maglag wrote:
The thing is that in 40K they are evil on all levels. The Imperium isn't just out to kill everything else, they regularly kill each other.
So does any sufficiently large mass of people. Imperium's internal conflicts killing as many people as they do, is a matter of the setting's sheer scale.
maglag wrote: spech merines genocide little boys, ghey knights kill holy women to gain the favour of daemonic forces,
Cherry-picking pieces of fluff universally ridiculed even by the tabletop players does not show your confidence in your argument. That is before considering the fact that the codex fluff is generally trying to be maximally METAL rather than even somewhat consistent or sensible (I still kek every time I see spaceships with fuckhuge guns that are loaded by teams of workers), and books - at least those I found to be worth reading - paint quite a different picture by trying to make some sense of the setting.
And in that picture I just don't find anything especially "insane" about the Imperium. Like, most of major historical empires from Roman to Chinese, were more of a clusterfuck and more ruthless towards the majority of their population for most of their existences. Being caught by the black ships suck, but it affects a tiny percentage of the population, being under deliberately crushing taxation so that slave markets are filled by insolvent debtors affected whole provinces.
And the Imperium is not the only fucking civilization in 40k, for that matter.
maglag wrote:Plus I believe that Xeleeverse, Boloverse and Lensmenverse don't have 10 000+ years wars with several of the starting named characters still kicking around and refusing to compromise or forgive anything ever.
Lensmenverse was already covered.
Xeeleeverse had humanity trying to zergrush the godlike titular race (who are to this day considered to be the golden standard of overpowered tech) for something like a million years, despite considerable evidence that Xeelee consider the conflict as little more than pest control and can fairly easily smash the whole Milky Way galaxy if they so choose. It also featured a race that helped humans to become this xenophobic holding a grudge to the point they prioritized killing as many humans as they could over their own survival, even as the whole universe was dying.
In Boloverse 90% of aliens mindlessly and relentlessly attacked everyone they met, and when humans finally encountered a race that was smart enough to even consider the idea of diplomacy and nonviolent first contact, it ended with both sides genociding each other to tens of thousands - at most - out of many trilliions. Well, at least it did feature some compromise and forgiveness, but only after a whole spiral arm was burned to the ground.