How bad would living in the Imperium actually be? | Warhammer 40k Lore 

Just to make it clear, ADB is a great author and there's a decent chance we actually agree on this topic. But I love being a shit stirrer so here we are Use code MAJORKILL for $5 off your next magic spoon order : magicspoon.thld.co/MAJORKILL_1021

Chore on a Catachan. "Okay honey I'm going to go mow the lawn now." Grabs a Heavy Flamer and rushes out to fight a dozen strangler plants.

It's the same in the fantasy version. In some novels, Empire is pretty chill place to live and most of the citizens regard stuff like Chaos and Beastmen like nothing more than Old Nan's tales, while in other novels, everyone lives in constant state of fear and paranoia. That's what you get when you employ shitton of different writers, each with their own headcanon.

*thumbnail* "You dudes. The Imperial Guard is like pretty chill. You should join it or something." - handsome Guardsman recruitment icon.

Life in the Imperium is the embodiment of "depends on the context".

The imperium is just so massive that applying a single theme like " everything is soul crushing depressing " is just not good writing , besides the reason we only get stories in these extreme settings is because they sell the best

I've always been under the assumption that most 40k worlds are portrayed as shitty due to being worlds located at/near warfronts, so they're undergoing a mass military production phase to support the imperial troops (and survive from the xenos that are incoming), with everything calming down to pretty nice living conditions if the battle is won (emphasis on "if").

i've made quite a realisation. they way the lore is self contradictory, the way the lore is retconned, the way the lore varies massively, and the sheer volume of lore is comparable to the variation, complexity, scale, and contradictions of the Imperium itself.

Your transition for the cereal product placement was so hilariously shitty I absolutely loved it. Top tier my dude

But majorkill, forgeworlds have some sort of a holiday/rest day called "sector wakes" - where the production facilities of a sector are closed down for routine maintenance, and the workers relocate en masse to a recreational facility. Source: Death or Glory, a ciaphas cain novel by sandy mitchelle.

I like to imagine that feudal worlds are less completely medieval and underdeveloped, but more like when the protagonist in a Star Wars film come across a remote village. They farm and live in huts but they have access to basic technologies like computer consoles, speeder vehicles, primitive blasters and droids lying around. Something like that is what I like to imagine in my head cannon as it’s kind of weird to me to imagine medieval stinky peasants who use pitchforks and serve armoured knights etc. Not saying they don’t exist, just that they’d most likely just a bit more developed than what medieval Europe was.

This reminds me of a quote in Game of Thrones by the Blackfish. He basically says that even in war’s darkest days, for most people in most parts of the world, absolutely nothing is happening. He says this while they’re looking out onto a peaceful and quiet stretch of land that is completely oblivious to the huge war being fought in Westeros. I imagine that this logic also applies to a lot of planets in the Imperium as well.

14:08 Forge world workers are given 1 week off while their stations are maintained each year, and there's plenty of non-servitor workers, Haldron 44 from the Skitarius book was a worker before joining the Skitarii

‘It has long been in your capability to transform these worlds. Baal Primus is dead, but you need not let your remaining people suffer unnecessarily. Will they fight any better for dwelling on a world that kills them? By sacrificing their children to the Emperor’s service, they have earned a better life. Once you have torn that blasphemy down, raise up the population of Baal Secundus. Teach them what we are fighting for. A line must be drawn between what is good and what is evil, for if the Great Enemy comes with offers of power to a wretch, what reason does he have to refuse hell if he dwells in it already? /Roboute Guilliman

Just as an example, the Dark Angels explicitly only recruit from Feral and Death worlds. Supreme Chapter Master Azrael is from a frozen almost-death world that was stuck in the dark ages, he was basically a feral child that carried rotting frozen heads from people he killed on him, and he turned out to be a brilliant commander and tactician.

8:06 "If you can survive in Necromunda, then you're welcome here." - Qrow Branwen probably.

