Who is The Most Evil faction in all of 40K?

[YorkNecromancer]

Well?

I'm going with the Imperium; hideous, genocidal fascism is about as evil as it gets for me.

[Wolfshade]

The Astartes. What makes them so evil is that they do not realise it. They are genetically enhanced transhumans that are as far removed from a regular person in physicality and mentality as a man is from a sheep. Their cold calculating detached view, quite happy to eradicate an entire population on the hunch that their might be a taint.

Indeed, they have no counter balance, no checks or measures. They act often on their own accord, following their own agenda and yet they are put up as heroes of the imperium.

It is this insiduiousness that makes them the most evil.

The others are "honestly" evil, well aside from the tau who like google, do no evil, well aside from when we do

[Psychosplodge]

The Tau. Everyone else is "honestly" evil. Even the Imperium nukes planets for their own good.
The Tau are join us or die. While presenting an animal farm equality...

[Mr Mystery]

Dark Eldar.

For everyone else, it's a matter of survival in an uncaring universe, or simple genetic imperative (Nids AND Orks!).

But Dark Eldar? They do it because they enjoy it it more that way. Seriously. Chaos do it so their Gods think well of them. Dark Eldar do it because they personally get off on it.....

Serious evil right there!

[DarkLink]

Well?

I'm going with the Imperium; hideous, genocidal fascism is about as evil as it gets for me.

So... you picked one of the least hideous, genocidal, facist factions in the fiction as your most evil choice?

[Demonus]

The Tau. Everyone else is "honestly" evil. Even the Imperium nukes planets for their own good.
The Tau are join us or die. While presenting an animal farm equality...

amen brother. I would also say they are evil because Riptides :)

[Prodigalson]

Agreed, Dark Eldar. Go read that codex. Chaos is insane, and yea they do evil stuff, but Dark Eldar do far more actually evil acts, and their motives are the absolutely least pure. I mean... the old quote on their codex was 'pray they don't take you alive'.

As for Tau... really? Tau are the most evil? If you had to put me in one society in the galaxy, go ahead and put me in the tau empire. They are the least evil (still evil IMHO), but the least evil of the groups.

[Skullchewer]

Dark Eldar, by a mile. Chaos is just that: Chaotic. Dark Eldar are deliberately malicious.
Orks are the least evil as they just have a laugh, and are very honest about their simple goals.

[Marshal_Loss]

Dark Eldar. Anybody evil enough to give birth to Slaanesh is certainly up there in terms of malevolence.

[Charistoph]

Dark Eldar.

For everyone else, it's a matter of survival in an uncaring universe, or simple genetic imperative (Nids AND Orks!).

But Dark Eldar? They do it because they enjoy it it more that way. Seriously. Chaos do it so their Gods think well of them. Dark Eldar do it because they personally get off on it.....

Serious evil right there!


Agreed, Dark Eldar. Go read that codex. Chaos is insane, and yea they do evil stuff, but Dark Eldar do far more actually evil acts, and their motives are the absolutely least pure. I mean... the old quote on their codex was 'pray they don't take you alive'.

Same. But for me it's because they destroyed their empire and then keep doing what destroyed their empire to stave off death and having their soul eaten.

Chaos at least is trying to get on someone's good side and gain power or strength or because it's their nature. Dark Eldar CHOSE to be who they are and continue to choose to be that way, even after everything went to hell, literally.

[TB0N3]

Dark Eldar are sick, rapist, flaying, person-experimenting *******s. Kinda like the japanese before WWII, doing evil acts just to break records. They even reside in the fiction's equilvalent to 4chan...

[Mr Mystery]

Bit racist wasn't it? :)

[DarkHorseSki]

Agreed, Dark Eldar. Go read that codex. Chaos is insane, and yea they do evil stuff, but Dark Eldar do far more actually evil acts, and their motives are the absolutely least pure. I mean... the old quote on their codex was 'pray they don't take you alive'.

As for Tau... really? Tau are the most evil? If you had to put me in one society in the galaxy, go ahead and put me in the tau empire. They are the least evil (still evil IMHO), but the least evil of the groups.

I had to really think between Dark Eldar, Daemons and Necrons... I do think the Dark Eldar are, in many ways, the most perverted, but they are evil as a way to survive and they are that way BECAUSE of Chaos and the force of those daemonic powers so I give the nod to Daemons over Dark Eldar because they are the reason the Dark Eldar are so evil, which makes them even more evil when it comes to ranking. Now, between the Necrons and Daemons... while I think that the Necrons may well have been evil in the same way we think of the DE today... too few of them retain the necessary evil spark to outshine the Daemons.

[Patrick Boyle]

So... you picked one of the least hideous, genocidal, facist factions in the fiction as your most evil choice?

The thing with the Imperium is, in universe, all of the awful stuff they do is justified, because if you let that odd little non-Emperor worshipping cult do it's thing, pretty much inevitably it's subverted by one of the Dark Gods, if it wasn't dedicated to one in the first place, and suddenly you've got daemons up to your eyeballs. Sure it could be argued they crack down overly hard, and some pretty terrible planetary regimes are left in place through crushing seemingly well meaning opposition movements, but when there's a fair chance of letting those things run their course causes daemons to pay a visit...

Doesn't mean they're not evil, but it's objectively a necessary evil given the alternatives of the universe.

[busbina]

Papa Nurgle is a pretty jovial guy. He just gets a bad rap for his stank. The only god who is a real dick is Khorne. I'm not even sure Tzeentch even cares enough to be evil.

[Anggul]

As the majority seems to have acknowledged, Dark Eldar. The others have some kind of goal, the Dark Elder are doing it purely because they can and they want to. They actively seek to be selfish and torture the galaxy. At least most Chaos Marines have some kind of goal of doing away with what they see as an unjust Imperium, and Chaos itself is just emotion incarnate. Khorne doesn't choose to be enraged and obsessed with violence, he's just rage incarnate in empyrean form. The Dark Eldar do it because they can and they want to.

[euansmith]

I thought it was GW Marketing and Accounts Department?

[interrogator_chaplain]

Sadism as a lifestyle choice? Yeah, Dark Eldar are about as evil as they get. I believe that the horrors you would experience in the hellish realm of Khorne's Fortress is nothing compared to the waking nightmare of a Haemonculus laboratory.

[YorkNecromancer]

So... you picked one of the least hideous, genocidal, facist factions in the fiction as your most evil choice?


The Black Arks.
Exterminatus.
The Inquisition: "A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time."
Speaking of which - Radical Inquisitors turning their own citizens into Daemonbound.
Commissars: "If you will not serve on the front, then you will serve on the firing line."
"Send in the next wave."
Institutionalised racism towards abhumans.
Death Cults. (actual, honest-to-god Death Cults, who offer up acts of murder as worship of the Emperor).
Servitors (brrrr....)
A culture entirely predicated around fatalism and martyrdom - some of us remember when human bombs were a legitimate Imperial Guard army choice. "Even a man who has nothing can still have faith. Even a man who has nothing can still offer his life."
The extermination of the genetically impure - mutants of any kind, whether Chaos corrupted or not.
The abject neo-feudal horror of Hive Planets - especially the Spyrers, who hunt the poor as a rite of passage, and sometimes keep doing it for fun.
The Adeptus Arbites - everything horrific, brutal and unjust about every human police force times about a hundred.
And so on...



The Imperium are ****ing monstrous. I literally cannot imagine a worse regime to live under. Chaos are just insane. Dark Eldar are bad, but not as numerous. For sheer magnitude of horror, nothing, absolutely nothing beats The Imperium of Man. Comparing any other faction to the Imperium is like comparing Jeffrey Dahmer to Hitler; it's a question of scale. The Eldar come close with their 'Everyone But Us Is Expendable Because We're Too Special To Die Out' philosophy, and the Tau are probably next ("For The Greater Good" being the only justification a total psychopath needs for almost any act of societal horror - q.v.: Gellert Grindlewald), but the Imperium are by far and away the worst.

I literally cannot see how anyone could ever view the Imperium as anything but a monstrous, monstrous wrong. "Because they're us" is totally wrong. They're Germany circa 1942, only they never lose, and they go on forever. That's not "us". It's certainly not me.

[DarkLink]

So... you don't think Chaos, who openly exists for the sole purpose of wrecking stuff, or Dark Eldar, who built their society around open gang warfare, criminal empires, slavery, torture, and murder, or nidz, who exist only to eat everything, is worse than the imperium? Not that the Imperium is a particularly nice place, but your views seem more than a little skewed.

[Nabterayl]

I sort of have to agree with York. As far as I can tell the actual social influence of Chaos is, at least in the Imperial era, a reaction to the Imperium - a regime that tells you not to hope, not to despair, not to think of yourself, not to get angry about injustice. People don't turn to Chaos because they're insane. People turn to Chaos because the Imperium is so obviously wrong. To paraphrase Samuel L. Jackson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3sm3yXDNXQ), their whole way of life is bullsh*t.

That said ... I'd draw a distinction between what is despicable and what is evil. The dark eldar commit acts that horrify us, but they do so out of fear - if they do otherwise, they die. Committing despicable acts in the name of survival is far from admirable, but is it the most evil thing on the list? I feel the same way about the Imperium. The Emperor ranks high on my list of Most Evil Villains in the 40K Universe, but now that the Imperium is in place, most of the despicable things it does are also motivated by the survival instinct.

But the Tau ... they decided to conquer the galaxy because they decided to. They're like the Imperium during the Great Crusade, killing people by the millions and threatening billions more with destruction because they've decided that Father Knows Best. There's no survival instinct there, no wrong being avenged. They do it simply because they want to.

