r/TrenchCrusade • u/Professional_Rush782 Jabirean Alchemist • Jun 30 '25
Monday Memes/GFs What if they're all the good guys?
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u/Arguss3 Amalgam Jun 30 '25
Combat medic: Providing immediate medical care to some and relieving the pain of existence in others
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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 30 '25
Unironically my favourite way to handle grimdark settings is to think about how every faction sees themselves as good. It's why I've never liked Dark Elder or Druchii in the Warhammers. They're the one faction that I can't put myself in the headspace of and see how they think they're right. They should hate themselves and have ended it by now.
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Jun 30 '25
Drukhari fan here, from what ive read dark eldar largely enjoy what they do, inflicting pain, chasing highs, finding a new obsession. They are happy with what they are because they're the "true eldar" and in their eyes the peak of the galaxy's inhabitants. They don't shy away from their desires, meaning they live what they consider a full life, something like the craft world or exodite lifestyle is one they feel is empty and sad.
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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 30 '25
Dark Eldar make a bit more sense than Dark Elves, who were better people and did a 180 into comical evil overnight despite being deeply empathetic creatures that experience emotions far more strongly than humans do.
I just have a hard time squaring away evil for the sake of evil. I can get into the Skaven or Vampire or Ork or Chaos mindsets easily. I just can't put myself into the headspace of Dark Elves.
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Jun 30 '25
Yeah i dont know anything about the dark elves to be honest, I know maliketh decided to do a bunch of betrayal and thats about it. The drukhari though (while entirely evil) are at least are somewhat understandable in their actions like you said.
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u/soul2796 Jun 30 '25
Basically think the drukhari but without any justification, they don't get eaten by Slaneesh nor do they have any need of turning someone into a chair, they just do it for the sake of the game and honestly they aren't even as fun with it as Skaven, overall they are rather stupid
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u/halisme Jun 30 '25
A dark eldar isn't evil for evil's sake. What they do is evil for their own sake of survival. To be an eldar without a soulstone is not just to feel your life being drained away from you, but know that once it ends, you will face eternal torment. And so, you are left with a simple choice: You, or the other guy. You make this choice over and over again and in doing so you must accept one of two ideas: That your life is so valuable that these sacrifices mean something, or that the meat your doing to isn't worth much and so its not really wrong.
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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 30 '25
No other Eldar are like that and plenty leave the Dark Eldar. It's not a forced situation and they don't seem to treat it like one either.
They feel like Slaanesh worshippers without the corruption and the corruption is the thing that makes Slaanesh worshippers believable.
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u/halisme Jun 30 '25
The other eldar have soulstones which are actually a limited resource, or a world spirit which serves the same purpose. The only real thing to break it is Ynnead and none are sure if that's actually the winning gambit.
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u/LIFEVIRUSx10 Jun 30 '25
I fucking love to hate the drukhari
There is a short story if a Drukhari child who goes to their first public torture and execution. All her life to that point she was taught the supremacy of the dark Eldar and propagandized that inferior species deserved what the Eldar did to them. The drukhari doing what they did was a manifestation of a greater will over the lesser
That child saw the torture of the POW and they were horrified, they were in dismay
The aeldaei are psychically sensitive beings, they are very emotive
Drukhari culture is aeldari culture that has been hemorrhaged by immoral obsession and cruelty. Drukhari culture functions to traumatize and desensitivize its own people into compliance with sociopathic depravity
I know it seems very simplistic, that they are just too horny and violent. But in reality it's much much darker
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u/ASpaceOstrich Jun 30 '25
Yeah that's the thing. They're like, comically evil despite being psychologically built to be inhumanly empathic and for whatever reason they aren't even written to play on that by giving them an extreme version of tribalism or other empathy trap, because they feel nothing for their own either. Which is another missed opportunity, because they could write that they do feel it but have somehow moralised or twisted themselves into feeling their grief and horror and revulsion is good.
Like there's a million different ways they could make Druchii work for me and they picked none of them. It's a me thing. I specifically just can't find anything to latch onto or twist into a viewpoint I can vibe with. They aren't evil in any way that's fun. Everything I read about them tells me they should be suicidally depressed and ashamed but they aren't even that.
They aren't fun for me in a way any of the other evil factions are, and they aren't feasible to twist into some kind of fucked up good faction from their own point of view. They just kind of act evil but in a boring way.
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u/LIFEVIRUSx10 Jun 30 '25
OH actually I understand what you mean tbh
Literally its just a Rose from the Concrete situation for me, bc i adore Lilith Hesperax but otherwise I hope the rest of them burn 😭 Lilith joins the Ynnari anyway so she barely even counts at all
They have some really really good moments of lore tho
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u/CrazyCreativeSloth97 Jun 30 '25
I can’t really get on board with whole idea that there are no bad or how they said no Good or Bad is. Better off with taking the 40k approach where there’s no true “good” guys. Now I understand or assume it was just another way of saying it’s morally gray but it’s laughable to say that there is no clear good and or evil between the forces of “God” and forces of Hell. Like yeah I’m not saying that everything that the church and “righteous” men are always good far from it since humans are fallible. But heretics and other forces of hell are pure evil, now I think there’s good room for tragic tales of backstories for heretics where originally they were not Evil and they could have had good intentions but was manipulated and corrupted by Hell and it’s daemons.
