The Imperium - Dying out or going strong?

[TheRise]

More worlds are burning. more civilisations are being destroyed. Xenos and chaos forces are moving in on all sides, and killing themselves yet multiplying. And the the Golden Throne has a major flaw which means the Emperor is comign to his death.
Its all in the fluff. I'm sorry but its fairly obvious how it will end.
The Imperium will be destroyed and other intelligent xenos races will be wiped out by the never ending tides of Chaos, Ork and Tyranid forces will eventualy become in small numbers, and the Chaos Gods will fall as they have no purpose. Then the Universe will end... and so will GW's reign

[eldargal]

Actually that is supposition, irreperable flaws have been noticed in the Golden Throne, but we don't know what they are. For all we know it could be the automatic waste disposal unit is buggered up and they will have to send in a servitor once a day to muck the Emperor out. We also know from published Black Library fluff that the Imperium endures perfectly well for decades more (in the Cain series I believe) at least.

[Porty1119]

I agree with BW. I am sick to death of the constant doom and gloom Imperium dying, humanity on the edge crap. When a real empire begins to go south, new and more vibrant states emerge. Why does humanity as a whole have to be tied to one mega-state? Another thing that often happens is that old enemies inevitably start to turn on each other thus giving the empire a chance to take a second wind. Consider Ottoman Turkey's revival in the early 19th century.

Personally, I would love to see what the spiky geeks of Chaos would do when the Nids start knocking on the door of the Eye. Now THAT would be interesting.

Agreed on both points. The Nids need to hit more than just the Imperium and Tau.

[UrielVentris]

'the night is always darkest just before the dawn,'


I'll leave it at that =)

[UrielVentris]

'the night is always darkest just before the dawn,'


I'll leave it at that =)

[Etra]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here, so I might as well make it a good one.

I've been playing the game since 2004 and have watched it go from 3rd edition to 4th edition to the current 5th edition. More or less, the Grim Dark rhetoric has always been there - it's less about escalation than it is about strain; the Grim Dark has been around for so long, it feels more dire than it really is.

I've also read nearly every codex, and one thing I've observed is a curiosity in all the timelines:

• Mankind had the whole galaxy under their boot before the Emperor walked on stage. The 31st millennium grand crusade was simply an effort to reclaim what was lost.
• You read the Horus Heresy books and you see that the Emperor had succeeded - he had won - in about two hundred years. That's all it took for Mankind to dominate the stars.
• This means that the Orks, the Eldar, all the Xenos baddies were crushed and forced to hide until it was "safe" to come out. And since then, the Imperium has only gotten better when it comes to waging war.
• The Heresy happens and Chaos rears it's ugly head - and this is my favorite part - the longer Chaos goes on, the weaker they get. The Chaos Space Marines codex is filled with examples of Chaos troops killing each other. Chaos certainly isn't getting any stronger. And replacing Space Marines with monsters and traitor Guardsman isn't going to cut it - especially with the way Abaddon keeps screwing up.
• Back to the timeline - after the defeat of Horus, there are literally entire centuries where nothing happens - no war or engagement worth noting.
• Did anything happen at all in the 32nd millennium? Or was this a period of relative calm and peace during which the Imperium could blossom and grow? True dat - this could be a lack of information of ages past, or it could be that the writers of the lore simply haven't filled in this blank. Just sayin - for every war, there are a million planets where there wasn't war. Where Imperial citizens lived, reproduced, paid taxes, and prayed to the Emperor.
• Further analysis of the timeline reveals that the closer M42 approaches, the more rapid and frantic the activity. This is either every race celebrating the Imperium's 10,000th anniversary, or it's a portent to a coming climax to the action.

The Imperium meanwhile still has in vast abundance the one resource they'll ever need - men and women of faith and spirit. True dat - the Emperor was a secular rationalist, but above all he demanded of his Space Marines loyalty and certainty that their cause was righteous and just. The Imperium elicits the same from their populace. Even if the Imperium is dark and cruel, ruled by malice and fear, so long as humanity will volunteer for service, the Imperium will never fall.

So you read about entire worlds being razed, the Tyranids spoiling Macragge and the other jewel worlds in the Ultramarine crown. At the same time, entire Tyranid Hivefleets are wiped out, with centuries needing to pass before another one can form again. Centuries of rebirth and recovery.

