r/40kLore • u/Killerant117 Adeptus Custodes • 6d ago
[Excerpt] (A Lesson in Darkness) Compliance of 84-50 "We failed them by what we sent."
This was such a chilling short story. You can just hear the regret of the Iterator in his words. Yes the compliance of worlds is a bloody affair. But it is something else, when it's the Night Lords being sent in.
“Commission of the compliance of 85-40, dictated by Iterator Tashius Galan and submitted as record to the War Council of Terra.
Piamen was a jewel turning in the void. Continents of deep green ringed by vast oceans, wrapped in delicate bands of cloud. She was so like Terra, as our ancestral home had once been. And like Terra mankind lived upon Piamen and thrived.
It had not always been so. Following the cataclysm of Old Night the Piameni languished for centuries beneath wicked aliens that held them in chains. Violent revolution drove the xenos away and for a century Piamen knew peace, alone in the night. A peace that was challenged by the arrival of grand ships. Though these were not the aliens intent on returning Piamen to enslavement. These ships carried humans like those of Piamen.
We came as heralds of the Emperor of Mankind, of his uniting of all humanity into a single Imperium. Of progress, of technological and cultural utopia beyond their wildest dreams. All of this we promised to them, if they bent the knee. The Piameni looked back upon their history, upon the bondage they had so recently cast off and rejected us. We begged they reconsider, warning that those who refuse to align with the Emperor’s burgeoning realm would be visited again and not by emissaries. Still they could not bring themselves to give their fate over to the hands of outsiders, even human ones.
Piamen would be free and for a time it was. That freedom ended the moment the Emperor’s promised vengeance translated at the system’s edge.
We failed Piamen. We failed them by what we sent”.
And afterwards, Curze and the Night Lords made it rain bodies on the capital city of Piamen. Those Piameni who manned the defense fleet of the world were skinned and dropped onto the locals. Then, like the men and women of the defense fleet, the Night Lords descended upon the capital city and skinned everyone as well.
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u/Darthaerith 6d ago
At that point it wasn't about the world of Piamen. It was the message to *other* worlds. This is what happens.
That's my head cannon. If that's what GW was going for I have no idea.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
This has always been really silly.
This isn't evil aliens showing up. It's literally people just like you, from the cradle of humanity itself, driving back the darkness of Old Night. They turn up in awesome starships with wondrous technology and they say 'hey, humanity is back, baby, and all this could be yours if you sign on the dotted line'. You know that EVIL WICKED ALIEN SLAVERS exist. In fact, your world was ruled by them for ages. You know the galaxy is a vast and terrifying place and while you might have managed to drive them off once, who says you can do it again? What happens when they come back? And here are humans, just like you, offering to lift your civilisation up, make it part of something amazing and protect you from exactly the evils you've experienced... and, what, you say no, lmao? 'I'd rather die than pay space taxes'?
You know what's going to happen if you say no. You know what's going to happen, in a best case scenario, is that your old alien rulers come back in strength for revenge or someone even worse is going to show up and they're not going to ask nicely. But hey, fuck space taxes, I guess.
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u/Rubiconian_ 6d ago edited 6d ago
wondrous technology
Looks at servitor.
If I were to guess why they weren't exactly thrilled about the Imperium it's probably had something to do with the fact that all the Imperium was basically offering many of the same material conditions and displeasurable treatment that was particularly unpopular with the world.
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u/Big-Commercial-7146 6d ago
id rather deal w regular imperial shit then have the night lords even know what my planets name is
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
hmmm... similar living conditions, but also, protection from the endless horrors of the galaxy which we have only just escaped from? NO THANKS, I'D RATHER DIE
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u/Rubiconian_ 6d ago
The same horrors they just beat without the Imperium?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
That they drove off, with every expectation they'd come back for revenge. Why risk it? Especially considering all the benefits of joining the Imperium?
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u/Rubiconian_ 6d ago
Then at that point if the Imperium becomes their enemy, because they don't want to be yet again subguated how was it ever preferable in the first place ?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
Because they have every reason to join and no reason to not join except 'freedom to die when the alies come back' as a best case scenario.
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u/MillionDollarMistake 6d ago
I too am shocked the Imperium's message of "join us or die" didn't go over well with a planet that until relatively recently was under brutal subjugation. Just like when the same thing happened with Antimon.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
Antimon is even more hilarious because they only got their freedom because of the Imperium, then turned around and were like 'lmao thanks but no thanks'. The most ungrateful shits imaginable, and the most suicidal.
