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The Imperium of Man

2020-06-20T00:24:03Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: Undo revision 666418 by 2601:197:B7F:E0C0:BCD6:624B:5E4B:734E (talk)

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{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name=Imperium of Man
|image=[[Image:Imperium_Flag.jpg ‎|300px|center]]
|Capital=[[Holy Terra]]
|Official Languages= High Gothic (aka Latin), Low Gothic (aka English/French/German/Italian/Russian/Chinese/Literally Every Language) and its countless dialects, Binary and billions of minor and local languages
|Power=Galactic Superpower
|Size=Galactic but stretched thin <br> More than 1 million to 10 million planets
|Head of State=[[Emperor of Mankind]]
|Head of Government=[[Roboute Guilliman|Lord Commander of the Imperium Roboute Guilliman]], [[High Lords of Terra]], [[Dante|Lord Regent of Imperium Nihilus Dante]]
|Governmental Structure=Unitary Atheistic Authoritarian Absolute Monarchy (''Great Crusade'') <br> Feudal Totalitarian Theocratic Dictatorship (''Age of Apostasy'') <br> Feudal Theocratic Authoritarian Confederated Oligarchy (''41st Millennium'') <br> Unitary Authoritarian Semi-Theocratic Confederation (''42nd Millennium'')
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Imperial Truth|State Atheism]] (''Great Crusade'') <br> [[Imperial Cult]] (''32nd Millennium onward'')
|Demographic=[[Humans]], [[Abhuman|Abhumans]], minor [[Xenos]] races, assorted Transhumans
|Military Force=[[Imperial Guard]], [[Space Marines]], [[Militarum Tempestus]], [[Sisters of Battle]], [[Inquisition]], [[Planetary Defense Force]]
}}
{{Topquote|What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?|Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2}}
{{Topquote|Great empires are not maintained by timidity.|Tacitus}}
{{Topquote|This bloated, rotten carcass of an empire is driven not by reason and hope, but by fear, hate and ignorance.|[[Roboute Guilliman]], who is [[Butthurt|not pleased]] by the [[Grimdark|actual state]] of the Imperium}}
[[File:Imperial Aquila.jpg|thumb|300px|left|The Aquila, the symbol of the Imperium and personal heraldry of the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]]. Failing to show proper reverence to the Aquila is [[heresy]] punishable by *BLAM*ing. The two heads represent looking towards the future while being [[Imperial Truth|blind towards the mistakes of the past]], while the two heads and differing feet represent the Terra-Mars alliance.]]
The '''Imperium of Man''' (Lat.: '''IMPERIVM HVMANVM''' or '''IMPERIVM HOMINIS''') is a gigantic, galaxy-spanning Civilization (to give you an idea of how truly massive this empire is, the most conservative estimates place its population at four quadrillion. Estimates that take into account the huge number of what are essentially [[Hive|cramped apartment-building planets]]? Now we're talking upwards of FORTY quadrillion. Oh, and this is not counting planets they have lost track of due to various heresies and other catastrophies, not to mention the general incompetence of those [[Administratum|blasted pencil-push]]{{BLAM}}) that contains the vast majority of humanity in the tabletop game ''[[Warhammer 40K]]''. It is often stereotyped in popular media as a xenophobic, amoral, gargantuan, militaristic, merciless, stratified, theocratic, [[Paranoia|paranoid, dystopian, totalitarian]], semi-police state and hellishly oligarchical bureaucracy. Why this is called 'stereotypical' to begin with is questionable though since it's absolutely fucking true{{BLAM}} Think of a hideous amalgamation of the [[Roman Empire]] including Byzantine Era with its sheer amount of scheming and administrative stupidity, pre-Reformation Catholic Church, [[Nazi|Nazi Germany]], Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia and George Orwell's ''[[1984]]'' spread out across the stars, under constant attack by aliens and subject to countless [[Chaos|disasters]] everyday. Add in the fanatical worship of a [[Emperor|dead dictator]] and it's basically North Korea IN SPEHSS (but somehow fucking works).

However, this is what [[GW]] ''wants you to think''; in all retrospective outside of the popular perspective, the Imperium of Man can actually be a pretty nice place to live depending on where you actually live... although GW description does apply to Death Worlds, some Hive Worlds and the Imperium as a whole. Sure, there are shit-holes like Catachan, but because of its size and extreme variety, you also have a higher chance of being born in places that shits all over any modern developed country and may even be led by people better than Gandhi. While it's plausible that atrocities happen all the time in the Imperium, given its size, that doesn't mean that everyone is always doomed. Unfortunately Games Workshop decided to ignore this aspect since it is not [[Derp|metal and grimderp]] enough...and thus does not help with [[Profit|sales]].

Almost everything 40K related and homebrewed on this website is a sterling example of /tg/ taking creative liberties with what the Imperium stands for. These include, but are not limited to, the [[Angry Marines]], [[Commissar Raege]], [[Commissar Fuklaw]], [[Pretty Marines]], [[Reasonable Marines]]... Truly, anonymous delivers!

==Synopsis==
[[File:Iron Men 40k.jpg|300px|right|thumb|The [[Iron Men]] are credited with fucking humanity right over, just like the [[Old Ones]] did with the rest of the galaxy's inhabitants.]]
The Imperium consists of over a million habitable worlds and is of such size that the loss of a few dozen planets (along with billions of citizens) is not even worth the paperwork it would take to declare said worlds Perdatus. Under constant threat and attack by a myriad of powerful alien races and traitorous forces, the Imperium is engulfed in a constant galaxy-spanning war. The everyday rule of the Imperium is left to the [[High Lords of Terra]], who basically don't give a fuck about anybody and have no clue what the hell they're doing half of the time.

The figurehead and subject of compulsory religious veneration, the immortal [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] forged the Imperium out of the [[Age of Strife]]. Being physically fucked for the past 10,000 years, he sits immobile and connected to the Golden Throne far from the sight of his subjects, witnessed his formerly [[Star Trek|glorious utopia of science and reason]] drop 99.9% of its IQ points against his will, and requires the sacrifice of many psykers a day to keep him alive, though this hasn't prevented his body from decomposing (he still has some fleshy bits left) and now looks like a mummy without the wrappings. [[Heresy]] is the greatest crime one can commit in the Imperium, the punishment for which is a painful death or torture followed by a painful death. Technology is barely understood and basically mythological, and even the Techpriests are afraid of their machines (this aspect of the Techpriests has been lessened over the years, now they're more like spiritualistic and very dogmatic scientists rather than technowizards.)

[[Image:Forbidden_Love.jpg|thumb|right|This would never happen. Ever. At least, not where anyone could see it.]]
The Imperium is also one of the biggest entities in the 40k universe, like a fatguy that hogs half the couch for himself and forces the others to sit on the arm rests. Some fa/tg/uys theorize that if the Imperium falls it may take the rest of the galaxy with it, as it holds so much territory that it staves off the Tyranids and the Orks before they can nom/loot everyone else's shit. (e.g. Dawn of War II, Spess Mahreens nuke the Tyranid fleet before they can nom an Eldar Craftworld.)

It's now a complete shithole and is not even remotely close to the Emperor's vision for humanity. Reasons for this include the Imperium's leaders being heartless fuckwads and the necessity of such an uncaring organization for the survival of humanity in a galaxy that wants to kill them in a million painful ways.

