JuankiMan said:

A quick question, but you've never played Vampire before, have you? Or Mage? Or, to get a little fringy, Demon?

Really… like half the game lines that White Wolf put out, would work here. My point is, that just because the player is playing a sadistic, bloodthirsty monster, doesn't mean they can't work with the rest of the group somehow. Some games work entirely around the concept of you playing one of those.

Mjoellnir said:

A few points of order…

Firstly, the fate of your soul, in 40K, counts for nothing. Whether it dissipates, gets absorbed by something else (benignly) or snacked on by a daemon, whatever happens to it doesn't really reflect upon whether you've been a good and virtuous person, or the scum of the galaxy.

Next, who gives a crap about planets. So humanity, by base necessesity needs to stripmine planets for their resources, and generally lay them to waste. So what? For one thing, Eldar don't need to mine anymore because they conjure all their building materials from the Warp (wraithbone remember), or make them out of trees in the case of Exodites. It's easy to keep your planets pristine and beautiful, when you hardly need them for anything but a warm but shaded place to stand.

Lastly. I very much doubt the ancient Eldar left humanity alone, during the 40,000 years or so of human history that took place before the Emperor's Great Crusade. It's just not written down anywhere, but it never explicitely says that the Eldar and humanity had no contact with one another. That the Eldar were content to let silly little primitive humanity do their thing in their little corner of the galaxy, while the Eldar ruled everything else. If we look at how the Eldar act now, and remember that the entire race was leaning toward being like the Dark Eldar (probably more like Corsairs, the Dark Eldar were apparently the descendents of the most depraved survivors, who liked living in the lawless 'international waters' of the Webway. So yeah, during those millenia, there were probably cullings, and bloody evictictions from Maiden Worlds (in the usual vein of ordering the evacuation of millions, or billions, in the space of a few days), and whole planets that were just plain made sport of just for bored Eldar.

JuankiMan said:

Yeah, but humans usually react poorly to finding out that their fellows have been squashed by others, and they usually can do a bit more than standing on your lunch with the same feet they touched horse crap with.

JuankiMan said:

Exactly, only the humans are willing to kill that many of their own.

JuankiMan said:

"Decent man and wise commander"? We are talking about the guy who freed a demon and got himself smashed to a bloody pulp by a titan-sized demon prince so that he's now nearly indistinguishable from a veteran of the Iron Hands? I find it more than fishy that the chapter got its recruits from Cyrene for generations and then he comes over and realizes that the planet is completely and utterly lost to Chaos what no one else could see before. It's also interesting that the Inquisition believed him to be a traitor afterwards.

JuankiMan said:

Yeah. The problem is that if every time you wreck one planet to save a dozen you're down one planet and all the lives on it. Since there are corruptible humans everywhere and the Chaos gods have an eternity for their plans they can play until you're out of planets.

Yeah, unfortunately "tainted" is everybody who doesn't accept the Emperor as his one and only savior and doesn't have the military power to rip the Sororitas and Imperial Guard a new one. In fact there are Chaos cults that mask as followers of the Imperial creed. So yeah, the ecclesiarchy is a bad place for saving souls they are more into building monuments and killing people.

Blood Pact said:

Yeah, so? What does that have to do with "caring" what happens to them?

Blood Pact said:

I very much doubt it's necessity.

Blood Pact said:

During the 40,000 years before the Great Crusade? You mean the one that started around 30k? I dare say that we can be sure that they left humanity alone for the first 12k of that time. :D And I wouldn't say that the ancient Eldar were completely like Dark Eldar or Corsairs. Otherwise there wouldn't have been enough smart enough to leave before the Slaanesh hit the fan. And humanity still exists after coexisting in space with an Eldar Empire that could make or break stars with a thought. Also at that time the Eldar could always make new maiden worlds. They didn't really have to care about humans settling on them. My personal guess would be that the Eldar mostly ignored humanity during the DAoT or amused themselves by watching them like humans watch birds. If the Eldar really would have wanted to harm humanity there wouldn't be any stories of "metal men".

Mjoellnir said:

Oh you can be bloody sure of that. However, at the height of their power the Eldar were all but unassailable. But now the lion has been brought down and the flies still remember their murdered comrades.