[Kevin Boyd]

I think a harder question to answer is who is truly GOOD in the 40k universe?

[YorkNecromancer]

Chaos, who openly exists for the sole purpose of wrecking stuff

Tribal warlords; Al Qaeda, Kony. Monstrous and cruel. Undeniably evil.


Dark Eldar, who built their society around open gang warfare, criminal empires, slavery, torture, and murder

Columbian drug gangs; the Mafiya. Brutal and violent. Horrible villains who contribute nothing but parasitism.


nidz, who exist only to eat everything

A tiger who eats you isn't evil; merely following its nature. Is it horrible and unpleasant? Hell yes. But evil requires knowledge of ethics, which a wild animal lacks. It doesn't eat you because it hates you. It eats you because that is what it does. There is no 'balance' to nature. There's just killers who are better at killing. Ethics is irrelevant. Either you kill the tiger, or the tiger kills you. Cruel, but fair.

But as to my skewed views:

Chaos, like all disorganised thugs, are consumed by petty rivalries. Yes, they do great harm, yes they are evil, but they are petty. Small scale. Failbaddon keeps on losing for a reason - being the best killer in the galaxy is irrelevant when your enemy is better at co-operating than your nutty allies (Hey Kharn!)

The Dark Eldar, likewise, are a pure and horrible kind of evil, cruel for the sake of cruelty. But like the Columbian gang lords who stitch their rivals' skinned faces across footballs for a kickaround with their friends, they are also small. Horrible, no doubt, a small and powerful empire, true. But consider the scale.

The Imperium's sole purpose is wrecking stuff - just non-human (how many Tau worlds decimated in the Emperor's name? How many dead Eldar? How many human planets whose only crime was to ignore the Imperial Creed? Or do we not count those sapient lives because they're not human/heretics?)

And Imperial Society is built around built around open gang warfare (you may have heard of a game called 'Necromunda'), criminal empires (again, you may have heard of a game called 'Necromunda'), slavery (what is a Servitor? Yes, some are vat-grown. But being surgically mutilated into a Servitor state is a fairly general punishment in the Imperium, and lest we forget, there is no such thing as a plea of innocence in the Imperium. Just degrees of guilt. Any Servitor could be a slave borne of torture and mutilation in the name of 'justice' that is explicitly anything but. And that's without including things like Chapter serfs (what is a serf if not an indentured servant?) and so on. The Imperium is built on the backs of slaves.) , torture (Hey there Inquisitor! Hey there Interrogator Chaplain! What's that? Because you only torture people who are bad from your perspective, that makes it okay? Well that's just swell!), and murder (DEATH. CULTS. What part of "offering up murder as an act of worship" is not complete and utter insanity?!)

To "Not that the Imperium is a particularly nice place" is to gloss over the simple horror of day to day life in the Imperium. It is AWFUL.

I fail to see how my views are remotely skewed; just because the Imperium aren't covered in spikes, that doesn't mean they're the good guys. I suppose some people see order and see stability and safety.

I just see that kind of order and see oppression, brutality, and violence. It's Orwell's '1984' but worse.


But the Tau ... they decided to conquer the galaxy because they decided to. They're like the Imperium during the Great Crusade, killing people by the millions and threatening billions more with destruction because they've decided that Father Knows Best. There's no survival instinct there, no wrong being avenged. They do it simply because they want to.

It's not even because they want to; their denial that that's their real motivation kind of makes it worse.

I seriously don't get people who say the Tau aren't evil. I really don't. Anyone who uses the phrase "for the greater good"? Well they left off the start of the sentence, which is "The horrific evil we're doing is.."

So yeah, don't trust that guy, he's got a plan that involves you and all your friends dying needlessly. Probably after killing some babies.


I think a harder question to answer is who is truly GOOD in the 40k universe?

Quite explicitly, no-one.

40K has heroes, and good gals and guys. But a good faction?

No.

Just like life, really.

[Xarga]

This just got real deep son. :P

In all seriousness though i agree with you york. Though one thing to note is all the elements you described are not all necessarily working in unison, so in a sense can't be described entirely as a collective (other than being under imperial rule obviously.)

Dark Elder seem to be the majority choice though. Yes they are horrific and commit countless despicable acts but ultimately it's to starve of their slow death, for survival. It just so happens in the society they're surrounded in it's perfectly acceptable and encouraged to do these things, and to get your kicks out of it while doing so.

Oddly enough i feel like Orks have the best deal (even if you're not likely to survive long, unless your "tuff".) I think this quote sums it up perfectly


The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude.

[Scion_of_Terra]

Someone posted above that Chaos worship is a reaction to the horrors of the Imperium. This is patently false. Humanity became what it is in 40k as a reaction to Chaos, i.e. the Horus Heresy.

It's easy to say, "The Imperium is the good faction, because they're humans like us." But IMO, relative evilness should be considered from each faction's perspective. Therefore, I tried to pick a faction based on which one diverged farthest from morality as it pertained to them, i.e. which ones went furthest from "we're simply trying to survive in the grimdark of the far future." Let's review:

-The Imperium and its forces are genocidal totalitarians because that's what they think they need to be to survive. Frankly, I would be more afraid if they were right. Can you imagine the sorts of horrors that would justify such a society?
-Craftworld Eldar are doing what they must in order to survive as a species (and they know it's what they need to do b/c of their Farseers).
-Dark Eldar are certainly nasty, and before the Fall I would have put them down for most evil. Now, though, they have to commit horrible deeds to survive, and thus are slightly more justified in their cruelty than my pick for the number-one slot by the slimmest of margins.
-The Orks are just doing what they were genetically engineered to do. You can't blame them anymore than you can a virus for doing what they do.
-Same goes for Nids.
-The Tau are objectively terrible people. Frankly, though, they're still working their way towards the Imperium's level, which I don't doubt they'll eventually reach as they see the galaxy for what it truly is.
-The Necrons are also problematic; as xenocidal as the Imperium, they've got slightly less justification ('We totally called seat check' vs. 'it's us or them'). Still, aggressive expansionism aside, they don't commit the sort of atrocities you see with the other races.
-Chaos Daemons are similar to the Orks and Nids; while not genetically engineered, they're simply reflected emotions brought to life by their terrifying hell dimension, bound to act out whatever tendencies their alignment represents.

This leaves...

-Devotees of Chaos - CSM, heretics, cultists, what have you - the people who betray their fellow human beings and lose themselves in perversity and carnage out of selfishness and personal weakness - they are the true evil, for they invariably work against the survival of their group, causing infighting, civil war, degeneration, and the destruction of society everywhere they go. Chaos destroys everything it touches, including basic humanity.

[Power Klawz]

Many of the factions are basically driven by their nature to do the things they do. Chaos Daemons, Tyranids and Orks fall in this category. I don't think they can really be considered "evil" in the human sense as ethic don't really play into their actions. They exist and do as they must.

The mortal worshippers of Chaos are at least internally justified in their actions by virtue of direct knowledge of a higher power. I mean, they know their gods exist because they gave them extra toes and laser eyes. Strangely enough I can't really call them evil since they can quite literaly talk to their gods, and when you have genuine divine providence behind you it can't really be considered evil, even if your god tells you to sacrifice your own children.

The Eldar are pretty much the good guys, but only because they were the really bad guys and got their pee pees whacked by karma. Good guys in the sense that they are aware of the consequences of their actions and generally seek harmonious outcomes, generally... obviously they're still racist elitists who kill lots of innocent beings because farseers.

Dark Eldar are probably the most rational race, I mean if you take the galaxy of 40k in its entirety (which the dark eldar do, since they basically know everything along with their Eldar cousins) the only logical solution is to go on an eternal bender and hope you never sober up. All the killing and raping is pretty evil, but when you know everything's soul is basically getting fed into an intergalactic blender full of eternal torment I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run.

Which leaves the truly evil races. The Imperium, Necrons and Tau. They've all decided to do the atrocious things they do because they think they're right and everyone else can just suck it. I think self righteousness is the worst kind of evil. They are all deluded and no amount of knowledge, time or consequence will every set them to rights. The necrons have been at it the longest and have brutalized the galaxy and themselves probably far worse than either the imperium or Tau could ever dream of. At least humans have some kind of tenuous afterlife that sort of props up their dickery. The tau are still pretty naive and to my knowledge haven't really gone down the masochistic roads humans and necrons have. I'd say if you were going by history Necrons would be the most evil, but judging by setting impact its hands down the Imperium.

[chicop76]

I say humanity.

1. If it is not human they generally want to kill it.
2. Not pro emperor they kill it.
3. So easy to be a heratic which they kill
4. Scarafice how many dead psykers to a brain dead corpse they worship as a god.
5. General attitude is to kill first and ask questions later.

I forgot about Dark Eldar which are pretty bad.

However humans tend to do things without any true purpose. Other races do what they do, but with purpose.

Daemons are fued by humans which begs to question which of the two are the most evil.

Which leaves Chaos Marines, Humanity, and Dark Eldar.

Out of the three thinking about it more I would go Dark Eldar if I revoted.

[Archon Charybdis]

it can't really be considered evil, even if your god tells you to sacrifice your own children.

Divine Command Theory is an intellectually bankrupt moral philosophy even operating under the assumption of a single god. In a universe where multiple divine entities exist, it's positively incoherent. That said, given the corrupting influence of Chaos on mortal adherents, you might be able to make the argument they fall more into the category of "going with their nature" like Orks and Nids. At a certain point, their minds have been warped (haHAH!) to the point they're incapable of genuine moral/ethical decisions.

[YorkNecromancer]

are doing what they must in order to survive as a species

This applies to every single race in the 40K universe. It's the justification of every monster in human history.