A million worlds you are going to get some variety. Everyone working like they were in a Soviet gulag? At 80% casualties you aren't going to last 10K years

That intro won't ever get old. That's how good it is

A lot of those authors get their lore from the wikis so I don't know how much of a lore authority they really are, beyond the material they created wholesale.

People forget that alot of these Grim Dark moments of hive fleets devouring worlds and chaos enslaving and torturing entire systems are not as frequent as they seem, they only happen to a handful of world's over decades, centuries or if not thousands of years, even the continuous wars are very slow drawn out conflicts, so the million worlds don't need to be enslaved to building up the armies of man since each battle, even your average inquisitor will only deal with 1 major chaos threat in their life

The best illustration of “not everything is one way and there are huge differences of doctrine, culture, etc” is probably the Gaunts Ghosts series. You can go from hellish meat grinders to intelligently commanded battles, from fodder regiments to respected and valued ones, from people loyal to the throne first to more locally minded people who barely have cause to care for the wider Imperium, and from Idyllic worlds to death planets fairly rapidly. I also like how the series fleshes out the culture of the heretical societies that live in the chaos occupied regions. To them, they are defending their long-standing culture and “liberating” the loyalists from a twisted dogma that denies them the true way. The books manage this perspective without devolving into “the bad guys are just as good as the good guys” trope.

It also depends on how the world is ruled since the Imperium does not care how a world its ruled so long it pays its tithes, worships the Emperor and is loyal. There's probably even planetary rivalries due diffrences of values and how they worship the Emperor. Hell the ecclesiarchy is probably flexible on how one can worship the Emperor which can vary in shape or form depending on the world some will have human/xeno sacrifices and some can have the same or mixture of rituals like in IRL religions.

This was fun. I do tend to feel that the average life on an Imperial world is shittier than this; the Imperium, as a people, doesn't feel a need to treat people like people, but as one more resource to spend as needed. If a Planetary Governor WANTS to operate his world in a way many fans of the grimdark setting seem to think it is, they totally can, and nothing short of an uprising will stop it. That's why he has the best planetary troops. HOWEVER, to think that every world is that bad is dumb. Are there Administratum planets where people mindlessly record info, are brought food once a day, and sleep for four hours, feet away from where you work? I'm sure there are, and the Imperium knows it can work you to death; you have no one to help you, and plenty to replace you, but then that's only if the governing body WANTS it like that. There are plenty of better places. I presume part of it is just to try and depict what the main characters of the story have arisen from, and what shaped them. I've read Angel of Fire, the first Macharian Chronicles book, and Leo Lemuel, while his planet is somewhat crap, lives a pretty average life. He has an apartment, and a job. He has friends, and goes out for fun, at night. His family is crap, but he accepts it. If memory serves, the only real reason he and his friend join the Guard, in order to leave the planet, is to get away from some personal trouble he brought upon himself, and knows will get him killed anyway, so what's the Guard going to do? He's not trying to escape poverty, or a dead-end job his family has had for years, or even to gallantly serve the Emperor, nor was he drafted against his will by some Inquisitor, or Commissar. It's sort of like Sherlock Holmes. Scotland Yard is one of the greatest law enforcement organizations in the world, or so I've heard, but when Holmes is involved, those bumbling goobs couldn't solve the case of the stolen lunch, or tell their own asses from holes in the ground. There's only so much awesome Sherlock Holmes can have, and then, in order to further exemplify his greatness, you have to enfeeble his peers. To make our humans look suitability more heroic, they sometimes have to make the places they came from all the more crap. On the plus side, since most Guardsmen never get to return home; they either die on their battlefield, or get sent to another one, and spin the autopistol barrel again, it helps explain why it's no big thing they left everyrhing; their family, friends, history, culture, and more behind. On such worlds, who'd WANT to return? Still, plenty of worlds aren't bad; it just makes for a more grimdark story if this one is.

You should do a video series about the main warhammer authors like adb, Dan Abnett etc... like what books they wrote, games they worked on..