Mjoellnir said:

Eldar simply cannot afford it, so they keep their fraticidal blood spilling to a manageable minimum. Dark Eldar are perfectly willing, though they are never pushed to such extremes since they're safe and cozy in their hidden city beyond the veil of time and space. Tau won't and probably wouldn't have the nerve no matter how desperate, which it will cost them if they ever come to the point where the Imperium would consider Exterminatus on one of their own planets. Orks will happily slaughter each other in the millions, though they do it close and personal to keep the blood pumpin', but who cares? There's more where those came from. Tyranid Hive Fleets sometimes fight and devour each other in an extreme example of Darwinian selection. Since the winner absorbs the loser's biomass and becomes stronger for it, the Hive Mind as a whole looses nothing. Chaos will sacrifice millions of its own pawns to further their vile schemes, from an Aspiring Champion sacrificing his conquered planets and anything within them to attain daemonhood, or a Chaos Sorcerer performing a colossal blood ritual to cast an equally colossal spell, or a Khornite zealot cult just wanting blood to flow. I… don't know much about the Necrons anymore, but the old Necrons didn't have the free will to actually choose to kill each other. Not that they could anyway, being effectively immortal. The C'Tan on the other hand drove themselves to near exctinction.

Really now, life is sacred to almost no one in this setting.

Mjoellnir said:

Why yes, the man who decided to destroy the extremely corrupting Chaos artifact that had caused the entire Tartarus campaign and costed him his closest friend. It ended up being a mistake, though he couldn't have known that there was a freakin' Greater Daemon inside (Toth might have not known himself or cared and the Eldar never bothered to tell him) and that destroying the Maledictum would somehow free it instead of casting it back into the Warp. However he took charge of his mistake and dedicated his career from then onwards to amending it, eventually facing in combat the very daemon he had unwittingly freed even though he knew full well that he probably wouldn't live to tell the tale (and in 5 out of 6 endings he doesn't). And Angelos wasn't declared traitor by the Inquisition, much less immediately after the Tartarus campaign. He was declared traitor by his Chapter Master after the Player Character brought to his attention proof that Azariah Kyras was secretly an agent of the Ruinous Powers. The Inquisition simply didn't bother to question him.

Mjoellnir said:

When the Imperium declares Exterminatus on one of its own planets it is implicitly admitting defeat. There will be no liberation fleet, no evacuation army, no valiant heroes saving the day. The planet is lost and everyone within it is at the mercy of their conquerors. An Exterminatus is a final "screw you" to the victorious enemy. If the Emperor cannot have it then the Imperium will make damn sure that you won't either. It will rob you of your spoils and kill its own people itself rather than allowing you the satisfaction of killing them, consuming them, mind raping them, corrupting them, enslaving them or whatever other atrocity you had in mind for them. Hell, in many cases you could argue that an Exterminatus is an act of mercy, like putting a bullet through the brain of an agonizing man who is beyond help.

Of course this only applies to Imperial planets. An Inquisitor can be much more liberal when Exterminating planets if there isn't a single human on the ground, but it will not look good in any Inquisitor's resume if all they have to show for their work is a bunch of useless, barren and irradiated piles of rock.

And it is sadly true that the Chaos Gods have time on their side. Perhaps the whole fight is pointless and their victory ultimately inevitable, but this is choosing between performing a terrible sacrifice and living for a couple of years more and not doing it and dieing tomorrow.

Mjoellnir said:

Well, when you instead accept Eldritch monstrosities from beyond the veil of time and space who thrive on death, horror and dispair as your one true lords which give you the power to extend the taint like a malignant tumor and conjure murderous killing machines from the very ether, then perhaps the Ecclesiarchy has a point in bringing out the flamers. For everyone else that rejects the Emperor for whatever reason, the Emperor and the Imperium are indivisable, so rejecting one means rejecting the other, and the Imperium is convinced that the only chance humanity has to survive is if it stands united, whether it wants to or not. Ironically enough, even those who vehemently reject the Emperor and His rule still need to look to Terra and His light to traverse the Warp. 

And the fact that the Ecclesiarchy suffers chaotic infiltration like virtually anyone else doesn't automatically invalidate their message nor does it negate the efforts of those priests who honestly struggle, suffer, sweat and bleed to preserve humanity before the encroaching darkness.

Mjoellnir said:

If you know how to conjure a Leman Russ, or a starship, or an isotopic battery or a plasma reactor from the very ether, the AdMech would be very interested in your findings.

