Warhammer 40,000/Nightmare Fuel: Difference between revisions

 

 

 

 

{{quote|[[Driven to Madness|Fear the Unknown]]!|''Warhammer 40,000''}}

 

 

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* '''Nurgle''' loves his followers, he really does. And he'd probably be jolly good grampy to you, if you'd just join up. It just so happens he shares his love by [[Body Horror|infecting you with so much disease]] you end up a bloated rotting zombie-like thing which is in so much pain that it can't feel ''any other pain''. But Papa Nurgle loves you, so it's ''all fine''.

** ''And they love it''. Other servants of Chaos are intensely suffering or blindingly insane or "merely" a mindless spawn, but Nurgle followers genuinely enjoy being followed by clouds of plague flies and having their organs dragging on the ground, and nothing would please them more than giving you a biiiiig hug so you can enjoy it too. Come to Papa Nurgle~

** And yes, it ''still'' gets worse. [[The Virus|Nurgle's Rot]], perhaps the most gruesome of the nightmarish Chaos powers, infects almost all of his followers and can be transferred with a single touch, inflicting the poor victim with a concoction perfected by Nurgle himself to cause the most agony while still keeping them from death, many pledging themselves to Nurgle just to end their suffering. It also [[Brainwashed|contaminates the soul]] [[Viral Transformation|as well as the body]], each person killed by the Rot [[You Will Be Assimilated|creating another Plaguebearer]] in Nurgle's "garden", the more they resist death merely resulting in a more powerful Plaguebearer. Oh, and said garden may include one very special favored guest, who Nurgle force-feeds all his creations to just to see how powerful and harmful they are...

** Plague Marines. Dark, bubbling, deep, filthy, scary...

** Who is the above special guest? The only being able to cure Nurgle's creations, Isha, the goddess of life. [[Abhorrent Admirer|Who Nurgle is trying to convince to marry itself.]] And she's ''still'' better off than with her previous "suitor", see below.

*** But since she can cure any of Nurgle's creations, that means she cannot die, so the experiments will ''never'' stop.

*** Ever heard of [[Doomy Dooms of Doom|Doombreed]]? A Daemon Prince from the Dark Age of Technology, recruited by Khorne in his younger days. [[Fridge Logic]] assumes him to be any one of a number of [[Real Life]] warlords with [[Complete Monster]] status, so Doombreed is actually either [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Pol Pot]], [[North Korea|Kim Jong-Il]] or [[Genghis Khan]]. (Almost definitely Genghis Khan, considering the fact that he's the only true warrior out of these men.)

*** Alternately, he could [[World War Three|have yet to be born.]] [[Fridge Horror|Which is probably worse...]]

 

== '''Tzeentch''' ==

** The Thousand Sons Legion learned this [[Unwitting Pawn|the hard way]]. Soon after being banished to the [[Negative Space Wedgie|Eye of Terror]], all of them began accumulating so many mutations that some weren't so much "unrecognisable" as "oh god oh god what the hell is that". Their most powerful [[Evil Sorceror|sorceror]] Ahriman cast a massive spell in an effort to prevent certain destruction, and he succeeded in halting the mutations... by converting most of the Legion to dust and sealing them inside their armour forever, transforming them into [[Mecha-Mooks|mindless automata]]. However the spell also turned the [[Black Magic|sorcery]] of the minority with even a little psychic power [[Up to Eleven]], so it's all good.

*** The best part is that the Thousand Sons primarch turned to Chaos (and Tzeentch) to save his legion from extermination. At the end he learns that Ahriman's fiasco was all part of Tzeentch's plan.

** And the Changeling, who has such absolute control over his ability to shapeshift that he's lost his original form. Only Tzeentch knows what it is, and he doesn't tell him to keep his control over him. That doesn't stop him from being an exquisite [[Magnificent Bastard]] in the name of Tzeentch. Once, a rogue Imperial governor summoned the Changeling and asked for an artifact to break the siege that the Dark Angels were laying upon him. The Changeling handed him a device, then vanished...and was replaced by a squad of Terminators. He'd handed the governor a teleport homer. Broke the siege, though not the way the governor wanted.

