Luetin09 put this out the other day, talking about 40K lore.
Luetin should have been cashing checks from Stupid British Toy Company, because he's done far more to make the professional incompetence of the company's IP management into a thing that works than they ever have.
What he points out in this video is that there is a serious issue with maintaining continuity of a historical narrative across generations, especially when there's been one or more Civilization-ending events that tend to disrupt or sever intergenerational transmission of culture, and there is a particular irony involved with a militant anti-theist (The Emperor) having to resort to the very institution he destroyed (Religion) to sustain the very historical narrative that he wishes to promulgate.
The Emperor doesn't call it a religion, but it is one nonetheless because it has all of the substance of a religion:
- Cult (a consistent body of rituals for public worship)
- Code (a set of moral rules)
- Creed (a canon of shared myths that defines a shared identity)
Which translates thusly in practice into how it explains Past, Present, and Future:
- Origin Story (explains the Creed): Mankind once rose to greatness and reached forth from Earth to the stars, but in its arrogance thought itself master of all things as it was blind to the Immaterium, and through its arrogance became dependent upon its devices and creations in all ways despite believing itself Enlightened. First their creations turned upon them, and then the evils of the Warp exploited this despair to promise false deliverance by embracing its gifts, and Mankind fell back into barbarism. Only by the divine intervention of the God-Emperor did Mankind not only survive this fall, but once more rose again to fight those that would destroy it, uniting all Man into one Imperium.
- Daily Life (ritual laws to observe): Obey The God Emperor and His appointed servants in all ways. Shun and abjure Chaos and all its heresies, lest it corrupt your flesh, your seed, and take your soul into oblivion beyond his divine light. Understanding is not required, only obedience. As your life cannot exist without the Imperium, so must you render all as demanded to it to secure Man's future against the Ruinous Powers and all other things alien and unclean. Purge the alien, the mutant, and the heretic without mercy or question.
- Eschatology (the end of the narrative): The God-Emperor shall be restored, rise from the Golden Throne, and with his divine power destroy Chaos and exterminate all that is not Man from all that is in a final Great Crusade and Man shall ever after live free under his divine protection.
It is ironic, and I doubt it is as intentional as I frame it, that this is what was intended by the God-Emperor of Mankind. I can--and have--interpreted it in a manner that makes the company's past and present IP developments not look like the amateur hour attempts that they really are. Therefore it is entirely accidental that this nonetheless arose; it shows that even folks who are in real life anti-religious cannot avoid creating religion because religion creates culture and culture forms (and informs) politics.
In the hands of a competent narrative craftsman, this property could be--should be--far more influential that it already is, but it almost never was and it certainly isn't now.
I wonder what a competently-executed example would look like?
Bradford
ReplyDeleteThat's a great explanation of British toy company's intellectual property. It's also why I was so leery of its mythos I shied away from playing game
Back to your last question of the post. I'd tonedown the grimdark. That's another factor repelling from playing. It affronted me.
So I'd emphasize hope and a sense of adventure by recovering the list knowledge. Adventure+danger+ the good guys win=a stirring intellectual property.
I like the cool heraldry and the equipment but it's the grim dark mythos that's such a turn off.
A last aside, your Revears novel addresses rather admirably how the British toy company conundrum.
xavier