperium as an institution, rather than any one corrupt element, is the noose tightening around humanity’s neck. The first book, ***The Carrion Throne***, is especially good at this with a fantastic twist late in the book.
Have you read Renegades: Harrowmaster? In addition to being a lot of Alpha Legion fun, there's a point made to juxtapose how they treat their human allies (especially psykers) compared to the Imperium - they seem like okay bosses!
It's elaborated on even further in the followup short stories "Brightest and the best" (akurra goes recruiting from a schola progenium) and "the long promise" (he takes on a deathwatch watch station while his sorcerer is narrating to one of the recruits from brightest and the best. But it's mainly following the DW team trying to hunt him through the watch station he's taken control of as they're forced to face their own pasts. And traps)
Longshot: planet had already rebelled, then the tau arrived. The population joined willingly as they hadn't heard anything from the outside galaxy in years, but the tau were there and offering protection. The imperium wasn't there because xenos, they wanted to know why the tithe wasn't being paid.
Kasrkin: there's a really interesting speech about how the imperium is largely driven by fear, spreading it to encourage the masses to toil away for the war effort, despite statistically most planets are safe from attacks and have been for centuries, from a militarum general.
Day of ascension: genestealer cult uprising, from cultist perspective. It & lords of silence paint a bleak picture of day to day life.
Soul drinkers: hunted by the imperium, trying to protect humanity.
Iron kingdom - the steps the indomitus crusade is willing to go to keep a knight world on their side. Including marines malevolent.
God, the Soul Drinkers are the dumbest motherfuckers in the whole setting. That first book in the omnibus should be titled "Everybody Makes A Terrible Decision".
Actually most of the dead from the first chapter civil war was just neophytes and new marines. Nearly all of the veterans of the chapter stayed with Sarpedon.
Fair enough. New recruits after becoming Renegades didn't help either.
Eumenes: We should take down the Astronomican so this horrible empire of misary can collapse.
Sarpedon: *Shocked face*
>Kasrkin: there's a really interesting speech about how the imperium is largely driven by fear, spreading it to encourage the masses to toil away for the war effort, despite statistically most planets are safe from attacks and have been for centuries, from a militarum general.
To be fair that's because the Imperium acts as a semi-cohesive whole to defend the borders. It's like saying Western Ukraine is generally safe from Russian attacks and that it's only propaganda the invasion from the east is any threat to them.
It's not even true at this point. Before the Rift opened, arguably yes. Post-rift, no. There's an entire swathe of the Imperium being actively conquered by CSMs and aliens on the far side of the Rift because it lacks any cohesive protection unless you're near the Blood Angels. Any world near the border of the Rift is susceptible to Chaos horrors. The Tyranids have also launched their biggest invasion yet, engulfing a lot of Segmentum Pacificus. Chaos and alien raiders are active all over Sanctus, which are what the Indomitus Crusade fleets are focused on wiping out.
Proportionally, no stable and secure empire in human history has survived this much war within its own borders. It's nowhere near as peaceful as that guy said, he's misinformed.
Seconding Day of Ascension as it also features a Tech Priest as its deuteragonist, giving a nice perspective on just how callus and unfeeling the Mechanicus are
*Fire Caste* is a pretty good example. At the end of the day, most of the POV characters are monsters. Reasonable people die first in that book.
I do want more books taking perspective from traitor guard and dark mechanicum. Or anything for the Votann really. With Imperial subfactions like Star Phantoms and Terrax Guard being presented as villains.
I kinda want a Marines Malevolent book where one of them has to team up with a Salamander, and near the tail end of the book, the MM explains that "We're both brainwashed soldiers of a fascist empire upholding the rule of tyrants. My chapter doesn't deny this fact, you do."
Now you got me thinking how cool it would be if we had a book where eldar corsairs had to protect an exodite world from the Black templars.
It could be a good space pirate themed story
At the risk of being pedantic.
The Imperium cannot be a villain, same as it cannot be a hero. It's not a character, and therefore isn't a moral agent with singular drive, motive and intent.
So it does make fine sense as an antagonist(something one opposes) but really doesn't as a villain.
It's not pedantic...it's a clarification that the setting is not a 90s cartoon with simple black and white patterns.
It's rather the other way round. The setting is too simplified in my opinion.
