User:GIRUNDE

This would never happen. Ever.

The Imperium of Man is a HUGE galactic civilization and empire that contains the vast majority of humanity in the tabletop game Warhammer 40K. It is a xenophobic, bigoted, paranoid, amoral, gargantuan, militaristic, merciless, stratified, theocratic, anachronistic, dystopian oppressive semi-police state and hellishly oligarchical bureaucracy. Basically think of a hideous Byzantine Empire/U.S.A./Nazi Germany triple threat team spread out across the stars, where's there is hardly any non-Caucasian soldiers in the official historical art.

Synopsis

The Imperium consists of over million habitable worlds and is of such size that the loss of a few dozen planets (along with billions of citizens) is not even worth the paperwork it would take to declare said worlds Perdatus. Under constant threat and attack by a myriad of powerful alien races and traitorous forces, the Imperium is engulfed in a constant galaxy-spanning war. The everyday rule of the Imperium is left to the High Lords of Terra, who basically don't give a fuck about anybody.

The figurehead and subject of compulsory religious veneration, the immortal God-Emperor of Mankind was the original founder of the Imperium. Being physically fucked for 10,000 years, he sits immobile and connected to the Golden Throne far from the sight of his subjects, and requires the sacrifice of many psykers a day to keep him alive. Heresy is the greatest crime one can commit in the Imperium, and the most common as any Imperial official can declare a citizen a heretic according to his own subjective and probably incorrect assertions, the punishment for which is a painful death or torture followed by a painful death. Technology is barely understood and basically mythological, and even the Techpriests are afraid of their machines.

Basically, it's a complete shithole and is not even remotely close to the Emperor's vision for humanity. Reasons for this include the Imperium's leaders being heartless fuckwads and the highly arguable/controversial necessity of such an uncaring organization for the survival of humanity in a galaxy that wants to kill them in a million painful ways.

That's fucking grimdark, but at least there's Slaanesh to lighten everything u-

• Door kicked down, Inquisitorial Stormtroopers enter and beat the fuck out of writer, Inquisitor puts a heavily booted foot on writer's toothless mouth.*

"HERESY!"

• BLAM*

So you'd better venerate the motherfucking Emperor.

Forces Of The Imperium

• SPESS MUHREENS - The massively enhanced, massively armored supersoldiers who form the elite warriors of the Imperium. All they do is train, sleep, pray, fight, and die; and they love every second of it, being the brainwashed warrior monks they are. There are only a million of them, but since the Imperium only has about a million planets it kind of evens out. They are no longer human, and remember nothing but an endless service of bloodshed culminating in their own violent deaths. Grimdark.

Join the Guard or die...then die.

• Imperial Guard - The endless legions of regular humans who form the vast majority of the Imperium's armed forces. Similar to a conventional modern military with slightly better technology. The Imperial Guard are a bunch of manly farmers and factory workers fighting off unstoppable robots, huge monstrous aliens, and destructive psykers with little more than a flashlight, reinforced t-shirt, standard-issue chesthair, and steel balls. Their numbers are endless and their tactics shitty, so that on any given day in the Imperium of Man countless thousands of Guardsmen are dying painfully and lightyears from home. Grimdark.

• Adeptus Mechanicus - An organization of Techpriests that keep the tinpot bigotry conveniently on their side by convincing others that they are the only ones worthwhile of knowing two shits about something ancient called "science". They're the "only ones" and their lower ranks are afraid of their machines. Planet-wide scientific organizations also exist, but only as long as they stay below the Mechanicus radar. Once they get powerful or competent enough to make a difference, they get wiped out or absorbed into Cult Mechanicus, which any logistics specialist would likely find highly efficient (probably because they run logistical science). Again, I reiterate, they're the "only ones".

• Inquisition - An organization with unlimited power whose job it is to keep the Imperium loyal. With jurisdiction over everyone and everything, the Inquisitors and their agents have very few impediments on their endless quest to murder innocent people and the occasional heretic. The Inquisition consists mainly of three branches: the Ordo Hereticus who take care of internal threats such as HERESY, mutants, and traitors, the Ordo Xenos who kill aliens, and the Ordo Malleus who fight Chaos. It is a common misconception that the Inquisition give a fuck about the people they are supposed to protect, but if you think otherwise you have probably been killed for HERESY. Grimdark.

