5 DARKEST Crimes The Imperium Is Guilty Of. | Warhammer 40k Lore

Warhammer 40K is one of the darkest franchises ever made even if you're only Vaguely Familiar with the property you know it's full of some pretty dark stuff I mean really dark it's literally the franchise that coined the term grimdark which would subsequently give rise to an entire literary genre of grim dark fiction now most of the horrifying things you'll encounter in the pages of its stories are done by The Menagerie of savage grotesque and even hedonistic alien species or by the Demonic forces that live just beyond the veil of our universe and are aided by their insane chaotic Cults that worship them but in a lot of instances the Imperium of man itself can actually be just as brutal if not far more grimdark justifyingly frankly terrifying actions under the guise of being the Lesser evil today we're going to be taking a look at five of the darkest things within the Imperium from the absolutely terrifying way the lobotomized Servants of the emperor known as servators are actually made a merchant Guild that has been tasked with possibly the most disturbing job imaginable and an example of an Imperial hero a woman said to be so great that her followers demand should be recognized as a saint but in reality she had some insanely dark methods for achieving her bloody goals we're going to be talking about all that and a whole lot more so let me know if you like content like this by dropping a like on the video and subscribing to the channel oh yeah and let me know down in the comments if you know of any other super dark things from 40K you'd love to hear me cover it's a pretty big universe and I always get the best ideas for videos from you guys anyways a quick shout out to this video sponsor then we're going to dive head first into the Grim dark I want to tell you about these amazing t-shirts that you see me wear in all my videos now they're made by this super cool clothing company called into the am and they're the sponsor of this week's video I wear these shirts 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background bodies but more commonly are made from mind wiped human criminals that have angered or offended the adeptus mechanicus in some way these people will end up being lobotomized having their minds wiped and reprogrammed and then cybernetically enhanced from the mechanicum's perspective these people have been improved and even criminals and Heretics are given another chance to serve the omnisaya these cyborg Creations can be found throughout the entirety of the Imperium and are used to perform any number of different monotonous or dangerous functions they are completely obedient and have no regard for their own safety willing to follow orders to the letter no matter what they may be most are not capable of speech unless this is part of their reprogramming done after the lobotomy and it's only done when it's deemed absolutely necessary for whatever their specific role will end up being to run an Empire as large as the Imperium artificial intelligence is basically a necessity but due to the fear and hatred of thinking machines prevalent throughout Human Society the servitors are the closest the Imperium is willing to get to a functioning AI without committing Tech heresy it's a convenient workaround considering that a human brain is still being used in combination with all of the different systems that make a servitor work rather than being just a machine that can actually think for itself servators come in an endless variety of different types from disturbing works of art that are created to serve the desires of the Rich and Powerful to Bulky misshapen labor units created to work in the most dangerous of industrial zones to even mindless combat drones equipped with all manner of heavy Weaponry most of the servators you'll see are made just to perform mundane tasks such as routine maintenance loading Freight sorting through endless dockets or acting as a guard for a particular area now this is where they get kind of dark but I have to preface this with it's insanely rare but there have been a few notable examples of servators who have maintained some form of diminished sentience whether that be them suddenly regaining Consciousness and Awakening to the horror that is their existence or in other cases being fully conscious after the process that was made to create them it's as if they're suffering from a form of locked in syndrome where their mind stays completely intact but they're unable to control their body forced to live on for centuries doing meaningless tasks after meaningless tasks but perhaps the most disturbing thing about servators is the process in which they are made now most of the details about this process are shredded in secrecy as the adeptus mechanicus rarely ever lets Outsiders bear witness to the condemns apotheosis and to a form more pleasing to the machine God but there is one example from the novel flesh and steel a war Hammer crime novel that follows our main character probator Simeon dimaximin noctis he's working on a murder case that involves a rogue servitor and he ends up getting a backstage tour of the mechanicus facility where the servators are made and I'm gonna warn you right now it's pretty disturbing the cold smell hit me like a brick like a meat store where astringents couldn't hide the smell of insipid rot there were notes of feces to go with the blood and Decay but the sound was the worst shouting screaming praying weeping all the cries of human Terror and misery I'm not a squeamish man and nor do I spare tears for those who deserve punishment but what I saw in the processorium haunts me still naked human beings were standing in a Switchback line between high fences outside the fences adeptus mechanicus menials in environment