Warhammer 40K: The Greater Good – An Ideological Battleground
The latest Lore Entry for Psychic Awakening pits three ideologies against each other – but the lines are blurring together.
Author Andy Clark explores the differences between the three warring ideologies in a Grimdark battle ground through the lens of an Imperial Vindicare Assassin. Literally. We’re going to talk about the story so if you haven’t read it – go do that now.
Spoilers Ahead
In The Killing Creed a Vindicare Assassin has been perched on his vantage point for 16 days. His target is Cardinal Jenguai and this is an assignment unlike any other. Normally, if a Vindicare Assassin is sent to take out a target, it’s simple algebra. Assassin + Target = Dead Target. But in this case there has been an additional variable introduced in the equation.
The Assassin has to make a judgement call: Is the Cardinal Preaching the Imperial Creed or has he been infected with Xenos Heresy? The only way for the Assassin to determine the truth is that he must listen to his sermon from his perch.
The Vindicare stays ready and has his target locked in. He listens to his sermon with his enhanced hearing and has the Cardinal in his sights the entire time. What follows next is a description of his thought processes. It is an interesting look at the psychology of this assassin and also a breakdown of the three creeds on a very high level.
As he speaks, I access microscopic neural augmetics within my cerebellum, surgically inserted there for this mission. I beseech their machine spirits to sift through the hundreds of thousands of hours of vid capture footage, audiothief recordings and Inquisitorial transcriptions. They do not infect my mind with the heretical dogma that has been painstakingly loaded into them. Instead, the micro-cogitators absorb the sermon being delivered below me, then compare and contrast each of the Cardinal’s utterances with the heretical speeches and sermons they contain.
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Serving a greater cause appears to be a strong theme in the Cardinal’s address, and of course on the surface he speaks of the Emperor. Yet, the T’au Empire prate of their Greater Good, even as the Genestealer Cults offer all they have to their unclean Star Children. This correlation is inconclusive.
After listening to the sermon (or most of it) the results are just that – inconclusive. In fact, all three creeds are so close the Vindicare comes to one conclusion:
All other creeds extant in the galaxy have stolen their tenets, and their convictions, from the word of the Emperor. All are but hollow echoes of his.
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The fact is that, heretical though many might call such an assertion, the different belief systems espoused by Imperial, Genestealer Cult and T’au preachers cleave so closely to one another that, without certain explicit utterances, they are nigh impossible to prise apart.
Uh oh. So without the Cardinal ever directly uttering a heretical praise of the T’au or the Genestealer what is the assassin supposed to do? He is unable to render a verdict of guilty. The judgement has been taken away from this would-be judge and the jury is still out. Or is it? The Vindicare then thinks back to the fact that he’s here in the first place. The mere fact that he is in this position is the only truth he needs.
You can guess what happens next.
Doubt is a sin that cannot be borne.
Download The Killing Creed by Andy Clark
It’s cold and logical – but that Imperial Creed is killer. What did you think of this new bit of setup for the Psychic Awakening’s next chapter The Greater Good?
