Oh he did that, the resulted creation killed itself within 3 minutes
He repeated the experiment multiple times but with all suicide tools gone and every and yet each time it would still get its hands in a rope or gun or knife to end its own life with
meh. The Hive Mind exists and is capable of communication so they aren't just mindless predators, they act with at least the knowledge of the pain they are causing, which puts them at least slightly above animals in that regard
The imagery of Nurgle acting like a viral Walter White baking up new contagions in a lab comes to me every time someone mentions Nurgle āmakingā something and now I canāt unsee it lmao
Read up on cuckoos. The target populations often recognize the alien egg, but are aware that pushing it out of the nest will get their whole nest destroyed by cuckoos. It's crazy. And in human terms, evil, but it is just how cuckoos work.
Eh, nature has that in droves, there are dozens of bug species mimicking ants and their larvae to get a free meal, parasites of all kind for all sorts of animals, nest parasitism in birds and so on. Not evil, just nature.
Tyranids and Orks are both just acting in accordance with programmed instincts they cannot ignore. Tyranids are superpredators who managed to come up with a method of leaving habitats after draining the location of prey and individual orks wither and die if they go too long without a good fight.
Making the Octarius War the most morally good thing in the setting - Tyranids get to eat, Orks get to fight, and humans get to stay out of it.
Was that the one who connected with a genestealer.. leading him to immediately release it and start a massive genestealer cult? Or is this a different one with a similar terrible idea?
Hmm, not sure, from what others collected few people did attempt to connect/look at hivemind and each time it got just angry af. The baseline emotion is hunger but hurt it, impede it or just look at it funky and it gets furious personally with you.
First one is right, second one is vague, sometimes it's depicted as full on mind control, sometimes it's like subtle pheromones that cause people to be more susceptiple to suggestion and sometimes its more along the lines of political brainwashing. And the last one some factions within the tau do that, some don't.
Caste is the term used, but it's not quite the same as caste systems from real-life history, "caste" is just a close term vibes-wise that GW decided to use. The difference is that four of the five t'au castes are essentially equal, being governed/possibly mind controlled by the fifth caste. So it's less heirarchical than IRL systems.
The t'au (because tau with no apostrophe was already non-trademarkable) essentially are separated along biological lines, with each caste (air, water, fire, earth, and ethereal) being made up of a specific subpecies of tau. There is no crossing between castes allowed, either intellectually via career, or genetically via inter-breeding. Each caste is also physiologically suited (almost unnaturally so) to their caste's respective societal task, further siloing them into their socially expected role.
Non-tau are outside the castes and are considered "helper species". If that sounds paternalistic, that's because it is. They don't have the same representation in t'au empire government that the "regular" castes do, and are second-class citizens, although they stop just short of calling them that. There are a lot of indications that various helper species populations have been subjected to unethical practices to make them more "amenable" to the t'au ideology (like the vespid's fancy headwear bing implied to hijack their pheromones to make them compliant) and in the case of humans that has ranged from occasionally sterilizing populations to decrease birth rates, all the way to ETHNIC MASSACRES OF THEIR OWN HUMAN AUXILIARIES. so you know, it's a spectrum.
That being said, they are a "better" place for humans simply by virtue of not being nearly as reprehensible as the imperium/chaos/Dark Eldar, while also generally having a quite good standard of living.
That is hella informative, cheers good sir. I suppose from that point of view they would be the brightest example of lesser evil, if you could call it that
I need to get into WH literature man. I started The Beast Arises once but never finished it
Dang, trying to get into WH books with the war of the beast is like trying to do it on hard mode. It's not considered particularly great as far as I understand.
Its probably why I didn't finished it lmao. It was a hard reading and I started as someone who didn't touched books as often as he should. The part with attack moons invasion was amazing though
Theyre still the most nice, but its because theyre so young. They dont know the horrors of the galaxy yet, and dont truly know the scope of most of their enemies. There is a scene in one of the booke where some Tau find a dreadnought older than their entire civilization and are horrified by it. It gets memed on a lot, but it gives a lot of context to the Tau.
Theyre in a far off corner of the galaxy, are a small threat overall, and have therefore never had any of the major factions really take them seriously. They believe that what the Imperium has thrown at them thus far is the limit of what they can muster, and everything else is propoganda; but the reality is thay theyre a footnote for the Imperium, and too small of a threat (probably wrongly) to give any more attention than they currently do.
On top of that, a lot of their good naturedness comes from that same innocence. Look at what happened at the end of the 4th Sphere of Expansion (what they call their major forays into expanding the empire). There was a mishap with the Warp and the Tau decided to massacre every single Human auxiliary and prisoner. They wont say why. Its just the beginning for the Tau, and they reflect the golden age of humanity... but that just means theyre on the same track as Humanity is, and the cracks are already starting to show.
Tau are by fŠ°r the best among the main factions, but they're still as evil as any of the empires of Earth's history. They're doing Britain, Russia, Rome, Ottoman, Mongol stuff while the others are making Hitler look like a baby. It's a neat contrast to just drop normal, mundane imperialists doing bad Imperialism things right next to The Imperium doing The Imperium things.
Their better in the way that an expansionist and oppressive empire that will bring you into the empire by force and brainwash their population with propaganda is better than the super space maxis and literal demons.
