Making evil communities without making them totally evil.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:22 pm

While you can argue about the quality of life in various factions, Orkish life in the 40k universe is the worst. They subject themselves to constant pain and misery from the moment they first open their eyes until they finally die. They literally live a Nietzschian existence where suffering without death makes them stronger. Indeed, only through suffering and pain do they even grow up.

It's the worst possible imaginable existence. The only thing to look forward to from a job well done is becoming physically larger and tougher so that it is possible for you to be exposed to greater and greater agonies in the future. It's like actually being a D&D character except that you don't ever take time off to have sex with whores because your species reproduces asexually.

Being a human on an Ork-dominated planet is not all that bad. I mean, you're a slave that is forced to work hard, and your masters may to forget to feed you for months at a time, and your "reward" for a job well done is that giant space ogres are going to try to kill you with titanic and ridiculous weapons. But it's 40k, and even that isn't nearly as bad as it gets. But actually being an Ork is the worst existence available. It's worse even than being a pain slave on a Slaanesh Daemon world. At least there you have the glimmer of a hope of escape or of being transferred to being something less constantly agonizing like a rape slave. As an Ork there isn't even that, if for some reason no one is around to torture you to near the point of death you'll be biologically compelled to do it to yourself because it's part of your species' lifecycle.

40k is the most pointlessly grimdark universe I have ever seen. The best life is actually had by the Tyranids. You're a giant hive mind that eats people, but you aren't actually being tortured.

-Username17

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:22 pm

OgreBattle wrote:
Stahlseele wrote:As a neutered worker drone, untill you die.
and though there are raging arguments about the validity of your statement's source, compared to everything else in 40k that is a pretty good life.

But the best life is to be an ork.

The best as in "Conan, what is best in life?"

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:51 pm

I thought 40k's grimdark was quite sensible for the game it supports. Life is clearly horrible but it's also possibly very much worse if anyone else wins the battle today, so you may as well stand up and get your head blown off FOR THE EMPIRE!

Bloodbowl's grimdark is better though. Oh yes. They let you play halflings, who are in it for the sticky buns at half time, if any of them live that long.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 1:19 pm

From Culture vs. Kultur: Thoughts on Orkish Society by Uthan the Perverse, a controversial Eldar philosopher

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.

Sources:
Codex: Orks (4th Edition), p. 8;
Waaargh: Orks p. 62

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:08 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:While you can argue about the quality of life in various factions, Orkish life in the 40k universe is the worst.

I don't know, man, I think as far as 'de jure non-punitive existence' goes it still might be worse to live as a human in Hive City. Even though Orks cannot progress without constant pain and torture, you suffer slightly less physical torture in the form of overwork, pollution, and deprivation in return for having your thoughts constantly read and living in fear of getting you and your entire block blammed for one heretical thought.

Remind me why the Imperium is the best possible outcome for mankind again?

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:22 pm

Because they kill everything that's not human and everything else kills everything that's human. So per se Imperium is FOR MANKIND the only feasible chance of survival . .

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 2:45 pm

But you're still living under a thought police more oppressive than George Orwell ever dreamed of and you're dying an accelerated death from overwork, pollution, and stress. Not to mention the random deaths and near-total social isolation.

I can think of non-Imperium fates worse for WH40K humans. But it's not hard to find non-Imperium fates that are better, either.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:04 pm

Orks use them about as much as slaves as the Imperium does . .
Tau use them as workers and let them die off slowly . . (this might actually be considered not bad for most)
Necron use them as nothing. (quick death like this could be considered good enough too in this universe)
Tyrannids use them as food.
Chaos uses them even more as slaves than the imperium and adds torture and sacrifice to that.
Eldar use them as pawns in their games over planets and ressources for their craft worlds.(Humans usually won't know about dem eldar, so it's mostly living as usual under the imperium)
Dark Eldar are basically just chaos in eldar skin.

And living under a thought police like that beats being eaten or sacrificed or tortured usually . .

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 5:47 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:40k is the most pointlessly awesomely grimdark universe I have ever seen.

More seriously, it is a little over the top sometimes. There's pretty much absolutely nothing to root for, ever. But the entire Lovecraft mythos is steeped in human hopelessness and insignificance in the face of the grand scheme of things, so you can make good stories out of how terrible everything really is. 40k usually doesn't, because it started as a wargame and the other shit just got grafted on, so most 40k fiction tends to be "space marines are awesome, END."