That's fucking grimdark, but at least there's Slaanesh to lighten everything u-{{BLAM}}

{{BLAM|+ This article's author has been seized by the local authorities for [[heresy]]. Please report all known contacts and co-conspirators to your local [[Commissar]]. ++ You may resume reading this article with an approved author. +}}

Well, honestly, Nurgle is at least a pretty nice gu-{{BLAM}}

{{BLAM|+ This article's approved author has been seized by the local authorities for [[heresy]]. Please again, report all known contacts and co-conspirators to your local [[Commissar]]. ++ You may resume reading this article with an even more approved author. +}}

Well, at least we have Tzee-{{BLAM}}

{{BLAM|+ This article's approved author has been seized by the local authorities for [[heresy]]. Please again, report all known contacts and co-conspirators to your local [[Commissar]]. ++ You may resume reading this article with an even more approved author. +}}

Kho-{{BLAM}}

{{BLAM|+ This article's approved author has been seized by the local authorities for [[heresy]]. Please again, report all known contacts and co-conspirators to your local [[Commissar]]. ++ You may resume reading this article with an even more approved author. ++ And for fucks sake please stop mentioning the cha--}}
{{BLAM}}

===Roboute Guilliman in M42===
With the events of Gathering Storm and the Dark Imperium, the awakening of [[Roboute Guilliman|Big Blue Wonder]] ushered sweeping changes within the governmental ruling of the Imperium. Roboute's self coronation as Lord Commander (His old job) and political reforms that meant the firing of some High Lords of Terra meant that the IoM is becoming more centralized like it was during the Great Crusade.

Of course, centralization means a more authoritarian Imperium. Nevertheless, Guilliman is the best living person to be given the responsibility in fixing the bureaucratic nightmare of the Imperium, so there is little reason to panic. One of the biggest reasons the vast majority of the Imperial Guard spends entire careers fighting rebelling worlds instead of humanity’s enemies is because each planet is highly autonomous and their governments simply blame the Imperium for the hardships caused by the greed of those worlds’ nobles and governors. So, an Imperium with greater authority and control over its worlds would increase efficiency and effectiveness of planetary governments in the Imperium’s usual inefficient methods; then the eighty percent of Imperial Guard forces fighting rebels can go banhammer aliens and daemons instead. Some (including the High Lords themselves, to the surprise of nobody) consider Roboute's rule as a dictatorship (not like they can honestly stop him since he has a blood claim to the throne and effectively controls all Space Marines and Custodes), but the reality is that whilst the Imperium is centralizing in a manner akin to how it was in the Great Crusade, certain political entities such as the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition still holds significant clout and influence over the Imperium. With Guilliman currently updating his new Codex Imperialis for good governance and ruling, it is safe to say that the quality of life for the Imperium would be slowly improving. Of course, the vastness and sheer diversity of the IoM combined with the unwillingness of the above-mentioned political entities to accept reform means that the actual results are ''far'' more complicated than this. Nonetheless, the very fact that Guilliman's rule is actively trying to improve the Imperium with mixed results shows that the Imperium unlike traditional oppressive regimes, still have a chance for the better. It would still be the Imperium we know and love, but it would be far more efficient and competent, since efficiency and competency was the biggest crutch on why the Imperium is in such a dire situation. Resistance to Guilliman’s reforms would most likely be met by a visit from loyal Inquisitors and the Inquisitor’s who plot against his reforms would probably be vanished by Raven Guard sent by Guilliman. Anyone in the way of his plans would simply...disappear or end up mysteriously dead. Primarchs are not known for taking shit. Or for accepting “no” as an answer to their orders.

Furthermore, it seems that the jingoistic foreign policy of the Imperium towards xenos for 10,000 years has relaxed slightly in favor of pragmatism on Robby's part, most exemplified by the current alliance of convenience between the Imperium and the Ynnari (It's hard to say exactly how sincere the relationship ''is''; Guilliman himself noted that the Ynnari could be respected but not necessarily trusted, and the [[Visarch]] has voiced criticism of [[Yvraine]] acting as a "lapdog of the Imperium", so while they're not fighting each other they can hardly be called the best of friends). However, it has been suggested that Big Bobby G and Yvraine are totally hot for each other and want to have crazy butt-s...OH NOT AGAIN! {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|HERESY!}} It could also be due to [[Great Rift|the giant Warp scar]] spawned from Abaddon's 13th Black Crusade and how Chaos is now a bigger threat to the Imperium than ever. G-man also appointed [[Dante]] as warden to administer the other half of the Imperium across the Great Rift.