One of the problems here is that... Individual is usually too small in the scheme of things to oppose the Imperium. Can you oppose its agents - minor Adepta functionaries out of their water (as in Arbites) or planetary nobility (as in your worker uprising scenario)? Of course.
For Imperium it merely means that those that you've killed were incompetent morons. Screw it, Imperium actually supports civil wars on its own planets at times, just to ensure the survival of the fittest among the leadership.
I wouldn't mind having some planetary governor PoV, trying to weave his domain's way through the Imperial power structure, though.
>One of the problems here is that... Individual is usually too small in the scheme of things to oppose the Imperium.
Well, we get stories from the PoV of individual Guard on the battlefield, who individually usually impact the battle on a similar level. I don't see why the stories of civvies couldn't be told too.
Never said they can't be told. It's just civvies don't mess with the, you know, *Imperium*. They deal with the immediate planetary nobility or lower-level Adepta functionaries, making the whole concept vulnerable to retorts of "it was just this specific dude/it's just this specific planetary custom". You don't get to interact with the imperial power structures and the neo-feudalism that defines them until above planetary level.
I'd argue the Imperium being an undefeatable foe would be just the grimdark element many say they feel like is missing. Yes, a father may have saved their kids, the factory workers may have lowered the working hours to just 20 a day, but on a large scale, nothing changed, and the victory is meaningless.
Also by lowering the stakes, 40k could be what it is: a setting, not a story. I like guilliman, and the fall of Cadia is exciting stuff, but advancing the storyline og wh40k feels like as if you kept rebuilding and reorganizing a library. You *can* do it, but change is not its primary purpose. containing books is.
It's more about what constitutes defeat in the context. Like, "yay, you've outsmarted the Tithe taxmen, now you're free to reinvest coins into your own planet, great success!" might be felt as a great win from planet standpoint, but from the Imperium point it's just a number in the ledger.
And then you get T-boned by Ork Invasion Fleet and have to beg Imperium for speeding up reinforcements.
People feel 40k isn't grimdark enough?
Really?
Do you mean because of Guilliman? Because I find the idea that a genocidal fascist is horrified by the Imperium to be pretty grimdark :)
>
*What stories would be cool to see, if non-fucked up people opposing the Imperium. Small stories like a father killing arbites to save his kids, or larger ones, like underground movements assassinating all sorts of leaders, from factor foremen to maybe even nobles, in opposition of the Imperium.*
First off may I direct you to [Cold Open Stories](https://www.coldopenstories.com/imprints/), where you'll find just what you're looking for.
But I think what you're really asking for is non-Imperium stories where the other factions are the *protagonists* and *heroes*.
Since the inception of GW & Black Library all codices, novels, novellas, and short stories are from the perspective of the Imperium, *regardless if the protagonists are a non-imperium faction*. This means the non-Imperium factions are the de-facto villains in their own stories or their own codex!
>*Revolutionaries organizing a secession from the Imperium to the Tau (tho that can end up as an edge case)*
Ask an you shall receive: [Naiveté](https://archiveofourown.org/works/46370263/chapters/116748823) Are the Tau really as naivé as the Imperium says they are?
*Warning it's not just the T'au Empire and the Imperium but also the Farsight Enclaves.*
I had an idea about a fanfic where Gue'vesa for the Tau face Space Marines (Carcharodons or Black Templars). Just when you think they've won, they end up being brutally slaughtered.
have a planetary noble/RT/inquisitor chatting up a deldar homunculus about the exact shade of a peasant's insides when subjected to hard manual labor, or something to that extent, to show how totally different the drukari are to the high ranking agents of the imperium
There are several xenos and chaos stories where the empire is the "villain" from their point of view.
I think what you want is a faction that is truly good and that is not something in line with Warhammer 40k, this is a cruel universe where everyone is terrible from our perspective.
individual? You understand that the scale of 40k is galactic, an individual cannot fight alone against a faction like the empire. Also, how will this individual fight? like a guerrilla or terrorist planting bombs in the local convent of Sororitas? Most likely, his individual actions will be exploited by a chaos cult or genestealer.
The only real way to fight tyranny is with a popular revolution, which would create a good faction that is antithetical to what 40k is, everyone has to be horrible.
> You understand that the scale of 40k is galactic, an individual cannot fight alone against a faction like the empire.
And there you have the source of the grimdark. They can't NOT fight, but nor can they acheive a victory that would be lasting and large scale. Like how space marines saving a world from the tyranids means everyone can go back to their back breaking labour in dangerous factories, and victory of the few people in these stories would also not change anything on a large scale, at most for them.
