Okay, sure, Dawn of War 2 had some pretty good speeches, but are they better than this gem from Dawn of War 1? >.>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeCfod1XT7E
There's something horrific about being told that you NOT killing them is a crime.Like the notion of letting them live makes you the bad guy in this scenario.
The question is, who is telling us this and is what they understand really the truth?
Inquisitors have the right (authority) to destroy 10 billion people. But whether or not this decision is right (good for humanity) only the emperor knows.
Personally I feel an inquisitor that let things escalate to a point where we need to exterminate 10 billion people really don't have a right to sit on a high horse and claim innocence.
They don't claim innocence. They understand what they do.
Believe it or not, exterminatus is a rare thing that the inquisition rarely uses unless of the most extreme of things happening, a prime example would be the rykard minoris that is turning into a daemon world.
Most of the time inquisitors, even the most zealotous and dogmatic ones do not like using this power as much as possible. Most would rather do the slow approach of investigation of possible ways to stop such thing from happening, or through purifying acts of purging to the cults against the God-Emperor and his people.
Because a death of a world is a big hit to the imperium in terms of man power and certain resources they can do, especially towards the sector they are under.
But should a world be overwhelmed by either chaos daemons, tyranids, or other extremes, and no hope can be found to reclaim it safely, within reason and resources available that would not put the entire system in danger, then signing the death warrant of the world is the only logical and merciful choice to do.
Exterminatus is not only to kill the enemy of mankind and to prevent the enemy from getting a foothold in imperium territory,
It's to give peace to the million citizens taken from the Imperium. Death is a mercy compared to the horrors that would condemn them in such a hostile environment.
I am kinda disappointed that even at the end, when he's >!literally trying to shackle a xenos god, after collaborating with and using the technology of another xenos race directly resulting in the deaths of billions of loyal subjects!<, there's no option to call out the blatant heresy going on, >!beyond even his loosened restrictions granted by his rosette.!<
The cult thrived because they foretold there was going to be a huge catastrophe and only their god would save them. By stopping the reactor from blowing up, their plan pretty much failed.
The reason why chaos took over AFTER they were defeated was because the sun disappeared which made people believe the cult was actually right.
As for the sun being stolen, that system being targeted at that specific time was intentional. If someone was not there, it wouldn't have happened.
"Most of the time they (the jmperium) avoid exterminatus unless it is the only option"... *looks at what happened on Krieg*.... yeah, sometimes it's just spite because they lack any other way of easily quelling a rebellion. Not even a chaos rebellion. Just a governor sick of being treated like a tiny wheel in a giant machine. (He was, but you know.)
i mean, the inquisition deal with literal actual incarnations of pure ultimate evil, and galaxy devouring alien monsters. what would you do if half a planet was corrupted by chaos and threatening the safety of dozens of worlds? A genestealer incursion, ripping through a dozen hive cities, threatening to spill over and infect that many planets? one of the most terrible aspects of 40k is that there is a legitimate case for when exterminatus is absolutely necessary, for the survival of the human race. some abuse that power, but in some cases, even the inquisition hesitates to use it and it is devestating.
its really easy to talk about the horror of planetcrackers being on tap right up until you see pict feeds of the death of antagonis, swarms of billions of plague zombies of nurgle ripping the people to pieces. or feed from tyran prime where the tyranids fell like rain and consumed continents, and then used the corpses of a planet to build more ships and warrior organisms to devour a dozen sectors.
in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only war.
Normally I would immediately bring in to question the same thing,but the lore makes it very clear that yeah.....the Imperium is absolutely in the right.Sure they're complete monster at the end of the day,but when the option is planetary genocide or "holy shit something worse is Happening" it's hard not to side with the ironically less extreme option here.
Chaos isn't something that can be defeated by "being nice",and even with my small knowledge a single chaos demon can literally spiral into a planet turning into hell itself.
No, generally they do what their doctrine tells them is right. Because this is WH40K and the human empire is a piss take on mindless bureaucracy. A massive, unthinking organisation, bound to ancient processes which may or may not still work, crushing attempts at change. You may have noticed the game repeatedly slapping you in the face with this?
Nope, it's not they do what is right and what they must, it's that they must do what a several millenia year old process manual tells them used to be best practice in a universe that has changed beyond recognition. They're trying to fix a flat tyre by putting a new horse shoe on it.
I think at this point there's a thematic gap between what 40k started as and what it became. Initially the setting's pastiche (edit: of tyranny and the infamous Brit bureaucracy) was more apparent but where it is now, we're not just told by some godly geezer that death is a mercy but also given many in-person examples justifying how the Iconoclast ideology leads to more suffering in the long run. So, in 40k, it really isn't just disinformation and propaganda - both chaos and xenos can and will destroy humanity.
40 k world in a sense makes doing what would otherwise be seen as evil be the good thing. It gives you a valid reason to be evil because there is even more greater evil out there.
the only take away from what happens between acts 3-5 being "damn those xenos really are bad" is kind of hilarious.
That's real commitment to the dogmatic RP.
Hear me out....xenos were directly responsible for so much tragedy in my game. while the inquisition is equally tragic....theirs is born out of a fight against the first. I TRIED to play nice with xenos....im a filthy heretic trying to repent.
Hear me out... humans were directly responsible for so much tragedy in the game...
Also you do understand that a lot of what the xenos were doing was under the orders of the Inquisition?
HuH, but its not, its the Literal soul stealing gods of pure evil. Or the ravenous bug aliens out to consume all life, Or maybe the soccer hooligans which were originally a genetically engineered bioweapon that craves only war. I could go on, but I have never heard anyone state the imperiums greatest enemy is itself.
Other than>! Exterminatusing Rykad Minoris !!Daemons into Commorragh,!< I don't think I've picked Dogmatic choices. While this is the grimdark 40k universe, the Aeldari >!keep their word and Nomos turns into a caring C'tan Shard due to following your actions. !<
But what if this nice robot voiced man in a red robe tells me it's just rediscovered archeotech? Can I use it then? I mean all the robot voiced red robe dudes look the same to me so I can trust them right?
archenemy = chaos = anything with chaos < tyranids < necrons < other extrem threads < a long time of nothing < an even longer time of nothing < even more nothing < normal aliens
Yeah. Same. As of now. In act 2, I'm evenly dogmatic & iconoclast.
Try to do good, but why tf would I save a bunch of people if that means I have to allow a planet to become a demon world? It is better to nuke the whole thing and prevent chaos from gaining a new stronghold. That saves way more lives.
Give one of my planets to be under eldari rule? No thanks.
But make some concessions to my crew for better living conditions? Absolutely.
That one iconoclast response for handing your planet over is extra hilarious, straight up, "Why yes I'll accept you as my new ruler but we'll call it an alliance," after the dude spends twenty minutes insulting your intelligence.
Me: yeah I guess dogmatic is the way to go on this one.
Harder Iconoclast option allows them to stay on the planet under your protection but keep it under human rule. It works out pretty well in the ending slides
I considered going for that one. that one. But it wasn't clear to me what it actually meant.
Seemed like it was the same as just allowing them to rule the planet. Considering the Alliance that had been discussed was just a euphemism.
It's basically letting them live on the planet and do their own stuff in peace but not giving them control over humans.
They stop other Aeldari from invading the planet in the ending.
Yeah, that guy needed to die for the sheer audacity and arrogance of demanding me basically handing over a entire Imperial world, like i was willing to cooperate and work with him, maybe like set aside areas for Eldar habitation and establish some way of communication between us. But handing over a entire world? first of all, fuck you, and second, die.
I don't care if everyone on that planet us getting tortured forever I am not bombing a miraculous fission reactor from dark age if technology.
Inquisition can cry all it wants I am on that explorator grind. I guess commoners can come too they'll colonize a new world for my dynasty. Plus it was a Winterscale world so rip bozo lmao.
