Far too many threads about which 40k faction are the good guys. Tell me which one is the absolute fucking worst, causing the most overall pain and distress across the galaxy turning everything it touches into a rotting shithole of corpses, maniacs and bones.
And why is it the imperium.
Putting all the 4 chaos gods into a single bowl would make this discussion far too easy, they hate each other so treat them as individual entities.

Never happened.

As individuals, the Dark Eldar. They are just a deeply evil people with no interest in getting better and not even the intention of improving anyone's conditions but their own. They're definitely the worst.

As a collective, Slaneesh and adjacents, if only because of the catastrophic casualties of its ascension and the continued torture of all Eldar souls. After that, the Imperium- cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable, after all.

>>96130115
>Nurgle - disease/decay
fundamental to all living organisms and ecosystems
>Khorne - blood, war, murder
a primordial element of nature that is symbiotic with decay. The active to Nurgle's passive.
>Tzeentch - fate/time/sorcery
the esoteric forces that bind together the universe (and the previous two).

meanwhile
>Slaanesh - gluttony/pleasure/hedonism
literally just the worst most selfish and unforgiveable actions with no higher drive than muh heckin good feelins and freedoms

>>96130070 (OP)
>Tell me which one is the absolute fucking worst, causing the most overall pain and distress across the galaxy turning everything it touches into a rotting shithole of corpses, maniacs and bones.
Its the word bearers
>And why is it the imperium.
And who's responsible for that again?

>>96130174
Is life worth living without slaneesh though? I mean even real life soldiers have to take drugs to keep themselves sane...

How lore-friendly would be to justify an alliance between Dark Eldars and Emperor's Children? Would they work together cool and nice just to rape, kill and hurt? Or it's just anti-lore nonse? Could it be chill and wonderful, lorewise speaking? Or just cringe grimderp slop?

>>96131419
The Emperor's Children have pledged themselves to Slaanesh. The Dark Eldar, while sadistic hedonistic creepy fucks, still fear Slaanesh and are in fact using part of their lifestyle to stave off her grip on their souls as long as they physically can. So yes, unless this particular group of Dark Eldars has given up and gone entirely into worshipping Chaos, they'd definitely refuse to work together with the Emperor's children on sheer self-interest alone.

>>96130257
>And who's responsible for that again

The Emperor. For all his supposed power and wisdom, he sure was terrible at managing the state he was trying to build. He was especially retarded when it came to understanding his people on a more human level instead of just seeing them as tools meant to serve a specific purpose.

>>96130115
Guess how I can tell you have never read a single Dark Eldar codex or novel

Deldar by a long fucking mile.

Chaos at least has the excuse of being completely fucking insane.

The Drukhari are conciously, deliberately choosing to rape the galaxy so they can keep partying and postpone damnation.

>>96130257
>And who's responsible for that again?
The Emperor. You can whinge all you want about Horus and Erebus and Erda, but the fact is the ultimate power was in the Emperor's hands. Literally, *ultimate* power, thanks to his hypocritical pact with Chaos. He got complacent, he made too many compromises in the building of the Imperium like joining forces with the Mechanicum (which was a MASSIVE fucking blunder since it kneecapped the Imperium's technology), creating heartless inhuman supersoldiers whose only purpose was war (easy prey for Chaos to corrupt), and probably the last nail in the coffin was abandoning the Great Crusade before it was finished so that he could try to jury rig his personal Webway gate in a race before Chaos started turning his armies against him (he KNEW there would be a Chaos uprising while he went to Terra and he KNEW Chaos would try to stop his project, there's zero fucking excuses for his fuckup there). He was in such a rush to get the Webway working that he didn't have adequate safeguards in place to protect the Webway project OR keep his forces loyal in the Great Crusade, and that cost him, and humanity, everything.
Even Erda could tell the Emperor was rushing his plans way too hard to have any hope of success. And it's pretty fucking dire if Erda is the voice of reason. Her breakdown of exactly where the Emperor went wrong in Saturnine is as clear as it gets. It wasn't any one specific detail that fucked it all, the big picture was simply fucked all along because the Emperor rushed through every detail of his plan without considering the consequences of every bandaid, duct-tape solution he devised to emergent problems.

