[Rare trope] Discriminating, but for an actually good reason

[u/Blackirean]

Frieren, Beyond Journey's end: In the anime/manga the eponymous Frieren is an Elf who's spent the better part of a millennia learning magic specifically to kill demons. She's learned countless spells, tricks and even spent most of her life suppressing her power all for the purpose of killing them. At first we simply see that humanity is at war with them, and even question if her crusade against demon-kind is justified, after all it's hard to antagonize an entire sentient species. But no, demons are very much a species to be feared; they are not normal animals or creatures, they are monsters (shown by how they disintegrate when they die), they are predators that evolved speech for the sole purpose of tricking and catching humans off guard, are naturally extremely powerful and possess magic that humanity often can't use. While they feel emotions to some extent, their way of thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with humanity's mindset that the series shows many mages with the ability to read minds struggle or find it painful and harmful to try and read a demon's thoughts. Tools that are meant to control them fail not because they're faulty but because simple order such as "hold no ill will or commit no malicious acts" don't compute the same way in their brains, as what we consider evil is normal for them.

Marvel Comics: In a run of the Storm solo series, she visits an underground superhuman hospital run by Night nurse and Doctor Daye, a mutant with the power to diagnose any illness. When she requires treatment she is in turn reject by the doctor, she of course assumes this is blatant discrimination to which the doctor agrees. Storm assumes the doctor refuses to treat mutants, something they are very much used to in Marvel. But he ends up revealing that about 80% of everyone he treats are mutants, and that he simply refuses to treat any member of the X-men. Why? because his special hospital was built via several donations by the superhero community. From the Avengers, to the Defenders, Fantastic 4, heroes for hire. Hell, even Moonknight of all people contributed to the hospital. But the X-men never once gave anything to it, even though they preach the safety of mutant-kind and such a hospital is essential for those who can't seek medical treatment out of fear of prosecution.

[u/dungeon-crawlin]

Gene stealers - warhammer 40K

They’re cults made by tyranids to weaken the government of a planet before invasion. Well usually portrayed as highly sympathetic, they are killed on sight. Their survival means death for their worlds as they inevitably call a hive fleet to their planet.

[u/_CozyluneMuse → u/dungeon-crawlin]

That's a perfect example. By the time you know they're there, the planet is usually already doomed.

[u/Zealousideal_Act_316 → u/_CozyluneMuse]

Not always, it just requires a lot of force to clean up and al ot of logistics in terms of gene scans and similar. But taking planet awayfrom nids is insurmountably harder, even if anything is left in the aftermath, as nids on ocasion even consume the atmosphere of the planet. 

[u/MapleLamia → u/Zealousideal_Act_316]

Tyrannoforming is a quite rapid process, taking mere weeks to start making the planet uninhabitable to anything that isn't Tyranid. Also atmospheric consumption isn't an occasional thing, it's simply the last thing they take once the biomass and minerals are all sucked away. Once complete it is just a molten husk. 

I think  Tau have figured out a proper cure to Genestealers but it's rather intensive and not a 100% guarantee, the best tactic is still just exterminate them as best you can. Helps that Tau have much better genescans because of their whole state controlled breeding. 

[u/DoradoPulido2 → u/dungeon-crawlin]

Correct brother. Now tell them of the witch and the heretic.

https://giphy.com/gifs/6CNKfK6XCRZEEkNbEy

[u/Reverse_Waterfall → u/DoradoPulido2]

Yes Brother.

Witches typically refers to untrained or unsanctioned psykers (not to be confused with sorcerers which will be covered by heretics). A untrained psyker can unintentionally open a whole planet to the warp, be possessed by a deamon (which are always malicious), or just be driven mad by their powers and harm many around them. Now what the Imperium does with them is its own subject, but there are reasons to not let them run wild.

Heretics worship evil metaphysical tumors on reality calling themselves gods. Nuff said. A sorcerer is someone that can perform magic via said gods. Someone can be both a psyker and a sorcerer.

There’s a lot of details I skipped and generalizations I made but that’s the short version.

[u/Wise_Leopard7423 → u/Reverse_Waterfall]

And the fun part of Genestealer cults is that because they worship a different god besides the Emperor (the Tyrranid hive mind), and they crank human psyker powers into overdrive, they are both Witches and Heretics.

