I imagine that there's a planetairy govener that was so brilliant his cititzens got an extra 1000 calories and 10 hours of extra sleep annually through his reforms.
There is a fanfic called Ciaphas Cain, Warmaster of Chaos, and the running joke is that his constant attempts at sabotaging the coalition of traitors he find himself leading backfires spectacularly. At every turn, he reasons "Take what the Imperium is doing, and do the exact opposite - surely, if the obvious solutions were actually _effective,_ the Imperium would already be doing it!" I won't spoil it, but suffice to say, workers with decent hours and paid time off, free and mandatory education for children, an engineering corps worshipping the twin virtues of innovation and OSHA compliance, and an all-volunteer army with a doctrine that emphasizes force preservation, combined arms, and encourages initiative on the tactical level - it didn't hobble his followers quite as much as Cain expected it would...
There are planets whose ruling Planetary Govenors do try to make the effort. Sadly such Govenors are the exception instead of the rule. If I was an Imperium Citizen? I'd rather be born and raised in the Ultramar Sector. Even during the worst days of the Age of the Imperium, that sector stood out as one of the better regions to live in over any other sector and planet.
@sebastianrubin7476 I dont think Cain was really as inept and cowardly as he says he is. I think he's been doing all this because he knows it improves the lives of his subordinates and is the right way to do things because it works and has a very healthy and normal response to horrifying situations but he lives in a society where all of this is technically very very very bad and something you could be killed summarily for, so he isn't even allowing himself to accept that he is, in fact, the very legend they say he is.
I really love this. You perfectly described how absolutely miserable such an existence is. "There are no good nobles. Those who are, are either dead or have retreated to the imperial guard to get out of this mess."
There are good nobles. Warhammer Crime Serie in flesh and steel features the son of a rich magnate of the hive world Varagantua. That dude became a low level detective for the local police force, but he still lives in relative luxury. Yet he generally behaves like a good person. There are no absolutes in life, not even in the Imperium.
Yes and no. You need a thing to tempt them with… and what thing do they not already have access to without turning to Slaanesh? Slaanesh more appeals to ones that want or need more than their already obscene wealth and power grants them which is not as common as you’d think. Tzeentch could almost appeal more to the average ones since schemes and climbing the ladder is more their stock and trade. The whole existing in an especially hostile social order thing.
@@Anaxemenies Because when you have so much luxury it'll start feeling average eventually, now imagine them discovering there are more luxuries and experiences for them to discover, she who thirsts is the god of excess for a reason
My dude, I was eating a slice of pizza, and the audio and narration you gave for the noble's meal. Just practically elevated the satisfaction of my own meal by 5x.
One of the things I'm reminded of about 40k the fact it's all taken to the final degree with how bad it is. While the lifestyle described is over the top opulent it's built of equally if not more over the top misery
That's WH40K for you. Some 14-year old edgelords in Thatcher-era England went, 'the Empire from Star Wars just isn't evil enough, surely we can do better than that' and now we have this hilariously grimdark franchise.
@@maltheopiaOh, believe me, the Rogue trader era stuff was a hilarious joke compared to how it got. It was in the late nineties that Warhammer 40k began to really settle itself as the purposely worst future mankind could have. This was when Herman Von Strab was introduced. He really set the tone for nobility in 40k.
@@orumonuldor1340 Personally, I think the descent from Judge Dredd-style parody of scifi to its current grimdark state was inevitable. 'I want my sci-fi civilization to be more dysfunctional, genocidal, and EVIL than the Ur-Quan, Dominion, Umbrella Corp, Yuuzhang Vong, and Aztechnology combined, yet I also want them to be totally badass and also the most sympathetic faction' -- well, what do you think was going to happen after a couple of decades?
I apologize but iron within iron without. I will go back to coping about how Dorn made a better sandcastle than my dad by only meager percentiles. Also that I had to carry the whole heresy, and most of the imperium during the great crusade, yet I was fed convicts and deranged to be turned into astartes. My malding knows no bounds.