"I did what I had to do."

You didn't have to; you chose to, because the alternative was death. "That which is necessary defines that which is moral" is the motto only of the predator.

Non-violence is an option; it's just no races in 40K have chosen to explore it, because they lack the courage. Given that the defining trait of 40K is tragedy, this is entirely appropriate.

It's like "Spec Ops: The Line"; it is entirely possible to gain a moral 'win' in that game; you simply have to choose to put the controller down, and walk away. Refusing to participate is a valid choice, albeit not one celebrated in action cinema or games, where the only 'win' condition is the death of any and all who oppose you.

I like "Spec Ops: The Line" a lot.

[Nabterayl]

Someone posted above that Chaos worship is a reaction to the horrors of the Imperium. This is patently false. Humanity became what it is in 40k as a reaction to Chaos, i.e. the Horus Heresy.

This leaves...

-Devotees of Chaos - CSM, heretics, cultists, what have you - the people who betray their fellow human beings and lose themselves in perversity and carnage out of selfishness and personal weakness - they are the true evil, for they invariably work against the survival of their group, causing infighting, civil war, degeneration, and the destruction of society everywhere they go. Chaos destroys everything it touches, including basic humanity.
I think there's a distinction to be made here between Chaos and the followers of Chaos. People turn to Chaos because their lives suck and the Imperium offers no structural emotional support. The Creed Imperialis' answer to you when you say, "Father, my life sucks ... what should I do about it?" is to say, "Your life doesn't suck, my child. Your life is exactly as it needs to be for the glory of the Emperor." It is only Chaos that is willing to say, "Yes, your life does suck, and that's not okay. Here is a solution."

And Chaos is quite right. Life in the Imperium does suck, and it's not okay.

That said, it's also true that those who stick around with Chaos the longest invariably turn into raving lunatics and monsters. People turn to Chaos for genuinely good reasons, I think - a response to the myriad injustices that Imperial society as a whole perpetrates upon them. I find myself hard pressed to call the devotees of Chaos evil for that reason. Chaos, now, Chaos itself ... I think that's another matter.

[Power Klawz]

Divine Command Theory is an intellectually bankrupt moral philosophy even operating under the assumption of a single god. In a universe where multiple divine entities exist, it's positively incoherent. That said, given the corrupting influence of Chaos on mortal adherents, you might be able to make the argument they fall more into the category of "going with their nature" like Orks and Nids. At a certain point, their minds have been warped (haHAH!) to the point they're incapable of genuine moral/ethical decisions.

Well when you consider that a bona-fide god is something which transcends human intellect, it really doesn't matter if its "intellectually bankrupt." I mean, see the entirety of human history for examples. And those gods weren't even real. I mean, if Jesus could give you acid breath you'd basically have all the divine justification necessary to do whatever your insane deity told you to do, its out of your hands at that point and obviously beyond intellectual rationale. I'd say that out of all the reasons to commit terrible atrocities, legitimate divine command ranks pretty high on the justification scale. Obviously for the sake of argument, as there's no such thing in actuality... but we're talking about a fictional setting here.

[Xarga]

I think there's a distinction to be made here between Chaos and the followers of Chaos. People turn to Chaos because their lives suck and the Imperium offers no structural emotional support. The Creed Imperialis' answer to you when you say, "Father, my life sucks ... what should I do about it?" is to say, "Your life doesn't suck, my child. Your life is exactly as it needs to be for the glory of the Emperor." It is only Chaos that is willing to say, "Yes, your life does suck, and that's not okay. Here is a solution."

And Chaos is quite right. Life in the Imperium does suck, and it's not okay.

That said, it's also true that those who stick around with Chaos the longest invariably turn into raving lunatics and monsters. People turn to Chaos for genuinely good reasons, I think - a response to the myriad injustices that Imperial society as a whole perpetrates upon them. I find myself hard pressed to call the devotees of Chaos evil for that reason. Chaos, now, Chaos itself ... I think that's another matter.

It's very much on a case by case basis though. Sure some may fall to chaos with good intentions, because their life is awful, fear or simply mislead and baited. However plenty others do so for personal gain, power and revenge. So a good portion of the more "sane" devotee's are infact evil, using chaos as a means to an end for whatever reason they need it for. Conquest, revenge, control, sadistic pleasure, what have you. Though then again it could all depend on how far they have fallen and if they have the willpower to retain a semblance of their own personality, morals and ethics. At some point more or less you just adopt those of your patron god instead. At which point are you really responsible for your actions? Though yes, i personally think those more "sane" and strong willed of chaos devotees can be evil for sure. However all those that are simply puppets of their patron god can't really be classed as such. As chaos is in it's nature just doing what it is, raw emotion manifest and by extension it's mortal puppets.

[daboarder]

I found a new favourite thread

[Nabterayl]

It's very much on a case by case basis though. Sure some may fall to chaos with good intentions, because their life is awful, fear or simply mislead and baited. However plenty others do so for personal gain, power and revenge.
I think that's fair. In that case, I guess I feel like "Chaos Space Marines/Cultists/Heretics" is too broad. Some of those people are evil. Some of them are simply monsters.

In my opinion, to win this contest, you not only have to choose to do something awful, you have to so choose in service to an ultimately indefensible goal. Some Chaos worshipers fall into that category, as Xarga has said, but not all. I don't think any dark eldar do. The Tau and the necrons are the only ones I can think of who routinely do despicable things for ultimately no good reason. I'd put the Imperium into that category too, ten thousand years ago, but not today.

I think that rules out the "doing despicable things to survive," "doing despicable things because it's in my nature," and "doing despicable things in the name of justice" factions. None of those excuses actually excuse the despicable things done in their name (I mean, you don't get a moral pass on being addicted to torture snuff porn just because otherwise you'll die). But they're at least sort of understandable, and sort of tragic. "Doing despicable things because it's my right to be in charge" is not only morally reprehensible, it doesn't even have the silver lining of understandable tragedy.

[Archon Charybdis]

Well when you consider that a bona-fide god is something which transcends human intellect... if Jesus could give you acid breath you'd basically have all the divine justification necessary to do whatever your insane deity told you to do, its out of your hands at that point and obviously beyond intellectual rationale.

That really doesn't follow at all. Just because someone is really powerful and gives you commands you can't comprehend doesn't make them "moral", unless you reduce morality to "whatever God(s) say(s) to do." At that point, you could have followers of the Emperor diametrically opposed to followers of Chaos and both could be behaving "morally", because they're following the commands of a god.

[Warpspider89]

I think the argument that Nids don't count is flawed. I agree that the majority of Nids are mindless beasts but that ignores the fact that the ones in control are intelligent and calculating beasts.

A similar argument can be leveled at Orks. They do actively choose to seek violence. They could choose otherwise, and it would not be best for them, but they do have a choice.

Choosing the worse path for oneself so that others may benefit would be a moral and goodly action and it is one not taken by those Orks and Nids with a semblance of rationality.

[Charistoph]

The dark eldar commit acts that horrify us, but they do so out of fear - if they do otherwise, they die.

I addressed this in my reasons for putting DE on the list. They are not the most evil just because of what they do, it's because they are still doing what caused the need for them to do it in the first place! It's like an alchoholic going to a bar to get plastered just so the pain from his liver doesn't cause him to vomit.

They have options. The leaders just choose not to try them.



A similar argument can be leveled at Orks. They do actively choose to seek violence. They could choose otherwise, and it would not be best for them, but they do have a choice.

Considering conflict is the reproduction method of the Ork, I don't see them surviving well as a species if they didn't seek violence. But then, you could probably put all that on the Old Ones or the Brain Boyz who made them that way.

[Joe TwoCrows]

The Tau. The Greater Good is the greatest fascism. My ethics find that indefensible. It's .... corporate America, nobody is responsible, because it's all for the corporation. Imperials are a distant second, but only because we know who 'they' are.

For you who vote the DE; are you voting on the basis of your culture? If so, add that to your comments. Consider the old phrase 'no one is evil in their own eyes'. Yes, the DE do unspeakable, incomprehensible acts by the notions of 21st century Western culture. By the standard of the (old) D&D alignment system, they are neutral evil. But, they are also one of the purest of the 40K factions. Along with the Orks and 'Nids, they do exactly as they believe they must to survive, in a manner that quite deliberately pleases them. They are not 'free', because of She Who Thirsts, but within that constraint they have freedom and use it. We, as 40K players see only the carnage they create. But, can any of us truly say there are not musicians in Commoragh who would invoke such passion in a (mon-keigh) listener as to kill without meaning to, and then take pleasure in their ability to affect the mon-keigh (along with its soul?) If you, dear reader, were faced with their choice, would you allow yourself to succumb to The Thirst, or would you struggle against it?

By comparison, the Exterminatus choices made by the Astares or the Inquisition are immeasurably callous, and do not even benefit the Imperium in either the short or long run.

And, yes, I play DE.

[ElectricPaladin]

My vote is for the humans and once-humans that serve Chaos.

Why? A couple of reasons.

First, I want to look at my other choices:

The Imperium represents a huge culture, millions upon millions of humans living out their daily lives. I know that we tend to focus on the grimdarkest parts of the setting, but the fact is that some Imperial worlds are pretty decent places to live. There are kids who pray fervently to Him on Earth that grandma will live another three years so she can see them graduate from primary school and want to be a hero like Saint Sanguinius when they grow up. They play the Warhammer 40k equivalent of Warhammer Fantasy in their basements with their friends. They have hopes, fears, ambitions, fall in love... all sorts of beautiful stupid human ****. Even in the harsher worlds, these are still people we are talking about. They struggle to make their world a better place, or even just to get by.

