TJDetweiler

Very hinged response.

The first comment engaged in whataboutism. The above poster just restated the point of the article..

You've pretty much got it. I'll reiterate some points below.

The warp, or the sea of souls, is an alternate dimension in which the soul of nearly every living being goes when its corporeal form dies. It is a place that is theorized to have always existed, although for much of it's history, was a relatively peaceful and dormant place. As sentient species, particularly humanity, spread across the galaxy, it made the warp more tumultuous. Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle have probably always existed in some lesser form, but as events transpire within real-space, they begin to grow in power. The cycle of life, death and decay fuels Nurgle, while Khorne grows more powerful as wars are waged. Tzeentch feeds on betrayal, schemes, plots, and change. These themes have been around since time immemorial, and so have these warp creatures that formed into the current day chaos gods.

The outlier is Slaanesh, who, as you noted, was pretty much murder-fucked into existence. Her birth was so catastrophic that she instantly killed most Eldar and and all their gods, and ripped open the galaxy in the heart of the Aeldari empire, which is why we now have the eye of terror.

Before I talk about Eldar, I need to talk about souls real quick. All souls reflect in the warp, and nearly every living thing has a soul. A plant probably isn't going to show up in the warp, but a human soul will, though a human soul is barely a candle flicker. A human psyker however, will be a strong flame and be much more noticeable to daemons. An Eldar soul is a bonfire, and a delicacy for Slaanesh. Since the birth of Slaanesh, she saps the Eldar of their souls over time. If an Eldar's soul is unprotected, over time, Slaanesh will turn that Eldar into a soulless husk. Each Eldar faction has a way of handling that problem which I'll explain below.

Now this part may be kind of dense because Aeldari get a lot of representation within Rogue Trader. They come in several flavours - 3 main factions I can think of, but I'm sure there are additional smaller ones: Eldar (Aeldari), Dark Eldar (Drukhari), and Harlequins.

Eldar

After the birth of Slaanesh, some Aeldari believed they must renounce their hedonistic ways, which are your regular Aeldari you see today. They fly around on their craftworlds and generally refrain from murder fucking. They keep soulstones on them so that if they die, their soul can be captured by the stone before it departs to the warp and inevitably consumed by She Who Thirsts. These soulstones are placed into the craftworld itself, which forms a sort of Eldar-only purgatory called the Infinity Circuit. These fallen Eldar can be called upon for council, or even for war, as they can inhabit war constructs made of wraithbone, which is a psychoactive building material that Aeldari society relies on heavily. It's essentially condensed warp matter that Bonesingers can form into shapes. If you're curious, a wraithlord is an example of what I'm talking about.

Dark Eldar

The twisted kin of the Eldar took a different path after Slaanesh's birth. Instead of protecting their soul using soulstones, Dark Eldar "steal" or siphon the souls of others. They perform massive raids on sentient species from their dark city of Commorragh deep within the webway. The webway is a sort of pocket dimension. It exists outside of realspace, and also outside of the warp. Typically anything within the webway is safe from Chaos, but you'll find there are exceptions to that. Anyway these Dark Eldar leave their city, raid a human planet, steal a bunch of humans, and take them back home. Once home, they pretty much torture the living shit out of these poor souls. In doing so, they replenish a bit of their own soul that Slaanesh has fed off of. Much of Dark Eldar society is built around torture, and so they have these massive coliseums in which thousands will gather to have their souls replenished during some fucked up gladiatorial event where captives will have to fight and be tortured. Dark Eldar also have extremely advanced technology and can essentially keep their victims alive indefinitely. They are also able to regrow themselves. Haemonculi, which are a sort of chirurgeon, are able to regrow a Dark Eldar body from a small piece. If a finger is left over, that may be enough to bring a Dark Eldar back. The time period of this is short though, as the body will need to be rebuilt before Slaanesh eats the soil. So essentially, they don't protect their soul like Eldar, they replenish it by way of torture as Slaanesh is constantly feeding off them.

Harlequins

These are a pretty mysterious and secluded third faction. They are soothsayers, story tellers, fate weavers, and mystics. They also live in the webway, are keepers of the Black Library, and like the Aeldari, don't partake in hedonistic acts. To protect their souls, they utterly devote themselves to the (likely) last remaining Aeldari god Cegorach. When a Harlequin dies, Cegorach snatches the soul before Slaanesh can. Not much is known about what actually happens with the soul or how Cegorach manages to protect and hide it from Slaanesh. Cegorach will try to do this for other non-harlequin Aeldari whose souls enter the warp, but it's not guaranteed he can save their soul.

