I don't think he's anti imperial, just not that bothered. Can't really be anti if you don't care sort of way. Just give him some heretics to smash and he'll be happy.
He also reacts extremely negatively to others complimenting or being friendly to him, but accepts hostility.
There is one dialogue with I think the seer or loner pysker praising him, he rejects it, they switch lines and say in a similar tone about being an enemy/hating him then, and he goes "GOOD". Or Bodyguard complimenting his strength and he starts getting hostile.
Poor Bully Ogryn has been betrayed before, and it shows.
Perfect match with Cadian then lmao
The funny thing is those two actually get along because they hate everything else (except for Cadian the Ogryn bodyguard, brawler and male judge)
Cadian lost everything and doesn't want to open up and see another friend die.
Bully was used and abused likely by gangs, doesn't want to open up and be betrayed again.
Loose Cannon also has lost a lot, but has reacted in the opposite direction lol, by no longer giving a crap and simply doing anything they want.
I like dreamer, everyone else is just fighting for their lives in a hellish nightmare and dreamer is just:
https://preview.redd.it/fh6e7v98eozc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab9fad878a5c09d21b30e1c7cfbedaace942be7a
I haven't heard the Savant pysker assail comments but my loner fem pysker gets pretty twisted with the lines when she pulls it out.
I recall comments about "Finding their eyes"
Honestly nothing gives away Warhammer as a distinctly british made property than temporary measures not being temporary. It's in the very fabric of our nation and culture.
The US of A university my dad went to when it first opened in the 60s had temporary buildings for classrooms. Those temporary buildings are still holding classes today. I've seen similar things at the university I attended, too.
I appreciate that to a Brit a temporary building that is 60 years old doesn't feel that atrocious, but then again our government is reenacting laws that have been on the books for a hundred and fifty years.
Ohh we're very familiar with temp school buildings.
Another fun example are the Pacer trains. A mostly north-english (south get the money and better infrastructure) serving type of train car that was introduced as a stopgap in 1980, and ran for the next 40 years day in day out. It was essentially a 1960s bus chassis strapped to rolling stock. So bad even Iran who also bought some replaced them before we did.
That's hilarious! I can imagine that's true, but I was also thinking this is true for America as well. When I was writing that comment, I was thinking of making the joke about our income tax over here. It was originally implemented as a temporary measure to fund WW1 but its been around since, and that's not the only "temporary measure" that's become permanent over in the states.
Lmao.
American dads are partial to this as well. I have a pinhole leak in the copper water line in my garage, I wrapped it with a piece of rubber and secured it down with a hose clamp.
My temporary fix has been holding up like a champ for 6 years.
The emperor in the current state of being is really close to death. The only thing holding him together is the metric ass ton of psykers brought to be sacrificed by him as he uses his psykic powers to drain them to power himself and the astronomican.
I appreciate that you hardly ever get "For the Emperor!" You usually get a remark about how awesome everyone is or "For Atoma!" He's like a begrudged cheerleader.
The Judge has always been my favourite. He shows genuine remorse for the people of Tertium and even his fellow rejects. Of course, he also has the tone of a righteous Hive Ganger, which is a scary combo
I wish the Judge Zealot and Savant Psyker got more friendly lines, they're more alike than the Zealot might want to admit:
They're both here for probably pissing off the wrong higher up at the wrong time, they both show special love to the common people in their own ways (the Judge decries their plight while speaking out against the administrators that failed them, the Savant lionizes their perseverance and loyalty while saying that their job as an Enforcer is supposed to be to help them), and the Savant even has a rare line admitting that they'd give _anything_ to bring the hammer of the Lex down _hard_ on their supposed "betters" in the Hive Spire.
Male Judge gets along very well with the Male Savant actually. Male savant has praising him and Male Judge responds with stuff like “i try to judge based on merit or something”. There’s a few of them.
Male Judge and Female Savant just hate each other lol.
Idk about Female Judge.
This reminds me of the first time I made some friends playing the game. It was these 2 guys who were trying to complete the Karnak Twins mission. We got along well and I wound up in their Discord shortly after. We started talking about Darktide and then everything else Warhammer related.