==Forces Of The Imperium==
* [[Adeptus Custodes]] - The Emperor's personal bodyguards who make ''Space Marines'' look like ordinary men. Their armour has so much bling it makes even the most pimptastic Space Marine's Artificer Armour look cheap. Their modification and training, not to mention the loss of the Emperor, robbed most of them of empathy and the ability to form connections with other people (even each other), as the only being they trusted absolutely is now stuck between life and death. Others are quite reasonable guys, and after 10,000 years on the bench, and a minor deamon invasion of Holy Terra, they're back in the game in a big way. Anyway, they go to insane lengths and cross any moral line to ensure His safety, and are now going forth on Crusade to help guard humanity as a whole from unending terror. Grimdark.
* [[Space Marines]] - The enhanced, power armored supersoldiers who form the elite warriors of the Imperium. All they do is train, sleep, pray, fight, and die; and they love every second of it (being the loyal warrior monks they are). There are only a million of them, but since the Imperium only has about a million planets it kind of evens out. They are no longer human, and remember nothing but an endless service of bloodshed culminating in their own violent deaths. Grimdark.
[[Image:Guardsmen_fighting.jpg|thumb|right|Die horribly or Join the Guard and THEN die horribly. At least that way you'll get a sweet-looking [[Lasgun|flashlight]].]]
* [[Imperial Guard]] - The countless quadrillions of regular humans who form the vast majority of the Imperium's armed forces. Very similar to a conventional modern military, they are a bunch of manly farmers and factory workers fighting off [[Necrons|unstoppable robots with guns that completely rip their skin off]], [[Tyranids|huge monstrous aliens who want to OM NOM NOM everything]], [[Chaos Space Marines|batshit insane super humans who want to kill everyone in painful ways and sacrifice their victims' souls while doing it]], [[Orks|barbaric aliens who are made for FIGHTAN AND WINNIN']], [[Eldar|mysterious spehss pansies who don't give a shit about anyone else]], [[Dark Eldar|spehss elves who wants to torture and rape them with the worst forms of BDSM]], [[Tau|Orwellian weeaboo space communists]], or [[Rak'gol|obscure but brutal spider Cthulhu reptiles that like to rip your intestines out before stealing all your stuff]], with little more than a [[Lasgun|flashlight]], [[Tallarn Desert Raiders|reinforced cardboard]], [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|standard-issue chest-hair]] and [[Cadia|BALLS O' STEEL]]. Or that's what you might be led to believe: a big part of the Imperium's wars are fought against fellow humans (or [[Lost and the Damned|things that once were human]]) but decided they had enough of being crapped upon by greedy superiors and uncaring leaders. Selfishly ignoring the fact the Imperium has no problem with them overthrowing said greedy superiors and uncaring leaders so long as Imperial law, taxes, and tithes are obeyed. But no, that would mean admitting their own cowardice was their own fault, so they rebel against "the man" instead and "the man" curbstomps them in the face for it. Most Imperial Guardsmen are conscripted every now and then from the best Planetary Defence Force troopers on a given world. Some planets supplement this supply with prisoners, while others give over their entire population to the Imperium as their tithe, the birth rate equaling the recruitment rate. Most die or muster out and they will never again see home, unless they're fighting on it. [[Grimdark]].
[[Image:Magos_Explorator_Delphan_Gruss.jpg|thumb|right|Combat Dentists, the Mechanicum's leading specialists on tooth heresy.]]
* [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] - An organization of Tech-priests. They have a monopoly over all Imperial technology from giant mecha to cybernetics, and almost everyone else in the Imperium is afraid of their machines. As a result, the Admech has to loan their techpriests to other organizations in the form of Enginseers, though for Space Marines it's more a work study program as they'll send one of their own troops to become a Techmarine. Independent scientists also exist, but only as long as they don't get killed for [[heresy]] or stay below the Mechanicus radar. Once these independents get powerful or competent enough to make a difference, they get wiped out or absorbed into Cult Mechanicus. Includes [[Adeptus Titanicus]]‎, [[Legio Cybernetica]] (Insidious Death Robotics, Inc), Centurio [[Ordinatus]] (look at name, figure it out), [[Skitarii]] (basically Imperial Guard of the Mechanicus), Auxilia [[Myrmidon]] (tech-priest war savants, stuff of nightmares), and the Ordo Reductor (siege specialists, infamous for ripping off the Space Marines by making the [[Thallax]]). Grimdark.
* [[Imperial Navy]] - Job is pretty self-explanatory, they split with the Guard after the Horus Heresy. They are a very large organization, as you would expect from a navy tasked with protecting a million worlds. Their ships range in size from meters-long fighters to kilometers-long battleships which are quite capable of [[Exterminatus|blowing up planets]], mostly Imperial ones, which they do at the command of the Inquisition on a regular basis in the fight against '''HERESY'''. Because Humanity was ass-raped by AI 15,000 years ago, the Imperial Navy uses huge human crews, most of which are "recruited" (i.e. Shanghaied) to die in space as one of billions of expendable men. Grimderp, considering not even some hydraulic lifters are employed when reloading even though the rest of the ship is high tech.
* [[Adeptus Arbites]] - These guys police every world in the Imperium. They're like [[Judge Dredd]] but more Grimdark. Arbites are usually one of the first institutions to be set up on a world and are equipped to fight a small war, with equipment ranging from power mauls and suppression shields to lasguns and even the [[Leman Russ Battle Tank]]. On the ground the Arbites have four units: Patrol Groups, whose job it is to make sure no wrongdoing occurs in the settlement; Shock Troops who are sent in when there are riots, street wars and other generalized disturbances (they usually shoot on sight if you are anywhere near the problem center); Execution Teams who pursue specific guilty individuals or groups; and Snatch Squads who are charged with capturing a specific individual or group for questioning. The criminals caught by the Arbites usually wind up dead [[Blam|one way]] [[Penal legion|or another]]. The Inquisition often uses the Arbites to apprehend certain individuals if they do not wish to be directly involved. Grimdark.
* [[Inquisition]] - The KGB of the Imperium. Their job is to keep said Imperium secure and loyal. With jurisdiction over nearly anyone and anything, the Inquisitors and their agents have very few impediments on their endless quest to contain heresy. The Inquisition consists of three main branches: the Ordo Hereticus, who's duty is to eliminate or contain threats such as '''HERESY''', mutants, and traitors; the Ordo Xenos, who specialize in destruction of alien threats, and the Ordo Malleus who are called on to stop Daemonic incursions. If they do their job poorly, entire worlds get destroyed based on the barest rumors. Alternatively, if they do their jobs well, those worlds still get destroyed because there are no other alternatives to stop the many genocidal threats the Imperium faces. Also, nobody expects them. Grimdark.
[[Image:Pimpin_Imperium.png|thumb|right|The Inquisition: not as easy as it looks.]]
* [[Sisters of Battle]] - The [[Ecclesiarchy|Ecclesiarchy's]] army, the nuns-with-guns or bolter bitches. Originally, they were an isolated all-female cult on a backwater world, and subsequently became the personal army of [[Goge Vandire]] during his fab [[Age of Apostasy|Age of Apostasy]]. After that blew over, they came into their current role through some top-notch [[rules lawyers|rules lawyering]]- after the Age of Apostasy, the Ecclesiarchy was only barred from having ''men'' under arms, so the Sisters weren't disbanded. They are trained from early age (because they are picked up as orphans) and in the end they become one of the best fighting troops of the Imperium, second only to the Astartes themselves. Their faith is so great that even Grey Knights are jealous of it. [[/tg/]] likes to see Sisters in different heretical fantasies, often involving [[Slaanesh|Slaanesh]], [[Shlicktau|female Tau]] and [[The wet dream of selena agna|Eldar Farseers]]. But what the poor bastards don't know is that the Sisters are all into [[FAIL|celibacy]] (though some lore says otherwise), love only the Emperor (sometimes it's a damn shame), and are so zealous and fanatical that they would turn off just about any human man anyway. Armed with their trusty Bolters, Meltaguns and Flamers (The Holy Trinity of weaponry as far as they're concerned), they go around the galaxy and kick Chaos/Renegades/Xenos ass as much as they can. Grimdark.
* [[Deathwatch]] - If you're an especially skilled Space Marine, or if your chapter just wants to get rid of you, the Deathwatch is always looking for new recruits to train into even more hyper-efficient xenos-killing machines. Acting on behalf of the Ordo Xenos, recruits get hypno-indoctrinated with endless videos of battle brothers getting slaughtered by all manner of xenos until they become frothing angry and need to be physically restrained. Instead of organizing into large task forces, the Deathwatch fights in small special-forces killteams to complete specific objectives and kick ass. Some of its members deliberately obscure or renounce their past ties and become [[Blackshield]]s, permanently joining the Deathwatch until death claims them. Grimdark.
* [[Grey Knights]] - You thought Space Marines were bad dudes? Well loyal citizen, Grey Knights are SUPER-Space Marines who are VERY interested in your heretical Google image searches. They function as the military arm of the Ordo Malleus. In a galaxy and time where literal demons from space hell can punch through reality and turbo-slaughter whole sectors, the Grey Knights are THE final word in supernatural defense. This was especially important since for over 10,000 years, there WERE no good Primarches around to fight the blasphemous ascended being of the week. Every bit of armor, weapon, training and gear they have is top of the line, and nigh irreplaceable. When they fight, a psychic shroud inhibits the psychic powers of whoever they are fighting, and they have psychic Nemesis Force Wea<strike>'''OH CHRIST, I CAN'T GO ON, THIS SHIT IS BANANAS!'''</strike> {{BLAM|Ignore Matt Ward's bullshit, stop making shitty references to Zero Punctuation, and finish the damn article! Psychic Psychic Bendy Spoons.}} Aside from their anti-anti-anti Chaos gear, Grey Knights aren't typically who you send to stop a cult. They're the guys you send to clean up a Chaos defiled planet with boiling oceans, poisonous air, psychedelic skies, and more bones than living people on them. Grimdark. And yet, no Grey Knight has EVER fallen to Chaos. Which is [[awesome]].
* [[Officio Assassinorum]] - The coolest (and scariest) men and women in the Imperium. Whose job it is to kill people. While one would think this would overlap with the duties of every other Imperial organization, it is different because the Assassinorum trains spies and assassins to be more subtle, such as [[Tzeentch|manipulating people to do your dirty work while totally not aware you are behind it]]. Except when they train batshit insane [[Eversor]] Assassins. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a paradox. Leaving no survivors to tell the tale is [[Oinkbane|a subtlety all in itself]]. Grimdark.
* [[Sisters of Silence]] - The militant arm of the Astra Telepathica, they are all Blanks and refuse to speak but are deadly enough to take down any psyker threat and to travel with the likes of [[Leman Russ]] and the Custodes. As you can imagine they feature in some pretty badass artwork but sadly have very little work dedicated to them. It is unknown if they survived the end of the Great Crusade but there have been no indications to the contrary. Given that the Inquisition and Culexus Temple exist their role is partly redundant, but may be justified in that by being under the direct authority of the branch that deals with Psykers it allows a faster and more standardized way of handling Psykers, plus neither zealous assault forces or assassins would exactly fit the job description. Grimdark (?). With the return of Guilliman to the Imperium we now know that the sisters did indeed survive, although they were officially disbanded as a fighting force. Nothing like getting fired the day after your dad dies. Understandably upset, many simply wandered off into the sunset, but a large number stayed to crew the [[Black Ships]] that go around collecting psykers to feed to the Emperor. With Rawbutt Girlyman's return, the Emo Sisters have started to fight on the frontlines again, serving as anti-psyker defense and notably fighting alongside their best bros the Custodes for the first time in 10,000 years (maybe). Considering how bad [[grimdark|the state of the galaxy is]] due to the [[Great Rift]], their job has become wayyyyy busier than ever before.