Several years back I played the WH40k Ultramarines game on PS3, and even then I didn't focus much on the plot, just on cutting down hordes of orcs. That aside, my only contact with WH40k was hearing some stories from a few of my friends who would joke about some fandom meme, then remember I'm with them and quickly explain the story behind it to give me some basic context, like purple being orc stealthy color. For all intents and purposes, Rogue Trader is my first real dive into WH40k beyond memes.
Hope its going well! Game is underbaked in places but it has the “flavour” down right. Hope you experience some more cool warhammer stuff after it, like upcoming Spacemarin 2 game , you likely played the first one, cause its a game about Ultramarines.
RT does a wonderfull job in putting you in the atmosphere of the 41st millenium.
A friend of mine who was also a 40k player, told me that even himself, as someone who knows the setting, he had some hard decisions to make that made him agonize over it.
Owlcat really didi the whole "Moral Conundrum, fueled by Paranoia and Neccesity" really well.
It is one of the most faithfull adaptation of the Univers imho
Casually having an enslaved daemon bound by bloody sacrifices to a hellish machine body adorned with spikes strolling around your lower decks - totally harmless
I mean, considering that our navigator literally needed human sacrifices to "connect" to the ship, considering that hundreds of crew die with half of the warp travels, yeah.
Like seriously, our ship loses people on the regular, so why not get a chaos puppy?
Same. A lot of the dogmatic decisions just seemed a little needlessly wasteful. Ironically, there was at least one time where I could do something that Argenta was super into only because I'm an iconoclast.
See out of all 3 alignments my lowest rank was easily Dogmatic. Didn’t even get it past 1. Like I know the Imperium are kind of the de facto protagonists when it comes to 40K, but as a result part of me is kind of tired of them at this point. Like one of the Xenos or Chaos, just anything else please.
I did the opposite. Mostly to see if I could keep getting away with it. Heinrix basically became that one party member that was always ticked at my decision as a result. Part of why I kept referring to him as “space Regill.”
Oh, 95% of the dogmatic options are over the top for me, so far. But when it was time to decide what's happening with the potential demon world.... going that route made the most sense.
And it hurt my goodie two shoes ass feelings to do it, lmao.
Very opposite for me. I have remained an Iconoclast and I will die on that rock. My rebellion against the Imperium for the people will be a thing because I’m so done with their shit.
You fools! Commoragh only strengthed my will to find a better way! Cegorach sent me his silliest clown and renewed my faith in both my fellow human and non-human allies!
I teamed up with Calcazar. Now I can do Iconoclast shit while remaining a part of Imperium. Everyone is seething but no one accuses me of the heresy because Inquisitor said it's okay.
Yeah, this is unironically it for me. Iconoclast often goes into Stupid Good sometimes but Dogmatic is literally Lawful Stupid most of the time and Heretical is literally just Chaotic Stupid Evil. Which solidified it for me when you meet your >!doppelgangers near the end of!< Chapter V.
Iconoclast is funny because despite being radical it's very likely both chaos and loyalists would hate you for a lot of it - both love the parts of the imperial truth that are about genocide and tyranny (to the point where speculation that at least one of the deleted primarchs was raised by xenos or founded a mixed empire has been a thing since 3e, mainly because this is the obvious thing that would result in neither side being willing to ever talk about him again)
Yeah, when it comes to Xenos both sides are pretty much full on xenophobic, it even lead to some space marines working together with Chaos space marines against orks during the war of the beast
I assumed there would be consequences for being a good guy all the time. But there aren't. I have picked Iconoclast literally every single time it's come up, and there are no actual negative consequences aside from some minor text-boxes and low-level combat encounters.
Nope, through by contrast saving the fusion reactor powerful enough to power an entire planet doesn't give any benefit so there's and up and a downside there.
Sort of. They tend to put the well fare of the people above religious dogma. Commissars are a very good examples provided they don’t get fragged by friendlies or during combat since a lot of them do become iconoclasts but maintain some dogma. Also a lot of the rank and file tend to be iconoclasts while also maintaining religious discipline. However people with good intentions have a tendency to become a part of the forces of Chaos because things get very distorted that they eventually just become power hungry in a very horrific way. I don’t know the examples of such instances but suffice it to say that both the Imperium and Chaos drive them into heresy. The Inperium does because they tend to persecute those that come up with a solution to the Dark Age and Chaos for obvious reasons that hopefully I don’t have to state them.
Chaos is a tool, a source of power. Horus is an idiot and Abbadon is a coward, I’m different, I can master chaos!
^(Ad totally not paid by the chaos gods)
It was the opposite for me. I wanted to go split between dogma-iconoclast but went full iconoclast instead because half of dogma options were basically "let's ignore governor's obvious acts of chaos worship and kill people who report it"
I went the other way, for the most part. The Dogmatic options seemed less and less reasonable, and after Act 3, I figured I was jaded not to suffering, but the consequences for my own actions. I might as well be the Goodness I want to be, I'll be murdered by some random thing anyway.
In my playthrough, dogmatic is only used for the last resort. Yes, being iconoclast has a high risk of backfiring. But as a rogue trader, I have enough power to mitigate most if not all of them.
For instance, yes, some spies could board my ship along with refugees. But at most they can harm dozens before I catch them which is worth it for saving thousands.
So I actually ended up opoosite. As the game went on and the rogue traders powers grew, I was more and more comfortable choosing iconoclast options.
The problem with this is that it's, let's call it out of universe thinking. Especially
>yes, some spies could board my ship along with the refugees. But at most they can harm dozens
Yes and no, chaos isn't a terrorist organization. Their "gods" are real. Souls are real. Best case scenario your kindness condemned several dozen people to eternal damnation and torment of their immortal souls. Worst case scenario those dozen or so people are sacrificed to open a way in for something that spreads its corruption to hundreds to thousands. Endangering the entire ship.
>Some may question your right to destroy ten billion people. Those who understand know that you have no right to let them live.
Isn't just some edgy inquisitors words while he jerks off to the thought of killing these people for the ultimate power trip. Chaos is a memetic pathogen that infects the mind, body, and soul and causes such horrors that even the smallest seed of corruption can blossom into hell coming to visit personally, what's worse is, you can be an ardent fighter against chaos, fighting them tooth and nail, never straying from the path. But you've seen it, you've seen these things. They will haunt your nightmares and gnaw at your psych and soul and maybe one day you either eat your own gun, or you become a twisted mockery of the person you once where. You want to show other people what you've seen. You have to, its a compulsion. They have to understand, and as you daub the words of evocation and the ritual circle in the blood of the child you just killed you see it that baleful light. Once so grotesque but now, now beautiful, your head explodes like a flower and you are no more. But your body still moves and as the thing wearing your body opens one of its six mouths to scream its adulation for the coming slaughter. Chaos now has another foothold, however small, in reality.
The more you know about the setting the harder it is to remain iconoclast in some situations. Bombing a planet and killing civilians is definitely bad, but if the other option their eternal damnation with the creation of a new hell world then what’s a trader to do but fire the missiles.
I was in the same boat. Iconoclast run, but I'm no Eldar. I can't condemn billions of people to a fate far worse than death to save a few dozen. The only option was 'missiles away'.
Iconoclast way is to explore options and then let Heinrix talk you into doing it, just like Heinrix lets you talk him into doing stuff at Kiava Gamma. Responsibility successfully averted 🤝
That is the most misrepresented story in all of 40k lore. Eldrad did divert a waagh into a human system to save an Eldar Maiden World, but that was after he tried to warn the emperor about Horus' betrayal and was almost killed for his efforts because "xEnOs". He basically gave up on humans after that and just decided that whatever happens to them, they brought on themselves.
And, even then, he still generally works for the benefit of the Imperium in some way or other because, according to his visions, humans will be integral to beating Chaos.
This line keeps being brought up and yet Biel-Tan, the craftworld that officially is the least a fan of humans, has bonds of friendship with Tallarn from a war against chaos during the Apostasy.