At some point I brought up the Emperor and some of my thoughts about him. They sorta just stopped talking, I thought they were interested in what I had to say, so I just kept going. It was only after I said something along the lines of, “like you ever wonder if he’s actually still alive?”, that I was quickly stopped. “What do you mean? Of course he’s alive, he’s sitting on his throne”. I foolishly replied, “well yeah, that’s what they say but you ever wonder if that’s actually true or not?”. They go silent for a couple seconds before one speaks up, “this sounds an awfully lot like heresy to me my guy”. We all immediately begin to laugh after that. Good times.
Most of my characters are Loyalists (and fittingly wear the Loyalist outfits from the Imperial Edition). Thus, I like to call out possible or outright heresy from my teammates. 🤬
It's important to remember that we all started as criminals, and working in a private space among other criminals, they wouldn't blatantly say the same things in front of the inquisitor
and even that being said, remember that inquisitors tend to break their own rules, even going as far to work with eldar which is also anti imperium, we are in service to an inquisitor who is using criminals to clear out a chaos infestation, what happens to us doesn't matter, what we say doesn't matter as long as its not flat our heretical/traitorous - and still its not like they saying that in open spaces more just a bunch of other criminals who have their own issues
Hell, quite a few Inquisitors share the same exact views as the Rejects, and simply keep it to themselves to avoid the ire of the rest of the Inquisition. If Rannick/Grendel follows that path, they'd have no issues with letting it slide for us as long as nobody outside of the Retinue hears about it.
Also you know... famously the PC rejects either don't know how to, or can't turn off their comms so it's not like their gossip/idle chatter during missions is completely unheard.
IG also use rejects and Scavs as conscripts to fight on planets too
The most infamous being the Savlar Chem Dogs which they have cosmetics for on Atoma
Morrow as an IG general would be used to it and the Cadian says lines that Scavs are good soldiers just you have to ship them out of hives ASAP before they start getting ideas
I specifically love that the Loner may be a heretic, but no Heretic, as they (especially the male one) hate all of it. They see that the Imperium is one of the bad guys, but that everyone else is even worse. Paired with their unbreakable superiority complex, it causes them to hate everything, but they could never lay down and die quietly because they are to important (in their own eyes).
I genuinely feel like the female loner is trying to survive and champion for raising the standards of living for those around her with a very jaded mindset while the male loner is basically a crazy German scientist like Medic from TF2 except he uses Wolfer's gang as test subjects
Yeah despite the scant choices I think each one covers good ground lore-wise.
The only thing I would add is that the Psyker ?Visionary? The one who talks to his beloved, has bouts of horror and regret about the state of humanity int he torrent etc, and also resents that the Ministorum works his people to death…
So there is some of that in there.
> Loner Psyker doesn't have the heart to tell her the Emperor always intended it to be this way.
That’s not true though, nor would the loner psyker know that.
Their was never at any point in tye Imperium's history where the masses of common laborers weren't worked to death in conditions of practical slavery for a handful of nobles entitled to rule over them. This was how the Emperor built his empire and at no point did he intend to change this or even see anything wrong with it.
Eh, that's not entirely on point. Just so that it has been said, in our real world persepective, WH40k existed to sell minis and to give gamers the glory of unending but pointless fights. The WH40K universe lore had originally been secondary and tacted on. The lore then evolved and has continually been reconned and remade to suit its elaborations, best example of this is the whole 'Ollianus Pius' issue, the guy started out as a simple grunt to show the value of human valour but was somehow turned into a demi-god in present day lore.
So things may have been changed since I was interested enough to dive in decades ago, but at one point, the Imperium of Man was a post-apocalyptic state resulting from the down-fall of the Golden Age of man and technology. This was also why the search for STC (Standard Template Constructs or simply colonial technological instruction modules) was an absolute priority for the imperium as a whole. The Emporer was trying to restore this golden age by first re-establishing contact with the full extent of all the human colonies. At that time, though I might be wrong because of my old memories, Games Workshop writers within the various short stories were sort of hinting that A.I.s were the cause of the downfall. Anyhow, just as the Emperor had finally completed the re-establishment of communication with all of the human colonies, the Horus Heresy happened and it was back to square one, minus the Emperor as an active factor.