• Sisters of Battle - Technically part of the Inquisition in that they are the military branch of the Ordo Hereticus, are nuns-with-guns. They are trained from birth to be loyal and awesome and incorruptible, etc, etc, etc, but really are just over-aggressive and overrated women with good equipment who would suck an Inquisitor's cock if he told them it was heresy not to. Exploitable.

• Grey Knights - A bunch of super-Space Marines who are apparently invulnerable to the influence of Chaos, as opposed to regular Space Marines who apparently turn to the dark side more often than they fantasize about fist-fucking heretics. They are the military arm of the Ordo Malleus. They have special gear and magic guns and a book built into their special anti-psychic armor that stops psychic powers from affecting them even more. Whenever they fight, a psychic shroud inhibits the psychic powers of whoever they are fighting, and they have Nemesis Force WeaOH CHRIST, I CAN'T GO ON, THIS SHIT IS BANANAS!

• Officio Assassinorum - Whose job it is to kill people. While one would think this would overlap with the duties of every other Imperial organization, it is different because the Assassinorum train assassins who are supposed to be more subtle. Except they train batshit insane Eversor Assassins. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a paradox.

• Imperial Navy - Job is pretty self-explanatory. They are a very large organization, as you would expect from a navy tasked with protecting a million worlds. Their ships range in size from meters-long fighters to kilometers-long battleships which are quite capable of blowing up planets, mostly Imperial ones, which they do at the command of the Inquisition on a regular basis in the fight against HERESY. Because the Imperium hates A.I., the Imperial Navy has to have huge human crews, most of which are "forcefully recruited" (i.e. kidnapped) to die in space having made no difference to anything at all as one of billions of expendable men. Grimdark.

The Inquisition: not as easy as it looks.

• Adeptus Arbites - Job is to police every world in the Imperium. They are police, judge, and executioner. They are usually one of the first institutions to be set up on a world and they are equipped to fight a small war with equipment ranging from power mauls and suppression shields to lasguns to even the Leman Russ. On the ground the arbites have four units: patrol groups, who's job it is to generally make sure no wrong doing is going on in the settlement, the shock troops who are sent in when there are riots, street wars and other generalized disturbances (they usually shoot on sight if you are anywhere near the problem center), the execution teams who pursue specific guilty individuals or groups and the snatch squads who are charged with capturing a specific individual or group for questioning. The criminals caught be the arbites usually wind up dead, since there is but one punishment in the Imperium. The Inquisition will often use the arbites to apprehend certain individuals if they do not wish to be directly involved.

Reasons it sucks to live in the Imperium

• Idiots will probably live longer.
• Free thinking will get you killed.
• Thinking about nothing is the only way to survive.
• Thinking about nothing implies you're thinking, and thinking is HERESY.
• You are constantly under attack by Orks, Eldar, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, the forces of Chaos, Space Japanese, etc.
• Voices in your sleep keep telling you that Chaos is great, at which point an Inquisitor kills you whether you resist the temptations or not.
• Priests keep telling you the Imperium is great and then report you for not attending the entirety of your third mass service of the designated planetary worship day, at which point you are executed by local law enforcement.
• If you aren't in the Navy you are in the Imperial Guard, which means you will either die painfully on the battlefield or be executed by a Commissar for not being loyal enough to die on the battlefield.
• You can be executed for taking incorrect care of your gun and angering the Machine Spirit.
• Space Marines or Sisters of Battle never get laid...ever. Unless they turn to Chaos, in which case they spend eternity having their souls tortured by Chaos.
• If you are not in the Navy or Guard, you are a defenseless civilian who will be taken by Dark Eldar to live a life of slavery and torture.
• If you happen to be an Inquisitor, you are expected to watch whatever you order. Vomiting is HERESY.
• Technology scares you.
• You are poor and uneducated.
• The Orks will eventually unite and destroy the Imperium.
• The Tyranids will eventually arrive and destroy the Imperium.
• The Necrons will eventually awaken and destroy the Imperium.
• Chaos cannot be defeated and will eventually destroy the Imperium.
• If you're not dead in the Guard, dead in the Navy, or dead as a civilian, you're a heretic and alien-sympathizer.
• But the Star Child can-
• *BLAM*

Heil Commissar Grimmler!

Summary

In the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium, there is only bleak, grim, black, hopeless, dismal, barren, gloomy, gray, joyless, dour, dreary, dark, cheerless, glum, oppressive, somber, grim darkness. And the sugar beat/cane is extinct.