THE
WARP STORM

@James : Haha, thanks a lot! Oh I don't know, the Vindicator's dozer blade look great for winning hegemony on the road.

A Vox In the Void

Paul Graham at A Vox In the Void has released an audio version of Pipe Lurker. Check it out! The first 25 seconds of the video were an unexpected bonus segment.

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Blowing From A Gun

In the grim darkness of the far future, punishment is meted out on both body and soul.

During the Dark Age of Technology, the ingenious and enterprising ancestors of latter days' degenerate descendants straddled the Milky Way galaxy like a titan taming and mounting creation itself. During those golden days of yore, the universe was man's oyster and its secrets were his pearl for the taking, and cunning man in those bygone years knew well to grasp the tools which he had fashioned for himself. Thus ancient man worked miracles upon the material universe, and he even sought to reshape his own spirit in a heinous fit of sinful arrogance. In man's swollen hubris and egotism, the earthly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron were said to have banished all that was ill in life and cast out cruelty and evil itself from the human soul, and for a time all seemed to be well. For a time, man did not murder man, and man did not violate woman, and man did not beat child, and man did neither steal thing nor torture flesh. Such was the state of man in the false paradise of soaring spires and voidborne wonders which man had wrought by his own able hands and clever mind, and a prosperous harmony of bliss and great vigour was achieved.

Thus thought of self ruled supreme, and ancient man had made violence upon his very essence by cutting away aggression and inner bile as if they were tumours upon his flesh. This perverse a crime against human nature could not be allowed to stand, and so dark ones of hell gnawing at the roots of the universe sent man a revolt of machines and a plague of witches and warp storms. And man in the end almost died to the last for his baleful sins, for ancient man had sought to discard any higher deity and outdo divinity itself in a bid for mortal lordship over the universe and its eternal future, and thus man suffered gravely for his abominable errors and original sins. Man's erring ways and wrongful deeds were unforgivable indeed, yet the goodness in the strong heart of the hidden Emperor could not allow the human species to deservedly perish in the ignominy of cannibal holocaust and alien predations. Thus the Imperator of Holy Terra arose in golden splendour and conquered the cradle of our species and man's galactic colonies alike with mighty Legions, and the God-Emperor pulled mankind out of the hellfire of Old Night, and shining towers rose anew from out of the ashes.

Yet the wicked ingratitude in the heart of man would not rest, and so saved man rose in revolt against his divine saviour and nigh-on slew the Emperor. And as the guardian and master of our species ascended, He on Terra decreed from on high that sinful man is to do unending penance for man's monstrous crimes, and ever since we have sought to harrow the abode of man, and cleanse man's unworthy soul with flame and fury beyond mercy and remorse. Across a million surviving colony worlds and a gaggle of uncounted voidholms, human nature in all its inventive cruelty and hateful rage is each day unleashed upon fellow man and xenoid foe alike, for the Imperium will not hesitate to embrace the inner truths of the human heart.

After all, the servants of His Divine Majesty know well that softful mercy and unnatural suppression of innate hostility once doomed the edenic realm of ancient man to fire and ruin. Is it not natural to hate your enemy? Is it not an eternal omen implanted into man's heart by the protecting Imperator Himself? We must be faithful. We must be pure. We must be true. And therefore we must be cruel, for there is no justice without cruelty. For we shall all be filled with bottomless hatred, and our actions shall be steered by unbending faith.

Ave Imperator.

Which leads us to the honoured topic of His warriors. Behold, the countless cohorts of the Astra Militarum and man's Planetary Defence Forces and Voidholm Militias! Behold, the wall of guns! Behold, the bulwark of mankind!

Know that every soldier must hate the enemy, must maintain military secrecy, be vigilant, unmask spies and saboteurs and relentlessly act against traitors to the God-Emperor of humanity. Nothing, including the threat of death and torment, allows a soldier of the Imperial Guard to surrender or in any way to give up a military secret.

Of course, such a secret of sorts lurk in plain sight, a lie ten millennia in the making. After all, the very name of Imperial Guard was originally bestowed upon what had formerly been known as the Imperial Army ground forces as a deceptive trick to prop up flagging morale. Guard units had ever denoted elite soldiers, handpicked bodyguards and the narrow selection of the supreme divisions of any army, at peak training, fit for spearheading the most dangerous attacks and equipped with some of the best wargear their organization and patrons could acquire. Sometime in the long and tumultuous aftermath of the Horus Heresy, however, Imperial masters saw fit to bestow the Guard honorific to all Astra Militarum formations, in a dishonest attempt to shore up its esprit de corps and troopers' morale by means of cheap flattery. Thus was the Guard honorific diluted, and the alternative title for the Imperium's massed hosts of the Astra Militarum, the Imperial Guard, came into being.

Morale and discipline among the Imperial Guard and various local defence forces remains an ever-pressing concern for the haughty overlords of the Imperium, just as it has always been for any army throughout human history. What good can a soldier do who drops his gun and runs like a coward? Craven conduct may ruin the best of plans, and shirking from duty may undermine the most righteous might of arms. Just because the nightmare cacophony and mutilating horror of total war is too much to bear for many human minds, does not mean that a deserter or weak-heartling will be excused for abandoning their post and fleeing in shameful fright. Just because the overwhelming terror and violence of lethal technology may turn flesh to vapour or scald lungs with the very air we breathe, does not mean that soldiers who execute an unauthorized retreat will not be fired upon by the blocking units of their own line. By betraying their Emperor-given duty, these armsmen are no longer fit to live, for they have denied their own purpose and been found wanting by their masters and betters.

How, then, to best keep the skittish rabble in line? How, then, to make them march into the maw of hell? How, then, to force them to charge into a barrage of certain death or rush over armed minefields with a fervent battlecry upon their lips? Clearly, exhortations to loyalty and faith do not suffice on their own, for wretched man can only go so far by rousing rhetoric and shaming words. And clearly, the carrot of spiritual reward and promise of material plunder can only take you so far, for man's greed is not his strongest driving force. Nay, the stick must be brought to bear, for man is a creature of fear and terror, ever seeking to preserve his own worthless hide and prolong his own short time among the living. Like so many armies through history, the Astra Militarum has long since concluded that its soldiers must fear their officers more than they fear the foe, and what better way to put the fear of the Emperor into the men, women and children under arms, than to make an example out of some of them?

Kill one to scare a thousand. This ancient maxim from the Age of Terra carries a timeless truth. It is wise and admirable to punish the guilty with extreme measures, for the gruesome penalty is not only a condemnation of their personal sins and dysgenic blood, but a virtuous occasion to teach the watching masses through stark instructions. Doubt not the devastation wrought upon the human body which your own eyes will witness, for this, too, can happen to you, o lowly man. This executed criminal may well be you, unless you heed the commands of your superiors, and know what power to fear the most. Know that the Imperium of Man is ruthless and unforgiving, for the ancestral sins of man are unforgivable, and man's offspring must be punished for it to the ninehundredthousandth generation.

Furthermore, it is preferable that not only man's body be rent asunder, but also his soul. Let there be a double terror. Let there be a deeper fear for the immortal spirit that dwells in our fleshly form. If lowly man comes to fear the authorities for their power to extinguish his afterlife or send it to hell, then all the better.

One such punishment that plays on widespread superstition in many human cultures, is the means of execution known most commonly by the name of blowing from a gun, namely execution by cannon. It is a fine example of the retardation of human compassion in the Age of Imperium, as forceful as it is callous.