You also read laughable speculation that, "if only all the Orks united under a common banner!" A similar message is found in the CSM codex - this is ridiculous because such a maneuver is counter to the core of those factions. Because if Orks started thinking and obeying then they wouldn't be Orks anymore.

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The only problem I see with the Imperium's future are the troubling signals I get from the Mechanicum - frankly they're dangerously incompetent. Mathematics is the most obvious truth, the only genuine constant in the entire galaxy. The numbers that guide a Tau Railgun are the same as the ones guiding a Navigator in a Space Marine's Battlebarge, are the same numbers controlling the combustion timings in a Leman Russ's engine.

All I expect or ask from the Mechanicum is to have the epiphany that magic doesn't power machines, chemistry and physics do. And from that, there's nothing to stop them from rediscovering lost technologies and pioneering new ones. The explanation is that the Mechanicum is not staffed by mathematicians or scientists, but by priests.

Nevermind that just doing their job and going about their routine, the Mechanicum uses techniques that require them to be smarter than they are. This is a huge oversight that Games Workshop has never adequately addressed - something that infuriates me, an engineering student.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

Is the Imperium dying out or going strong?

Absolutely going strong. You have to think - the Imperium is the engine of the entire galaxy. From the Imperium, Chaos steals the men and weapons with which to continue their campaigns. The same is true of the Orks and Tyranids. All of those factions are, at their most threatening, parasites. Because they live off the back of the Imperium, they'll always be second to the Imperium.

The Dark Eldar were never more than an irritation; no Dark Eldar raiding party is going to threaten a Hive or even a Forge World. Both the Eldar and the Necrons just want to be ignored and forgotten, seriously. Those two will never go on the offensive.

The Tau are the only race organized enough to pose a threat, but they never will. Before I explain why, let me list their advantages:

• The Tau have a government. For what it's worth, no other faction has a government, except the Imperium.
• The Tau are united and embrace cooperation and organization and building. They are growers.
• The Tau are cold-blooded, clean, methodical, and thorough. They have science and they use it.
• Crises Battlesuits are demonstrably a match to Space Marines, and unlike Space Marines, the Tau can replace and mass-manufacture Crises Battlesuits.

Now, I'll tell you why the Tau will never topple the Imperium, or even pose much of a threat to them: the Imperium already sent a crusading fleet to wipe out the Tau, and only because of Hive Fleet Behemoth did they not succeed. This was one Imperium crusade, among dozens if not hundreds if not thousands, that proved to be more than a match against the entire Tau civilization.

And if the crusade fleet had the means to perform man-made Exterminatus (and not just melting polar caps) then the campaign would have been more one-sided than it had been.

The Tau would lose only because they arrived too late to the party - the Imperium is flawed but too far ahead. The Imperium has more men, weapons, and ships. Done deal.

And that is why the Imperium is still going strong. For all the dysfunction and backwards thinking exhibited by man, these same flaws pervade all the other factions in spades, and they still don't have all the advantages the Imperium squanders.

[eldargal]

No, they had colonies accross most of the galaxy, not all, and they were largely independent as far as we know, not part of some earlier all powerful human Empire.

Mankind had the whole galaxy under their boot before the Emperor walked on stage. The 31st millennium grand crusade was simply an effort to reclaim what was lost.

Wrong, the pre-fall Eldar were so advanced that no other species could threaten them, they ignored humanity because they were sp primitive in comparison as to be irrelevent. When you can switch stars off or capture them and transport them to the webway you don't need to worry what a bunch of primates are doing.

This means that the Orks, the Eldar, all the Xenos baddies were crushed and forced to hide until it was "safe" to come out. And since then, the Imperium has only gotten better when it comes to waging war.

Wrong again, the Dark Eldar can and do assault hive worlds and other large Imperium targets:
p23 of the current DE codex has them assaulting a Hive World
p96 of IA:A2ndEd has them taking 37m people in a single raid (admitedly on an agri world but still its a lot of people)
p129 of the 5th ed BRB has the Dark Eldar crippling the Imperiums Bakka naval base, the naval base for an entire segmentum.

