James workshop is also very bad at scale in their own universe though. You'll have 100 year full scale wars over entire systems and the lore will say some shit like "3 million casualties of IG over the course of the war"; like that's probably not even in the top 10 casualties list of imperial Chinese rebellions.
Worse is their space marine treatment, where apparently a million known space marines is enough to serve as shock troops over the entirety of their holdings in the galaxy.
Rule of cool and all, but every time I see a 40k novel mention numbers I have to add two zeros to the end for it to actually make sense given the quadrillions of imperials and the other quadrillions of their enemies.
100% in general, famously the leman russ tank has a comically small amount of armor. But when it comes to space marines specifically, imo part of the point is that the symbol of the Imperium's strength is spread too thin and is completely lacking, which is part of why the Imperium has been in a constant spiraling decline for over ten thousand years. I'll admit this take makes a bit less sense since they started advancing the timeline.
That is exactly why in Fantasy, they say "There are exactly as many Elves as the story needs".
(Even that doesn't justify though, the elves apparently being in such a population crisis that the death of even one elf is enough to be considered a tragedy for the race, yet hundreds of elves regularly die in battle, and every year, the Dark Elves celebrate Murder Christmas.)
Who even WOULD they be in the Imperium? They're not strong enough to be Space Marines or Imperial Guard, or even Inquisition, not smart enough to be Mechanicus, not disciplined enough to be Administratum or in a Forge World, not charismatic enough to be in a Pleasure World, and they would almost certainly not be Psykers, so they couldn't even be fed to the Golden Throne.
Where does that leave them? Cannon fodder? Human test subjects?
Most people are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Even the Imperial Guard are among the top-tier forces of the Imperium. They have better equipment and training than PDFs (planetary defense force) or the private mercenary armies of whatever rich fuck. And being in the Guard still sucks.
The lower castes within the Imperium have few (if any) rights. Some are slaves doing horrific labor in even worse conditions. Some are turned into servitors, performing the tasks of AI and computers without being AI. Some are harvested for organs or experimented on. Some are straight-up killed by the wealthy for sport. And this doesn't even get into what kinds of things are done to humans by various aliens and chaos worshippers.
It is the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable. An eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
servitors,but that would imply they were cool enough to do a crime though, so maybe not. what are those skull bots flying around? probably one of those
Being in the lower tier of a hive city still requires you to be a badass though. They are what Nextdoor boomers think big cities are like, but on steroids.
Eh, you could be some malnourished drug lab prole working for a gang of roided up future guard recruits. Or a scrap harvester living in an abandoned sewer drain.
They all think they'd be a Space Marine
They never think they'd be the scutman who dies because the planetary governor accidentally launched a viral bomb into their house
We're in 401320 motherfucker, you are a servo skull. You live on Mars. You are a peasant. You need to give your techpriest the fucking sector scans.
Not even a very well decorated servo skull
all grey plastic, not even painted
Dipped in Walmart craft paint and left to dry laying on a paper towel.
Not that chuds have ever been good at math.
Earth/Terra alone is supposed to have a few quadrillion.
Umm, uhhh, Terra isn't a recruiting world for any chapters so it doesn't count
James workshop is also very bad at scale in their own universe though. You'll have 100 year full scale wars over entire systems and the lore will say some shit like "3 million casualties of IG over the course of the war"; like that's probably not even in the top 10 casualties list of imperial Chinese rebellions.
Worse is their space marine treatment, where apparently a million known space marines is enough to serve as shock troops over the entirety of their holdings in the galaxy.
Rule of cool and all, but every time I see a 40k novel mention numbers I have to add two zeros to the end for it to actually make sense given the quadrillions of imperials and the other quadrillions of their enemies.
100% in general, famously the leman russ tank has a comically small amount of armor. But when it comes to space marines specifically, imo part of the point is that the symbol of the Imperium's strength is spread too thin and is completely lacking, which is part of why the Imperium has been in a constant spiraling decline for over ten thousand years. I'll admit this take makes a bit less sense since they started advancing the timeline.
That is exactly why in Fantasy, they say "There are exactly as many Elves as the story needs".
(Even that doesn't justify though, the elves apparently being in such a population crisis that the death of even one elf is enough to be considered a tragedy for the race, yet hundreds of elves regularly die in battle, and every year, the Dark Elves celebrate Murder Christmas.)
Who even WOULD they be in the Imperium? They're not strong enough to be Space Marines or Imperial Guard, or even Inquisition, not smart enough to be Mechanicus, not disciplined enough to be Administratum or in a Forge World, not charismatic enough to be in a Pleasure World, and they would almost certainly not be Psykers, so they couldn't even be fed to the Golden Throne.
Where does that leave them? Cannon fodder? Human test subjects?
Most people are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Even the Imperial Guard are among the top-tier forces of the Imperium. They have better equipment and training than PDFs (planetary defense force) or the private mercenary armies of whatever rich fuck. And being in the Guard still sucks.
The lower castes within the Imperium have few (if any) rights. Some are slaves doing horrific labor in even worse conditions. Some are turned into servitors, performing the tasks of AI and computers without being AI. Some are harvested for organs or experimented on. Some are straight-up killed by the wealthy for sport. And this doesn't even get into what kinds of things are done to humans by various aliens and chaos worshippers.
It is the cruelest and bloodiest regime imaginable. An eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.
servitors,but that would imply they were cool enough to do a crime though, so maybe not. what are those skull bots flying around? probably one of those
Either a hive city rat hunter or a thrall on a feral world.
Being in the lower tier of a hive city still requires you to be a badass though. They are what Nextdoor boomers think big cities are like, but on steroids.
Eh, you could be some malnourished drug lab prole working for a gang of roided up future guard recruits. Or a scrap harvester living in an abandoned sewer drain.
Material for Corpse Starch