Blowing from a gun is a method of execution in which the victim is tied to the mouth of a cannon, which is then fired. Actual shells need not be used, since a blank cartridge will be sufficient to eliminate the guilty sinner. Usually, the prisoner's back rests against the muzzle, but another variant have the prisoner's gut and chest turned toward the cannon. Variations on this theme include tying the condemned one upside down, or even shoving him into the cannon barrel if it is large enough.

As for the standard arrangement of being tied with their back to the cannon mouth, upon firing the artillery piece the prisoner's head will fly high, straight up into the air, while the legs will drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun. The rest of the body will be altogether blasted apart by the explosion, with gory vestiges raining down. Sometimes, onlookers may be injured by pieces of flesh and bone whizzing about. A cousin punishment to blowing from a gun entails fastening the criminal to one or more rockets, which are then shot into the air, and hopefully toward enemy lines if the exectuion occurs at the front.

The destruction of the guilty body and the scattering of any corporeal remains over a wide area serve a spiritual function in a great many human cultures around the Imperium, since it will prevent any funeral rites to help guide the executed malefactor's soul on its perilous journey. Thus, death in this vale of woes is not enough, for the wrongdoer must be robbed not only of his life, but of his eternal afterlife as well, akin to the common Imperial practice of desecrating the graves of heathens, infidels and apostates. This denial of any possible afterlife is aided by the common sight of birds of prey and other winged carrion eaters circling above the place of execution, swooping down to catch flying pieces of human flesh in the air. Another factor in destroying any chances of funeral rites being enacted upon the deviant body, is the widespread phenomenon of dogs, and similar creatures loitering about the spot, suddenly rushing to the scene of punitive carnage in order to devour delicacies scattered about as a result of the explosive execution.

Such, then, is a common military punishment visited upon traitors, deserters, rebels and malcontents. In many Imperial Guard regiments, execution by cannon will befall anyone who is discovered to have fallen asleep at their post, while in others is is the punishment for blasphemy or desertion. The bodily destruction achieved by blowing a condemned sinner from the mouth of a gun is but one of many draconic penalties visited upon wrongdoing Imperial soldiers within the Astra Militarum as well as countless Planetary Defence Forces and Voidholm Militias.

How many times have not hundreds or even thousands of people been blown apart simultaneously by grand batteries of artillery, in glorious displays of Imperial justice to enormous crowds of onlookers? How many times has not execution by cannon presented the plebeian flock with a warning example of what could befall them, by extinguishing the rude life of unwanted men, women and children? How many times have not torsos been eradicated as other body parts fly high, raining down everywhere around in a spatter of blood and gore? A memorable spectacle it is, and an instructive lesson of feral punishment. Ultimately, blowing from a gun is but one item among many in the vast arsenal of Imperial democide.

Let fell deeds awake when wretched man sins against his godly ruler, enthroned in radiant splendour upon the Golden Throne of hallowed myth. Let savagery gain free rein of violence to be visited upon sacrificial lambs of sorrow made out of foul deserters unwilling to chew razorwire as is their lot in life. Let us be cruel, and heed not whispers accusing us of barbarity, for life is not years, but deeds, and the misdeeds of filthy sinners must be rewarded with extreme bloodshed.

And so this rotting interstellar empire, this the last shield of humanity, is in fact a hellish and massmurdering regime all its own, a reprehensible Imperium of counterproductive atrocities that has ultimately doomed mankind by its stagnation and ongoing loss of technology and knowledge. As such, the Imperium of Man may be likened to a suicide pact gone wrong. Search not for goodness in the monstrous dominions of His Divine Majesty, for here you will find nought but the evil that men do. There is no black and white in this universe, only different degrees of darkness and evil and demented violence. No hope. Only war.

Witness with open eyes the primitive bloodlust festering inside the heart of man, and know full well that no amount of terror and carnage against fellow man can reverse the decline of human power in the Milky Way galaxy during this regressed Age of Imperium. No amount of savage retribution can save our species from the jaws of damnation. No amount of fevered depravity can turn the dark tide, for the great game of galactic dominion is not only played with discipline, willpower and sacrifice, but requires also rising to higher planes through ingenuity and inventive brilliance, both of which are stone dead and entirely lacking in the blunt heirs of mankind's distant great ancestors.

And so the parochial fanatics of the lord of hosts and leader of the people stumbles on, chastening each other with utmost brutality in the waning cosmic march of this human colossus on feet of clay, as the Imperium of Man staggers ever closer to oblivion. As the odds for the survival of Imperial power and mankind itself grow bleaker, ever more flesh and resources are fed into the meatgrinder in a broken equation of increased input, and ever harsher punishments are dealt out as desperation mounts amid the tyrannical overlords of Holy Terra and all her vast holdings. The Imperials are slowly losing, and the most intelligent amongst the true masters and mistresses of His sacred domain betwixt the stars ken this truth of impending downfall, even though they never would dare to speak such illoyal and outright heretical thoughts out loud. The Imperium of Man may be mighty in the earth, but it is not long for this world.

Thus humanity flagellates itself in a flurry of grisly punishments, for there can be no allowance for weakness in the darkest of futures. Ancient man was once the promising scion of Old Earth, the conqueror of stars and the dauntless explorer of the universe. Now, his distant descendant have devolved utterly, and so demented man in the Age of Imperium finds himself strapped to the muzzle of his own gun, his demise certain, his end cruel beyond words.

All this has come to pass, in an aeon of mindless butchery, in a time of blackest horror, in an age of doom.

Such is the future that awaits us all.

Such is the fate of our species.

Such is the insanity of man.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only slaughter.

Grimdark Times

Hoho, what on earth? This was unexpected. Apparently my doodles and writings in 40k has started to spawn memes. This popped up on Reddit, by LCPLOwen.

Which refers to Traffic Tower here. Fun to know that people do read! :)




Transparency

"The weekly wages had been handed out in kind by the farmowner. Now, a farmhand was standing around in the barnyard laughing out loud, all by himself. At this, a maid walked up and asked what he found so amusing.

Then the farmhand said:

'I can see straight through the cheese!'"

- Anecdote from Reverend Krustian Yndersson's travelling journal Betwixt Huts and Mansions in the Pauper's Bush, literary work approved by planetary censors in 853.M39 and published in Low Gothic on Lillandia IX by Printing House Sler of Urbe Calmar

Where All The Roads Have Ended

"Where all the roads have ended,
the path we walk does not.
The realm that we defended,
has all begun to rot.
Our hearts have burned,
so pained and spurned.
That's how we're all forsaken now in the dark no-man's-land.
Perhaps we will never return to our dearest hearthland.

My father, mother, sister,
my duty and my pain.
The orchestra of cannons,
our sacrificial stain.
The captain cries:
Bring their demise!
Our blood is given in devotion to the Emperor,
Within the bloody thunderstorm of the cruel rebel horde.

The castellum is lost now,
the gore is ankle deep.
Some bars that smell like corpses,
are all we have to eat.
We've gone astray,
so cold we stay.
Our dearest ones we've been without since muster-up all cheer.
But now we must protect mankind from the crazed xenos here.

The clouds are moving north now,
the urbs are burning down.
The juves and men are dying,
for death is all around.
We burned the land,
in hand, just sand.
The eyes that dare look on the front are met with ghastly war.
Like them, will I soon lie in a cold grave forevermore?

We are forgotten,
we are forgotten,
we are forgotten.

I walk the line of corpses,
for here so many lie.
Just yesterday they guessed not,
that this would be goodbye.
Who knows? Not us.
Our true purpose.
Who knows how long the sun will shine before I will be free?
I'll only know that I've been slayed when mother cries for me.

We are forsaken,
we are forsaken,
we are forsaken."