Every writer has their strengths and weaknesses. Demski bowden is good for stuff that needs to actually be grim dark, like chaos space marines (his night lords books are good) , but the problem is he also writes absolutely everything and everyone else that way in all his books.

Could you imagine a feudal world novel? Imagine a rebel creating a revolution to take down the tyrant ruler and believing to have overthrown the greatest threat in his world only for giants in armor to come and slaughter him and his friends for questioning an Imperium from the stars he has never heard of.

Space Wolves lace meat with hormones to begin the Astartes conversion process - Major Kill's chapter uses ersatz fruity pebbles instead

Contemplating if I should get access to a boat load of Warhammer hentai

Nailed it. Abnett is the man! Love the variety we get in his books. Not just 'big men in power armour, fap fap'. I loved seeing the few Astartes in Eisenhorn from the point of view of humans.

Abnett's ability to describe various worlds and locations is a treat. Really feel like a 40k tour. Just the swamps of Monthax and the Carnival is still pict recorded in my brain and I only had one read through of books containing those a decade ago.

5:34 *sees the lady's legs* TFS Broly: "That's hot."

We need a compilation video of everytime Majorkill says 'hectic'

Would range from shitty life in a hellhole to making our lives look like life in a hellhole in comparison

If there were ever an Imperial Governor I'd choose for me, it'd be you mate. It'd be so spicy to be in your inner circle.

0:40 Majorkill loves magic? That's heresy! *calls the Witch Hunters immediately*

Janitor in the Imperial Palace, the safest place in the Galaxy, the only issue is that you have to polish the Custodes all the time, good lord the amount of wax & oil used for that gold

Always felt life will vary greatly from planet to planet as each one is somewhat at the whim of the Governor. Reading A Thousand Sons atm found it interesting to see Ahriman talking in a Siege about how he thinks the Ultramarines had the right of it in leaving planets genuinely better than when they found them compared to the bomb-to-shit-then-onto-the-next behaviour of some other legions.

I think the Warhammer 40k universe is really similar to stellaris. Forge worlds are basically machine worlds.

Living in the Imperium is kind of like being in the US military. You might end up in some base in hawaii where they serve steak three nights a week at the chow hall, or you might end up patrolling a Shia neighborhood in Ramadi for 18 months and sleeping 2 hours a night.

Nearly as bad as living in Australia

I remember one 40k book where some Space Marine is listening to an Inquisitor and Scholar go back and forth on what the Tau could be using to get so many Humans to become heretics and "defect" to the Tau's "Greater Good" and internally says to himself that if they ever bothered to look at the conditions regular people are forced to live in and endure, especially by officials who supposedly "Agents of the Empire", they'd realize the Tau don't need mind control or coercion to get people to join at all.

You should read some of Ciaphas Cain novel, it shows some aspect of civilian lives.

If u watch majorkill videos from his earliest to now u see a man gets more and more educated and civilized

@Majorkill You should read "The Siege of Castellax". It is a Hive world in the hands of the Iron warriors which gets attacked by a Waagh. I have the feeling that many ppl, including Aaron Dembski-Bowden, think that normal worlds of the Imperium look like this. But it gets very clear that the harsh conditions under which the workers have to live slowly kill them, even to the point where they are nearly happy that they are getting attacked by a huge Waagh and will probably die. It is a cool book, if you like to see some Chaos Mariens vs Orks Action without some edgy Bs in it and the story of a normal human that gets recruited as a slave worker and later slave soldier, and tries to survive.