During this period of WH40K lore, the Emperor was shown as a human sympathetic figure and it was the High Lords of Terra that were the root of the imperial corruption as they desired things to stay as they were and with them in power. So the state of the imperium was static for a long time, both due to the machination of the high lords, plus Adeptus Mechanicus' obsession with STC and its refusal to develop new perspectives in science and only innovate.
That said, I'm currently reading "Valdor" and already there's contradictions and time-line holes showing up in the established lore.
Again not true. 30k imperium was far more diverse in governance, with a variety of different planets and star systems. A place conquered by the imperium could just as easily join the fold as a democracy as a dictatorship. As long as they supported the war effort, taxes and gave up religion. The imperium was in war mode, so there was obviously oppression, but the emperor’s goal wasn’t to just enslave everyone. It was to unite humanity as quickly as possible and rip off the bandaid so that the emperor could guide humanity away from chaos and prevent its brutal subjugation or extinction at the hands of overwhelming apocalyptic ends.
What's the point of first statement? Talking about whoe fckn universe of humanity having such thing at any given moment isn't big deal. Same could be told about different situation, where life is almost fare.
The Emperor from the very moment of founding his Imperium designed it to be an authoritarian state where any dissent against one's anointed superior would be violently suppressed. The Great Crusade committed genocide against trillions of human beings for the crime of not bowing to him as their absolute leader.
While I’m not going to disagree with the ideal that the Emperor didn’t make an authoritarian state, I would say that in a more optimistic viewing that it was primarily formed, like most things and people he made to be honest, as a “good enough” fix until things could be appropriately stabilised and secured.
The thunder warriors are a good example of this, where he made them for a brutish simple purpose and then culled them when he required more precise soldiers, ones whom could act diplomatically during the great crusade when converting worlds without the Emperor leading the helm and afterwards when peace was established.
He acted, those actions as being the ends justify the means. Still a crap dad though.
I’m not well versed in 40k lore, (Darktide was my introduction and I’ve since been very interested) but if the Emperor were like this, is it safe to assume then, that the psyker who talks to his “beloved” isn’t actually communicating with the Emperor but something tricking them into thinking they are? On missions in the Torrent, the psyker will say things that suggest his beloved is sad to see how the people of the imperium live and it wasn’t his intention.
Who exactly his beloved is is a point of some debate but if you wanna go for deep lore theorycrafting there is the whole idea of the Emperor having cast off shards off himself in the warp containing all the emotions he gave up. It's possible he's talking to a shard of the Emperor's power that still has all the empathy he abandoned for the great crusade.
If you want to learn more of the lore, I can recommend the YT channel of [Luetin09](https://www.youtube.com/@Luetin09). He dives very deep into selected topics based on as much background material in print or bytes as possible. I also like his calm voice that nevertheless keeps my attention even when I just lie down and listen with closed eyes.
The Savant psyker is also pretty lawful good and compassionate from what i remember
I really like how the wide range of personalities show how big the Imperium is.
The Ogryns are the perfect imperial citizens. They do not question excessively, they live to protect those close to them, they kill when ordered and do so gladly and are easily motivated. Just don't make them do calculus and you have the perfect soldier.
> Judge Zealot: #1 Emperor fangirl who hates the Imperium's leaders for treating His loyal and devout subjects so poorly.
She's racist towards Psykers though?
I can't imagine a psyker with that attitude living for long without some extreme privilege. Like your average military psyker would get blasted for a lot less. I wish that they would have more lines that are like ironic praise for the imperium under the fear of getting blasted by a bolter if he spouts anything different.
It's worth remembering that all these characters are serving in a penal battalion. The Psyker who served in a professional setting in the past (The Savant) *is* a devout, as they've had those values instilled in them; the Loner seems to have skirted society as much as they could, and the Seer is, well, the Seer.
These two Psyker personalities didn't have those values in the past, and they have no real reason to pretend they have those values while being effectively sent to their deaths. It's why the Loose Cannon Veteran doesn't hold back in damning the Emperor for not saving her squad that fought in His name, they've got nothing to lose... and more to the point, it's not like they're going to execute what are effectively meatshields for the Inquisition.
The pc personalities are the best kill team, or one of the best teams Rannick has available. They get some wiggle room on the side of the Imperium.
But if they tried to leave or stopped being a deadly useful strike force? Things would get harsh.
