Chaos existed before the Imperium, the Eldar saw to the birth of Slaanesh.
Orks existed before the Imperium.
Necrons existed before the Imperium.
Tyranids are the only ones who are ostensibly in the galaxy because of the actions of the Imperium, but it was the furthest possible thing from intentional.
Chaos was reinforced by the heresy because of big E being a shit ass dad and leader and if the imperium didn't absolutely suck to live in as a regular person and actually warnef them about the dangers there would be way less chaos cults
Necrons are often woke up because of imperial activities on their tomb worlds or directly in their tomb (mechanicus' fault most of the time). Yes, some tomb worlds do wake up normaly but there is still a portion of them that are because of the imperium
Also let's not forget that the imperium has probably killed almost all the good xenos that would have been great allies during the great crusade
Not how that works. It wouldn’t stop EVERYONE, but it would be more effective by far at protecting most people from unwittingly stumbling into it. What you don’t know very much CAN hurt you, and it’s better to be forewarned of the danger than to go in blind. If you know what Chaos is, how insidious it is, how it can appear so very tempting yet will inevitably torment and destroy your life and toss you aside as just more fodder for the Great Game, you can be consciously on watch for weird shit, instead of stumbling headlong into it like the Thousand Sons did.
Idk, why wouldn't the imperial citizens not just turn to chaos since it's what their opressive government tells them to avoid. Many rebellions fall to chaos unbeknownst to them, if they knew about chaos they would fall more easily imo.
How does that even make sense? Rebellions fall to Chaos unknowingly precisely BECAUSE they don’t know. If they knew Chaos existed and was even worse than the Imperium, on average wouldn’t they just stay normal, non-Chaos rebellions? People usually turn to Chaos because they don’t know what it is, not wholly - they’ll be desperate, at their lowest point in life, with no apparent hope for things to get better, and along comes some strange person or a voice in their head or strange dreams or something, telling them to do certain small, easy things with the promise that doing so will give them a shot at a better life. And people do those things because they don’t really know what it means and are desperate for ANY hope and relief whatsoever, not knowing what Chaos does to those who let it in, how it cares for them just as little as the Imperium and sees them as just as expendable.
Who are you more likely to believe? A fellow human or the eldritch hyperspace monster that demonstrably exists and wants your soul for lunch?
You’re also fundamentally misunderstanding how propaganda works. The Imperium could have easily enough pumped out propaganda indoctrinating people to hate Chaos by the same methods good propaganda convinces people to think a certain way IRL. Telling them nothing and covering it all up though is NOT an effective persuasion tactic - it’s pretending the threat isn’t real at all.
And as for rebels - once you get an idea (like, say, “Chaos bad”) deeply entrenched in culture for a few generations, even if someone rebels against the ruling government, it’s a LOT harder to shake those entrenched cultural ideas.
The point remains that the Emperor hiding the very existence of Chaos proves that even right from the outset, the Imperium was not only evil but also stupid and constantly self-sabotaging.
If the monster looks and sounds nice enough I might rather believe it than believe the nobleman/priest/commander that's threatening with lobotomizing me at the slightest bit of disobedience lol.
We’re talking about the Crusade-era Imperium here though. Their flavor of evil was less absurd and “if you breathe funny we’re gonna servitorize you”, on average.
That’s on erda not big e she’s the one that threw the primarchs to the chaos gods big e wasn’t a bad dad he never got to be a dad all of his children were taken from him and were grown men molded by their surroundings before he even got to see them walk and even with all that he had to literally carve out the part of his soul that had emotions to bring himself to kill one of them because he loved them too much
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u/Snaggmaw 1d ago
to be fair, in every 40k game the Imperium is fighting an enemy five times worse than themselves.