As much as many of the Adeptus Astartes are - individually or chapter-wide - jerks, the fact is that they were made to protect mankind. As much as you may take issue with the Imperium's structure - and who doesn't? - they are the defenders of humanity. Some are arrogant, but many of them are humble about their role and look longingly at "mortals" as living the true, human life, while their own lives are corroded and war-torn parodies. Even the most arrogant are spending their lives in defense of innocents. There's something noble about that, however you slice it.

Tau and Eldar are in a similar position. They are fighting to protect their ways of life, their families, and their children. Are the Tau arrogant, obnoxious, and imperialistic? Yes! But, they also genuinely believe that they have the answer to all the galaxy's ills. You have to admire them, a little. Are the Eldar obnoxious, arrogant, and even more arrogant, with a little bit of arrogance on top? Do they create most of their own problems by just ****ing failing to actually talk to the galaxy's other sentients? Yes! But there are craftworlds full of baby Eldar, and mommy and daddy Eldar, and freaking shoe-making Eldar and artist Eldar and friendly lovable (for an Eldar) Eldar, and they aren't going to let those civilians down! Honestly, they have the same sympathetic quality as the Imperium: they are a society, full of millions upon millions of individuals, and they are fighting to survive in a galaxy they only kind of understand.

Daemons, Orks, and Tyranids all fall into the same category for me: they can't be the most evil because they aren't equipped to make moral choices. They are basically monsters, forces of nature. When these guys knock over your house and eat you it isn't out of malice, it's because they can't really be expected to make any other choice. It's awful, sure, but is it evil? They're not really any more evil than an earthquake or a virus. They don't have the agency.

Dark Eldar and Necrons fall into the same category as well. While their choices have been awful, they are at least a little sympathetic. Although they are definitely jerks, they are just trying to get by amidst the consequences of their terrible choices; that survival requires them to continue to do even more terrible things. Would the galaxy be better without them? Yes! Are they definitely evil? Absolutely! But, they aren't the most evil.

But the humans who serve Chaos...

These represent people who have turned against everything they were taught as "right" and "wrong," all for the sake of personal power and gratification. These are Space Marines who rampage and slaughter because it's fun. These are the scum of the galaxy, murderers and rapists and torturers and traitors. They want to see mankind groveling, forever, at the feet of the thirsting gods because the gods offered them a good deal. In my mind, they are the real evil, because they used to have moral agency, and they threw it away.

[Victor Ques Ramos]

I voted for the Daemons as chaos are the representation of all the evil feelings. They only purpose is to corrupt destroy. They only objective in the life to propagate chaos and evilness.
Said that all the factions in Warhammer 40K have they evil side as all are xenophobe, intolerant, and they want to eliminate any other faction in the universe. All factions only look for the control and supremacy over the others.

[chicop76]

I say humanity is second now, but Dark Eldar is pretty evil from being captured and actually living within the society. They don't kill everything, but torture everything. Chaos does too, but they also try to convert.

Pure evil destroys everything with no rhyme or reason which humanity fits the bill, while Chaos doesn't want to destroy, but to convert and spread.

Orcs and Nids can be seen as a force of nature, heck same can be said for daemons.

[Archon Charybdis]

At the risk of veering into oubliette territory, I think part of the disconnect in discussion here is that people are using different definitions of morality, which obviously affects what we categorize as an "evil" action. Everyone seems to be generally accepting that evilness or immorality requires a degree of volition and understanding as to the consequences of your actions, but people are disagreeing over whether or not you can have an objective morality, or if everything is relativistic (Dark Eldar aren't evil cause there's just their culture). Without getting to deep into a major philosophical discussion, it might be most productive to assume a standard of morality along the lines of the societies most of us here discussing this hail from. Something to the effect of: That which is moral is that which reduces harm and promotes a happy, healthy, cooperative, flourishing society.

[YorkNecromancer]

The Imperium represents a huge culture, millions upon millions of humans living out their daily lives. I know that we tend to focus on the grimdarkest parts of the setting, but the fact is that some Imperial worlds are pretty decent places to live. There are kids who pray fervently to Him on Earth that grandma will live another three years so she can see them graduate from primary school and want to be a hero like Saint Sanguinius when they grow up. They play the Warhammer 40k equivalent of Warhammer Fantasy in their basements with their friends. They have hopes, fears, ambitions, fall in love... all sorts of beautiful stupid human ****. Even in the harsher worlds, these are still people we are talking about. They struggle to make their world a better place, or even just to get by.

So do members of the KKK. So do members of neo-fascist groups.

I'd still call them evil. Sharing basic humanity is insufficient grounds for claiming automatic moral decency.


These represent people who have turned against everything they were taught as "right" and "wrong,"

But what if you were taught it was morally correct to be racist? If you reject that teaching, then by this definition, you are evil.

Is the general cultural consensus for "good" enough to justify it as truly moral behaviour?

By this chain of logic, anyone who disagrees with their culture could be considered evil!


These are Space Marines who rampage and slaughter because it's fun.

Because only Chaos Marines do that.

It's almost as though the Flesh Tearers, Minotaurs and Carcharadons aren't Imperial Chapters...

The Ultramarines aren't the only chapter. Neither are the Salamanders. If we're going to talk Marines, let's avoid generalisations. We all know that no chapter is like any other unless they share the Chapter Tactics rule.


murderers and rapists and torturers

It's almost as though the Imperial Guard doesn't enforce its will through the Commissarat.

Or the Dark Angels through the Interrogator-Chaplains.

Seriously, why does everyone act like the Imperium doesn't have these horrific organisations? Or that they're not as bad? The Commissars are pure, unadulterated evil! In the Guard, executing your own soldiers and ruling through terror is the Imperium's core strategy to enforce morale!


They want to see mankind groveling, forever, at the feet of the thirsting gods because the gods offered them a good deal.

How is this any different to the Ecclesiarchy? You know, the one that turns you into an Arcoflagellant if you disobey, hardwires women into Penitent Engines, calls Exterminatus on worlds unlucky enough to simply be visited by Chaos - kind of like killing everyone in America because a Chaos attack occurred in Japan. Oh that's right, the people doing it only do so because there's no other way.

It's not like they'd lie about that.

People in power never lie about their reasons.

Seriously, at the end of the day, there is no functional difference between the way Chaos Cults and Imperial Cults treat people at the end of the day.


I voted for the Daemons as chaos are the representation of all the evil feelings.

With daemons, it's a question of which came first - us or them? Are they evil because they choose to be, or because we made them that way?

If it's our fault, who's the real monster?

[Eric Cook]

Tyranids. they seek to kill and eat everything how is that not the most evil. they have no moral choices to make. Even a Dark Eldar has fear and times when they may question shoving a knife in their comrades back. But Nids only have one purpose to eat and kill everything, No alliances with other races only more food product out there for them. So i make them The most evil on the grounds of no moral choices.

[chicop76]

We made the daemons, yet they always exist. Which is why you really can't count something that was created from us.

I forgot about commisars. What gets me when people try to convince me that Tau is the most evil race and give good tidings towards humanity.

I think people just don't read at least the general fluff. Humans have to be good so I side with them.

The Imperium kills their own and others. They have no value of what is life. People scream Tau are communist, but the Empire is no democracy. If you go aginst the grain in the Empire you are marked a heretic and killed.

What humanity reminds me off is a bunch of Darth Vaders running things and killing whatever gets in their way.

My question is before Horus Heresy was the human factions actually good than. I wouldn't be surprised that the Emperor winds up to be a Daemon.

[Anggul]

People are making the huge mistake of thinking that the Dark Eldar are only so evil because they have to do it to survive. They don't. They could do what the Craftworlders and Exodites do if they wanted to. Wear a spirit stone, focus their minds, and in the end bond with an infinity circuit.

The reason they don't is that they don't want to. In their eyes, why should they suddenly start being good just because they created a dark god that killed most of their kin? They survived, so they don't care, they're going to carry on doing what they want because they can, and what they want to do is pure, sadistic evil. Sure, by not doing what the Craftworlders and Exodites do, Slaanesh slowly saps their spirits... but it just so happens that doing what they enjoy replenishes them, so it's all good in their eyes.

They are not to be pitied, they are not monsters because they have to be, they're monsters by choice.

[chicop76]

People are making the huge mistake of thinking that the Dark Eldar are only so evil because they have to do it to survive. They don't. They could do what the Craftworlders and Exodites do if they wanted to. Wear a spirit stone, focus their minds, and in the end bond with an infinity circuit.

The reason they don't is that they don't want to. In their eyes, why should they suddenly start being good just because they created a dark god that killed most of their kin? They survived, so they don't care, they're going to carry on doing what they want because they can, and what they want to do is pure, sadistic evil. Sure, by not doing what the Craftworlders and Exodites do, Slaanesh slowly saps their spirits... but it just so happens that doing what they enjoy replenishes them, so it's all good in their eyes.

They are not to be pitied, they are not monsters because they have to be, they're monsters by choice.

Reason why I said earlier they are #1 and humanity is #2. You think you would learn when daemons eat most of your race.

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

You can't say daemons = the imperium is evil though. if you follow line of thinking that eldar would be the most evil... they did create a god from their excess after all that torn a gigantic hole in the universe.

So humanity is evil because its set up as a feudal state? so does that mean that camelot or the british empire or hell the roman empire are evil? they were not democratic in the senes of modern society. So the imperium kills a bunch of heathan cultists... better to kill them then to have them manage to summon daemons and damn the entier world...


Tau as the good guys? y ou have to be kidding me... what happens to those who refuse the greater good? oh thats right they are trampled under the flag of the greater good. you cant tell me to join me or die and then pretend like your the good guy with a gun to my head saying come with me if you want to live it doesn't work that way.