===Other organizations===
* [[Administratum]] - The pencil pushers of the Imperium, complete with bureaucrats so devoted to their trade that they treat it like a religion, and massive inefficiency. They regulate the [[Imperial Guard]] and the [[Imperial Navy]], dictate and assess the Tithes all worlds in the Imperium are required to pay to Holy Terra, and administer how those things get used. Their archives are so big and so full that if you search anything in them, you'll die wrapped in endless layers of red tape, if you're not accompanied by an Adept. Grimdark.
* [[Ecclesiarchy]] - The Imperial Church which works with the Inquisition to regulate the worship of the Emperor and define what counts as '''HERESY'''. Basically priests with flamethrowers and mega-chainsaws. It also oversees the Sisters of Battle and the [[Schola Progenium]], and works closely with the [[Ordo Hereticus]]. Often has a complicated relationship with the other members branches of the Imperium (Space Marines insisting that the Emperor was a human, the Administratum for overall control of the Imperium, the Adeptus Mechanicus worshiping a deity that ''should'' be the Emprah or not, etc.). Grimdark.
* [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] - The organization charged with maintaining the Imperium's vast network of [[psyker|psykers]], who are necessary for faster than light travel and keeping the Emperor alive on the Golden Throne. Their members are oftentimes forcibly conscripted children who have just barely survived being lynched on their homeworld, and were lucky enough not to be mulched into Emperor Food or Astronomicon fuel. Even so, the process to become a sanctioned psyker is physically and emotionally scaring, and can still lead to a grizzly death via headsplosion, possession, or just losing complete control of your sanity. Grimdark.
* [[Astronomican|Adeptus Astronomican]] - The organization charged with maintaining the light of the Astronomican, the psychic beacon for traveling through the [[Warp]]. Sacrifices assloads of psykers every day to keep the Astronomican running and literally the only thing keeping the entire Imperium from winking out like a candle. Grimdark.
* [[Imperial Knight]]s - The Imperial Knights are the lords of feudalistic worlds where the rulers and the military forces are one and the same, piloting massive combat mecha into battle to defend their worlds or to aid the Imperium. Usually have strong ties to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Grimdark.
* [[Squat]]s - A [[Dwarf|dwarfish]] race of technologically advanced [[abhuman]]s descended from mining colonists on high gravity planets, their worlds were the only other independent Imperial worlds besides Admech's forge worlds prior to integration into the Imperium from the Tyranids war. Their forces complemented that of the Adeptus Mechanicus' and the [[Imperial Guard]], with a tendency towards [[Colossus War Machine|giant-sized]] [[Land Train|war]] [[Goliath Mega-Cannon|machines]]. Their populations are now greatly diminished due to various reasons. Grimdark.

==Reasons it sucks to live in the Imperium==
{{heresy}}
{{Topquote|Call no man happy until he is dead.|Thought for the day. Also Aeschylus}}
[[File:Lord General.jpg|250px|right|thumb|Imperial Guard generals are some of the sexiest men alive, <s>and the worst part is that almost all of them are celibate</s> Lies, all lies!...On an unrelated note, this is one of [[Dawn of War 2#Imperial Guard|General Castors]] earlier designs.]]
* The High Lords of Terra are brutal and manipulative.
* The Adeptus Arbites make Judge Dredd seem reasonable.
* Thinking about nothing is the only way to survive. Unless you think about the steely musculature and long, shimmering hair of the Emperor.
* The Hive World you almost certainly live on is an overcrowded shithole where being able to breathe non-recycled air is a luxury.
* Thinking about nothing implies you're thinking, and thinking is '''HERESY'''.
* You are constantly under attack by Orks, Eldar, Tyranids, Dark Eldar, the forces of Chaos, Space Communists, etc.
* If you mutate, you will be at best shunned, but most likely killed, and even death is not the worst case scenario.
* Voices in your sleep keep telling you that Chaos is great, at which point an Inquisitor kills you whether you resist the temptations or not.
* Priests keep telling you the Imperium is great and then report you for not attending the entirety of your third mass service of the designated planetary worship day, at which point you are executed by local law enforcement.
* If you aren't in the Navy you are in the Imperial Guard, which means you will either die painfully on the battlefield or be executed by a Commissar for not being loyal enough to die on the battlefield. Seriously, many worlds hold your funeral the day before departure, people mourn your passing while you are standing next to them, and you are considered to be already dead.
* Your planetary governor is incompetent, ruthless, heretical or just very greedy (if you're lucky). Any that aren't are rarer than an Ork that doesn't WAAAAGH!, and either dead or about to be killed by one or more of the Imperium's enemies (or someone else from the Imperium).
* Even if you DO win the war via sheer hard-work, chances are that you are sterilized and shipped to a labor camp because you MIGHT have the taint of Chaos. And killed.
* Your whole life consists of working your ass off with no hope of social advancement. Unless you're a noble, in which case nothing in this list applies to you anyway.
* You can be executed for taking incorrect care of your gun and angering the Machine Spirit. And that assumes the Machine Spirit doesn't kill you first.
* Loyalist Space Marines never get laid, eve-{{BLAM}}