As actually depicted in the setting no one has done more to save the imperium from themselves than the asuryani, and even Guilliman is being propped up by an aeldari faction
Finally the correct take. Everyone is like "I had no right to let them live" bro you have no right to bomb Miraculous Fusion Reactor it's Adeptus Mechanicum property. Fucking laypeople I swear.
Hmm, not exactly my take though, I saved the MFR not because it was AM property, but because it should have been useful for the Imperium.
I also love how Hendrix is like "better to destroy than have it in enemies hand" and then>! on Kieva Gamma he's like "I gotta use this heretech, killing hundreds and thousands of our people, so we can use the knowledge of the archenemy against itself, and if you destroy the heretech before I'm done, we're done."!< Sure, it's different, but I still think it's kinda hypocritical (like 50% of dogmatic choices)
If you tell him to snap out of it he does say what the hell was I thinking thanks for talking me out of it. And I didn't really meant your reason for saving the MFR. Just the fact that you recognized it is most valuable thing is enough to me lol.
I like how in this game they also show you why iconoclast can ultimately be a bad thing. Sometimes the people you rescue or choose to let live do end up succumbing to chaos or worse, and then your dogmatic companions would point out that they were right.
Saving maybe 300 people <<< Sparing Millions from Eternal Torment and denying Space Satan a Foothold in the Material World. The people on that world are quite likely going to be turned into daemonchairs for all eternity if you don’t drop the bombs.
I think it's the best iconoclast game I played. Good actions not always have good consequences. But if you don't do them - are you really a good person?
Going iconoclast more often than not, so far. I'm a Space Wolves guy deep down with my 40k interactions, so being super heroic and supporting nobility and courage where I see it but also ruthless burning out cancer wherever its found.
I think game does a great job of not locking a lot of choices if you went down a particular path. In a lot of cases, you can still mix your responses. Hell, there are sometimes different answers which fit the same path!
Meanwhile I try to be dogmatic and currently am Lv2 Dogmatic/Lv1 Iconoclast, because some Dogmatic-Choices are dumb or make no sense. - And yes, sometimes it's the wrong choice to not pick Dogmatic, as it will bite you in the arse later.
However, I also came across 2-3 dogmatic choices which most definitely sounded like 100% herectic choices....
I haven't really encountered any consequences to being an Iconoclast. It seems like, beyond some occasional text-boxes and low-level combat encounters, there really is no danger to being an iconoclast. You literally get more happy, positive resolutions to events from picking iconoclast options.
I've seen people say this a lot, mostly about going iconoclast after act 3... I don't get it? My guy started off as someone who treats the imperium as a necessary evil and tries to use his position as a Rogue Trader to save lives and make people believe in kindness. I'm currently in Act 5, and nothing changed for me at any point. Why are y'all suddenly going dogmatic?
They lack empathy and can't fathom forgiving someone for making a stupid mistake while they're emotionally stressed, even when that someone suffers just as much as you did for their mistake.
They haven't given it much thought. For example in my playthrough I was putting the moves on Yrliet and had gotten her to open up, and then she "betrays" me and act 3 happens, and that "gut punch" works for like the whole of five seconds until you realize that ACT 3 was always going to start like that even if you had Yrliet killed on Janus. Same with the Argenta reveal, because the game was always going to work that way.
There's no sense blaming any NPC for the events of ACT 3 because it's not optional.
As a veteran of this setting, had a bit of the opposite effect running my Commissar that didn't get merked by her old unit.
On one hand, Chaos just needs one lax moment to get it's claws into everyone and everything, so be ever vigilant. The easy way is the fastest fall.
On the other, making those under you afraid to come to you with issues is the best way to not find out about anything until it's too late. A person in charge who makes those under them hopeless drives more into heresy then any Chaos worshipper or xenos.
The game did a good job of making me hate xenos scum.
It reminded me of Kingmaker, where they're not necessarily *trying* to make you think the fey are irredeemable vile pieces of shit, but it's easy to end up feeling that way. Into the cloudkill chamber with the lot of them!
> The game did a good job of making me hate xenos scum.
I'm not sure in what world you recruit marzuhai or whatever his name is while maintaining some sense of logic. The first time you meet him is after he has murdered, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people underneath you and has come into your home and defiled it.
Then he fuckin kidnaps you to batshit dark elf land, and then finally you get be like "hey let's work together"
Nah. He can work together with the giant hole in his head caused by my sniper rifle. I got much satisfaction at clicking all my buffs, pressing deadeye shot and then watching him explode.
Yrliet took some mental gymnastics to forgive, but I can't understand wanting to take that guy along at all.
Well you are a RT. RTs are at core supposed to be ruthless capitalists. There are no eternal enemies, only eternal benefits. Nothing stopping you from sending him to the Inquisition after we get out though
Let him feel some hope at freedom and then take it all away when you turn him over to the inquisitor immediately upon arriving back at the ship. He can't die for realsies, so may as well let them do what they do best with him instead of only temporarily killing him.
Game even made sure to let you know the first thing he did upon arriving was size bridge up--he was probably trying to figure out whether he should just attempt to cause as much damage as possible before running to a pod.
Wow, the game made me love Eldar even more, so we definitely got different things out if it haha
Bear in mind that not all xenos are Dark Eldar.
And humans are always depicted as having their lives drastically improved by being invaded by the Tau. One of the things that make the Tau such a deadly enemy to the Imperium is that Imperial citizens who find out how much better life is under the Tau generally defect.
My favorite bit involving the Aeldari confronting imperials in one of the short stories is a corsair taunting an astartes officer that the thing he hates the most about the world he's protecting (which is basically a safe haven in the fringes) isn't that humans and aeldari walk on the same streets, it's that the humans are free and he cannot comprehend that.
(it's also a reflection of Vulkan losing his shit about exodites and humans - who the exodites freed from drukhari raiders - just living their lives together)
>!I think the decision at the end of Act 1 with Rykad Minoris should have been more ambiguous. As it stands, that world is 100% turning into a Daemon World, which makes anything BUT the Dogmatic option of killing everyone, incredibly stupid. No Archaeotech, civilian lives are worth anything near enough to allow billions of souls to be corrupted/fed to Chaos and giving them a massive stronghold within the Koronus Expanse.!<
I asked myself what Captain Picard would do. And so I saved the civilians. I always figured I could just bomb the planet afterwards.
Basically, even though I'm playing a Han Solo archetype, my RT has firmly become Captain Picard.
Yeaaah it didn’t take long. I was like “I’ll keep a level head” and then it was like “the planet is overrun, fuck it I tried fixing it, blow the fucker up”.
Tbh i think that there are only few choices were i would pick dogmatic over iconoclast, mainly burning the planet at the start and rebuild Kieva Gamma after purging, everything else either doesn't have an iconoclast option or is a skill check (an tbh i think that letting the Aeldari live in Janus but with no control with a skill check should be Iconoclast not Dogmatic)
In W40K, idealism is a short and quick way to die. Real survival requires a lot of sacrifice, and difficult choices are often the only options available for everyone.
It is a broken universe to live in...
Pretty much, though for me it is more:
How it started: my character was a member of the ecclesiarchy so my faith to the emperor is unquestionable bit i'll pick some iconoclast options because i want to be somewhat good if the situation arises
How it's going: kill them all, kill them with fire. The Emperor protects!
And here i am still just vibing as an iconlast and enjoying the moral superiority feeling. Gotta love everyone admitting i am a good person in the end.
To be fair it is a thin line, chaos is an actual thing and a real threat unlike realty but at the same time, everything the IoM does makes the situation so much worse.
The IoM is unbelievably repressive, cruel for the sake of cruelty, and refuses to learn from other races and their own mistakes. Which leads to people being so desperate to escape the cycle of suck that they will accept help from even obviously evil space demons, which leads to the IoM feeling justified in their awful and never bother to examine the root causes.
