Warhammer 40000 and the Grim darkness of the Far Future

Warhammer 40000 as the name implies, takes place in the very, very distant future of humanity. Though the current present of the setting actually takes place in the 41,000s so. In its purest form, Warhammer 40000 is space opera mixed with fantasy mixed with dystopian fiction. Many armies roam through the galaxy in an endless nightmare of war and totalitarianism has become the rule rather than the exception.I could give you a lecture about the setting's history but that's done better by Alfabusa here and here anyway (though note that the Eldar didn't destroy their reproductive systems, they just mature from infancy very slowly so population losses are hard to recover from, and the C'tan were defeated by the Necrons who turned on them after the Necron ruler thought twice about his pact, not the Orks) That covers the early history of the setting pretty neatly. After the Emperor was placed on the golden throne following Horus' rebellion against him when he was corrupted by the Chaos gods, the Imperium would go on for more than ten thousand years past that.This would be pockmarked with many charming and fun events, but it's best to just read the timeline. So what are the concepts and who's who of the setting?Perhaps the most central aspect to the setting is the warp. It's part hyperspace, part hell, part dream world. It's where most souls go to when they die, it's affected by the thoughts, ideas, dreams, and emotions of all known living things save for the Tyranids and a handful of species and individuals too dead to the warp to affect it, and because of the terrible condition of sapient life it has become infested with monsters. The most well known are Daemons, spawned from the Chaos Gods who are formed from the most persistent and most overpowering of turbulent fronts in the warp created by persistent and widely felt emotions and concepts. All psychic powers and magic in 40k draws from the warp, which carries some risk as the energies of it are dangerous to utilize, missteps in their use can result in horrible catastrophies from injury to possession to death to imploding into a warp gate. As such all psykers and sorcerers must train themselves intensely and must be ever mindful of the attentions of the Warp's predators they can draw.There are four Chaos Gods who are really worth mentioning in 40k. Tzeentch is the blue god of ambition, magic, knowledge, and change, they are an all consuming schemer who freely screws over their own worshippers when it suits them and because Tzeentch does not actually desire true victory; as that would mean a world where nothing is left to change. Khorne is the red god of rage, hatred, war and blood and skulls, Khorne is the simplest of the Chaos gods to grasp and probably the most openly and nakedly malevolent to sapient life in general, Khorne does not care from where the blood comes, only that it flows, and battle is their all consuming passion.Nurgle is the green god of despair, perseverence, decay, and plague. They are the god for those who just give up on things, such as ever getting better from one of their plagues. Those who give up hope and submit to Nurgle's stagnation become corrupted masses of diseased flesh, still sapient but happy in the twisted way someone who's given up can be. Slaanesh is the youngest god and is the god of excess, sensation, desire, and obsession. Slaanesh was born of the decadence of the Eldar as their ennui lead them to immense depravity, and they ask that life be lived to the absolute fullest until one consumes themselves in the obsessive search for new and better sensations and highs.All the Chaos Gods are ultimately malevolent and harmful influences on sapient life and civilization, as they would delight in the ruination of society and the abandonment of morals as everyone lives to the emotions and standards that fuel them in a desperate struggle to survive. Their Daemons are no better, and their worshippers; those corrupted by the energies of chaos or those who have willingly sought it out, are also evil and wretched people as sooner or later Chaos twists all attempts to use it for good to just self perpetuating the misery that allows it to thrive. Humans are the most common mortal followers of Chaos, being the most vulnerable to its predations and also being widespread.Then you have the other great dangers in the setting. There is of course, the Orks. Brutal, savage, violent, hooligan like, rowdy, adrenaline junkies; all these describe the Orks. As befitting an artificially created species made for the sole purpose of being the ultimate soldiers in the most apocalyptic war the galaxy has ever known, the Orks love nothing more than a good fight. And yet most of this doesn't feed Khorne, but instead goes to their own mighty gods; Gork and Mork, the gods of cunning brutality and brutal cunning, with the difference being that Mork hits you hard when you're not