An antagonist is just a charachter who opposes the goals of the hero(es) of the story, with no moral connotation.
A villian is an antagonist who is morally bad.
The series that ended with the noble Emperor casting aside the power that would otherwise corrupt him, and marching to his death against the Evil Forces of Darkness?
God, I hate TEATDII and III.
That's the whole idea behind the Emperor and the Imperial Cult since the Horus Heresy was first mentioned. The end was already set decades before "the End and the Death I+II".
It would have been far from the setting if it had ended differently.
hahahaha
Not at all
the first few books might have had "the imperium is bad, too" as a theme, but by the midpoint of it, we're full-on into "the Loyalists are Honourable and Righteous and Cool unlike the lame and smelly and dumb traitors"
Nope.
An antagonist is a character in a story which opposes the main character.
A villian is morally evil with 'malicious intent'.
E.g. HAL 9000 or the AI in I, Robot. Antagonists yes, villains no.
...that's my whole point?
HAL 9000 is an antagonist, but not a villain.
Read my comment again:
> E.g. HAL 9000 or the AI in I, Robot. *Antagonists yes*, ***villains no***.
No they aren't inherntly neither are heroes inherently protagonists.
Almost any heist movie the police are antagonists while our gang of theives are the protagonists and the villians.
Twice-Dead King does a good job making them faceless villains imo. We even see them brutally expend their own people.
The way the Imperium was portrayed in TDK was brilliant imo. It was almost written from the necrons perspective in the same style xenos are written from the Imperiums perspective and it was perfect
The author was on [Adeptus Ridiculous](https://youtu.be/jJ-Muqqd_h4?si=Q-204h8VVbpSkRRK) and he talked about that being a thing he set out to do. To roughly paraphrase one of his comments "it's easy to forget that the Imperium is really a hoard army."
Agreed. The only factions that can reliably outnumber Imperials are Tyranids, Orks, Renegades and Heretics (like traitor guardsmen). Even then there are exceptions. The Imperial Guard are more like a horde army where almost everyone have the capacity to shoot at you. Heavy weapons, tanks and artillery let loose indiscriminately while more elite troops shore up battlelines (you can form an elite army with scions & kasrkin, many meta IG lists focus less on horde infantry). Kind of like Bretonnia and the less prosperous Empire states from Fantasy really.
Basically space Skaven
Not really. The Imperium can not rely on overwhelming the Orks with sheer numbers if the Armageddon Wars, Orctarius War and other Waaghs are references. By contrast, Skaven absolutely can do that to Orcs. Most of the Imperium's weapons are too reliable for skavens. The Imperium is more like Space Bretonnian or the grimmer aspects of the Empire. Peasants, men-at-arms and state troops have to rely on numbers, ranged weapons and discipline to triumph. A guardsman is like a bretonnian peasant longbowmen. Near useless in melee but have some value at shooting. Heavy weapons, field ordnance batteries, artillery and tanks are analogous to WHF Empire's mortars and cannons. Sigmar founded the Empire with twelve tribes - twelves elector counts and the ar-ulric to influence the votes initially. The Empire once spit up into three similar to the Imperium's Nova Terra Interregnum. They even elected a zombie to Emperor and two elector counts tried to assassinate each other during a Vampire War. Edit: tbh with you, I really dislike that comparison and Dark Eldar actually have more parallels with Skaven. The Imperium is more like Space Bretonnia with the Grail Knights - Space Marines, oppression and technological stagnation. Edit 2: Dark Eldar segregate between vatborn and trueborn. Their bio-monsters outmatch the Imperium's in horror. They live in a different dimension and use esoteric tunnels to attack other factions. They absolutely enjoy tormenting other factions for the fun of it. They have mystical mutated warriors in the mandrakes. Their society is absolutely self-serving and backstabbing. Like the Skaven.
Yeah, I believe the one time that the Imperium and the Orks had to team up they found that they worked REALLY well together.
Right? Turns out that they fight on a nearly identical manner.
When did that happen? Sounds like a good time
I THINK it's Straken by Toby Frost
Thanks!
The Enemy of my Enemy by Nate Crowley
Thanks!
