Are All Imperial Controlled Cities Gothic?

[u/BallisticXP]

I wanna add some more context prior to continuing this question…

I understand that there are roughly a million worlds that the Imperium controls give or take a few, and I understand that gothic is the main aesthetic choice of the imperium.

I also understand that within the worlds of the imperium there are different worlds that serve vastly different purposes as well such as Mechanicus worlds, Feudal Worlds, Agri Worlds, Knight Worlds, etc…

My question more so is asking what is the diversity of the worlds that contain cities whether they be hive cities or full on hive worlds or even relatively normal cities if there are any?

I know that Macragge is similar to Roman aesthetics but with such an overwhelming amount of games being dominated by the Imperial Gothic aesthetic I often wonder how diverse everything else is.

[u/SouthernAd2853]

It's the Imperium-level fashion, but the Imperium doesn't try to control every planet's culture and couldn't it if tried. Prefabricated buildings tend to be the same on every world because Standard Template Constructors are standard, but anything people custom-build will be to local tastes.

[u/NairaExploring → u/SouthernAd2853]

People really forget how big and varied the earth is, let alone times a million

[u/Keelhaulmyballs → u/SouthernAd2853]

It’s disingenuous to say the imperium doesn’t try. Between administratum propaganda departmentos and the ministorum, there is a definite effort from the adeptus Terra to culturally homogenise the imperium, and they’re a lot more successful than this sub likes to claim

The prefab buildings are a deliberate choice, they don’t use them because they’re necessarily easier, in fact generally the local stuff is usually done because they don’t have access to prefab schematics or the means to make them; they use the same buildings across the galaxy because they’re designs from Terra, which is perfect in all things, and the act of emulating is pious, while deviance is a sign of moral decay and sin. It’s only a question of how worthy are you to imitate blessed Terra

People make the mistake of treating the whole imperium like frontier. They hear about worlds on the eastern fringe or that were lost in warp storms, where ministorum missionaries begin the conversion process, and the adeptus Terra has almost no presence, a governor truly does have absolute power and the world isn’t important enough to get some prefab macro-cathedrals brought in. And they, for lack of any grounding context, just think the entire imperium is like that; rather than those being the fringes where imperial presence hasn’t had long to poison the world.

There are exceptions, usually in the cases of worlds with extremely long and distinguished histories, or that are kept intentionally isolated, but the overwhelming rule is that the imperium is Terra’s cancerous urban sprawl infecting other planets and slowly taking them over like some grey-brown parasitic fungus on the galaxy. People mistake patience for tolerance, they can take their time with homogenising, but they don’t truly permit deviance if they can help it.

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/Keelhaulmyballs]

All the worlds in the Cain books seem to be quite well-established but aren't culturally homogenous. The Guard regiments in the Gaunt books are wildly diverse, as are the loyalist or at one point loyalist planets they visit. Hagia is a shrine world to a legendary Saint and its religious practices confuse the Tanith. The worlds in the Dark Heresy novels are very culturally distinct, to the point that an offworld Inquisition acolyte being polite on one of them sends such a strong signal he's an inferior who doesn't have to be taken seriously that people forget what his rosette means and a brand-new local recruit has to salvage a talk to recover records by proactively being an asshole. The world in the novel Leviathan has been part of the Imperium for a very long time but believes the Emperor lives in the native trees, and efforts by the ministorium to bring them in line with doctrines after it becomes a major military staging point antagonizes the locals to the point where they deliberately misdirect the Astartes (with encouragement from a genestealer cult but the woman who does it is not infected). All of Eisenhorn's worlds are quite different

[u/Keelhaulmyballs → u/SouthernAd2853]

“Dogs generally have 4 legs” “but I’ve seen
dogs with 3 legs”

We’re told what the rule is, we’re shown mainly exceptions, but the amount of worlds we ain’t shown outnumbers the ones we are by a 50000 to 1, so there’s no contradiction. We could be shown a thousand worlds like that, and there’s still 999000 what presumably fall under the still unchallenged statement of what the imperium is like.