looking and Gork hits you harder when you are.Orks are fungoids who reproduce by sporing and emerge from the ground in a short space of time as largely mature adults, though orks never stop growing as long as they can keep on finding worthy fights to win; with these victories causing them to undergo growth spurts. Orks naturally gravitate to the leadership of the biggest and strongest among them, who is also going to be the smartest and most cunning out of them. But anyone in ork society can be cast down if they are defeated in a challenge. Orks also have perfect genetic memory of all the basics needed to run an industrial interstellar war machine, how to make factories, how to make vehicles, how to create advanced weapons, how to innovate on their mechanical engineering, how to take cover, how to swing weapons. Their economic system also is based on the teeth that they continually discard like sharks, ensuring every Ork has some money, and anyone can earn more money by punching someone else in the face; Ork teeth decays quickly however so you can't really hoard it. Other sharp teeth can count though.There is no such thing as a peaceful relationship with nearby Orks. There is only "they are attacking" and "they are getting ready to attack". Building up your strength and fortifying yourself will only make yourself more of a challenge as the Orks are largely just looking for the fight itself rather than any sensible goals. Though if you have powerful weapons or advanced factories, they'll seek to steal those for themselves and loot them into Ork service. The Orks are also noted for the WAAAGH field, a gestalt field produced by all greenskins that they can tap into to affect reality as every greenskin is a latent psyker. Active psykers in the greenskins can use this energy to manifest their spells and powers, while in other cases this manifests as Ork beliefs affecting reality in some modest ways, like their red vehicles going faster because they believe red ones go faster. Orks are in every way, excluding the sex, an entire species of drunk British football hooligans and fratboys. A numberless green tide (including the animal like squigs that also form from their spores, and the goblin like grots who also do so and serve as their menial laborers, and the smaller goblin like snotlings who exist purely to be the butt of black comedy) the Orks are feared and hated by everyone else in the galaxy; just how they like it.Then you have the Tyranids. Unlike every other faction in 40k, the Tyranids do not come from the Milky Way Galaxy. Their origin point (if they even have one) is very far removed from the galaxy that everyone else comes home and they have come for but a few purposes. To devour, to assimilate unique genetic materials, and to multiply. A hive minded species, the Tyranids make use of only organic weapons and creatures, genetically engineered to compete with more mechanical military systems, and reliant on numbers so vast that even the Imperium's quadrillions strong military and the Orks who outnumber even that by a vast margin; are not able to match the numbers of the Tyranids. Having devoured at least a thousand galaxies and a billion civilizations, and quite possibly having been a primordial annihilator of civilization since the dawn of time, the Tyranids are quite possibly the greatest threat in 40k. They are the only faction in the setting without internal division and are by far the most numerous. So numerous in fact that when the Tyranids enter an area in force, their synapse creatures who act as relays and hubs for their hive mind actively make it harder for other species to utilize the warp as the sheer density of Tyranid psychic chatter drowns everything else out. Even Daemons find it hard to stay active in this field, called the Shadow of the Warp, which also interferes with warp based faster than light and can cause pain in psykers, as well as create a sense of creeping dread for systems under the vigil of a Tyranid fleet.The Tyranids adapt incredibly swiftly. Even grandfather nurgle cannot make a plague that can affect the Tyranids twice as the Tyranids engineer a counter with the very next generation. They shift their tactics with the syncronicity that only a hive mind can bring, alter their strategies and operations, and change their very bodies and create new tyranid creatures specially adapted to defeating troublesome enemies. Casualties are meaningless to the Tyranids as they can simply absorb the lost biomass and minerals and spawn it anew, and no Tyranid creature with a connection to the hive mind is capable of knowing fear or hesitation. Impossible to meaningfully communicate or reason with, the Tyranids will not stop or rest until the galaxy is left a lifeless desert, they will continue and destroy every last world bearing or capable of bearing life and bring about an eternal silence to the galaxy. Helping them in this task are notorious tyranid organisms