For The Emperor!

So, among many MANY other geekly things that I have an interest in is the whole Warhammer 40K universe. If you’d asked me what the Hell that even was even 2 years ago, my answer would probably have been something rambling on about space people and laser weapons. And my answer now? Space people, laser weapons and awesome.

I first gained an interest in this when I found the Dawn of War Platinum Collection for PC on sale for about 15 bucks. Considering it’s a game and 2 expansions, that kind of caught my eye, so I threw caution (and a few 5 dollar bills) to the wind (or, you know, the cashier) and bought it.The game is a little dated by the standards of 2009, but it was a solid little RTS game with a very minor push for base building. Actually, I got so in to the RTS game style of the developers (Relic Online) that I decided to give Company of Heroes another chance. I still cannot stand the campaigns in that game, but I’ve really enjoyed playing skirmish maps (a little bit online but mostly against the AI…using an AI mod that makes it a little vicious). That’s a story for another day, though.

Anyway, the game hooks me, and I start getting curious about the fiction. Problem is, there is a LOT of fiction written by a LOT of people. After asking a few people about it, I was told who to avoid like a plague (C.S. Goto is often described as about the most abysmal author ever) and who to seek out (Dan Abnett on the other hand is pretty much the main theme of altars the world over it seems). So I lucked out, picked a few good books to start with, and it’s been downhill since then. I’m not going to claim that it’s the most mind-stressing compelling reading material, but it tends to be pretty damn entertaining!

How to describe the universe as a whole…one word immediately comes to mind. Brutal. Everything and everyone are absolutely brutal. The closest things to go0d guys would be the Imperium of Man, and they’re comparable to The Empire from Star Wars. You have the Emperor, a man who has been dead for a thousand years, but to whom a few thousand civilian types are sacrificed on a daily basis. Maybe his spirit lives on and fills the hearts of men in battle the universe over, or maybe it’s a convenient lie to keep the ruling class in power? Who knows? Within the Army of man are several factions…you have The Inquisition (when your government contains an inquisition, that’s usually a pretty good sign you’re rather brutal), a collection of Seers, Mystics, Sorcerors and the like who investigate phenomena and the enemy, and pass judgment on little things…like if an entire planet of human beings needs to be ‘cleansed’ as they’ve been tainted with the whiff of heresy. Their main arm in such matters are the Sisters of Battle. Picture a group of hardcore dyke nuns. Now put those nuns in massive powersuits and give them energy weapons. There are the operators of the Titans, ancient mechs (well, ancient to the year 40,000, anyway) in to which the driver is connected. This means he has pinpoint control over every inch of the mammoth robot. It ALSO means he feels everything that happens to it. It gets it’s leg dissolved by a volcano cannon…guess what? Driver boy’s in the market for a peg leg! The most interesting are the Adeptus Mechanicus. Cyborgs who gradually become more and more machine. Actually, when great leaders and heroes die in this universe, rather than a proper burial, they tend to be ‘rewarded’ with something like having their spirit embodied in side of a giant computer for all eternity.

The two most ‘well known’ factions are the Space Marines and the Imperial Guard. The Marines are basically the special forces. After passing extensive training, during which probably 95% of enlistees die, they are genetically modified to superhuman proportions, and awarded extra body organs as well as augmentations and healing powers to enable them to absorb massive damage. Lost an arm? Still got another one to hold a weapons with! Put them in suits of armor bigger than a modern car and arm them with weapons a regular man cannot even lift by himself…bolter pistols (take a handgun, now chamber it to fire 20 mm. explosive cannon shells) and chainswords (take a big ass power sword…now cover at least one side of it in whirring teeth like a sharpened chainsaw blade), power fists (turn it off, massive gauntlet capable of crushing a skull. Turn it ON, massive gauntlet capable of punching THROUGH a skull…and the wall behind it)…all kinda of fun toys. They’re like the soldiers in Starship Troopers the book.

What was that crunch? Oh...stepped on an SUV.

Then there are the Imperial Guard…the drafted bulk of the military. They’re like the guys from Starship Troops the movie…running around in glorified hockey helmets and shoulder pads, wielding outdated energy rifles. They’re fodder, pushed forward only by their belief in the Emperor. Well, that or the unit’s Commisar…the guy who will shot them in the head if he suspects them of…well, basically anything. They do get some pretty nifty vehicles, especially Baneblades, which are basically like a tank that built out of a house, but on their own, they’re hooped.

So those are the GOOD guys…homicidal maniacs worshipping a dead guy and ‘cleansing’ all who disagree. Niiice. The bad guys?

Well, I’ll deal with the neutral types first. You have the Tau…basically a Japanime fanboy’s wet dream. Well, the one that DOESN’T contain tentacle rapings. Individual mech suits, anime looking uniforms, Kroot mercenaries (reptilian troops who will mercilessly slash through a wall of defenders, then turn around and eat the corpses). They’re not common in the fiction, but they’re pretty well respected, if not feared, for their tech level. And you have the Eldar. They’re sort of the Ferengi of the Warhammer universe. They strike when it’s to their advantage. Only, instead of being mewling whiners who use complaining as their weapons, they tend to use long range rifles.

And now, the bad guys.

Most of the Warhammer 40K villains are of the ‘mob of monsters’ variety. You have the Tyranids. They travel in hive fleets consisting of millions of the damn things. Some are reptilian, others are insectoid, some are a mixture.

I'll just rip you open and shove an egg sac in your chest and be on my way!

Say Hello to the most common of the Tyran subspecies, the Genestealer. They’ll attack in waves. Most of you they’ll tear limb from  limb. Some of you they’ll eat. And a few will have gene seed planted within you. That seed not only mutates you over time but spreads to others on your world…and all of you act as a beacon for a hive fleet. Yay!