** And do you know what Tzeentch's ultimate plan is? ... {{spoiler|'''He doesn't have one!''' Tzeentch is the very embodiment of scheming and change and transformation; he doesn't ''need'' a goal to achieve. He exists, literally, just to meddle with things and see what happens; he can never lose because he's not trying to ''win''. No matter what the outcome is, so long as something keeps happening, Tzeentch is winning -- he's just got to set the wheels in motion so that the universe keeps changing.}}

 

== '''Slaanesh''' ==

** All of the Chaos Gods have Chaos Marines devoted specifically to them. Slaanesh's are the Noise Marines; [[Sense Freak|Sense Freaks]] so jaded and burnt out that they can't "feel" anything any more. So they take to the battlefield wielding [[Makes Me Wanna Shout|sonic weaponry]], because the resultant cacophony is the only thing that can provoke any reaction in them any more. These have absolutely horrific effects on anyone they hit with them -- imagine a sound so [[Brown Note|intense]] that your flesh literally ''melts off your body from the vibrations''. These even managed to be creepy when the official models for them sported [[Musical Assassin|weapons designed to resemble guitars and electric keyboards]].

** A Slaaneshi Lord.

 

== '''Malal''' ==

** Worse still, whereas the other chaos gods can be taken as corrupted versions of otherwise positive emotions -- Slaanesh, for example, could be considered a corrupt version of "Love," Tzeentch a corruption of "Hope" -- Malal is a corruption of '''Justice.''' It's specifically stated that anyone who hunts Chaos too effectively, anyone who lets the hunt consume them... has a chance of being approached by Malal. In other words, ''even if you win against Chaos, you still lose.''

**** Oh, it more violent than most cannibalistic chapter rituals. In the short story The Labyrinth from Heroes of the Space Marines, they are depicted eating slaves alive. The rest of The Labyrinth is quite scary, what with the [[Body Horror]] of the transformed marines and {{spoiler|it ends with the protagonist, having run the titular Space Hulk's gauntlet, being sacrificed with the ten other victors to summon Malice (renamed due to copyright) himself.}}

**** That was only AFTER they had turned to Chaos.

 

== '''Chaos Forces''' ==

* '''[[Night Lords]]''' get their giggles from psychologically torturing entire planets. One piece of fiction has them crucifying and eviscerating loyal Assault Marines, then nailing the iron crosses to the front of their tanks. ''And the Assault Marines were still alive''.

*** In another piece of fiction the Night Lords invaded a hive city (a planet covered in mile high cities) and hacked into the telecommunications networks and broadcast the murder, death and torture ''as it happened.'' The Imperium reports after the attack stated that fully one-third of the population died from ''fear itself.'' Total. Nervous. Shutdown.

** The Night Lords were nuts even before the Heresy. Failing to get enough recruits, the Primarch resorted to [[Psycho for Hire|using psychopathic criminals]]. True, he regrets it at the end and hated what the legion became, but one must remember: the Primarch himself was considered [[Ax Crazy|a homicidal psychopath]] before becoming Primarch, ''and he hated what the legion has become''. It's even suggested that he allowed himself to be killed by an Imperial assassin because he was so deeply and utterly horrified by what he himself had become. The entire legion basically runs on this trope.

*** Actually, he let himself be killed as vindication; he had [[Prophetic Dreams]] ever since he was a child, one of them being the exact circumstances of his death. He allowed the assassin into his chambers, watched her walk up, and flat out told her in only slightly more grandiose speech that "everything I have ever done is proven to be in the right by your presence here." This includes betrayal of the Imperium, and the [[Earthshattering Kaboom|destruction of his own homeworld]]. And he's RIGHT. ''Yikes.''

** Or at least, they would be the apex if they weren't led by [[General Failure|Abaddon]].

*** Actually, Abaddon, the main flaw in their plans to take over the universe? '''[[Dangerously Genre Savvy|He's learning.]]''' And that's what's scariest of all.