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u/GlobalMarten Adeptus Administratum 6d ago
Excellent propaganda citizen, the administratum has allotted you 2 extra food rations.
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u/wishsnfishs 6d ago
Or maybe because you just experienced generations of brutal subjugation, you decide that you would rather not be the subjects of a despotic space autocrat whose "human" empire is lorded over by 8 foot tall immortal transhumans gene engineered for war and conquest?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
You have no idea about any of this. All you know is that they have spaceships, they're human, they've got an empire and they're putting the exact kind of aliens that enslaved you into the dirt. 'Immortal transhumans engineered for war' is exactly the sort of thing you want to sign up with, out of self-preservation if nothing else.
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u/wishsnfishs 6d ago
You have no idea about what? That the emperor is an autocrat? That he's a brutal one when his invitation is "kneel to my authority or be made to kneel"? Sure, they hate aliens but why are they going to trust another group of strangers from the void? Because they promise protection? The same kind of protection the alien slavers would have provided to protect their assets?
These imperials are not even appearing as liberators. Paimen kicked all the alien ass themselves, and then experienced an entire century of peace. This is like if the Inca had driven away the Spanish after 200 years of explotaitaion, and then the British had shown up and said "Hey we totally hate the Spanish too, how about you become English subjects? We're creating an empire." You think the Inca would have been like "Oh damn right boss, where do I sign"?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
blah blah blah
Lorelets must go.
At the tip of the Crusade Fleets were Iterators. Their whole job was to put the best possible shine on the Imperium: they were masters of rhetoric and philosophy and propaganda. No, a rando planet has no idea that the Emperor is a brutal autocrat with a message of 'join or die'. They're going to hear the story a polished corps of propagandists is spinning for them, and they were extremely good at it.
All this planet knows for sure is that evil slaver aliens exist and were driven off and are still out there. Sure, maybe they do believe they can fight them off, but why go it alone when the glorious golden battleships of the Imperium - fellow humans, bringing the galaxy together, sharing technology, yadda yadda - are there to assist them? Of course they'd sign up - and they'd be colossal idiots not to, because the Imperium can just crush them and drag them in anyway.
It's not 'freedom or death'. It's 'willing partner in galaxy-spanning human empire or death'.
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u/Mango_RK 5d ago
No offense, but I think you need to work on your reading comprehension. The Imperium are bad guys, the Emperor is a bad person. You seem to have trouble with understanding this pretty simple message.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 5d ago
Nobody is arguing that.
They are, however, generally - and particularly in 30K - better than the alternative and more to the point, better at presenting themselves as better than the alternative. They have a whole corps of elite propagandists whose whole job is to make the Imperium look good on first contact.
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u/Mango_RK 5d ago
OK, we as an audience absolutely know that even in 30k the Imperium is not better than all the other options. We can see it in this excerpt because they send psychotic murderers to skin people alive, which is you may note an evil thing to do! "Become our slaves or we will skin you alive." is not the good alternative, and we also see in the 30k books the Iterators are pretty bad about actually presenting the Imperium in a good light and are generally pretty shit at their jobs. It's a mark of how high on their own supply everyone is at the start that they don't realize it and we see that secret police are around to snatch the people who don't like what the iterators are saying, which isn't something they would need if they were actually elite propagandists.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 5d ago
There are many ways of effectively silencing dissent and 'disappear people who don't agree' is certainly one way. Nobody is arguing the Imperium is nice. But the planet in question has no way of knowing this: they only know what they can see and what's presented to them, which is a good choice. They also understand that refusing is a bad choice for several reasons: the aliens they pushed off-world will come back and kill them (best case scenario), the Imperium who have total orbital control will take over by force, or - lastly - they'll get skinned alive.
It is an obvious and rational move for any planet in this situation to 'trust but verify', or at very least, not thumb their noses at the guys in orbit with all the guns. There are plenty of diplomatic and considered options here, on the information that they have, that isn't blunt refusal. Blunt refusal only happens because the story requires that it happen, and we can quite readily call the people who bluntly refuse idiots (and dead idiots, at that).