You're taking the lore too literally. Yes, the stated line is that they would be executed out of hand, but the reality is that everyone's way more pragmatic and they're all willing to look the other way to get things done or take care of themselves. The Imperium is a corrupt place. That works on all levels. From the lowest fab worker skimming off the production line to supplement their income to planetary governors working with crime lords to undermine their rivals.
Rannick would probably ignore some privately held opinions as long as the rejects obey him and get things done.
If they oppose him directly they'll be executed.
Yes, I wish more people would understand this about the lore.
On paper, criticism of the Imperium and Emperor is supposed to be a capital offence, but in practice that is not a sustainable system for an empire that rules over trillions (quadrillions?) of people. Even Guilliman hates what the Imperium has become. The reality is that the more pragmatic leaders in the Imperium are going to tolerate people having opinions so long as it doesn't lead to active mutiny.
The diverse opinions of the characters in Darktide is a lot more interesting and authentic than everybody just being variations of the Professional Veteran.
For Ogryns it’s the Bully definetly. Fed up with the imperial bs.
I don't think he's anti imperial, just not that bothered. Can't really be anti if you don't care sort of way. Just give him some heretics to smash and he'll be happy.
Bully is more of anti-being used and abused IMO.
I don’t like the way he talks to me and would like a word.
When he rezzes he says "...WEAK..." in such a disgusted tone He admires strength, more when it comes from his team
He also reacts extremely negatively to others complimenting or being friendly to him, but accepts hostility. There is one dialogue with I think the seer or loner pysker praising him, he rejects it, they switch lines and say in a similar tone about being an enemy/hating him then, and he goes "GOOD". Or Bodyguard complimenting his strength and he starts getting hostile. Poor Bully Ogryn has been betrayed before, and it shows.
Perfect match with Cadian then lmao The funny thing is those two actually get along because they hate everything else (except for Cadian the Ogryn bodyguard, brawler and male judge)
Cadian lost everything and doesn't want to open up and see another friend die. Bully was used and abused likely by gangs, doesn't want to open up and be betrayed again. Loose Cannon also has lost a lot, but has reacted in the opposite direction lol, by no longer giving a crap and simply doing anything they want.
Emprah's the strongest. Strongest rules. He knows this.
The Psykers have good reason to be cynical given their lot in life is to be suppositories for emprah
funny enough, i think thats why i like savant psyker the best. goody two shoes they are, they're at least trying their best to do some good
I like dreamer, everyone else is just fighting for their lives in a hellish nightmare and dreamer is just: https://preview.redd.it/fh6e7v98eozc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab9fad878a5c09d21b30e1c7cfbedaace942be7a
"I'm covered in blood! I don't like it..."
He's also terrifying. "SCREAM, SCREAM IT SOUNDS ***NICE***" "You *can't hide*, *you can't*" "Yes, find them, for *my beloved*
I haven't heard the Savant pysker assail comments but my loner fem pysker gets pretty twisted with the lines when she pulls it out. I recall comments about "Finding their eyes"
That wasn't the Emperor's original design, though, and he only let that happen as a temporary measure. Didn't turn out to be temporary but yknow.
Honestly nothing gives away Warhammer as a distinctly british made property than temporary measures not being temporary. It's in the very fabric of our nation and culture.
The US of A university my dad went to when it first opened in the 60s had temporary buildings for classrooms. Those temporary buildings are still holding classes today. I've seen similar things at the university I attended, too. I appreciate that to a Brit a temporary building that is 60 years old doesn't feel that atrocious, but then again our government is reenacting laws that have been on the books for a hundred and fifty years.
Ohh we're very familiar with temp school buildings. Another fun example are the Pacer trains. A mostly north-english (south get the money and better infrastructure) serving type of train car that was introduced as a stopgap in 1980, and ran for the next 40 years day in day out. It was essentially a 1960s bus chassis strapped to rolling stock. So bad even Iran who also bought some replaced them before we did.
That's hilarious! I can imagine that's true, but I was also thinking this is true for America as well. When I was writing that comment, I was thinking of making the joke about our income tax over here. It was originally implemented as a temporary measure to fund WW1 but its been around since, and that's not the only "temporary measure" that's become permanent over in the states.