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:15 pm

Stahlseele wrote:Orks use them about as much as slaves as the Imperium does . .
Tau use them as workers and let them die off slowly . . (this might actually be considered not bad for most)
Necron use them as nothing. (quick death like this could be considered good enough too in this universe)
Tyrannids use them as food.
Chaos uses them even more as slaves than the imperium and adds torture and sacrifice to that.
Eldar use them as pawns in their games over planets and ressources for their craft worlds.(Humans usually won't know about dem eldar, so it's mostly living as usual under the imperium)
Dark Eldar are basically just chaos in eldar skin.

And living under a thought police like that beats being eaten or sacrificed or tortured usually . .

Honestly, and I'll admit this is dumb, but I'm one of those people who'd rather die standing up to tyranny than live under it.
(yes Frank, I'm an evil, lazy american hypocrite doing nothing to stop the actual tyranny out there. I know.)

On the matter of orks. Um, if they grow stronger through pain, ...hell they shouldn't even have a pain reflex, as pain is the body's signal that it is in trouble. But an ork's life is damage and danger, so, if anything, they should feel euphoria from damage to their body, because they are growing stronger and propagating their genes. Beyond that, one must question what orks enjoy. I mean, you wouldn't say that a masochist who gets beaten by their sadist master daily is living a torturous existence, would you? And even if you would, does it really matter? Ideally, they entered the arrangement consensually, whether they had any say in their desires or not. So even if they are daily beaten and stretched on a rack, if they chose that life because they enjoy it.... do we care that it seems extreme and undesirable to us? Orks' lives center around combat and damage to their bodies, not necessarily pain (I've never read any WH stuff, so feel free to point out canon that says they do feel pain). Saying that that's bad is like saying a fly's life is bad because it centers around eating shit, spreading disease, and dropping maggots from it's body occasionally.

tl;dr: Has anyone considered the orks' feelings on the subject of a life of "pain?"

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:42 pm

Not from an orks point of view.
Aside from them being afraid of their mad dokz, they don't seem to care much about pain . . you can sew lost limbs back on. Hell, even lost heads can be sewn back on and the much feared pigrot brain transplant has worked several times . .

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 9:58 pm

I believe orks are capable of pain, and pain alone doesn't make them grow or reward them. They beat and brutalize eachother to keep 'order,' so pain is probably a valid deterrent (or it may be less the pain and more the symbolic display of might that cows them).

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:17 pm

Orks are definitely both more and less complicated than I think Frank is describing them as.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:42 pm

Pain, does not make an Ork grow.
WINNING BATTLES and the accompanying Hormone Output do.
They were CREATD for this after all. Nature had as much to do with da Orkz as it had with the Necrons . .

RiotGearEpsilon · Post by **RiotGearEpsilon** » Thu Feb 16, 2012 10:47 pm

Of course, most Orks are Gretchin, for whom life genuinely does royally suck.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 12:15 am

*nods* no discussion from me here . .

tenuki · Post by **tenuki** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:05 am

There is/was an excellent sourcebook on the orc stronghold of Mount Gundabad. You know, The Hobbit, King Bolg?

The book was published by ICE as part of their MERP series, but you can easiliy adapt it for different fantasy settings.

It's got lots of political intrigue in it. A brutal and pragmatic king with an achilles heel in the shape of a mean-assed half-orc lady; a pool of eligible pretenders called the Seed of Skorg; two princes who hate each other, one of them a moderate thug, the other a slavering maniac; the High Priest of Darkness; hordes of angry and downtrodden slave orcs; a wretched human ambassador; non-orc slaves...

One of the few good things that ever came out of ICE.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:22 am

Also, orks are the only guys with a good afterlife, they join the cosmic spiritual entity of Gork n' Mork (who are completely immune to Chaos), and reincarnate.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:34 am

I think just about every community has some evil aspects in it, so how easy it is to make them evil but not totally evil is where you draw the line.

Just because the official sources label a country good doesn't mean you have to follow that either.

Let's pick the clichee "good kingdom" from generic fantasy, styled after medieval europe. You've got the just king, his noble vassals, peasants, and the middle class in cities. You can easily style that as evil: Consider the peasants serfs, and you have slavery in almost all but name right there. A king ruling the country can easily be considered a dictator, lacking democratic legitimation. Add some genocide against orks and a too zealous hunt for demon-cultists, and you can judge the whole country evil.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:07 pm

Modern Western Society (The real world)
You can build a pretty compelling argument for us being an evil society. We rape the planet without a thought for the future. We work to get money which we then use so someone can torture children in sweatshops halfway across the planet we never even heard of. We praise violence, mock people who have never done us harm and we are all too ready to kill, maim and destroy for mere conveniences. But on an individual level most of us are decent enough, even kind people. We help each other, we give to the needy, heck, most of us don't even drop litter even when we aren't being watched.

