Robert Evans

It's a cannibalistic nightmare regime.

Yep.

Nothing changes.

Nothing changes.

Variations of that passage have been included in basically every book of rules and lore published by Games Workshop in the years since.

Unfortunately, they didn't do that in a vacuum.

And over the long years of the game has existed, they also expanded the lore behind the Space Marines and turned them into what they are today.

And because the Space Marines are what sold the best and what looked the coolest, most of like, especially the kids who were just getting into the hobby got into, the Space Marines were who they marketed and focused more and more of the game around.

And there's a lot of different alien races and stuff in it.

And obviously those had to become more monstrous to match, right?

Because that makes the Space Marines look cooler and more heroic, right?

And all of this led to a situation where a lot of players didn't realize, really, that the Imperium aren't the good guys, and that Purge the Heretic and other Imperial catchphrases shouldn't be seen as admirable.

But again, Space Marines look really, really cool, and Warhammer players and writers have created so much fiction and fan art over the years

that a lot of people have made that aesthetic a real part of their lives.

And this has happened in some pretty extreme cases.

Probably the most extreme example of this would be the fact that if you watch enough videos put out by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or just a ton of combat footage from the war in Ukraine, where you can see a lot of Ukrainian soldiers, you'll inevitably run across dudes with decorations in their armor or gear that look like this.

And Joe, you're seeing this now, but this is essentially a...

I mean, it's a wax, like, stamp with some papers underneath it that's adhering it to the armor.

Yeah, these are, in the game, these, like, wax papers adhered to, like, armor by these, like, wax seals.

It's called an oath of moment, right?