{{BLAM|+ This article's approved author has been seized by the local authorities for [[heresy]]. Please again, report all known contacts and co-conspirators to your local [[Commissar]]. ++ You may resume reading this article with an even more approved author. +}}

* If you happen to be an Inquisitor, you are expected to watch whatever you order. Vomiting is '''HERESY'''.
* Technology scares you. Not much of a change, though is it?
* You are poor and uneducated. Isn't a change, either.
*If and when you die, the chances that anyone will ever give a shit about your death are nearly nonexistent. Again, nor much of a change there either.
* The Orks might eventually (re)unite and destroy the Imperium.
* The Necrons will eventually awaken and might destroy the Imperium.
* Chaos cannot be defeated and will probably destroy the Imperium sooner or later.
* Tyranids are pouring in from nearly all sides of the galaxy and will probably destroy the Imperium through the power of OMNOM.
* If you're not dead in the Guard, dead in the Navy, very dead in the PDF, or dead as a civilian, you're a heretic and alien-sympathizer. Therefore executed, and therefore dead.
* The Imperium routinely cleanses Xeno species. So if you're a wandering Eldar Craftworld or even a minor xenos race on a conquered planet expect no sympathy or even a quick death.
* Independence is nonexistent, and the Imperium has even destroyed two perfectly healthy, anti-chaos empires called Adrantis Five and Interex, granted the second one they destroyed thanks to Chaos bullshit, [[derp|whoops!]]
** The first was due to a mis-identification by over-eager Imperial Psychotic Killers, and given that the second was a civilization that had a race who created Chaos artifacts, including the big one that led to Horus' corruption, that's arguably a good thing since they might as well have been a ticking time bomb.
* Incompetence is also nonexistent, and if you show competence, you are imbued by the Chaos Gods and therefore executed for Heresy.
* Thinking ANY model is sexy is obvious heresy.
* And let's not even get started on what it's like if you're on the wrong side of the [[Great Rift]].
* Either you work, or you die. It's that simple. SO BACK TO THE MANUFACTORUMS AND STOP READING NOW!!!
**If by some shred of luck you don't get executed for dereliction of duty, then the lasgun you didn't make while slacking off meant that a Guard Regiment got equipped too late to be deployed to save your world.

==However, is the Imperium really ''that'' bad?==
[[File:8eb60203712e469761aeba78ec3c78ec-d7904b7.jpg|350px|thumb|left|Because the only way to keep a [[Roman Empire|stagnating empire]] alive is with excessive force (Ah, but where's the Roman Empire now?) Also, note the [[Imperator Titan|walking cathedral]] several miles in the background that's still bigger than the [[baneblade]] at the front.]]

{{Topquote|[[Noblebright|A line must be drawn between what is good and what is evil]], for if the [[Chaos|Great Enemy]] comes with offers of power to a wretch, what reason does he have to refuse hell if he dwells in it already?|[[Roboute Guilliman|Robu]] telling [[Dante|Luis]] the most obvious thing yet apparently missed for ten millennia of imperial history.}}

However, as said before, if you excuse GW's initial promotion that life in the Imperium must be "Tough and Dark", then average life in the Imperium for the common Joe is for all intents and purposes, uncomfortable and highly unpleasant, but ultimately tolerable for its people (as opposed to those of us in M3 who would likely lack the temperament or the constitution to do well in such a life). This can be further explained below....

===The Reality of the Imperium===
Throughout WH40K, nearly every-single grimdark example in the fluff is shown through the narrative perspective of either Space Marines and Inquisitors whose primary job is to fight against [[Chaos|WTF-Horror Eldritch Abominations]] and [[Orks|genocidal aliens]] for every single day of their lives, or of criminals, crooks and scum such as those living within the darkest pits in Hive Worlds like [[Necromunda]]. Of which, there are only about thirty-two thousand and something hundreds in ratio to the several hundreds of thousands of Civilized Worlds which are the planetary majority in the Imperium - the odds of being born in a desolated dump is actually quite low, and if you are born there, the only thing you need to be wary of are Gang fights and Mutants, and that's only if you are dumb enough to venture in the Underhive or unlucky enough to be born <s>poor</s> there (the poor can still get labor jobs in manufactoria or wherever else or enlist in the PDF and such; worlds are never lacking for jobs needing filling or soldiers to hold the fort). Life as a Working-Class Imperial (which are the majority in Hive Worlds) is often plain and simple (if boring and repetitive) with your average wage, average working job and with your average necessities in life such as TV (level of propaganda vary) or food (might be artificially processed), and since there is always a demand for workers at some level, unemployment ratios would actually be quite small (unlike real-life, you don't have to fear automation and new technologies taking your job and the Imperium always needs more menial laborers).

If you're in the Imperial Guard, the chances of being sent into an eternal meat grinder is actually quite slim, if the Imperium's size and speed is taken into perspective. Although some policies within the Imperium would be regarded as immoral or "Crimes Against Humanity" in today's world, take note that what the Imperium does is a necessary evil. They know what they're doing is morally questionable, but they have to do it since they have no other choice and in the grim setting of WH40K, this is the only solution to be dealt with for the betterment of Humanity as a whole. Unlike every single other being in the entire setting, the Imperium actually knows its necessary evils ''are'' evil and bemoans this fact but grits its teeth and does it anyway, determined to make sure what was done has meaning and was never in vain. This is why in the Imperium, you very rarely see that, as in their point of view, to destroy a planet without a justified cause is seen as incredibly wasteful and sinful as you are technically "Wasting the Emperor's resources" (which, ironically enough, can lead to you getting executed, so its something most people try to avoid). There is even a small Ordo of the Inquisition whose job is to investigate exterminatus (planet boom) events and determine whether or not it was justified. About eighty percent of the Inquisitors who order exterminatus are executed by this Ordo for not having sufficient justification.

The Imperium is also remarkably egalitarian (unless you are a mutant). For the most part, regardless of the circumstances of your birth, you can reach unimaginable heights if you have the right combination of smarts, strength, faith and luck. Space Marine chapter masters were once feral tribesmen or underhive scum, great heroes of the Imperial Guard have come from death worlds, prisons or dead end jobs in hives. Inquisitors come from almost any background imaginable, and are some of the most powerful individuals in the Imperium, and can even sit as one of the High Lords of Terra. The only thing that actually blocks social mobility is the difficulty of standing out against countless trillion other humans on a million worlds. It's not all roses though as nepotism still counts for a lot hence the many powerful noble families, and while you can reach almost any rank in the Imperium chances are you are born in the gutter you'll die there not long after, but again not too dissimilar to your prospects if born in the wrong class and part of the world now.

===Foreign Policy on Xenos===
For those that complain of the Imperium's genocidal stance against Aliens (especially prior to the Emperor getting stuck on the golden throne), remember that during Humanitiy's earlier years, virtually every xeno they encountered were either genocidal dickheads or sadistic assholes, so can you really blame them? Take for example, the Craftworld Eldar. On the surface, they may seem benign and offer their hand in friendship, just so you are the ones who walk into a Necron Tomb-World and lose millions where they could have done the same and possibly only lost a few hundred. Regardless, this is easier said than done and they prioritize hostile races over occasional allies. Add to that, Big.E wanted an atheistic empire starving the Chaos gods out with science (although given that the Chaos gods thrive on ''emotion itself'' just as much as worship, Big E was probably doomed from the start) all without falling into '[[Men of Iron]] II: Revenge of the Machines', and those xenos that weren't deeply religious and/or psykers tended to go the A.I. way. So in order to avoid any [[Mortarion|unnecessary questions]] and [[Magnus the Red|unhealthy curiosity]], he basically got a standing order to purge everything on sight in place. Said order was duly followed during the Great Crusade proper, but now that the expansion is over, it is applied much less zealously.