Ok that's enough Eldar backstory, and should give a sufficient basis of knowledge in regards to the game.

The earth shaman story is the most likely theory, but it isn't confirmed, or maybe rather it's confirmed through an unreliable source. Anyway, there are other theories about how the emperor came into being, such as the Sigilites creating him. I won't get into that theory here, but yes, the running theory is that a bunch of Shamans killed themselves simultaneously so their souls could coalesce and form the Emperor. I don't think the Emperor ever gave the Chaos Gods a wallop, but he did deceive them and steal their power for his own plans, which is why we have the Primarchs. For what it's worth, there are many references in both Warhammer Fantasy and 40k that state the Chaos gods are always playing their great game, vying for power among one another. The split seconds they look away from their great game is when calamity falls upon humanity, but a vast majority of time (not that it exists within the warp) is spent fighting each other. If the Chaos gods actually teamed up and spent more than a fraction of their power on wiping out the galaxy, they could do it. This however will never happen, as if the galaxy does not exist to feed the warp, they will cease to be as well.

Now, assuming the shaman theory is true, the Emperor guided humanity in the shadows for tens of thousands of years until he made himself known and created the imperium of man. The rest is as you say, space crusade, horus heresy, internment on the golden throne, blah blah blah. You've got it.

The rest of the Xenos factions don't get a ton of representation in Rogue Trader. I won't say what, I'll leave you to discover it yourself, but I can quickly touch on Tau and Necros below as you mentioned them

Tau

Yep, galactic newbies, and a small empire. They are rapidly advancing, but are nowhere near anything that could be considered a threat to the imperium. They live simply due to the slow bureaucratic processes that prevent the imperium from properly mustering the miniscule amount of strength it would take to wipe the Tau off the playing field. If you take what they say at face value (which you probably shouldn't), they might be the only faction that can be considered the "good" guys. I wouldn't really call them space dwarves, that's more Leagues of Votann.

Necrons

Necrons are pretty much (imo) the biggest xenos threat to the galaxy, aside from arguably Tyranids. Their technology is so advanced it is akin to magic by the imperiums understanding. They have devices that can simply delete planets from existence. Their basic gauss weapons rend organic matter down to atoms. The only reason why they haven't dominated the galaxy at the current time is that they are still awakening after millions of years in slumber. A small fraction of the race is currently active and awake, while the vast majority still rests within their tomb worlds. In the early days, the Necrons killed their gods and turned them into batteries. I cannot emphasize how powerful this xenos faction is. To clarify your last sentence, they aren't genetically engineering other races. They believe in racial supremacy. Necrons dominate, lesser races serve. They are the ones who were genetically engineered by their gods (the C'tan) in the early days. Once, Necrons were humanoid, made of flesh and bone. Their homeworld revolved around an irradiated sun. The Necrontyr (their name before they became robots) were highly advanced, but their lifespans were short due to their sun essentially killing them. Their goal was to seek immortality, something the Old Ones had figured out. Necrons waged war with the Old Ones in an attempt to learn these secrets, but were unsuccessful. As the Necrontyr were pushed back and driven towards extinction, they struck a deal with the C'tan. The C'tan promised immortality in exchange for alliance with the Necrontyr, as they told the Necrontyr they were also once at war with the Old Ones. This was a lie. The C'tan simply wanted something to feed on. Anyway a bunch of shit happened, the Necrontyr went through a biotransference process, ate a bunch of Necrontyr souls, and now you have Necrons. More advanced Necron forms have retained a larger portion of their soul, so your run of the mill necron warrior is essentially a soulless automaton, while overlords retain much of their former self.

I'd recommend reading the wiki on the C'tan if you want to know more. It's quite a good read, especially if you want to learn about the earliest days of the setting. This is where I started my wiki rabbit hole.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/C%27tan

Lmao. I'm leaving that one.

I guess it's probably helpful to know what a rogue trader actually is. I think the game explains it somewhat, but just in case, here's a (not so) quick rundown on some major components of the lore and game.

A lot of people think that rogue traders are just the captain of a big ship. They are not. They command nearly unimaginable power within the imperium. They have a warrant of trade sealed with the blood of the emperor from a time when he walked among men. It is both a holy relic, and a hall pass to do whatever the fuck they want mostly. They are pretty much outside the bounds of imperial law. They can recruit xenos and worse into their crew. They can befriend, dominate, subjugate, and exterminate entire systems if they wish. Not even the Inquisition can really boss them around, but Lord inquisitors are probably the only authority to actually influence a rogue trader. A rogue trader wouldn't want to piss off a lord inquisitor and vice versa.

