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Warhammer 40,000

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The Orks trapped in the Eye of Terror will destroy the Chaos Gods.

An entire company of Orks has been banished on a planet where their fate is to fight hordes of demons, getting killed, then resurrected for the whole thing to start again the next day. Sounds like Warrior Heaven for them.Except that Orks get bigger and stronger and more psychic the more they fight, and with all those battles, they'll get more and more skilled in their fights against the demons than they already are. They'll continue growing and improving every single day, not having to worry to be killed as they're cursed to be resurrected every single time. The demons will notice this, so they'll send more and more soldiers against them, except that it won't stop the Orks from evolving and will only make them stronger than they would be at this point. Eventually, realising the Orks are getting out of control, the Chaos Gods would lift the curse so that they'd be permanently killed... But it won't work, because at this point the Orks will be convinced they'll be resurrected the next day. And as everything an Ork believes becomes reality, they'll indeed resurrect as Reality Warpers even after the lifting of the curse.Eventually, the Orks would continue to become more and more skilled, as well as stronger and stronger, to the point that even the most powerful demons won't be able to vanquish them. And, after a few millenia of endless wars between this ork company and THE ENTIRE LEGIONS OF THE WARP, the Orks will be strong enough for fighting the Chaos Gods themselves and tear them apart one by one.And then shit will hit the fan for the rest of the galaxy when they'll get out of the Warp for finding new enemies to fight.

• Cain help us all.
• If they believe so strongly in dieing and being reborn wouldn't that mean they will make the legions of chaos strong enough to defeat them, even as the orks get stronger? In the end there will be the ork company, and a their chaos enemies as the strongest creatures in reality. Then the sheer force of their awesome will rip apart the barriers that keep them (both of them) imprisoned. The logical conclusion is that they will then proceed to annihilate everything including each other, before being reborn again the next day. Thus making their endless cycle a destructive force more potent than the chaos gods multiplied by how awesome orks are.
  • No ork ever believes they're going to die.
    • But what Ork knows he won't? Or rather - what Ork knows that he'll die, but he'll come back again?

Virtually every race has their own Warp Gods.

What? You thought that Chaos were the only ones who had gods? WRONG!!! Okay, the Eldar have had an entire pantheon of warp gods, Orks have Gork and Mork, the God Emperor of Mankind has been riding the limits of this one BEFORE he got on the bling throne, and the Tyranids have the Hive Mind, a gestalt entity so powerful that it smothers psykers from across entire sectors of space.

• Canon, though it's a bit complicated. It's sort of like the difference between Elder Gods, Great Old Ones, and the Great Old Ones in Lovecraftian mythos - you can't understand. Suffice to say that the Chaos gods are probably different in certain ineffable fashion in relation to other warp entities. (Just to note, the Eldar only have one god left active with maybe another in the works. Two more exist, but one is shattered and the other captive.)

Tzeentch is Basement Cat.

Think about it for a second. It makes sense.

• Tzeentch is diametrically opposed to Nurgle, therefore Nurgle = Ceiling Cat?
  • Actually, Slaanesh = Ceiling Cat. Who else would spend all day watching people masturbate?
• Hold on, Khorne hates sorcery, and Tzeentch is the patron god of evil sorcerors. I thought that Khorne was diametrically opposed to Tzeentch.
  • Khorne's so angry he has TWO diametrical opposites.
    • Nope. The opposition goes deeper than that, it's about the fundamental human drive each god embodies- Tzeentch is "Change" (improve myself, do better, things should be better for me) and Nurgle is "Endure" (don't change, everything should stay the same!); Slaanesh is "Want" and Khorne is "Destroy." That's where the oppositions come from.
    • To give a bit more detail then that, Tzeetch is hope, ambition and change. He gains power form everyone trying to make a difference, everyone trying to gain some small amount of agency or relavence in the univerese (this being 40K, the only plausible way to do so for anything not already a demigod is to be a shadow puppetmaster of other poeple). Nurgle meanwhile is acceptance, despair and compassion. People tryingto make due, thanking heaven for small miracles and trying to help other do the same are his.

Prety much the same for Khorne and Slaanesh, rage and destruction versus longing and possesion.

Warhammer exists in the same continuity as Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

This, straight from the Chaos Codex: [1]◊. I don't know many girls (with dogs as their companions) that could make an eldritch abomination of madness whine about cheating, after, as it is implied, beating it at its own game.

• Only one problem — I don't think anyone could describe Barnabas as "little", by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, Del might have forgotten how big he's meant to be, but I don't think he'd tolerate that kind of thing.
• This is Warhammer 40k. Standard dog size is probably around horse size.
• Conversely, the little girl is the Emperor and the guard dog... huh. One of the lost Primarchs?
  • Logically, this means that the Emperor is Delirium, which explains so much.

Ciaphas Cain is one of the missing Primarchs.

That is all.

• Was, he was buried with full military honors according to our narrator.
• There's one key difference between Cain and a Primarch: three feet in height.
  • Meh. Someone must have screwed up the cloneing process.
• To elaborate, when the Primarchs were scattered to the warp, it mutated Cain into a largish man. The warp, being the warp, then spat him out several millennia after the Horus Heresy where he was recruited into the Schola and became the Commissar we all know and love. Since his particular quirk is damn fine luck, Implausible Fencing Powers and Improbable Aiming Skills, the Space Marine Legion◊ (I've gone for a semi-Commisarial scheme because the Emperor was just that good at planning ahead) based off his genetic template would therefore have the following in game rules: if a unit fails a leadership/morale check, then they receive a 1D6 4+ to ignore any armour saves the enemy might have and have a lower 'To Hit' roll. They would also have Implausible Fencing Powers as standard. A Cain model would have the same rules but with a 1D6 3+ instead for ignoring armour saves. If anyone could come up with a decent name for them I would be very grateful and feel free to incorporate them into your own games.
  • Cain's considered a prophet by some, right? Sons of the Prophet, maybe?
  • The Forward Retreaters?
  • Both good, but I think I'll go with Forward Retreaters
  • Oooh! Taking the theory a step further: All the great heroes of the Imperium are incarnations of the missing Primarchs. They got a rather more severe case of what happened to Alpharius and Omegon and while it has lessened their abilities somewhat it still leaves them heads and shoulders (literally in Cain and Gaunt's cases) above normal humans. They incarnate out of the Warp in times of the Empire's great needs.

There will be no Warhammer 40,000 movie

Hollywood and possibly Scientology are fighting against it with all their considerable might, because they know that a 40K movie would be awesome enough to put them out of business.