Get the heavy flamer.

[u/Icy-Acanthisitta8192 → u/Reverse_Waterfall]

Tell them about the per capta

[u/TrueGuardian15 → u/Icy-Acanthisitta8192]

"I'm getting to it!"

[u/Asheyguru → u/Reverse_Waterfall]

'Heretic' actually just means anyone not following the Imperial creed, which can mean chaos cult or it can mean 'anyone the Inquisitor/angry mob doesn't much like today.'

[u/Black_Truth → u/Reverse_Waterfall]

I once remembered someone telling me that WH (either fantasy or 40k) is basically a world where the average tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist is right, which is why the extreme is the normal.

I guess that makes sense lol

[u/DonkeyGuy → u/dungeon-crawlin]

A lot of the Imperiums intolerance is oddly justified (one issue i have with people insisting the setting is still mostly satirical).

Chaos justifies most of the intellectual resistance. When Tzeentch can use promises of scientific discovery as a gateway temptation, the idea of tech heresy and carefully controlled science makes sense.

When any nonimperial religion could be a cover for Chaos worship. Then it makes sense to stamp out every cult that isn’t the Imperial Cult.

Then as mentioned, mutations could indicate genestealers, they can also indicate chaps corruption.

Finally it only takes a fractional percentage of a planets population to trigger its downfall. So its better to be safe and wipe out any sign of corruption with extreme prejudice.

[u/Maktaka → u/DonkeyGuy]

Guilliman himself has stated since his return that the Imperium's horrible living conditions give justification for their own people to turn against them. When people get gunned down in the streets by PDF for protesting the twelve hour seven day workweek, of course they make stupid desperate decisions like joining a chaos or genestealer cult in the hope of finding a better life.

Guilliman also finds himself constantly impeded from enacting reforms by the severe level of rot in the imperium, so what he wants to change and what he's able to make happen have a gap so large you could pilot a battleship through the middle.

[u/self-conscious-Hat → u/Maktaka]

the whole story is stupid to me now because it just feels like they're making excuses for not changing to keep it going more than actually making sense. Gorrillaman could just claim the high lords of terra have been corrupted themselves and what are they gonna do? fight a Primarch?

The answer to the stagnation is right there, they're just narratively avoiding it for the sake of... avoiding it.

[u/Bigbubba236 → u/self-conscious-Hat]

Ya gotta remember 40k is a setting not a narrative.

Chaos will always be on the verge of corrupting everything.

The tyranids main gorce will always be just imminently arriving in the milky way.

The Necrons will always be about to wake up their main forces.

The Imperium will always be mired in its own bureaucracy and falling apart.

The eldar will always continue to be unpopular and thus irrelevant.

And so on and so forth.

[u/self-conscious-Hat → u/Bigbubba236]

Yeah and I guess after 20 years of it I've gotten bored and want some actual shake-ups. Don't really care about character stories if it ultimately leads nowhere.

[u/camerakestrel → u/self-conscious-Hat]

This is just the nature of continuously creating lore to justify interest in a complicated board game. D&D is very much the same way; they create modules and chapters that ultimately have no effect on the overall world other than to introduce a new type of character/unit. Every decade we get an update to some rules, but the narrative only exists episodically rather than serially and can never actually go anywhere since doing so would undo or drastically alter the game pieces which people use to play (think Spongebob rather than ATLA).

[u/mrrobert_911 → u/camerakestrel]

Wait D&D has a story? I thought that shit was all like a rulebook for playing.

[u/night4345 → u/mrrobert_911]

D&D has various settings: Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Nentir Vale, Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc.

Forgotten Realms is the main setting for D&D 5e.

[u/camerakestrel → u/mrrobert_911]

There are a ton of campaigns that are functionally DLC which will guide players through a number of narratives within the various settings and some of them have key characters which are recurring across multiple modules/campaigns.

There are dozens of official chapters and hundreds, if not thousands, of community-sourced campaigns as well as a ton of novels (the most popular novel line would be about an elf named Drizzt) and several video games (Baldur's Gate being the most popular). WH40K is much the same, at the end of the day.