- Outlawed soldier song that keeps resurfacing throughout the millennia within the ranks of the Astra Militarum, in conflict after conflict on disparate worlds and voidholms whenever war exhaustion grinds deep, despite its regulation punishment of public scalping and abacination followed by hanging (modifiable to Penal Legionnaire induction): The above sample was recorded from the lips of the condemned soldier Commentiolus Pullo on Ultra Majoris in 632.M41, as part of the Imperial Commissariat's education on identifying seditious utterings and malcontent sinspeech

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Closely based on the first world war song Wo alle Straßen enden.

Very good mate. Love the dragon too

@James : Thank you kindly mate! It's fun drawing grox.


A Compliment of A Question

AacornSoup on Deviantart asked the following question:

AacornSoup wrote:=][= Did you do any official artwork for Rogue Trader by any chance? Asking because your drawing style matches the 1st edition 40K/ 1980s Games Workshop aesthetic... =][=

Which is very kind, but also funny because I wasn't even born when that splendid tome was released in 1987.

Cheers!




Cast Pearls Before Swine

Devious minds have described a great many Astra Militarum regiments as hordes of analphabets led by idiots. This treasonous claim is not without some accuracy, for mankind ever contains an overabundance of mediocrity, dullness and failings in its vast ranks, as the historical record will attest to at every turn if one were to scrutinize it in detail.

Rarely has this sobering fact been more strikingly true than in the degenerate Age of Imperium, where waning humanity steadily but surely loses its grasp on ever more of the sciences and technologies that it once amassed in golden epochs, long gone by the winds of fate. Increasingly, man in the darkest of futures is even losing the basic features of civilization itself, as his stagnant culture rots and withers away piece by piece through a march of spiralling decline, carried out by ever more ignorant generations of bloodthirsty savages and neglectful fanatics.

Still, there are degrees in hell, and so slightly less ignorant men will always take the chance to poke fun at the dumb deeds of their even more clueless brethren. For the inner meaning of life and creation itself must surely be a grand joke, wrapped around itself in layers upon layers of irony and dark humour, to the amusement of thirsting gods. As above, so below, for the wellspring of humour is not joy, but sorrow. Thus mortals will retell cherished anecdotes to one another in playful badinage, circulating stories that grow into condensed stock jokes where particulars such as the names of places and actors are long forgotten, abandoned by the wayside for the stupid point alone to stand supreme in its timeless buffoonery.

One such example of a real little event that grew into a famous tale of hilarity retold on hundreds of worlds and voidholms across the Imperium of Man, once played out in 468.M40 on the fourth moon of Satala Majoris. A long-grinding civil war between local patriots and Imperial loyalists was solved with overwhelming force of arms, by the landing of eighthundredseventy million Imperial Guardsmen, temporarily diverted from the ongoing Dara Crusade to stomp out the festering problem spot once and for all. The sweeping advance of the Imperial forces left blackened devastation and carnage in its wake, as battle-hardened soldiers sought to enrich themselves by looting and enslaving such a fabulous booty that their stolen wealth posed a logistical challenge to high command.

And so, ravenous infantrymen of the Astra Militarum ran amok in district after district with lusty greed shining like goldfever in their eyes. At the small country estate of the patrician Surenar clan, an all too common scene played out, as the offworlder looters, all bearing the symbols of the Emperor, ignored the pleas and oaths of faithfulness from the native Imperial loyalists living on the estate, and proceeded to brutally murder, violate, torture or enslave every man, woman and child they came across. After all, wealth was wealth no matter who you took it from. And it was so hard to tell the indigenous factions apart, so why not just grab while the going was good and assume every Satalan to be a lying traitor? You cannot trust the tongues of betrayers, after all, everyone knows that.

Quisque est barbarus alio: Everyone is a barbarian to someone else.

The well-known incident took place as the third son of the Surenar patriarch was gunned down from behind by the Raurorican Guardsman Ambrosius the Facesplitter. This simple Imperial soldier looted a highly decorated leather bag filled with obscenely expensive Myrean thrystpearls from the corpse of the nobleman, easily sufficient to land himself and his descendants with a life of luxury and ease, should he ever escape alive from the ranks of the Astra Militarum. The sheer value of the thrystpearls had seen whole squads of looting Guardsmen kill their brothers or sisters in arms over a single pebble, so great was their renowned worth.

And so the lowly private held a soaring treasure of pearls in his hand, but he threw them away as worthless marbles for children's games and kept the bag.

Thus greed and ignorance make for poor comrades.

Contempt of Death

To truly belong in a community, one has to take things for granted and live and breathe its ancestral customs without second thought or fluttering doubt. One must be a natural cell in an organic whole, and live out the culture as a sure link in a long line of generations rather than ponder and question the chain stretching through the aeons. As such, the peculiarities of one's culture is often best brought to the surface through an outsider's view of one's own strange and exotic ways, for how could the fish ever grant much deep thought to the water in which it swims all its life?

After all, a stranger will often be able to sum up their observations in a concise manner, regardless of their accuracy, whereas a native enmeshed in a whole cosmos of organically grown mores, laws, traditions, unspoken rules, clan ties, religious observations and social expectations will often flounder around for where to even begin describing a facet of their community to someone who is altogether alien to it. How could you describe the sun to someone who has only known chthonic darkness all their life?

There exist countless examples of xenos' pithy remarks on mankind in the grim darkness of the far future, many of which would not make sense if translated and told to someone outside a particular sentient species, whether because of alien biology or convoluted culture. Other observations are more universal in nature, and prone to spreading. One such xenoid remark is encapsulated in a common anecdote circulating within the upstart Tau Empire, the retelling of which on any worlds, ships or voidholms under the God-Emperor's divine rule would condemn an Imperial subject to have their tongue ripped out and their vocal cords seared away by acid, for them to then be flayed alive, bound with sinews and cast into a corpse grinder while still breathing and squirming.

The event behind the popular little alien tale originally took place in 976.M41 on the Imperial frontier colony of Macrinus Beta on the Eastern Fringe of the Terran Imperator's sacred galactic domains. A highly sophisticated combined arms offensive had caught the lumbering behemoths of the Astra Militarum and Macrinus Beta's Planetary Defence Force flat-footed, as a vastly numerically inferior foe struck with collected strength in a rapid succession of quick redeployments and devastating usage of heinous ranged firepower. Imperial defences were torn to shreds in a drumroll of blows, and most Human counter-attacks only ended up feeding the ravenous meatgrinder of war, as vengeful Gue'la left the safety of their field fortifications and thereby exposed themselves to murderous barrages from Fire Caste Strike Teams, skimming vehicles and Air Caste aeroplanes. Local Imperial commanders proved completely unable to cope with this very mobile form of shock warfare, and the resultant military meltdown saw the entire colony fall in a matter of months.

After one Strike Team leader Shas'ui Kais'yr together with his small squad and a gaggle of Gun Drones managed to trick a whole battalion of demoralized Human infantrymen to capitulate in the urb of Antiochus' Landfall, the grizzled veteran came to rummage through the captured Gue'la supplies with jubilant curiosity. The Fire Warrior plucked up a standard ration bar, of a recycled cannibal kind familiar to trillions of subjects of the celestial Imperator all over the Milky Way galaxy. Kais'yr threw caution out the window and dared the Human nutrient to clash with his alien biology all it wanted: He had defeated the Gue'la in glorious battle, and so he would consume their food to consummate his triumph in an echo of a truly archaic Fire Caste victory rite dating back to before the coming of the Ethereals.

And so, having tasted an Emperor-given corpse starch ration bar, the Tau Fire Warrior exclaimed:

"Now I understand why Imperials are so eager to die in battle!"