*** Someone at GW must be reading this page, because in 5th edition, the last 3 sentences of the preceding post are all but canon.

** The really scary thing is that it's very strongly hinted that the Core of the Alpha Legion at least, is well and truly loyal to the Emperor despite their Daemon usage, chaos cultist cannon fodder, fondness of spikes, and the occasional warband that has lost sight of their goal and truly has fallen (Like Lord Bale's or Fieravious Carron's). Everything they do, they do for the Emperor.

** As it turns out, their motive itself reveals some added horror--it was revealed to Alpharius that if Horus were successful, humanity would be wiped out within two generations, but Chaos would ultimately be broken. If the Emperor won, however, he would be trapped within his own body on a golden throne, and humanity would stagnate and decay over the course of the next 10-20 millennia, enabling Chaos to overrun the entire universe. [[Doomed by Canon|Welp.]]

* You know what's really freaky? So many named characters of the Chaos Space Marines were around during the Horus Heresy. Which means the Emperor built his Empire with these psychopaths, many of whom willingly sold themselves to Chaos. [[Good Is Dumb|The Emperor, humanity's greatest hope and salvation, was an incredibly]] [[Horrible Judge of Character]].

* And on a final Chaos note, '''Obliterators'''. Basically, think of a Chaos Space Marine combined with a Dreadnought. These guys are Chaos Marines infected with a virus from the Warp (so essentially a virus that haunts the nightmares of other viruses) so that it morphs their bodies, melding them with their armour, turning them into piles of flesh and metal, and allowing them to absorb artillery weapons into their bodies and spontaneously spawn ammunition for any weapon. Couple that with the fact that they're all gibbering lunatics from being in the Warp for so long...

** They were originally Traitor Legion's Techmarines (so, some bionics already), but years in the warp and "blessings" by the dark gods caused the Obliterator virus to appear. Someone actually wrote an account of a Techmarine slowly turning into the monstrosity that is an Obliterator - in very slow and agonising detail. For example - Techmarines have various plugs and sockets in their flesh (mainly hands and head - that they feel all the time) so they can 'communicate' with machines - well, the virus caused the weapons to spawn from these. Very small holes, the size of a coin - having HUGE anti-tank missile launchers, or heavy machine guns, several times the size of the plugs, being pushed out. Veeery slowly....

*** The fluff about Deathleaper is even worse. The first recorded occurrence of the creature was on a heavily fortified Imperial shrine world that the Hive Mind decided was too strong to take in a head-on attack. It installed Deathleaper there and told it to find the leader of the planet and assassinate him. After stalking for a while, Deathleaper found the governor of the planet and attempted to kill him, but was repulsed by his bodyguards. So it began a campaign of psychological terror - every day it would infiltrate the governor's palace, butcher its way to the governor but then leave him unharmed. The governor had to deal with the loss of his advisers, scientists, commanders, friends, bodyguards and family, until it got to the point where Deathleaper entered the room the governor was residing in, killed everyone inside except for his target, and left him snivelling on the ground, coated in the viscera of his friends and allies. He took his own life minutes after this attack, leaving the defences of the planet thrown into disarray. The Hive Fleet consumed the world within the end of the week. Be glad the psychological warfare rule he has only deducts d3 LD from an enemy character...

* The Imperium has currently encountered three major Tyranid Hive Fleets: Behemoth, which had over a thousand hive ships and countless other smaller ships and Emperor knows how many ground organisms, which killed the entire Ultramarines first company and almost devoured Ultramar; Kraken, which was much, much bigger than Behemoth (Behemoth was only ''30-40%'' the size of Kraken), was the first to develop genestealers (the aforementioned hybrids), and nearly destroyed the Iyanden Craftworld and the planet Ichar IV with tendrils that were themselves as big as the whole of Hive Fleet Behemoth, if not bigger; and Leviathan, which is all-surpassingly gigantic (from a picture in the 5th edition codex, its main mass of tendrils is ''a third as wide as the milky way galaxy itself'' - that's ''50,000 light years of hive ships''), which has only been slowed by initiating [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Exterminatus]] on any planet they infect. All of them have only been [[Pyrrhic Victory|repelled with massive losses]] and none of them have been defeated, each producing numerous splinter fleets; though the main body of Kraken and Behemoth have been destroyed, there seems to be no end to the number of tendrils constantly coming upwards at the Galaxy from Leviathan.