You're just talking about Asia. I'm in Thailand, and chicken feet / beaks are genuinely a pretty common snack, especially when you're out for a few drinks.
@@kevinaustin51 It's not just corpse starch. MRE's like what our current militaries using are more like what they're using,but a bit more with warhammer flavour.
And none of the are safe from one of Inquisitor Grendel's ogryns smashing in their doors and being dragged away by the Inquisition under suspicion of being a heritic.
@@IAmSwatchingYouso I'm not going to get into it but I've actually tried it and it was not particularly good. Honestly one of the most overrated vices out there IMHO.
Instead of all the other Narrators just reading off wiki articles over an image gallery (although I like their content too) you truly exceed them by offering something much more interesting to listen to, can't wait to see what you do next!
@@erdene2476 I think he's grouping in every narrator. Only onemindsyndicate does it directly from the wiki. Others, like the GrimDark Narrator at least re-write it into a narrative script. Even Baldemort does this (though he usually includes damn good stories too). Especially the pure AI channels that popped out of nowhere this year.
@@insertname9736I mean... he's not. Info is taken from the books but yes clearly using it to make a small scene for you instead of reading it in a un-immersive, outside universe perspective.
I think they function like the underhives, they are steam-valves to make sure the rot doesn't infect a big population center... ineffective but better than nothing I guess
If the Immaterium is a reflection of the Materium, you can definitely see why the warp is so horrible. It's horrible because the Imperium is horrible. There is a reason why chaos corruption wasn't a going concern during the days of the Federation.
It's more than that my friend, both worlds reflect the other. As the material universe worsens, so too does the warp, which then influences the normal world. It's a feedback loop.
@orumonuldor1340 even then, when the Federation collapsed after the Iron War and the warp storms cut FTL travel, communication, and governance, Chaos still wasn't a systematic concern until the Anathema decided to spread his fascist genocidal empire across the entirety of the milky way galaxy. The Interex had a categorically better way of dealing with Chaos but they got exterminated because the Imperium is a bucket of crabs par excellence.
@@Scriptedviolincethis. The Imperium was unnecessary in 30k. The Interex shows that better ways were available. But the Emperor gambled everything on 20 genetic and sorcerous monstrosities and now Mankind is locked in this positive feedback with the Immaterium, as mankind gets shittier so does the immaterium and it makes mankind even shittier.
I imagine there are likely a wide variety of highborn cultures in the vastness of the Imperium. Some more decadent, others more spartan. All of them taught in the ways of taking and keeping power.
40k fans thinking being a noble is easy when in reality you gonna need to navigate through politics, govern billions and dodge hundreds of assassination attempts per day
I have only read two Warhammer short stories from a Necromunda book. I was really surprised with how much I actually enjoyed them lol. I loved just how oddly believable the authors made such an insane dystopian system. I also love the RANGE of Warhammer lore. That being said it all felt very DnD to me which makes sense. What I loved was just how EVERY part of humanity was basically all about mass production. In the books I read even the nobles were basically mass produced lol. There was a short where a priest basically had to speak to a princess, but to get an appointment with her would've been like 100 years out, and he had to wait in a waiting room with dead bodies lol. He cheats the system and gets to meet the princess thinking she will be knowledgeable and able to help him, only to find out it's like a 10 year old girl and just one of like thousands. So she isn't anything special lol. She basically is really simple and he tries to plead with her and she kinda understands but ends up sending him to the underhive (I think that's what it's called). I also read another book where the nobles basically enter political fighting at birth where even siblings compete against each other and plot against each other, pushing each other off the giant towers of the hive cities. I just loved how in these books the authors make sure to completely destroy any bit of humanity, and to make it as bleak as possible, but yet even in all that darkness, humanity does poke through in the stories. Even in all that suffering some people manage to form true relationships and to fight against the giant machines even if only for a brief moment. That's what I guess I appreciated about the underhive stories I read, they are portrayed as these horrible places, yet people still go there searching for freedom, everyone always dies, no one survives long, but there are just these tiny little moments where people get to be people again.