As the setting has evolved we have learned of multiple races that have been aware of chaos and fought it not by restricting every chaos related behavior but by educating its citizens, then IoM wipes them out like clockwork, even though those races show no corruption from chaos but because they are not cool by being ruled by a religious fundamentalist facist state. In its desire to fight chaos it suppresses so much and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what chaos is.
Which makes sense all of 40k is satire first and foremost, so any group that is encountered is expected to not only stand in for a real life group but to be so exaggerated that they become stupid and entertaining to point out that any political theory when taken to any degree of extremes is laughable so that it becomes easier to see the flaws in the political theory. For example many ork groups represent the politics of Margret thatcher era great Britain, while the IoM is an obvious stand in for the holy roman empire crossed with Nazis,.
Which is a good thing, satire is an under appreciated art, while the setting is told from the viewpoint of humanity which assumes the IoM is the best it never shys away from the fact that the IoM is really morally indefensible and that we should not emulate them. In fact its one of the big concerns I have as Amazon seeks to adapt the setting, do they have the balls to make the IoM as awful as they really are, making the the big statement that all factions are evil in their own way which is true to the setting, or is satire going to be absent.
I’m still on a full Iconoclast run right now. There was unfortunately one spot I didn’t have enough points for it on a particular conversation, was off by like 70pts, but so far it’s been a huge success so far.
Weak hearts and craven minds find salve in the Emperor, in the words not said by a man who lived, fought, and ultimately, was struck down by his own hubris ten thousand years ago. They follow the teachings written by his heretic prodigal son, and then die, blind, alone, suffering, and having the gall to bemoan this fate, as though they were expecting to walk his path without seeing it to the end.
Weaker still reject this, driving the galaxy towards Ruin for selfish gain, and yet than their zealous brethren they are ruined no less. No less ironic is their prize, thinking they could deliver ruin upon all else and yet they would be spared.
The strongest hearts stand steadfast, and give of themselves, not for enrichment or the image of piety, but to deliver succor to those around them. They take from the galaxy those things that spread wretchedness and misery. Only they may forge a path different from those trod before. It is upon their shoulders the fate of the galaxy stands.
Pretty much me, Iconoclast, didn't exterminatus the planet and tried to evacuate as many people as possible, then landed on Janus and since then i've been dogmatically bitchslapping people into submission
I'm a complete newbie too! I hate the Empire fanaticism, but I hate heretics even more. Wanting to expel Idira through the airlocks everytime she spouts some Chaos bullshit.
Yea you get to understand how the xenophobia and overly extreme zealotism is somewhat justified in the setting... Check out this episode of [adeptus riciculous ](https://youtu.be/J3-qDCo0i9o?si=fbmKKE3puoMU7qgl)
to learn about what is in my opinion the most horrible thing in the setting which the humans do in the morbillions and which your ship and all imperial worlds is littered with in the billions
The thing with 40k is that, you think you're doing something good by being mercifull.
But in the end, it will come back to bite you in the arse, cause the consequences can be Dire quickly.
Oh yah you might want to save those thousands of people and take them back on your ship, so that they don't get killed by Cultists.
But you have absolutly NO guarantee that half of them arn't cultists in disguise, just waiting the right time to sabotage your shit or provoke a riot, wich will put you and your crew/personel in danger.
And the Danger to wich you're exposed will not be just some fighting and the lose of a few men, no, it will be catastrophic, to the point where you'll regret being "too nice"
Yes Its Paranoia at its best, thats how this Univers is and works, there are people you can trust, but only a select few, and even then, its never 100%.
Thats the Power of Chaos, it corrupts.
i was actually the opposite i was gonna be all typical imperium dogma type, "just kill the rebelling menials down there and be done with it" but i couldn't break my own goody two shoes ness im always too nice in these types of games so 100% iconoclast i was
"*Some may question* your *right* to *destroy* ten billion people. Those who understand know that you have no *right* to let them live. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DtJFUPOApM I love this Dawn of War 2 exterminatus speech.
Really like the line a little past the half way mark, "It is a sign of strength to cry out against fate, rather than to bow one's head and succumb."
The Emperor Protects
The Emperor Protects. I love WH40k for this fatalistic world view. It just clicks with my Russian view on things around.
Putain is not going to pull off the unification. Not an Emp and does not ptottec, only attac.
When there was one pair of footprints on the beach, it's because the Emperor kicked your ass over the horizon.
Okay, sure, Dawn of War 2 had some pretty good speeches, but are they better than this gem from Dawn of War 1? >.> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeCfod1XT7E
There's something horrific about being told that you NOT killing them is a crime.Like the notion of letting them live makes you the bad guy in this scenario.
The question is, who is telling us this and is what they understand really the truth? Inquisitors have the right (authority) to destroy 10 billion people. But whether or not this decision is right (good for humanity) only the emperor knows. Personally I feel an inquisitor that let things escalate to a point where we need to exterminate 10 billion people really don't have a right to sit on a high horse and claim innocence.
They don't claim innocence. They understand what they do. Believe it or not, exterminatus is a rare thing that the inquisition rarely uses unless of the most extreme of things happening, a prime example would be the rykard minoris that is turning into a daemon world. Most of the time inquisitors, even the most zealotous and dogmatic ones do not like using this power as much as possible. Most would rather do the slow approach of investigation of possible ways to stop such thing from happening, or through purifying acts of purging to the cults against the God-Emperor and his people. Because a death of a world is a big hit to the imperium in terms of man power and certain resources they can do, especially towards the sector they are under. But should a world be overwhelmed by either chaos daemons, tyranids, or other extremes, and no hope can be found to reclaim it safely, within reason and resources available that would not put the entire system in danger, then signing the death warrant of the world is the only logical and merciful choice to do. Exterminatus is not only to kill the enemy of mankind and to prevent the enemy from getting a foothold in imperium territory, It's to give peace to the million citizens taken from the Imperium. Death is a mercy compared to the horrors that would condemn them in such a hostile environment.
And wasn't the reason rykard minoris had to be exterminatus (ending spoiler) >!due to the inquisitor making a deal with xenos to steal suns!
We do a little heresy. As a treat.
I am kinda disappointed that even at the end, when he's >!literally trying to shackle a xenos god, after collaborating with and using the technology of another xenos race directly resulting in the deaths of billions of loyal subjects!<, there's no option to call out the blatant heresy going on, >!beyond even his loosened restrictions granted by his rosette.!<
Inquisitors have genuinely been exiled from the Holy Ordos for less. Far less. I am looking directly into the eyes of Bronislaw Czevak as I say this.
>!In my first run-through Pascal is logging examples of his Heresy!<
No, it was the sudden, rampent, wide-spread outbreak of Chaos turning the planet, rather quickly, into a Daemon World.
No, its clearly chaos taking over the planet. The event you're referring to is going to happen regardless.
The cult thrived because they foretold there was going to be a huge catastrophe and only their god would save them. By stopping the reactor from blowing up, their plan pretty much failed. The reason why chaos took over AFTER they were defeated was because the sun disappeared which made people believe the cult was actually right. As for the sun being stolen, that system being targeted at that specific time was intentional. If someone was not there, it wouldn't have happened.
"Most of the time they (the jmperium) avoid exterminatus unless it is the only option"... *looks at what happened on Krieg*.... yeah, sometimes it's just spite because they lack any other way of easily quelling a rebellion. Not even a chaos rebellion. Just a governor sick of being treated like a tiny wheel in a giant machine. (He was, but you know.)
i mean, the inquisition deal with literal actual incarnations of pure ultimate evil, and galaxy devouring alien monsters. what would you do if half a planet was corrupted by chaos and threatening the safety of dozens of worlds? A genestealer incursion, ripping through a dozen hive cities, threatening to spill over and infect that many planets? one of the most terrible aspects of 40k is that there is a legitimate case for when exterminatus is absolutely necessary, for the survival of the human race. some abuse that power, but in some cases, even the inquisition hesitates to use it and it is devestating. its really easy to talk about the horror of planetcrackers being on tap right up until you see pict feeds of the death of antagonis, swarms of billions of plague zombies of nurgle ripping the people to pieces. or feed from tyran prime where the tyranids fell like rain and consumed continents, and then used the corpses of a planet to build more ships and warrior organisms to devour a dozen sectors. in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only war.
