Huge fan of your nanofic and your worldbuilding is superb.
Thank you kindly!
That being said, however, I’ve also long been a fan of the less insane parts of the Warhammer 40K universe (in particular the Imperial Guard and Space Marines) for much the same reasons; in my estimation it offers a fairly well thought-out look into the military makeup of a combined-arms force built around the need to combat massed infantry durable enough to reliably close to knife-fighting range.
In a face-to-face matchup between the Imperial Legions and the Imperium, then, how do you think the dice would fall?
Well, now. I’m going to insert a couple of disclaimers up front, here. The first being the more-or-less obligatory one that it’s always hard to compare across universes where the physics and metaphysics are so different. (I’ll be basically ignoring the wackiness of the Warp, for example.) And the second is that I’m not all that familiar with 40K canon – grimdark not being really my thing – so most of what I know about the setting I learned from Ciaphas Cain.
Anyway.
At the top level, civilization vs. civilization as portrayed at the current place in both their timelines, I’d probably have to give it to the Imperium, simply because of size. It’s a galaxy-spanning regime versus a few hundred worlds, and quantity has a quality of its own. I think, for the below reasons, they’d win over a planet-sized mountain of their own dead, but it’s not like the Imperium has any shortage of commanders who subscribe to the We Have Reserves school of tactics.
(Of course, there’s always ADHÁÏC PARASOL and friends to worry about even then, so the Imperium may have some trouble afterwards with the galaxy’s new infestation of self-improving, self-replicating berserker fleets. This is the sort of ‘take everyone with you’ strategy that the Imperials would generally disapprove of, of course, but given the 40K galaxy’s parameters, I suspect they’d see it as civic improvement.)
If, though, we adjust things so the conflict in terms of civilization-scale is equal, or even less disproportionate, then the pendulum swings the other way. One can argue some advantages for either side (the Imperium certainly has an initial advantage due to being, well, highly optimized to hatemurderize basically anyone it comes across given the opportunity; the Empire arguably has a technological edge in various areas, such as preferring to expend readily replaceable machines rather than population; etc.), but ultimately, I think it comes down to these two things:
The Imperium has an impressive fighting machine, but it’s a stuck fighting machine. Their technology is stagnant and at best poorly understood even by the Adeptus Mechanicus, their tactics are also terribly by the book except when they get really lucky in choice of commanders, they have a religious proscription against adopting ideas from outside, and anyone who tries to change any of this runs hard into PURGE THE HERETIC. They get away with this because, well, it’s not like anyone else (with the possible exception of the Tau) in their galaxy innovates worth a damn either: the Eldar are stagnant, the Orks rely on genetic knowledge, etc., etc. Meanwhile, the Empire understands exactly how all its stuff works, and innovates, borrows, and steals good ideas from the enemy about as easily as breathing.
And the other one is that the Imperium’s fascist theocracy is a seething mass of factions, many of which appear to hate each other almost as much as they do the xenos, and all of whom are paranoid about hidden mutants and traitors. This is the sort of scenario that the Stratarchy of Warrior Philosophy adores, because they specialize in getting into all those little cracks and inflaming the hell out of them until they catch fire and explode. (The Empire’s a lot less susceptible to this sort of thing, and in any case, the Imperium doesn’t go in for it. Even if it tried, it’d probably have to regularly have all its memeticists shot for understanding the xeno outlook.)
To sum up – unless the Imperium is smart enough to realize that it had better use all its biggest hammers right away, and not telegraph its blows, it’s in deep trouble, because it’s fighting people who are scarily adaptive given even half a chance.
Admittedly, a lot of kroot are mercenaries, and they really like finding new and useful genetics. “We pay you in exotic cloned flesh, and you’ll enthusiastically cooperate with and assist our bioengineers” seems a very likely outcome once the initial cultural and linguistic issues are sorted out. Given that kroot can read a lot of genetic data by taste, I predict at least one kroot shaper/esseli bioengineer friendship rapidly blooming to Mad Science levels enough for their allies to clear their throats pointedly.