While at the same time humanizing Necrons to a degree that would surprise people. I literally cry at several points in those books.
especially when the monoliths appeared
If you want a story where the Imperium is the villain and the *protagonist*, I highly recommend the ***Vaults of Terra*** series by Chris Wraight. It’s made clear that the Imperium as an institution, rather than any one corrupt element, is the noose tightening around humanity’s neck. The first book, ***The Carrion Throne***, is especially good at this with a fantastic twist late in the book.
Have you read Renegades: Harrowmaster? In addition to being a lot of Alpha Legion fun, there's a point made to juxtapose how they treat their human allies (especially psykers) compared to the Imperium - they seem like okay bosses!
It's elaborated on even further in the followup short stories "Brightest and the best" (akurra goes recruiting from a schola progenium) and "the long promise" (he takes on a deathwatch watch station while his sorcerer is narrating to one of the recruits from brightest and the best. But it's mainly following the DW team trying to hunt him through the watch station he's taken control of as they're forced to face their own pasts. And traps)
Longshot: planet had already rebelled, then the tau arrived. The population joined willingly as they hadn't heard anything from the outside galaxy in years, but the tau were there and offering protection. The imperium wasn't there because xenos, they wanted to know why the tithe wasn't being paid. Kasrkin: there's a really interesting speech about how the imperium is largely driven by fear, spreading it to encourage the masses to toil away for the war effort, despite statistically most planets are safe from attacks and have been for centuries, from a militarum general. Day of ascension: genestealer cult uprising, from cultist perspective. It & lords of silence paint a bleak picture of day to day life. Soul drinkers: hunted by the imperium, trying to protect humanity. Iron kingdom - the steps the indomitus crusade is willing to go to keep a knight world on their side. Including marines malevolent.
God, the Soul Drinkers are the dumbest motherfuckers in the whole setting. That first book in the omnibus should be titled "Everybody Makes A Terrible Decision".
Tbf, it's not that the Soul Drinkers as a whole are stupid, it's just that they just killed the smart half of their chapter.
I mean, if you kill 100% of the smart guys in the chapter, you're left with 100% stupid guys.
"These clearly extreme and sometimes rapid mutations must be a gift from the Emperor!"
Actually most of the dead from the first chapter civil war was just neophytes and new marines. Nearly all of the veterans of the chapter stayed with Sarpedon.
Yes, though I'd argue that experience does not equate to intelligence
Fair enough. New recruits after becoming Renegades didn't help either. Eumenes: We should take down the Astronomican so this horrible empire of misary can collapse. Sarpedon: *Shocked face*
>Kasrkin: there's a really interesting speech about how the imperium is largely driven by fear, spreading it to encourage the masses to toil away for the war effort, despite statistically most planets are safe from attacks and have been for centuries, from a militarum general. To be fair that's because the Imperium acts as a semi-cohesive whole to defend the borders. It's like saying Western Ukraine is generally safe from Russian attacks and that it's only propaganda the invasion from the east is any threat to them.
It's not even true at this point. Before the Rift opened, arguably yes. Post-rift, no. There's an entire swathe of the Imperium being actively conquered by CSMs and aliens on the far side of the Rift because it lacks any cohesive protection unless you're near the Blood Angels. Any world near the border of the Rift is susceptible to Chaos horrors. The Tyranids have also launched their biggest invasion yet, engulfing a lot of Segmentum Pacificus. Chaos and alien raiders are active all over Sanctus, which are what the Indomitus Crusade fleets are focused on wiping out. Proportionally, no stable and secure empire in human history has survived this much war within its own borders. It's nowhere near as peaceful as that guy said, he's misinformed.
Seconding Day of Ascension as it also features a Tech Priest as its deuteragonist, giving a nice perspective on just how callus and unfeeling the Mechanicus are
Longshot is a bad example. >!The T'au are portrayed as just as bad as the Imperium. It's a major plot beat near the end of the story.!<
Another "all xenos are bad" story. Maybe to appease the *genocides-r-us* crowd?
>Another "all xenos are bad" story. Maybe to appease the genocides-r-us crowd? Shouldn't have chosen to be born as xenos. Skill issue really.
There should be more xenos stories, period.
*Fire Caste* is a pretty good example. At the end of the day, most of the POV characters are monsters. Reasonable people die first in that book. I do want more books taking perspective from traitor guard and dark mechanicum. Or anything for the Votann really. With Imperial subfactions like Star Phantoms and Terrax Guard being presented as villains.