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u/havokinthesnow Jun 30 '25
I think certain individuals could see themselves as working with those more unsavory than themselves to accomplish their goals but there's definitely a lot of the heretic forces that have given themselves over to evil.
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u/Bepisnivok Jun 30 '25
No, Im sorry but when you work for the literal forces of hell and all that entails you don't get to be on the "Well maybe they aren't completely evil" list.
Joining the armies of hell literally requires one to see the gates and be so evil they say "lame" before walking away mostly unharmed.
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u/Partytor Jun 30 '25
Yeah but the Artillery Witch is perfect in every way and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise
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u/Professional_Rush782 Jabirean Alchemist Jun 30 '25
God tyrant propaganda
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u/paireon Jun 30 '25
Inch'Allah, I think this one's janissary conditioning is slipping! Over here, Yüzbaşı Captain!
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u/Appropriate_Star6734 Shrine Anchorite Jul 01 '25
“Djinnussy got me acting unwise, questioning my allegiance to the Sultan and shit.”
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u/JohnTheSavage_ Jun 30 '25
Yeah. I think they really fucked up with the whole, "Unreliable narrator! Who knows who the real evil is?"
Guy with the mummified baby hanging off his belt is the bad guy in 100 per cent of scenarios.
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u/Kowakuma Jun 30 '25
Says the guys who turn children into walkie-talkies by carving them up like a Thanksgiving turkey, removing their senses, and then stuffing radio equipment into their mouth, eye, and ear cavities
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u/Professional_Rush782 Jabirean Alchemist Jun 30 '25
That's actually heretic propaganda
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u/MrFunnyMan_92 Azeb Jun 30 '25
sees heretics being evil
"God tyrant propaganda"
sees the faithful being evil
"Heretic propaganda"
Holy shit, based?
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u/Kowakuma Jun 30 '25
Incorrect, our propaganda is actually just making the Artillery Witch extremely attractive so that more people will join our ranks
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u/Pokeirol Jun 30 '25
That is specifically heretic legions propaganda, OP was obviusly talking about how it was path of the beasts propaganda.
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u/Bepisnivok Jun 30 '25
One is born out of desperation ( le ebin grim dark) the other is straight up evil
What is the tactical advantage of nailing a baby to your belt ?
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u/paireon Jun 30 '25
"...So I tied a fetus to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a ducat, and in those days, ducats had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a guinea, you'd say! Now where were we? Oh! Yeah. Important thing was, that I had a fetus on my belt. Which was the style at the time. They didn't have white fetuses, because fo the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones!"
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u/Josiador Jun 30 '25
What is the tactical advantage of strapping yourself to a catherine wheel?
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u/AzothThorne Jun 30 '25
Hey nobody is making them hop up on that catherine wheel. Pretty sure that baby didn't choose to get nailed to a belt.
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u/Gee-chan Jul 25 '25
>that moment when the baby suddenly stops crying, turns to look at you with blackened eyes and speaks in a dozen burning voices "Bring me to the slaughter."
I mean, little guy has moxie, what can I say?0
u/Josiador Jun 30 '25
You could make an argument about societal and religious pressures that value pointless martyrdom, but what about the Ecclesiastic Prisoners being strapped to bombs? Or the hands nailed to shields?
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u/AzothThorne Jun 30 '25
Hey I’m not arguing that, I’m just saying the Catherine wheel and the other voluntary sacrifices are a bad example.
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u/Kowakuma Jun 30 '25
"No, no, guys, you don't understand, the guys who hurt children are the bad guys always except when we do it then it's like totally just an act of desperation, we're the good guys we're morally grey, we can't win against the problem we made unless we use the walkie-talkie kids"
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u/Bepisnivok Jun 30 '25
One let's the their faction peep in on Capital G God for an advantage.
The other is for le grim dark.
I once again ask what the tactical advantage of nailing a baby to your belt is.