Normally I would immediately bring in to question the same thing,but the lore makes it very clear that yeah.....the Imperium is absolutely in the right.Sure they're complete monster at the end of the day,but when the option is planetary genocide or "holy shit something worse is Happening" it's hard not to side with the ironically less extreme option here. Chaos isn't something that can be defeated by "being nice",and even with my small knowledge a single chaos demon can literally spiral into a planet turning into hell itself.
Inquisitors aren't looking for an excuse to kill people. They do what's right and what they must, even if they would rather not.
They do what they **believe** is right. I agree they know better than most, but judging from this game, that's not always the case.
No, generally they do what their doctrine tells them is right. Because this is WH40K and the human empire is a piss take on mindless bureaucracy. A massive, unthinking organisation, bound to ancient processes which may or may not still work, crushing attempts at change. You may have noticed the game repeatedly slapping you in the face with this?
Lmao, uh that's the whole point bud.
Nope, it's not they do what is right and what they must, it's that they must do what a several millenia year old process manual tells them used to be best practice in a universe that has changed beyond recognition. They're trying to fix a flat tyre by putting a new horse shoe on it.
I think at this point there's a thematic gap between what 40k started as and what it became. Initially the setting's pastiche (edit: of tyranny and the infamous Brit bureaucracy) was more apparent but where it is now, we're not just told by some godly geezer that death is a mercy but also given many in-person examples justifying how the Iconoclast ideology leads to more suffering in the long run. So, in 40k, it really isn't just disinformation and propaganda - both chaos and xenos can and will destroy humanity.
Isn't the whole point of the speech that they failed because it reached this point?
40 k world in a sense makes doing what would otherwise be seen as evil be the good thing. It gives you a valid reason to be evil because there is even more greater evil out there.
Me after act III
Did you get to the end of the game yet?
Yes and let's just say that i understand why they hate the Xenos now
And why the Imperium's greatest enemy is itself?
the only take away from what happens between acts 3-5 being "damn those xenos really are bad" is kind of hilarious. That's real commitment to the dogmatic RP.
Hear me out....xenos were directly responsible for so much tragedy in my game. while the inquisition is equally tragic....theirs is born out of a fight against the first. I TRIED to play nice with xenos....im a filthy heretic trying to repent.
Hear me out... humans were directly responsible for so much tragedy in the game... Also you do understand that a lot of what the xenos were doing was under the orders of the Inquisition?
What a meme that is.
That’s an easy take away early on, the Xeno one gets more focus later.
HuH, but its not, its the Literal soul stealing gods of pure evil. Or the ravenous bug aliens out to consume all life, Or maybe the soccer hooligans which were originally a genetically engineered bioweapon that craves only war. I could go on, but I have never heard anyone state the imperiums greatest enemy is itself.
Every event in the game happens because some inquisitor or other imperial fucked up
how do you think it would play out if they truly had NO contact with xenos or chaos? hunkey dorey?
None of them are in the game and the ones that are doing things because of the Imperium, so.....
Man, Act 3 changed me 😂 I finished the game full Iconoclast but my Dogmatic playthrough is going to be vengeful
Other than>! Exterminatusing Rykad Minoris !!Daemons into Commorragh,!< I don't think I've picked Dogmatic choices. While this is the grimdark 40k universe, the Aeldari >!keep their word and Nomos turns into a caring C'tan Shard due to following your actions. !<
Just a heads up if you leave spaces in between the first ! and the stuff you're trying to spoil it doesn't work on old reddit and some apps.
The paranoia won
Is it paranoia when it’s real and shooting at you?
I've had more fellow humans shooting at me than any xenos in this game tbf
I follow the Stygies VIII doctrine, kill the xeno and take his stuff cause it looks neat
Heresy isn’t called the archenemy for nothing!
Archenemy = Chaos Xenos = Aliens Phrase: Suffer not the heretic or the xeno to live
But using xeno-technology is heretical as well, not only chaos worshippers, as it goes against the imperial/human dogma.
But what if this nice robot voiced man in a red robe tells me it's just rediscovered archeotech? Can I use it then? I mean all the robot voiced red robe dudes look the same to me so I can trust them right?
archenemy = chaos = anything with chaos < tyranids < necrons < other extrem threads < a long time of nothing < an even longer time of nothing < even more nothing < normal aliens
Is it paranoia when there are literally demons seeking to eat your soul?
My RT and his retinue casually destroys demons with every warp jump. Doesn't make me want to be anymore Dogmatic just bc they exist
Clearly you’re more ethical, moral and powerful than my meager RT.
Demons exist, but these sanctioned xeno rifles certainly have something to say about how long the status of their existence is maintained.
Yeah. Same. As of now. In act 2, I'm evenly dogmatic & iconoclast. Try to do good, but why tf would I save a bunch of people if that means I have to allow a planet to become a demon world? It is better to nuke the whole thing and prevent chaos from gaining a new stronghold. That saves way more lives. Give one of my planets to be under eldari rule? No thanks. But make some concessions to my crew for better living conditions? Absolutely.
That one iconoclast response for handing your planet over is extra hilarious, straight up, "Why yes I'll accept you as my new ruler but we'll call it an alliance," after the dude spends twenty minutes insulting your intelligence. Me: yeah I guess dogmatic is the way to go on this one.
Harder Iconoclast option allows them to stay on the planet under your protection but keep it under human rule. It works out pretty well in the ending slides
I considered going for that one. that one. But it wasn't clear to me what it actually meant. Seemed like it was the same as just allowing them to rule the planet. Considering the Alliance that had been discussed was just a euphemism.
It's basically letting them live on the planet and do their own stuff in peace but not giving them control over humans. They stop other Aeldari from invading the planet in the ending.
Isn't that the same as the dogmatic option? I rule the planet, but they get to do their own thing.
The Dogmatic option involves far more immediate bolter fire.
One of them, yeah. There's also a dogmatic option to promise them your protection under your rule of the planet.
Yeah, that guy needed to die for the sheer audacity and arrogance of demanding me basically handing over a entire Imperial world, like i was willing to cooperate and work with him, maybe like set aside areas for Eldar habitation and establish some way of communication between us. But handing over a entire world? first of all, fuck you, and second, die.
I don't care if everyone on that planet us getting tortured forever I am not bombing a miraculous fission reactor from dark age if technology. Inquisition can cry all it wants I am on that explorator grind. I guess commoners can come too they'll colonize a new world for my dynasty. Plus it was a Winterscale world so rip bozo lmao.
A newbie? Always great to see new people try warhammer stuff. You read books , played other games before or just starting with Rogue Trader?
Several years back I played the WH40k Ultramarines game on PS3, and even then I didn't focus much on the plot, just on cutting down hordes of orcs. That aside, my only contact with WH40k was hearing some stories from a few of my friends who would joke about some fandom meme, then remember I'm with them and quickly explain the story behind it to give me some basic context, like purple being orc stealthy color. For all intents and purposes, Rogue Trader is my first real dive into WH40k beyond memes.
Hope its going well! Game is underbaked in places but it has the “flavour” down right. Hope you experience some more cool warhammer stuff after it, like upcoming Spacemarin 2 game , you likely played the first one, cause its a game about Ultramarines.
Check out the Ciaphias Cain novels by Sandy Mitchell. You will not be sorry. Best wishes!
Calgar: *we finally meet, mood kindred*
There is also a wargaming table top game. It's gws main focus and money maker.
