The tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000 lays its cards (and plastic, resin and metal miniatures) on the table from the word go. Its famous tagline warns players: “In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.” Well, war and fur stoles.

It’s the latter that has got Peta UK up in arms, it seems, with the animal rights organisation writing to Games Workshop, creators of the franchise, to protest about the fact that some characters wear animal hides. “From the mighty Leman Russ and Horus Lupercal to Chaos Warriors and the Sisters of Silence, Warhammer features an abundance of characters who wear what appear to be animal pelts, which just doesn’t add up,” the group’s senior manager, Yvonne Taylor, wrote.

“Indeed,” she adds, “nothing on the bloody battlefields of Warhammer’s war-torn world could match the horrific reality that foxes, minks, rabbits, and other living beings experience at the hands of the fur trade.”

Chaos Warriors: ‘Depending on which of the Chaos Gods they worship, they may have as their battlecry: ‘Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne’, which should give you some idea of their attitude towards the idea of veganism.’ Photograph: Games Workshop

Yvonne, forgive me, but are you kidding? The only thing Warhammer 40,000 is worse for than ethical instruction is the wallets of young nerds. Its creators have spent 30 years coming up with grim, dark tales of warfare and violence that absolutely match the horrific reality of animals in our world.

Take the Necron army. Skeletal metal beings, their foot soldiers armed with weaponry that strips an opponent apart one molecule at a time, flaying their victims alive by the thousand. The more elite soldiers in the Necron army dispense with the technological skinning, though, and do it the old-fashioned way: with knives attached to their hands, so that they can wear the flesh of their defeated foes.

I mean, Peta, if you’re going to attack Games Workshop for characters wearing skins, it might be worth focusing on the ones who don’t bother killing the victims first.

Of course, the Necrons are unabashed villains, even for a franchise that begins with the God-Emperor of Mankind winning a civil war at the cost of 2.7 trillion lives. We can really look only to the human characters for ethical motivation.

Peta, for instance, points out that Horus Lupercal wears a lot of fur. Lupercal is one of 20 sons of the emperor whose rebellion, the Horus Heresy, cost all those lives. As the inciting act of the rebellion, he virus-bombed the planet of Isstvan III, dropping a manufactured micro-organism that spread over the entire planet in a matter of minutes, breaking down all organic life into a sludge. Yes, Peta: he didn’t just kill humans, but all other life on Isstvan too. Maybe the fur is the wrong thing to focus on there?

Peta doesn’t just cite Horus, though. It also targets the Chaos Warriors for wearing fur. Let’s put aside, for now, the fact that the Chaos Warriors are actually from another game – Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, set in a fantasy universe where the world has been destroyed by the forces of Chaos and where the souls of fallen warriors are revived to fight in nine magical realms to defeat Chaos for ever.

Even ignoring that, you still have to deal with the fact that the Chaos Warriors are the foot soldiers of the gods who destroyed the world in the first place. Depending on which of the Chaos Gods they worship, they may have as their battle cry: “Blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne”. Which should give you some idea of their attitude towards the idea of veganism.

And anyway, who are we to judge the fact that Chaos Warriors wear fur? Sure, in our world, that has to come from a dead animal. But the Chaos Warriors fight regular battles with … well, everyone, but occasionally the armies of the Vampire Counts. Which are dead. So are their wolves, on top of being skinned. Yet despite being dead and having no skin, they seem to be doing fairly well. At least until they move too far away from the vampires, at which point they just revert to being corpses.

Peta isn’t trying to be difficult here. It even says as much: “While we appreciate that these are fictional characters,” the letter ends, “draping them in what looks to be a replica of a dead animal sends the message that wearing fur is acceptable.” It’s not entirely clear what other, more positive, messages Peta is getting from the wider Warhammer universe, though.

Until they clarify that, I recommend steering clear of the organisation. Or at least staying more than 18 inches away, and with a pocketful of dice at the ready in case you need to roll to wound.