They also do things like divert hive fleets and Ork Waaghs to Hive Worlds to reduce the defenses they will encounter. Labelling the Dark Eldar as nothing more than an irritant is simply ludicrous.

The Dark Eldar were never more than an irritation; no Dark Eldar raiding party is going to threaten a Hive or even a Forge World. Both the Eldar and the Necrons just want to be ignored and forgotten, seriously. Those two will never go on the offensive.

I do agree the Imperium isn't as weak as some people seem to think.

[Etra]

No, they had colonies accross most of the galaxy, not all, and they were largely independent as far as we know, not part of some earlier all powerful human Empire.


Wrong, the pre-fall Eldar were so advanced that no other species could threaten them, they ignored humanity because they were sp primitive in comparison as to be irrelevent. When you can switch stars off or capture them and transport them to the webway you don't need to worry what a bunch of primates are doing.



Wrong again, the Dark Eldar can and do assault hive worlds and other large Imperium targets:
p23 of the current DE codex has them assaulting a Hive World
p96 of IA:A2ndEd has them taking 37m people in a single raid (admitedly on an agri world but still its a lot of people)
p129 of the 5th ed BRB has the Dark Eldar crippling the Imperiums Bakka naval base, the naval base for an entire segmentum.

They also do things like divert hive fleets and Ork Waaghs to Hive Worlds to reduce the defenses they will encounter. Labelling the Dark Eldar as nothing more than an irritant is simply ludicrous.


I do agree the Imperium isn't as weak as some people seem to think.

I stand corrected on those exceptions you outlined, but I stand by my larger point.

[eldargal]

I agree with your larger point, the Imperium is strong. It is decaying slowly, but it is strong.

[Hive Mind]

The standard fluff is Imperium vs. everyone else because GW only tells the story of the background thru human eyes. They've said, countless times, that they believe that telling it any other way is an endeavour doomed to failure.

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Etra, your theory on Chaos supposes that there a finite number of CSM; that they consist of only those that 'fell' during the Heresy. This is not true. The fluff mentions SM 'turning' to the Ruinous Powers; sometimes only individuals, sometimes whole squads. In the case of the Astral Claws, an entire (oversize) chapter. In a universe where no-one really knows how many SM chapters there are or have been, no-one knows how many of them have 'fallen', either. You also assume that CSM have no way of recruiting. This may well be an erroneous assumption. The fluff mentions Red Corsairs recruiting and you don't know what happens to the geneseed of fallen CSM. What happens in the Eye of Terror, stays in the Eye of Terror, so to speak.

Your ideas about the Tyranids don't really hang together either. Nowhere is it stated that the Hive Fleets 'need' centuries to recover after taking a mauling, it is just that no-one in the Imperium knows i) where they're coming from and ii) how many there are. Now it's true that the currently known Hive Fleets and their spaced arrivals could represent the majority, if not all, of the Tyranid forces but it's also true that there could be a hundred other Hive Fleets all heading for Imperial space together. Regardless of speculation, the current wars raging along the Eastern Fringe and the Imperium's (unsustainable) strategy of biomass denial suggest that the Hive Fleets are a much bigger thorn in their side than you represent them as.

As for the Orks 'uniting under a common banner', well that's what Thraka is for isn't it? He's managed to give the Imperium a pretty serious kicking twice and while thru Imperial eyes he failed both times, thru Ork eyes he's a leader that has come closest to giving Orks what they all desire; the mother of all battles. Given the Ork fluff of them uniting under whoever will give them the biggest scrap and flocking to that scrap, I don't think it's right to be so casually dismissive of the Ork threat. There's even a quote from some Imperial agent (maybe a Xenos Inquisitor? I don't remember) about how he fears that ultimately Orks will rule the galaxy, not humans.

Then there's the Necrons. No-one knows how pervasive they are and no-one knows how many of them there are. What seems clear is that they are awakening and they are yet another threat to the Imperium, one that is already present (though slumbering) on Imperial worlds. There's also the Machine God angle; if the Mechanicum do 'fall' to Necron worship, the Imperium is, not to put too fine a point on it, ****ed.

I agree that the Tau do not represent any real threat as things stand. They're a very minor player in the galactic struggle.

I don't know enough about Eldar to comment.

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My own feelings are that the Imperium is a great beast slowly bleeding to death from a thousand small wounds.