It is the duty of rogue traders to navigate unexplored space and claim worlds for the imperium. The world's they claim are theirs by right of their warrant of trade, but those worlds are required to pay tithe to the larger imperium, which is non negotiable. The tithe is usually set by the high lords of terra or the administrators that work underneath them.

As for wizards/magicians, they do and don't exist. They are called psykers, and their "magic" is derived from the warp, the nightmarish parallel reality inhabited by daemons and their respective gods. Using warp energy is extremely dangerous, and can cause the veil between realities to thin. If it thins, tears open up, and daemons can burst forth. This is usually a one way street, as anything non-daemon entering, or even seeing the warp, will pretty much instantly go insane, turn into a chaos spawn, or worse. There are very few exceptions, but they do exist. There is a lot more to the warp, I'd recommend looking into it deeper if you're interested. Leutin09 on YouTube is a great source.

Now that we know what both rogue traders are and what psykers are, we can talk about navigators, which are a really important part of the game and lore. They are human, but mutated. They have a genetic trait that gives them a third eye on their forehead. They use this eye to see into the warp. It's not perfect, but it can help ships travel through the warp, which is humanity's form of faster-than-light travel. Pretty much every warp capable craft will have one. Ones that don't take extreme risks even doing the smallest warp jumps. Without navigators, the imperium is screwed. It's why they are one of the very few types of sanctioned abhumans.

As for the mechanicus, machines spirits, and the god they worship, it's somewhat complex. The mechanicus at its height was technologically progressive, and significantly more advanced than the contemporary version. They understood how to create and innovate. During the age of strife, they lost much of their knowledge. Creations they once built, they have lost the knowledge to rebuild, repair, enhance, and sometimes even maintain. When dark age technology is lost, it is usually lost for good, which makes it so valuable. The current day mechanicus has stagnated, and are afraid to progress as innovation has caused problems in the past (see Age of Strife and men of iron).

The modern day mechanicus warships the omnissiah, which is essentially the avatar of the machine god, which they believe is the emperor. In a roundabout way, they do workshop the emperor, which is relatively in line with the imperial creed. The mechanics is technically separate from the imperium per the treaty of Mars that the emperor signed, which gives the mechanicus religious freedoms and rights to technological finds, such a STC fragments. I'm not going to talk about STCs here. Mechanicus likes the fragments. They struck a deal with big E, and now they are an allied faction to the imperium. For all intents and purposes, you can consider them a joint faction, but they are technically distinct.

As for machine spirits, they do exist. I think of it kind of like how orc psychic manifestions work, though, to be honest I'm foggy on the details as machine spirits did exist during humanity's enlightened phase. Technology does have machine spirits, and the more powerful the machine, the more powerful the machine spirit. Tech priests sometimes must commune with and appease machine spirits. Angry machine spirits can cause their host machine to misfire, break down, malfunction, etc. Appeased machine spirits can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the machine they are bound to, with some spirits being so powerful they can control aspects of a machine, such as advanced targetting systems, defensive capabilities, etc.

The last thing I'll touch on is the emperor. Some comments say he's dead, some say he's alive. The truth is that he is neither. He is a husk that resides on the golden throne - a dark age of technology device that is a psychic amplifier and a life support system. It maintains his decript body and allows him to remain in a state of undeath. His psychic abilities are so powerful that he cannot really die. There is a lot more to this, as the emperor is a perpetual. I can expand on this more if you want, but I'll leave it out for now as it's complicated. Anyway, he is so powerful a psyker that he is the focal point or source of the astronomicon. This is essentially a psychic lighthouse in the warp that navigators will use a point of reference to know which way holy Terra is. They also say the emperor wages and eternal psychic war in the warp with the chaos gods, which keeps chaos from taking over the imperium of man.

You've got the gist of the foundation of the lore down, so my breakdown above is a little more comprehensive. Feel free to ask any more questions or DM me. I also wrote all this at 2am in the dark so if there are typos, inconsistencies, or things that need further clarification, I apologize and in advance.

And braless women in tank tops

That's not a source, and I couldn't find one either.

I'm a dummy and know nothing about anything, but it sounds like for your partners sake, maybe you are working too much. I think your feelings are valid and are handling the situation really well, but I think his feelings about your work/life balance are valid too.

