Audio Version by A Vox in the Void
In the grim darkness of the far future, man tortures man for cracking a joke.
An ancient Terran sage from mankind’s misty past once wrote that humour ought to be based upon ambiguity, the unexpected, wordplay, understatement, irony, ridicule, silliness and pratfalls. Yet another wise man claimed that the wellspring of humour was not joy, but sorrow. As tens of thousands of Terran years have passed, and the seed of man has spread and multiplied across the stars, time has ultimately proven both to be right. For if you cannot laugh at the misery, you must cry at it.
Likewise, an ancient proverb hailing from the distant Age of Terra delves to the core of man’s spirit, by noting that gloating is his true delight. This, too, stands by and large as a timeless truth to last the aeons, for wretched man finds solace in the knowledge that somewhere, someone else fares worse than himself. If only in a joke, it nevertheless lightens his spirit to watch from the shores the stormy struggles of others out at sea. Pure gladness, the happy kind bereft of malicious joy at the suffering of others, is to be treasured due to its sheer rarity in the human heart.
Since the most ancient days of mankind’s civilization, subjects in some oppressive tyrannies have developed a fine wit filled with clever quips and sharp jests. They may never be able to stand up to their overlords and tormentors, yet in some human cultures people have nonetheless learnt how to ease the travails and frustrations of everyday life by poking fun at their rulers and their multitude of corrupt and pompous minions, as well as the dysfunctionalities of their realm. Witty women and fellows fond of ribalds and jest do so at their own extreme peril, for the powers that be rarely appreciates being dragged in the mud and made the butt of irreverent jokes. While in some cultures, people have found it altogether distasteful to make wisecracks about hardships, bloodshed and civil strife, those other human cultures that have traditionally embraced gallows humour as a fine art have all honed it to marvellous levels of twisting creativity and witticisms in the face of deadly threats.
This pattern certainly holds true in the darkest of futures, for the Age of Imperium has seen humanity subjected to a rapacious rule of cruel tyrants, inept administrators, zealous fanatics and selfish warlords. As man has degenerated into scattered hordes of insular, hidebound and aggressively myopic savages and cannibals, the ignorant and parochial subjects of the God-Emperor of Holy Terra has all been grasped hard by the steely talons of that callous twin-headed eagle. This sclerotic rule of theocratic dictators has seen man reduced to dust under their ironshod heels, and the harsh lot of man has been one of misery and hardship neverending. The pattern varies greatly, but it holds true across the astral domains of the Imperator: Some human cultures just cannot resist the allure of jocular sinspeech.
Imperial Governors and their croneys remain popular targets of disrespectful jokes, even though anyone uttering such quips of black humour must do so at baleful peril to themselves and their entire clan. Not for nothing are such examples of irreverent humour in the Imperium of Man known as whisper jokes, for these jokes cannot be told openly in public because of their taboo subjects. Such dangerous witticisms constitute dark jokes for a dark age, all deviant and malcontent. The danger is real. There are eyes and ears everywhere, for in the darkest of futures, mankind teems like a horde of rats. Almost everywhere you go in inhabited human regions, there will be informants listening in on your conversation in overcrowded settlements, willing to sell out their fellow man to hellish dungeons for meagre rewards and the kick that this power over others allows them to experience.
One such example of dangerous words can be glimpsed in periods of great debauchery among secular or Ecclesiarchal ruling castes on Imperial worlds and voidholms, which are often dubbed pornocracies by street wits. As noted, many human cultures find it tasteless to make fun of their woes and grim sufferings, while other cultures find in the whisper jokes a release and a means to cope with all the hardships and terror. Cultural attitudes to risky jokes tend to vary greatly between regions on the same world or larger voidholm, on top of great interplanetary variety and general differences between entire subsectors. Still, the vast oral flora of mankind’s humour include a great many jokes that do not entail pulling the tiger’s tail, for most quips concern domestic matters far safer to make light of, than the matter of Imperial power and governorial authority.
For instance, human cultures in which parents place an overemphasis on cleanliness (such as on Armageddon or Aleph Primus), generally tends to sport a prominence of scatological humour. In other cultures where the maintenance of outward face is everything, and you must never break down in your display of self-control, diligence and politeness (such as on Taugast III or Wonlu’s Station), humour revolving around extreme humiliation of others reigns supreme. Whatever the local peculiarities, many human jokes depend on stock figures, ridiculing caricatures of timeless personality types.