You can easily build a society like this, if it is sufficiently large that is. You need social structures (like corporations, goverment and military command structures) and these structures are where you build from. Your individual orc need not be evil, but if you put a thousand orcs into officer positions and ensure only the most brutal and sadistic of them get promoted then your military will be commanded by a bunch of psychos, even if the average orc only wants to grow flowers and raise puppies. And if you make it clear to your officers that they will be killed (or even only demoted) if their troops don't pillage enough they will make sure their troops act like psychos too. Do this for a couple of generations and you start warping the entire culture. Repeat as needed for other parts of society.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:01 pm

I've been wondering about this quite a bit, because a significant chunk of what I have planned for book 3 of Antipaladin Blues deals with what it must be like to live in The South(an ersatz Mordor). What little I've done towards it (including a one-off Christmas story set there, that is probably not going to be canon) is troubling, since the more you have an "evil" society with some redeeming elements, the more it just looks like a normal real world society. Like in Murtak's point above. So one thought I had was that since D&D alignment is almost meaningless anyway, the evil in an "evil" society is mostly an aesthetic choice. I remember there was a Cracked article along the same lines, positing that from the point of the view of the orcs, Sauron is a liberator, giving them jobs, a place to live, and hope in the face of a fanatically racist Middle Earth.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 6:38 pm

Tau are probably the best because even though they relegate species to certain tasks based on what they are best able to do at the very least they aren't (as far as I know) torturous about it. As far as I know they don't intentionally, or even haphazardly work their "slaves" to death. So they tend to toil about until they eventually die. I mean sure, you don't get to take a higher position in the grand scheme of the Tau Empire but I don't recall reading anything where they were just giant D-Bags to their average dirt farmer. Their religious belief of doing things for the "greater good" is all about self sacrifice for the advancement of their society and isn't really as oppressive as what other races expect of you. Eldar not being counted for obvious reasons.

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 4:12 pm

Murtak wrote:Modern Western Society (The real world)
You can build a pretty compelling argument for us being an evil society. We rape the planet without a thought for the future. We work to get money which we then use so someone can torture children in sweatshops halfway across the planet we never even heard of. We praise violence, mock people who have never done us harm and we are all too ready to kill, maim and destroy for mere conveniences. But on an individual level most of us are decent enough, even kind people. We help each other, we give to the needy, heck, most of us don't even drop litter even when we aren't being watched.

You can easily build a society like this, if it is sufficiently large that is. You need social structures (like corporations, goverment and military command structures) and these structures are where you build from. Your individual orc need not be evil, but if you put a thousand orcs into officer positions and ensure only the most brutal and sadistic of them get promoted then your military will be commanded by a bunch of psychos, even if the average orc only wants to grow flowers and raise puppies. And if you make it clear to your officers that they will be killed (or even only demoted) if their troops don't pillage enough they will make sure their troops act like psychos too. Do this for a couple of generations and you start warping the entire culture. Repeat as needed for other parts of society.

Yeah, the basic concept here is that the upper crust of society, those who wield all the power, are evil in spite of the goodness of the people, even in spite of the dissent of most of the people. But the organs of power tend to keep good-meaning people out of them by their nature or design, or both. Though I would make the evil being engaged in a little bit worse than building a sweatshop in a third-world country (that is, arguably, a real step in becoming a more developed economy).

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 5:07 pm

@Tau:
Well, their Celestials are powerfull Psionics who tell other people to want what they want . .

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 5:08 pm

Stubbazubba wrote:Yeah, the basic concept here is that the upper crust of society, those who wield all the power, are evil in spite of the goodness of the people, even in spite of the dissent of most of the people. But the organs of power tend to keep good-meaning people out of them by their nature or design, or both.

No.

The concept is that given the right structures evil will rise to the top. Evil fuckers in command of everything is the result, not the premise. Remove them, but keep the same structures and you will end up with evil fuckers again in short order. Additionally you can both create and encourage evil and you can hide evil from those making decisions, making it easier and easier to get more and more evil. But the basic idea is this: The structure itself can promote evil.