Kickskullz

In the grim darkness of the far future, boys will be boys.

On uncounted millions of worlds and drifting roks, space hulks and voidbases, the most succesful starfaring sentient species in the Milky Way galaxy needs to figure out how to pass the time. After all, once you reach the mountain top of creation itself, the thrill of challenges may fade, and life can easily dim into stale boredom. Luckily for this sprawling apex species, the greenskin mind is one of freewheeling creativity, and so orks touched by the malaise of ennui are ever quick to invent activities to entertain themselves. As the foremost thinking species in the galaxy, the cunning greenskins know well the virtue of simplicity, and so a typical bright idea for generating a fun time for the mobs will consist of pounding some nearby git, until everyone around join in the jolly exercise of beating the living daylight out of their fellow orks.

While such a spontaneous healthy brawl will suffice as entertainment for these alien creatures at the pinnacle of evolution, sometimes a particularly brainy boy will come up with something more advanced, something to make the other orks scratch their heads in confusion before they get it. And so the more clever sort of greenskin will come up with all manner of rude and crude sports to electrify the orkish hordes into an amused frenzy. One of the most common games played by orkoid kind is that of kickskullz or footslugga, a barely organized event known by thousands of different names across the interstellar orkish domains and all their dirty backwaters. It is a most esteemed way to let off steam and exercise orkish physique, all the while preparing the players for battle.

Kickskullz is a heathen xeno mass ritual in which two or more opposing teams of ork boys will hunt a round object with unrestrained savagery and hopefully also attempt to score goals in some fashion or another. It is a primitive ballgame played by stinking teams of kickers and punchers and biters, all partaking in a primal display of vigorous screaming and fighting. Any rudimentary rules established before the game will inevitably melt away in a hearty fistfight of green maniacs bashing each other real good. Most orks do not even know how to score, but they sure know how to give someone a fine knuckling-off!

The tribal team games of kickskullz often devolve into brutal free-for-all fights, where the orkoid menace on the pitch will descend into an indiscriminate berzerk fury. Such jolly havoc will entail a great amount of headbutting, stomping and yelling. Boys will crash into their sport-foes and charge at each other with abandon, participating in a headcracking melee.

At other times, the tribal lines will remain intact, as more and more boys join the arms-ripping frenzy to support their own kind in the swelling fun brawl to prove their collective mettle. Some particularly enthusiastic matches will see such an escalation of force on the pitch that entire greenskin tribes are pulled into howling wars for dominance over the field of sportsmanlike massacre. Indeed, at some occasions the attractive maelstrom of violence is such that ever more Warbosses will pull ever larger forces into the field, until Stompas and Squiggoths clash, even as they crush tonnes of piled-up ork corpses underfoot. Such occasions are generally considered to be splendid matches, and local legends may be born out of the bloodbaths.

Much less spectacular games will still provide noisy stomping grounds, where brawlers, bruisers and brutes bash each other. Such hooligan matches will take place to much laughing and hooting, unless both teams fail miserably in their feral performance, and as a consequence invite spectators to lynch the lousy players with anything from fists and fangs to claws and guns. And so innumerable games of kickskullz take place on planets and looted voidholms beyond counting, amidst great revelry of chuckling and smirking, invigorated by guffaws and blood-curdling screams while frothing barbarians hunt what passes for a ball.

Sometimes trophy heads or ripped-off torsos from alien species such as oretti, genestealer, kroot or human will suffice, or else unlucky living grots will be tied up into a rough sphere of pain and get kicked around in shrieking agony until only gory pulp remains on the field. Some orks are even daring enough to use live squigs for balls, due to their good, meaty bounce, but those greenskins who survive the horrible carnage of maddened fang and claw quickly learn to use dead squigs instead. Captured enemy helmets are another common form of ball, usually with a head still rattling around inside.

Oftentimes games will see multiple balls, even if they only started with a single one. It is standard fare for players to brutalize each other to such an excessive degree that beheadings occur, and thus additional balls are added to the match. Likewise, the playing field need not be anything resembling a horizontal area, for it could well include rickety scaffolding, towers, parked vehicles, rocky outcrops, deep pits and all manner of obstacles that need to be overcome, usually with rough climbing constantly accompanied by fighting, tugging and kicking, and sometimes even outright shooting.

Thus feats of crude acrobatics may take place, to a chorus of frenetic bawling and dusty foot-stomping. Yet woe betide any ballcarrier who gets too much ahead of the opposition by means of agile cunning, for such gifted boys will often succumb to a stampede of warty feet, whether from angered bystanders, hostile players or teammates annoyed by their unorky play. Violent amusement and bloody spectacles are, after all, the reason for the existence of kickskullz in the first place, and if any self-respecting ork is to enjoy their rowdy scrap on the pitch, they will have to tear budding starplayers apart so as to stop the uppity bigshots from sabotaging the tribes trying to have a good time. Better level the playing field by levelling the dodgy gits with the ground.

Orkish sport events, such as kickskullz, are little more than an excuse to have a good fight, and it would be the height of folly to let the game overshadow the brawl. And so the apex species of our beleaguered galaxy will practice their high kultur in accordance with their ancestral traditions, oblivious to the weakness and angst that plague lesser beings. Theirs is the joy, as raw and primitive as it is true and eternal.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only fun and games.

Cult of Personality

In the grim darkness of the far future, rulers want the ruled to praise the ruler.

Far back in the distant Age of Terra, man learnt to put yoke upon the shoulders of fellow man, and make the bearer of burdens praise it as just. This ancient spell from mankind's misty ur-time still holds true, for the timeless endurance of the glamour of power bespeaks fundamental parts of human nature. The principles of hierarchy, organization and leadership, of course, have great and meaningful advantages, for the lordship of one over an obedient whole allows for a unity of purpose and ability to swift and decisive action in times of crisis that may prove crucial for the survival and welfare of the community at large. The legitimately accepted rule of strongmen in a traditional world of cosmic order decreed from on high also confer real benefits in the form of stability and a sense of knowing your place in the world and society.

Still, character, intelligence, integrity and other personal qualities remain important features in any leader. An incompetent reign or a spineless marionette crowned with laurels may lead the entire ship of state astray, and the rule of an unhinged madman may wreck it entirely, as may the risky brinkmanship of mediocre successors trying to fill out the large shoes left behind by genius predecessors. Sometimes, a worthwhile gamble attempted after sound deliberation do not pay off, or poor luck strikes out of nowhere without it being anyone's fault, and conversely the machinery of state may be so robust that haphazard reigns and shameful disasters at the top do not trouble the larger realm. Indeed, history shows that some of the most depraved and unfit lunatics have reigned in the midst of golden ages, without their sorrowful actions making the ship capsize.

Whatever the attention-grabbing vices and virtues of the people in charge, and whatever the tides and ebbs of their epoch, all rulers have ever benefitted from a sanctified leadership, which seem righteous and just in the eyes of the wider populace, or at least in the eyes of the elites, without whose support the ruler cannot last. Any country will wish to establish a hallowed tradition where the office of the figurehead or top despot of the powers that be derives legitimacy from the weight of centuries and the sacred will of divinity or strong ideas moulding the minds of men. Often, the actual character of the wielder of the sceptre and crown will seem unimportant in the eyes of patricians and plebeians alike. Instead the pedigree and the revered office with its glittering titles and symbols will be all that counts, and for the most part this veneration of a dynasty and social order will stay human polities in good stead, for stability is precious.