>>96131608
>Guess how I can tell you have never read a single Dark Eldar codex or novel

>>96131629
Damn, sorry, is there a short story that proves the deldar dindu nuffin?

>>96130272
>Is life worth living without slaneesh though?
According to the vast majority of foundational western philosophers and their teachings, yes.

>>96131637
All the codexes after 3e. Fucking secondary shitter. So sick of lorelets who get all their information from fucking youtube.

>>96130070 (OP)
Nurgle. Look at how he treats his poor wife.

>>96130070 (OP)
Nurgle.

>>96131662
>NO URDADDY-DOMO YAMATE

>>96131549
I have read several and i have yet to see them be anything but utter cunts to everyone including themselves

>>96131651
>opens DE codex
?

>>96130070 (OP)
Tyranids eat everything. Because they have a presence in the warp with their immense number of psykers, and having the most powerful psykers (entire world size bio ships that are psychic) among other things.

It's easy to presume they consume all souls they encounter. Granted their shadows in the warp ability.

Tyranids are a type of demon from beyond the galaxy.

>>96131662
>>96131707
Such loving husband. Isha is so lucky.

>>96131624
Well said. Imperiumfags eternally BTFO. The Imperium is an inherently self-defeating state that is literally the cause of all its own problems.

>>96131836
Only if you actually read or count Horus Heresy books in your canon, which I don't

>>96130070 (OP)
The writers.

>>96130115
The Dark Eldar are literally the good guys of 40k.

>>96131624
>be the HH novels
>attempt to make the Emperor nuanced wherever it would be easier for him to just be a hypocrite
>he turns into a retarded hypocrite instead
>attempt to make the Emperor tragically hamstrung by paranoia wherever it would be easier for him to just be a tyrant
>he turns into a weak tyrant instead
kekaroo and there will still be people who think filling out a whole bookshelf with this shit is more sincere or mature than getting the gist from youtube and then playing the actual fucking game.

>>96130115
I barely see tragedy in the Deldar, they're basically just pulling the same exact shit they were pulling for millions of years but now they have to actually do it for survival in their own little protected pocket dimension.

>dark eldar
>bad guys
ok lorelets
still haven't seen any of you refute this

Dark Eldar and Tau are probably the only factions that, if they "won" the setting, would produce a society you would want to live in.

>>96134879
the only instance I would want to live in a DE win scenario is If I'm Lilth's personal pet and there is still a high chance I'd curse my existence there.

>>96130257
You know the one thing I don't understand?
Modern religious imperium and the eccliesiarchy is supposed to be because of lorgars weird book. Everyone is quick to put the blame there, but if we look at the worlds lorgar actually did get to break down and rebuild they were utopias that just so happened to worship the emperor. Both of these are undisputed facts of lore but are contradictory and allowed to coexist.

Is the imperium copying lorgar or not? And if so why is lorgar's actual work beautiful and perfect while the imitation is grimdark?

>>96134879
I undestand the Tau but ????? the Dark Eldar. How the fuck would that be a nice outcome?

>>96132665
It’s not like the average vatborn has much choice in whether or not they want to be a pain vampire

>>96131641
Wasn't their pleasure writing/philosophy? They're just as bad

>>96131608
Are they even "postponing" damnation? Commoragh seems to exist outside of realspace and they don't even care about the mountain daemonic incursion in the little bottom corner. I'd argue the Dark Eldar are the only faction other than the Orks that are not only thriving but will probably outlive all the other factions.