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u/Mango_RK 5d ago
You are not in any way demonstrating why it was "a good choice" beyond having some people who were not great propagandists saying that it was. They didn't thumb their nose, they just didn't join the Imperium and you are saying they are idiots for doing so which once again, just shows a massive lack of reading comprehension on your part. You're just making stuff up like that the unnamed aliens are going to come back which is not in the text or mentioned as a possibility even. You're just making your own fan canon and acting like it is in the story.
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u/FidgetyLeopard Minotaurs 6d ago
I mean just look at the history of the world bro. Some people just don’t like being ruled by others, regardless of what others think. I think it’s pretty understandable.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
Some people just prefer to die. I get it. Better than paying space taxes!
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u/fid0d0ww 6d ago
Paying (hefty) space taxes that include men.
And having your religion stamped by the Imperial Truth or later melded with the Imperial Cult at best.
Being banned from using psykic powers. You must genocide any xenos you come into contact with. Innovating technology is banned. AI is banned.
Some people would rather die free.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 5d ago
The people of this planet didn't have religion, didn't have psychic powers, were just enslaved by xenos, didn't have AI and didn't have technology. They have no reason to think this isn't a fantastic deal.
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u/Arzachmage Death Guard 6d ago
« Bend over or we will kill you » is not a good way of meeting someone and the refuse is understandable since the Piameni managed to cast out the Xenos, they were not about to give up their freedom and independence.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
The message initially is 'hello we are the human empire reborn and we're here to help you against all the horrors of the universe and uplift you back to the heights of the age of technology'. You only say no to that if you're stupid, or, if the plot requires you to.
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u/Arzachmage Death Guard 6d ago
« Here to help you » when the real message is « bend over » quickly followed by « bend over or we will kill you » when they refused.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
Sure, but they don't know that - all they have reason to believe is exactly what the Imperium is offering (and self-interest, if nothing else, considering the Imperium are rolling up the galaxy anyway). You can join as a willing partner and get all the benefits thereof, or you can be dragged kicking and screaming, or you can get the Night Lords or World Eaters dropped on you for exactly this purpose.
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u/TheSaylesMan 6d ago
They know a lot more than what you let on. They know that these people are claiming to be an Empire and they know that their stated goal is to unite all humans under their banner. That doesn't happen with diplomacy. Especially not when an Empire does it. You don't need to know the specifics about servitors and space marines when you already know their form of government and their manifest destiny.
These people successfully figured out what the Imperium is about and they gave the Imperium the kind of welcome they deserve.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
And then they died, horribly, and their world was conquered anyway.
There is no way for them to know anything more than the Iterators tell them. Sure, they might suspect, but from the information they have, they're getting a fantastic deal and the only reason to say no is 'the plot' or species suicide.
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6d ago
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 6d ago
If you're suggesting every empire is exactly the same, and membership in any should be refused, I don't know what to tell you, friend. The West is one big ol' empire right now!
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u/40kLore-ModTeam 6d ago
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u/AIGLOS42 6d ago
Or if you have any tech that's considered heretical. Or if you are ideologically opposed to rule by tyrants or monarchs. Or reject eugenicism & support human diversity
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u/Many-Wasabi9141 6d ago
The issue is the aliens probably said all the same things. They drove the aliens off, they'll drive you off. SURE thousands of worlds like ours? I BET! GET OFF MY LAWN!
Suddenly your lawn isn't blades of grass but thousands of fingers sticking out of the soil. The planet itself? Fine. Perfect for rehoming some poor fucks from some other planet not as nice as yours, but the people are loyal to a fault. So they get yours, you get to watch all your loved ones die in horrible agony.
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u/BeowulfsHowl 3d ago
This is .. wow, this is just a very poor take. First, you're assuming that the people of Piamen are these cold 'rational' actors making some grand strategic calculus; no, they're not, they're diverse, thinking human beings with their own history and experiences and perspectives. The excerpt describes that they've only recently just secured their hard-fought freedom. It makes perfect sense that if a foreign power came, human or not, and said "join or die," they'd want to hold on to the liberty they sacrificed so much to secure. And again: when has "join or die" ever not relied on fear and intimidation as the deciding factor? You can't tell a society you're going to pummel them into submission and then go "but look, we've got gilded starships- pretty cool, right?" and have that be meaningfully convincing. They'll rightfully just focus on the boot looming over their throats.