Next up…Necrons. You know those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercials where two guys ran in to each other, the whole “Hey, you got chocolate in my peanut butter.” “No, you got peanut butter in my chocolate!” and then they eat it and it’s good…and never ever explain why anyone would be running with those products. Imagine something like that…an interesting combo…but replace chocolate with robot and peanut butter with zombie. Built by the Eldar, they were turned (at least it isn’t just people who build the robots that attempt to destroy them!), they were tainted by an annoyance towards organic life. Combine that with the actions of dark beings and demonic forces (a LOT of that goes on in this universe!) and you have a massive army that feels no pain and lives only to kill…everything. They inahbit the interiors of planets without anyone even knowing they’re under foot. Than something wakes them up and BAMMO, welcome to slaughter city! They also have travel gates that let them cover half a galaxy with a few steps. Fun!

Finally in this band of mobs we have the most ‘fun’ of the bad guys, the Orks. Big, green, dumb. Their vehicles and weapons are broken down wrecks that work because the Orks think they will. Seriously. Someone else could pick it up and it would be a heap of slag. An ork has it and believes it’s a gun and he’s spraying lead (very inaccurately). What they have is large numbers and a stubborn willingness to climb over literally mountains of their own dead to get at something to kill. Their biggest weapons is probably the battle cry WAAAAGH!, and anyone who runs on scream power is fine by me, especially when that scream is basically a psychic connection between them. It doesn’t hurt that you can blow them in half, and the upper half will crawl towards you, ready to kill, until it bleeds to death. As for how they grow so quickly in to massive populations…when you grow/reproduce through spores, that helps!

Why do I love these bastards? Their Gods are named…Gork and Mork. Teeth are their currency. Their language was based on Cockney English people. Their various troop types are things like Slugga Boyz and Shoota Boyz. Their mechs are Killa Kanz. What’s not to love? It’s like a collection of idiots and simpletons who can tear your arms off. Think Lenny from Of Mice & Men, only 8 feet tall and with a psychotic need to crush people’s heads.

Now we get to the REAL twisted motherfuckers from this universe. First up. The Dark Eldar. They were normal…then they took sin and gluttony and vice to such an over the top extent that they gained the attention of Slaanesh, one of the 4 Gods of Chaos (more on those lovely fellows shortly). So, you had a split as the Eldar took two separate paths to remain free. One (standard Eldar) followed a life of devotion, locking their souls in to Spirit Stones. The other, their dark brethren, formed a massive hive city in which their souls are housed. They feed on souls of anyone else they encounter, launching piratical raids with no warning, using pretty gnarly weapons firing pretty much razor blades in to their victims. They play with them awhile, then finally eat their spirit. They’re like cats, just bigger pricks. Only through regular consumption of the souls of others can they protect their own from being ripped away by Slaanesh.

I'll just take a few moments to take your innocence and I'll be on my way

Finally, we reach the bottom of the black pit as we reach…Chaos. Demons and demon worshippers, basically. The demons live within the Warp, which everyone travels through when they’re moving at faster than light speed…if your ship’s warp shielding should fail, in about half a second it will be torn apart while your crew and passengers are led to an eternity of torment by bored demonic forces. This is probably the most interesting (and horrible) aspect of Chaos…unlike in typical religions where man reaches Hell only big his own choices, here you’re fucked regardless if they get their hook in to you.

There are 4 different dark gods. Slaanesh is basically the god of desire and lust, to the point that his foul harpies will be slashing you to ribbons while you moan and pretty much get off. His direct nemesis (the four Gods don’t get along and their followers regularly square off with one another) is Khorne, who is basically just the God of bloodshed. His followers can become powerful warriors…unless they let him in TOO much, at which point they become berserkers, mindlessly seeking the blood of anyone near them. Nurgle is the God if Despair and Pestilence. Think boils, phlegm and viral infection and you’ve got his army. The daemonic princes beneath him can actually fashion troops OUT of phlegm and vomit. Lovely guys! His opposite is Tzeentch, the God of Change. In this case, change is mutation…maybe he decides you need a head the shape of an anvil and a left hand the size of a frying pan. Or maybe he gives you a third arm out the small of your back and makes you crap out your nose.

Those are the ones everyone else within their ranks follows. Please them and you could be lifted to daemonhood. Displease them and become a mindless slave drone, never to escape and never to die.

While they have many followers, the most potent are the Chaos Marines. They WERE Space Marines of the Imperium, but believe the Emperor to be a false god. They believe man’s only hope for survival in a universe filled with entities out to slaughter him entirely is to follow the demons. So they’re armed and armored and equipped and trained and modified just as well as the marines of man. Since every Space Marine is part of a specific chapter (basically, a regiment) and every Chaos Marine ABANDONED a specific chapter (they also have chapters), if they encounter one another…ESPECIALLY those from their old chapter (these guys live tens of thousands of years), it’s fuck everyone else, we’re goin’!

Pardon me, pain to inflict

There’s a lot more to Chaos…dark sorcery, their WONDERFUL treatment of prisoners (if you’re lucky, you’re slave labor. If not, you’re either marched in front of their army as a meat shield, or used more directly for that as you’re impaled on to a spike on one of their battle tanks), their trapping of lesser demons inside of armaments to make them more powerful (the demons don’t tend to be happy if they should escape), they trapping the souls of their great war leaders within their battle robots well past the point when they go stark raving mad…but this sumbitch is 2200 words long now.

So, to sum up…a universe of desperation and endless violence and war tends to make for some solid entertainment…if you’re not in it.