St. Rev. Dr. Rev ⏭️☯️🏴😻

Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game but I think of this image whenever someone praises its writing in particular

Playing Rogue Trader helped me understand why the imperium is the way it is better than any novel. Every time I tried to apply my world morals to it, there would be unforeseen suffering caused by it down the line. And this would keep happening until I started playing by that universes rules, not my own then things started making sense. I started adapting and being able to predict outcomes by playing by it's rules. Psykers don't have to be evil to cause evil or untold damage and you don't put them down because you hate them or even for any cruelty. Often its because they can't control themselves and will eventually end up killing thousands of people. When a planet threw me a parade I demanded the lower classes got front row seats because why wouldn't I. I wasn't born into their world, wasn't 'brainwashed' right so I can be nice. I was bringing my views in with me and in doing so they were front row seat to a chaos invasion caused just to get at me. They were closest to me because I wanted to be nice without thinking, without being logical, without seeing ten steps ahead and it got them all killed as collateral, it got the guardsmen distracted dealing with tons of civilians, where they would have been much further away from the danger and would have had a greater chance of escape had I just acted more like an imperial ruler and kept them away. My favourite part of the game is how it teaches you, you are living and playing by their universes rules not your own and to protect humanity it needs you to be more ruthless. You start genuinely sacrifice thousands to save billions because you have to and chaos really is everywhere. The nature of their universe is unforgiving thanks to chaos, humanity can't become some noble bright empire people say they intentionally 'refuse' to be just to be evil (wrong) whilst chaos and the warp is bleeding into reality. Any person really can let it in, any person can cause a chaos incursion costing billions. It's corrupting influence is everywhere, in every dark corner and it needs constant vigilance and inquisition just to hold it back. You begin to understand why the imperium functions the way it does when you're lacking any current way to deal with the warp as it is. It's purely out of necessity. Even if it's just a suspicion of corruption, the outcome if you leave it compared to executing a handful of potentially innocent people is untold amounts of human suffering. It's funny Tau always talk about the greater good, when that's what most of the imperiums calculous is built on. It's easy to be an advanced society when you have no connection to the warp and your people can't become corrupted, conduits and portals for it. As soon as Tau encountered the true horrors of the warp their entire fourth sphere turned imperium on each other and the tau that returned had the same outlook the imperials had because that's what the chaos infested universe needs you to become to survive it. But people see it purely from our worlds morality and point of view and just see cruel monsters.