Overall, the tolerance of xenos vary on their threat to Humanity in the first place, mostly since the Imperium does have not enough resources to even deal with those that possess an actual threat (hence why Ork Charadon and Sautekh Necron empires flourish, and no new crusades are sent to bring down the Tau, despite all three being almost next door to Ultramar). If the Imperium encounters another alien civilization that's only interested in trade and does not pose an obvious threat, then the Imperium (although still strictly supervised by the Inquisition) will trade to a certain extent, via [[Diplomacy]]. Put in the fact of the Imperium's "I don't disturb you and you don't disturb me" policy to outsiders, with the fact that there are actually '''A LOT''' of Xenos living within multiple Imperium Worlds contrary of popular opinion, and the fact that the majority of the wars that Humanity has fought was on the defense then the offense (of course this depends wholeheartedly on the Imperium's mood in the first place); you would then realize that on a whole, the Imperium is actually tolerant insofar as it doesn't destroy xenos races right away if they aren't an immediate threat.

An excellent way to understand the Imperium's policies toward aliens is seen in the [[The War of The Beast]] novel series, as it portrays some xenos-sympathizers and populations subjected to them. Ultimately, with threats like Chaos, genestealers, and countless other malevolent forces at large in the galaxy, the Imperium's intolerance is born of crucial necessity, with the xenophobia growing out of it as a by-product. The Imperium cannot afford to be accepting of alien influence and ideas, because you just never know what might be sneaking in with it, and they learned that through painful experience. What might be dismissed as innocent and inconsequential can (and often does) lead to the downfall of entire worlds. The only reason the Tau can act like they can openly befriend the whole galaxy is because they are naively unaware of all of what's out there and what they're potentially inviting in and run the risk of learning the same lessons the Imperium did the hard way. That much has been pointed out by both [[Farsight]] and [[Ciaphas Cain]]. Even with all the above, the Imperium is focused on survival above all else, and if that means working with xenos they may very well do so. [[Roboute Guilliman]] can testify to that, given that said xenos played a major role in his revival.

===Governmental & Ideological Structure of the Imperium===
Additionally, while the Imperium, as referenced above, looks like a merciless and oppressive empire, it is in fact a confederation of several powerful organizations and a million planets. It occupies a strange place in between libertarian paradise (as planets have a fair bit of autonomy, more than GW would like to admit) and oppressive theocracy, (as shown all over this page) as the Imperium's main policy for what a world does under their control is "Pay the tithe, send your psykers over when the Black Ships show up, and don't make me come over there." Each 'normal' planet in the Imperium (besides specially classified planets like Forge Worlds, Fortress Worlds, Death Worlds...) has its own laws, Government, culture and social order that can [[Attilan Rough Riders|differ]] [[Tallarn Desert Raiders|from]] [[Salamanders|one]] [[Ultramarines|another]] [[Catachan Jungle Fighters|by]] [[Vostroyan Firstborn|A]] [[Space Wolves|LOT.]] Just like today's countries some have merciless dictators (North Korea) and some have democracy to an extent where citizens can choose their own head of government (UK). Furthermore, each planet itself is actually quite independent to the extent where they can have their own armed forces and even wage their own civil wars. Due to this, the Imperium only cares when some serious shit happens (like xenos invasion, [[Chaos|corruption by Oh-God-What-The-Fuck eldritch horrors from beyond space and time]], or when a Planetary Governor decided to declare himself independent of the Imperium), and given that this is the Imperium, these kinds of things vary from "happening by on a regular basis" to "Not seeing an actual war for multiple millennia".

[[File:Tumblr nnrqjzAyKm1si96eio4 400.jpg|thumb|400px|right|A sprawling Imperial city. That ship's around two miles long, by the way. In Rogue Trader, anyway. In the novels more like ten to twenty.]]
Of course, in a few cases where a Planetary Governor or planet does declare independence, it is usually listed as [[HERESY]], however most Governors don't do this kind of thing because [[Chaos|they]] [[Necrons|know]] [[Orks|what's]] [[Dark Eldar|out]] [[Tyranids|there]] and that the Imperium is the only thing that [[Imperial Guard|can]] [[Space Marines|protect]] [[Imperial Navy|them]], because the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] and the system of the [[Adeptus Astra Telepathica]] provides a cheap system of FTL and communication through the horrors of the [[Warp]], and because the Merchant Fleet enables intergalatic commerce. There is also the reason that they have so much autonomy already that there isn't really a reason to leave the Imperium other than sheer greed and egomania. If a Planet declares independence, they lose the right to FTL and trade with the Imperium, and that's bad for Hive Worlds that need Agri-Worlds in order to survive, meaning the Imperium doesn't even ''need'' to send in their military since ''they'' know that the young usurper would most likely peacefully surrender in that prospect. The reason why the loyalty of some planets differ in question varied over the Imperium's history. During the Great Crusade, most worlds were extremely loyal to both the Imperium and the Emperor because it rescued them from all sorts of indescribable horrors that had plagued them for the thousands of years of the Long Night (Age of Strife). After the Great Crusade, the Imperium remained (mostly) cohesive as a whole due to both a remaining sense of loyalty to their savior and for mutual survival in the face of a severely fucked up galaxy. After a few thousand years of that, the Imperial Cult had gained sufficient strength that the reasons for remaining loyal to the Imperium and the Emperor expanded from just mutual survival to a shared religion where loyalty between each planet must be routinely checked to prevent separatism or [[Horus Heresy|another civil war that essentially kicked the Imperium in the galactic nuts.]] [[Derp|However, even then,]] [[Age of Apostasy|some religious asshat decides to do it all over again]] [[lulz|for the lulz,]] the aftermath of which persuaded some Planetary Rulers to question the legitimacy and thus loyalty to the Imperium. This is why you see that although most planets would never dare to even break away from the Imperium, a certain few that do break away is either due to the above questioning, your typical [[Just as Planned|Chaos hijinks]], xenos manipulation (as is frequently the case when the Tau or Genestealer Cults are involved), or just a Planetary Governor who's either arrogant enough to think he can get away with it or desperate enough to believe his world has nothing to lose from rebellion.

Therefore, the loyalty of most to the Imperium is not out of an ideological obsession to stamp out HERESY, but of pragmatism and necessity in order to survive in the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium as Protectorates. This real-life perspective again, is then supported in WH40K where the Imperium, being a decentralized but powerful semi-autonomous group of Corporate entities, have different ways of pledging allegiance to the Emperor himself rather than the State: the Inquisition stamps out anyone caught separating from or perverting the Emperor's rule of conduct as Heresy, the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] worships the Emperor as an aspect of another pagan Machine-god called the Omnissiah and benefits from an ancient pact of alliance dating to the Great Crusade, and the [[Adeptus Astartes]] are altered transhumans who merely view the Emperor as an exemplar of humanity, but were created by the Emperor himself and so can claim a closer connection to him than the other above-mentioned organizations via their genetic descent from the Primarchs. They all might just as well declare each other's ideologies as HERESY but each of them are personal Protectorate vassals to the Emperor himself, and both know that they need to work together lest Humanity as a whole goes extinct.