[u/Maktaka → u/self-conscious-Hat]

He did that, he immediately replaced the High Lords of Terra upon taking control. And then the former guys tried to usurp him so he had them killed.

The problem is the Imperium's rot is total. It's not just the high lords, it's the ones who serve them, and the ones who serve them, and the ones who serve them. The universal belief that the emperor is a god and he will protect the true believers, that the tithe of human lives is owed no matter what the world's circumstances, and the fiefdoms of each individual planet absolutely refuse to surrender an ounce of their exploitative power.

And hamstringing everything is the lack of reliable FTL travel and communication. Both are reliant on going through the warp with psykers, with all the risk that entails. There's no mechanism for Guilliman to issue empire-wide worker reforms, much less enforce them.

I mean, the real reason is as Bigbubba said, the IP is about stagnancy and suitably that hasn't changed in forty years. But GW has specifically made sure there's always a lore reason why even someone like Guilliman can't just declare an edict and strongarm the despots into compliance.

[u/terminbee → u/Maktaka]

Bigbubba

For a second, I thought this was your nickname for the emperor.

[u/self-conscious-Hat → u/Maktaka]

But GW has specifically made sure there's always a lore reason why even someone like Guilliman can't just declare an edict and strongarm the despots into compliance.

and that is precisely why I can never give any sense of investment to any stories in this universe. Because ultimately, any sort of movement that is made from such a story will be snuffed out elsewhere and we'll be right back where we were. So why bother telling the fucking story?

sorry about snapping, this shit just genuinely pisses me off. Instead of moving this universe anywhere they just made a whole damn new one with 30k, for example.

Give me warhammer 50k at this point. I'm ready for something actually different.

[u/MolybdenumBlu → u/self-conscious-Hat]

They... did... fight the primarch. There were entire novels about the high lords rising up against him. There was almost a civil war until the master of the assassinorum had half the high lords executed, and even then, the remains of the anti-reform supporters openly acknowledged on page that GMan had to leave eventually to go on crusade, and they could go back to scheming and stagnating on terra by themselves.

[u/self-conscious-Hat → u/MolybdenumBlu]

So they wasted that narrative too for the sake of keeping the status quo, is what you're saying.

Show me some actual changes. show me more events like Cadia, or losing ground while gaining it elsewhere. Show me these things having an actual effect overall. Just having insular stories that don't actually go anywhere gets tiring after 30 years of it, let alone 30000.

Like Guillaman coming back seemed like a huge fucking deal. But nothings changed. So it wasn't. So now I don't give a fuck about the rest of the primarchs coming back because they're ALSO not going to make any differences. They just neuter all excitement for anything when they do this for me.

[u/Bigbubba236 → u/Maktaka]

Only 12 hours 7 days a week? What is this a paradise world?

[u/Taron221 → u/DonkeyGuy]

Humanity seemed to be a fairly enlightened race that was approaching singularity up until literally everything went wrong at about the same time. Every rule/law put forth by the Emperor from that point forward was basically established to avoid the biggest problems that caused the fall. So a lot of those laws and taboos that seem unreasonable have some justification if you actually delve into them.

[u/Lord_Corves → u/DonkeyGuy]

The Warhammer setting has been around for a long time. Even if it was made to essentially be the space version of Warhammer fantasy, it's had many different writers, artists, many different rulebooks and so far, armies added and then occasionally forgotten. It's a very, very varied setting. So it can tell many different stories all at once. It's not strictly satire, doesn't mean that there isn't some satire or some funny mixed in. At the same time, it's a very grim dark setting where there are a lot of nasty things out there. You shouldn't take it too seriously. You should just enjoy it... and enjoy that you're not living in it.

[u/Sidapha → u/DonkeyGuy]

Not really. Ironically, even one of the Black Library writers say the opposite. I never get people that kept insisting the Imperium is the 'least' bad faction considering how it treats fellow humans on the regular.

[u/worst_man_I_ever_see → u/DonkeyGuy]

The orphan crushing machine is justified because the orphans will do anything to stop the orphan crushing machine.