• Peter Jackson to direct, Bill Gates donates half a billion for the special effects alone. Imagine it.
  • Michael Bay is given free reign over the pyrotechnics
  • The golden throne runs on Windows40k. Cain help us all if it BSOD s.
• Alternatively, if it ever gets made, the Chaos Gods will know and will use it as a portal to enter our world/time period, a la Moving Pictures. And then we shall all die.
  • You overlook our main advantage: we are better at dying. Wait.
    • What's the key thing whenever the Imperium is fighting daemons? Faith. Faith in the Emperor, faith in mankind, faith that daemons can be beaten - and what true 40k player lacks this? But if even this were to prove insufficient, well...do you want to live forever?
  • Add to it all: Joss Whedon writes the script.
    • Um... well, it would probably turn out all right.
• They've announced a 40K movie. It's by the guys who did the Bionicle movies.
  • Cain help us all.
  • Never fear, it'll probably be stuck in Development Warp until the real year 40,000.
    • Except that a release data as well as clips have been shown.
  • As somebody who's now a 40K buff (but having been a Bionicle fanboy when he was much younger), I can vouch that the CGI in the Bionicle movies is brilliant. That and the fact that Dan Abnett is doing our script...
  • It's direct-to-DVD, we don't have to worry about anything.
• There won't be a major 40K movie because Game Forge knows Hollywood would ruin it. The protagonist would be a Guardsman who falls in love with a Tau and becomes a Gue'vesa or some crap like that.
  • They would try to taint the beloved space marines with female creatures and Games Workshop would have to shut it down.
    • Alternatively they would go out of their way to paint the Imperium in a bad light and make up some goody-two-shoes pacifist faction that defeats the Imperium invaders with some magical connection to the world around them or some shit that would mean a more true-to-fluff sequel has them facing the Death Korps of Krieg just to ruin their day.
• I know how they could do it, they could modify the whole premise and make it a more campy early sci-fi trebuiuit like Flash Gordon with an Inquisitor threatening earth.

More Predictions for 6th Edition

First: The Ultramarines supposedly have the only pure geneseed left. This will turn out to be false, part of a huge cover-up scandal. After all, we know the Imperium fudges its propeganda.Second: Abaddon will kick the bucket, leaving what's left of the forces of Chaos in, well, chaos. Without organization, this leaves the other groups to eat themselves without achieving any real goal.Anything else?

• The Angry Marines will become canon. At least that's what this troper hopes.
  • It's worth noting that there is an attempt at a more slightly serious (Refuge in Audacity rather than Played for Laughs) chapter called the Dessert Fangs that some are trying to get GW to canonize.
• The Alien Hunters and Techpriests will get codexes.
• Whatever's chasing the Tyranids will show up, and turn out to be energy beings. See, the Nids can't eat them and they're drastically different from what we've already got.
  • Those energy beings will be based on the Drej from Titan A.E. with their solid energy thing since we already have the cloudy energy beings that are the C'tan(outside of their shells).
    • We already have (sorta) solid energy beings. They're called "daemons". (Psychic energy, yeah, but still energy.)

Ghazghkull has become the Ork equivalent of a daemon prince.

He claims to hear the voices of Gork and Mork in his head. He has been confirmed as KIA on a number of occasions, but is demonstrably still alive and harassing the Imperium. He has supernatural abilities (such as becoming temporarily immune to anti-tank fire through sheer Orkiness). He's big enough to qualify for Daemonic Stature. He has a 5+ invulnerable save ("cybork body" my ass). And hey, if the Chaos gods (and, arguably, the Emperor) can elevate a favored champion to daemonhood, why not the Ork gods?

Yarrick has become the Ork equivalent of a daemon prince.

He's as tough as an Ork (tougher, if you take Eternal Warrior into account). He has a functioning power klaw for an arm. He has a kick-ass force field (read: protective aura) that no one else seems able to replicate. He's the only human being alive that can inspire true, honest-to-Gork fear in the Orks. He has Ghazghkull's lasting respect. For a while, his official GW studio model even had a distinctly greenish cast to its skin tone. Maybe Gork and Mork noticed how awesome Yarrick was and, deciding that their chosen messiah needed a proper enemy to fight, imbued Yarrick with some of their power. Now he and Ghazghkull have been destined by the gods to kill each other, and neither one can die before then.

Both of the above are true.

Gazghkull is a demon prince of the god of hitting things really hard in the front, and Yarrik (who's human and thus acquainted with that "tactics" nonsense) is the god of sneaking up and hitting things from behind. After all, the only thing that can give an ork prince a proppa scrap is another ork prince.

• Taking this to the inevitable extreme: Gazghkull and Yarrick are the Avatars of Gork and Mork.
  • You mean they're the avatars of Mork and Gork.
    • They are both avatars of Gorkamorka.

The Saim-Hann Eldar are somehow related to the Evil Sunz Orks.

Both adopted red as their main color, and both are specialised in the use of fast vehicles. Coincidence ? Most certainly, but what would be funnier than an Eldar screaming "RED WUNZ GO FASTAH !!!" ?

• A Carnifex in a top hat?
  • Only if it has a monocle as well.
    • A noble cause. I will proceed post haste!
  • Gentlemanfex is no match for Unyuufex.

The Primarchs were fertile

Firstly, one of the theories how the Primarchs ended up on different planets was that the Emperor sent them there to become more human. That's a pretty weird reason, especially given the amount of Raised by Wolves Primarchs, but this Troper has her own spin. The theory behind producing Space Marines is Artistic License – Biology at best, but that's because the whole "implants change your DNA" bit was all lies deliberately spread by the Emperor, so that nobody can fiddle around with the process. Actually, the Primarchs were necessary for the creation of Space Marines, because their children would be compatible with their Legion's Gene Seed. So the Emperor basically sent them away to father a whole lot of kids.

Now, this is where the Chaos Gods decided to butt in. They couldn't kill the Primarchs, but they could send at least some of them off-course. The Emperor couldn't do much about this, but he was aware of the intereference, so his searching for the Primarchs was at least partially genuine. Also, the first Space Marines, the one that didn't come from their Primarchs' homeplanets were results of the efforts of an army of Magos Biologos twinking out faetuses.

• Whether or not the Primarches/Space Marines were/are fertile, the latest Space Wolves codex implies that Space Marines are at least... capable... with a Space Wolf (Svengar the Red) making a pass at a female native of a planet he was stranded on.
  • Perhaps, even if the Primarchs were fertile, the human-born Astartes are not—the changes caused by their implants play merry hell with gametes and their precursors. This adds an additional resonance to the importance of retaining the progenoid glands; if they carry some of the host's genetic code and not merely an exact copy of the gene-seed used to create the Marine's implants, they represent the only way an Astartes can leave a biological legacy, and bind Chapters as true blood families.

  • Space Marines are 'capable,' but except for some random exceptions, show next to no interest in the act. The Horus Heresy novels also appear to poke holes in this guess, as none of the Primarchs are ever shown giving a single thought to procreation, before or after being found by the Emperor. In addition, while Primarchs may be fertile, its doubtful they'd be fertile with normal humans, and no female equivalent exist.

The Squats had their home-world eaten by Tyranids, renamed themselves Demiurg, and went to work for the Tau.