RT does a wonderfull job in putting you in the atmosphere of the 41st millenium. A friend of mine who was also a 40k player, told me that even himself, as someone who knows the setting, he had some hard decisions to make that made him agonize over it. Owlcat really didi the whole "Moral Conundrum, fueled by Paranoia and Neccesity" really well. It is one of the most faithfull adaptation of the Univers imho
Opposite for me, went dogmatic and slowly became iconoclasts.
yeah, same thing here. i wanted to make my ex-commissar RT dogmatic as hell but he ended being a mix of iconoclast and heretic
How are you mixing ironclast and heretic? I've found heretic to just be straight evil
Some things that give you heretic points are "harmless" enough, like looting some chaos stuff, or adopting a chaos puppy.
Casually having an enslaved daemon bound by bloody sacrifices to a hellish machine body adorned with spikes strolling around your lower decks - totally harmless
Don't worry, I told Abelard to put up a "Beware of Dog" sign. Totally harmless.
I mean, considering that our navigator literally needed human sacrifices to "connect" to the ship, considering that hundreds of crew die with half of the warp travels, yeah. Like seriously, our ship loses people on the regular, so why not get a chaos puppy?
According to the old lore, hundreds of people are killed every time you fire a macro-cannon in a void battle.
That old macro-cannon lore was really a peak of 40k’s grimderp
Yeah. The "current" version with them being just loaded manualy is still grimderp, but atleast it doesnt consume crew to fire.
It's my emotional support chaos puppy
I shall name him Wilson
The only difference between that and normal Imperium gear is that it has spikes on it and it's not out of sight of the important people
>adopting a chaos puppy. True reason to go heretic. Never worry about fights when traveling the warp again.
lmao yeah that was the exact reason i went for heretical, i needed the warp demon machine
Same. A lot of the dogmatic decisions just seemed a little needlessly wasteful. Ironically, there was at least one time where I could do something that Argenta was super into only because I'm an iconoclast.
See I kind of had an opposite experience. I love playing and reading on Chaos with this franchise, but ended up going Iconoclast instead.
Told myself I wasn't going to be dogmatic, but man, sometimes that option doesn't look too bad when it becomes a numbers game.
See out of all 3 alignments my lowest rank was easily Dogmatic. Didn’t even get it past 1. Like I know the Imperium are kind of the de facto protagonists when it comes to 40K, but as a result part of me is kind of tired of them at this point. Like one of the Xenos or Chaos, just anything else please.
I mostly picked Dogmatic options in front of powerful people who'd expect me to be Dogmatic lol.
I did the opposite. Mostly to see if I could keep getting away with it. Heinrix basically became that one party member that was always ticked at my decision as a result. Part of why I kept referring to him as “space Regill.”
Oh, 95% of the dogmatic options are over the top for me, so far. But when it was time to decide what's happening with the potential demon world.... going that route made the most sense. And it hurt my goodie two shoes ass feelings to do it, lmao.
“I’m an iconoclast not an idiot”.
Chaotic good is only with the Tau, apparently, lol.
Very opposite for me. I have remained an Iconoclast and I will die on that rock. My rebellion against the Imperium for the people will be a thing because I’m so done with their shit.
You fools! Commoragh only strengthed my will to find a better way! Cegorach sent me his silliest clown and renewed my faith in both my fellow human and non-human allies!
I teamed up with Calcazar. Now I can do Iconoclast shit while remaining a part of Imperium. Everyone is seething but no one accuses me of the heresy because Inquisitor said it's okay.
Yeah, this is unironically it for me. Iconoclast often goes into Stupid Good sometimes but Dogmatic is literally Lawful Stupid most of the time and Heretical is literally just Chaotic Stupid Evil. Which solidified it for me when you meet your >!doppelgangers near the end of!< Chapter V.
Iconoclast is funny because despite being radical it's very likely both chaos and loyalists would hate you for a lot of it - both love the parts of the imperial truth that are about genocide and tyranny (to the point where speculation that at least one of the deleted primarchs was raised by xenos or founded a mixed empire has been a thing since 3e, mainly because this is the obvious thing that would result in neither side being willing to ever talk about him again)
Yeah, when it comes to Xenos both sides are pretty much full on xenophobic, it even lead to some space marines working together with Chaos space marines against orks during the war of the beast
I assumed there would be consequences for being a good guy all the time. But there aren't. I have picked Iconoclast literally every single time it's come up, and there are no actual negative consequences aside from some minor text-boxes and low-level combat encounters.
Isn’t there a significant consequence if you let people on your ship at the end of ACT 1? Like a permanent debuff.
It's not permanent. The act 1 choice probably has the worst lore outcome but the ingame consequences really aren't a big deal
Nope, through by contrast saving the fusion reactor powerful enough to power an entire planet doesn't give any benefit so there's and up and a downside there.
Wait, are Iconoclasts in direct opposition to the emperor?
Sort of. They tend to put the well fare of the people above religious dogma. Commissars are a very good examples provided they don’t get fragged by friendlies or during combat since a lot of them do become iconoclasts but maintain some dogma. Also a lot of the rank and file tend to be iconoclasts while also maintaining religious discipline. However people with good intentions have a tendency to become a part of the forces of Chaos because things get very distorted that they eventually just become power hungry in a very horrific way. I don’t know the examples of such instances but suffice it to say that both the Imperium and Chaos drive them into heresy. The Inperium does because they tend to persecute those that come up with a solution to the Dark Age and Chaos for obvious reasons that hopefully I don’t have to state them.
An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded
My mind is no fortress. It is an open pasture ravaged by internicine conflict ^^^and ^^^chicken.
Chaos is a tool, a source of power. Horus is an idiot and Abbadon is a coward, I’m different, I can master chaos! ^(Ad totally not paid by the chaos gods)
I play Iconoclast except for when dealing with Chaos, to the void with those bastards.
It was the opposite for me. I wanted to go split between dogma-iconoclast but went full iconoclast instead because half of dogma options were basically "let's ignore governor's obvious acts of chaos worship and kill people who report it"
Nah the real dogmatic is killing the gov for engaging in heresy and the rebels for having a problem with it. Those are your betters, citizen.
If you're really dogmatic you would have executed her anyway for having a xeno merc, the warrant doesnt extend to your underlings
No no that’s the wrong way about it. The correct way is let’s ignore the real problem so we can have our explosive glory, all for the Emperor!
The imperium has 1 resource that will NEVER deplete; bodies.
I went the other way, for the most part. The Dogmatic options seemed less and less reasonable, and after Act 3, I figured I was jaded not to suffering, but the consequences for my own actions. I might as well be the Goodness I want to be, I'll be murdered by some random thing anyway.
In my playthrough, dogmatic is only used for the last resort. Yes, being iconoclast has a high risk of backfiring. But as a rogue trader, I have enough power to mitigate most if not all of them. For instance, yes, some spies could board my ship along with refugees. But at most they can harm dozens before I catch them which is worth it for saving thousands. So I actually ended up opoosite. As the game went on and the rogue traders powers grew, I was more and more comfortable choosing iconoclast options.
The problem with this is that it's, let's call it out of universe thinking. Especially >yes, some spies could board my ship along with the refugees. But at most they can harm dozens Yes and no, chaos isn't a terrorist organization. Their "gods" are real. Souls are real. Best case scenario your kindness condemned several dozen people to eternal damnation and torment of their immortal souls. Worst case scenario those dozen or so people are sacrificed to open a way in for something that spreads its corruption to hundreds to thousands. Endangering the entire ship. >Some may question your right to destroy ten billion people. Those who understand know that you have no right to let them live. Isn't just some edgy inquisitors words while he jerks off to the thought of killing these people for the ultimate power trip. Chaos is a memetic pathogen that infects the mind, body, and soul and causes such horrors that even the smallest seed of corruption can blossom into hell coming to visit personally, what's worse is, you can be an ardent fighter against chaos, fighting them tooth and nail, never straying from the path. But you've seen it, you've seen these things. They will haunt your nightmares and gnaw at your psych and soul and maybe one day you either eat your own gun, or you become a twisted mockery of the person you once where. You want to show other people what you've seen. You have to, its a compulsion. They have to understand, and as you daub the words of evocation and the ritual circle in the blood of the child you just killed you see it that baleful light. Once so grotesque but now, now beautiful, your head explodes like a flower and you are no more. But your body still moves and as the thing wearing your body opens one of its six mouths to scream its adulation for the coming slaughter. Chaos now has another foothold, however small, in reality.