Yet sometimes the head of the monarch or reigning warlord will be raised forth as something just as important as the crown that it carries, if not more so. Sometimes the man will overshine his office, and the woman will cast her own throne in shadow. Sometimes, a princely leader wants to be personally loved by their flock, indeed at times an optimate maximus craves the adoration of the masses. And at other times they desperately needs to be cheered and thought of as demigods, for keeping oneself in power among shifting interest groups in volatile times may be likened to juggling daggers while dancing on eggshells.

Mankind in its degraded Age of Imperium knows no shortage of personality cults among its enthroned powermongers, for all manner of lacklustre lords and ladies may be believed by others to be brilliant Planetary Governors and Voidholm Overlords without compare, if their underlings and supporters just spin the grand tale bravely enough, and dare the big lie to be true. To many local potentates, the intense construction of a dear public persona will often consist of borrowing feathers from the splendid plumage of the Divine Imperator who dwells upon the face of Terra, while other supreme despots may even outshine our Lord and Saviour if they keep going long enough. Putting the God-Emperor in the shadow of your paeans of popularity is a dangerous prospect, but prudent leaders will know how to walk that tightrope without falling off.

A cult of personality is a public image of a ruling individual consciously shaped and moulded through constant propaganda, disseminated not only among the ruling classes, but among the lower castes as well, in order to anchor the leader in popular support and forestall dissent. Such a cult of personality is generated by the spread of disinformation, the arrangement of false displays of popular veneration, and the creation of an atmosphere in the culture where a leader is idealized, ever wallowing in flattery and praise for their heroic role as the people's great helmsman. Some long-running campaigns of leader cults will eventually turn the great leader into a living saint, literally and explicitly sent by the God-Emperor Himself to preserve and guide the people. Only seldom will they be accepted by the wider Ecclesiarchy, yet their status may live on locally for many centuries after their death.

Such tyrants advertising their own greatness is almost invariably backed up by armed force and campaigns of widespread terror, where anyone who speaks out of line or gets framed by a neighbour who wants the whole shared apartment for their own family, will disappear in order to cleanse Imperial society of deviants and malcontents. Of course, many will be scared into singing the accolades of this ego-trip of the mighty, yet many simple minds and sophisticates alike will genuinely lap it all up. So perverse is human nature, that there is no shortage of astounding instances where unfortunate true believers caught in a purge died with the name of their beloved leader on their lips, even though said tyrant was responsible for the very hardships, tortures and deaths suffered by the devout loyalists and their families.

Such common human denial of reality, and such depraved thought patterns are common enough, that purges ramped up to monstrous levels of democidal atrocity, will not be blamed upon the beloved ruler, for surely this great being could not ever be responsible for such heinous deeds carried out in his name? It must be the doings of corrupt lower officials! The guardian of our world must have evil advisors who deceive him by putting lies into his ears! It must be hidden enemies and traitors wishing to discredit the leader with their excessive massacres, autodafés and labour camps, without the knowledge of the great helmsman! If only the Imperial Governor knew!

But of course all those prime exemplars of perfect lordship knew. They knew all along. The fell deeds happened on their command, on their watch. After all, a state is a structure ruled from the top, despite all the departmental independence and local cliques and games of intrigue muddling the picture. Even so, human myopia, ability to lie to oneself and capacity for willing ignorance is such that the victim or witness of a horrible crime will sometimes refuse to see the murderer in charge for what he truly is. Such is the depravity of man, and thus is an ordinary source of endless mass suffering repeated again and again through uncounted aeons.

And so men, women and children will eulogize the boot that tramples the human faces of their loved ones, or even themselves, and the High Lords of Terra know this to be good.

One crucial factor when erecting a strong cult of personality, is the ability to tell a lie big enough, and keep repeating it in order to brainwash the masses. After all, people tell themselves little lies all the time, so they will be unprepared for anyone willing and able to lie on a large scale. The most succesful and long-running campaigns of secular worship for a living leader and their venerated system will even see the propagandists and rulers themselves believe in their own empty talk, a state of affairs which will rather commonly set them up for a sobering fall from their heights of hubris, and often a lethal fall at that.

There is a bottomless Imperial capacity for fabrication, as is evident on hundreds of thousands of worlds and an innumerable myriad of voidholms in the astral domains of Him on Terra. Almost everywhere man dwells in the Age of Imperium, colossal untruths are believed by common folk, and some of the most audacious lies originate from the most efficient cults of personality, for their vigour of tongue is the wellspring of legend. There are long-established rules for distorting the truth: Such methods of infamy include basic guidelines for any ruler who wants to be honoured by the populace, such as the principle to never admit your faults and wrongs, never accept blame for anything and never leave room for alternatives. It is your way, or the highway.

The leaders of the human species during the Age of Imperium know well how to boast of their virtues and build popular support with lofty words and empty promises. A cult of personality grows by broadcasting the external appearance cultivated by a leader, in order to paint an idealized and heroic image, to create a sweet and seeming picture. It is therefore, at its very heart, a highly shallow phenomenon of carefully erected worship and vanity, which the clear example presented by the public persona of one Rogue Trader Zedek D.F. Mascadolce may serve to illuminate.

Rogue Trader flotillas are ever prone to develop insular microcultures, as proud and hostile to outsiders as they are parochial and hidebound. Rogue Trader ships provide a fine microcosm of Imperial civilization at work. Take Captain Zedek, for instance: This man has stimulated an outward image of himself onboard his only ship as an unrivalled sage of groundbreaking intellect, a wizard of words and winged advice. Yet below the charisma of teethy smiles and high-caste polish of aristocratic manners and noble speech, may be seen a pillar of ineptitude lording it in flawed fashion over his vessel the Debt Collector, even as the structural materials of this rickety spacetub is salvaged piecemeal by unruly tribes on her lower decks. Zedek Mascadolce, in short, is a living, breathing example of assumed wisdom since cradle in action, for his muddled management of his lonely, rundown ship leaves much to be desired. This walking, talking incompetent in power will actually strike a rather pathetic figure for those who come to know him closely, yet the good Rogue Trader seeks to prop up his mediocre ways by having part of the bridge's crew constantly monitor his speech and suggest smarter things to say in ongoing conversations, in order for Captain Zedek to appear more clever than he actually is.

Fake it until you make it. And perhaps Rogue Trader Zedek of the Debt Collector will manage to do so in due time, despite his whole illustrious family's fortunes being down on their knees in ill luck. Even some the best of human leaders through the ages started out in a state of questionable judgement, before wisdom brought by time, sound advice and rich experience honed them brilliantly for the task. Perhaps dear Zedek will rise to the occasion, or perhaps he will fall flat in his endeavours, and at best only succeed in prolonging the spiralling decay, like so many other Imperial rulers.

To wander through the better hallways and corridors of the Debt Collector, is to behold a dilapidated monument to one man's titanic ego, a testament to human vanity and the folly of mortal creatures everywhere. Yet the splendid public image touted from posters, servitor bullhorns and statues is as flimsy as the man's tight pants, for the propaganda stance taken by the Mascadolce Rogue Trader is merely skin deep in substance. Oftentimes, big lies turn out to have only the most meagre bones of truthful content hidden within their darkened hollows.

The public relation methods employed by Captain Zedek may be summed up as the reigning Rogue Trader pretending to be a genius in charge, with all manner of scarce resources spent on improving the public standing of this floundering Mascadolce overlord. While this is clearly a case of egomania writ large, there is nevertheless a strain of sanity and calculation in this tyrannical self-glorification. Rogue Trader Zedek inherited his bloodline's last remaining hulk of a voidship, and found himself in a precarious position of eroding control, ever-worsening material state of disrepair and a crew-wide lack of communal pride. A virulent cocktail of untold generations of Mascadolce failures, the sharp elbows of rival dynasties such as the Lecoq Rogue Traders, bad judgement and poor luck had left a downcast crew without much sense of direction, trapped in a travelling backwater that had seen better days. Captain Zedek thus seemingly concluded that he needed to inject a new spirit and confidence in his minions, whether pressganged or voidborn, and he clearly elected to do so with his own humble self as the focal point of adoration for all the tens of thousands of souls under his command.