Also, that's where the warp drive space ship came from.

They're pretty friendly with Vespid, because they both like mining. They don't like the Kroot, because the Kroot have no beer or gold. At all. They don't appear on the battle fields, because generations of living in cramped spaceships has left them pretty short-sighted.

• You'd think that anyone who had their planet eaten by space insects would find it a little tricky to relate to other space insects.

Even the codexes have Inquisitorial editing

The Soul Drinkers are descendants of Rogal Dorn, that's why Sarpedon can use the Soulspear (which has genetic analysers on the handle). The novels record they were given the Soulspear at the Second Founding, by Dorn himself. Yet the Black Templars book essentially says "no, the Black Templars are pretty much the only Second Founding descendants of the Imperial Fists". All records pertaining to the Soul Drinkers were destroyed by the Inquisition at the beginning of Bleeding Chalice. We can't even trust the codexes.

• Given that the Soul Drinkers were excommunicated as heretics, that technically WOULD make them the 'only' Second Founding Chapter, if only retroactively.
• Alternatively, the Codices are 'In Character' and the Black Templars are lying in order to make themselves look important, or are just bitter that THEY weren't given a Soulspear to play with.
• No, no, no, the Black Templars Codex states explicitately that, during the almost-civil war after the Horus Heresy, Dorn relented and allowed two Second Founding Chapters to split from the Imperial Fists Legion: Crimson Fists (loyalist Codex-adherent Chapter) and the Black Templars (definitely non-Codex). (Technically, there are three Chapters split from the old Legion, but the Imperial Fists are First Founding.) The Soul Drinkers have a damn convoluted history, anyway, but all of the Imperial Fists successor Chapters have artefacts of Dorn:
  Imperial Fists: The Fist of Dorn. Carried by First Company Captain, Darnathy Lysander. A super-powered, master-crafted Thunder Hammer.
  Crimson Fists: Dorn's Arrow. Carried by the Crimson Fists' Chapter Master, Pedro Kantor. Venerable storm bolter integrated into his armour.
  Black Templars: The Sword of the High Marshals, carried by High Marshal Helbrecht. Forged from Dorn's own shattered sword as a symbol reminding them to uphold the honour of the Emperor.
  Soul Drinkers: The Soulspear, carried by Chapter Master and Chief Librarian, Sarpedon. A vortex weapon that can kill just about anything, given to the Soul Drinkers by Dorn himself during the Second Founding.

The Sisters of Battle armour was a left over from a project to create female Space Marines

They project was shelved due to repeated failures but when the Sisters of Battle were founded some Cog-boy pulled out the old designs and adapted them for normal humans.

• Powered Armour was used by the Techno-Barabarians of Terra during the Dark Age of Technology, long before the Space Marines were created. It's not that they were failures and were shelved, it's that the newer version were better because they included neural-interfaces via the Black Carapace. For the needs of the Sisters, though, they still work perfectly fine.

There are female Space Marines

However, no matter what you start with, after you've crammed in all those extra organs and fed them steroid enhanced Battle Flakes for breakfast for a decade you wind up with someone who's eight feet tall, has a head shaped like a mini-keg and needs to shave.

The missing Primarchs are dead of defective geneseed.

The Emperor created the Legions before he recovered the primarchs. If they were just missing, where are their Legions? Obviously, attempts to use their geneseed failed totally — and they didn't survive, either.

• The Alpha Legion are listed as the 20th Legion. Apparently "abysmal failure" still counts as a Legion for the numbering scheme.
• Actually it makes sense. Even failures are numbered (look at rockets).

Ollanius Pius will not feature in the current version of the Horus Heresy.

Instead, the character who tries to stop Horus will be "Little Horus" Aximand. Who

1. would be there as Horus's captain
2. was weeping with self-blame after he killed Torgaddon — Abaddon thought he needed watching
3. does not feature in the future

• And of course he doesn't he got replaced by a Custodian Guard because Games-Workshop hates you.
  • Jossed as of Know No Fear. He's some form of immortal, but not super-strong, super-smart, or psychic, just an old soldier.

The feth are a form of pixy.

Because Gaunt assures us that they are a form of tree-spirit, and yet "feth" is plentiful used as a curse word. Obviously, they were The Fair Folk and prone to pixy-leading people, in the forests of Tanith no less. "Fethed" therefore means hopelessly lost and bewildered — like "pixy-led". "Fething" as an adjective refers to something that would put you in the "fethed" state.

Really.

Has nothing to do with any other f-word.

Creed is Tzeentch's champion

Tzeentch recognized Creed's genius. He also decided that it would benefit him if Cadia remained in Imperial hands - it would force his Chaos servants to find smarter ways of attacking the Imperium. So he made a deal with Creed that did not involve betraying the Imperium - in fact, Tzeentch has commanded Creed to protect Cadia at all costs. In return for his service, Creed became enough of a tactical genius to pull off stunts like hiding a Baneblade behind an outhouse. Tzeentch simply gets a kick out of seeing Creed in action. It also makes disposing of Chaos Lords he doesn't like easy - just point them at Cadia and let Creed do the rest.

• This also explains why Abaddon is still the Champion of all the Chaos gods despite his utter failure as a leader, because seeing his two favoured servants continuously fighting each other is exactly the sort of thing Tzeentch enjoys.
  • What? One of the greatest human commanders in the Imperium's history is a hidden servant of Chaos? It must have taken some kind of tactical geni— CREEEEEEEEEEEED!

The Tyranids are another creation of the Old Ones

Long story short: Necrontyr hate Old Ones. C'tan hate the Warp. C'tan use Necrontyr as eternal servants to wage war against Old Ones. Old Ones create psychic species to combat C'Tan and Necrons. Enslavers arrive to kill everything. Old Ones bugger off. C'tan get hungry and have a sixty million year nap.

The Old Ones didn't appreciate having their galaxy hijacked however, and decided to make other species that could ensure victory for them. To oppose the mechanical, static, mindless, technologically superior Necrons they created beings that were purely organic, even their spacecraft, possessing a mind so vast it could project across the Warp for hundreds of light years, and the capacity to change by consuming their foes, simultaneously robbing the C'tan of their food source. As insurance they unleashed their new babies against other galaxies first to provide them with the size and strength necessary to kill the Necrons, then directed them towards their home galaxy. Said galaxy being filled with numerous other species that will be consumed in the process is irrelevant, because the Old Ones are dicks like that.

The Tyranids will win thanks to the Orkz.

Orkz can make stuff work because they believe it should work, but do so subconsciously with their latent psychic power. Imagine the Nids absorb that ability, combined with their massive galaxy-spanning hive mind and huge intelligence, they could probably figure out how to do that consciously, and thus become a reality-warping God that can eat the Emprah and Chaos.