** A nitpick, if I may: Genestealers were first encountered well before Behemoth's incursion; they were previously believed to be a predator native to the moons of Ymgarl. This was literally an [[Oh Crap]] moment for the Imperium; Genestealers were employed by Behemoth as shock troops, and confirmed by Imperial techno-magi to be Tyranid creatures. So what, exactly, are they doing all over the galaxy, and why do they seem to have been here for a really long time?...

* And then there's the fact that it's heavily hinted that this is at least the Tyranid's ''second'' go through this galaxy, i.e. they passed through our galaxy millions or billions of years ago and wiped out everything (bar the occasional Ymargl Genestealer) so throughly that ''there were no records of them whatsoever''.

* The Hive Tyrants themselves can be upgraded to have a rule that's literally Nightmare Fuel personified: Indescribable Terror. Aside from a few Fearless individuals, this would make even Space Marines crap their pants in horror and refuse to attack.

* One must wonder if some of the new [[Game Breaker|game-breakingly powerful]] specialised Tyranid breeds are. Subject One - the Doom of Malan'tai. In its fluff, it destroyed an entire craftworld by literally eating the souls of the dead from the Infinity Circuit. Now just stop and freeze frame a second. There's no sign of the creature, but who's to say it hasn't found a way off? Who's to say all the souls it's eaten didn't give it protection from the vaccum of space? Who's to say that [[Paranoia Fuel|a bad codex writer didn't just put the God Emperor in the form of a Tyranid? Who knows how many souls it's eaten since, and how much power it now has?]]

** To be fair, Malan'tai is/was an exceedingly minor Craftworld -- possibly created only for the purpose of the new Tyranid Codex had just finished a bloody and protracted campaign (alongside Idharae, another Craftworld that was seemingly only created to be destroyed by the Invaders chapter of Space Marine) against the Tyranids.

* The battle of Sondheim V. A peaceful Agri-world in the Imperium of Man that has been up to that point far removed from any conflict for thousands of years suddenly sees the skies turn into a multihued mess as the Daemon prince M'kar the Reborn decides to turn it into his private playhouse and Daemons start running loose everywhere. But soon after this a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan descends upon the planet and the sky starts glowing in other weird colors as endless numbers of Mycenic spores rain down upon the planet. Gaunts, Genestealers, and Warriors start fighting Bloodletters, Horrors, Daemonettes and Plaguebearers, utterly undeterred by their Daemonic nature. Gargoyles and Furies gnash and tear at one another in the skies while Carnifexes, Tyrannofexes, Hive Tyrants, and all sorts of bio-titans fight Greater Daemons in the streets. Nurglings and Rippers devour one another while Zoanthropes fight psychically with Lords of Change. Now this may sound awesome, but imagine if you were just a normal Imperial Citizen cowering under his bed while watching two of the greatest horrors in the Galaxy have a go at each other. The entire Sky Sentinels chapter is sent to reclaim the planet, but the whole thing is so terrifying that they just decide to Exterminatus the place and blow up the hive fleet tendril.

* The Shadow in the Warp. The mass of Tyranids in the hive fleet is so incredibly huge, the subconscious buzz of all their minds adds up to ''[[Beyond the Impossible|drown out the Warp.]]'' This renders all FTL travel and communications impossible, and presumably also makes Daemons shit themselves.

*** Actually, it's explicitly stated that, while the exarchs are regarded with a great deal of respect for their combat prowess, they are also regarded with a great deal of pity. This is precisely because of how limited their obsession with war has made the remainder of their lives.

* The Eldar A. [[Dreaming of Things to Come|can see into the future]] and B. [[Fantastic Racism|place no value on the lives of other species]]. This means that if the only way to prevent the death of a single Eldar is to turn [[Apocalypse How|an entire world of humans into molten slag]], they won't even hesitate to do it.