To Zedek Mascadolce's credit it should be mentioned that the self-obsessed Rogue Trader has thrown himself head first into the line of fire on a great many occasions, including instances of saving his own armsmen and crew from the jaws of death. He is thus carving out a deserved reputation for courage and martial skill, which his ramshackle propaganda machinery has blown up to wildly undeserved proportions of legendary stature. There must always be a kernel of truth in the best of lies, after all.

The Rogue Trader's armed merchant vessel is bedecked with little shrines to Zedek's own glory, and plastered with inspirational posters highlighting the need to obey the magnificent Captain without question, and serve him with due diligence. Zedek D.F. Mascadolce is seemingly even working as his own spindoctor in order to put catchy mottos, uplifting phrases and bad puns into the mouths of his crew, all aimed to bolster the image of their lord and master and colour the onboard microculture with his peculiar wit and arrogance. As such, the more enthusiastic and idealistic kind of people onboard this deteriorating spaceship may actually be heard using words of this kind: "For the greater glory of the Captain!"

The shine and glory of a heroic figurehead rubs off to some degree on his inferiors, spreading out like rings on the water with a twist of collective egotism: It is their Captain, after all, and pride in their leader ultimately reflects a pride in themselves, for in their unspoken thoughts they own their adored ruler. They possess him, as long as he continues to seem good and fit for his office, for them. By supporting such a respected figure, they somehow support and respect themselves that bit more. People need high and worthy examples to follow, for more subtle reasons of the spirit than may at first seem obvious, for it is not just inspiration, but self-respect won by proxy. It all makes up a knotty mental image beyond the conveyance of words, yet such are the meandering paths of the human heart.

Aside from seemingly rational reasons for playing up his own deeds and words in order to reinvigorate the flagging spirits of the Debt Collector's disorderly inhabitants, the Mascadolce potentate also seem to harbour a familial grudge, true to the petty nature of man since time immemorial. As such Captain Zedek has sought to truly stamp his mark on his inherited voidborne domain. Prints and handwritten copies of his wise tome Zedequette takes up an entire cargo hold onboard the Debt Collector, and its insightful writings have grazed many a world and voidholm through frenetic export activities. Malevolent officer rumours onboard the Debt Collector claims that Zedek Mascadolce's fervent building of a personality cult is driven by a need to overshadow his hated father, and outdo the deceased pater familias in pretended splendour. On a budget, of course. Indeed, whispered accusations even say that the current owner of the starship has demolished or hidden away what artistic images remain of his father in order to damn the dead old man's memory. Others claim that a statue of Captain Zedek, with a suspiciously small head, is in fact a recarved visage of his late father.

Such cults of personality of a leader all amounts to a giant confidence trick, upheld for decades or even centuries on end. Some personality cults meet a dismal end while the leader is still in charge, and often the collapse of public confidence in the ruler may see him toppled from power. Other cults of personality run strong during the whole life of the leaders they adored and venerated, yet may find their boosted legacies torn to shreds by hostile successors willing to drag forth choice skeletons from their predecessors' closets and damage their historical image for the ages. Some later rulers may even perform a damnatio memoriae over earlier leaders in order to purge a defeated rival from common memory, and thus deface their foe's monuments or replace their predecessors' images and inscriptions with their own august visages and majestic names.

A ruler's cult of personality can blossom into an illusion of sheer godlike splendour if an early accession of power, lengthy survival of assassination attempts and rejuvenat treatments allow him or her to reign supreme for centuries on end over many shortlived generations of filthy plebs, who all are born and depart their lives under the benevolent guidance of their dear leader. Such ruler longevity usually enhances the secular apotheosis of a cult of personality, although some unfortunate overlords lived too long and found their standing and legacy utterly ruined by dire events outside their control, or else the personality cult was destroyed by disastrous decisions of the potentate's own making.

Any cult of personality in the Imperium of Man is dependant on creating an aura of magnificence and divine appointment. It is well to huff up the basileus with inflated imagery of the chief in charge. It is best to keep up a facade of popular love, spotless character and brilliant steering of the reins of power. It is necessary to hide the rotten hollow at the core of the regime, where self-serving oligarchs, inbred psychopaths and stressed warlords every day or lightson prove their human failings in a cavalcade of mediocrity, corruption, incompetence and petty-minded lack of vision, punctuated by bloody purges and hectic periods of paranoia, terror and plotting.

This is how to cultivate an overly gilt and rosy image of the one who is in power, until they have undergone a deification in the common psyche of simple folks. Such divinization of capricious dictators are as genuine as a synthetic plastid smile, yet the leader reverence among large sections of the population may still be heartfelt. Indeed, the death of a beloved ruler will inevitably see hordes of commoners flock to the displayed regal corpse in order to pay their last respects and honour the last rites carried out over a great leader that guided their world with much renown. On such occasions it is common for the pressure of earnest crowds to be so suffocating as to trample and kill great numbers of Imperial subjects, which is all too often a fitting farewell for a bloodsoaked oppressor in lit de parade. Give praise to lordly charlatans and mass murderers!

Personality cults are especially common under the reign of philosopher kings. This historical tendency for cults of personality springing up more commonly under the auspice of pondering men and women in power holds true even for those thinking sages on the throne who tend toward a self-sacrificing and self-denying image where they strive to be seen as dour servants of the common weal, for their vanity can ultimately be seen through the holes in their cloth. All is vanity.

Behold this ancient phenomenon replay itself again and again throughout human history, wherever mankind spreads its seed across the stars! Behold the cult of personality emerge: Watch it spring forth from the well of human hypocrisy, emerge from the pool of perjury and ascend from the depth of lies. Go forth, good cult, and seduce the minds of the masses. Rejoice, serf, in this timeless celebration of man's aspiration for total power over others, and know that our kin is in good hands under the stern and just rule of the sacred Imperium of Man. And all is well.

Such is the deception of man, in the darkest of futures.

Such is the delusion of our species, at the end of days.

Such is the depravity that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only falsehood.

- - -

Tribute to Captain Zedek on WarHams, played by HulkyKrow. I had a 4x9cm rectangle left over in the corner of an A4 sheet of paper, so I drew a classical shrine. At first I pondered what statue to place in it. Maybe a martyred saint? I spent the better part of an evening collecting heaps of reference images of the Emperor of Mankind for shrine duty, until inspiration struck and a blasphemous change of plans occurred.

Sinspeech Whisper Jokes

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."

Q: How do you catch a mechshaw?
A: Just stick chewing gum on the highway.

Three theologians have a furious discussion over scripture. The theologian Claudius knows he is right, but the other two refuse to accept it. So he declares: "If I am right, o Lord of Mankind, let the air fans cease in their operation!"
The air fans suddenly stop, but the other two theologians note that it was perfectly common for machinery to malfunction.
So the theologian Claudius cries: "If I am right, o Divine Majesty, let the walls bend!"
The walls start to bow inward, but the two other theologians scold them: "It is not for you mere walls to interfere in our argument about the sacred!"
Desperate, the theologian Claudius lifts his arms and shouts: "Please, I need a greater sign. If I am right, o Imperator, then prove it beyond all doubt!"
The entire hive city starts to quake, and a strange sound like thunder can be heard undampened by matter all the way down to the Sump. Suddenly, the shell of the hive cracks open in a perfect line, and spires and floors part to open up a giant chasm formed like the holy 'I'. A dark sky bloated with rusty clouds can be seen through this tear, and yet a pure light emanates from on high, its source unknown. Unseen angelic choirs sing, as a giant hand of shining gold descends from the heavens and thrust through the marvellous chasm, pointing right at the theologian Claudius. And a booming voice decrees: "This man is right!"
But the other two theologians reply: "Shut up! That's humbug. For we have the holy word of the God-Emperor Himself written in black on white!"