Sure, the planet in Infinite & Divine got invaded by orks and then exterminatus'd due to genestealer uprising but literally thousands of peaceful years elapsed in between. For most people who ever lived there life was pretty decent

ADB being a cannibal sounds about right considering what he did to the emperor.

even though hive worlds make up a small percentage of the imperial worlds they have much much larger populations sometimes even into the trillions compared to other types of worlds that may only house a few billion so even though hive worlds are a small minority of the worlds in the imperium they still house most of its populations. most peoples lives on hive worlds are terrible maybe not work till you drop terrible but your still never going to leave your hive the rest of the world is basically a wasteland, you'll be working long hours with restrictive laws effectively no hobbies and little in the way of comforts like decent food or comfortable shelter

I mean the average Imperial world would still have populations several times that of ours, considering how bad poverty, exploitation, crime and misery can be on the real earth. I think its fair to say that theres a significantly smaller chance of the average Imperial citizen having a good living situation even if the majority arent born into total destitution.

Keep working mate. You will be a living space marine one day. (If a squat was a space marine)

I remember hearing about one world that was just a bunch of archipelagos where few tribals just fish all day. I always figured if I had to live in the imperium then being on that planet would be my safest bet.

Honestly I’ve always wanted to write a novel about a guard regiment from a quite nice pleasant world that gets underestimated constantly because they haven’t been toughened up by harsh living, but actually turn out to be pretty good. It would have a sort of Ciaphas Cain tone to it.

I always thought agriworlds would be like living on a 1800s slave plantation. Nice to know it was much worse.

always nice to see a calm civilized disagreement between creators...

It's like with live on earth - Depends where you were born and in what class/family

Here i am, watching a Majorkill video and the moment its over, this one pops up. Good job aussieman.

That´s kinda the cool thing about 40k in general, you have about 10,000 years to play with and not too many set in stone rules regarding lore. The Imperium could have hundreds of thousands of Grimdark worlds, and just as many that are Grimderp and, well, like ours.

Everytime I hear the word Arbites always comes in my mind. Attention Citizen!! Mutiple third party individuals!! 😂😂

Simple answer. Depends on the planet.

GW: "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." Everyone: "Yeah it's prolly pretty decent"

I live in Mexico city and the lawlessness, dog eats dog, pollution, packed apartment buildings and Santa Muerte cults in the slums have a 40K ring to it. So does all beautiful palaces and churches downtown along with the opullent wealthy neighboorhood, its indeed quite a Hive City.

I said the same thing on the 40k subreddit and was downvoted to hell, glad someone can get my point across

I like the idea of somewhat peaceful feudal worlds where people are unaware of the horrors in the 40k universe. Sort of like the emporium is just leaving them in quiet ignorance.

So the Eisenhorn novels gotta be a must read with how much lore you always share from them. Might have to go hunt them down then

Sick at home today so I dont have to go to class. Gonna spend a few hours painting models and watching some hectic Aussie lore

Magic Spoon tastes like shit and it costs a fortune.

Majorkill wow you manage to make how Imperium of man look like thanks for your insights

In one of my early Warhammer reads, a young man is conscripted for Imperial Tithe. His world is described much as ours, and he is in fact conscripted from a rural farm.

Majorkill: Hive city living? Oh yea, it's honestly pretty chill~ Luetin09: Hive cities are places of condensed human suffering.

A thing I would like to add about feudal worlds. Historically speaking, the medieval age is not nearly as grim and bad as people think it was. People were not dirty and filthy, things were not all gray and black and people did not just dump their shit in the streets, furthermore most people were not at war most of the time. While it is true that the early medieval age as well as the plague created more extreme situations they still were not as people think and these are more outliers.

Basically, a lot of the Imperium Worlds are actually fine to live in and are even above average in terms of living conditions. Its only the worlds that are nearest to the warfronts/just unlucky enough to encounter some catastrophic event that are shit.

"Noone wants to be a Mongaloid." Love The Fifth Element Reference Bro.

*Another Major video killing it with the worlds of 40K.*

Kids sometimes get their first pets at 7 yrs old. It could be a dog, a cat, a bird etc. A catachan kid at that age must tame a wild bull grox or die trying.

6:30 "It's got suburbs" is probably the most grimdark part of any setting. (Mixed zoning all the way)

i'm a new majorkill fan. but this type content is good for the brain. and most importantly funny. keep on keepin' on.