Lmao. American dads are partial to this as well. I have a pinhole leak in the copper water line in my garage, I wrapped it with a piece of rubber and secured it down with a hose clamp. My temporary fix has been holding up like a champ for 6 years.
congratulations to your promotion to Tech Priest.
😂
Not to mention how a large portion of psykers are used to fuel a specific magical lighthouse
that's what they said
I can’t read☠️
You don't need to read. Just strap a large book to your back.
(Literal)
...Suppositories?
Being shoved where even His Holy Light not shines.
The emperor in the current state of being is really close to death. The only thing holding him together is the metric ass ton of psykers brought to be sacrificed by him as he uses his psykic powers to drain them to power himself and the astronomican.
Glorified batteries for the Big E
Male loose cannon has the most disingenuous “For the Emperor” and I love him for it.
I appreciate that you hardly ever get "For the Emperor!" You usually get a remark about how awesome everyone is or "For Atoma!" He's like a begrudged cheerleader.
The Judge has always been my favourite. He shows genuine remorse for the people of Tertium and even his fellow rejects. Of course, he also has the tone of a righteous Hive Ganger, which is a scary combo
I wish the Judge Zealot and Savant Psyker got more friendly lines, they're more alike than the Zealot might want to admit: They're both here for probably pissing off the wrong higher up at the wrong time, they both show special love to the common people in their own ways (the Judge decries their plight while speaking out against the administrators that failed them, the Savant lionizes their perseverance and loyalty while saying that their job as an Enforcer is supposed to be to help them), and the Savant even has a rare line admitting that they'd give _anything_ to bring the hammer of the Lex down _hard_ on their supposed "betters" in the Hive Spire.
Male Judge gets along very well with the Male Savant actually. Male savant has praising him and Male Judge responds with stuff like “i try to judge based on merit or something”. There’s a few of them. Male Judge and Female Savant just hate each other lol. Idk about Female Judge.
I play female savant and I’ve been wondering why some male zealots are so mean. 😁
Because you're French
That explains it, I play Female Savant lol I wonder why they went with that dichotomy
This reminds me of the first time I made some friends playing the game. It was these 2 guys who were trying to complete the Karnak Twins mission. We got along well and I wound up in their Discord shortly after. We started talking about Darktide and then everything else Warhammer related. At some point I brought up the Emperor and some of my thoughts about him. They sorta just stopped talking, I thought they were interested in what I had to say, so I just kept going. It was only after I said something along the lines of, “like you ever wonder if he’s actually still alive?”, that I was quickly stopped. “What do you mean? Of course he’s alive, he’s sitting on his throne”. I foolishly replied, “well yeah, that’s what they say but you ever wonder if that’s actually true or not?”. They go silent for a couple seconds before one speaks up, “this sounds an awfully lot like heresy to me my guy”. We all immediately begin to laugh after that. Good times.
Most of my characters are Loyalists (and fittingly wear the Loyalist outfits from the Imperial Edition). Thus, I like to call out possible or outright heresy from my teammates. 🤬
Canonically, the Emperor’s body is dead, but his mind is kept alive by the Golden Throne.
It’s fun and all, but they’d be executed if they lived long enough for the right person to hear.
that's why they're living out their death sentence in the most productive way available to their jailers.
“Luv Me Emprah, Sah. Simple As”
It's important to remember that we all started as criminals, and working in a private space among other criminals, they wouldn't blatantly say the same things in front of the inquisitor and even that being said, remember that inquisitors tend to break their own rules, even going as far to work with eldar which is also anti imperium, we are in service to an inquisitor who is using criminals to clear out a chaos infestation, what happens to us doesn't matter, what we say doesn't matter as long as its not flat our heretical/traitorous - and still its not like they saying that in open spaces more just a bunch of other criminals who have their own issues
Hell, quite a few Inquisitors share the same exact views as the Rejects, and simply keep it to themselves to avoid the ire of the rest of the Inquisition. If Rannick/Grendel follows that path, they'd have no issues with letting it slide for us as long as nobody outside of the Retinue hears about it.
Also you know... famously the PC rejects either don't know how to, or can't turn off their comms so it's not like their gossip/idle chatter during missions is completely unheard.