** I'd say that's pretty [[Badass]] of them.

*** [[Fridge Horror|Read again: The only thing that could create a chaos god of fun, love, pleasure, hedonism etc. was an empire of sadomaso hedonists!]]

** Actually, the fluff in the rulebook and codex states that both humans and Eldar find the other attractive and they both keep sex slaves of the other.

** Earlier fluff has the Eldar as gaunt, ugly and wierd looking, usually - the later and more recent stuff paints them as almost akin to Tolkien Elves.

* And while we're on the note of the Eldar, the '''Harlequins''' are the folks that even the Dark Eldar don't mess with. They're [[Monster Clown|circus performers in colourful armour]] who put on amazing, psychically-enhanced theatre of the legends and history of the Eldar race, and in battle they have weapons that are [[No Kill Like Overkill|brutal even by the setting's standards]], such as a razor wire that liquifies your insides (called the "Harlequin's Kiss). The weird thing is that as guardians of the Black Library and foes of Chaos, they're relatively ''good guys'' [[Black and Grey Morality|by Warhammer standards]].

** Don't forget their rictus masks and holosuits, which are grotesque, constantly shimmering and in motion, garish and baroque to many extremes. Death Jesters are another example, and in addition to wielding heavy weapons they can load their aptly-named [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Shrieker Cannons]] with viral shuriken ammo that causes enemies to [[Gorn|explode into many pieces]], showering their allies with gore. Oh, and [[Badass|Solitaires]] as well.

* Even killing an Eldar will not remove it from this plane--as long as its spirit stone remains intact, it can be "repurposed" to further the Eldar's ends--the spirit stone is implanted into wraithbone, whether in a wraithguard or wraithlord (the Eldar's answer to a Dreadnought) or in the core of their craftworld. A wraithguard/lord's soul experiences life as a dream.

 

 

== '''Dark Eldar''' ==

* Relevant quote from ''Bleeding Chalice'', on human slaves to the '''Dark Eldar''' (the aforementioned creepier cousins of the Eldar):

* First of all, you know what we said about the Eldar being sorry about creating Slaanesh and learning their lesson? Well the Dark Eldar are the ones who '''didn't.'''

* On the subject of Dark Eldar: the Talos. A robotic mecha shaped like a scorpion that works by seizing victims on the battlefield, stuffing them inside itself, and torturing them to death, powered and motivated by their dying agonies.

* More Dark Eldar stuff include poisons designed to kill you from pure pain, weapons that shoot the ghosts of insane tortured slaves at you, guns designed to cripple not kill (cripple from pain as opposed to any actual physical damage, although that happens too) with shrapnel splinters, so they can take you alive, Eldar who delightfully dedicate their lives to torture and creating freakshow Dark Eldar 'grotesques' who are driven beyond even these torturer's ability to cause pain, just so they can be unleashed on enemies and worse.

* Worst of them are the [[Deadly Doctor|Haemunculi]]: Think [[Those Wacky Nazis|Josef]] [[Mad Scientist|Mengele]] [[Complete Monster|and]] [[Torture Technician|co.]] - AS [[The Fair Folk|DARK ELVES]] [[Space Elves|IN SPACE!]] They go into battle with ultrahorrible poisons (often disablingly painful but nonlethal) to get experimental material. [[Body Horror|And however they rearrange your anatomy]] ( [[Fate Worse Than Death|in at least one case including]] [[Squick|YOUR ORGANS HANGING SEPERATLY AND ONLY CONNECTED BY VEINS AND NERVES]]), [[And I Must Scream|you can't even pass out]].

* The Dark Eldar only care to obtain spoils of war, i.e. slaves, experimental subjects, etc. From their perspective, "DEATH IS A GIFT"!

