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Satire that people don't recognize as satire has failed. And as much as I like the setting, I feel 40k falls there. Its satire is contextual, there's so many works that just ignore those elements entirely, it feels like trying to maintain it is a losing battle.
Crueller would-be-gods take from others. It's said that a wandering swordsman who cuts down every opponent will eventually face a god, cut them down and take their place in Heaven's ranks. More than one seemingly irrational tyrant has their eccentricities lead to rumours of Exaltation.
But not all Heaven seekers are willing to absent themselves from civilization like that. More than one Emperor with less magical skill has tried to use conquest as another way to reach Heaven, forging a great empire and using a massive rite to help forge their Exaltation.
The best case scenario is someone using pure knowledge to ascend, bringing their soul into the Empyrean. That requires uninterrupted meditation, and can cause environmental effects: great storms, a winter of years, a fire that never seems to stop burning. If interrupted, Athamatic fall is inevitable
#Febchantment
Exaltation.
Powerful Aetheri mages can ascend to godhood purely through mastery of magic, using it to transcend the limits of the flesh and find themselves a place in Heaven. If they succeed, they become a god.
But it's not an easy process. And it can have consequences
I mean.... that's more just 'that art sucks' TBH. :P You're right, but that piece barely says *anything*. About the best I've got is an attempt to say 'no one's in the right' because they dirty up the 'pure' white lighting some. Even then, that's... barely even an attempt.
I think it's the raised fist in the middle that does the idea in to me. That, the raised banner, and the subtlety of the more negative stuff. A guy in the back. The positioning. The fact that you can't see the enemy. I can see the negative read, thinking about it - but I only see it then.
The Voice of Thunder style themselves as a populist front, who supported the Aetheri in the war against the Roseikoh to distance themselves from their prewar history as unsuccessful insurgents and wannabe tyrants.
Now, everyone's on a different world. But that history doesn't just vanish.
Their powers are different. But their cultural origins are just as distinct. The Spiritographers have a tradition of public service and education. The Assassins and Architects have their roots in nobility and pride themselves on class, but their histories diverge between service and (hated) rule
Pendan, the world I'm mostly focusing on, is limited to a comparatively restrained 'ten-ish'. But even amongst that ten, you've got spiritographers, who copy the abilities of naturally manifesting spirits, Architects who draw on the innate power of the city, shadow-cloaked Assassins, Fashionistas...
Each discipline has its own framework for how it uses the Empyrean and what it creates. The Aetheri are a naturally magical people; while they aren't all mages, spellcasters are relatively common and they all have their own ideas on how it's supposed to work. There are hundreds of schools.
Yes, there are a lot of different types of magic among the Aetheri. All of them utilize the same power source, the Empyrean, and the same primary method of drawing on it, the Magic Circuit.
That's all they have in common.
#FebChantment
Catch up time! And starting with one that made me chuckle because... this was a hard one to answer because my 'Yes' is empathic enough that doing this in anything other than exhaustive depth was going to be painful.
From the first, (okay, not quite, *from early on*) the grim inevitability of the Imperium's fall clashed with 'The Space Marines are cool, buy them now'. You can't make the Astartes look truly badass while stressing their inevitable defeat. The longer you make the odds, the more heroic you code them
Honestly... I don't see the delineation as starkly as you do. To my mind, the first is as clear a heroic image as the second.
(I'm still laughing at running into some young Homestuck fans who earnestly thought that their... whatever it is coined the term 'Grimdark'. ^^ Speaks to 40k IMO.)
The lie's emotional importance may outweigh the practical worry of letting ghosts enforce a legal code on each other. And more investigation could help stamp out corruption within the house. Carnacki's likely to allow it at some point; it's just not in play yet.
Carnacki's called it premature. He's not a fan of ceding power in general, and this would be the first step in relinquishing his authority to the House of Shades. But the whole reason he allowed the house in the first place was to create a feeling his operation *wasn't* despotism.
As things stand, their society works on unadulterated corporate structure. Your supervisor can assign you whatever punishment they see fit. The rank and file ghosts would certianly prefer something a bit more fair and impartial. And it wouldn't be too hard to set up.
#FebruaryWorldbuilders
Mortals have the regular ol jury trial structure. No need for the ghosts to meddle in that.
The ghosts are debating this point. They don't have a firm system of laws or control just yet, but as their numbers grow, this is something they're weighing up
1/4 🧵
Not just that, it's subject to the law of conventional narrative structure. Almost all 40k media deemphasises the Imperium's corruption, brutality and incompetence as hard as they can, shifting towards regular SF and a heroic Imperium. To casual fans, that's all they know about it.
And then there's military and the military police. With their expanded numbers and role, civilians being tried due to breaking military law (usually tresspass) is something that happens. Still handled through civil court, just means there's people with guns to arrest you if you go to the wrong place
Riot control is a lot more common, and has more mechanised force behind it. Portable Enforcement Placements (Pepperpots), ground based reinforced drones with heavy 'non-lethal' armament, are usually wheeled out, along with overhead camera units to register attendants and track escape attempts.
There's a small community of werewolf police officers embedded into the force across the nation. Most counties have enough for a pack to get together when their 'old friends' have reason to see some particularly troublesome fugitive brought to justice.
#FebruaryWorldbuilders
Still the Home Office. That said, the Department of High Technology has a few 'unorthodox' levers to apply some extra pressure to 'subversive elements', if they feel its warranted.
#FebruaryWorldbuilders
Still the houses of parliament. The ghosts have their House of Shades, but that's more a forum for a workforce to air their grievances and the bosses to try and sell them on what they're doing. Law is still a thing for mortals and their MPs. The ghosts have all they need.
#FebruaryWorldbuilders
This is something that the leads have some reason to worry about. Once they figure out the dimensional sealing thing, there's no way to be sure what the wider world would be like if they brought Britain back to the material plane. They could be heading back to a ruined world
So... yeah, I really wanted to get some stains on the Aetheri culture with this. It's easy to show corrupt practices in an imperialistic sci fi military, harder to paint the issues with a quasi democratic mage republic. ^^
The Heart Seal works. But 'works' is the wrong word given what it puts people through. It's a clumsy, blunt force approach, ripping magic away and creating an underclass of victims. If you need it, you're weak, you wouldn't have been a decent mage anyway.
And even some people with the Seal buy that
You know, in the abstract, what those memories are. But the specifics are cut off. Trying to access those memories is physically painful, and your feelings in general are... muted. Not gone, but hidden. Buried.
They're still there, and the subconscious effects of them... tend to not be great.