In real-life examples, the Imperium is more of a mixture between the "Protectorate" system like the Roman Empire, which allowed local governments to exist as Protectorates as long as they pay taxes/tithes and don't dis the Emperor.

Additionally, while chastity and prudence are technically heralded as virtues by [[Sisters of Battle|some]] organizations and planets within the Imperium, the Imperium as a whole is decidedly pro-sex. The reason is more utilitarian than [[Slaanesh|hedonistic]]; more babies means more soldiers. Even in the smallest sectors, there are always more planets to colonize (even if it's on the ruins of some other civilization) so space is seldom a concern. Imperial citizens are encouraged, by most local customs, to be fruitful so that the tithes may be paid. If you'd ask "why not just clone more soldiers?", the reason the Imperium doesn't do that (atleast excluding their black projects like the [[Afriel Strain]] soldiers) is because it's considered a perversion of the holy human form, hence it's labeled as heresy. Plus, attempting to clone regiments of soldiers on a rapid basis is likely to come with a variety of genetic problems that would hinder the Imperium rather than help it. Then there's the problem that the technology to clone a full human with a functioning mind (as opposed to a brain-dead clone fit for making into a servitor) is extremely difficult, to say nothing of how the clones' souls seem to be inherently abnormal for reasons nobody can explain.

And if anyone still complains that the Imperium is still 'dark and miserable,' just shove Stephen Baxter's [[Xeelee Sequence]] down their throats, portraying a human empire that is so downright evil and malicious that you will actually applaud their [[rape|cosmic butt-whipping]] by the nigh god-like Xeelee. Seriously, the Interim Coalition of Governance is what happens when the [[Marines Malevolent]] becomes a pan-galactic empire that has no qualms in sending over [[Grimdark|200 trillion child soldiers to die in a rather hopeless and pointless war;]] they make the policies of the Imperium [[Noblebright|look like the]] [[Star Trek|United Federation of Planets]] [[BrightHammer40k|in comparison.]]

===IoM in contrast to True Totalitarian Regimes===
Whilst it ''is'' true that the IoM combines many elements from all of the dictatorships on Earth, the key word you are looking for is <u>elements</u>. All of the dystopian tropes in the IoM are nitpicks from great dystopian classics. They aren't a true mixture of various authoritarian tropes, but are mere themes to set up the atmosphere of the Imperium. The presence of authoritarianism is there all right. However, it is not outright enforced; the Imperium doesn't care how your planet is run as long as the tithes come in on time and there's no outright heresy to be found. Imperial law focuses on best practices, security against subtle enemy attack methods, and anti-Chaos related manners of thinking (like a distinct lack of questioning the unknown because it could enter you and play havoc with your world). Basically, as long as you have laws that don't leave you wide open for the horrors in space, the Imperium is fine with you. And as mentioned before, the dystopian elements varies between planets to planets with the fact that you could actually ''leave'' the planet if given money and time (although that's an option open to fairly few unless the navy is recruiting).

The reason why places like Oceania from [[1984]], North Korea, and the aforementioned Interim Coalition of Governance are terrifying is because they are actually true totalitarian governments with extremely nihilistic attitudes. These are totalitarian regimes done horrifyingly right. These are governments which pride themselves on their malevolence and power; in which an ordinary person has little to no chance of leaving the hell hole they are born into. Their governmental and ideological structure is done in such a way that the mere act of pragmatism will be condemned for [[Heresy|HERESY]]. Places like these are concentrated and true dystopias in which control is so absolute that you live in a personal prison for all eternity. These governments make the raging incompetence of the Imperium look like Fantasia. Furthermore, the Imperium has one thing these governments do not have: a sense of humanity and heroism. Throughout all the GW works on the Imperium, we have characters who show remarkable amounts of [[Sanguinius|selfless]] [[Ollanius Pius|heroism,]] [[Ciaphas Cain|courage,]] [[Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt|and]] [[Saint Celestine|intense]] [[Vulkan|humanity]]. The protagonists (and general "good guys") in these stories consistently try to move heaven and earth to [[Logan Grimnar|protect the weak]] against all odds. We almost never see that kind of optimistic effort in the aforementioned dystopian works. This is why [[1984]] and the [[Xeelee Sequence]] are so horrifying: there is no hope, no epic struggle, no grandeur... just a collapsing social reality where the very concept of humanity is treated like a nonexistent joke.

Essentially, what we are trying to say here is that the worst thing the Imperium can do is not out of malice, but out of desperation, incompetence and necessity. For example:

''"We are forced to commit exterminatus on a billion souls because we have no choice and the [[Chaos|alternative]] [[Xeno|outcome]] would be much worse. I pray that these innocent souls would meet peace with the Emperor.''

In contrast this with Oceania which go along the lines of:

''"We torture you not because of some politically motivated means or a necessary evil. We do so because we want to exercise our power. We do so because we can."''

Or the Interim Coalition of Governance:

''"We are ready to send over a untold number of kids to die against the Xeelee. Why you ask? Because it is more economically viable to protect our sweet, sweet moolah and we need something to cover up our deep insecurities and spite."''

The bottom line: the IoM embodies not perpetual evil and suffering for its own sake, but desperate measures taken in desperate times, exacerbated further by inefficiency and human error. It may be shit by our standards, but considering all the other alternatives that would actually stand a chance in the grim darkness of the far future, it's pretty clear the Imperium is the ''least horrible'' alternative for humanity.

In a way, this makes it worse than the full dystopias as those guys have no one but themselves to blame. The Imperium simply cannot afford anything better.

===Character development at meta level===

From a meta point of view the evolution of the Imperium reflects that of the franchise and the company's interest and capabilities, back in the 80s during the Rogue Trader GW writers didn't bother too much about the possible ramifications of their character profiles, they were after all doing things for kids which wanted something cool and funny; morality, rationale and introspection didn't really have that much of a priority, at best there was a lot of parody with a pinch of political commentary inherent in british pop culture.

As editions moved the Imperium went from a glam-coloured 80s feudal cyberpunk place for adventures, fun and profit to the stage were the "Grimdark" entered in full effect, think of it a bit like a child turning into a teenager who wants to sound cool a deep, edginess was the order of the day for the Third Edition, this is from where a lot of the dystopian stuff we all know and love came from, Battlefleet Gothic with their slave-powered ships is a great example, the original portrayal of the necrons as eldritch horrors directed by the C'tan are born from this edition too, it was the lowest point of characterization for the Imperium in terms of dark induced apathy.

Gradually, thanks in great part to the efforts of Black Library writers and the simple fact many fans were already adults who wanted something more "elaborate" the Imperium started to gain their humane elements, the Gaunt Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain put in evidence that no, not everyone in the Imperial Guard were zealots and jerkasses, Uriel Ventris and other SM portrayals allowed the Adeptus Astartes to win back their heroic aspect and while Matt Ward broke a lot of the old fluff he allowed for factions such as the Necrons to become something more than a horde of metallic zombies.