known as Genestealers, who go out ahead of the fleet and basically start up what can best be described as a mix of Shadow over Innsbrusk Cults and the Xenomorphs from aliens. The xenomorph/chryssalid esque Genestealers infect some organisms with an ovipostor, which drives their sex urges to uncontrollable levels, and any offspring birthed of the mating of an infected person will be a hideous Genestealer hybrid. One which the parents are psychically compelled to be loyal to. The breeding continues, with each successive hybrid generation getting more diluted until the fourth one resembles the host species in every way; indoctrinated into the Genestealer broodmind that tries to sabotage and subvert the defenses of wherever their cults spring up and then use a psychic beacon to call the Tyranids to finish their job. Unusually, the fifth generation of genestealer hybrids somehow produce purebred genestealers, allowing the cycle to continue.Then of course, is the most ancient menace in Warhammer 40000. The Soulless ones and the Star Gods. The Necrons and the C'tan. Much of the basics of Necron and C'tan history has already been mentioned, but the Necrons are bar none the most advanced species in the galaxy when it comes to purely material (non-psychic) technology. Even their basic weapons are unfathomably advanced and what has been seen is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the capabilities of the Necrons goes, and more and more of the outlandishly powerful and reality quaking technology of the Necrons continues to arise as they wake up in greater numbers. Bereft of their souls after having made their bargain with the C'tan, and having been nearly dead to the warp anyway, the Necrons can never be corrupted by Chaos, but such is a small mercy as the Necrons are in their own way; just as terrible as the Chaos Gods. Every Necron machine and individual is made out of various alloys of living metal, capable of regenerating from even liquification under the right circumstances, and the material is incredibly durable to begin with.The Necrons are divided into various dynasties of feudal lords who rule through their still sapient nobility, their sapient but bereft of emotion soldiery, and the commoners who have had all sapience stripped away from them, leaving them as robotic as the canoptek drones that the Necrons use in huge numbers. The Necrons typically reside in what are called "tomb worlds", worlds that they retreated to and established catacombs to sleep away the sixty million years between the end of the war in heaven and the present as the galaxy was simply too devastated by war to be worth ruling. The Necrons are as a rule, incredibly arrogant and believe that the galaxy is theirs by right to rule for simply being Necrons; though their age and advanced technology does give this some validity. The Necrons are the oldest foes of the Eldar, and the Eldar stop at nothing to defeat the Necrons whenever and wherever they emerge and stymie their plans, while the Necrons for their part still remember the war in heaven and take great satisfaction in destroying the works of their ancient enemy. The end goal of the Necrons depends on the dynasty, but even the most beneficent Necron Phaeron ultimately wants to rule as the absolute monarch of all creation, while the cruellest have far darker fates planned for the living. Most of the C'tan are contained as shards, released when felt necessary to do the Necrons' bidding, shattered by a weapon that shook the very foundations of the universe as Szarekh turned on them after the Old Ones' defeat to try and retake control of his people, but even these C'tan shards have great and terrible reality warping powers, and they hunger to be whole again.On the less terrible side of things you have the Eldar. The children of the old ones, and quite arguably their favoured creations. Ancient, fair, and highly emotional, (also literally Elves in space, looks and all), the Eldar are close enough to humanity for the two species to interbreed despite the Eldar being tens of millions of years older than humanity; something that raises a number of questions. Such pairings are quite rare due to the mutual xenophobia that most of the two species hold for each other. Following the fall of the Empire they established after the disappearance of the Old Ones, the Eldar Race sundered into many fragments. Those who fled from the growing decadence of the Empire on great merchant ships became the craftworlders, who took to lives of discipline and the path, a system where each Eldar focuses on a job or a task and solely on that job until they eventually drift away from it. Such keeps their minds intensely focused on perfecting their specialization, though there is the risk of becoming so devoted to a path that they can never leave it. There are paths for every job, as well as many subpaths; most notably seen in warriors and those Eldar who choose to pursue the