Thank you kindly @Jackswift ! Spot-on, that is indeed how the Imperium works.
Reply to this thread on DakkaDakka, which asked what the tone of 40k should be:
40k should be science fiction gone wrong. It should be a mixture of Mad Max and Star Wars. It should draw upon the most depraved aspects of human history.
Warhammer 40’000 should be grimdark, bonkers and unrelentingly inhumane and cruel with no sane alternatives anywhere to be seen. It should be a place of unavoidable, mechanistic cruelty. It should be an era of lost hope and hypocrisy on every side, all presented with deliciously ironic humour and endless historical references and glorious aesthetics.
40k should be dark. 40k should never be dry and dull. And the Imperium should be a fortified madhouse, a hopeless dead-end of interstellar human galactic civilization and a monster on the prowl in its own right.
Note that the Tau fulfill an important function in such a setting: You need a naïve and optimistic, technologically advanced upstart to be shocked and traumatized by all the insanity and unrelenting horror reigning from end to end of the Milky Way galaxy. Contrast is key. Anyone who thinks the Tau breaks 40k’s tone need to think it all over again. If everything is solidly dark everywhere, then nothing is dark. Only by contrasting the Age of Imperium against stuff like the Tau and humanity’s lost golden era in the Dark Age of Technology can you hope to get the point across on just how regressed, tyrannical and murderous the dark future truly is.