* Well, the Dark Eldar do have at least one [[Subverted Trope|Pet The Dog]] moment, as shown in this comm recording of them offering amnesty to the residents of Section 9 which they put under siege. [[Too Dumb to Live|Maybe they aren't as evil as others let on]]:

* Anything out of the new Dark Eldar Book is filled with this, from abilities gained from pain to having biological wings stuck on you and your bones hollowed out. However special mention goes to the Wracks and Grotesques, who are malformed, grotesque beasts made to be the servants and bodyguard of the haemonculus. The worst part? Wracks are made into these ''willingly''.

* The new fluff states that they get an intense high off causing pain to other sentients. Given that they already have next to no self-control when it comes to their own pleasures and vices, but they actively go out and hurt as many people as possible. Given that they have the ability to resurrect themselves with their technology, battles that humans consider as life or death are just another form of orgy for the Dark Eldar.

* They also have a nifty device called the Crucible of Malediction, which contains the soul of a psyker who had been tortured to death. Upon activation, the soul's dying screams of agony cause such a massive shitstorm in the Warp that it instantly jams all psychic activity.

 

== '''Necrons''' ==

* To reinforce this: '''[[Ciaphas Cain|CIAPHAS CAIN, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM!!]]''' has shot powerful Daemons in the face, engaged [[Axe Crazy|World Eaters Space Marines]] in duels, and hurled himself boldly towards swarms of Tyranid horrors. (Granted, [[Dirty Coward|he would rather have run away]].) He's merely ''scared'' of these. When it comes to Necrons, he is '''flat fucking terrified'''.

* From ''Xenology.''

* Scariest of all, the Orks - the most violent, belligerent, and brutal species in the galaxy - and the Eldar - possessing psychic might enough to hit the Necrons were it hurts - were both specifically designed to destroy the Necrons. '''''They failed.'''''

** To be fair, there were more C'tan back then...and fewer threats to the Necrons in terms of intelligent races.

* The main reason Orks are funny is because we get to see their perspective, where their language is rendered as Cockney football jargon. In other works (like ''[[Ciaphas Cain]]''), we see what the Imperium sees: gigantic, monstrous creatures in horrid, rusted armor, wielding weapons that shouldn't even ''work'' but still do, coming down in hordes. There's no reasoning with them - they don't even understand what you're saying. Orks don't speak Gothic. You plead for mercy, and they respond with animalistic bellows and the swing of a giant, cruel axe...

* How about the fact that once they've invaded, you can't get rid of the Orks wthout exterminating all other life on the planet. Once you kill an Ork, it releases spores, which settle in the wilderness and, eventually, grow up into new Orks. You can beat back an Ork WAAAGH!, have the Imperial Guard and Space Marines move on to the next theater of war, and then, when you least expect it, a green tide of feral Orks come pouring out of the wilderness.

 

== '''Imperial Inquisition''' ==

* The '''[[Church Militant|Inquisition]]''' is slightly miffed that it hasn't been included in the list of terrifying things. After all, they have the power to turn all the biomatter on your planet into flammable goop with a word (aka. Exterminatus), command assassins that include psychotic murder machines that explode on death or ones that fire bolts of pure ''anti-soul'', and countless other horrible ways to kill or torture anyone who catches their attention.

* Or the people who don't. Exterminatus has been ordered ''just to be sure'' on more than a few occasions, with any notable people taken off planet for Inquistorial interrogation.

* There is a particular form of Exterminatus which has generally fallen out of favor, since it seems to bolster the forces of Nurgle.

* Fortunately for every non-human in existence, the Inquisitors spend far too much of their time engaged in their own philosophical squabbles, demonstrating that near-infinite resources plus no supervision plus being actively encouraged to think of yourself as the divine will of the Emperor is perhaps not the best combination.

** The size is irrelevant. An excruciator has wires which dig into your skin and latch onto nerves, then, with some skill and fine callibration, it is possible to make the subject experience just about any degree of pain that is permissible by the way pain receptors work.Given that, this troper gets the feeling that the room-sized version is just the =I= equivalent of a VAX compared to a modern netbook.