Mjoellnir said:

The ancient Eldar weren't smart enough to leave. At the beginning of the Fall the Exodites went "I'll make my own civilization! With casinos! And whores! In fact you know what? Screw civilization!" and then left to the furthest reaches of the Empire and have lived like hermits ever since. Those were the smartest ones. Those that would later become Craftworld Eldar saw the incoming storm and tried to warn the others. When they were told to sod off they did just that and ran for the hills as fast as their Craftworlds could take them. Many didn't make it. Those were quite smart themselves. But the rest? The vast majority of the entire Eldar Empire? They stayed put, wallowing in their excess, unknowing or uncaring of what their actions were brewing in the Warp, and when Slaanesh was born they were utterly destroyed and consumed by the very, very hungry infant. The very few survivors who fled to the Webway divided themselves into those that had the patronage of the only surviving God, who had kept them mostly sane amongst the growing madness, and managed to hide becoming the Harlequins; and those who fled to the deepest, darkest recesses of the Webway and became the Dark Eldar. But at the end of the day the vast majority of the Eldar race laid dead and soulless and the core of their Empire became a open and festering wound in real-space.

And the relationship between humans and Eldar might have indeed been akin to humans watching insects. Usually you just watch, but you'll squash them the moment they touch stuff you don't want them to touch (like your food or the goddamn inside of your ear). But as they degraded they probably came out with a fly swatter just to pass some time. At the very end they probably caught flys and ripped out their wings just to watch them squirm. But in all three cases you don't declare open genocidal war against all fly-kind no matter how much they piss you off. They're simply not worth your time.

JuankiMan said:

While it is true that the vast majority of the Eldar were destroyed during the Fall, I think you're minimizing the numbers of the Dark Eldar. According to either the current Dark Eldar Codex or Path of the Renegade - I can't recall which one for certain - their numbers in Commorragh are vast and quite possibly beyond that of all the Craftworlds and Exodite worlds combined. It could be that the Dark Eldar are actually the majority of modern Eldar, but their existence within the Webway makes it hard to know.That they can and do have the ability to mass-spawn half-born to bolster their population after any losses is a fact, and this means that they can easily exceed their kin in birthrates (even if most are rather unnatural).

 There seems to be a general misunderstanding about the origins of the Imperium, JuankiMan.

You said something along the lines of "the Imperium is a machine built for war, but it is and remains that way out of necessity and self-preservation."

Incorrect.

The modern Imperium was founded by the Emperor in roughly 30 000, as he unleashed his Astartes legions in an all-consuming crusade to retake all Human worlds and colonies and forge them into one cohesive empire. All who opposed in any way (be they xenos, corrupted, or simply wishing to be left alone) were to be crushed by the merciless fist of his armies as "deniers of the Imperial Truth." This was not some defensive move to fight the threat of an angry, advancing menace like the Tyrannids, this was a proactive and unprovoked crusade for power and wealth. Now, turns out, he made a grievous error in the incredible size and breadth of his armies, and in imbuing his commanders with such power (the Primarchs) and eventually one of them decided that he would rather fight for his own glory and power and wealth then muck around with his bastard of a father because Horus knows better(one could call the Horus Heresy the universe's greatest case of teenage rebellion). 

So, having forged the greatest empire Humanity is likely to ever see, and then had half of his forces turn on him, entomb him in the Golden Throne, and generally cripple the entire human race, the Imperium still has all this size and territory and population, but it no longer has the incredible might of the Legions and the Primarchs to support it and keep it in line, let alone actually make viable attempts to defend its borders coherently, and just perish the thought of actually expanding (Yes, yes, the Jericho Reach, and the various Crusades going on. Bear in mind also the general flaccidity of these thrusts into the unknown, and the consistent loss of ground to the enemies of man, particularly Leviathan). So, it seems to me that the Imperium has its origins founded distinctly in waging a war for "personal" gain, and can blame its current predicament soundly on one half of the head trying to kill the other for control of the now rather foundering body.  Furthermore, now it doesn't even stand for the idea of universal peace anymore! It stands for a religious base that preaches torture and death for any who dare question the way things work, for better or worse. There may be some philanthropists, but generally speaking the best you could hope to find in the drudging, meat-grinder of humanity is someone who lends a hand to his crippled neighbour in between bludgeoning someone weaker to death with a rock.

Good Guys? Hah.

The Tau at least actually offer peace. For races willing to cooperate, the Ethereals can viably promise an end to civil war and internal fighting. The technologies are not limited to what a cruel and unforgiving robot deems close enough to what we used to have ten thousand years ago to be considered "pure". Instead, they are limited to what can be safely and consistently harnessed for the benefit of the Tau. Sure, they use other races as fodder, but not senselessly. They minimize their own losses in the same way the Navy SEALS would use regular forces to minimize the losses to the elite, or Officers use non-coms to minimize losses to the Officers. That's not evil, that's prioritizing. They will fight, but only when their reasonable offer of induction into an empire that promises peace and prosperity is refused. Right now, they also don't fuel chaos or run the risk of falling to it, but hey, they don't bathe in sororitas blood so they're more then vulnerable.