Here follows a wide selection of jokes harvested from a multitude of different human cultures thriving bitterly under a plethora of alien suns, all plucked from worlds and voidholms across the cosmic empire of His Divine Majesty. Many of the following witticisms constitute clear-cut cases of criminal sinspeech, the telling of which will greatly interest local Securitate enforcers or even the Adeptus Arbites. Read on at your own peril, and ken that you will have damned your soul by knowing of such malcontent wisecracks. For the radiant Emperor who dwells upon the face of Terra know all, and judge all.
Hear the whispers of the downtrodden, in a demented age.
Hear the whispers of depraved man, at the end of times.
Hear his whispers, and know that he himself is the punchline.
It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only the laughter of thirsting gods.
All jokes can be read and downloaded here (Google Drive)
They can also be found in two posts here on DakkaDakka
A judge walks out of his chambers laughing his head off. A colleague approaches him and asks why he is laughing. “I just heard the funniest joke in the world!”
“Well, go ahead, tell me!” says the other judge.
“I can’t. I just gave someone fourhundred years camp labour for it!”
A drill-teacher asks a Cadian novice: “Where does Cadia fall on the starmap?”
The novice answered pompously: “Cadia does not fall!”
“How miserable my life is! I will leave nothing behind. What will I have to show for my mortal existence?”
“Chin up, old friend! Long after the rest of your body has been recycled, your visage will still be displayed on high for endless masses to behold. The public sight of your face shall be immortal.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course I do! The architects are in constant need of human skulls.”
A coward is asked which are safer: Warships or merchant-ships. “Dry-docked ships,” he answers.
Q: Is it true that the Imperium of Man is standing on the edge of an abyss?
A: No. It used to be true, but now we have taken a big step forward.
A man was reported to have said: “Titus is a moron!” and was arrested by an Enforcer: “No, sir, I meant not our respected Governor, but another Titus!”
The Enforcer barks: “Don’t try to trick me; if you say ‘moron’, you are obviously referring to our Imperial Governor!”
Three men are sitting in a cell in the Securitate Headquarters at Forum Malcador. The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned, who replies: “Because I criticized Carolus Torquatus.”
The first man responds: “But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Carolus Torquatus!”
They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly in the back, and ask him why he is in jail. He answers: “I am Carolus Torquatus.”
Q: What is the easiest way to explain the meaning of the words ‘Imperial governance’?
A: By means of fists.
“Tyrant Matteus, is it true that you collect jokes about yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And how many have you collected so far?”
“Three and a half labour camps.”
Q: Three in a room and one is working, what’s that?
A: Two Administratum clerks and a fan.
*Emir Pius was a man who united all Imperial sects, because he degraded the True Believers, he degraded the Orthopraxists and he degraded the Redemptionists. *
A new arrival to the penal labour camp is asked: “What were you given sixty years for?”
“For nothing!”
“Don’t lie to us here, now! Everybody knows ‘for nothing’ is twenty years.”
Q: Is it true that the Imperium of Man is divinely ordained for future greatness?
A: Of course! Life was already better yesterday than it’s going to be tomorrow.
Time of shortage. A line is forming around the street’s corner. A man passing by saw it and asked the last one in line: “What do they sell here?”
“I have no idea,” the woman in line replied, “go ask someone ahead.”
The man went to the middle of the line and asked another woman: “What do they sell here?”
“I have no idea,” the answer came, and he was sent farther ahead to seek for an answer.
The man went straight to the first person in line and asked him: “What do they sell here?”
The other man answered: “Nothing, I just felt sick and took support on this wall.”
“Well then, why are you still here?” the man asked.
“Because I’ve never before been the first in such a long line,” came the answer.
Q: How does every Imperial joke start?
A: By looking over your shoulder.
After a speech, High Baron Eratosthenes confronts his speechwriter: “I asked for a fifteen minute speech, but the one you gave me lasted fortyfive minutes!”
The speechwriter replies: “I gave you three copies…”
A miser writes his will and names himself as the heir.
Planetarch Xingu loses his favourite pipe. In a few days, Securitate Supremus Nihao calls Xingu: “Have you found your pipe?”
“Yes,” replies Xingu, “I found it under the sofa.”