suits stood guard with shock codes in hand the people all mature men and women were shepherded down the Caged walk like livestock like they were food Beast being led to the slaughter meat for the ravenous appetite of the machine God I grew up lucky enough to eat real meat I was unlucky enough to see where it came from another gift of my father on another damn tour of my family's various businesses the manufacturem produced servators but it was more akin to an abattoir than a workshop every surface was easily cleanable large plastic flaps divided areas from each other servitors with spray units surgically attach their backs prowled about hosing filth into slit drains set into the perfectly smooth slanted floors we walked above all this past Sentry pods on spikes occupied by galvanic rifle arm snipers our path went from one end of the hall to the other and I could see pretty much the whole sorting process beginning to end as the line slowly Advanced the people were passed through various scanning devices and most of them mounted in ugly functional arches that let out a constant series of acceptance Chimes occasionally one would let out an angry Blair and the indicator lumens would flash red the rejected person was then swallowed up by a trapdoor opening beneath their feet from these pits wafted a hideous stench and the grinding sounds of industrial mensers one rejected man grabbed onto the lip and hung their arms and hands bloodied shouting a stream of defiant profanities guards lined the grating either side of him and shocked him until he fell the adepts wouldn't even even waste bullets on these people the trapdoor flipped up and the next terrified person was ushered forward a number of pneumatic Gates separated the people from each part of the process snapping open and shut with bone crushing force violent metal arms snatched them up and spread eagleed them in the air and a servitor Shearer shaved them all over at another they were subjected to a high pressure counterceptic wash whose chemical stink made me choke from a hundred feet away more scanners more rejects winnowed out machines forcibly dressed them and the heavy rubberized garments common to all monotask serviters they were saggy on them all one size until another process Force shrank them to fit their bodies Where Metal cuffs sockets and collars bit into vulnerable flesh the last few prayers gave way to screams at that point and even the most stoic shouted in pain they were ushered over a floor buzzing with power that made them shriek with every footstep what is that for I asked gelling answered only reluctantly follicular inhibitor to stop the hair growing he said how I asked but gelling was done answering come come this way he waved me over to a door but I didn't come this way I watched numbly the Shivering lines of terrified men and women reached a final series of gates where a high energy auger beam of such potency it made my data slate Buzz passed over them dazed they were manhandled into different cues and then hustled from the room to their Fates gelling gripped my elbow with surprising strength and pushed me out of the hall this way please he said thankfully I was spared a few of the surgeries I doubted the adeptus mechanic has provided anesthetic for the same reason they would not Dull the pain of a nail under a hammer one of the most commonly cited Grim dark things about the Imperium is their persecution of psychers the fact that thousands of people are sacrificed every single day to the astronomicon but what's particularly disturbing to me is the black ships that are sent to round these people up psychers are one of the most feared misunderstood and hated groups of people in the 42nd Millennia they are individuals that are capable of bringing about great ruination with simply a thought and considering the horrifying conditions most of humanity is forced to live in within the Imperium having an uncontrolled person with the power of a nuclear warhead at their disposal going undocumented and uncontrolled is a horrifying concept now obviously not all psychers are this powerful some simply have the ability to read minds or change a person's emotional state well others are strong enough to bring about the complete collapse of a planet single-handedly without Relentless training the more powerful abilities that some of these psychers can generate become harder and harder to control but the greatest threat posed by unsanctioned psychers is their susceptible ability to chaotic corruption and demonic possession in a worst case scenario a psycho could unwillingly become a warp portal in which a demonic incursion can flow through and quickly overrun a planet the Imperium deals with this Threat by utilizing the fleet of Black Ships ancient dreaded vessels that scour the Galaxy traveling from planet to planet and taking a tithe of each of the world's psychers these individuals are rounded up and contained within the ship's numerous cells now despite their terrifying appearance these ships are less like a war vessel and more like a Giant floating Maximum Security Prison designed specifically for psychers each and every one of them has a huge crew with a large portion of them being blanks and normally women from the sisters of Silence a blank is a person who can project a negative aura that shuts off a psyker's connection to the warp under normal circumstances having tens of thousands of psychers gathered in a single place is an insanely dangerous situation but when it's counteracted by the thousands of blanks the threat is severely diminished the ultimate destiny nation of the ships is Terror itself where the psychers will be handed over to the Scholastica saikana the lucky ones will be conscripted into service and trained to become what is known as a sanctioned psycher individuals who