>>96134879
>dark eldar
>ideal society
even for the very top elites it can be hell since literally nobody can be trusted, even eldar like vec have to be on their toes or risk turning into some guys furniture

>>96130115
>As individuals, the Dark Eldar. They are just a deeply evil people with no interest in getting better and not even the intention of improving anyone's conditions but their own. They're definitely the worst.
Man, they just went mask off with their antisemitism didn't they?

>>96131419
There are instances of emperor's children marines alongside other slaneeshi hedonists looking up to and even venerating the deldar in their craft but it seems more a artist to artist thing or BL author's OC slop

>>96131624
We can't even be sure if the webway project would have been a good thing after all. The only thing keeping the imperium from being a totalitarian state is the fact it's impossible for them to regulate an entire galaxy worth of people and keeping them in line, at most they can tax a couple basically feudal shitholes for money soldiers and psykers and even that is hard enough for them. For all we can tell it would have just spiraled the galaxy into further tyranny and given the oligarchs on Terra fucking up the galaxy even more power. Big E is by all means a asshole but since we never get told what his ultimate plan was, specially since multiple authors have multiple viewpoints on it we just can never know.

>>96130115
>As individuals, the Dark Eldar.
I'd go even more specific - Homunculi. Guys were so shit even pre-Fall Eldar Empire didn't want to deal with them outside of a few raving lunatics. They literally looked at their nation crumbling and gone full on "How can it benefit me?". They are so bad even most Dark Eldar consider them gross and off-putting. A bunch of most vile motherfuckers to ever grace the 40k galaxy.

>>96130174
Hot take, but to me Tzeentch is ten times more sadistic than Slaanesh.

>>96131641
Socrates and his descendent schools embraced aesthetics and pleasure as good. Stop overhyping the Stoics, they're not that important to western philosophy.

As a faction? Deldar are pretty irredeemably and cartoonish villainous (love them for that), but they also have very little impact on how shit most people have it. The Imperium isn't quite as cruel, but its sheer size probably means they are directly responsible for most of the suffering in the Galaxy.

But I would present an alternative, micro-scale answer to who's the most evil. Everyone who does what they do usually have a reason or motivation behind their cruelty, often linked to their own survival (even the Deldar technically do need to be blending babies, even if they'd probably still do it if they didn't need to). With that in mind I say the Night Lords are the most evil fucks around, purely because they have no fucking reason whatsoever to be as cruel as they are and often actually go out of their way to be cruel, for no reason other than they're a bunch of assholes (luv them <3)

>>96131641
>they were all pederasts
Ok.

>>96130272
>worth living without slaneesh though?
Yes, you can enjoy things without excess.

>>96131419
In the Black Legion book, Khayon has an EC and a Dark Eldar waifu (it's ADB) in his retinue. The circumstances for them both being there is, unsurprisingly, contrived and there is really no way any Eldar would work with Slaaneshi simps willingly.

>>96136252
Slaanesh is still slowly draining their souls, even in Commorragh. It's not like they can just camp in the Webway and ignore the rest of the galaxy forever.

>>96138540
Excessive overwork in the imperium = excessive ways to get out of it and enjoy life. It's a delicate balance and it's why the japanese have so many gambling dens and brothels.

atleast the Dark Eldar and the Slaaneshi factions "let" you die (more like accidentally kill you because they got too into it) but Nurgle will do all he can to keep you alive in eternal unending agony as your body is mutilated and defiled by every imaginable disease and parasite until you give your soul to him so he can continue the torture for the rest of eternity in his garden.

>>96130070 (OP)
/vo/trans are destinyshit therefore the most vile.

>>96139184
Deldar are fully capable of keeping you alive forever as well, they claim it's resource expensive for them but they do it at a whim all the time anyway.

>>96131419
It would be temporary, and really depend on the Dark Eldar in question. Haemonculi probably would, like how Fabius Bile was instructed in Commoragh by them. But many Archons probably wouldn't want to deal with them, because the urge to backstab and claim Dark Eldar souls for Slaanesh would be too powerful to resist for most Slaaneshi forces.

