Explaining Warhammer 40K to a Friend

[Yayachan]

As soon as gabe mentioned 20 Legions, I could hear the Inquisition knocking

[Another_Aussie]

"Give me a summary of the backstory of 40K."

"60 million years ago..."

[itcheebeard]

"In 40k there are no good guys"

Stinks of heresy to me.

[Jarl_Throthgar]

"The Horus Hersey??

"We. DO NOT. Have time for that.

[Noah-pcwq]

I like how the "WTF" in this one is still kinda into it

[angsty_saint]

"There are no good guys"

My man VULKAN: the closest thing to a superhero in 40k

[XxnostalgiaxXdrive]

The Ultramarines do have a specialization and it's logistics and optimization. As an example, it was explained to me that they would be the best at doing taxes.

[d_]

"How many legions are there?"
20
*inquisitor*
I mean 18!
*raises bolt pistol*
I mean 9!!!

[markattwood]

“Legions”
I believe you mean Chapters, brother…..*stares in inquisition*

[bogustoastnone]

Ultramarines are good at logistics. This may not sound important, but it’s what gives them the ability to be good at everything.

[justadonutidk]

The salamanders are the only chapter you could consider "the good guys" since they literally have every characteristic of a "good guys"

[TriTomMaximum]

"There are no good guys in 40k."
"What are Ogryn?"
"There are good guys in 40k."

[robpaul]

You forgot the “Werewolves” part. They’re “Space Viking Werewolves” who get themselves drunk. For the Vlka Fenryka Brother!

[emoment]

"Golden Jesus had twen-eighteen sons"

[donovanphillips]

Anytime I hear this man say “explain.” I know I’m going to get a speech at 2x speed.

[ShinigamiSparda]

That last “WTF?” translated to “Please repeat that because I need to make sure that what you said was as awesome as I thought it was.”

[BigPhatPandaGaming]

Hold on. How many Legions did you say?? Sounds like someone's spouting out some heresy! Where's my boltgun?

[Vixtraction]

Man, I also love the white scars, and space wolves. good to see somebody that's actually like me.

[georgenovak]

"There are no good guys"
Salamanders: AM I NOTHING TO YOU?!

Edit: I refuse to acknowledge any other chapters other than our green good boys...and the raven guard, but THAT'S ALL!!

Edit 2: 1.2K likes, why? Why can't my Alpharius jokes get that many...

[franciscomoutinho]

If anyone here is a 40K newbie (doubt it but still), there is alot more to 40K than Space Marines (officially known as the Adeptus Astartes). Since the video is about humanity I'll focus on them and Chaos troops. First four paragraphs are relevant to the video, all rest is extras.

The Astartes are one of many military institutions in the *Imperium of Man*, an empire with an extremely complicated history that was formed ten thousand years before the modern era ( which is around the year 40, 000 CE) by a man known as the *God Emperor of Mankind*. The God Emperor and his left-hand man, *Malcador the Sigilite*, unified the Earth which has long lost its life, and then procedeed to expand their empire throughout the galaxy through scattered human colonies left behind from a more civilized age.

The Emperor made 18 sons, each to lead a Legion of the Astartes, but He Himself does not consider them 'sons', more so tools. When they were not fully born, their embryos were scattered through the Galaxy and so did the Emperor go in his Greatest Crusade to unite Humanity and collect his sons.

There is a problem, though; the *Warp*. Known officially as the Immaterium, it's a dimension overlapping ours made of thoughts, souls of the dead, and emotions, and in them dwell the *Chaos Gods*, the anathema to the Emperor and the material Gods, the *C'tan*. These four Chaos Gods have a corrupting influence and in modern 40K, almost everything is prone to falling to its influence exept Necrons, Imperial saints, T'au (somewhat), and the Emperor. Yet through the Warp, faster-than-light space travel is done and basically space wizards called Psykers can draw their power from it (people from all species are racist to these individuals tho), such as the Emperor himself. EDIT: Many of these psykers are percecuted in modern times.

One of his eighteen sons, Horus Lupercal, became corrupted by Chaos and rebelled against his father along with eight of the Emperor's most neglected sons. This began a seven year long civil war that halted the Great Crusade and resulted in the Emperor being put on a piece of ancient (possibly Necron) technology called the Golden Throne like its life suport, most of his sons being either dead or missing, people beginning o pray to the Emperor and the Chaos legions retreating into the Warp for 10, 000 years. That is the Horus Heresy and there are 70 in-universe books about, to learn about them you can read just fifteen at most because most relate to specific engagements but its a good book series.