* I think the Inquisition are one of the highest levels in Nightmare Fuel. A regular human will fight because he is told to. Humans don't think about what they are doing, they just do. This applies even to Planetary Governors, Space Marines, Starship Captains and so on. The Inquisition not only have to think for themselves, they have to understand what they are fighting, why it needs to be fought, and worst of all, to know and understand the consequences of the actions that must be taken to defeat them. Can you imagine having to learn and understand a Tyranid? Sure. It would be like understanding bugs on Earth. Imagine creating bug spray, including what it does to humans. Now, could you drop that bug spray over the entire Earth, and kill billions upon billions of people, even to save billions more? The Inquisition do. And they watch.

* [[Complete Monster|Inquisitor Heldane's]] face is altered to look like some sort of mutant horse in order to inspire fear.

* It gets interesting when you consider some of the ''Inquisitor'' characters. One of them is slowly being driven mad by the Eldar spirit stone he's nailed to his helmet.

** Perhaps more terrifying is in the novel ''Kill Team'' where some Kroot invite the [[Five-Man Band|titular squad]] to join them for a meal, which they are eager to do since they have only been eating meat-free Tau food for a few weeks. It is only when they start to dig in that they realize [[I Am a Humanitarian|from what animals]] that meat was taken. The shaper in charge then presents [[Brain Food|dessert]], and implies that if one of them does not partake, the Kroot will be most offended and may be motivated to add them to their meat locker... Of course, the shaper turns out to be well aware of the human prohibition on eating the (unprocessed) flesh of their own. The Kroot definitely do have a sense of humor, and it is sick sense of humor indeed.

** We would like to now remind you that the native fauna of Pech, the Kroot's homeworld, is pretty much all Kroot-based, because eventually, every species on that planet was eaten by the Kroot, and some of them got ''stuck'' in those forms and eventually took their place. That couldn't have been very nice, realizing that you and your clan are slowly regressing to a feral state, and unable to do anything about it.

* Though not as prominent as the Kroot, the '''Vespids''' are also pretty nasty. They're essentially giant flying bugs, but uglier and with more spikes. At close range, they attack by shredding their opponents into little pieces of flesh with claws that can cut through steel. Have fun imagining that.

** Again, though, the Vespid are, by the standards of the series, pretty nice guys overall. They eagerly joined the Tau upon learning that the Greater Good was quite similar to their own beliefs, and their allegiance to the Tau is one of mutual faith and understanding, not the mercenary-employer relationship of the Kroot.

*** Not to mention the fact that they have a tendency to go complete batshit nuts just before a battle, to the point that they consider haveing half their bodies blown off nothing more than a flesh wound. Oh, there's also the fact that if they don't have a Chaplain to rein them in they might just start drinking your blood from your still-beating heart.

**** Why do you think they're so noble? They try their hardest to be, to avoid [[Heroic BSOD|losing their minds]] and [[Genetic Memory|reliving the last memories]] [[Napoleon Delusion|of their Primarch before he died]]. They [[Friendly Neighbourhood Vampires|are powerful and loyal allies]] once on your side, but [[Our Vampires Are Different|heaven help you if they're not]]...

** Oh, and remember that bit about the Tyranid Lictors further up the page? The bit about them eating your brain to take your memories? Yeah, the Marines do that too.

 

== '''Imperium and general background material''' ==

* The very ideology of the Imperium is scary:

** Perhaps an example will better define how horrific the Imperium is at heart. The planet Veyna was colonised in 068.M41, and rather than setting it up as the standard "you do X for the Emperor" planet, the Adeptus Mechanicus spotted the lakes of liquid hydrogen on its poles and claimed all the land for a processing plant rather than continue creating their own. Instead of simply placing the inhabitants to live out their lives on a nearby planet, all but the most rebellious (who fought a guerrilla war to no great effect) were herded off to a forge-world and worked to death. No-one in the Imperium who knew considered this anything unusual or unethical in any way.

** On a similar note: ''[[Battlefleet Gothic]]'' features ships kilometers long, with torpedo bays. Torpedo bays with three hundred meter torpedoes designed to scream across space and cripple a kilometer-long spaceship. And the Imperium loads these things by hand - by chain and pulley. Not because they couldn't do it automatically, but because it is easier to enslave a thousand humans than it is to build loading rails. The Imperium's greatest resource is men: "Give me enough of them and I shall choke up the Eye of Terror."