Kroot culture does have some issues with empathy for non-kroot and aggression, but sophantologists may conclude a good chunk of that is the environment they’re stuck in. They have a well known sense of honour and when they make a bargain they stick to it, even to the point of killing their own kin for violations. So while they might not be immediate candidates for joining the Empire, they’d at least fit in just fine with the Worlds and honestly their planet of Pech may be one of the few suitable for a satrapy. Introduce them to the kaeth and give the memeticists some time to work and the kroot would likely be off the People Who Need To Be Dealt With list entirely.
Here’s the thing about the 40K universe that I keep trying to explain to critics.
It is fundamentally fucked up. Not “oh, we’re dealing in satire/irony” kind of fucked up (which it is, mind you), but “the very superstructure of reality is one bad day away from having a divide-by-zero error and collapsing into nothingness” kind of fucked up.
Earliest consistent history of the 40K universe is the War In Heaven. Which happened because the Old Ones were utter assholes to the Necrontir, who declared war against a force they could never beat, who later made a devil’s bargain with the Old Ones enemies…
…forcing the Old Ones to strain the very firmament of the Warp, and when the War In Heaven was over, the Eldar created gods to Do Things in the Warp and deal with the Three Chaos Powers.
Meanwhile, you have humanity at it’s height in the Dark Age of Technology. The only other races with the tech to be considered peers to DAoT humanity were the Eldar at their height, the Old Ones, and maybe the Necrons. When they considered Baneblades and Titans to be planetary defense weapons, their warships considered time-distorition weapons that would literally rewind time to ensure a round hit as a light weapon, there is an issue.
Unfortunately, the Eldar proceeded to squick a fourth Chaos God into existence, and in the process the DAoT humanity fell into the Age of Strife(1).
And Then The Master Of Mankind Happened.
Short version-the Master of Mankind thought he was playing three-D chess against opponents who were playing three-D poker with marked cards and cheating, destroying his plans utterly. Which resulted in the lovely universe that we have today, where there are parts of the Imperium where time itself is malfunctioning. Where if you build an AI powerful enough to recover anything along the lines of Dark Age of Technology capability, something from the Warp will get inside it sooner than later. You have to be ignorant, because it is entirely possible to be strong…but very fragile to the seduction of the Ruinous Powers, no matter how well they think they are protected(2). Your only defense on average is not knowing anything-and keeping others from knowing anything.
It’s great for a wargame, because there’s always a reason for everyone to trying to sincerely kill each other.
Progress? Improvements? Not going to happen, or it’s going to require divine-level intervention of some kind. And there are almost no friendly deitites in the 40K universe.
(1-Theory of mine that I’ve had is that the Men of Gold and Men of Silver and Men of Iron set things up to fail the way they did because they suspected what was going to happen, and gave humanity a deliberately crippled tool-set that could save them, but it wouldn’t destroy them. Other things might end them, but not their technology.)
(2-Every person can be seduced, if you know how to get to them. The world is full of marks to a well-trained con artists, and sometimes it is the kindest of things that will damn you…)
That really lets the dwellers therein off too easily.
The so-called Ruinous Powers are born from reflections of thoughts and emotions imprinted on the Warp. All thoughts and emotions. In theory, they have positive aspects. Tzeentch, god of hope and ambition, for example. Khorne, lord of honor and justice. Nurgle, who loves you just as you are. Etc. In theory.
So, why, in practice, are they so fuckin’ Ruinous?
Because within delta epsilon of every mortal organization in the entire 40K galaxy is set up to promote malevolent, backstabbing bags of dicks, and have been for the entire history of ever. The Ruinous Powers are only Ruinous because their emofood comes out of a giant awful-people cesspool. There may be a positive feedback loop involved, but it’s one that could still be choked off tomorrow by the Great Intra-Galactic Anti-Douchebaggery Accord. Instead, everyone thinks they can solve their problems by becoming even worse.
(And this is why the only people close to worth a damn therein are the bioweapon, the devouring swarm, the omnicidal maniacs, and the race with minimal warp presence.)