Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[LordBaal]

Humanity would have steam rolled everything else. That would mean no Tau, no Eldar, no Dark Eldar, no Chaos, probably no Orks (or at least no Waaaghs), Tiranids slamming against an unified, competent galaxy and Necrons woking up against the same.

On the other side it would mean most of Imperial institutions would not exist or would not have men or women at arms, that would mean no Sisters of Battle, no Inquisition, Ecclesiarchy, and any of their militant branches.

Who knows what might have been of the Mechanicum, probably it would have been fully integrated into the imperium once the former grew huge enough to not really have use of a separated faction to run technology and most manufacturing. Maybe it would have been something gradual and pacific or a violent conflict.

The game would then have only a few factions:
- Imperium of man: With the imperial army, with numberless well equipped and trained soldiers, and vast, ultra high tech navies as the bulk with several special operations groups, the most glorious of all being the Space Marines. With competent officers to use all this resources, it would have been ridiculously over powered. Probably geared towards extra galactic colonization once all the Milky Way was tamed.
- Tyranids: All the same, but probably much less successful.
- Necrons: Probably doing better than the Tyranids, but not as well as right now.

[Taricus]

Well you'd probably have the tau as a client species or something, mostly since big E would've clamped down on xenophobia towards 'non-threatening' species.

[LordBaal]

But seeing as the Tau are "recent" species, most probably some colonization fleet would have taken up the planet, established an imperial colony and either make the Tau go extinct or have them in zoos/museum of sorts or whatever the policy on sentient, tribal level indigenous population was at the time.

[TempAcc]

Not sure about the Tau surviving. After seeing human auxilia within their ranks and their rapid technological growth, emprah would prob not think twice about exterminating them. Keep in mind that the xenos race most similar to humans in the galaxy are the eldar, and that never stopped the pre-horus heresy imperium from skirmishing with them. Granted, the eldar are sanctimonious dicks, and maybe if they weren't so dickish, there would be possibility for peaceful cohexistence, but even then its a slim possibility. This could only happen since the emprah himself has an interest in the eldar and they aren't exactly a huge threat to the imperium, since the eldar are extremely wary of letting themselves fall into decadence again, plus their tech would be very useful to the imperium, not to mention the fact eldar and humans, while eons apart in evolution, are oddly physically and genetically similar, etc.

Tau tech still pales in comparison to archeotech, and their xenophilic policies would be at odds with the imperium, specially since their lack of knowledge about the warp and chaos could cause them to recruit xenos psykers into their ranks, plus them kroot be scary, scarier then the tau themselves.

[LordBaal]

But at the time the Tau where only at a savage or tribal stage. Remember the Mechanicus fleet that explored the planet, finding out the savage Tau species (somewhat cavemen level) and cataloged the planet for colonization, but the colonization fleet was lost to the warp and the Tau where saved by plot armor (and GW need of a new faction).

What is known is that only 6,000 standard years ago, in the 35th Millennium, an Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet had discovered the Tau homeworld of T'au and determined that its population of sentient xenos were a primitive people at the Stone Age level of development who had only just mastered fire.

Warhammer 40k Wikia, Tau entry.

Hence in the year 34K (or before), under the rule of the emperor, the Tau would have quickly become yet another cataloged and extincted species of primitive local xenos to make way for human colonists.

[TempAcc]

:U

Well, I imagined the scenario of the emprah surviving the HH and how the imperium would be at the current years, which would mean the tau would be the same as now, unless they got exterminated before that.

[Rolan7]

Heh, I'm imagining The Emperor personally visiting the stone-age Tau and just, to everyone's confusion, bombarding the planet into space dust.  Or throwing it into their sun with his mind.  "None shall speak of them.  Ever."

'Course that's from my desire for the Tau to be significant, even if they're doomed

[Grim Portent]

I imagine if the E was taken to see the Tau as they were when first discovered he'd have just said something like 'Who cares about a bunch of xenos cavemen? If the planet is useful enough colonise it, otherwise let's leave the primitives to linger here and come check on them in a few millennia and see if they'll make an acceptable vassal species.'

[Dorsidwarf]

lets not forget that the Tau only came together from the influence of the Ethereals, who are all-but-outright-stated to be / the result of extra-tau intervention by another species (eldar?) who might not have gotten a chance in  Emps'hammer 40k

[pisskop]

E is a founding myth character in 40k

even in HH he does fuckall.  because hes plot moving strong.
he has to be out of the picture in order for real conflict to happen.


hes somebody's marysue manifested.
hes unnecessarily strong for his importance to plot, to be blunt

[pisskop]

id go as far as to entertain an arguement that he is a poorly designed character.  :|

[milo christiansen]

Forgive me if I don't keep up with 40K much, but what is this "plot advancement" thing the title speaks of? (a link to something detailed I can read would be nice)

[Loud Whispers]

I'd go so far as to argue the Emperor is not a character, but is pure plot

Forgive me if I don't keep up with 40K much, but what is this "plot advancement" thing the title speaks of? (a link to something detailed I can read would be nice)

https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Advancing_the_Storyline#Yep.2C_They.27re_Doing_It

[Rolan7]

id go as far as to entertain an arguement that he is a poorly designed character.  :|

heresy etc
And I see your point, but it is rather important that this one man was able to unify Earth.
We could have had the Imperium be run by a successful world-conquering oligarchy- oh wait it essentially is, but the backstory is that this guy did it.

I do like the idea that the Emperor really wasn't that exceptional, just a mid-high range psycher, who happened to win the unification wars.  Inevitably, someone would.
Would actually work with his "No I'm not a fucking god, just the best human" agenda.

[Neonivek]

A lot of the Warhammer stuff has an alternate interpretation.

One side is that the God Emperor really isn't anything special and that his death really represents more strongly his death in the eyes of the people... He is put into quite literal life support by the very life and soul of his people.

Yet the reason they don't just let him reach his natural death is because his is needed far too much as a symbol.

Add in that the Warhammer universe is a "Belief = Power" universe... and now you understand how the Emperor protects the imperium just by existing. He is important because everyone believes he is important. His undue importance is his greatest strength and asset.

But the better part? The Emperor is quite unimportant. If anything he is a detriment to the entire imperium. He has reached near figure head levels yet him getting as much as a sore throat gets national news (not that they would ever let him show weakness... Nooo... Likely they will post some sort of new hobby he has)