psychic gifts all their kind have; in the various different subgroups of warriors (unit types) and spellweavers the craftworld Eldar have. Those who cannot stand the system of the paths take the path of the outcast and leave the craftworld to wander the galaxy on their own, though most feel enough loyalty to their craftworld to answer their calls to war.The Eldar primarily use the webway, basically a massive series of interdimensional tunnels so huge it essentially became its own dimension unto itself; as their means of travelling across the galaxy, far faster than normal warp travel and also much safer. In the webway dwell two more varieties of Eldar. The Dark Eldar are those who refused to lessen the hedonism that lead to their doom in the first place, and psychically feed off of the sensations of other individuals to fortify their own souls against the draining effect Slaanesh's grip on their souls has on them. Every time they drink off this psychic energy, they refresh themselves and prolong their existences longer. The Dark Eldar are very numerous and are growing in number, and their society is arranged into a series of crime cartel like kabals lead by Archons who run them like mob bosses to get slaves and prisoners for the enjoyment and the survival of the dark eldar. To ward off Daemons, Dark Eldar are psychically stunted compared to other Eldar. They are cruel beyond belief as well as vain and arrogant, and self centeredness is at the very core of the Dark Eldar psyche.Then you have the Harlequins. Dedicated to the god Cegorach, the Harlequins are protected by the Laughing God of the Eldar, making them immune to Chaos and protecting their souls on death (though in this setting Slaanesh can no longer grab at souls, but the Craftworlders still use soulstones as they're convenient). They are performers as much as they are scholars and warriors, and they have the greatest collection of knowledge yet known to anyone in the galaxy in the Black Library, where the Harlequins have stored their knowledge on Chaos, on other species, on the Necrons, and more. Naturally, harlequins organize themselves around performance troupes who can at once do majestic and beautiful performances of all sorts (not just cirque du soleil type stuff or theater arts, though these are common), spread their vast depth of knowledge as educators, and serve as quite possibly the most lethal of all Eldar on average pound for pound. They are agile beyond the normal limits of the Eldar body and graceful beyond belief, and core to their philosophy is the philosophy of laughter. In such a dark galaxy, to laugh is the most precious and sacred thing, to find joy and mirth a gift. They are also the least prejudiced Eldar. Harlequins hold no grudges against humanity, the Tau, or other species. The Tyranids, Necrons, and Chaos are of course, all enemies they will never make peace with, but if any Eldar is likely to form attachments with humans; its the Harlequins.Then you have the exodites, those Eldar who were the first to leave the empire and basically set up space amish communities without the benefit of most labor saving technology (though they still keep a lot of advanced, if not as advanced as the other Eldar weapons to use if attacked) and have formed deep connections to the worlds they settle on; making them thrive and bloom in terms of habitability with the methods they utilize that can turn desert worlds into lush paradises. Naturally this makes them targets for everyone and as they have never been a major faction in their own right they mostly appear to get killed in 40k stories. There are also the Corsairs who are renegade Eldar who are well, space pirates. They're somewhere between the Dark Eldar and the Craftworlders in outlook and mindset.Physiologically, Eldar are taller but thinner than humans and are generally about as strong and tough on average when you're comparing two individuals of similar levels of fitness and body mass. However Eldar are much, much faster than humans, reacting quicker, capable of higher top speeds, and are generally more flexible with their bodies. All Eldar have some psychic potential that is usually locked away unless an Eldar undertakes the steps needed to learn Eldar witchcraft, always done under the supervision of others. Eldar of course, are very human like appearance wise, with pointed ears and a greater chance of exotic hair or eye colours, but still very human like. Eldar are slow to mature and don't grow old so much as they grow weary, though the more powerful an Eldar is in terms of psychic potential, the longer they stave off the weariness process. While Eldar culture varies considerably, Eldar are very strongly emotional. To the point that non-Dark Eldar who go to war have to develop another personality called the war mask to cope with the psychological guilt of killing people. As for the Dark Eldar, they're noted for Sociopathy being the norm rather than a mutation.​