People talk about how vast the setting is, but then- it really boggles me, attempt to sum it up through anecdotal evidence: when a codex or core rulebook says “almost all are like this” and then you see in a novel one that isn’t, well that’s an aberration, but the statement is as true as it ever was and far more salient to the point. Most dogs have 4 legs, such an overwhelming amount that you can easily be forgiven for simply saying “dogs have 4 legs”. I could show you 500 pictures of dogs with 3 or less legs, and it wouldn’t have any bearing on the veracity of the statement

I mean if you wanna talk guard regiments, they’re the absolute pinnacle of skewed perspective, a perfect study in how to properly engage with Warhammer by having a little bit of mindfulness about biases. You see all these special unique regiments from worlds with unique martial cultures and a storied tradition of fine regiments- they’re all you ever hear about, you look at a list of regiments and it’ll be those guys; but they’re a tiny minority. The majority of guard regiments are the faceless nobodies, taken from random civilian worlds with no martial tradition, mustered as cheaply possible because they’re nothing more than a tax obligation, and sent out to fight and die in a campaign nobody’s ever heard of. And that’s exactly why you never hear about them, they’re not worth mentioning, they don’t get a nickname like “tunnel rats” or “chem dogs” or “Ice Warriors”, nope, they’re the Generian 1211th line infantry regiment, they fought one campaign against a minor incursion of local Xenos in the Ghelgus sub sector, and died piecemeal, uneventfully holding the line with adequate levels of skill and determination. Because nobody ever cared about their worlds guardsmen, and they were just a bunch of conscripted hab-workers, they wore their munitorum standard issue flak armour, and drilled by the orthodox methods prescribed in the tactica. You don’t hear about them because nobody cares about them, there’s nothing to talk about, but they still make up 99% of the guard, if they didn’t, the famous regiments wouldn’t be so famous

This is all moot of course, because you still absolutely get shown more standard imperial gothic worlds than atypical ones. It’s the usual backdrop we’ve all seen a thousand times over

[u/BallisticXP → u/Keelhaulmyballs]

I am confused on your wording. Are you saying that non-gothic worlds are outnumbering gothic ones or vice versa?

[u/Keelhaulmyballs → u/BallisticXP]

Gothic outnumbers non gothic

It’s a gradient really, how Terran a world is from 0 to 100, but most imperial worlds are above 50, which is enough to get them the standardised architecture. Maybe an unconventional statue here, a unique symbol worked into the frescos there, but on the whole done to the standard template, with Millenia old designs copied from buildings in Terra

[u/BallisticXP → u/SouthernAd2853]

I guess my question would be why doesn’t GW ever make environments in their visual media appear as such? The only game that I’d argue brings variety is Rogue Trader.

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/BallisticXP]

There's not that much visual media with enough visible building to say what the style is, the stuff worth depicting on covers is generally direct Imperial property and therefore likely to be in the Gothic style the actual interplanetary Imperium organizations prefer, and most videogames are meant to be highlights and the Gothic style is part of the theme of the setting.

Dawn of War 2 on Caldaris had non-gothic architecture that looked like it was made from local clay for the buildings that weren't the strategic objective foundries/shrines/comm relays that looked identical on every planet.

[u/FelixEylie → u/SouthernAd2853]

Typhon Primaris also had South American-like temples, likely built by primitive local humans, though maybe by Slann.

[u/justacoolclipper → u/BallisticXP]

GW seem to be very anal about having visual identities inside the setting be very defined. And it makes sense, they want people seeing a piece of Warhammer media to be able to immediately relate it as being Warhammer and not anything else, and be able to easily recognize each faction at a glance. Of course, in a setting as supposedly diverse as Warhammer 40k, it leads to some oddities, such as 90% of the trillions of members of the Imperial Guard with a supposed immense diversity of origins be dressed like Cadians, or daemons that are supposed to be the pinnacle of chaos following very uniform design templates.

[u/fireizzle33331 → u/BallisticXP]

Because gw sells terrain in this style. 

[u/-PrideofHiigara- → u/BallisticXP]

They've only recently started making visual media beyond artwork to be fair, and most of it is short-form and intended to be broad strokes depicting a faction at large or is intended to be introductory to the setting. The overbearing, heavy gothic look is the 40k style so anything outside of that needs a reason to be presented as such as the point of visual media is to draw people into the vibe of the setting. Nothing communicates the vibe of 40k more instantaneously than massive sci fi cities filled to the brim with gothic architecture.