Most people in the world live in what are called Hive cities, which are continent-wide cities where billions of people live short and meaningless lives of manual industrial labour. Cults are almost everywhere, human connections are rare, people live afraid of the Law, the nobles, those around them and the Church, which murders millions in every city as public displays daily. The Inquisition regularly tortures people, zealots chant sacred texts in name of the Emperor and the very air of these cities is toxic and the surrounding land is barren. These places are also a hub for centuries-spanning architectural projects made by noble families and generation-long political plots at the cost of thousands of lives of the lower classes by the nobility in their spires of the highest levels of the Hive cities. Nobility in the Imperium works almost like medieval Houses, with families ruling specific swathes of land in specific planets and planetary governors working in the bureaucracy of ruling planets and solar systems and with the high aristocracy that is the highly inneficient *Administratum*. Yet it is important to note that Hive Worlds are not the only Imperial worlds, with Agri Worlds (planet-wide fields of crops with seasonal storms of pesticides), Shrine Worlds (planet wide churches), Fortress Worlds (Remember tbe Creek), Death Worlds (just dangerous), and feudal worlds (worlds with less developed technology) making a large portion of them.

Yet in these millions of worlds is the potential for soldiers, a lot of them. This is the *Imperial Guard*, an institution known officially as the Astra Militarum, where a trillion men across the galaxy are conscripted and a trillion dies over countless trench fronts daily. They are well disciplined forces of soldiers conscripted into their regiments, but the most common to see are Cadian-armored, Cadia was a planet which recently imploded but for 10, 000 years single handedly pushed back one of the largest Chaos incursions the Galaxy has ever seen. There are multiple types of regiments and discipline is inflicted through torture, executions without trial, and fear mongering, and they mostly fight in trenches against Chaos forces, aliens and Imperial rebels. My favorites personally are the Kriegsmen, drawn specifically from the planet of Krieg, which five hundred years ago rebelled and after being reconquered by Imperial forces, began pumping out immense amounts of soldiers, being masters of sieges and trench warfare and as the saying goes "there are no civilians in Krieg, only soldiers." Guardsmen live short lives and those who don't, quickly jump the ranks while countless more are forced to fight horrors that either outnumber them or outmatch them in every way that make them powerless, but against all odds they are forced to hold a million lines on over a million worlds, working together with forces like the *Imperial navy* (Navis Imperialis) which works in Warp and space travel, the Imperial air force (Aeronautica Imperialis [EDIT: Aeronautica Imperialis is a whole different ball game from the ground troops of the Imperial guard with different classes of vessels from troop transfer to basically fighter jets to basically fighter jets firing intercontinental ballistic missiles), and when things are really bad for a specific war-front but they cannot simply implode the planet like the Imperium does to many planets in friendly territory that have been corrupted by Chaos, is when the Astartes come in. And not to mention, some Astartes chapters like the Grey Knights will execute entire regiments when the fighting is done to avoid potential Chaos Corruption.

Yet the Imperium has many cultures, part of why Imperial Guard regiments may vary so much from planet to planet; and to produce that many space ships or make such finely crafted power armor, there is another institution that dabbles with the Administratum and the nobility, which is the *Mechanicu*s. The Adeptus Mechanicus is the institution of people who control the weapons factories and armor factories and artillery factories and basically any type of heavy industrial production that is above the pay grade of the average Hive World, who live in Forge Worlds. The Mechanicum was established before the Imperium even existed, in Mars, and since then it has been expanding and crusading to regain lost technology and preserve it. The red-robed praise technology and believe it all descends from the Machine God, the Omnissiah; which some heretics speculste is just a C'tan pretending to be a human god; and they are the only institution exept the Astartes who negate the faith in the Emperor's rotting corpse. They believe the flesh to be weak, and so they strive to remove the flesh from their bodies in often violent surgeries, some done without anesthesia. They also believe that every technology has a soul, which is why they can be found in most war-fronts before any cavalry charges or artillery assaults or suicide charges, blessing the guns, armor, tanks etc. and passing sacred scents through the trench-lines.


I could go into ALOT more and I did get into a lot, so if you are resfing this, congrats. If I got you hooked into this obsession of a hobby and universe, great; if not, it is what it is. TL; DR: There is none, go read a 40k book or go to a youtube loretuber, there are many great ones.

EDIT: There were some dudes saying that was alot of words and you're absolutely fucking right, but I didn't even get started on the intricacies of Imperial history, I did not talk at all about the Sororitas or the Custodes, I did not talk about how space travel works, what the Astronomicon is, what the Chaos Legions are, the Chaos Daemons because 40k is a fantasy setting sisguised as sci-fi; and oh lord I did not say a WORD about any alien empire/race and did noy have the chance to call Eldar fans knife-ears.