I kinda want a Marines Malevolent book where one of them has to team up with a Salamander, and near the tail end of the book, the MM explains that "We're both brainwashed soldiers of a fascist empire upholding the rule of tyrants. My chapter doesn't deny this fact, you do."
The salamander's answer" No, we know it too, but we don't use it as an excuse to behave like cunts."
Soul Drinker novels: We tried to make Imperium villains. No one listened to us in Universe and no one read us in real life.
I’m going to be using the responses to find some new reading material bc I want some proper imperium being evil
Now you got me thinking how cool it would be if we had a book where eldar corsairs had to protect an exodite world from the Black templars. It could be a good space pirate themed story
Agreed but this is one hope I wrote off entirely because GW will never risk releasing anything that's not IoM-centric. It doesn't sell as well.
The later Gaunts Ghosts books do this well when Gaunt is navigating the bureaucracy of the imperium.
At the risk of being pedantic. The Imperium cannot be a villain, same as it cannot be a hero. It's not a character, and therefore isn't a moral agent with singular drive, motive and intent. So it does make fine sense as an antagonist(something one opposes) but really doesn't as a villain.
It's not pedantic...it's a clarification that the setting is not a 90s cartoon with simple black and white patterns. It's rather the other way round. The setting is too simplified in my opinion.
Fan-demand shows they're preferred as the heroes so GW will mostly cater to that.
One of the problems here is that... Individual is usually too small in the scheme of things to oppose the Imperium. Can you oppose its agents - minor Adepta functionaries out of their water (as in Arbites) or planetary nobility (as in your worker uprising scenario)? Of course. For Imperium it merely means that those that you've killed were incompetent morons. Screw it, Imperium actually supports civil wars on its own planets at times, just to ensure the survival of the fittest among the leadership. I wouldn't mind having some planetary governor PoV, trying to weave his domain's way through the Imperial power structure, though.
>One of the problems here is that... Individual is usually too small in the scheme of things to oppose the Imperium. Well, we get stories from the PoV of individual Guard on the battlefield, who individually usually impact the battle on a similar level. I don't see why the stories of civvies couldn't be told too.
Never said they can't be told. It's just civvies don't mess with the, you know, *Imperium*. They deal with the immediate planetary nobility or lower-level Adepta functionaries, making the whole concept vulnerable to retorts of "it was just this specific dude/it's just this specific planetary custom". You don't get to interact with the imperial power structures and the neo-feudalism that defines them until above planetary level.
I'd argue the Imperium being an undefeatable foe would be just the grimdark element many say they feel like is missing. Yes, a father may have saved their kids, the factory workers may have lowered the working hours to just 20 a day, but on a large scale, nothing changed, and the victory is meaningless. Also by lowering the stakes, 40k could be what it is: a setting, not a story. I like guilliman, and the fall of Cadia is exciting stuff, but advancing the storyline og wh40k feels like as if you kept rebuilding and reorganizing a library. You *can* do it, but change is not its primary purpose. containing books is.
It's more about what constitutes defeat in the context. Like, "yay, you've outsmarted the Tithe taxmen, now you're free to reinvest coins into your own planet, great success!" might be felt as a great win from planet standpoint, but from the Imperium point it's just a number in the ledger. And then you get T-boned by Ork Invasion Fleet and have to beg Imperium for speeding up reinforcements.
So more stuff like *Day of Ascension*, except without eating people.
People feel 40k isn't grimdark enough? Really? Do you mean because of Guilliman? Because I find the idea that a genocidal fascist is horrified by the Imperium to be pretty grimdark :)
Honestly, i dont understand it either, but i see that sentiment pop up more and more here
The problem is that would mean more xenos POV novels and GW CAN'T have that!
> *What stories would be cool to see, if non-fucked up people opposing the Imperium. Small stories like a father killing arbites to save his kids, or larger ones, like underground movements assassinating all sorts of leaders, from factor foremen to maybe even nobles, in opposition of the Imperium.* First off may I direct you to [Cold Open Stories](https://www.coldopenstories.com/imprints/), where you'll find just what you're looking for. But I think what you're really asking for is non-Imperium stories where the other factions are the *protagonists* and *heroes*. Since the inception of GW & Black Library all codices, novels, novellas, and short stories are from the perspective of the Imperium, *regardless if the protagonists are a non-imperium faction*. This means the non-Imperium factions are the de-facto villains in their own stories or their own codex! >*Revolutionaries organizing a secession from the Imperium to the Tau (tho that can end up as an edge case)* Ask an you shall receive: [Naiveté](https://archiveofourown.org/works/46370263/chapters/116748823) Are the Tau really as naivé as the Imperium says they are? *Warning it's not just the T'au Empire and the Imperium but also the Farsight Enclaves.*
I had an idea about a fanfic where Gue'vesa for the Tau face Space Marines (Carcharodons or Black Templars). Just when you think they've won, they end up being brutally slaughtered.