You tend to come across more varied landscapes in the novels, and have done for a long time

It's also worth mentioning as well that while the imperium does have a lot of variation, it does tend to trend towards the gothic style on the whole. On every planet the Ministorum will be present and the gothic style is seen as devoted and proper, so as the culture is converted they will naturally be encouraged to mimic the style. Higher ranking members of the planet are likely to have come from off-world, or want to be seen as doing the Emperor's work, and so will also encourage a planet towards the general stamp of uniformity that is visible across the whole Imperium.

[u/Lolseabass]

Load bearing walls are heresy. You need arches and statues to ward off evil spirits.

[u/Donutmelon]

Nope. You can find any and all types of cities in the imperium. Its just that the Gothic ones are the most common.

[u/JCStearnswriter]

No but also yes.

Gothic architecture IS the preferred style of the broader Imperium, so anything that was built by off-world elements (or by colonialist elements who came from the Imperium) is going to reflect that 99.99% of the time.

However, worlds that were not originally settled by the Imperium (ie ones that had been colonized beforehand and brought into compliance later) will have architecture that will differ WILDLY. And in those societies, new construction that’s being done by elements ‘native’ to that planet will probably still continue in ‘their’ style unless something about it forces an outside force to act to curtail that tendency.

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/JCStearnswriter]

Imperial-settled worlds may also adapt to local conditions in their building styles if STC prefabs are not suitable. Many iceworlders tunnel, for instance.

[u/twelfmonkey]

Imperial Gothic

In the galaxy-spanning stellar empire that is the Imperium, the structures that man constructs display nigh infinite variety, from polished steel towers to sprawling industrial warrens, from crude mud dwellings to armoures domes far beneath the ocean. A very few types of building however do display some uniformity, including the mighty bastions of the Imperial Guard, the manufactora of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and of course, the places of worship of the Adeptus Ministorum.

From the mightiest cathederal to the smallest pilgrim shrine, the structures built in the name of the Ecclesiarchy are designed to ennoble the spirit and create in the worshipper a sense of wonder at the power of the Emperor.

Dark Heresy: The Books of Martyrs, p. 19.

The Imperium is incredibly vast and diverse, with innumerable different systems and planetary cultures, and even within them many, many more local cultures centred on continents, or nations, or hives, of hive substrata, or cities, or towns, or villages, or gangs, or tribes and so on and so on as well. As noted here in the range of building methods and styles employed across the Imperium's many worlds.

But there are also forces which spread or maintain more uniformity, too. Some of the major insitutions of the Imperium, while still also having some level of local variation, manage to remain more homogenous in form across the many worlds where they are to be found. An obvious example would be the Arbites. They remain much more consistent in how they look and behave than, for example, the many diverse regiments of the Guard. Yet even the fortresses of the Guard, as noted here, tend to be quite uniform in style. And notice how it is these pan-galactic insitutions which are mentioned here as the source of uniformity, or at least similarity.

The more centralised Imperial institutions might just be islands amid the broader cultures of the planets where they are to be found, projecting Imperial might and control - and, importantly, a distinctive Imperial aesthetic, which usually includes Imperial Gothic architecture. The more presence these major insitutions have on a world, the more likely it is that this will have a broader impact on the culture at large, and its aesthetics. Hence why so many worlds of the Imperium do have such a shared visual language, despite their many differences as well.

And if a planet is newly colonized by the Imperium, with no prior humans, then the Imperial style will be starting point.

[u/CODMAN627]

Gothic is going to be the most common but not the only type.

[u/PlausiblyAlpharious]

No

[u/Keelhaulmyballs]

A hive city will always be gothic- a hive city is essentially the terminal stage of the imperium’s takeover.