“Imperial citizens live comparable to us”, sounds like grim dark writing at its finest.

Life in the Imperium can be chill sometimes, until the Dark Eldar/Orks/Nids/etc decide to crash the party...

Read flesh and steel the Warhammer Crime novel. The crime novels are amazing from seeing the world from the bottom up but as a cogboy fanboy this is the best if the bunch.

Off the top of my head, I can imagine a Forge World as being like Giedi Prime, the Harkonnen homeworld, from Dune; cityworlds as being like Coruscant from Star Wars; agri-worlds as being basically a whole world just like a major industrial farm in Kansas; and death worlds being anything from a whole planet like Australia only nastier to the planet Pandora from Avatar but with a major hard-on for killing anything not native and the means to do it--in other words, the worst parts of Pandora, the Amazon Jungle, and Australia, except with Eiwa, the giant mind controlling Pandora, hopped up on a LOT of crack and speed and all paranoid and psychotic.

This makes a LOT more sense than it all being grimdark. Look at our world, just one planet and how diverse and distinct it is. It stands to reason that the Imperium and all its million worlds would range from one extreme to the other.

40K is probably the last sci-fi setting I would want to live in, but, given the variety of planets and conditions and the frankly stupid numbers involved, the odds of actually being somewhere terrible is pretty low. Just don't be born with any significant Psyker powers or a blank or null. Stay away from Astartes recruitment zones and hope like hell the world you're born on doesn't have a famed Guardsman regiment and you should be fine. I mean, I can't imagine working as a bar tender on a civilised or pleasure world is generally any worse than working as a bar tender in a IRL tourist trap, if anything the stuff you could overhear might be more interesting.

I assert that no matter what the condition of a hivecity it will ALWAYS be a living hell if you live below a certain strata. Population density at that level alone would make it hell, forget the fact everything would be constantly damp and humid.

Imagine you’re on a feral world, some caveman type guy, and you manage to survive an encounter with a mammoth-type thing. Then some Imperial dude is like “Holy shit, this mf is awesome”, and then you become a space marine and start fighting demons on the other side of the galaxy

Now my question to chat, what kind of world would you like to live on and why? Me: A warm mountainous pleasure planet, I dont do well in extreme cold, and I have to be constantly entertained.

As bad as Australia lmao gottem

1:17 HOLY SHIT HE HAS A COMICLY LARGE SPOON

Man ever since knowing warhammer still brand spanking new all the content especially this one is such a joy

My new head canon is that a inquisitor just one day found a feudal world, was gonna colonise it and stuff, but the just saw this dude chilling and herding a flock of sheep, and just changes his mind and leaves the planet.

Man the imperium isn’t that bad. 4 day later. Mass recruiting for guardsmen. 😧

Death Worlds have even been known to have redback and funnel web spiders…

1:00 me, who ate a cheese and tomato sandwhich for breakfast today, and regularly has fruit and toast instead of cereal: "I don't have such weaknesses".

The only two luxuries afforded to the average joe, in the imperium of man are "quick and "painless" deaths. Consider yourself blessed by the emperor if you're lucky enough to receive both.

Pretty much depends on where you are, basically Russian Lolette but on a cosmic scale.

Life is likely "hard" In most cities and planets of the Empire by design. Humans perform at the best when they have something to do and hardships to overcome. The death core of Krieg being the extreme case here.

This video sounds like a travel agency trying its utmost hardest to convince people that the imperium is actually okay to visit

I think it's interesting how this dude has gotten more professional as his channel went on and he dosint really sware that much

where would you start in the setting for a movie series with budget and as ambitious as marvel?

I remember in second Icenhorn novel they visited agri world that had planet wide network of factory/reaping trains that collected the od crop of the world that left after procesing kinda sticy starch floating down and covering all mutie towns as mutants where used as mine work force

Wish Magicspoon didn't cost like $7 per box that contains enough cereal for one bowl

To be fair, most people hear "Australia" and think a place where 'everything wants to kill you'