Underhives are a utopia compared to the modern world tbh. The modern world is lifeless with no inherent meaning. Everyone fights for their own cause. In the imperium there is actually a cause to fight for. There is meaning, which is the survival of the imperium and the god emperor. Today the only meaning we have is "muh human rights" and "don't be mean to people haha". It's so empty and nihilistic, far worse than. The worst dystopia.
Modern people are intrinsically materialistic (similar to how the communists boiled down all of human existence to material conditions). This materialism and fear of death common in the modern man has isolated us and cheapened are existence. In the middle ages it was actually similar to warhammer 40k. You died early sometimes in a brutal or painful way. Yet you had meaning in your god and afterlife. A cause to fight for. Today we have nothing but fast food, and dumb entertainment. No great civilizational progress, leaps of philosophical understanding or human expression. Simply the human detritus of half hearted gestures, desires and platitudes.
One thing that never seemed realistic was that 90% of the Imperium lives in dire dystopian industrial squalor. All subsisting on corpsestarch and tiny dreams of impoverished survival. Yet every world owes a tithe of soldiers to serve in the Imperial Guard. Skipping payment or providing low quality troops risks the Imperium’s wrath. Either from the on world Arbites or the Inquisition or another agency that can call upon the Imperium’s military to “fix.” Yet how can a world levy competent troops from such a malnourished, beaten down population? By requirement they need a portion of the population living at a decent quality of life to recruit from.
The first and foremost requirement that there must be exact number of troops equipped with exact list of weapons and equipment. The second is actually mutations - the less the better (those soldiers will travel the empire in contrast to majority of locals). As for how they fix the scrawny part - they either conscript the okay ones or fatten them up before they are collected
@@SerCommander The actual equipment and weapons isn't that much of an issue. Hive cities can make all that. Indeed they're dedicated to it in many cases. Or the Mechanicum Forge Planets will. But scrawny recruits isn't a simple fix. Quite a lot of American men who volunteered after Pearl Harbor were turned away because they grew up malnourished during the Great Depression. There may be a 40k nutrition solution, of course. But will it really be cheaper than just a regular diet of protein and vitamins?
@@EricDaMAJ in several of the books it was mentioned that governors constantly tried to weasel out of providing teethes in q variety of ways - providing regiments with ramshacle vehicles and unusable weapons, crippled recruits etc. I think at least one Cain novel had this mention
I thought this channel would have at least 500,000 subs. I would be here all day explaining why everything is just perfect. Keep at it dude youll get there in no time.
It's actually more of a matter of inevitability. When the first imperial governors were selected, they were the cream of the crop, military success stories, every single one. The emperor would only want meritocracy, after all. The first generation of descendants were fine, taking the values of their parents with no trouble, maybe even the second... But the third? Well even today we see how that works. Extrapolated across ten thousand years? It's a miracle that the Imperium functions at all. I hate to say it, but the Inquisition is absolutely necessary.
@@lilfattcatt7758 Over 10k years. The Imperium we know and love to hate is NOT what the emperor envisioned. The thing is, as bad as it is as a whole, it's actually had a very good run. I'd have expected the mundane corruption to cause a collapse merely three centuries in, not for it to be hobbling along roughly 12,000 years on. Especially when you consider that the chaos gods are doing everything they can to wipe out the Imperium from the get go.
in germany, even the lowest tiers -who "take part" in parlament, merely by being present for a few minutes and signing papers (to confirm presence) get 10s of thousands per month, for existing dont get me started on their even more generous retirement fund for their ... "services"
@@Awakened0101 Razorwings are not cherubs, they are weird dark eldar monsters so who the heck knows how much money was paid to get and cook one. It was *served* by cherubs who are weird imperial servitor monsters ;-)
*Slaanesh, watching as the nobles indulge in more indulgence than most of it’s worshippers could dream of asking for: “Yes… yes… your soul shall be mine… and once it is, your Hive shall be ripe for my influence…”
No he will not. The nobles are part of the Imperium's government. Their arrangements, deals with each other actually help run things. He won't get rid of them just like he did not do the same with the Ecclesiarchy. Remember that Guilliman came from a time when the Emperor was still around and the Imperial Truth discarded religion and superstition to embrace science and reason. Space Marines were labeled traitors because they worshiped the Emperor. Yet Guilliman accepts the modern Imperium's zealots because they are part of the show now.
