Intentionally or not, we are all meat for the beast. But the gods care for nothing save filling their bellies with our sorrows.

The Word Bearers believe the gods crave worship. A merciful strategist devises a plan for bloodless victory, and Tzeentch is content. A woman strikes her crying child, and that awful moment of elation she feels feeds Khorne. A man pets a stray, and his small pleasure in the kindness of the act feeds Slaanesh. Win or lose, the gods feast on our deeds. What is there for the gods to feed on? Where is the desire for victory, the savagery, the hope and despair? Where is the entertainment? War as you describe it would be little more than pest control. I figured that out the day of my culling, when my family forced my cousins and me to fight for the honour of joining the Third. Perhaps we are little more than psychopathic apes, driven to fashion clubs and smash out the brains of our closest neighbours.Īnd here I thought you were the clever one. Perhaps I overestimate the intelligence of our species.

Saboteurs, chemical weapons - there are hundreds of ways of dismantling a world and its population that do not involve orbital insertions and glorious advances into the teeth of enemy fire. Pound the earth flat and build over the ashes. It always seemed to me more efficient to simply eradicate our foes from orbit. “I have never really understood our gene-father's obsession with martial glory. You know nothing of courage! Honor is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian High Riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue clad wretches yelling courage and honor, courage and honor, courage and honor! Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. “What would you know of struggle, perfect son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything other than tally compliance's and polish your armor? The people of your world named you 'Great One'.

Warhammer 40k primarch quotes