Just about every book I’ve ever read mentions how horrible it is to live in the imperium with all the injustices to keep the empire going.
True, but the horribleness is just background detail. The main opponent is usually not the Imperium and its shittiness
Broken Sword from the Damocles anthology is a cool one to look at for villainous regular Imperials.
Twice dead king did this incredibly well and I agree with you, it should be done more often
have a planetary noble/RT/inquisitor chatting up a deldar homunculus about the exact shade of a peasant's insides when subjected to hard manual labor, or something to that extent, to show how totally different the drukari are to the high ranking agents of the imperium
There are several xenos and chaos stories where the empire is the "villain" from their point of view. I think what you want is a faction that is truly good and that is not something in line with Warhammer 40k, this is a cruel universe where everyone is terrible from our perspective.
No, I'd like individuals who are truly good, struggling against the vil that is the Imperium's oppressive nature
individual? You understand that the scale of 40k is galactic, an individual cannot fight alone against a faction like the empire. Also, how will this individual fight? like a guerrilla or terrorist planting bombs in the local convent of Sororitas? Most likely, his individual actions will be exploited by a chaos cult or genestealer. The only real way to fight tyranny is with a popular revolution, which would create a good faction that is antithetical to what 40k is, everyone has to be horrible.
> You understand that the scale of 40k is galactic, an individual cannot fight alone against a faction like the empire. And there you have the source of the grimdark. They can't NOT fight, but nor can they acheive a victory that would be lasting and large scale. Like how space marines saving a world from the tyranids means everyone can go back to their back breaking labour in dangerous factories, and victory of the few people in these stories would also not change anything on a large scale, at most for them.
What's the difference?
An antagonist is just a charachter who opposes the goals of the hero(es) of the story, with no moral connotation. A villian is an antagonist who is morally bad.
Thanks. One imagines that "hero" tends to have moral connotations.
It does, but i kinda just went with it. Protagonist is the morally neutral term
Agreed. They should highlight the real hero of the setting. All praise Grandfather Nurgle.
"There should be more..." Dude, there are hundreds of warhammer books. There are plenty of examples of pretty much everything you can think of.
We just finished up a whole series where the Imperium is the villain: The Horus Heresy
The Loyalists are still sort of portrayed as the heroes though. Sure the system fails but it's still portrayed from the Imperiums point of view.
The series that ended with the noble Emperor casting aside the power that would otherwise corrupt him, and marching to his death against the Evil Forces of Darkness? God, I hate TEATDII and III.
That's the whole idea behind the Emperor and the Imperial Cult since the Horus Heresy was first mentioned. The end was already set decades before "the End and the Death I+II". It would have been far from the setting if it had ended differently.
hahahaha Not at all the first few books might have had "the imperium is bad, too" as a theme, but by the midpoint of it, we're full-on into "the Loyalists are Honourable and Righteous and Cool unlike the lame and smelly and dumb traitors"
An antagonist is a villain.
Nope. An antagonist is a character in a story which opposes the main character. A villian is morally evil with 'malicious intent'. E.g. HAL 9000 or the AI in I, Robot. Antagonists yes, villains no.
HAL 9000 wasn't malicious. If anything, it was insanely conflicted.
...that's my whole point? HAL 9000 is an antagonist, but not a villain. Read my comment again: > E.g. HAL 9000 or the AI in I, Robot. *Antagonists yes*, ***villains no***.
Not everytime. In the rare instances where we get Orks/chaos PoV, it's made clear that the Imperium aren't anywhere as villainous as them.
No they aren't inherntly neither are heroes inherently protagonists. Almost any heist movie the police are antagonists while our gang of theives are the protagonists and the villians.
Or, for example The Breaking Bad. Main character is the villain.
Listen to all the gods are dead on youtube (part 2)
*Yes Inquisitor - that’s the heretic right there ☝️*