Seriously we all know who the most evil faction is its the dark eldar. they literally survive off of carnage death torture and evil in all its facets. you don't see space marines having to tortue peple to death to prolong their lives... you don't see imperial guardmens fighting slaves in a slave pit. Seriously they make serial killers look like faniful uniorns prancing in a frigging field. there is a reason that the fluff portrays the dark eldar as they do while chaos is evil they are evil in service to their patron god or for glory and greed. Dark eldar do this for giggles. Look at me to survive i'm going to eat food and drink my arizona tea. not the same for the dark eldar their going to go catpure a slave from any race even their own kin... torture destroy and do all kinds of unthinkable horors and literally drink up that pain and they recieve pleasure and statisfaction from that... they look at a slave like i look at a steak... thats just mesed up one is food the other is some poor exodite you stole away and are now skinning alive....

[chicop76]

Regular Eldar is trying to attone from making a great evil. Dark Eldar not so much.

No humanity is a cross of Stalin run Russia and Spanish Inquisition with a **** attitude towards xenos. It's not them deciding to be a feudal state that that makes humanity evil. It is their actions.

The Space Marine video game says it all when the hero ultramarine possibly might die to an Inquisition thanks to the newbie Marine. Not to mention the marine movie where the chaplain and the other marine dies due to them being possibly tainted by chaos.

During the Spanish Inquisition they capturd heretics and tried to convert them even by use of torture. When they repent they was allowed to die, in some cases they didn't.

Anyway I don't see Tau shooting each other in the back.

[Charistoph]

Not to mention the marine movie where the chaplain and the other marine dies due to them being possibly tainted by chaos.

Those two were shot in the face by the Captain who was possessed by a daemon, not because they were possibly tainted by chaos (though, they were under suspicion).

[chicop76]

Those two were shot in the face by the Captain who was possessed by a daemon, not because they were possibly tainted by chaos (though, they were under suspicion).

Schematics. They thought the captain was justified, until he went all Daemon on them. Is it me or did the CSM in that movie died a bit too easily.

[Denzark]

Ah, Yorky, bless you - you are letting your real world lefty tendencies flash in here. I think to look at the respective 'levels of evil' you need to look at the motivation of any faction. Yes the imperium does some horrible sh*t. But it does it for survival of the species. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs sort of thing. Actually the imperium repreents a whole plethora of planetary systems whom the imperium doesn't necessarily get involved with as long as those systems are subservient, adopt the imperial creed, sent tithes in terms of manpower and materiel.

Take Ultramar. Home of the just. You can't say citizens of ultramar are subjected to greater evil than those who live on a chaos world such as described in GG novels. They just aren't.

Whereas Chaos is evil because the motive is the acquisition of power, the ultimate reward of which is daemonhood. It is entirely selfish. DE just do it for sh*ts and giggles so quite ammorally evil - but the Chaos are in it for themselves.

The bits of the imperium that are quite enlightened (comparitively) aren't the ones that get written about in fluff, who wants Eastenders in 40K? At least Abnett hints at some better developed worlds where they are relatively free from imperium with a capital I.

[YorkNecromancer]

Ah, Yorky, bless you - you are letting your real world lefty tendencies flash in here.

Actually, my leftist views (not tendencies) derive from my moral thinking, not the other way round. My politics derive from my moral thinking.

Debates about morality will always involve some element of personal politics - the one informs the other.

Also, if you patronise me with phrases like "bless you" and pejorative terms like "lefty" again, and you and I are going to have a problem. This has happened a number of times now, and I have ignored it, but I'm a little tired of it. Casual disrespect is unbecoming, especially in a place as usually nice to hang out as the BoLS forums. You want to disagree with my politics, fine - I love a good debate. You hate left-wing politics/view it as wrongheaded? Also fine. This is no excuse for disrepect. Please moderate your language towards me in future.


it does it for survival of the species.

"Necessity defines morality"?

But does it?


You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs sort of thing.

A quote from Stalin which he used to justify a disgusting personal moral relativism is not something I would ever use as a justification for any act.


Take Ultramar. Home of the just. You can't say citizens of ultramar are subjected to greater evil than those who live on a chaos world such as described in GG novels. They just aren't.


So a few good planets means we can just ignore all the other horrible stuff the Imperium does? We can allow the worst depravities a free pass, because "Hey, there's some places it doesn't suck!"?

Not sure I agree with you there. That would be my left-wing views coming through: that we are all equal. That we all deserve an equal chance to live somewhere that doesn't suck.

[Nabterayl]

So a few good planets means we can just ignore all the other horrible stuff the Imperium does? We can allow the worst depravities a free pass, because "Hey, there's some places it doesn't suck!"?
Well ... at the same time, it's worth asking whether the Imperium is structurally bad or simply so big that an awful lot of bad stuff happens in it. For instance, consider the Ecclesiarchy: officially, the Creed Imperialis is so imperial that it's barely a creed. The Ecclesiarchy doesn't even care whether you acknowledge the Emperor as a god so long as you acknowledge him as the sole rightful master of mankind, which is why space marine chaplains can wear a rosarius. Precious few actual priests know that, but are we now in the business of judging the institution by the behavior of its members as opposed to its actual beliefs?

Similarly, the inquisition is really ... well, inquisitorial (that is, like the actual inquisition). Yes, there are some crazies, but for the most part inquisitors seem to care about actually finding out the truth and are well aware that the hammer blow is rarely the most efficient response in the long run. As Ravenor says, you can spend a few months taking down a cult, and then you spend decades repairing the damage. Etc.

[bfmusashi]

There is no place in the 41st millenium that doesn't suck. I thought that was the whole point. 2nd at least made it clear that the universe might be a great big ball of suck, but you can have a jetbike and kick a daemon in the head before the suck finds you.
I'm voting Dark Eldar. They're a race of survivors that literally live off the suffering of others. They do this without intermediaries or illusion, they know what the result of their actions are and choose not to find another way of living. Humans and Orks are depicted as too ignorant or apathetic to do any better, Daemons and Tyranids are more forces of nature, and the Tau believe in an equality that puts them above all others. After Iyanden came out I thought the desperation of the Eldar became clearer so I can't be upset with them right now.

[ElectricPaladin]

Actually, my leftist views (not tendencies) derive from my moral thinking, not the other way round. My politics derive from my moral thinking...

Take it as a compliment. He clearly subscribes to the false logic that us leftists are merely idealists who will eventually grow up, become jaded and cynical, and start voting Republican. He's calling you an idealist and a utopian, while saying that he hasn't got the guts to believe in ideals any more. Good for us - fie on him!

[Denzark]

Also, if you patronise me with phrases like "bless you" and pejorative terms like "lefty" again, and you and I are going to have a problem. This has happened a number of times now, and I have ignored it, but I'm a little tired of it. Please moderate your language towards me in future.

Jesus wept MaltonYorkcromancer. Seriously I actually respect your views and didn't deliberately with my epic vocabulary, set out to cause you offence - I can think of many worse things to call someone than lefty. I sincerely apologise, and will try to avoid this. On the condition you don't take offence to something as benign as lefty. Lefty is as lefty does natch?

"Necessity defines morality"?

But does it?

Look people have said Tyranids and Orks instinctively fight as a biological imperative. Arguably the will to survive is a human biological imperative. The imperium has chosen the method they best think will allow them to do so. Disagreeing with the method doesn't make it evil if they are doing it as necessity and they can't help themselves any more than a tyranid can help stripping a world of life. Misguided, but evil? Depends if they deliberately perpetuate the status quo to achieve an ends, as opposed to genuinely believing they have no choice.

A quote from Stalin which he used to justify a disgusting personal moral relativism is not something I would ever use as a justification for any act.

Allow me to elaborate. This is a wargame, the imperium is a state at war. Constant war. You must therefore apply some military thinking to their position. It is a regrettable fact that sometimes militarily you have to sacrifice resource to achieve your endstate. That can be time, materiel or unfortunately manpower. Fact. People talk about baiting their opponents in 40K with a throwaway unit. People tarpit. This is sacrifice. So the imperium does it on a grand scale. Is it better that 1000 psykers a day feed the emperor's psychic vampire habit or that the untold billions in the imperium suffer demonic incursion because his psychic protection isn't there? Once you acknowledge there is some sacrifice to be made, you are merely arguing what is an appropriate level of scale. Hence the egg comment is not meant to be flippant.

So a few good planets means we can just ignore all the other horrible stuff the Imperium does? We can allow the worst depravities a free pass, because "Hey, there's some places it doesn't suck!"?

No I am saying that there is a 'Sun' Factor here. GW will clearly only publish what makes good reading, which is clearly going to be the extremes. So there could be untold planets in the imperium where the adminstratum influence is minimal and the standard of living and relative imposition on personal freedoms is quite acceptable.

Not sure I agree with you there. That would be my left-wing views coming through: that we are all equal. That we all deserve an equal chance to live somewhere that doesn't suck.


Take it as a compliment. He clearly subscribes to the false logic that us leftists are merely idealists who will eventually grow up, become jaded and cynical, and start voting Republican. He's calling you an idealist and a utopian, while saying that he hasn't got the guts to believe in ideals any more. Good for us - fie on him!

EP thanks for the use of 'fie' there is not enough of it. He should take it as a compliment, I like lefty idealists because principled people are always worthy of respect. Its the ones like Tony Blair who talk the talk, 'redistribute' my wealth as part of their social engineering, whilst developing a personal £10m property portfolio I can't stand. Hypocrites the lot of 'em.