The Eldar may make war, but when do they do so? When the Skein shows the impending destruction of Eldar. They do not try to force others to their beliefs, but rather force others to halt if they threaten the dwindling race that once shaped the galaxy, They turned from the ways that caused so much harm, and now do all they can to prevent the deaths of anyone, but suffer not a threat to themselves.

Orks were made the way they are. Literally, they were engineered to be this way. How could you possibly hate a race that enver had a choice, but was simply planted (again, literally) in a particular way to grow into something you don't like? That's like hating weeds, when they do just as much good for the universe as you do. More, in fact, since they are completely insusceptible chaos and therefore are one of the few and only ways chaos could actually be beaten.

I can go on, but I would rather see your take on this first.

HappyDaze said:

That may perfectly be possible, though I find very hard to swallow that the survivors of ground zero outnumber both the Craftworld Eldar AND the Exodites. Regardless, even if that is true, their number is almost insignificant compared to how many Eldar died in the cataclysm. It would be like if the Imperium was wiped out and only Necromunda remained. Sure, as a Hive World it has a population of hundreds of billions but they're a speck of dust compared to how many humans existed before.

And though they far exceed their kin in birthrate, they also far, far exceed their kin in mortality rates. In fact, I think they resorted to mass cloning just to prevent their excuse for a society from collapsing under the weight of their own bloodlust. And actually, when you think about it, the Haemonculi's ability to bring back from the dead a fallen DE from even the smallest remains is hardly that impressive. Chaos doesn't need even that to pull it off and, in the brutal battlefields of the 41st millenium, there are literally dozens of ways to die that leave absolutely nothing behind.

JuankiMan said:

Haha, what? The race and empire that is entirely built around the idea of "do things for the greater good," "sacrifice yourself for the greater good," etc, is the one you think would most shy away from killing a few to save more? Again (and this isn't a bad thing) you seem to have a very clear Pro-Imperial bias. I'm not saying this to be rude or insulting, I think it's just what this pages-long debate boils down to: you see the Imperium in a very different light than the rest of us, which explains the disconnect between your perception of other races and others' perceptions.

 The Webway (Commoraugh is nestles deep within one of the largest segments of webway)makes sense as the greatest chance of survival for the Eldar, when you think about it. It's a place made to stand firm against anything the warp has to offer, period, and ensure the contents are safe from the predations of that abyssal plane. Sort of like how the safest place in the middle of a hurricane would be your hurricane shelter. Just because this hurricane is bigger, doesn't mean the storm cellar isn't still the safest place…

Also, pardon the terrible run on sentences in my previous post. I am rather tired and need to finish some work, and so don't have time for proper editing of forum posts.

BangBangTequila said:

Why yes, I had heard about that particular period of Imperial history, but let us make an excercise of speculation, shall we? Humanity was scattered, isolated, alone and afraid. Many colonies had devolved into barbarism. Others had mutated beyond recognition. The most intact colonies had formed tiny Empires but they warred amongst each other for dominion and resources. In such a state, what would had happened come 745.M41 when Hive Fleet Behemoth came along? Who would have stopped Ghazghkull Thraka? How would the butchery and endless tide of madmen being spewed from the Eye of Terror be contained? But you don't need to go so massive in scale. A single planet is often helpless against a well prepared planetary invasion force. Sure, the PDF can hold out for years in most cases, but they fight a losing battle. What hope can an isolated colony have of long term survival if it has no one to call for aid when something bigger than itself decides to gobble it up?

The recent novels paint the Emperor as nothing short of a physical God that has been puppeteering Humanity's rise to dominion over the stars since before the Romans, but no matter if that is true or not, the Emperor was very, very farsighted. He knew that, no matter how bad things were, they were bound to become even worse unless he could unite humanity under a single purpose, a single goal. That's why he launched the Crusade, and that's why he did ask nicely but would not take no for an answer. Independence was not an option, because an independent state is free candy for the enemies of Man in the meatgrinder that is the 41st Millenium. He didn't launch the Crusade for personal wealth or power, but for Humanity's collective wealth and power. The alternative was total human extinction in the next few millenia.

Unfortunately, he had his eyes so far set into the future that he failed to closely peer into the present. Horus' idiocy and betrayal destroyed in days what had taken decades to forge, and the Astartes Legions, which would have been the key to total human domination, were left broken and crippled forever. The Emperor was gone and his greatest projects that would have ensured a better quality of life for everyone were left incomplete and forgotten.