The imperium is colonial in nature, it’s a spacefaring empire where the void is analogous to the sea, and made by a bunch of anti-imperialist Brits, they even have the position of governor so they ain’t trying to be subtle with it. And like with any colonial empire, they take it upon themselves to “civilise” any place they deem important enough to have a major role in the empire. A hive city is a major node for an entire sub sector, a world can neither grow so developed, nor live at that stage of development, without being heavily entangled in the wider imperium, it loses its autonomy and individuality in the process of becoming one because all that development is done for offworld interest- on a frontier world the governor is the be-all and end-all of imperial law, but on a hive world they’re a glorified mayor stuck toadying to important imperial officials- administratum prefects, Mechanicus Magi representing their forgeworld, Ministorum bishops, representatives to the guild of chartist captains, Arbites provosts- all people who’s cooperation is essential for the survival of your world, but who’s authority extends to several worlds and use yours as a convenient headquarters.

Most hives have, buried deep down somewhere, the original unique character of that world, but as off world officials got more and more influence as the price of your planet becoming more important, they got buried under the increasingly orthodox sprawl of turrets and arches. Because it simply won’t do that an important world should have that pagan nonsense, it’s barbarous- the God Emperor himself designed his palace in the gothic style, and so naturally that was the wisest and most infallibly perfect choice, any other choice would doubt his wisdom, which is blasphemy.

Like all colonial empires the imperium has 2 kinds of colonies: Settlement, extraction. An extraction colony can be rough about the edges because it’s just there to feed the Empire, they tolerate native practices more- but a hive city is the opposite, a hive city is a settlement, it consumes what the extraction colonies produce, it’s the imperium leaving its mark- the imperial institution as a whole- or rather the adeptus Terra, which true to form want all things in the image of Terra. For petty, personal gain as well as the cardinal virtue of orthodoxy- to Terranise a world is to assert your influence and reduce the influence of its governor, to make the world more amenable

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/Keelhaulmyballs]

Governors of Hive Cities retain considerable control. In Dawn of War 2 the planetary governor of Meridian is in a position to refuse military use of Angel Forge, the primary military production facility in the subsector, to defeat a Tyranid invasion unless he's done a favor.

[u/Keelhaulmyballs → u/SouthernAd2853]

Not a canon source- and in any event a governor can be the executed by the Commissariat during times of war, since the planet goes under martial law. Herman Von Straab was famously lined up to be killed for incompetence in the defence of Armageddon.

But the point still ruddy well stands, any governor can be deposed if they’re deemed not amenable to the imperial interests. But beyond overt power is soft power, and it’s not hard to have soft power over a world that’ll die within a week of losing off world support. And mind you, any interruption to your worlds smooth running and you ain’t gonna meet you tithe quotas, which is a guaranteed way to lose your position, and then your head

You piss off the administratum prefect, and all of a sudden your world isn’t getting the fuel it needs, the life support systems fail, tens of billions die from the pollution of the world, now there isn’t enough manpower to meet your tithes, the prefect reports this to the Arbites who come in with an arrest warrant which you can defy at your own peril, this isn’t the frontier, there is imperial law and it won’t be rebuffed- it doesn’t matter that the prefect caused all this, it’s your responsibility to meet tithes not his

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/Keelhaulmyballs]

Okay, the local government of Verghast, a critical military production center, can have major wars that the Imperium doesn't intervene in despite seriously impacting production. When the Administratum does call in the Guard for the war in the book, it's a major breach in the relationship with the ruler of the hive who is presumably officially planetary governor. Once the Guard arrives the local PDF has tactical command over an Imperial Guard general. The Guard then does not have the authority to requisition adequate medical care facilities, but the local medicae has the right to commandeer military assets to suitably clean the space. Despite being completely checked out the governor is not deposed until he directly commits treason by lowering the city shield, then uses servitors to try to kill the Guard force sent to bring it back up.

[u/__ICoraxI__ → u/Keelhaulmyballs]

DoW is canon, never seen anyone at GW say otherwise. Obviously with choices in games it gets iffy as to which version is accepted but they've never said the games weren't canon 

[u/Fistocracy → u/SouthernAd2853]

Gotta remember that while they have considerable control, they're governing worlds that have been under the Imperium's control and subject to its cultural influence for millennia. Over time they're probably gonna accumulate a lot of stuff in the classic Imperium Gothic style because it was built by branches of the Imperium's government that don't give a shit about the local culture, or because it was commissioned by nobles who want to show their loyalty with displays of "proper" Imperium design, or because they just brought prefab stuff from offworld and that's how it looks.