[ElectricPaladin]

EP thanks for the use of 'fie' there is not enough of it. He should take it as a compliment, I like lefty idealists because principled people are always worthy of respect. Its the ones like Tony Blair who talk the talk, 'redistribute' my wealth as part of their social engineering, whilst developing a personal £10m property portfolio I can't stand. Hypocrites the lot of 'em.

I aim to please!

[YorkNecromancer]

I sincerely apologise, and will try to avoid this.

Apology accepted. :)


Misguided, but evil? Depends if they deliberately perpetuate the status quo to achieve an ends, as opposed to genuinely believing they have no choice.

The implications are strongly that things are deliberate - the High Lords of Terra are, in the end, flawed humans, looking to keep power for themselves. Even if they are doing it because they have no choice, well - still evil, because they are presiding over a civilisation which we KNOW to be inferior to human civilisations of the past (for example, just after the Unification Wars, or - Throne save us - during the Dark Age of Technology, which was, of course, a golden age for those living during it.) "Best we can manage" is merely a commentary on either the High Lords' indolence, their incompetence, or both.


Allow me to elaborate. This is a wargame, the imperium is a state at war. Constant war. You must therefore apply some military thinking to their position. It is a regrettable fact that sometimes militarily you have to sacrifice resource to achieve your endstate. That can be time, materiel or unfortunately manpower. Fact. People talk about baiting their opponents in 40K with a throwaway unit. People tarpit. This is sacrifice. So the imperium does it on a grand scale. Is it better that 1000 psykers a day feed the emperor's psychic vampire habit or that the untold billions in the imperium suffer demonic incursion because his psychic protection isn't there? Once you acknowledge there is some sacrifice to be made, you are merely arguing what is an appropriate level of scale. Hence the egg comment is not meant to be flippant.

Agreed - the scale is the issue - and neither daemons or chaos marines are anywhere near as successful at inflicting horror as the Imperium; Chaos Warbands are too limited is size by comparison, and the Imperium clearly has the Daemon situation mostly under control (or else there would be no Imperium to speak of). It achieves this through the brutal exercise of cruel power.

Politicians will always justify their own evils in the name of stopping the evil of others; it doesn't mean they're good by comparison - just better at PR, disinformation, and lying.

[Denzark]

I think there's a distinction to be made here between Chaos and the followers of Chaos. People turn to Chaos because their lives suck and the Imperium offers no structural emotional support. The Creed Imperialis' answer to you when you say, "Father, my life sucks ... what should I do about it?" is to say, "Your life doesn't suck, my child. Your life is exactly as it needs to be for the glory of the Emperor." It is only Chaos that is willing to say, "Yes, your life does suck, and that's not okay. Here is a solution."

And Chaos is quite right. Life in the Imperium does suck, and it's not okay.

That said, it's also true that those who stick around with Chaos the longest invariably turn into raving lunatics and monsters. People turn to Chaos for genuinely good reasons, I think - a response to the myriad injustices that Imperial society as a whole perpetrates upon them. I find myself hard pressed to call the devotees of Chaos evil for that reason. Chaos, now, Chaos itself ... I think that's another matter.

I think that this is quite telling. Chaos itself and those who follow/worship it in the full understanding of what it is, are evil. You could postulate there is a proportion of 'rebels' who align themselves because that's all they have as an alternative to an unaccomodating imperium - but i know of no examples of 'rebels' who aren't simply used and sacrificed by fully aware chaos worshippers, or in becoming aware, turn into the real thing.

If that is the case and if you agree that the aim of chaos is self perpetuating power - then the options you mention above, ie chaos offering a solution to how much life sucks under the imperium - all ends in the same result. Worship of and personal sacrifice to a power until you end up dead, daemon or spawn.

I can't reconcile this rebel option as misguided people with no other option - being less evil than the imperium. The vast majority of imperial pawns have no other option, those 'rebels' who are self aware enough to buck the system in the chaos direction, are just prey to their solution.

[FTGT]

There is no place in the 41st millenium that doesn't suck. I thought that was the whole point. 2nd at least made it clear that the universe might be a great big ball of suck, but you can have a jetbike and kick a daemon in the head before the suck finds you.

This. Grimdark is Grim and dark.

I love these debates, With Tyranids, Orks, and even the Imperium, a large motivation, in the grand scale anyway, is survival in a galaxy out to get them and acting out of their nature. Dark Eldar on the other hand, could chose a more moral path. Some sort of do (Incubi can come off as some of the most twistedly moral Dark Eldar, which is saying something). The point is, they know what they're doing is hurting other sentient beings (themselves included) and they like doing it. And yet, they also do it to preserve their immortal souls and stave off the grasp of Slaanesh. So there is an element of survival in inflicting pain, but they also derive pleasure from it.

Daemons are elemental to some degree, which could put them in the Orks and Tyranids category, except their elements of evil. They are evil incarnate. So I guess I go Daemons?

[YorkNecromancer]

Daemons are elemental to some degree

Yeah. See, I always assumed Daemons were the way they were because of the Imperium's nature - if fascism breeds violence, greed, despair, and backbiting, well - who's really to blame for the fact that humanity's emotions are all so cruel and unstable; especially if they never were beforehand.

"We create our own daemons" essentially. This is all but confirmed by the Emperor's original plan to institute a rationalist society; he understood that humanity defined the Warp. It just never seemed to occur to him that maybe if people were happier, daemons might have less reason to be so destructive.

[Arkhan Land]

The most evil faction in the GW universe is... the Slann!

Creating all these races and then peacin out before leaving decent instructions! Buncha Jerks

[-Tom-]

The point is, they know what they're doing is hurting other sentient beings (themselves included) and they like doing it.?

From their point of view, the other species are barely sentient. Human mon-keighs aren't all that far evolved from fish. So, sure, they're burning ants with a magnifying glass (although the scales of 'might' based on population size are reversed in that analogy), and enjoying it, but that puts them on par with an 8 year old kid as far as 'evilness' goes in their own context.

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

No apparently we are all missing the point because the imperium is evil and the most evil of them all blah blah blah... really so the imperium who do stuff for survival are evil? does that make FDR evil? What about your beloved Harry Truman? he dropped not 1 but 2 atomic bombs on the Japanese.... Do you consider him a genocidal or a homicidal maniac? what about Churchill? he bombed the German people who were not soldiers? All 3 of those men committed heinous acts during war time. Are they evil? Their orders resulted in the dearths of thousands of people....


I would most most certainly consider their actions to be comparable to those of the Imperium yet I doubt any of the Imperium is evil crowd will agree I'm sure they will come out to defend their actions as just and as the ends justify the means.... Ya the imperium is evil.... Yet you have the Dark eldar who are prancing faeries by comparison..... yes because slavers are much better then fascists and those who seriously get off and live off of terror torture and suffering are just paragons of virtue in comparison to the imperium...


Seriously is all the imperium hate due to getting your ***** beat last edition by guard and grey knights and wolves? Get over it read the damn fluff do you see books written let alone fluff written where humanity is evil and chaos orks dark eldar and tau are the victims?

[-Tom-]

No apparently we are all missing the point because the imperium is evil and the most evil of them all blah blah blah... really so the imperium who do stuff for survival are evil? does that make FDR evil? What about your beloved Harry Truman? he dropped not 1 but 2 atomic bombs on the Japanese.... Do you consider him a genocidal or a homicidal maniac? what about Churchill? he bombed the German people who were not soldiers? All 3 of those men committed heinous acts during war time. Are they evil? Their orders resulted in the dearths of thousands of people....


I would most most certainly consider their actions to be comparable to those of the Imperium yet I doubt any of the Imperium is evil crowd will agree I'm sure they will come out to defend their actions as just and as the ends justify the means.... Ya the imperium is evil.... Yet you have the Dark eldar who are prancing faeries by comparison..... yes because slavers are much better then fascists and those who seriously get off and live off of terror torture and suffering are just paragons of virtue in comparison to the imperium...


Seriously is all the imperium hate due to getting your ***** beat last edition by guard and grey knights and wolves? Get over it read the damn fluff do you see books written let alone fluff written where humanity is evil and chaos orks dark eldar and tau are the victims?

Is this written in direct reply to my post? You hadn't quoted me or made it explicit, but it's been a while since any previous posts had mentioned humans, whereas I did make mention of 'mon-keigh'...?

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

@tom no not directed towards you but towards those who miss the entire concept of dark eldar and are delusional enough to believe the imperium of man is the uberest of evils in the galaxy.

[-Tom-]

@tom no not directed towards you but towards those who miss the entire concept of dark eldar and are delusional enough to believe the imperium of man is the uberest of evils in the galaxy.

The first problem really with the whole concept of this thread is that it is applying a human concept based on human morality to a universe that contains a lot of non-humans. None of the races in the list, if they could vote, would vote for themselves as being the most evil.

The second problem is that the whole concept of 'evil' is pretty much a load of rubbish anyway. Looking at another fictional setting, but on a purely fictional earth, let's take the X-Men universe. Magneto isn't evil. You might, at a young age when the world was very black and white, have said that he was the bad guy, and evil. But really, is he 'evil?'. He has good intentions for his kind (the mutants), but he has very different views about what he will to do protect them than Xavier does. People might be 'misguided' about the means to achieve noble intentions, they might be greedy, callous, delusional, or a whole host of other things that lead to negative acts without being 'evil'. Even a sociopathic serial killer, one may argue is that way due to their brain chemistry and maybe a horrific childhood, that has damaged them emotionally and leads them to view the world in a different way - i.e. to some extent they have become brain damaged as a victim of a traumatic event, which is the spark for any acts they perform in later life.