So the Crusade was the bold attempt to forge an Utopia. Had he succeded humanity would have enjoyed a second Golden Age of Technology free of superstition and fear, with the tools to fend off whatever threat a hostile and undkind galaxy would have thrown at it and safe from the random and perilous nature of Warp travel. But that wouldn't have been Grimdark enough, so instead everything he worked so hard for came crashing down, enlightment was replaced by ignorance, his beloved sons destroyed each other and, in the cruelest irony of all, he became the very thing he most hated: a God. The Imperium is the crumbling ruins of a gilded dream, but it was still left with the resolve and the tools to survive mostly united against impossible odds for ten millenia, which is quite impressive in an of itself.

Finally, I have no idea how you came to believe that I think the Imperium are the "good guys". In fact, I don't think there is such a think as "good guys" in the entire Warhammer 40K universe. There are good people, but there is no good side.

BangBangTequila said:

The Tau offer of peace is just the same as the Emperor's offer of peace 10 thousand years ago. "I offer peace / Sweet, we like peace but we don't want to join your empire / Then sucks to be you *BLAM*". For races willing to cooperate they offer and end to civil conflict because if the try to fight each other their Tau overlords will beat them both up and stuff them into reeducation camps. If they are unwilling they offer a volley of pulse rifle fire. And Tau use of auxiliaries as cannon fodder is not prioritization. It's Operation Human Shields and Operation Get Behind the Darkies.

As it is, Tau have it easy. Everything has consistently fallen into their lap. They have amazing technology that would make even the Eldar drool for no good reason, they are in an extremely tight-packed cluster of planets that was ideal for their expansion despite their lack of Warp drives. When they ran out of close-by planets, lo and behold! They conveniently found a crashed alien ship with an easy to reverse-engineer functional Warp drive. Their biology ensures that they have no civil disobedience whatsoever and since they have no shadow in the Warp they are resistant to most forms of Chaos induced corruption, though as a downside they can never develop psychic powers. Despite the fact that they're straight in the middle of Hive Fleet Leviathan's path, it is paying them minimal attention compared to what it could be doing to them, and Ork WAAAGH!!!s in their territory are so comparatively timid that they seem more like an excuse to have Tau players fight Orks in the TT. I'd like to see them learning first hand why the AdMech is terryfied of AIs, but judging by the recurring trend, that will never ever happen.

BangBangTequila said:

Or if they want something from you. Or if you set foot on the completely abandoned planets the make absolutely no use off. Or if you unwittingly pick something up that you shouldn't in a long forgotten ruin. Or if a Corsair is bored and wants a taste of "adventure"… But that is in the rare cases when they bother to get their hands dirty. More often than not they'll divert an Ork WAAGH!!! to slaughter you in their stead or manipulate their enemies into killing each other, or simply lead them to their doom at the hands of the galaxy's many perils.

And of course they don't try to force others their beliefs. From their point of view it would be like teaching a bunch of orangutan the finer points of art and philosophy.

BangBangTequila said:

It'd be stupid to think of weeds as evil, but you still pull them out because otherwise they will litterally overrun your garden and strangle the plants you've put some much effort into cultivating. As I already mentioned, the fact that Orks don't kill out of malice is of little consolation to the helpless civilian who gets a choppa to the face for no better reason than because the Ork finds it bloody hilarious.

Incidentally, Tyranids also have a very good chance of beating Chaos once and for all, but I don't think anyone is gonna think of them as saviors for that.

HTMC said:

Well, the Tau have never ever been put by GW in such a tight position as to be forced to choose whether to completely obliterate a planet full of their own civilians, so no one can be completely sure. It is personal opinion really, because even though Tau dogma glorifies self-sacrifice for the Greater Good (not unlike the Imperium, really) it generally doesn't do it to the point of suicide or self immolation (quite unlike the Imperium, really). There are exceptions, of course, like self-destruct mechanism a member of the Shas'O squad can buy, but they don't appear to be the rule. Also, Tau seem to have this bright-faced naive mentality that leads them to believe that they can save everyone. I'm not saying such a thing as a bad thing. That same attitude is what attracts many people, since they're the only ones whom the cruelty of the galaxy hasn't turned into sour-faced fatalistic cynics (well them and Orks, which seem immune to depression).

Again, it is my personal opinion, but I just get the feeling that when push came to shove, they wouldn't be ruthless enough to pull the trigger.