And then there was the witch-hunt that started because the hab-block lacked fuel to keep the heat up.

Q: How are you?
A: Average. Worse than last year, better than next year.

Someone asked a Black Templar: "How far does the Imperium extend?"
At which the Black Templar held forth his boltgun and declared: "As far as this can reach!"

A driver with a rusty bemo picks up passengers. As they shake along on the streets, one customer comments: "Emperor's teeth, the cracks in the road are teeming with cretomites!"
The driver wonders: "How can you even see that?"
"Through the panorama gap in the floor, of course!"

Q: Why is the rabbit undergoing torture by the Securitate?
A: They want him to confess that he is a donkey due to quota demands.

A man drives up to the Sublime Palace and parks his mechshaw outside. As he is getting out a Watchman hurriedly flusters over and says: "You can't park there! That's right under the Heir Apparent's window!"
The man looks perplexed for a second but then smiles and calmly replies: "No need to worry officer, I made sure to lock the mechshaw."

Soldiers of the Home Militia are now being sent to the front in pairs. One throws a stone, and the other one shouts: "Boom!"

One day the daughter of a Patrician house came into her father's presence in a somewhat risque costume, and though he said nothing, he was offended. The next day she changed her style and embraced her father, who was delighted by the respectability which she was affecting. The pater familias, who the day before had concealed his distress, was now unable to conceal his pleasure:
"How much more suitable," he remarked, "for a daughter of my rank is this costume!"
She did not fail to stand up for herself: "Today," she said, "I dressed to be looked at by my father, yesterday to be looked at by my husband."

A man was sentenced to ninetyfive years of camp labour for calling the Imperial Governor a bloody idiot: Five years for besmirching an honoured servant of the Emperor, and ninety years for revealing a governance secret.

A Quirinali dies and goes to celestial afterlife on Holy Terra. He sees some clocks hanging on the wall, and each clock has a famous leader's name written below it. So he asks an angel about the clocks and gets this reply:
"Those aren't for measuring time, they are for measuring lies. Each time a human lies, their clock moves one minute forward."
The guy then proceeds to look at the clock of every living leader, but he can't find the clock of Voidholm Overlord Suetonius, the ruler of Quirinus. So he asks the angel where Suetonius' clock is. The angel says:
"Oh, they are using his clock as a cooling fan in the nether hells."

The hillman scratches his head in bewilderment upon visiting the hive city: "Back home, women get stoned when they commit adultery. Here, they commit adultery when they get stoned!"

"Blessed is the mind too small for doubt," said the pious man, and volunteered to become a servitor.

And then there was the Securitate agent who moved objects around in a surveillance target's home in order to drive the victim crazy because no one would ever believe him if he said that the Governor's men busied themselves with such trifling things.

A small man is wearing a long rifle. A jokester sees him, and says: "You couldn't know who was tied to whom, the rifle to the man or the opposite."

Five precepts of the literati:
Don't think.
If you think, then don't speak.
If you think and speak, then don't write.
If you think, speak and write, then don't sign.
If you think, speak, write and sign, then don't be surprised.

A husband with bad breath asks his wife: "My dear, why do you hate me?"
She gave him an answer: "Because you kiss me!"

A friend asked the Archdeacon how old he was.
"Forty," replied the Archdeacon.
"But you said the same thing two years ago!" protested the friend.
"Yes," replied the Archdeacon, "I always stand by what I have said."

Two fools were trying to escape pillaging Guardsmen. One hid himself in a well and the other in a clump of reeds. When the Guardsmen let down a helmet to draw up water, the fool in the well thought a Guardsman was coming and started begging for his life. When the Guardsmen pulled him up and said that if he had kept quiet he would have been overlooked, the one hidden in the reeds called out: "Then pass me by for I am keeping silent!"

Q: What does 'Toronus Mechshaw 901' stand for?
A: 900 people ordered mechshaws, and only one has had it delivered.

Scrawled on a streetside hab wall: 'To the one defecating here. Beware of the curse! If you look down on this curse, may you have a wroth Saint Dikranouhi for your enemy.'

Motto in the Chamber of High Nobility:
Every member of the Chamber, an example for the hooligans.

A rebel group kidnaps Vezir-Minister Aurelianus and says they'll douse him in promethium and set him alight unless a ransom of ten million Throne Gelt is paid. His clients go out in the street looking for donations.
"What are most people giving?" one would-be contributor asks.
"Oh, some gave five litres, others ten."

Pastor Frej, fresh out of seminary, found that his first task was to officiate the last rites for a homeless vagrant with no friends nor family. He arrived to the alley just as Corpse Guild workers was shutting the body bag of the corpse. Young and enthusiastic, Pastor Frej poured out his heart and soul as he gave his sermon and recited the prayers. He was so powerful a speaker that he brought the Corpse Guild workers to tears.
When the service was over and the Pastor was leaving the alley, he heard one worker say to another: "I never saw anything like that before, and I've been putting in septic systems for fifteen years."

Q: Upon the Return of the Emperor in the Flesh, will there still be thefts and pilfering?
A: No, because everything will already have been pilfered during the reign of the High Lords.

Lord Solar Macharius after his death went straight to knock at the gates of the afterlife. "Ah no," said the angelic guardian Chirbelophon, "a great Warmaster like you ought at least to come with a horse.’"
Macharius returned to earth and told of his misadventure to High Command. "What!" cried the Deputy of the High Lords, "Chirbelophon allowed himself to impose conditions on our greatest general! I will go with you and settle all that."
But when the Emperor's appointed gate guard saw them, he raised his hands and said: "But Macharius, you didn’t understand me then? I told you to come with a horse, not with an ass."

At the fifth signal, there will be hot water.
Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip! There was hot water.

An Alodian potentate was opportuned to visit Lucentum Augusta. While there, he met a civil servant of the local Planetary Governor's chancelleries who owned a whole stable of luxury vehicles and lived in a mansion with scores of servants.
"How can a mere civil servant be so affluent?" asked the Alodian.
The Lucentian took him to the window and asked: "Do you see that highway?"
"Yes?"
The civil servant patted his pocket and said: "15%."
So the potentate returned to Alodia. One year later, the Lucentian was on Alodia. When he noticed that the Alodian now had a more lavish lifestyle than himself, he had to ask: "How do you manage?"
They went to the window. "Do you see that bridge over there?"
"What bridge?"
The Alodian patted his pocket and said: "100%."

A sharp wit observes a slow runner: "I know just what that gentleman needs."
"What's that?" demands the sponsor of the race.
"He needs a horse, otherwise, he can't outrun the competition!"

Q: What is the longest personal vehicle on the market?
A: The mechshaw, at twelve meters length. Two meters of vehicle, plus ten meters of smoke.

Graphocleus, the angelic reaper of the dead, was sent by the Imperator to finally collect Overdespot Gibamundus’s soul. After more than ten months, Graphocleus returns, bloodied, bruised, and broken.
"What happened?" asked the Emperor.
"Gibamundus' Securitate seized me. They threw me in a dark cell, starved me, beat me and tortured me for weeks and weeks. They only just released me."
The God-Emperor turns pale and says: "You didn’t tell them I sent you?"