Hell, even Stalin, or Hitler, probably didn't wake up of a morning, raise their morning cup of tea and proclaim "Gentlemen, I have me a hankering for some serious evil doing today".

[bfmusashi]

Yeah. See, I always assumed Daemons were the way they were because of the Imperium's nature

Point of contention. Daemons are not only manufactured. All races contribute to the ruinous powers without exception, and the turmoil in the warp starts during the War in Heaven. Humans aren't supposed to be more than nascent at that point. But, the warp is also timeless so cause and effect mean nothing there.

[Nabterayl]

The second problem is that the whole concept of 'evil' is pretty much a load of rubbish anyway.
The concept of "evil" is certainly subjective, but I don't think it is on that basis rubbish. Believing in evil requires one to believe that some moral stances (maybe not a lot, but at least one) are wrong - they ought not to be held, even honestly and in good faith. I don't think it's rubbish to say that the truth or falseness of a moral belief is to be judged on whether the belief is held honestly or in good faith. Believing that something is good does not make it so.

There's a lot of room to argue about what does make something good, which is both the great flaw of this thread and the reason it exists - this is really just a thread about what different posters use as their standard for judging something evil. But I don't think there are very many people who would argue that good and evil are to be judged on the basis of sincerity of belief.

I agree that Hitler didn't wake up and say, "I am now going to do evil by doing X." He said, "I am now going to do good by doing X." At most I imagine he said, "I am going to do X, which will result in a lot of evil, but even more good, so that - if only slightly - more good is done than evil." To call those acts evil is to say, "I understand that you sincerely believe yourself to be doing good, Mr. Hitler. But you are wrong."

That is not something one should ever say lightly. But it is also not something one should say never.

[Charistoph]

I agree that Hitler didn't wake up and say, "I am now going to do evil by doing X." He said, "I am now going to do good by doing X." At most I imagine he said, "I am going to do X, which will result in a lot of evil, but even more good, so that - if only slightly - more good is done than evil." To call those acts evil is to say, "I understand that you sincerely believe yourself to be doing good, Mr. Hitler. But you are wrong."

Actually, Hitler was probably trained from youth to consider certain races of humanity as "lesser", especially the Jews. Racism has been quite prevalent throughout history, and part of it is for the survival of the individual's family and securing the resources for such. Jews were an easy target due to their diaspora and being linked to the death/murder of Europe's God really didn't help. Add on all the other unusuals and strangers that city-dwellers tended to not see as "their own" to the list, and it gets bigger. This went on for most of history for every country.

Hitler was born in such an environment. Add a country that was hammered in to being less than nothing just for being good in war, and it was ripe for such racism to be given head, even in his own mind. I believe Hitler had written that he thought that America would embrace, or at least accept, the genocide of the Holocaust.

Even today, we see similar bigotry trying to be played out in our own countries. Certain parties are being blamed for things of which they are guilty of being different or just plain good at their jobs. Some of it is based on the color of one's skin at birth, some of it is based on wealth (no matter if it was earned or inherited), some of it is based on religious convictions (or against them), and some of it is based on lifestyle choices.

So, how truly "evil" was Hitler? Personally, I think he was quite evil, if for no other reason he had some training in the Ten Commandments and Christianity, even if others helped him to think that they only applied to your own people. And he used their pain simply to gain power.

[YorkNecromancer]

but towards those who miss the entire concept of dark eldar

I haven't missed the concept of the Dark Eldar. I just think it's pretty stupid to say that "this race is the most evil because they say they are" or "because the game writers say they are". What, am I not allowed to make up my own mind, judging each faction on its own behaviour? Must I agree with GW's opinion on who the villains are?

I haven't 'missed' the concept. I just don't agree with it, because I took the time, and thought about it, and concluded that the Imperium is worse, because it does more evil things than the Dark Eldar.

This is without even getting into how pants-on-head stupid it is having a race who are defined as "dark". "Oh, the normal Eldar can't possibly be evil, because look at their name. It doesn't have the word 'dark' in it! You can't be evil unless you wear a cape and twirl your moustache."

Ridiculous.


Seriously is all the imperium hate due to getting your ***** beat last edition by guard and grey knights and wolves? Get over it read the damn fluff do you see books written let alone fluff written where humanity is evil and chaos orks dark eldar and tau are the victims?

Ummm... I'm an Imperial player. I hate Chaos (both models and fluff) and always have. I own a frankly ridiculous number of Imperial models, including a Deathwatch army, an Imperial Guard army, an IG Armoured Company, two preheresy Legion armies (Blood Angels and Iron Hands - and I'm starting an Emperor's Children one because my girlfriend likes purple). I have been an Imperial player since I was 11 - that's 24 years now.

I don't think they're evil 'due to getting [my] ***** beat last edition'; in modern parlance, I was 'the one who knocked'.

I think the Imperium is evil because the way it conducts itself is utterly reprehensible. Does that mean individual Imperial citizens are evil? Well, let me put it to you this way: Oskar Schindler.

It is entirely possible for good people to be members of an evil culture: Oskar Schindler, undeniably an exploiter of Jewish slave labourers, and paid up member of Hitler's party... but the man saved thousands from the gas chambers. He was a hero, but he was part of an evil, evil culture.

I don't hate the Imperium - far, far from it. I just think they're the most evil faction, and there is a weight of evidence that suggests my opinion is valid. You disagree? Cool. Your opinion is just as valid. That's the thing about subjective opinions - there is no 'right' answer to this.

I'll be honest, I'm amazed the Eldar haven't recieved a single vote yet! This is the same race that cheerfully uses every other sapient species as bulletproof shields, creating wars of distraction between planets who otherwise would have been peaceful, just to stop it coming to them. If you view survival as a justification for any action, no matter how vile, then you're probably okay with that. If you wonder about those innocent Tau and human children, burned to spare a single ancient Eldar who used to torture others for fun prior to The Fall, you might not.

This thread is about morality, which by its nature is a discussion: there are some agreed upon definite moral virtues, but just because a lot of people agree on them, doesn't mean they are 'true' in an objective sense.

Consider the following horrible thought experiment.

You have been kidnapped by a 'Jigsaw'-style serial killer. You are put in an airtight bank vault with a child. You do not know this child, but they are scared, and crying for their mother. There is nothing else in the bank vault, and you are only in your underwear. There is a tiny window, heavily barred, not wide enough for your arms. On the other side is a second vault, filled with five scared children.

The serial killer then gives you the choice. Your vault will open in ten minutes, regardless of what you do. However, in five minutes, the other vault will be set on fire, and all the children in it will die. If you kill the child in the room with you, by twisting its head around 270 degrees, both vaults will be opened immediately.

What do you do? Do you kill one child to save five, or do you refuse to play the game, and let those children die? It is in your power to save them - but you must commit an evil act to do so.

You can use this thought experiment to test the limits of your own morality by simply altering the people in either vault - if you would let five children die, what about ten? What about twenty? What if they weren't children, but adults? What if they weren't children but grandmothers? What if they weren't children, but US soldiers? What if they weren't children, but lawyers? What if they weren't children, but lawyers who had been chosen because they had disabled children they cared for at home?

It's a bit chilling to realise that we rate people's lives on a hierarchy. That we simply view some people's lives as 'worth more' than others, especially when we make those decisions based on archetypes/stereotypes of what we believe those people 'are like'? Would we allow the soliders to die because they are trained? Would we allow the grandmothers to die because they are old, they've already had 'a good run'?

What if the killer didn't ask you to kill one child, but two, and the person in the other vault was your mother? How many anonymous children is your mother's life worth?

Morality and ethics. They get dark when you're forced to properly think about them.



The second problem is that the whole concept of 'evil' is pretty much a load of rubbish anyway... People might be 'misguided' about the means to achieve noble intentions, they might be greedy, callous, delusional, or a whole host of other things that lead to negative acts without being 'evil'. Even a sociopathic serial killer, one may argue is that way due to their brain chemistry and maybe a horrific childhood, that has damaged them emotionally and leads them to view the world in a different way - i.e. to some extent they have become brain damaged as a victim of a traumatic event, which is the spark for any acts they perform in later life.

Hell, even Stalin, or Hitler, probably didn't wake up of a morning, raise their morning cup of tea and proclaim "Gentlemen, I have me a hankering for some serious evil doing today".

Josef Fritzl.
The Moor Murderers.
Fred and Rose West.
Jimmy Savile.
Anders Breivik.
Unit 731.
Arial Castro.

These are just the ones off the top of my head.

I used to think that there was no such thing as 'evil'; that people were only the product of their upbringing, etc...

I don't believe that any more. There are people out there who hurt and torment others for no other reason than they enjoy it. Not only that, but they know what they're doing is wrong, and the sense of power 'getting away with it' confers is part of the appeal.

Evil is complicated, and yes, there are many people who could be called 'well-intentioned' who have engaged in some appalling acts.

But there is such a thing as real evil. There really is.

[eldargal]

Dark Eldar.

'nids are animals acting on instinct, albeit also sentient, no more evil than a shark or a spider. The hive mind itself may be evil but that's a stretch frankly
Orks aren't evil, they are also slaves to the instincts coded within them. They aren't good either, 40k is about shades of grey.
Chaos is the manifestation of our desires, it is no more or less evil than we are. It is literally what we make it, just what we make it with sentience.
Tau fight to defend themselves.
The Imperium fights to survive and does a great many truly horrific things. Are they evil? Perhaps, some of the leaders are yes. But are they any more evil than anyone else? Probably not.
Eldar of the non Dark varieties? They will happily sacrifice a million humans to save a single eldar life. Does that make them evil? From the perspective of a human, probably, but then they are fighting to surive just the like IoM which will happily exterminate another species.
Necrons? They are fighting to reclaim what they consider theirs and survive just like everyone else with the added complication of largely being automatonis controlled by nutjob robo-monarchs.