>>96137081
Hotter take, Tzeentch is personification of "two more weeks, trust da plan!", he's so fucking random and contradictory that he's not even worth thinking about. Trying to please or oppose him is a waste of time, just ignore him and do what you want. Since no matter what it's all part of "da plan" anyways.

>>96130070 (OP)
How is this even a question?

What is the material difference between an Eldar world which orgied itself into Slannesh, and Cumraggh which did not? I can't see the difference.

>>96146686
only a scarcity of psykers
dork eldar are literally a group of jackasses who, upon noticing what was going on, decided to move the party elsewhere instead of stopping

>>96146741
So, straight bdsm vs farseer bdsm?

>>96146686
Cumraghouls only worship Slaanesh "ironically"

>>96134858
You joke but I've unironically seen people on the Rogue Trader subreddit argue that DEs are less evil than the Imperium because they aren't as racist and sexist. Apparently the whole "everyone in the setting is awful and if you unironically root for anyone you're a FASCIST" thing goes away when there's a fujobait sexyman involved.

>>96130070 (OP)
Slaanesh. The followers of the other 3 gods are delusional or insane on some level. Slaanesh followers know the shit they are doing and they love it.
Also deldar have some kind of biological need to be the way they are. Slaanesh cultist choose it.

>>96150020
Slaneeshi cultists never start off by raping en masse or doing 18 types of drugs. They are slaves like the ones to the other 3 but by far they have the most innocent starting point of just going to raves and maybe having sex with that overly tatooed weird magick chick. Khorne cultists probably have the most evil starting point of "let's kill everyone!!" but they aren't known to torture and subvert like slaneeshi ones do.

>>96130070 (OP)
based on the minis it is league of voltann

>>96130070 (OP)
The necrons and its not even close. They fed the souls of their entire population to demonic star gods for a chance ti wipe out another race who did absolutely nothing to them.

>>96131624
Mate, the HH novels are all fanfic by GWs own admission. Everything is canon, nothing is true. The HH novels coukd be the fever dream of a retraded ogryn, they certainly read like one.

>>96132010
That is an absolutely rertarded take. Only someone high on moral reletavism fart sniffing could come to that conclusion.

>>96150020
From what I understand some slaanesh followers start seeing the pain they inflict as gifts of experiences onto their victims instead of just selfish hedonism. Or maybe not I dunno.

>>96130070 (OP)
Noone is the good guys.
Everyone is varying degrees of assholes.
Voltann is arguably the only "neutral" faction because they are just AI led clones who were made to produce resources from the Galactic Core for the DAOT humans during and after the Cybernetic Revolt hence they are still rocking all the basic STC derived shit, albeit improved, that colonists and miners would have had access to at the time.
If the Emperor and Imperium weren't retarded and the Admech was wiped out, they'd probably have answered a request for aid/supplies/technology and brought a couple of 100% complete STCs with them just to do that.
Instead the Imperium treated them as Abhumans and had rules against AI, clones and so forth which means they can barely interact. Plus the AdMech is aware they have functioning STCs and use DAOT equipment so there's no fucking chance they can be left to repeat their Men of Stone era days.

>>96152668
They're evil though. There are accounts of them blowing up entire planets for a 0.02% profit increase and they're all made from birth for max efficiency and profit. They are the jews of 40k

>>96134858
fuck me, dark eldar have an auxiliary race of snake people?

>>96135226
Is the circumstances of their birth supposed to make the evil they inflict "better"? Dark Eldar aren't even biologically different from Craftworld or Exodite Eldar, and its not like DEldar ate ignorant of their cousins, so even the most ignorant of the vatborn could choose to be different in how they approach not getting their soul sucked out by Slaanesh. But they choose not to.

>>96130174
>Slaanesh
He's the personal evolution guy, the fella who runs Umbrella.

>>96131979
You huffing copium doesn't change reality tho. Feel free to keep malding tho.