Funny how in my country we constantly compare our country to Imperium and it really fucking clicks a lot of times. Especially with the nobles being so far away from common folk it's insulting.
And to think, the nobility are actually essential for the imperium - both to generate an economy through whatever business they have and whatever wages they pay their employees, and to subcontract the work of keeping the common man under control.
Nobility doesn't do business. It's beneath them. They're privileged for their service to the Imperium in the past or service of their ancestors. Their public mission is to serve as managers, administrators, representatives, diplomats. They're civil and military officials of the feudal space empire not business people.
My man. youve just with this one video raised your self up to legends like baldermort in terms of quality!.(in my humble opinion ofcause!) Loved this exploration and story!
Yeah, I wanted to get a limited copy of each one before they start playing Disney games n put them in "vaults" so the new versions can be made politically correct.
@user-nz6bk7lf8u too late mate, it has already started, with some of the older material no longer available at all, just grab some of the pdfs from older sites and encrypt them. Put them on an external drive in a small Faraday cage. There was someone from Disney making changes to the skies to add cloudy streaks prior to the VHS releases, he came out and his role was found to be real.
There's something very ominous about the way how ... strangely average this sounds. I feel like something terrible must be happening somewhere, but it doesn't. This is really well written by you, gonna subscribe.
Slaanesh and Tzeench are fighting over them. Plus, I sometimes wonder how angry the Emperor would be if he saw this. I'd also wonder what the returned Primarchs really think.
Imagine if a single book of Marcus Aurellias and his teachings of stoicism survived and was part of the nobilities curriculum. It would change just about everything lol
Aurelius is the only reason Europe was not much worse than Genghis Khan all the time. He didn't invent stoicism but he showed you could exercise power using it as your theory. Harry S Truman was a huge Aurelius man and paid great attention to it as he designed the world you now live in. For now.
Its nice to see a warhammer lore channel that talks about the more nieches/normal things in the warhammer universe we take for granted, very cool work! Could we get a video on avarege dark eldar/eldar life? We get so little about them other than "stupid mon'keigh! You think you are on my level?!" Yada yada
@@dystopianchimp WWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO No fr, hella cool videos man, I love to speculate how the lives of the "lil ones" are in franchises like warhammer, you have no idea how big of an itch your videos scratch
Meanwhile that one imperial guard in some broken planet : dude my Lazgun aint working *looks at corpse starch can with tear filled eyes* I miss you dude, I miss you Timmy *starts eating the corpse starch like hungry animal* THANK YOU TIMMY! For everything!
But let's be fair, most of these nobles have earned their place in the bloodline. Constantly defending against would be heirs, dueling and fighting the more ambitious of the lot, and more importantly defending and trying to keep a woman that isnt mutated beyond making descendants to the line. Its a hard life, even for the nobles.
Very nice! It makes me wish for something similar, but a bit more focused; the Rogue Traders. In some ways, they, too, are nobles, but instead of loving in a spire of a hive, on a world, they dwell within the mobile hive that is a ship, and sometimes must journey beyond the bounds of the Imperium, and its "safety" to serve the two greatest masters; the Emperor of Man, and their own unlimited ambition.
I like the Tau, but I am a warhammer noob, I heard that people didn't like them so they decided to make the Tau darker? People didn't like that there were "good guys" in the story. If that's the case then yeah perhaps Orks are actually the "good" guys.
They don’t know it, but they serve Tzeentch and Slaanesh unwillingly. Normally plots and desires are harmless; but the degree of treachery and opulence that these nobles partake in is a lure for the dark gods.
At the end of the narration, when yhou talk about how close "you" are to control of the hive, just a few more alliances, I was fully expecting the Officio Assassinorum's representative to chime in :P