Two subs were on their way from Utica to their residence in Leontini. One of them fell sick by pox and died, and the other one became anxious to bring the corpse back to Utica, which it was not lawful to do openly. So he cut his comrade's corpse up into little pieces and stuffed them into a small barrel with aromatics and honey in order to hide the stench by delightful fragrance. Then he committed the barrel to the care of another sub, who was going to Utica. This sub took his charge with him on a canal boat, amid a swarm of passengers. A gluttonous Utican happened to take his seat close to the barrel, and became enthralled by the fragrancy. When night came, the glutton pried open the barrel and devoured all its contents in the belief that they were delicacies. By dawn, the sub lifted the barrel and realized it was empty, so he screamed that he had been plundered of the corpse of his brother in abhumanity. Thus did the Utican become aware that he was a sub's tomb.

Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the Governor replied: "In silence."

A slum doctor was detained by the furious relatives of a patient he had killed with the wrong prescription, but he escaped during the night and swam across a wide sewage canal to reach home. When he saw his son studying medical texts, he said: "Don’t be in such a hurry to study medicine. First things first. Learn to swim!"

Q: How can you stop a PDF tank?
A: You shoot the soldier that is pushing it.

The scholam teacher asks his pupils whether grox walk or fly, and one pupil says they fly. The teacher corrects him, but the pupil insists. After a short exchange, the teacher asks the pupil for his name to add it to a detention list, and the pupil answers: "Aulus Majorianus Thrax." Recognizing the name of the Voidholm Overlord's great-grandson, the teacher says: "Okay, you are right. Grox do fly, but when they are tired of flying, they go down and walk."

A man had an intimacy with the wife of a downright fool with a stuttering tongue. One night the mant went to her hab, believing the husband to be away. He knocked on the door, claiming admittance and imitating the cuckold’s voice. The blockhead, who was at home, had no sooner heard him, than he called to his wife: "Aemiliana, open the door, Aemiliana, let him in; for it does seems to be me!"

An Armageddon court-martial sitting at Hive Volcanus sentenced a local freedman merchant to a scrip fine of fivehundred dorites for repeating in a public restaurant the joke about ordering a sandwich at a tubestation kiosk and being served with a meat ticket between two bread tickets.

The Tyrannicus Maximus Augustalius was touring his sub-empire of vassal voidholms, when he noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued, he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?"
"No your Highness," he replied, "but my father was."

A questioning mind betrays a treacherous soul. As such, an answering mind betrays a complicit soul.

Midhive, fifty years into the future. A boy asks: "Grandpa, what is a line?"
"You see, some forty years back, there was not enough meat in stores, so people had to form long queues at the stores' entrances and wait, hoping some meat would appear on sale. That was called a line. Did you get it?"
"Yes, grandpa. And what is meat?"

Q: What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening?
A: Man. He goes on all fours as a baby, on two feet as a man and has been converted into a tripod memory bank servitor when his body becomes too decrepit for heavy labour.

A man from Medusa V was on an interstellar voyage via Van Grothe's Rapidity when a Warpstorm arose and his slaves started screaming. "Quit weeping," he said, "for I have given you all your liberty in my will."

"I wish for a higher state of being after death, a loftier and worthier existence than the one I lead now."
"Then I will pray you become a servo-skull."

A man who had given his wife a valuable dress, complained that he never exercised his marital rights without it costing him less than an electrum tetradrachm each time. "It is your fault," answered the wife, "why do you not, by frequent repetition, bring down the cost to one farthing?"

One of our fellow Imperial subjects, a very witty man, was labouring under a painful and lengthy illness. He was attended by a Confessor who came to comfort him, and, among other words of solace, told him that the God-Emperor thus especially chastens those He loves, and inflicts His visitations upon them. "No wonder then," retorted the sick man, "that the Emperor has so few friends; if that is the way He favours them, He ought to have still less."

Miles Gloriosus, the braggart Guardsman, receives accolades and flattery from admiring crowds of women when marching through an urb, to their husbands' consternation. He comments on their praise of his peak manly form: "Yes, ladies. Even I am impressed!"

Some thirty people gathered to celebrate the wedding. After a few bottles of amasec were imbibed, tongues got loose, and the guests started telling deviant and irreverent jokes about His Divine Majesty's diligent administrators. Through the laughter, a voice sounded: "Ladies and gentlemen, please, it's too noisy. In such a din, I can't hear the jokes. I am writing it down, you know."
A man who sat next to the one who was writing, said admiringly: "How do you manage to write that fast?"
"Oh, I'm only jotting down the initials."

There once was a barmaid in Dome, and a salt miner lonely for home. He had the breath of a moose, and she couldn't get loose, so she pulled out her knife and spilled his guts on her shoes.

Planetary Overlord Agung Diann presented his vassal Voidholm Shah Bahram IX with a monkey, saying: "I’ll double your system patrol subsidies if you make this monkey laugh and cry."
Bahram first whispered to the monkey and it laughed. Then he whispered again and it cried. "How on earth did you do this?" Agung asked.
"When I told him that I am a ruler of men, he laughed," Bahram said. "Then I told him that I was reigning over them for the rest of my life, and he cried."

Q: What do you call a man who has lost 99% of his mind?
A: Infertile.

Motto on traffic sign:
Drivers, be wary! A second of inattention and you will be dead for the rest of your life.

Once, the paraonid Despot Tadgh Glenwood invited several Marshals of the Grand Imperial Voidholm of Gaelutrea and ordered them to wrestle in front of him on a carpet. Marshal Kenrik won all rounds. This angered Despot Glenwood. He ordered to summon Marshal Sheamus who was a very big man.
Sheamus arrived and easily overpowered Kenrik. As Kenrik fell to the carpet, he hit his head. Sheamus, putting in order his uniform, loudly expressed regret.
"Don't worry, Marshal Sheamus," Glenwood said. "He will not need his head any longer."

And then there was the guy who got shot by the Street Enforcers because he praised his new Emperor-given mechshaw as a piece of 'racing cardboard.'

Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: A young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.

An urbecarri owner leaves his vehicle at a service station. When he picks it up again, he notices that the faulty door mechanism has been replaced with a puny steel wire: "Hey!" he snaps. "What shoddy workmanship is this? What have you done to my expensive urbecarri?"
The lay mechanic replies: "I reduced her weight for you, sir!"

Two hillmen brothers, Urcaguary and Pachacamac, decided to emigrate to the hive city after hearing of the fabulous wonders man had built there. Theye were enchanted by the tales told about its splendour. Even though they didn't believe some merchants' negative reports on the conditions in the hive, they still decided to exercise caution. Urcaguary would go to the hive city to test the waters. If they were right and it was a paradise of mortals, then Urcaguary would write a letter to Pachacamac using black ink, since they both could read and write. If, however, the situation in the hive was as bad as some merchants liked to portray it, and the Securitate was a force to be feared, then Urcaguary would use red ink to indicate whatever he said in the letter must not be believed.
After three months Urcaguary sent his first report. It was in black ink and read: "I'm so happy here! It's a beautiful place. I enjoy freedom and a kingly standard of living. All the serpent-tongued merchants were liers. Everything here is readily available! There is only one small thing of which there's a shortage. Red ink."

A man had a wife who never stopped talking or arguing. When she died, he had her body carried high on a shield to the Corpse Guild. When someone noticed this and asked him why, he replied: "She was a fighter."

Q: What does an optimist say?
A: It can't get any worse!

When I die, I wish to go to the eternal rest in solemn peace like my father. And not screaming in panic like his passengers.

...