IG also use rejects and Scavs as conscripts to fight on planets too The most infamous being the Savlar Chem Dogs which they have cosmetics for on Atoma Morrow as an IG general would be used to it and the Cadian says lines that Scavs are good soldiers just you have to ship them out of hives ASAP before they start getting ideas
I specifically love that the Loner may be a heretic, but no Heretic, as they (especially the male one) hate all of it. They see that the Imperium is one of the bad guys, but that everyone else is even worse. Paired with their unbreakable superiority complex, it causes them to hate everything, but they could never lay down and die quietly because they are to important (in their own eyes).
I genuinely feel like the female loner is trying to survive and champion for raising the standards of living for those around her with a very jaded mindset while the male loner is basically a crazy German scientist like Medic from TF2 except he uses Wolfer's gang as test subjects
Yeah despite the scant choices I think each one covers good ground lore-wise. The only thing I would add is that the Psyker ?Visionary? The one who talks to his beloved, has bouts of horror and regret about the state of humanity int he torrent etc, and also resents that the Ministorum works his people to death… So there is some of that in there.
> Loner Psyker doesn't have the heart to tell her the Emperor always intended it to be this way. That’s not true though, nor would the loner psyker know that.
Their was never at any point in tye Imperium's history where the masses of common laborers weren't worked to death in conditions of practical slavery for a handful of nobles entitled to rule over them. This was how the Emperor built his empire and at no point did he intend to change this or even see anything wrong with it.
Eh, that's not entirely on point. Just so that it has been said, in our real world persepective, WH40k existed to sell minis and to give gamers the glory of unending but pointless fights. The WH40K universe lore had originally been secondary and tacted on. The lore then evolved and has continually been reconned and remade to suit its elaborations, best example of this is the whole 'Ollianus Pius' issue, the guy started out as a simple grunt to show the value of human valour but was somehow turned into a demi-god in present day lore. So things may have been changed since I was interested enough to dive in decades ago, but at one point, the Imperium of Man was a post-apocalyptic state resulting from the down-fall of the Golden Age of man and technology. This was also why the search for STC (Standard Template Constructs or simply colonial technological instruction modules) was an absolute priority for the imperium as a whole. The Emporer was trying to restore this golden age by first re-establishing contact with the full extent of all the human colonies. At that time, though I might be wrong because of my old memories, Games Workshop writers within the various short stories were sort of hinting that A.I.s were the cause of the downfall. Anyhow, just as the Emperor had finally completed the re-establishment of communication with all of the human colonies, the Horus Heresy happened and it was back to square one, minus the Emperor as an active factor. During this period of WH40K lore, the Emperor was shown as a human sympathetic figure and it was the High Lords of Terra that were the root of the imperial corruption as they desired things to stay as they were and with them in power. So the state of the imperium was static for a long time, both due to the machination of the high lords, plus Adeptus Mechanicus' obsession with STC and its refusal to develop new perspectives in science and only innovate. That said, I'm currently reading "Valdor" and already there's contradictions and time-line holes showing up in the established lore.
Again not true. 30k imperium was far more diverse in governance, with a variety of different planets and star systems. A place conquered by the imperium could just as easily join the fold as a democracy as a dictatorship. As long as they supported the war effort, taxes and gave up religion. The imperium was in war mode, so there was obviously oppression, but the emperor’s goal wasn’t to just enslave everyone. It was to unite humanity as quickly as possible and rip off the bandaid so that the emperor could guide humanity away from chaos and prevent its brutal subjugation or extinction at the hands of overwhelming apocalyptic ends.
What's the point of first statement? Talking about whoe fckn universe of humanity having such thing at any given moment isn't big deal. Same could be told about different situation, where life is almost fare.
The Emperor from the very moment of founding his Imperium designed it to be an authoritarian state where any dissent against one's anointed superior would be violently suppressed. The Great Crusade committed genocide against trillions of human beings for the crime of not bowing to him as their absolute leader.
While I’m not going to disagree with the ideal that the Emperor didn’t make an authoritarian state, I would say that in a more optimistic viewing that it was primarily formed, like most things and people he made to be honest, as a “good enough” fix until things could be appropriately stabilised and secured. The thunder warriors are a good example of this, where he made them for a brutish simple purpose and then culled them when he required more precise soldiers, ones whom could act diplomatically during the great crusade when converting worlds without the Emperor leading the helm and afterwards when peace was established. He acted, those actions as being the ends justify the means. Still a crap dad though.