You can make an argument for basically any species in 40k being evil, even the Tay, yes, really. That's the whole point really. There are no good guys in 40k, just people fighting to survive. On an individual level many of them may be good guys, on an institutional level many of them may even be able to set aside theri differences with others and band together against a common foe. But they aren't good.

Which brings us to Dark Eldar. They aren't fighting to survive, that their survival is linked to fighting is an irony. They are doing what they have done possibly for millions of years. Dominate, subjugate and torture. They give no ****s, they do whatever they want to whomever they want. All other species are chattel to them. They aren't acting on instinct, they are trying to get high. They aren't trying to defend themselves, they are trying to get high. They are utterly, absolutely and irrevocably evil.

[Archon Charybdis]

I'll be honest, I'm amazed the Eldar haven't recieved a single vote yet! This is the same race that cheerfully uses every other sapient species as bulletproof shields, creating wars of distraction between planets who otherwise would have been peaceful, just to stop it coming to them. If you view survival as a justification for any action, no matter how vile, then you're probably okay with that. If you wonder about those innocent Tau and human children, burned to spare a single ancient Eldar who used to torture others for fun prior to The Fall, you might not.

This isn't a thread about "Is X Faction Evil?" It's who is the MOST evil. As others have already pointed out repeatedly, everyone is evil to some extent in the 40K universe, that's the whole point, but I think you'd have a hard case to make by claiming regular Eldar are the MOST evil. And as an aside, pretty sure there are no (or almost no) Eldar alive from prior to the fall outside of Commoragh. Eldrad was pre-Fall, and was considered astonishingly old, and it only took him being the most powerful non-Emperor psyker in the galaxy to achieve that feat.

[-Tom-]

I believe Hitler had written that he thought that America would embrace, or at least accept, the genocide of the Holocaust.

America did endorse a eugenics program of their own in the 50's. Which, again, supports the statements that morality is subjective.






Consider the following horrible thought experiment.

...

Morality and ethics. They get dark when you're forced to properly think about them.


Kudos on a well written post that nicely adds another layer to pointing out the subjectivity of 'good' and 'evil'. :)




Josef Fritzl.
The Moor Murderers.
Fred and Rose West.
Jimmy Savile.
Anders Breivik.
Unit 731.
Arial Castro.

These are just the ones off the top of my head.


I still disagree that one can just say people are 'evil'. Perhaps my issue is really one of practicality. I would like to prevent "evils" being done in the world, the idealist part of me thinks it'd be great if everyone could just get along in harmony. But, to prevent them I think we need to understand them. Let's take Savile as an example from the above list, why did he do what he did? Did he aim to hurt people? Or, was that just a consequence of his selfish actions? A cocktail of selfishness, callousness in disregard for the impact of his actions on others, and a disposition (genetic? / environmental - upbringing?) towards minors. (To play devil's advocate here, if sexual attraction towards minors is a result of genetics then it would be wrong to label that is 'evil' in itself, in just the same way as homosexuality is not a choice - although there are sections of the christian community who would say that being gay is evil - however, one does have a choice of ones own actions in regard to that attraction, and that is where we come to the selfishness and callousness).




Evil is complicated, and yes, there are many people who could be called 'well-intentioned' who have engaged in some appalling acts.

But there is such a thing as real evil. There really is.

Perhaps. I think we're probably not really disagreeing as such. In fact we're agreeing that the term 'evil' is overused to generalise misguided, well-intentioned people, as well as people who enjoy hurting others (although I would still add a further stipulation here that there will be people who are mentally impaired who may enjoy hurting people because that is how their brain is wired, without properly understanding that they are hurting people).





On another note, regarding Xenos, let's consider a parallel with hunting on Earth. There are people who will take a gun out, and shoot a deer, for fun. Some people would say that hunting for sport is evil, some wouldn't. It's a contentious issue. Taking a gun out and shooting people for fun isn't so contentious, it's generally agreed that is murder. What's the difference? Species? Presumed levels of sentience?

On that basis, Eldar and Dark Eldar have the same excuse as a hunter does on Earth. Tau, I'm less sure about because they would view humans as 'equal' enough to let them into their empire I believe?

(We've already covered that Orks and 'nids are acting out their nature... you certainly wouldn't call a lion evil if it were to attack a human.)

[YorkNecromancer]

Perhaps my issue is really one of practicality. I would like to prevent "evils" being done in the world, the idealist part of me thinks it'd be great if everyone could just get along in harmony. But, to prevent them I think we need to understand them.

You do raise some good points. But in the case of Fred West, The Moors Murderers and others, they absolutely enjoyed the harm they were causing, and more so because it was wrong. Just because they had "A cocktail of selfishness, callousness in disregard for the impact of his actions on others", it doesn't absolve them of the accusation of evil.

I suppose it depends on what your definition of 'evil' is. Mine would include factors of premeditation, lack of empathy, cruelty, sadism, pleasure gained from the act, selfishness, and an awareness that the act is one defined as morally wrong by the majority of people in the land. (Interesting sidenote - Which is actually why insanity pleas are so hard to pull off successfully. I seem to recall a lawyer on Radio 4 discussing that pleading insanity in the UK is possibly the easiest way to guarantee that your client is off to prison, because the burden of proof falls to person pleading insanity, to show they have no awareness of ethics - which is next to impossible to achieve. I seem to recall that something like 4% of cases where the defendant pleades insanity are successful - and less than 1% of defendants will plead insanity in the first place).

All I will say is that I have met someone I would personally regard as truly evil. What he did, nothing can forgive or make acceptable. He did it because he wanted to, and because he could.

[-Tom-]

All I will say is that I have met someone I would personally regard as truly evil. What he did, nothing can forgive or make acceptable. He did it because he wanted to, and because he could.

Yeah, you know what, I'm going to change my stance on this. I retract my earlier comment about 'evil being a load of rubbish'. Well, actually, I'll change it: that notion of the "Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha, I will destroy the world, because it's what I do!" evil villain from cartoons of childhood is a load of rubbish. And, I stand by the point that it can also be complicated; means justifying the ends, misguided good intentions, sort of stuff. But, yeah, there are just some *******s out there who are malicious. I'm happy enough to chalk them up as 'evil'.

[SON OF ROMULOUS]

this is my view the empire kills kittens they do it as a means to an end. the goal is to win the war and survive not be destroyed. Dark Eldar kill kittens because it amuses them and they get a sick twisted perversion out of it. For me i look at it through their intentions one does it to survive thats why they destroy whole planets. the other destroy whole planets because they can and because it amuses them to do so. for me thats the defining example.

[YorkNecromancer]

Yeah, you know what, I'm going to change my stance on this. I retract my earlier comment about 'evil being a load of rubbish'. Well, actually, I'll change it: that notion of the "Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha, I will destroy the world, because it's what I do!" evil villain from cartoons of childhood is a load of rubbish.

This, I totally agree with. Though in the right circumstances, those characters can be a lot of fun (Hi, Davros! Hi, Angelus!)


this is my view the empire kills kittens they do it as a means to an end. the goal is to win the war and survive not be destroyed. Dark Eldar kill kittens because it amuses them and they get a sick twisted perversion out of it. For me i look at it through their intentions one does it to survive thats why they destroy whole planets. the other destroy whole planets because they can and because it amuses them to do so. for me thats the defining example.

A fairly solid take on the situation; thought it does suggest that the end result of both Empires is the same, (lots of dead people) in which case, I would argue that the scale of the Imperium's depredations render them the greater evil (simply because they cause more harm to more people) - although perhaps the Dark Eldar's motivation (or lack of it) renders them the more loathsome.

Kind of like comparing Genghis Khan to Jeffrey Dahmer.

[eldargal]

The issue with the Imperium is that it is not a monolithic empire that ruthlessly oppresses all within it's borders. It is a Feudal empire with a range of planets from dystopian hell hole to relatively idyllic (Ultramar). Believe in the Emperor and pay your taxes and you get left alone, that isn't evil. Your life may be hell regardless but not necessariluy because the IoM actively makes it so.

Given I wouldn't even say it is certain the IoM is loathsome to more people than the Dark Eldar, given that the Dark Eldar have been known to wipe out entire hive worlds while those actively oppressed by the IoM may be relatively small. Personally I think motivations count as much as scale. Allowing a million people to die through incompetence is terrible but whether it is evil is up for debate. Murdering a tenth of that number or even less is most certainly evil. Tortunng them to death for lulz even more so.

[chicop76]

Eldar isn't good, but not as evil as Dark Eldar. It's just not the name, but what both races do. I still think Eldar is more even than atau do to Eldar's manipulation of other races. Well Tau gives you a choice when it expands into your section of space.

Kroot Mercenaries keep pretty much the identity they had when working with the Tau. What's worse they still hire out their services to other races. Heck said kroot have fought against Tau.

[benn grimm]

Space Marines, without a doubt. Super space jocks? In tight fitting black bodysuits? Massive xenophobia? Compensation issues with the massive boltguns much? All this For the Emperor stuff? They are clearly of the dark side. Nuff said. ;)

[Archon Charybdis]

Personally I think motivations count as much as scale. Allowing a million people to die through incompetence is terrible but whether it is evil is up for debate.

Also, the at least perceived (if not actual) necessity of performing acts like Exterminatus and having Inquisitorial oversight to prevent daemonic incursions would be a mitigating factor in the eyes of most people. The acts are still heinous and undesirable in the extreme, but if they're seen as better than the alternative (and may in fact be better) in terms of mitigating human suffering, then I have a hard time calling it evil.