• On the other hand...the Orkz will win thanks to the Tyranids, since Orkz grow bigger and their WAAAGH field grows more powerful in combat. As a result, when every Ork in the galaxy is engulfed by the full Zerg Rush of the main Tyranid intergalactic fleet, every Ork in the galaxy will grow the size of a Warboss. The Warboss will be two storeys tall and ride a Battlewagon like it's a Warbike. Heck maybe these Orks will end up turning into full-scale Reality Warpers.

The Codex Astartes is a load of crock and not a single chapter follows it

Seriously, 1000 Marines per chapter? Even with the average attrition rate of 99/100 initiates during training, numerous chapters could easily field more full battle brothers than that, and it would most certainly be necessary for the constant wars against the alien, mutant and heretic. The Ultramarines most likely followed it originally, if only to honour its writer, but after their near annihilation fighting hive fleet Behemoth even their Lawful Stupidity was not enough to ignore the relative logic of using the significant resources of Ultramar to their full potential.

• The Ultramarines ignore the 1000-man suggested limit, but in order to assuage their Lawful Stupidity, they do it by simply pooping out successor chapters. The Ultramarines may only number 1000 battle brothers, but the "Ultramarines" number in the hundreds of thousands.
• The Black Templars use a similar system, with limited to 1000 Marines per "crusade". And by my calculations there are about five times as many Astartes post-Codex as there were pre-Heresy (1000 Chapters of 1000 marines each= 1,000,000 now, 20 Legions, average 10,000 = 200,000 then)

There were never any Primarchs

The Space Marines are revered throughout the Imperium as Angels of Death and direct instruments of the Emperor's will and fury, mythical beings despite encounters by regular humans continuously. It is only natural then that their original leaders, whom were most probably exceptional leaders and warriors but "normal" Marines otherwise, experienced Memetic Mutation of literal religious proportions, becoming massive, unstoppable, invincible warriors comparable to the Emperor himself. Similarly, while the ones that rebelled would have been major elements of the civil war known as the Horus Heresy, the main factors would have been the dissension and discontent arising within a literally galaxy spanning empire, essentially a larger version of the strife present in the 41st millennium. The gene seed and the "necessity" of implanting a sample into each initiate is yet another example in the extensive list of something working because a large enough amount of people believe it should work.

• And you explain Roboute Guilliman being on display on Macragge and Angron's invasion of Armageddon...how?
  • Guilliman could very well be a "mere" Space Marine, and Angron is a Daemon Prince - who says he couldn't be a "normal" marine either? There certainly have been plenty of Chaos Marines elevated to Daemonhood.
    • A "mere" Space Marine significantly taller than any other Marine?
• This theory is in fact TRUE, although only insofar as the original Rogue Trader is concerned. 'Primarch' was just a title meaning 'The most highly skilled, dedicated and powerful Space Marine in the Legion' rather than it's genetic blueprint-figure. It was changed at the advent of 2nd Edition to allow for the Heresy to have taken place and unleash the GRIMDARK that we know today.
  • Rogue Trader didn't have the Chaos Gods, either.

The Tyranids are fleeing from more Necrons

Not all the Necrons stayed in the Galaxy, some left those millions of years ago while the others were fighting the wars (maybe they wanted to slaughter everything, maybe their C'Tan wanted to escape the in-fighting, maybe the ones that stayed in the Milky Way Galaxy drew the short stick), and now, they are herding the greatest amalgamation of life they know of into a place they knew they had a foothold (not knowing the amount of decay their brethren suffered from).

• Yep, because you're totally able to herd an entire species of unstoppable biokillers into another galaxy if you're looking for a foothold. To elaborate: if they're able to scare away the 'Nids, why would they need a foothold? And if they need a foothold, how can they scare away the 'Nids – if they could they wouldn't need a foothold, and if they couldn't they couldn't scare away the Tyrannids.

The Horus Heresy went according to the Emperor's plans.

First of, Horus was supposed to betray the Emperor. Either the Emperor chose him, because he knew Horus would have breakdown once he's put under too much pressure and switch alligence, or because he mentally conditioned Horus to join Chaos when given the occassion. Why? Because the Emperor did intend to become a god from the start. The Imperial Truth was there to eradicate belief in other gods, not because it would weaken the Chaos Gods, but because people would turn to the immortal guy with awesome powers, once they learned there isn't anything else to believe in. Then the Emperor needs somebody to "kill" him, so that he doesn't have to contradict himself when more and more people start insisting he's a god.

Cain actually did everything he is given credit for, including killing Khornate Space Marines in hand-to-hand

Bear in mind, Cain is credited with single-handedly killing two hive tyrants by the people who the books say did the actual killing.

• Uhm, I thought Cain actually "barely managed to defend himself" against a Khornate Space Marine (although the book does say that he taunted the marine AS IF it was easy) until Jurgen managed to get him with a Melta Blast?
  • The whole point is that Cain is an Unreliable Narrator who spends the majority of his secret memoirs giving credit to everyone around him. The question is: Is Cain being honest with himself, or is he giving credit to others because he views himself as a coward undeserving of praise and unable to do most of the things people say he's done?

SOYLENS VERIDIANS IS PEOPLE!!!!!!!

Sorry... couldn't resist...

• The sad thing is, in this 'verse, that'd probably count as genuine virtue... it is recycling, after all. The corpses of all those killed for heresy have to go somewhere after all.
  • The Mechanicus openly recycles the "organics" of their dead skitarii (and allies, if they're given permission) to create slurry that is fed to the surviving ones, or used to build new ones in People Jars.

GW's denial of the Squats is just a cover-up of the fact that they'll be the next army.

Please?

Case-in-point, the new model you get with a subscription to White Dwarf is clearly a dwarf with a servo-arm and a freaking space helmet on the ground next to him. It's a Squat.

• Discussions on that model point at it just being a Mythology Gag, but you never know...