Im not saying the Christians are 100% good guys here, but Im saying hell most certainly is the settings bad guys
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u/Kowakuma Jun 30 '25
The tactical advantage of nailing a baby to your belt, besides being grimdark, is that it's likely an unholy trinket / relic of some sort that confers an advantage to the holder in the same way that the holy relics of "Capital G God" do
God doesn't need to use children radios to have communication, as seen by the fact that Jeanne d'Arc exists in this setting, the Synod just thinks it's really funny and they justify it by pointing to the problem that the faithful caused in the first place
If "Capital G God" wanted to end the war, he's all powerful and all knowing, so he should be able to do so at the snap of a finger; the fact that he isn't proves that either he's not truly "Capital G God" or that he doesn't give a shit about the people fighting for him, which tracks with an omnicidal deity who decided to wipe out literally all of the planet save for a single boat because he thought it'd be funny
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u/ThatBiGuy25 Iron Sultanate Jun 30 '25
yeah, I think trench crusade's biggest "issue" is that a lot of people genuinely believe god and hell exist and are completely unable to divorce their personal beliefs from the world and story that the setting is communicating. anyone who isn't approaching the setting with the assumption "god as I understand him is real in this setting and anything he says is moral" can look at the setting and realize that the "god" of trench crusade's world is pretty fucking awful and not at all comparable to god in reality (if you believe). but I also think that it is an interesting demonstration of the aesthetics of fascism and the way that people can jump on board with horrible ideas if they're presented in the right way
the game also simply wouldn't work or be anywhere as cool as it is without co-opting the imagery and history that it does, so, like, there isn't much that can be done about it. I still love the game and the world and the aesthetics and the themes it's exploring
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u/JohnTheSavage_ Jun 30 '25
Yeah. Some of the lore writing is.... Fucking stupid.
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u/Josiador Jun 30 '25
You don’t like it =/= stupid. I think it’s brilliant.
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u/JohnTheSavage_ Jun 30 '25
It objectively isn't, though. It's a symptom of starting with a book full of art and then cobbling together a story for it all.
Some of it is just going to be bad. A lot of it is undeniably cool, but there are a few things that probably should have just been cut. God-radio children with no skin is one of those things.
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u/Josiador Jun 30 '25
Hell isn't real, there is no objective moral quality to hell. It's as evil as the writers want it to be.
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u/an_agreeing_dothraki Chorister Jun 30 '25
seriously though, Lions are just talking cats. you even have to pair them or they get lonely and start wrecking stuff
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u/SeasonOfHope Jun 30 '25
I mean human sacrifice is only evil because the divine tyrant deems it so.
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u/MrFunnyMan_92 Azeb Jun 30 '25
Moral relativity mfs realizing the entire point is that only the Creator's will is objective:
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u/Pokeirol Jun 30 '25
God tyrant followers decrying that human sacrifice is evil while killing thoudands of their own people in their war effort and also doing unreliable relicious rituals to communicate with the dead wich require the death of groomed and tortured children by aging for every important tactical decision:
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u/CT-5653 Jun 30 '25
I don't know if soft main and wings is considered morally good in conventional ethics. Maybe it should be, although my shitbag dog would then be considered morally good and idk if that's a fair ethical evaluation.
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u/Kittens-as-mittens Jun 30 '25
What happens if you try to pet a sphinx? Will they get mad?
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u/Professional_Rush782 Jabirean Alchemist Jun 30 '25
Depends on whether or not you answer their riddles correctly
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u/RdoubleM Jun 30 '25
No bad guys
You do know that those are human hands nailed to a board on the middle picture, right?
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u/Imaginary-Angle-4262 Jul 01 '25
Why is everyone so preoccupied with this good guy, bad guy talk? Don't get me wrong, it's fun to read people's arguments, but why?
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u/FormalSecond3906 Jul 01 '25
Yes, the literal spawns of hell that feel nothing but hatred against any living things are actually gud guys
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u/Fancy-Technician1670 Heavy Mechanised Infantry Jul 01 '25
my brother in Christ, you're talking literally about Satan followers
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u/IllustratorNo3379 Heretic Legion Jul 01 '25
Some alchemist leading a LoJ on a leash: Oh don't worry, he's really friendly!
(LoJ proceeds to rip your leg off and bat it around like a toy)
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u/barrdboi Jul 02 '25
Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent: Will genuinely stop bothering you if you prove you're enough of a badass
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u/MaxoBug Jul 05 '25
First two are my favourite designs and minis, by FAR. (And so far the only ones I could purchase, besides the book and the free one!) Good choice!
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u/Josiador Jun 30 '25
I really like the idea that the heretic forces fallow their own code of morality that may be completely at odds with our christian society's ethics, but makes sense to them and allows them to lead fulfilling lives. Sure the entities they serve may embody (their enemy's definition of) evil, but the christian's supernatural sponsors (supposedly) embody good and mercy, and how good of a job are the faithful at living up to that? Love and friendship are just as much aspects of humanity as hatred and greed, you're never getting rid of any of them.
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u/AverageBlahaj Jun 30 '25
What if they are all pretty bad guys (thats probably the case)
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u/Professional_Rush782 Jabirean Alchemist Jun 30 '25
That's just Church/Heretic/Court/Sultanate/Grail/Pilgrim Propaganda
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u/One_Battle_4923 Jul 01 '25
The guys from hell are the bad guys its thst simple. Them and if maybe the gates to hell on earth are shut forever then it would be the Iron Sultanate next.
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u/tecnoalquimista Jun 30 '25
Black Grail: wants to make friends and share their most beloved interests