I’m very new to the Warhammer 40K universe. I found a group that plays role games and I wanted to join that I felt I needed to learn the lore first.
I’ve been binge-watching lore videos on Youtube and BTH im hooked, I can see how similar it is to franchises that came after and were inspired by it, but at the same time is like nothing I’ve seen before. I actually love that there is not such a thing as a “good ending”.
I wanted to ask people who know more about this universe than me, what is the worst thing that has ever happened in the universe? The most tragic event? The most disturbing one? I really want to know and read about it.
I wanna read some books but seems like ebooks are not available on my country, on Kindle it seems like they were purged and on Kobo maybe I could by them with a VPN or something.
Probably the creation of Orks.
I subscribe to the idea that since Orks are living in a utopia from their perspective, they are the only faction living in utopian circumstances, and we know Ork psychic energy can affect reality so the sum total of all Ork desires may effect the entire universe, the current circumstances in the 40k universe are all a consequence of Ork desires. Every bad thing that has happened since Orks were created were to engineer a paradise for Orks, which is an irreconcilable deadlocked state of total war.
I don’t think the Waagh field is quite that strong in canon lore, but holy shit that makes way more sense than it should. I never even considered this as a possibility.
It actually tracks pretty well, particularly with how the Old Ones got clapped after the Necrons went to sleep.
The only question I’d have is why the Krorks devolved if that was the case. Shouldn’t their Waaagh have created a universe where they were necessary, instead of being overkill?
There’s a theory that Orks only evolve to meet the bare minimum technology level. Advanced to far in technology, Orks can’t have a good krumpin. It’s why Orks in the Old World and Age of Sigmar don’t have insane technology even though Orks in all three universes are the same.
Something like this happened on the planet Urk where orks were fighting eachother for thousands of years but had no desire to ever leave until Ghazkull united them, but then they constructed spaceships with no problem. There’s also a lot of feral orks in 40K universe while it shouldn’t be the case since mek knowledge is genetic. So it indeed might be the safety switch made by the Old Ones to reduce the danger of Krorks. And both after Horus Heresy aftermatch seen a lot of galaxy unified under the Imperium and now when the overal danger level in galaxy intensified greatly the Ork activity also greatly risen which given birth to a Beast (M32) which was almost a Krork and now Ghazkull is on a good way to becoming one, so it might indeed be correct to say that the Orks are adapting to the level of danger.
The book “Da Gobbo rides again” provided some interesting lore parts about how greenskin specialisation works.
I mean Orks were originally Krorks, beings superior in every aspect to for example human marine primarchs, who were desigend to take on not only the galactic spanning might of Necrontyr but even the C’tan. But since Old Ones were really callous and cruel beings, they didn’t given a shit about them and they degenerated to Orks as we know them (there’s a lot of plot shield in this too but it’s irrelevant atm). Orks are also more of an organic von Neuman machines.
Oh and speaking about Old Ones, the worst thing in the universe is what they did to Eldar. Old Ones were masters of the warp, they did know more than anyone about it. Yet they still designed Eldar as beings with not only good talent for warp, that would be not bad by itself, but also as beings with incredibly strong emotions and emotional feedbacks, which left them extremely vulnerable to warp - all that while knowing how warp works and by themselves being largely immune to this adverse effects due to their own nature.