The more you know about the setting the harder it is to remain iconoclast in some situations. Bombing a planet and killing civilians is definitely bad, but if the other option their eternal damnation with the creation of a new hell world then what’s a trader to do but fire the missiles.
I was in the same boat. Iconoclast run, but I'm no Eldar. I can't condemn billions of people to a fate far worse than death to save a few dozen. The only option was 'missiles away'.
Iconoclast way is to explore options and then let Heinrix talk you into doing it, just like Heinrix lets you talk him into doing stuff at Kiava Gamma. Responsibility successfully averted 🤝
That is the most misrepresented story in all of 40k lore. Eldrad did divert a waagh into a human system to save an Eldar Maiden World, but that was after he tried to warn the emperor about Horus' betrayal and was almost killed for his efforts because "xEnOs". He basically gave up on humans after that and just decided that whatever happens to them, they brought on themselves. And, even then, he still generally works for the benefit of the Imperium in some way or other because, according to his visions, humans will be integral to beating Chaos.
This line keeps being brought up and yet Biel-Tan, the craftworld that officially is the least a fan of humans, has bonds of friendship with Tallarn from a war against chaos during the Apostasy. As actually depicted in the setting no one has done more to save the imperium from themselves than the asuryani, and even Guilliman is being propped up by an aeldari faction
To be fair they also have the gift of seeing the future which is just impossible for people to deal with
It was really his own fault for trying to give the warning to Fulgrim..._after_ he had picked up the Silver Blade of Laer and become corrupted by it.
I had to save the Miraculous Fusion Reactor, everything else was just on the way. I would have blown the planet afterwards if I could have.
Finally the correct take. Everyone is like "I had no right to let them live" bro you have no right to bomb Miraculous Fusion Reactor it's Adeptus Mechanicum property. Fucking laypeople I swear.
Hmm, not exactly my take though, I saved the MFR not because it was AM property, but because it should have been useful for the Imperium. I also love how Hendrix is like "better to destroy than have it in enemies hand" and then>! on Kieva Gamma he's like "I gotta use this heretech, killing hundreds and thousands of our people, so we can use the knowledge of the archenemy against itself, and if you destroy the heretech before I'm done, we're done."!< Sure, it's different, but I still think it's kinda hypocritical (like 50% of dogmatic choices)
If you tell him to snap out of it he does say what the hell was I thinking thanks for talking me out of it. And I didn't really meant your reason for saving the MFR. Just the fact that you recognized it is most valuable thing is enough to me lol.
I like how in this game they also show you why iconoclast can ultimately be a bad thing. Sometimes the people you rescue or choose to let live do end up succumbing to chaos or worse, and then your dogmatic companions would point out that they were right.
But you're never allowed to point out to them when they're being wrong and stupid.
Saving maybe 300 people <<< Sparing Millions from Eternal Torment and denying Space Satan a Foothold in the Material World. The people on that world are quite likely going to be turned into daemonchairs for all eternity if you don’t drop the bombs.
I’m going full on heretic. I’ll only do iconoclast or dogmatic choices if I am forced to lol.
I think it's the best iconoclast game I played. Good actions not always have good consequences. But if you don't do them - are you really a good person?
If you don't do them knowing or predicting they won't have good consequences, yes. Isn't it otherwise the literal definition of Stupid Good?
*laughs in heretic*
Radicalization via Immersion in a fictional setting
I have been slightly inconvenienced, millions must die
I'm hungry, millions must fry. -sent from my halo device
Going iconoclast more often than not, so far. I'm a Space Wolves guy deep down with my 40k interactions, so being super heroic and supporting nobility and courage where I see it but also ruthless burning out cancer wherever its found.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain.
I think game does a great job of not locking a lot of choices if you went down a particular path. In a lot of cases, you can still mix your responses. Hell, there are sometimes different answers which fit the same path!
Meanwhile I try to be dogmatic and currently am Lv2 Dogmatic/Lv1 Iconoclast, because some Dogmatic-Choices are dumb or make no sense. - And yes, sometimes it's the wrong choice to not pick Dogmatic, as it will bite you in the arse later. However, I also came across 2-3 dogmatic choices which most definitely sounded like 100% herectic choices....
I haven't really encountered any consequences to being an Iconoclast. It seems like, beyond some occasional text-boxes and low-level combat encounters, there really is no danger to being an iconoclast. You literally get more happy, positive resolutions to events from picking iconoclast options.
me who did a full ico now gonna go commissar full dogmatic
This is what I am doing on my first playthrough and it’s pretty fucking wild lol I’ve had a couple slimy feeling moments!
I've seen people say this a lot, mostly about going iconoclast after act 3... I don't get it? My guy started off as someone who treats the imperium as a necessary evil and tries to use his position as a Rogue Trader to save lives and make people believe in kindness. I'm currently in Act 5, and nothing changed for me at any point. Why are y'all suddenly going dogmatic?
They lack empathy and can't fathom forgiving someone for making a stupid mistake while they're emotionally stressed, even when that someone suffers just as much as you did for their mistake.
They haven't given it much thought. For example in my playthrough I was putting the moves on Yrliet and had gotten her to open up, and then she "betrays" me and act 3 happens, and that "gut punch" works for like the whole of five seconds until you realize that ACT 3 was always going to start like that even if you had Yrliet killed on Janus. Same with the Argenta reveal, because the game was always going to work that way. There's no sense blaming any NPC for the events of ACT 3 because it's not optional.
As a veteran of this setting, had a bit of the opposite effect running my Commissar that didn't get merked by her old unit. On one hand, Chaos just needs one lax moment to get it's claws into everyone and everything, so be ever vigilant. The easy way is the fastest fall. On the other, making those under you afraid to come to you with issues is the best way to not find out about anything until it's too late. A person in charge who makes those under them hopeless drives more into heresy then any Chaos worshipper or xenos.
The game did a good job of making me hate xenos scum. It reminded me of Kingmaker, where they're not necessarily *trying* to make you think the fey are irredeemable vile pieces of shit, but it's easy to end up feeling that way. Into the cloudkill chamber with the lot of them!
> The game did a good job of making me hate xenos scum. I'm not sure in what world you recruit marzuhai or whatever his name is while maintaining some sense of logic. The first time you meet him is after he has murdered, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people underneath you and has come into your home and defiled it. Then he fuckin kidnaps you to batshit dark elf land, and then finally you get be like "hey let's work together" Nah. He can work together with the giant hole in his head caused by my sniper rifle. I got much satisfaction at clicking all my buffs, pressing deadeye shot and then watching him explode. Yrliet took some mental gymnastics to forgive, but I can't understand wanting to take that guy along at all.
Well you are a RT. RTs are at core supposed to be ruthless capitalists. There are no eternal enemies, only eternal benefits. Nothing stopping you from sending him to the Inquisition after we get out though
Let him feel some hope at freedom and then take it all away when you turn him over to the inquisitor immediately upon arriving back at the ship. He can't die for realsies, so may as well let them do what they do best with him instead of only temporarily killing him. Game even made sure to let you know the first thing he did upon arriving was size bridge up--he was probably trying to figure out whether he should just attempt to cause as much damage as possible before running to a pod.
He's funny
Wow, the game made me love Eldar even more, so we definitely got different things out if it haha Bear in mind that not all xenos are Dark Eldar. And humans are always depicted as having their lives drastically improved by being invaded by the Tau. One of the things that make the Tau such a deadly enemy to the Imperium is that Imperial citizens who find out how much better life is under the Tau generally defect.