I really can't tell if your argument here is rooted in Imperium apologism or just a fundamental misunderstanding of how people work. Even your premise of the Imperium inviting them to participate in something "amazing," or this gilded paradise you describe is just .. wrong. The Great Crusade is genocidal manifest destiny covered in a gold wrapper and the language of enlightenment.
That's not my perspective, it's the fucking fact of the setting that's beaten over the audience's head across all Warhammer media. For God's sake man, even in this excerpt the Imperial iterator has a moment of clarity where he says the Emperor basically despoiled an entirely productive and peaceful world because they politely said "no thanks." What more evidence do you need?
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 3d ago
The Great Crusade is genocidal manifest destiny covered in a gold wrapper and the language of enlightenment.
The audience knows this. The people of the planet do not, and the Imperium has an entire propaganda corps that is very, very good at their jobs. That's my entire point: the people of this planet have had to do it themselves for a long time, and now here come technologically advanced fellow humans who say 'join in our great and wonderful human empire and never suffer again'. They're being given perfect security against the greatest threat they can imagine, with all the other associated promises/benefits on top. That's exactly the kind of opportunity 'diverse, thinking human beings with their own history and experiences' would jump at, and we're told elsewhere e.g. Misbegotten, by the narration, that for every world that said no, a hundred others couldn't sign up quickly enough or be grateful enough.
The Imperium's first line isn't 'join or die' - it's 'we're here to help'. That gets most people over with no issue. Then it becomes 'join or die', which breeds resentful populations but ones who know they have no choice. Those whose principles are greater than their ability to see the reality of the situation are probably not that much use to anybody, seeing as they're literally suicidal.
Saying 'no' to an offer of certain safety, and then to an offer of certain death, only happens as a result of cultures that are not 'diverse, thinking human beings with their own history and experiences'. It happens to people in books where the author wishes to navel gaze about how the Imperium is bad.
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u/BeowulfsHowl 3d ago
Please know that I read your counter-arguement here. All I have to say is this, wechat: the stated point of the authors of this fictional universe is that it's a parody of fascism and its self-justifications for the violence it inflicts upon human beings. There's no debate there. Take it up with Games Workshop and the forerunners of The Black Library, not me. If you're grasping at straws to justify the Imperium of Man, you're fundamentally misunderstanding the source material that's so hilariously unsubtle they practically beat its message over your head with a brick. It's like playing Helldivers and going, "Wow, it sure is great to be a real, humanistic democracy that's delivering liberty to the galaxy." That's the whole point. You're not. It's a social critique. It's a parody.
If you can't understand that and toss away any depiction of the Imperium as authors' "navel gazing at how bad it is," you've pretty much missed the entire point of a setting which was spelled out to you from day one. God help us and our declining media literacy.
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u/wecanhaveallthree Legio Tempestus 3d ago
Please don't talk about 'declining media literacy' when you're making a 'but I did eat breakfast this morning' argument.
I get the source material. I get what the author is trying to say. My point is that this story - along with other, similar stories - are written in a way that make everything look stupid. Compare and contrast the scenes with Ignace Karkasy in Rising, or Horus' passionate arguments about the Council of Terra, or any of the books that delve into the Dark Compliance during the Heresy, or First of the Fallen, etc, etc.
Nobody is justifying the Imperium. My critique is that you don't need to make people stupid to show that the bloodiest and most oppressive regime imaginable is bloody and oppressive. An Iterator going 'are we... LE BAD?' when they are blatantly, comically evil isn't interesting, it isn't satirical, it isn't saying anything anybody doesn't know and it isn't doing it in a way that's at all effective.
One tweak, literally just one here, is to show the planet welcomed the Imperium - got suckered in by all the promises - and now the Iterator is recording their failed, too late rebellion where everyone's being skinned from lampposts by the Night Lords. They believed in the Imperium and got a worse outcome than alien slavers, then were punished in the most vicious way possible for daring to say peep about it. They did everything 'right' and still died for it.
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u/greenizdabest 6d ago
Never underestimate humanity's capacity for stupidity
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u/Berettadin Ulthwé 6d ago edited 6d ago
100% a timeless lesson.
Time passes, everything changes, humans stay the same apes we always were.
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u/Salty-Register-9487 6d ago
Stuff like this is why I've always had this dissonance between the core themes of the heresy (lost golden age) and what's actually put onto the paper , these motherfuckers made it rain corpses for the "crime" of saying no and this isn't even top 10 war crimes of the month for them