The Tau are GW's second attempt at Cyberpunk Dwarves

• "hah!" i hear you laugh, "hah! but they're blue! they can't be dwarves! and they've already scrapped the 40K dwarves anyway!" i've been laughed at before, but if you'll just listen just a minute...
  • Dwarves:
    • In Fantasy, Dwarves are more Human than Orks, Elves are more Human than Dwarves, and Humans are more Human than Elves... in 40K, Tau are more Human than Orkz, Eldar are more Human than Tau, and Humans are (kinda) more Human than Eldar.
    • To expand on that, Elves/Eldar are lighter framed humans, Orks/Orkz are big, green, muscley, monstrous humans. Dwarves are midget, massively beardy humans, Tau are slightly shorter, blue, cloven footed humans - i.e similar to enough to humans to see a resemblance, but too dissimilar to pass for each other.
    • Dwarves tend towards technology, Elves tend towards magic. Tau tend towards technology, Eldar tend towards using The Warp/Souls.
    • Tau in fact have no psykers, as their rave has almost no connection to the warp. Similarly, Dwarves have no mages, as their race is inept in casting spells. However, dwarves do have the ability to forge magic runes, an ability the Tau lack.
  • Cyberpunk
    • We're looking at a perfect society, as far as we know, courtesy of a ruling upper-class, with no known crime, and they're divided into factions where interbreeding is forbidden.
    • They are highly science-oriented and use mechas and technological implants to improve their combat abilities.
    • They had the technology to leave the planet as soon as the warp storms surrounding them disappeared. how could they know that there was anywhere to explore? why, on having failed attempts, did they continue to progress their technology to the point where they're equipped for space battles? did they know when the Warp storms would clear, allowing themselves to perfect the technology at the perfect time to use it? or did the Ethereals create the storms on purpose to allow them to perfect their fighting machines?
    • Somehow, in just 2000 years, the Ethereals got them from human technology ca. 10,000 BCE to using technology that man isn't using 50 THOUSAND years later. admittedly, man is using some technology that the tau aren't, like teleporters, and in the years of intraspecies war, the Tau that would form the Earth Caste managed to build cities and invent blackpowder weapons, but still...
    • Somehow, in just 2000 years, the Ethereals got them from human civilisation ca. 10,000 BCE to something that humans have never reached (despite previously showing same warlike tendencies between tribes)
    • We only have the Ethereals word that they're the same race. sure, they look almost the same, but despite a worldwide war, they managed to appear from nowhere to stop it. Who the hell are they? is one of the above theories right about them being eldar/necron/whatever?
• Am I just going mad, or does this make sense to people?
  • I agree that the Tau have essentially filled the "Space Dwarf" niche left after the extermination of the Squats. But a few notes:
    • Tau technology was much more advanced than "10,000 B.C.E." when the ethereals showed up. The codex specifically describes them as using black powder weapons. In addition, the Tau's swift rate of scientific and technological development is perfectly plausible, given what humans have accomplished. The Dark Age of Technology was much more advanced than anything the Tau have accomplished. Humanity is currently less advanced than the Tau due to the Age of Strife destroying most of what they had developed and the Age of the Imperium being marked by stagnation and a dogmatic Adeptus Mechnanicus whose idea of "research" is locating lost technology, and who regard developing new technology as heresy. Of course the scientifically-minded Tau have passed by humanity.
    • Warp storms exist within the warp only, they don't spill over into realspace (That's a warp rift, like the Eye of Terror or the Maelstrom). So they didn't prevent the Tau from using any space travel technology that they developed, but instead prevented other races (notably the Imperium and the Orks) from wiping the Tau out before they had developed a small stellar empire. These particular warp storms protected the Tau, the didn't hinder them in any way. (Which opens up WMG of its own...)
• The recent introduction of the Demiurg to the tau army simultaneously both josses and confirms this theory.

Doom Rider was once Richard Pryor

He does cocaine & his head is on fire. Obvious, really.

The Emperor is an agent, perhaps unwitting, of the Chaos gods.

What does it say at the beginning of all the novels:

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods. [Emphasis added.]

Which gods could these be? The Imperium worships only the Emperor himself. Gork and Mork, the Ork deities? The surviving Eldar gods? Cegorach, who is in hiding? Isha, who is in captivity? Khaine, who is in pieces? Or perhaps the C'tan, who have slept since before humanity existed, and only awoke recently? None of these beings seem to be credible candidates. No, it can only be the Chaos gods, who have clearly been deeply interested in the affairs of the Imperium since its founding. The only question is why they want the Emperor on the throne of Terra, and whether the Emperor knows that he is their agent.

• We can think of The Emperor, Bringer of Hope and Change, as definitely an agent of Tzeentch.
• I always taught that the 'gods' who endorsed the emperor were humanity's own warp entities, like Zeus or Thor or possibly Ra. They got consumed by Chaos a long time ago (they only had energy from one planet of sentients, and they were so many of them that they didn't have enough power to resist) but were able to give their power to the Emperor before they were fully consumed. But since there's no canon evidence for such a thing, that's another WMG entirely...
  • That doesn't really work, because the Emperor is supposed to have been around since prehistoric times, which means before any of those beings were worshiped, or even dreamed up. But consider this: who puts that inscription about the Emperor at the beginning of all the Warhammer 40K novels? The publisher, obviously. And who is the publisher? The Black Library. And what is the Black Library? It is the repository of all the information the Eldar have collected on Chaos over the millennia. So why are all these stories about the Imperium coming out of an archive that's supposed to be about Chaos? Because the whole Imperium unwittingly serves Chaos, because the Emperor is an agent of Chaos. It's all some big plan, probably by Tzeentch.
  • Tartar Sauce! And it was a good theory too. What about the Great Mother and the Great Horned One? They can't be aspects of Slaanesh then, as s/he was born during the Fall of the Eldar, which was thousands of years after the Emperor's birth. Sorry, grasping at straws here.

The Emperor is dead.

Has been for thousands of years. The Golden Throne could keep him going only so long, but he kicked the bucket ages ago. Or maybe he's been dead since the Horus Heresy, and the life-support system is just a myth that the High Lords of Terra cooked up with the leaders of the Mechanicum so as not to have humanity getting driven down to suicide.

• There's a reason that the followers of Chaos call him the "Corpse-Emperor" or "Corpse-God".
• Then explain how the light of the Astronomican is still open for the psykers to use to get through the Warp.
  • It's being powered by all the psykers who get sacrificed to it every day. The Imperium just claims that it's still being directed by the Emperor in some way as part of the propaganda that he's still alive.

Slaanesh did not kill the Eldar gods. He is the Eldar gods.

Consider: warp entities, including gods, are created by the worship of living beings in the materium. The Eldar created Slaanesh because, whatever lip-service they paid to Asuryan, Vaul, and the others, by the way they lived, they were actually serving Slaanesh. So Asuryan and the others were transformed into Slaanesh. The Eldar experienced this as Slaanesh "devouring" their gods, because that is how it would have seemed: the old gods were being absorbed into the new one. The warp storms the preceded Slaanesh' birth were, metaphorically speaking, the chrysalis by which the bulk of the Eldar pantheon metamorphosed into Slaanesh.

The reason Khaine, Cegorach, and Isha survived is that they were the only remaining of the old Eldar deities who were still receiving sincere worship anymore, so they were able to remain distinct from Slaanesh.

Everybody is the Emperor in his life support

It's addictive.

At some point before the Emperor's reign, Earth faced a cataclysm that destroyed much of humanity's cultural heritage - the biggest surviving cultural forces were the Catholic church, heavy metal and This Very Wiki.

Thus all the gratuitous Latin, the ideology of "burning heretics", the Trope Overdosed setting, and Rule Of Brutal-based everything. This is probably Dethklok's fault somehow.

The next edition will be distinguished, not by things getting better or worse, but by things getting sillier.

The setting's so over the top that it's ripe for black comedy anyway.

• Sandy Mitchell as head writer in place of Matt Ward?

The missing Primarchs are still alive and in hiding.