“This is impossible!” exclaims Nihao. “Three people have already confessed to this crime!”
One advantage of growing old, is that your enemies tend to fall silent.
“The ruler of our voidholm, Kandahar Darius, is in surgery.”
“His heart again?”
“No, chest expansion surgery, to make room for one more Gold Wings medal.”
An uphive athlete, a midhive athlete and an underhive athlete are all on the medal podium after the Centenary Victory Games, chatting before the medal ceremony. “Don’t get me wrong,” says the underhive athlete, “winning a medal is very nice, but I still feel the greatest pleasure in life is getting home to the holestead after a long day, putting one’s feet up and having a nice can of booze.”
“You underhive proles,” snorts the uphive athlete, “you have no sense of romance. The greatest pleasure in life is going on balls without your wife, and meet a beautiful girl with whom you have a passionate love affair before returning home to the spire.”
“You are both wrong!” scoffs the midhive athlete. “The greatest pleasure in life is when you are sleeping at home and the Security Vigiles breaks down your door in the middle of lightsout, bursts into your hab and says, ‘Albinus Felix, you are under arrest,’ and you can reply ‘Sorry cop, Albinus Felix lives next door.’”
After his wife had beaten him badly, a man crawled under his family bed. “Come out this instant!” his wife screamed.
“I am man enough to do as I please!” he said. “And I’ll come out when I’m good and ready.”
When Wahibre became Imperial Governor he wanted a Throne Prince who was dumber than he was, so as not to cause him trouble or pose a threat to his power, so he chose Mernepta. When Mernepta became Governor he too wanted a Throne Prince dumber than he was and picked Takelot. After ascending to the throne, Takelot waited eight decades to pick a Throne Prince because he, too, was waiting to find on Khemrat III someone dumber than himself…
In a labour camp, two inmates are comparing notes. “What did they arrest you for?” asks the first. “Was it an anti-Imperial or common crime?”
“Of course it was anti-Imperial. I’m a plumber. They summoned me to the District Dictateum to fix the sewage pipes. I looked at them and said, ‘Hey, the entire system needs to be replaced.’ So they gave me seventy years.”
Q: What’s the best feature of a mechshaw?
*A: There’s a heater at the back to keep your hands warm when you’re pushing it. *
Graphocleus, the angelic reaper of the dead, appears before the Emperor’s appointed Archking Caelestis and tells him to bid farewell to the Nomian people. Caelestis asks: “Why, where are they going?”
When will we finish the war? When the spire caste will eat mice and we will eat mice substitute.
Governor Royarch Bindusara makes a speech: “Everyone in the Governance Chamber has dementia. Count Pelshevu doesn’t recognize himself: I say ‘Hello, Count Pelshevu,’ and he responds ‘Hello, Royarch Bindusara, but I’m not Pelshevu.’ Praefectus Kulottunga acts like a child – he’s taken my rubber Space Marine from my desk. And during Vizier Kerala Varma’s funeral – by the way, why is he absent? – nobody but me invited a lady for a dance when the music started playing.”
What are the four deadly enemies of latifundia farming? Spring, summer, autumn, winter.
Governor Hasdrubal and Minister Mago are standing on the Lilybaeum Vox-Com Spire. Hasdrubal tells Mago he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Lilybaeum. “Why don’t you just jump?” Mago suggests.
A nobleman happened to be dining at the home of the best painter in the Spire, when he saw the painter’s nine ugly sons.
“You don’t make children,” he said, “the way you make pictures.”
“That,” said the painter, “is because I make children in the dark, pictures in the light.”
Lightsoff in Hive Caenophrurium. Two Baronial Guards on nightwatch spots a shadow trying to sneak by: “Halt! Who goes there? Documents!”
The frightened person chaotically rummages through his pockets and drops a paper. The Guard chief picks it up and reads slowly, with difficulty: “‘U.ri.ne A.na.ly.sis’… Hmm… an offworlder, sounds like… A spy, looks like… Let’s shoot him!”
Then the Guard reads further: “‘Proteins: none, Sugars: none, Fats: none…’ You are free to go, humble man! The poor shall not cease in the land!”
Dear God-Emperor, make me dumb, so I don’t come to labour camp.
Why did Magos Referatum go abroad, while Enginseer Heimunu did not? Because Referatum ran on power-packs, but Heimunu needed an outlet.