* Now that you've read all this, imagine being an [[Redshirt Army|Imperial Guardsman]]. That is to say, a [[Badass Normal|normal person]] armed only with a laser rifle, a flak jacket which you will quickly discover to be almost useless, and training not much different from the modern military and tell me the entire ''Warhammer 40k'' universe isn't out to get you.

** It doesn't help that military propaganda says every guardsman is expendable...

** Though, to be fair, some PDF, mainly from wealthy and/or important worlds (''especially'' Forge Worlds), can be as well or even better equipped and trained than the Imperial Guard. Still, though, most Forge Worlds have permanent, massive IG garrisons, not to mention the Adeptus Mechanicus' legions of cybernetically enhanced warriors (who are far ''more'' capable than the IG, or should be; they're not dealt with much in the fluff). Some worlds, though, have a massive industrial complexes which are extremely important, and with production schedules stretching ahead decades, but don't necessarily make the worlds they sit on Forge Worlds, nor important enough for a permanent IG presence. These are the worlds that tend to have excellent [[PD Fs]], simply because they can manufacture lots of top-tier (by human standards) equipment. Wealthy worlds, those with large noble populations or extremely lucrative trading or corporate worlds generally have enough money just to pay for very high quality [[PD Fs]].

** The amount of Nightmare Fuel varies depending on who you're fighting. You can pretty much expect Orks to just kill you. Tyranids will usually just eat you. Eldar generally just kill you if you're in their way (whether killed by their hand or by the hand of another faction they influenced to attack you). Tau might even take you prisoner ''without'' doing horrible things to you. Simply being shot/eviscerated/turned into a pile of shredded flesh isn't really so bad considering what would happen to you if some of your foes feel like taking prisoners, especially the Dark Eldar or followers of Slaanesh...

* An unconfirmed source from the [[Human Resources]] page claims that some parts of the Juvenat Process are derived from children. Yes, that means that the elite of the Imperium and even [[Ciaphas Cain]] (HERO OF THE IMPERIUM) bathe in children. Blood Countess, anyone?

* ''"Forget the power of technology, science and common humanity. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for there is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods."''

** Sometimes you actually feel that is not that they are adding mechanical parts to a human body, but that they are adding human body parts to a machine...

** You know where many combat servitors come from? From a system where there is an official sanitarium for Imperial Guardsmen suffering combat trauma. May or may not be a coincidence. Probably not.

* Imagine being a common, normal human in this. To paraphrase one of the comic books, "We used to pray that the Emperor would send his angels to save us. Now we pray he never does again."

** To expand on this, imagine being one of quadrillions of human beings alive in the Imperium. Imagine living in a hive planet, which is basically an entire planet hollowed out and turned into a single giant city, where countless other humans live, where all your food and water are probably exported from some agri planet. Imagine being at the mercy of an unthinkably massive government, one that views you, at best, as a resource to be used as they say fit (as a citizen of the Imperium, you have no rights, just responsibilities). On top of some incredibly shitty job (think 12 hours of factory work a day), imagine also having to worry about the incredible amounts of crime all around you. Imagine knowing that, at any moment, the authorities might take you in for any crime (guilty or innocent), and do whatever they please. Imagine being taught from birth that your entire existence is to be a servant to the Emperor, a lesson which everyone around you has learned very, very well. Imagine knowing that any amount of heresy, of any kind, you might display will land you, at best, a very quick death. Then, remember that doesn't account for all the xenos, heretics, and so on that exist all around, and that, with every coming day, the chance of being killed by some invading fleet, your own government, or something similar can only get stronger....Yeah, the Imperium sucks.

 

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If any of these images prove to be too much for you, just take a deep breath, relax, watch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO3MttgvHUY these] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMLfACod48 videos], and take comfort in the fact that [[narm]] can reduce the scariest of worlds into over-the-top hilarity.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Tabletop Games/Nightmare Fuel]]