>>96136468
If the Deldars were Israelis, they'd be funding Exodite communities on Agriworlds.

Only and exclusively on Agriworlds.

>>96152525
>Khorne cultists probably have the most evil starting point
They go from: "I don't know, I only ever killed Commies" to: "I don't know, I only ever met Commies."

>>96154870
The reality that I think the Horus Heresy books are so stupid that they're outright ignorable? Sure.

>>96154870
>produce endless slop portraying Space Marines as superhero's fighting objectively evil forces
>"umm, it's IRONY guys"
GW wants to eat its satire and have it too. They focus all their marketing on Captain Chaddeus of the Thundercocks chapter and his stoic band of badasses, then wonder why people think the Imperium are "the good guys".

>>96155087
That doesn't change what they are saying, sure it's one of the lesser evil but they are still evil nonetheless

>>96155118
Except Space Marines exist in their own little bubble, largely removed from the average Imperial citizen. They are either actively fighting or training in seclusion. Media with Space Marine POV characters get to conveniently ignore the majority of what makes the Imperium "cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable" in favor of bolter porn. Hate and genocide doesn't sound so bad when it's directed at a 12 foot tall space bug actively trying to kill you.

>>96155087
>world declares independence
>imperium comes to retake it
>chaos is the cause the whole time
>sms stop chaos from raping planet

this is the plot of every other novel, with no nuance or room for interpretation, yet GW will tell you with a straight face that its a well crafted obvious satire that portrays the imperium as evil

>>96135012
>but are contradictory and allowed to coexist.
Not really
>why is lorgar's actual work beautiful and perfect while the imitation is grimdark?
Because Lorgar was a Primarch with a portion of the 30k era Imperium's resources to carry out his goals.
The religious corpus of the Ecclesiarchy is weighed down by millennia of degeneration, corruption and redaction, and what it advocates has to be enacted by the far more thinly stretched 40k Imperium.

>>96155309
>Media with Space Marine POV characters get to conveniently ignore the majority of what makes the Imperium "cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable" in favor of bolter porn
Not really, even the most blandest of bolter porn with have things like "oh, this governor doomed his entire plannet by being greedy, oh, this nobleman likes to skin babies alive", at worst it shows that marines are the "good guys" amd even then that only happens with the expected chapters (Ultramarines, Salamanders, etc) If they are the sole protagonist

>>96135226
They do though. Eldar individuals freely chose between life in Comorragh, a Maiden World, a Corsair Band, a Craftworld, or whatever else. They can always leave

>>96130070 (OP)
>Tell me which one is the absolute fucking worst
A tie between the Deldar and the more lucid traitors like the Iron Warriors/Alpha Legion/Night Lords. Deldar for being sick fucks who willingly continue the disgusting hedonistic practices that brought about the downfall of their entire race, and are a scourge upon the galaxy as a result. The non-marked traitors for being more-or-less clear eyed and conscious of their betrayal of the Imperium, thus dooming the galaxy to ten millennia of decay. It's hard to overstate just how much suffering was caused by Perty, Alpharius, and/or Kurze switching sides
>causing the most overall pain and distress across the galaxy
The Imperium by a country mile. While most planets are probably somewhat pleasant places by our standards, those planets in no way represent the majority, or even plurality, of the population. Most people live on Hive Planets which make the Kowloon Walled City look like a paradise world, with probably the second most populous category being Forge Worlds, which if anything are worse. Servitors are a crime against any sort of conventional morality, the Administratum produces more deaths through incompetence than an Ork Mech, the Inquisition is hideously cruel, etc. ect.
>turning everything it touches into a rotting shithole of corpses, maniacs and bones
Nurglites, easy answer there.

>>96155660
>the more lucid traitors like the Iron Warriors/Alpha Legion/Night Lords
Wdym, Alpha Legion is just the inside men. Someone's gotta be the double agent ;)

>>96155497
what are you talking about? some lowborn gutter dweller cannot just up and leave to a maiden world or craftworld.