will use their gifts in the name of the emperor for the rest of their lives but the others who are deemed uncontrollable will end up serving the emperor in a different way they will be literally sacrificed to The Golden Throne having their life Essence and power drain from them like batteries until they wither to dust their Essence joining with the emperor in order to help him power the astronomicon and keep the forces of chaos at Bay the lore originally stated that it was around a thousand psychers that were rounded up and sacrificed each and every day but as the story has progressed into the 42nd Millennium The Golden Throne has begun to fail and the estimated number of psychers sacrificed in this way is rumored to be far higher it's said that the inside of these ships is like a nightmare prison for The Condemned everything about the ship from its Black Walls its strobing lights its psycho-conditioned guards the blanks that Patrol the calls the drugged slop they call food and the constant feed of tranquilizers the jailers pump into their living cargo all of it is designed to break you to crush your spirit into submission and accept your fate you aren't a human being you are anathema saikana you are a mistake to be corrected by simply being born as a psycher you have committed the sin of existence and your innocence proves nothing now the concept of living in a hive city is already pretty dark they were impossibly massive cities that can house billions of people and it gets even crazier when you look at a hive World which is a entire planet covered in Hive cities these worlds can have populations in the quadrillions now there are a lot of different systems in place to keep such a place running smoothly one of which is the merchant guilds they're what hold all of the great houses of necromunda together and regulate trade throughout all of its cities there is the promethium Guild sometimes known as the torch bearers that control the light and power of Hive Primus the water Guild that manages the distribution of one of the most valuable resources to ever exist water and even the slave guilds who manage the trade of captured and enslaved gangers basically taking criminals and turning them into prisoners for profit but by far the most disturbing of all is the marketer pallidus the corpse guilds the corpse guilds are said to be one of the most important and Powerful guilds within the hive world of necromunda they regulate the trade and production of the food stuff known as Corp starch a starch-like paste literally made from ground up bodies living in a hive city is a pretty bleak and miserable existence that gets even worse the further down into the Highview go billions of people can live in a hive City and due to their ridiculous populations millions of people are born and die each and every day on a hive world if there hadn't been a system in place to deal with the extraordinary amount of corpses a hype city produces then plague and disease would end up running rampant so the corpse skills serve two fundamental purposes at first is the disposal of the Dead to prevent the outbreak of plague and second rendering those bodies down into a viable food product in which to feed the hive's enormous population each and every cycle the corpse guilds send their members to collect thousands of dead bodies with which they fill their Mortuary Caverns keeping them secured until they are ready to be processed death is an incredibly lucrative business within necromonda and thus few other guilds have the resources or members in which to challenge the corpse guilds necromonda is also Rife with Superstition and it's said to even look upon a corpse skill there is bad luck when word gets out that one of these specters of death are going to be heading towards a settlement they will often arrive to find all of the windows and doors boarded up tightly and all of the dead bodies laid out neatly in the streets for them the living population not even willing to so much as look upon the Harvesters perhaps even more disturbing is what is known as a corpse grinder Cult of which many have formed out of the places in which the bodies are processed even in an environment as horrifying as a hive City and the individual workers that are burdened with the task of rendering their fellow hivers into corpse Arch are at an incredibly high risk of having a psychotic breakdown the whirring of massive meat sauce and the crunch of bone Grinders causes their minds to rebel against reality these individuals who were once selected for the job because of their Grim Detachment from emotion and ability to carry out their dark Duty with efficiency and composure become little more than deranged lunatics obsessed with flesh and blood they become cannibals that set out into the dark an ancient evil from Beyond the Veil whispering in their mind to enact ever more grisly murders and which defeated their Twisted desires many of these Cults worship what they call the Lord of skin and sinew which is most likely a stand-in for the blood God corn the Cults are led by blood-soaked demigods known as harvest Lords that spread their dark message of Slaughter now once the cult is swelled to a Breaking Point an uprising is all but inevitable order breaks down and a horde of rampaging cannibals descends upon the population of a hive the citizens are given a choice either join the corpse grinder Uprising and partake in their forsaken Bounty or become their next meal the Cults are a plague that the great houses are all too familiar with and while enforcers are secretly sent out to take them down before they grow too large the houses themselves will do everything within their power to cover up their existence chances are you've never heard of something called a Chrono Berserker I know I hadn't Intel just recently