All twenty Primarchs participate in the Great Crusade, and the records of II and XI were deleted after the Heresy. Their respective Legions were annihilated in the fighting, leaving only the two Primarchs around. Realizing that the Galaxy was going to get worse before it got better, they decided to cut their losses and hang up their helmets for a while. For the past ten thousand years they've been silently waiting for the proper time to re-emerge.

• The histories of the legion II and XI were deleted during the Great Crusade. Even the Primarch's considered it a taboo to even mention them. Little is known about their fate, save that they are referred to as the "forgotten" and the "purged". This could potentially refer to two separate events. The only other bit of information is a subtle reference from Leman Russ immediately after the destruction of Prospero; he implied that the Emperor ordering a Legion to fight against another legion was not "unprecedented".

Ghazgkull and Yarrick will team up.

To destroy a chaos invasion. Why? Well, it'd be awesome, but the both of the them will be trapped together for a while and realize that they actually like each other a lot, and that they both could work together to destroy an enemy that they both hate. In fact they'll both show up with a giant fleet and in fact will destroy them with their sheer coolness when they're really needed, maybe in the final battle.

The Illuminati exist, and are tragically almost-right about the Star Child.

The Illuminati are, in the same old background that introduced the Star Child, a group of people who managed to throw off Daemonic possession by sheer will. Unfortunately, Tzeentch had a plan for this, and made sure his Daemons left behind simple suggestions buried deep in their former hosts' minds. They plan a mass sacrifice of the Star Child's champions to pull together the scattered aspects of the Emperor's will with his long-discarded humanity dominant, reborn in a (super)human body. This would work...to the great advantage of Chaos. Even with the power of a popular god as well as the greatest of all psykers, his attention would be far more limited by cohesive identity and incarnate consciousness. The most urgent of prayers would go unanswered and the hearts and minds of innumerable faithful lie unshielded, to be claimed by the Ruinous Powers. Just as Planned.

Chaos Space Marines infected with the Obliterator virus will actually the good guys (whatever "good" that means in this universe).

My reasoning for this theory? Well, Obliterators are basically living guns, and as our God Zardoz has said, THE GUN IS GOOD. They (like most Chaos Space Marines, or for that matter most Space Marines, or most Chaos forces, and in fact most people in this 'verse) like to use most of their time to GO FORTH, AND KILL.The true ultimate evil of Warhammer 40,000 will be the Emperor's Children legion of Chaos Space Marines. In a future update of the fluff, their forces will be enhanced with a Slaaneshi varient of the Obliterator virus, and will be the embodiment of Zardoz's concept of Evil.

There is going to be another chaos god.

They have been building up to it. The grim darkest W40k ever got.

Emperor help us, when the Chaugle, God of Chairs arrives. CHAIRS FOR THE CHAIR GOD, THRONES FOR THE THRONE THRONE!

• And he was Chairface Chippendale before his ascension.
  • They already did it. Malal(now Malice) is back. In pog form.
    • Clearly, the next army list will be the missing primarchs' legions, corrupted into the most grimdark faction in the galaxy. The Pog Marines shall rise...

The Tyranids are running from the Chaos god of Hunger

Trillions of monsters with a powerful psychic Hive Mind with insatiable hunger are bound to start something in the warp. They made an eye of terror in their home galaxy, and they are the dark eldar to the hunger god's Slaanesh. There will be a faction of non-hungry, repentant Tyranids to act as a normal eldar counterpart, somehow having a seperate hive mind. They will live in giant synapse creatures that are their version of craftworlds.

• Non-hungry Tyranids?!?! Holy crap, even Brighthammer 40,000 didn't go that far!
• Alternatively, the Hive Mind is the Chaos God of hunger itself.

The Warhammer 40k MMO shall focus on the Eldar

It will be called War of CraftWorld

• Or "Craftworld of War" or "War of Craftworld."

Games Workshop are secretly worshippers of the Chaos Gods, and their line of toy soldiers is an evil Chaos plot by Tzeentch to get us all addicted for life.

• Or they are a front organiation for Chaos, as they control both settings they are active in...

Warhammer 40k happens in Real Life's version of the Warp.

Think about it.

The Orks have realized that they can bend reality.

Case in point: In the 41st Millenium, There Is Only War.

The Imperium of Man (as we know it) will roll over and die.

Tragedy will befall the Emperor, shaking the very foundations of the Imperium. Admist the panic and confusion, humanity will be divided. The Imperial Guard will break down and scatter. The various Space Marine chapters and the Inquisition will become separate kingdoms, each laying claim to a fraction of what was once the empire. And needless to say, the ranks of the Chaos cultists will grow tenfolds.

• That is clearly implied in every single square centimeter of the Warhammer 40k Verse. It's not really that wild.
  • The canon is wilder than the guess...for as long as ^note GW wants to sell models some faint heroism remains in the heart of Mankind, the Imperium endures.

The Necrons were meant to destroy the Tyranids.

Self-explanatory. The Necrons are merely galactic pest control.

• Orks were also made to fight the Necrons.
  • She swallowed the spider to kill the fly...

The Imperial Guard is a highly competent Badass Army that not only wins the vast majority of its battles, but rarely takes any casualties in the process.

The Imperial Guard has by far the longest-ranged artillery of any army in the game, along with the best metal boxes, so of course their standard tactic is going to be to blow away their enemies with cannons and ballistic rockets from miles away. The tabletop battles you see involving the Guard? Those are the rare occasions where an enemy got close enough to shoot back. Of course, if an enemy does get close enough to shoot back, or, even worse, launch melee attacks, bad day for the Guard. Still, those would be the only occasions where the Guard would take any serious casualties. Also, all those novels about the badassery of the Imperial Guard.

• Isn't avoiding melee battles and shooting the shit out of your enemies with superior firepower the Tau's tactic?
  • It is also the Tau's tactic, but if you've ever played as the Guard, then you have used a lot of artillery.
• Long-range artillery doesn't suffice when your enemy can freaking teleport. Or when their numbers are endless. Or when they are utterly invincible. Or when...well, you get the picture.
  • How many of the teleporters can jump inside the range on an ICBM? Also, numbers don't really help against artillery, since the space you have to squeeze those numbers into is finite. The more guys you have bunched up in the blast radius of the shell, the more the shell will kill. And none of the enemies are actually totally invincible, even if they seem that way some of the time.
    • I thought this was pretty much canon. Most wars are decided by the imperial navy showing up and nuking everything from orbit. Most of the rest are decided by the guard showing up with ridiculous amounts of tanks and blowing everything up from over the horizon. Only when important stuff like ancient cathedrals or titan forges is in risk of becoming collateral damage do the dudes with lasguns show up.