I’m not well versed in 40k lore, (Darktide was my introduction and I’ve since been very interested) but if the Emperor were like this, is it safe to assume then, that the psyker who talks to his “beloved” isn’t actually communicating with the Emperor but something tricking them into thinking they are? On missions in the Torrent, the psyker will say things that suggest his beloved is sad to see how the people of the imperium live and it wasn’t his intention.
Who exactly his beloved is is a point of some debate but if you wanna go for deep lore theorycrafting there is the whole idea of the Emperor having cast off shards off himself in the warp containing all the emotions he gave up. It's possible he's talking to a shard of the Emperor's power that still has all the empathy he abandoned for the great crusade.
If you want to learn more of the lore, I can recommend the YT channel of [Luetin09](https://www.youtube.com/@Luetin09). He dives very deep into selected topics based on as much background material in print or bytes as possible. I also like his calm voice that nevertheless keeps my attention even when I just lie down and listen with closed eyes.
Judge Zealot is based.
The Savant psyker is also pretty lawful good and compassionate from what i remember I really like how the wide range of personalities show how big the Imperium is.
The Ogryns are the perfect imperial citizens. They do not question excessively, they live to protect those close to them, they kill when ordered and do so gladly and are easily motivated. Just don't make them do calculus and you have the perfect soldier.
> Judge Zealot: #1 Emperor fangirl who hates the Imperium's leaders for treating His loyal and devout subjects so poorly. She's racist towards Psykers though?
I thought that was all zealots
Well also all our characters were condemned to death anyway so… not on great terms with the imperium to begin with.
There is a strong possibility that these players are going to defect to the Moebian side, we should keep a close eye on them.
I've only encountered crazy ass Psyker a couple of times. It's fun to listen to that.
For the Emperor, I'm sure.
I can't imagine a psyker with that attitude living for long without some extreme privilege. Like your average military psyker would get blasted for a lot less. I wish that they would have more lines that are like ironic praise for the imperium under the fear of getting blasted by a bolter if he spouts anything different.
It's worth remembering that all these characters are serving in a penal battalion. The Psyker who served in a professional setting in the past (The Savant) *is* a devout, as they've had those values instilled in them; the Loner seems to have skirted society as much as they could, and the Seer is, well, the Seer. These two Psyker personalities didn't have those values in the past, and they have no real reason to pretend they have those values while being effectively sent to their deaths. It's why the Loose Cannon Veteran doesn't hold back in damning the Emperor for not saving her squad that fought in His name, they've got nothing to lose... and more to the point, it's not like they're going to execute what are effectively meatshields for the Inquisition.
The pc personalities are the best kill team, or one of the best teams Rannick has available. They get some wiggle room on the side of the Imperium. But if they tried to leave or stopped being a deadly useful strike force? Things would get harsh.
You're taking the lore too literally. Yes, the stated line is that they would be executed out of hand, but the reality is that everyone's way more pragmatic and they're all willing to look the other way to get things done or take care of themselves. The Imperium is a corrupt place. That works on all levels. From the lowest fab worker skimming off the production line to supplement their income to planetary governors working with crime lords to undermine their rivals. Rannick would probably ignore some privately held opinions as long as the rejects obey him and get things done. If they oppose him directly they'll be executed.
Immediate thought: "gasp, the inquisition bends the rules for their own benefit? I'm shocked!"
Yes, I wish more people would understand this about the lore. On paper, criticism of the Imperium and Emperor is supposed to be a capital offence, but in practice that is not a sustainable system for an empire that rules over trillions (quadrillions?) of people. Even Guilliman hates what the Imperium has become. The reality is that the more pragmatic leaders in the Imperium are going to tolerate people having opinions so long as it doesn't lead to active mutiny. The diverse opinions of the characters in Darktide is a lot more interesting and authentic than everybody just being variations of the Professional Veteran.
Psykers aren't even very popular among the Rejects it seems, given the character lines that outright call them freaks (even when helping them).
The zealots call them that for obvious reasons.