it's an obscure monster type character from one of the old RPG systems called Inquisitor that actually just recently showed up in the new system called wrath and Glory they don't get a lot of attention but these things are pretty horrifying and are basically forced to live a life of Eternal Slaughter if they ever stop something absolutely horrible will happen honestly it sounds like something you'd hear more from the followers of corn than from the Imperium much like a servitor a Chrono Gladiator is a brutal Union of Flesh and metal The Unlucky individuals that are forced to become such a creation are sentenced to undergo extreme athletic enhancement in order to become an absolute killing machine most of the people sentenced to death by Chrono are notable criminals but there have been documented reports of some of them having been taken as slaves or were debtors that were unwilling or unable to pay back what they owed instead settling their debts with their bodies and lives these guys are immensely physically powerful and are gifted with a wide array of different augmented stations specifically designed for combat they are frequently fitted with oversized hydraulic claws Buzz saw arms iron lungs and piston-driven legs to name a few many of which even have a form of subdermal armor under their skin and are force-fed chemicals designed to increase their resistance to pain their personalities can vary from Gladiator to Gladiator but it's mostly determined by just how much of their Humanity they manage to retain due to the nature of living a life of constant death and destruction it's pretty common for whatever Humanity they have to quickly be stripped away what's particularly dark about these guys is where they get their name you see in their creation a clock is placed in either their central nervous system or inside of their heart the clock is constantly ticking down and if it was to ever run out it would explode the timer only pausing In the Heat of battle and time only being added to the countdown when the sensors within the clock detect a very specific chemical pattern released when the individual feels the sensation of shedding blood meaning the Chrono Gladiators extend their life by stealing it from others the augmentation process used to create a chronogladiator is particularly barbaric and takes an enormous toll on the victim's sanity many end up having to be decommissioned shortly after their surgeries finish as they awaken as an uncontrollable and Mindless killing machine well there have been reports of some being able to make peace with their fate and end up rising to Heights of power as a bodyguard or an assassin by all accounts even the Chrono Gladiators that are able to thrive within this new role are particularly insane one such group of Gladiators known as the timekeepers of Hive testimonium were said to take the blood of their kills and mark their time of death on a nearby wall leaving the mutilated victim to be found by individuals that would spread the message of their particularly brutal execution and thus increase the gladiator's infamy despite their brutal existence there have been reports of Chrono Gladiators managing to protect something of a normal life outside of their Bloody Business While others have been entirely consumed by a Red Rage they know nothing of reason or compassion and have given themselves holy over to the pursuit of Slaughter the life of a gladiator is one based upon borrowed time a life that will inevitably end and a gory explosion and unfortunately for their masters it's not uncommon for the Gladiators that are running low on time to turn and attack their allies desperate to spill just a little bit more blood to extend their lifespans although a lot of the horrible things the Imperium does can be justified in universe as a necessary evil in comparison to the Eldritch horrors of the 42nd Millennium every now and then you come across a story that reminds you of just how brutal and inhumane the imperium's mentality actually is to combat the Monstrous they must in turn be even more monstrous and the crazy thing is some of these human monsters end up being put on a pedestal as a hero Genevieve allmas was a missionary of the Imperial Creed that had been sent on a mission to bring the light of the emperor to the coronis expanse by all accounts she had an incredible reputation for Success despite the fact that the world she claimed in the sector do not normally fall under the Imperial oversight and despite this their populations have maintained an unbreakable faith in the emperor such a track record of success by a missionary in such a dangerous Uncharted section of space is incredibly rare and lends Credence to the efficiency of her methods her heroic Tales have spread far and wide and even now there are huge swaths of people that demand can she be elevated to sainthood they see her as a shining example of The Emperor's gifts to all of humanity though all of her foes looked and fought differently they all stood in defiance of the Imperial Creed and by utterly and completely obliterating them her and her missionary inspired the population of dozens of Worlds to recognize and embrace the glory of the Imperium and the god Emperor as their savior this is the legend that is told but when you start to dig a little deeper and you start to look at what exactly her methods entailed you see that this person that many would argue was a saint was a manipulative monster this is made abundantly clear by what she did on the world of trainer's rest a world within the Coronas expanse that had gone Untouched by the Imperium and in their isolation the human population of the world which numbered in the millions lived side by side in peace and prosperity with an unknown reptilian Xeno species extensive research that was conducted