Apple is the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Okay, so every new device they release is simpler to use and harder to work on (Only apple personnel can do so, otherwise the warranty is voided) Eventually, apple will drive all other device makes into a corner while their interfaces become simpler and simpler yet impossible for anyone other than trained apple technicians to work on. To perpetuate their now great power over the people, apple engineers will mythologize their devices, alluding to supernatural components in their function. Their customers, who already wait in line to buy ridonkulously overpriced versions of fairly conventional technology readily available elsewhere at a far cheaper price, will be utterly taken in by this and venerate their words, at this point they will start affecting themselves as priests and innovation will slow down to a crawl as the faithful grow to venerate their apple devices with fanatical fervor. At this point, the few remaining PC crowd who actually work on their own machines will be rounded up as heretics and executed in a bloody inquisition, and apple's dominance of the technology sector will be complete. Steve Jobs will be deified as the Machine God and in time, the secrets to innovation will be lost and all new products will be copied from old patterns.

• I thought it was PCs that required prayer to work?
  • Ba dum tish.

The Adeptus Mechanicus is Microsoft

In counterpoint to the above, the hallmark of Apple OS is user friendliness, sometimes to the exclusion of functionality. Windows, by contrast, tends to be more functional but less user friendly. Tech in 40K is shown to be capable of performing a wide range of of functions, but is almost impossible to use without being inducted into a secretive brotherhood of tech-savants, prone to break down for no discernable reason save the whim of some angry tech-god.

The Tyranids are causing the Necrons to awaken.

The Necrons originally went to sleep because they had been so effective in ridding the galaxy of life that there wasn't enough life left for their C'tan masters to feed on anymore. So they went to sleep to give the population of the galaxy time to recover. In the meantime, the Tyranids have been approaching, bringing with them the combined biomass of several galaxies that they had already consumed. Sensing all that life approaching, the Necrons have begun to awaken. Of course, so far only the Tyranid vanguard has arrived, so only a handful of Necrons have awoken. When the hive fleets start showing up in force, all the Necrons will awaken. And then it will be on like Donkey Kong.

The Orks are in control of everyting.

Subconsiously of course but think about it. the orks think Yarrick had an evil eye and then he got one. they belive that war is the end of everything, the orks rule the entire galxey though their beliefs.

The Golden Throne is working perfectly fine.

Its purpose isn't just to sustain the Emperor — it's also been slowly repairing his body. It's taken a while, but it's making good progress. The "malfunctions" are certain devices shutting down as their work is done.

• Or perhaps it's meant to let him decay. Sure, Magnus busted its Webway-control functions, but the Emperor could have left good enough instructions to keep up its life-support functions. That wasn't his plan. If he was ever disabled and forced to fall back on the A God Am I plan, it was meant to sustain him as a single embodied mind only long enough to build up the necessary worship to face the Chaos Powers as their equal. It is merely the egg from which the true Emperor-God will hatch.

Warhammer 40k is not the future of Warhammer.

It's the past.

• What? I thought it was common knowledge that Warhammer Fantasy took place on a feudal world.
  • Nonsense. In the future of Warhammer 40k, something happens that wipes out the Necrons and the Tyranids, while reducing the scale of the conflict to one world.
• Jossed, the Word of God has stated that Warhammer and 40K are not the same universe.

The Chaos Gods aren't making the setting grimdark.

The Chaos Gods are the embodiments of both positive and negative emotions. Whichever is more prevalent in the galaxy at the time determines their being good or evil.

• So, the dark universe makes them evil... but their evil makes the universe worse... It's positive feedback!

The Machine Cults rituals and prayers work for two reasons

Part of in a mnemonic memorisation device. Works especially good for little things like 'The Litany of True Aiming' and helps the actions become automatic, even under high stress conditions. The second is that as humanity is slowly evolving towards and all psychic race they're developing something akin to the latent field that allows Ork technology to work in strange and unusual ways (such as paint colour affecting the speed of their vehicles). The Mechanicum has spent so long convincing their rituals are necessary humanity's growing psychic abilities actively contribute to the success. As a result when the rituals aren't done there is a distinct drop in effectiveness/efficiency which only re-enforces the belief. The success rate of performing Percussive Maintenance (canonically a measure of aptitude for becoming a tech-priest) is indicative of a person's ability to focus this effect.

• The second part here is nearly-canon...humans and other races with an average-to-better Warp presence influence the Warp whether or not they have obvious Psychic Powers. There is one main difference between the Orks and the Mechannicum, though—the Orks work directly through a field of joined will, Gork and Mork being fairly minor in comparison; the faith of the Mechanicum, and others' belief in them, is focused through the semi-autonomous entity of the Machine-God, partly joined with the Emperor's will, and the machine-spirits it spawns.

Almost every human soul is absorbed by the Emperor upon death

Canon states that the Emperor was basically the manifestation of "thousands" of psykers who committed mass suicide. He is also implied to be greater than the four primary Chaos gods combined. It seems to follow that only a few thousand psykers would need to concentrate to wipe out the gods of Chaos, however we all know this isn't true. Why is the Emperor so powerful? Because being absorbed by him is the "default" setting of the human soul after death. While only a few thousand psykers may not be a match for the Chaos pantheon, the collective souls of every human being over millennia almost certainly is. Only people who directly worship a Chaos deity fail to be absorbed by the Emperor.

• This adds another layer to his reasoning behind spreading the "Imperial Truth." He ensures that people will stop worshiping (and empowering) false/evil gods.
• Furthermore, it adds a layer of Fridge Brilliance to why the Emperor is such a magnificent, godly figure. . . but also kind of a dick. He is humanity made person, with all of our greatness, and all of our flaws.
  • I award you sir, the internet.

The Space Wolves will kill the Emperor

In Norse mythology, the Fenris wolf was prophecies to kill the Allfather - and the Space Wolves refer to the Emperor as the Allfather# The Space Wolves will learn that the Golden Throne prevents the Emperor from being reborn, and will attack Holy Terra, destroying what remains of the Golden Throne and Emperor's body. And the Emperor will be reborn. But the Ecclesiarchy will not accept that the Emperor has been reborn, and, with conflicting reports that the Space Wolves have become traitors, the Imperium will be plunged into a new civil war.

Following on the "Tau=Necrontyr" theory, the rise of the Tau is the result of an intervention of their (and the Necrons') former gods

Okay, kind of a stretch, but here's how it works. We do know that Eldar and Ork have warp gods. For all we know, Tau (and maybe, by extension, the Necrons) don't have a warp signature, but maybe that doesn't mean they don't have an impact on the population of the warp. Back when they were still the Necrontyr, the Necrons may certainly have gods of their own, who as a result of their worshipping appeared in the warp. However, when the Necrontyr decided to join the C'Tan's side, those gods then only got worshipped by the very, VERY small Necrontyr population of a backwater planet who didn't want to become metal like the rest of their species, and who would later become the Tau. Because the link between the Necrons and their gods broke after their transformation, those gods couldn't do anything but to protect the proto-Tau from their former brethen. Fastforward a few million years, and those gods, severely weakened, could however still feel that their lost children were beginning to awake. So, to make some sort of compensation for the rebirth of the Necrons, the gods contacted the Tau which still had a tiny spark of warp signature, and turned them into the Ethereals. Then, to be sure they wouldn't fall to the same extremities than the Necrons, they made them spread an ideology that was putting an emphasis on sacrificing one's fate for the good of all the other living beings (the Necrontyr, after all, fell because of their selfish desire to increase their life expectancy, even at the cost of the rest of the galaxy). Guided unknowingly by their former gods, the Tau could evolve beyond the stone age and became the booming high-technological empire we know today.