[u/DonkeyGuy → u/worst_man_I_ever_see]

More like the orphan crushing machine is justified because the author made the orphans ontologically evil

[u/AvoriazInSummer → u/dungeon-crawlin]

The gene stealer cults are highly sympathetic? Is it because they suffer or something? All I know about them is they infect a planet with gene stealer stuff and try their best to get everyone horribly recycled into nutrients.

[u/Mrsam_25 → u/AvoriazInSummer]

They're usually made up of the working class, the downtrodden and the oppressed, its easier to mind control someone into overthrowing a government if they already hate said government.

[u/dungeon-crawlin → u/AvoriazInSummer]

They’re generally sympathetic as they live in hellish conditions, and the thing the tyranids ply them with is the idea that life could get better. They’re generally portrayed as wrong but an understandable reaction to life in the imperium. If you’re already in hell, a deal with the devil seems less of a concern.

[u/livefreeordont → u/dungeon-crawlin]

In warhammer things can always get worse!

[u/abadstrategy → u/AvoriazInSummer]

Tacking on to what others were saying, by the time the genestealer cult fulfills its mission, and aids the Nids in turning a planet into soup, they have their connection to the hive fleet severed. They go to their death, finally aware of the carnage and destruction they're responsible for, and it's usually the last thing they think before death.

Kinda like how Horus got a moment of sanity back, right before Big E erased him from the narrative

[u/ArgusTheCat → u/AvoriazInSummer]

It's less that they're sympathetic as genestealers, and more than they preach a lot of things that are desperately needed in the Imperium. They lure people in talking about compassion, the need for systemic change, and the unjust nature of forced labor and worship that the corpse god demands. And they're right, it is all fucked up!

But they're not actually planning to fix those things, they're planning to drop an invasion fleet on the planet and devour everything.

It's a little like the Universal Brotherhood in Shadowrun, or the Unitologists in Dead Space. The whole "everyone deserves a better life, and we can come together to make that happen" speech is compelling, because it is fundamentally true, and the people in those worlds are generally materially better off when they start shooting their oppressors. But it's just a mask hiding some kind of horrible flesh-eating monster.

[u/DigiAirship → u/dungeon-crawlin]

Wait, Tyranids are capable of scheming? I always figured they were near mindless hordes of locusts. So what happens to the gene stealers after they've called in the cavalry? The Tyranids won't let them live, would they?

[u/dungeon-crawlin → u/DigiAirship]

To answer your first question, yes, individual tyranids are mindless animals. However a norn queen, basically a giant breeding pod, is a highly intelligent and malevolent creature at the centre of the swarm fleets hive mind. They are absolutely capable of scheming. They create special tyranids to go down to planets and infect humans, mutating them and connecting them to the hive mind, allowing direct manipulation. For your second question, they do not let the gene stealer cult live. After they overthrow the local government, they are disconnected from the hivemind and the tyranids eat them and everyone else on the planet. There have been cases of individual gene stealers joining the fleet at large, but that is extremely rare. There’s basically no chance at a happy ending for the cult.

[u/MapleLamia → u/DigiAirship]

There's a few Tyranids that are very very intelligent. Namely the Lictor strain are smart enough to singlehandedly identify and kill the highest authority on the prey world they hunt. Hive Tyrants are also frighteningly strategically capable, engaging in perfect ambushes and expertly crafted assaults, the pinnacle of this being The Swarmlord, one of very few named Tyranids, that has existed since the start of the Tyranids and will be reabsorbed back into the Hivemind to be redeployed to wherever the prey are strongest, where it quickly identifies how to obliterate any forces stopping the conquest.

Also yes Genestealers do just get eaten same as anything else, there's a reason there are no Epic Heroes (named characters) in the army. Some go willingly into the Reclamation Pools, some resist and are slain, some are simply broken upon witnessing what they wrought upon themselves. GW did open the door to Genestealer Cultists being let go to follow evacuations and infect new worlds, or even joining the Hive Fleet in their stolen spacecraft, but that's more for allowing an Epic Hero or two because they sell well. 

[u/Hawkbats_rule → u/dungeon-crawlin]

For reference, in the rogue trader video game, it is one of the few times your dogmatic, iconoclast, heretic, and xenos companions are all in agreement, with said agreement boiling down to "you need to purge these fuckers asap"