by the scholars of her missionary were never able to identify buy any single act of war or hostility between the two species and by all accounts they maintained a completely symbiotic culture each providing materials and knowledge that contributed to the other survival Genevieve was repulsed by this she would end up traveling to the world with only a handful of other missionaries a force that was insufficient for direct military conquest she instead sought to convert the human population to the Imperial Creed the worship of the Emperor as the one true God the problem was when she started to interact with these people she found that they were completely happy with their existence living alongside their xenos neighbors in peace and Harmony this troubled and Disturbed her greatly and she realized if there would be any form of success to be found upon this planet she would need to drive a philosophical wedge between the two populations this would need to be done in order to mobilize the humans against the xenos Abominations and more importantly they would need to be willing participants in the slaughter never questioning the righteousness of their actions the zenith that lived on this planet had a different biological makeup to humans and thus the majority of their populations lived in more tropical areas zones that she realized had a greater abundance of mineral wealth these minerals were critical to the production of certain Technologies and thus she fabricated the story that the aliens had been refining and Gathering these materials in secret hoarding them in vast quantities in order to eventually strike out and dominate the human population into a subservient slave race she told them that once they had all been enslaved they would be forced to make more weapons for their reptilian overlords who would then set out into the Stars to war against the rest of humanity in addition to this great lie she dedicated an enormous amount of time to studying the history and religious practices of both species finding many similarities between the humans beliefs and the Imperial Creed she would end up writing a manuscript that got distributed to all of the humans on the planet these writings indicated that the Godlike figures the humans worshiped were actually Imperial Saints the deities the humans worshiped were something like Pantheon and she told them that their leader God was actually an incarnation of the emperor she also told them that the devil allegories they had in their mythology that were known as the Guardians of the Damned were actually the ancient ancestors of their xenos allies she used all of this information to drive the population into a religious fervor word of her Revelation spreading like wildfire across the planet more and more came to embrace her teachings each and every day eventually her pinned work would become the mainstream tenet of the planet these enlightened humans realized that their oldest allies and friends would have to be eradicated it started small at first riots taking place within shared population centers between the two species but over time these riots escalated into full-blown Warfare it was at this point that Genevieve stepped in to take Direct Control of the religious zealotry and the righteous brutality that she had inspired it took only seven years for every last member of the unnamed Xeno species to be hunted down and purged in the name of the emperor all of their cities buildings and ancient monuments were demolished any documents or artwork that even so much as referenced them was deemed as anathema and was defaced or destroyed in their place were erected countless new statues and manuscripts devoted to the god Emperor even from the imperium's perspective the war was not without its cost the elimination of the zenos had shattered the planet's infrastructure and even centuries later it still failed to even come close to its original levels of stability despite the Desolation the population maintains an incredibly strong faith in the Imperial Creed and continues to Revere Genevieve as the servant of the Emperor who revealed to them who their true enemies were and that was five examples of the Imperium being super Grim dark which one did you find the most disturbing do you know of any other super Grim dark things within the Warhammer 40K universe that you'd love to hear me talk about what about scary stuff from other factions what do you think is the most terrifying alien species in all of 40K what do you personally think is the scariest or darkest thing in the entire franchise I'm a huge horror movie fan so I'll take any excuse I can get to talk about spooky stuff and if this video does well I'll definitely do more videos like this because I feel like I could make a five darkest things for pretty much every faction if you enjoyed this video go ahead and leave a like And subscribe to the channel thanks to everyone who supports the work that I do over on patreon I'm actually working on completely overhauling that and I'll have an announcement on that coming soon thank you very much for watching the video all the way through and I'll catch y'all on the next one

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 573,548

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40000, warhammer lore, 40k lore, xenos lore, lore, warhammer story, warhammer factions, imperium of man, imperium, 40k imperium, god emperor, emperor of mankind, 40k emperor, primarchs, 40k humans, adeptus mechanicus, adeptus mechanicus lore, horus heresy, imperial guard, astra militarum, sisters of battle, sisters of silence, black ships, battle fleet gothic, astartes, space marines, rogue traders, necromunda, necromunda lore, hive city

Id: WMsD82CdigA

Length: 26min 56sec (1616 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023