It's going to get much worse, because...

The next Chaos god is going to be the Yaoi God, created from a mad Yaoi Fangirl! Then, they would rename the taglines as "... in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war YAOI!" And then, they would add units like Uke Space Marines, and something like that.

• Eh, already covered. That's a tiny little aspect of Slaanesh.
  • All Space Marines are Semes, it's the Imperial Guard who are the Ukes (except for Gaunt, and Cain).
  • And Yarrick.
  • Great, the goddess of chaos write Harry/Ron and Aku Roku fics in her spare time.
  • Where else do you find such a concentration of Hurt/Comfort Fic and other terribly Slaaneshi tropes?
  • Give me five minutes on Google, I'll find something.
  • BEHOLD, THIS EXISTS!!!

40K is secretly the most Anvilicious work. EVER.

Despite the presence of at least two definite Space Whale Aesops (the Eldar backstory and Chaos worshippers), there are some quite sensible ones:

• The Imperium: Don't be an overly paranoid racist who gets angry at anyone different or you'll be making enemies faster than you could pick up a gun.
  • Also, the A.I. Is a Crapshoot angle in their backstory.
  • There's also one about "Well Done, Son" Guy: respect your kids or they'll go Oedipus on your ass.
  • Argh. Too tired to think of any more.
  • Here's another, although it may be more controversial than some: shortly before he begins the Great Crusade, the Emperor speaks with the last priest, who warns him that mankind needs faith. The Emperor disregards this warning and attempts to spread the Imperial Truth, a doctrine of atheistic rationalism, throughout the galaxy. Sure enough, this leads pretty directly to the Horus Heresy. The Aesop: reason is not opposed to faith, reason depends upon faith. Attempting to suppress and abolish faith does not lead to reason and enlightenment, but to madness and chaos.
• The Eldar backstory is actually also quite sensible: don't devote yourself to purely hedonist self-indulgent pursuits, or the negative side effects of your actions will ruin your health and your life in the long run.
• Necrontyr: Don't take loans that sound too good to be true, they probably are and you'll be regretting it for the rest of your life
  • Who cares, when you can live forever!
• Tau: Just because you think you're in the right and have the moral high ground doesn't mean you are in the right and have the moral high ground; fundamental differences in cultural perspective can make all the difference, and there may be something important that you aren't aware of

Early First Edition was an Alternate Timeline.

The Point of Divergence was very early—instead of fighting a long war where stalemate turned to slow defeat, the Old Ones sacrificed themselves to destroy the C'Tan and all their works, leaving the Slann to inherit their territory and knowledge. This massive attack created the Eye of Terror and scattered the Eldar eons earlier—but it also was strong enough to literally drain the Warp, tearing apart the nascent Chaos Powers and generally weakening supernatural powers—thus, the different tone of the world, in which destiny and belief are far weaker forces. In addition, this meant that the Emperor lacked the power to create the Primarchs to his satisfaction, and was weak enough to gradually fail without combat injuries, eventually needing to be confined to the Golden Throne anyway. The absence of the C'Tan explains why the original Rogue Trader book places the Mechanicus on Earth...without the Dragon, there was no advantage to luring the tech-cults to Mars.

The Tyranids are actually the physical incarnation of The Maw.

The Warhammer Fantasy world can deem itself lucky to only have the Ogres.

The orks used to be much more organised, only the dumb ork class overthrew the smart

Because honestly, it doesn't seem like many orks follow the god of brutal cunning anymore and that guy had to come from somewhere right? So, relatively smart orcs once existed. Than one of the orks discovered smart orks made a funny squish sound when they died. And that was the end of a cunning leadership.

• Previous editions stated that the Orks were actually created by the Snotlings as a warrior class, before they'd degenerate into the insignificant and almost animalistic grunts they are now. It's much more ambiguous now, as the Old Ones are now considered to be their creators, but maybe the Snotlings were still once the Orks' ruling class.
• The newest codex mentions both, based on Ork oral histories.

Blanks and Pariahs

More analysis than WMG, but here goes anyway...the two types of psychic nulls are far more alike in their origins (a symbol scribed in DNA that disrupts the Warp) than their effects. Blanks are effectively a living Gellar Field, diverting warpstuff around them; Pariahs are a sucking hole in the Immaterium, drawing psychic energy inward to annihilate itself, in its passage tracing the negative image of a human warp-soul. This negative image is why, in Nemesis, the mind of Spear the Black Pariah was dimly visible to a psyker he was "sucking". Thus, Blanks are more perfectly immune to Warp powers, while Pariahs are far better at creating terror and, with the aid of Culexus equipment or Spear's unique powers, may throw back energy they have drawn away but has not yet annihilated, transformed to their own indrawing nature.

One of The Emperor's more recent aliases from the perspective of our era is Joshua Norton

Self explanatory. Emperor Norton really was The Emperor, either He was getting impatient, wanted to do a dry run, or was just really, really bored while waiting for the next stage of His Great Plan For Humanity.

• I've always thought that Joshua Norton was really, really bored after being stranded due to losing his Electronic Thumb...

The Tau actually are the Good Guys

The concentration camps (or whatever they are) are obviously Imperial propaganda (hell, most of the Tau codex is told from the point of view of the Imperium. Devilfish, Manta, Piranha skimmers, Hammerheads, all are Terran fish names given to Tau vehicles by the Imperium), the translation devices given to the Vespid really are just that, translation devices, not mind control devices (for starters, Vespid Strain leaders aren't Fearless, as they would be if mind controlled, and Commander Shadowsun's ability to let any Tau unit or Vespid unit with a strain leader (who has a translator) use her Leadership for Morale checks, as the strain leader would relay what she is saying to his squad), etc etc.

• Mind you, even if there was some degree of truth to those rumors, the Tau would still be good guys compared to everyone else...which says a lot.

Boltguns have been invented...for real.

This. Or this. It fires 25mm High Explosive Shells (boltshell) with a laser guided system and various optics(M.40 Targeter), semi-automatic (usual canon depiction of a boltguns' mechanism). That's right, ladies and gentleman. The madness that is Warhammer 40,000 is one step c retloser to reality! Sleep tight!

• Oh calm down, we have around 28,000 years left until Horus betrays His Imperial Majesty and things start getting REALLY worse. We'll be long gone by then, even our souls, and the grand galactic war isn't scheduled to really heat up for a while; most of the threats aren't even close to ready to attack us. I mean, has Slaanesh even been born yet?