The fools Pullo and Vorenus cross the street in a besieged urb, when they are suddenly hit by a shell. Pullo loses an ear and goes back to look for it.
Vorenus shouts: “Come on, let it go, you have another ear!”
But Pullo replies: “But it’s not about the ear. I had put a lho-stick behind it!”
Lord of Lords Imhotep is visiting an asylum. The patients line up by their beds and greet him with: “Hail Imhotep!”
Only one man stands aside and does not greet. Imhotep gets angry and asks him why. He answers: “I’m not crazy, I am the head of the ward.”
A ganger walks into an apothecarion and says: “Give me a loaf of bread.”
“But sir, this is an apothecarion, we don’t carry bread,” replies the apothecary.
The ganger takes out a plasteel pipe and beats the apothecary to within an inch of his life.
The next day he comes in again and says: “Give me a loaf of bread.”
“We don’t carry bread.”
The same thing happens. The apothecary decides to get some bread to avoid a third beating.
On the third day, the ganger walks into the apothecarion.
“Hello, sir, I have your bread right here,” says the apothecary.
“Oh, that’s okay, I got bread at the hardware store. You get me a quart of milk.”
On his deathbed, Tarquinius XIX cries: “What will the Cassian people do without me?”
His advisor tries to comfort him: “Your magnificence, don’t worry about the Cassians. They are a resilient people who could survive by eating stones!”
Tarquinius replies: “Quick. Grant my daughter Alenia a monopoly on the trade in stones.”
Q: When will the Emperor Return in the Flesh?
A: It is already seen on the horizon.
Q: What is a horizon?
A: An imaginary line which moves away each time you approach it.
“My wife has been going to cooking school for three years.”
“She must really cook well by now!”
“No, so far they’ve only got to the bit about the words and deeds of Saint Sebastian Thor.”
The PDF troopers are standing at attention. The Lieutnant inspects his platoon: “Number eighteen! Why don’t you hold your lasgun in your proper hand?”
“I’ve got a splinter in my hand, sir.”
“Been scratching your head I suppose!”
Goge Vandire appears to the Master of the Administratum Zeno Hipparchus in a dream and says: “I have two bits of advice for you: Kill off all your opponents and paint the Imperial Palace black.”
Zeno asks: “Why black?”
Goge Vandire: “I knew you wouldn’t object to the first one.”
A corpulent Abbot approached the small urb of Giovanniopolis on his travels. He met a water-carrier on the road. The Abbot asked him if it was possible to pass through the citygate, whereupon the water-carrier looked at the Abbot’s rotund body and said: “If a truck can pass through, then you should have a fair chance of squeezing yourself in as well.”
Q: Why do Securitate officers make such good limo drivers?
A: You get in the limo and they already know your name and where you live.
What a coincidence: Governor Gregorius has died, but his body lives on.
A man walks into a shop and asks: “You wouldn’t happen to have any ratmeat, would you?”
The shop assistant replies: “You’ve got it wrong, ours is a bakery. We don’t have any bread. You’re looking for the butcher’s shop across the road. There they don’t have any ratmeat!”
Q: How do you kill fifty flies with one blow?
A: Hit a sub in the face with a shovel.
The Imperial Governors of Piscina IV, Hydra Cordatus and Ashkelon are invited to see a shuttle built entirely out of gold. They are told that they can enter it and look around for as long as they like, but they cannot take anything. The Governor of Piscina IV goes first, stays five minutes, and upon his exit the metal detector blares; he had taken a screw and a nail with him.
The Governor of Hydra Cordatus goes second, stays five minutes, and upon his exit the metal detector blares again; he had stolen a fistful of screws.
*Finally, the Governor of Ashkelon enters the plane, and stays there five minutes. And another five minutes. And another… Suddenly, the shuttle takes off. *
*Motto in farms: *
Every egg, a bomb, every hen, a bomber against the traitor dogs!
On the Imperial Guard sniping range, the Lieutenant says to a fellow soldier: “That guy over there is good.”
“Yes indeed, but I have a feeling that we should better check his personal background.”
“Why?”
“After every shot he carefully removes his fingerprints from the rifle.”
The Emperor promised us a golden age to last a million years. Time must be flying. Those years took just ten millennia.