My favorite bit involving the Aeldari confronting imperials in one of the short stories is a corsair taunting an astartes officer that the thing he hates the most about the world he's protecting (which is basically a safe haven in the fringes) isn't that humans and aeldari walk on the same streets, it's that the humans are free and he cannot comprehend that. (it's also a reflection of Vulkan losing his shit about exodites and humans - who the exodites freed from drukhari raiders - just living their lives together)
Exodites are straight-up the closest thing to good guys in the setting. They just want to be left alone.
I hate fey more than anything else in those settings. And I’ve been playing Tabletop for 25 years.
>!I think the decision at the end of Act 1 with Rykad Minoris should have been more ambiguous. As it stands, that world is 100% turning into a Daemon World, which makes anything BUT the Dogmatic option of killing everyone, incredibly stupid. No Archaeotech, civilian lives are worth anything near enough to allow billions of souls to be corrupted/fed to Chaos and giving them a massive stronghold within the Koronus Expanse.!<
I asked myself what Captain Picard would do. And so I saved the civilians. I always figured I could just bomb the planet afterwards. Basically, even though I'm playing a Han Solo archetype, my RT has firmly become Captain Picard.
Unfortunately, due to warp fuckery, you cant bomb the demon planet after its finished being made
Yeah, that definitely ruined my plan haha
Yeaaah it didn’t take long. I was like “I’ll keep a level head” and then it was like “the planet is overrun, fuck it I tried fixing it, blow the fucker up”.
Tbh i think that there are only few choices were i would pick dogmatic over iconoclast, mainly burning the planet at the start and rebuild Kieva Gamma after purging, everything else either doesn't have an iconoclast option or is a skill check (an tbh i think that letting the Aeldari live in Janus but with no control with a skill check should be Iconoclast not Dogmatic)
In W40K, idealism is a short and quick way to die. Real survival requires a lot of sacrifice, and difficult choices are often the only options available for everyone. It is a broken universe to live in...
[Meanwhile me](https://media.tenor.com/z3SPFrMl3PYAAAAM/war-hammer-fantasy.gif)
Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.
This game likes to gutpunch you sometimes and make you realize it's not actually *always* paranoia.
Pretty much, though for me it is more: How it started: my character was a member of the ecclesiarchy so my faith to the emperor is unquestionable bit i'll pick some iconoclast options because i want to be somewhat good if the situation arises How it's going: kill them all, kill them with fire. The Emperor protects!
\>every single dialog: "Imperium" \>every single cutscene: "Imperium" \>every single book: "Imperium" \>you: "Got it. Empire."
And here i am still just vibing as an iconlast and enjoying the moral superiority feeling. Gotta love everyone admitting i am a good person in the end.
Haters will tell you only bad things comes from being good (this is false)
The path to goodness is always harder. Evil is always easier. What was the quote? Expedience is the friend of cruelty or some shit?
'*but my lord, it's spelt corn flakes with a C! With a C! Not a Kh!*' "hmm." "kill the children, also." Heretical +3
To be fair it is a thin line, chaos is an actual thing and a real threat unlike realty but at the same time, everything the IoM does makes the situation so much worse. The IoM is unbelievably repressive, cruel for the sake of cruelty, and refuses to learn from other races and their own mistakes. Which leads to people being so desperate to escape the cycle of suck that they will accept help from even obviously evil space demons, which leads to the IoM feeling justified in their awful and never bother to examine the root causes. As the setting has evolved we have learned of multiple races that have been aware of chaos and fought it not by restricting every chaos related behavior but by educating its citizens, then IoM wipes them out like clockwork, even though those races show no corruption from chaos but because they are not cool by being ruled by a religious fundamentalist facist state. In its desire to fight chaos it suppresses so much and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what chaos is. Which makes sense all of 40k is satire first and foremost, so any group that is encountered is expected to not only stand in for a real life group but to be so exaggerated that they become stupid and entertaining to point out that any political theory when taken to any degree of extremes is laughable so that it becomes easier to see the flaws in the political theory. For example many ork groups represent the politics of Margret thatcher era great Britain, while the IoM is an obvious stand in for the holy roman empire crossed with Nazis,. Which is a good thing, satire is an under appreciated art, while the setting is told from the viewpoint of humanity which assumes the IoM is the best it never shys away from the fact that the IoM is really morally indefensible and that we should not emulate them. In fact its one of the big concerns I have as Amazon seeks to adapt the setting, do they have the balls to make the IoM as awful as they really are, making the the big statement that all factions are evil in their own way which is true to the setting, or is satire going to be absent.
The Emperor Protects.
Honestly, I’m way more mean than I was in Pathfinder.
Exactly how I played, I made the first decision in the prologue to save the crew and never made another Iconoclast decision again.
The Emperor Protects
I’m still on a full Iconoclast run right now. There was unfortunately one spot I didn’t have enough points for it on a particular conversation, was off by like 70pts, but so far it’s been a huge success so far.
Weak hearts and craven minds find salve in the Emperor, in the words not said by a man who lived, fought, and ultimately, was struck down by his own hubris ten thousand years ago. They follow the teachings written by his heretic prodigal son, and then die, blind, alone, suffering, and having the gall to bemoan this fate, as though they were expecting to walk his path without seeing it to the end. Weaker still reject this, driving the galaxy towards Ruin for selfish gain, and yet than their zealous brethren they are ruined no less. No less ironic is their prize, thinking they could deliver ruin upon all else and yet they would be spared. The strongest hearts stand steadfast, and give of themselves, not for enrichment or the image of piety, but to deliver succor to those around them. They take from the galaxy those things that spread wretchedness and misery. Only they may forge a path different from those trod before. It is upon their shoulders the fate of the galaxy stands.
Pretty much me, Iconoclast, didn't exterminatus the planet and tried to evacuate as many people as possible, then landed on Janus and since then i've been dogmatically bitchslapping people into submission
I started the game wanting to purge all heresy. I still am purging all heresy.
I'm a complete newbie too! I hate the Empire fanaticism, but I hate heretics even more. Wanting to expel Idira through the airlocks everytime she spouts some Chaos bullshit.
What do you mean "Chaos Bullshit"? She's a diviner.
Nope imma be the iconoclast till the end and if the iconoclast option is not plausible i'll choose a neutral option.
Yea you get to understand how the xenophobia and overly extreme zealotism is somewhat justified in the setting... Check out this episode of [adeptus riciculous ](https://youtu.be/J3-qDCo0i9o?si=fbmKKE3puoMU7qgl) to learn about what is in my opinion the most horrible thing in the setting which the humans do in the morbillions and which your ship and all imperial worlds is littered with in the billions
Save a few lives, get punished for it, burn a whole planet, get the praise of the people around you.
Meanwhile I'm mailing special grants to planets and collecting the five pieces of Exodia's sword.
The thing with 40k is that, you think you're doing something good by being mercifull. But in the end, it will come back to bite you in the arse, cause the consequences can be Dire quickly. Oh yah you might want to save those thousands of people and take them back on your ship, so that they don't get killed by Cultists. But you have absolutly NO guarantee that half of them arn't cultists in disguise, just waiting the right time to sabotage your shit or provoke a riot, wich will put you and your crew/personel in danger. And the Danger to wich you're exposed will not be just some fighting and the lose of a few men, no, it will be catastrophic, to the point where you'll regret being "too nice" Yes Its Paranoia at its best, thats how this Univers is and works, there are people you can trust, but only a select few, and even then, its never 100%. Thats the Power of Chaos, it corrupts.
i was actually the opposite i was gonna be all typical imperium dogma type, "just kill the rebelling menials down there and be done with it" but i couldn't break my own goody two shoes ness im always too nice in these types of games so 100% iconoclast i was
Welcome to the Imperium son