If you have the option, maybe hit the brakes on work a bit. If you can't, or would lose your job, I suppose it is what it is and you guys just need to tough it out for a while. I get a lot of people don't have the luxury to just stop working as much. The 5 day work trip after what sounds like a few months of relationship tension caused by overworking probably sting. I think I would feel hurt by that.

I also think your partner threating to leave you is a little alarming. It sounds like they need a temperature check on how they feel about the relationship outside of the work issue. It could just be heightened emotions, or there could be something else underlying. Better to talk it out than let it fester.

The above is just my thoughts. Again, I'm just a stranger on the internet without clear context and perspective. I suppose my advice is to reflect on if you need to work as much as you do. If so, maybe your partner need sto reflect on the circumstances in which you are forced to work 60 hour weeks.

It's a tough spot to be in. Maybe you guys can set a soft target of when to expect a return to normalcy, whatever that may mean for you both.

Best of luck and sorry about your doggy. I hope things work out.

Yep... My first day like a year ago(?), I deleted my bootloader. Thought I had nuked both my Windows (which I needed for work) and my bazzite drives.

Turns out I'm just a fucking moron (thank God) for trying to reclaim some storage space by formatting the boot partition.. didn't even think about what I was doing at the time I guess. Anyway, I managed to salvage it by putting windows on a USB, then running some command I found on a 12 year old post on a French website in the windows terminal. I was so close to just reformatting and reinstalling everything, which was largely recommended after trying various commands without success.

I still have no bloody what I'm doing these days on Linux, but at least it's fun to tinker and learn and I feel like I can ram my head against most issues until I figure it out.

Thanks for the read :) glad you were able to sort it out!

Can't iterate on perfection.

Ya trump can literally do whatever tf he wants. Who's gunna stop him?

Well, I can't say I necessarily agree with everything, but I can see your points.

Thanks for sharing your POV.

Hey man, future Julie got a haircut. Don't tell me there's no character development

So if I hypothetically own a home and rent my basement suite out, you think I would be inherently exploiting someone? What's my alternative? What if I need the rental income to afford the mortgage?

I feel like following this train of thought results in either nobody owns anything to keep it fair, or everyone is entitled to a home for free, both of which are not realistic.

I don't get how this above conversation isn't just /thread.

7 people who downvoted, care to explain? Genuinely curious what your take is.

This is coming off as deliberately obtuse.

If you have a nuke, and someone wants to take your shit or kill you, they will be deterred from doing so. Will anyone ever use a nuke in this situation? Who knows, but it would probably cause a world war. Millions, if not billions could die. Governments could collapse. Entire species could be wiped out. The results are nearly unfathomable. I don't think anyone wants to be the cause of that.

If Ukraine nuked Russia, or vice versa, it would likely result in the destruction of both countries regardless of who the nuke hit, hence the previous commenters wiki link to mutually assured destruction.

It's uncharted territory for humanity, and no one wants to fuck around a find out.

I thought it was alligator on a dictator for sure but these comments sure opened my eyes to the possibilities

I started by watching little lore videos on YouTube. After 10 years of voraciously consuming Warhammer 40k content, I can confidently say I have no fucking idea where to start. The meme is absolutely spot on for trying to explain a starting point.

In all seriousness though, Warhammer isn't a story, it's a setting, and stories occur within it. If you take this mentality, you begin to piece the universe together in your head.

Leutin09 on YouTube does great lore videos. He has great beginner content, and it's perfect to put on while you do dishes or chores or whatever. I started out listening to the audio books, beginning with the first book in the Horus Heresy.

Imo, find a cool part of Warhammer you like, explore that topic. If you like it, you will organically expand upon your own understanding of the universe and find other aspects interesting. I'd also stay away from learning lore from reddit threads, shitposts, or podcasts like lorehammer. They are often wrong or misunderstand the source material.

Also, I gotta mention, the Warhammer community on forums can be super xenophobic, transphobic, toxic, outright Nazis, and all shades of shitty. Enjoy the content for the content itself, don't let the shitty community ruin an otherwise amazing setting.

DM me if you have any questions about Warhammer. Please. I'm desperate. My wife can't stand me talking about it anymore.

I switched from Windows to Bazzite on my main rig 2 weeks ago. Likely won't go back to Windows for gaming as I've had pretty much no issues with Bazzite.

I did also get a Steam deck recently, so anecdotally, both above answers are right.

Insert "I'm doing my part" meme

I'm the executive director of a very official organization I just made with just me as the sole staffer, and I'm warning that Bruce Pardy is a dumbass