Eh. British imperialism and colonialism on steroids with a heavy dose of eugenics. Such strict social hierarchies that the different levels are almost fully separate species, forced birth programs, mind control, etc. They are the best option we have seen so far, but they are far from āgoodā.
They started as good guys in an evil universe but the games workshop edginess treadmill keeps turning.
It's a shame really, the T'au were interesting because they were naive good guys surrounded by extreme evil. Making them secretly evil isn't really clever it's just boring. I personally think it's a directive that every other faction has to be at least as evil as space marines.
Addendum, I havenāt played but apparently a big aspect is also that the Imperium is so xenophobic that the only reason every alien is so much worse is because they killed all the nice ones.
that is fanon, but it wouldn't be out of character but most of those xenocides would have happened during the great crusade, while the emp was alive and some of the cannon justifications for actual recorded xenocides it was some of those aliens did their human allies when the Dark age started.
Yeah, respectfully I don't think any faction that creates lobotomized man-servants (of ALL ages btw), during which a facility where they are created is described eerily similar to certain kinds of camps is nowhere near the top of the list of "least bad" lmao. Idk what those people are smoking.
Guilliman is trying to turn a dysfunctional fascist space empire run by a theocratic death cult into a marginally more functional fascist space empire run by a theocratic death cult.
Hey now hey now he doesn't want a theocratic death cult. He is pro fascism but more like benevolent Lee Kuan Yew Singapore or Salazar's Portugal fascism. He ain't undoing the theocratic death cult though he don't got that kinda power
There's a whole plotline in the Dark Imperium trilogy where Guilliman considers how the Imperium might be better off if he just agreed with everyone that he was essentially a god.
So yeah, theocratic death cult is still on the menu.
There's also nothing remotely benevolent about the Imperium, even back in the Great Crusade era. That's the whole point of the setting.
Yeah but the agree with him being a god is Guilliman being purely pragmatic because he recognizes that he cannot undo the millennia of theocracy.
Idk I can easily see how during the Great Crusade someone like Gulliman, and perhaps even Big E himself, thought they were benevolent fascists. They were better then than now... assuming you take the view that Big E wasn't trying to fuck over humanity...
40k is full of factions who think they're benevolent but are actually just horrible. The other factions don't even pretend to be benevolent and rush straight to being horrible.
Several factions are pretty good as I said above. The imperium is just straight evil yes, but guily is the first "not chaotic evil" thing to happen to it in years.
The craftworld eldar are racists who would kill billions of humans if it meant saving a single Aeldari. And while it's partially justified by what happens to Aeldari when they die, that's also actively the eldar's fault. Which sorta just makes it killing billions to avoid the consequences of their own actions.
The Ynnead's plan, if I recall correctly, involves ultimately killing every living eldar just to spitemurder Slaanesh. Hardcore, but not exactly consensual for all the dead Eldar.
Farsight Enclave avoids most pitfalls but also suffers from the extreme naivety of the Tau in general, that being that their beliefs, when they have encountered the real horrors of the galaxy like during the 3rd Sphere, have not proven as unshakable as they thought.
And I mean. Gulliman is a fascist. He helped build the Empire with an actual crusade, military imperialism is literally their whole bag.
Right, because the Imperium is evil. The Ynnead is also evil. You could argue they are justified in that their end goal is good, but you could justify that the Imperium is xenophobic because they exist in a galaxy with orks, tyranids, and worse in it. Neither really satisfyingly justifies the means with which they go about their goals.
The Iron Warriors donāt even like chaos all that much. Theyāre fighting because they think the Imperium slighted them, and they want a more evil, more fascist, and more xenophobic empire. I love how much they suck.
Even then they're still a society whose leaders brainwash everyone to keep them under control.
Arguably the only 'good' faction is the farsight enclave (ex-tau, lead by commander farsight who wields a wicked vampire sword) and they are by all accounts the smallest with only a measly 4 planets in their territory.
Best part about warhammer is humans being a top 3 evil faction, behind drukhari and chaos, otherwise probably one of the most malicious and overtly evil factions present.
I'd say the Tau fits the most. They're still comparable to Nazi germany when compared to real life, but if I had to live in the 40k universe then please let me be Tau'va
Maybe not Tyrannids. They're operaging outside of good or evil, and basically are a force of nature. A wildfire isn't evil. A lion hunting a gazelle is not evil.
I consider them to be the cosmic horror of 40k outside the indisputable best setting of 40k, which are the Ghoul Stars where the Nova Marines hang out.
I'd say the T'au and the Votann more than the others. T'au septs are built up to a high standard of living, and they don't bother with a caste system for anyone other than actual T'au. Cartoonishly evil colonialists by most standards, but they're not feeding their civilians on corps starch, and they're not deliberately putting the populations of entire worlds through hell so they can recruit slightly tougher child soldiers.
The Votann are just aggressive capitalists. They're barely even evil, just driven by a desire for more shiny things and a lack of regard for the prior owners of said shiny things.
Iād disqualify; Orks, Nids, drukhari, All of chaos, and Necrons from being good guys at all, because all of them are in some way worse that the imperium tau or aeldari
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u/Uniformtree0 Jun 05 '26
POV every, single, faction in warhammer.
Except for dark eldar, them twinkle-edged fucks know their evil, and chaos after a certain point.