>>96131515
The biggest tragedy of Heresy was Malcador's permadeath. The man was the true MVP keeping the Imperium working while the Emperor was fucking around playing the game against the Dark Gods. The Emperor should've listened to him more.

>>96146686
Webway is more shielded from the Warp than the materium. That's about it.

>>96155497
This is like saying some child soldier from the Congo can just move to Switzerland. Like, yeah, it's possible but a dozen different circumstances stop it from being realistic.

>>96152565
I'm just going to come out and say it.
The Old ones deserved it.

>>96130070 (OP)
Whatever pic related touches
/thread

>>96156457
Eldar have much higher IQ than Congolese though so I don't find your scenario to be comparable. Low iq races (like blacks) are in the situations they are in because of their biology.

Chaos are worse than Drukhari. How? Drukhari fear Chaos.
An individual may suffer more from Drukhari torture but Chaos will make an entire planet system suffer.

>>96157798
I feel like DEldar would absolutely make an entire planet system suffer were they given the opportunity, though. I don't claim to know the particulars about how their pain vampirism shtick works, but it strikes me that an entire system of suffering people would be great for basically all of them of they can just figure out how to use it to make their Slaanesh-shield/spirit revitalization thingy.

I mean, assuming they cause pain so Slaanesh can sup on that person's suffering instead of the deldar's soul, its probably the exact same net result anyway. If Slaanesh likes feasting on souls and torment or whatever and doesn't care whether its from his followers or from DEldar acting as middlemen, Chaos and DEldar have basically the same endgame.

>>96158010
Drukhari are cowards who lie to themselves that they are doing what they do because they like it, but really they do it to evade Slaanesh. Chaos does it for the love of the game and to impress the dark gods. They are not the same.

>>96159048
The net effect is absolutely the same, ie tons of souls being shredded and devoured to satiate warp gods, which is my point.

>>96159930
>if you ignore the fact that they are different the effect is the same
Anon.

>>96130070 (OP)
For every happy know-nothing imperial peasant on some semi-idylic backwater planet, there exist billions upon billions of suffering serfs, cannon fodder militiamen, servitors and worse. What makes it all the much worse is the fact that the Imperium pretends to act in its subjects favor. The only other factions competing in terms of hypocrisy and plain delusion are the Tau. By sheer unadultered pain, suffering, despair and destruction, the Imperium doesn't have an equal still: Chaos basically only ever operates where the Imperium creates the fertile soil for its corruption, much like the Eldar before.

>>96130115
I concur. All the other factions have some sort of endgame, how they can make things better for all their members. Dark Eldar? Nada. Maybe some of them like the idea of this Ynnead thing, but it certainly didn't come to be because of their efforts, they can just ride the gravy train. Also being one of the most ancient factions, they had a long time to change their ways. They didn't.

>>96159970
In what substantive way are the actions they are taking to serve Slaanesh different? I am directly asserting that by the very premise that Slaanesh is accepting the pain they inflict as worth suckling another soul than the Deldar's soul itself, that it is clearly an acceptable if not preferable means of serving Slaanesh's desire, and since Chaos is all about serving the chaos gods, it can be inferred that they would employ similar if not the same methods on worlds they conquer to satiate Slaneesh, since both ultimately are just trying to serve him, even if it is for different reasons (pure calculated self interest vs crazed worship).
>um akshually Chaos does [x] for [y] reasons and DEldar do [x] for [z] reasons so its completely different akshually
Don't even reply if this is all you got dude. Might as well claim that theft 'for a good reason' vs theft for the sake of me want [thing] makes any difference to the dude who got his shit stolen.

>>96161174
>In what substantive way are effects of the actions they are taking to serve Slaanesh different?
Crucial fix

>>96159048
Cry all you want it's not gonna unrape Jaghatai Khan

>>96161335
>>96161174
>Don't even reply if this is all you got dude.
>He never replies
Hilarious desu