*A soldier in the local militia regiment is told that they will have to fire a 21-gun salute when Imperial Governor Rictus Stercus arrives in Apamea: “What if we get him on the first shot, can we stop then?” *
A novice voidship owner of a system yacht got into steering trouble too close to a gas giant and had to call the System Defence Force for help.
“Alert, alert, alert!” he yelled. “This is yacht Supremus Astra, Supremus Astra, Supremus Astra, over.”
“Supremus Astra, this is K-92,” came the reply with lag. “Can you give me your position, sir, over.”
“K-92, this is yacht Supremus Astra. I’m a Senior Decurion in the Guild of Coin on Arboretus VIII, over.”
Two prisoners are about to be shot. Suddenly the order comes to hang them instead. One says to the other: “You see, they’re running out of ammo.”
Governor Philagrius is flying in an ornithopter with his advisors. Suddenly he pulls out a thousand Throne Gelt and asks each of them to tell him how to spend it to make the Rhegian people happy. The first advisor says: “Your highness, if you throw it out the window, it will be found by some family and make them happy.”
The second advisor says: “Sir, if you divide it into two bundles and throw them out the window, you will make two families happy.”
Then the pilot chimes in: “Your excellency, if you put the lucre in your pocket and throw yourself out the window, you will make all Rhegians very happy.”
Motto in Medicae wards:
Don’t let a single patient die without medical assistance!
A scrivener is having a crisis of faith after a long life of serving the Emperor with reverent diligence. He confesses to his wife:
“I know the sacred order of mankind emanates from the Golden Throne by His will alone. But darling! Just look at the ones I have worked under! All our leaders are either greedy and hopelessly corrupt, or else they are die-hard madmen.”
His wife scolds him:
“Yes, but at least they’re good Loyalist madmen!”
A father excitedly tells his family of his doings twenty years ago. Suddenly, the youngest daughter interrupts his vigorous story: “Did you have hair back then?”
A mind without purpose will lose itself in drink.
An Martian man and a Terran man died on the same day and went to the nether hells together. The dark ones told them: “You may choose to enter two different types of hell: the first is the Martian one, where you can do anything you like, but only on the condition of eating a bucketful of manure every day; the second is the Terran hell, where you can also do anything you like, but only on the condition of eating two bucketfuls of manure a day.”
The Martian man chose the Martian hell, and the Terran man chose the Terran hell. A few months later, they met again. The Terran man asked the Martian: “Hi, how are you getting on?”
The Martian said: “Horrible! I can’t stand the bucketful of manure every day. Like clockwork. How about you?”
The Terran man replied: “Well, I’m fine, except that I don’t know whether we had a shortage of manure, or if somebody stole all the buckets.”
Q: What is the most permanent feature of our Imperial economy?
A: Temporary shortages.
The Supreme Marshal of the PDF has attached an arrow to the row of medals on his tunic. It reads: ‘Continued on the back.’
A school teacher asks little Ammatas:
“Ammatas, why are you always speaking of our Terran brothers? Why not Terran friends?”
“Well, you can always choose your friends.”
A hotel room for four with four strangers. Three of them soon open a bottle of raenka and proceed to get acquainted, then drunk, then noisy, singing, and telling jokes about Imperial governance. The fourth man desperately tries to get some sleep; finally, in frustration he surreptitiously leaves the room, goes downstairs, and asks the lady concierge to bring tea to Room 45 in ten minutes. Then he returns and joins the party. Five minutes later, he bends to a power outlet: “Detective-Espionist, some tea to Room 45, please.” They laugh at him.
In a few minutes, there is a knock at the door, and in comes the lady concierge with a tea tray. The room falls silent; the party dies a sudden death, and the prankster finally gets to sleep. The next morning he wakes up alone in the room. Surprised, he runs downstairs and asks the concierge what happened to his companions. “You don’t need to know!” she answers.
“B-but…but what about me?” asks the terrified fellow.
“Oh, you… well… The Detective-Espionist liked your tea gag a lot.”
A young man said to his frisky wife: "What should we do, darling? Eat or love?
And she replied: “You can choose. But there’s not a crumb in the house.”
At the celestial gates of Holy Terra, the guardian angel Chirbelophon asks the latest soul seeking entrance to state his talents and abilities.
The newcomer’s answer: “None.”
The guardian angel smiles and says: “Oh, I didn’t recognize you, High Governor Varus.”
…