The case of commissar Cain is special, some people didn't like to consider him canon as he broke with the overall idea of grimdarkness, he starts as an anomaly, a secretly epicurean, self-loathing character capable of decent and even heroic acts as well as abject fear who visits worlds which suddenly are not hells on earth, through his eyes we see both military and civilians who are, despite the obvious and obligatory cultural dissonances, humans with their loves, hatreds, good intentions and limitations, enjoying life whenever they can and showing commodities and services which shouldn't exist in the grim darkness of the far future, this sudden injection of humanity shakes a great deal of the fanbase perception of the Imperium, they suddenly discover this galactic warring monster is quite more than a stage for endless dystopian war, suddenly imperials have a great deal more to fight for than debased ideology, they are fighting for survival, and that survival can allow for something more than slave-work at factories alternated with unending sermons, behind the facade of the fanatic and the mad you find reality ensues, ruthlessness with your own is a ticket for friendly fire incidents, even the staunchest sororitas has a pension to think of and the administratum is not totally filled of incompetent people.

Gaunt's Ghost work in tandem with Ciaphas Cain to add more humanity to the Imperium, the Tanith First and Only are people, they remember their world of forest and stone cities destroyed, they clearly see their memory as something worth fighting for, and while they are loyal to the Imperium they will notice when there is something unfair and, if possible, deal with it, even at terminal strength, while Colonel-Commissar may be in the minority of competent commanders he and other characters in HQ put in evidence you can't run a military force purely with lash and bolt-pistol, at least not totally, like many real-life regimes you still need a sandwich as well as a shotgun to deal with people, remove the sandwich, use the shotgun too much and you will eventually find the dog bitting back.

The Horus Heresy series helped too, as the origins of the Imperium were vastly expanded and explained, allowing for a better understanding of the choices taken by both loyalists and traitors, the Emperor in particular lost their portrayal of a perfect being and finally was revealed to be a more human character, with great inentions but ultimately flawed and capable of failure. This also allowed for a better understanding of how the Imperium became so religious, repressive and authoritian despite, or perhaps, because Big E original plans to fight the Chaos Gods by starving them, the primarchs background was further explored and the tragedy behind their fall became now a known narrative, all these aspects adding a "depth of field".

With the return of Guilliman in the last editions we finally come to a point where the Imperium as an entity recovers, or more exactly gains, its capability for self-criticism, and with it a gut-punching self-awareness, we see through Guilliman's eyes the vast gears of traditionalist government, the monumental historic inertia pushing things to the brink, the continuous and terrible technological, economic and social degradation mankind has been subjected for centuries fueled by terrible wars of extinction.

From such capability to see these flaws is that the desire to break with this unending cycle of darkness is born, for the first time we see the chance of reform not born from Tzeentchian influence or Xenos infiltration, stable (so far) technological advancement finally happens, the character of Belisarius Cawl comes to mind, he is certainly a maverick, his relation with Guilliman and his subordinates is interesting, he knows his own value and dares others on the Imperium's side in a way which reminds a bit of the oldest editions where Rogue Traders went to strange and extravagant adventures, but we also see his backstory, what eventually shaped in his current self, his manias and hopes, no longer just "the tech support guy who knows how to fix the server", but a person, someone who can go talk face to face with Guilliman.

And hence in the Imperium of this modern age ancient traditional powers find themselves checked, not to say this brave new messiah in blue is not without his limits and contradictions, more than once Guilliman has to recognize his own mistakes, and he is still blind to others, and some things he attempts don't end well, and while the situation has become more critical than ever since, perhaps, the Horus Heresy, the Imperium and characters such as his "Uncrowned King" as narrative entities finally recover their potential for the humane. The Imperium is still a place of unending war and misery, en epic saga with many elements of cosmic horror history, but with a glimpse of a path to, in words of Black Library "Salvation".

===In Summation===
To put it simply, the Imperium is more or less a Feudal society rather than an "Empire" in the modern sense like is seen in Star Wars or a thousand other Science Fiction/Space Fantasy stories. You have a central authority in the Adeptus Terra and a unifying religion in the Imperial Creed, but the assorted fiefdoms of the Imperium generally are left to rule themselves without that much oversight from the central authority as long as the taxes come in on time and no open rebellion is occurring. Given that the Imperium is 40k's counterpart to the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy which is more or less the medieval/renaissance era Holy Roman Empire but bigger and more technologically advanced, this isn't all that surprising. And much like those feudal era societies you have some parts which are much better off than others, in agriculturally rich land with ample access to trade and developed cities feudal societies could rival anything that the earlier societies of antiquity could make in terms of sophistication. But poor provinces mostly made out of useless swampland and rocks are of course going to be poor hicktowns (somehow their ancestors thought settling in said swamp and rocks was a brilliant idea). Furthering the parallels to feudal Europe is that the Imperium is built atop of the corpse of an older and more urbane society; Rome for Medieval Europe and Dark Age humanity for the Imperium, and emerged out of a prolonged dark age following the collapse of that old empire. And the most important thing to note is that Feudal governments did not exercise absolute control, for a feudal peasant your local Baron had far more influence over your life than the King or Emperor would, and how harsh or kind your life was depended largely on the nature of your local overlord. Similarly, some places would have elected heads of local government like mayors in many cities, some would be ruled directly by the church, and even the laws and customs could vary dramatically between the domains of the various nobles. In essence, the Imperium is a space medieval society that due to the original generation of games workshop writers being history nerds with degrees and shit, actually resembles a medieval society much better than stories supposedly set in faux-medieval times. The Imperium has much more in common with the Empire of Charlemagne (during the Great Crusade) or the Holy Roman Empire than it does with any of the expansionist and/or authoritarian regimes that arose from the 1700s and onwards.

You could also hand the whiners the Ciaphas Cain books, which repeatedly showcases Imperial worlds that are actually fairly decent places to live, with planetary governments that actually give a shit about their people, and are perfectly capable of surviving an invasion or two (or several, in the case of ork threats) and still returning to a state of normalcy after the organizations whose purpose is to deal with these threats does their jobs (who, by the way, eight times out of ten are usually able to do so without leaving the planet in question a smoking ruin).

Space feudalism is even implied in the way the people in the lore speak of the Imperium. For instance, a politician might tell his fellow "watch what you say or the Imperium will come" or something. The Imperium is an outsider to most of the worlds it is made of, not an immediate presence. This is, like real life, out of necessity. Real life feudalism was due to social breakdown following Rome's collapse, and technology limited just how much one group could control. The Imperium is much the same, this time due to sheer scale involved and the collapse of order following the Iron War and the Age of Strife.

===Tl;dr===
[[Tl;dr]] the Imperium of Man has [[Lulz|more in common with the]] [[Star Trek|United Federation of Planets]] [[Derp|in terms of government structure than it does with the]] [[Star Wars|Galactic Empire.]] They're allowed to rule with relative independence, as long as they pay their tithes and obey the [[Imperial Cult]]. This does, of course, lead to many worlds being shitholes ruled by greedy homicidal tyrants, but there are plenty of examples of peaceful and even prosperous worlds. It really depends on galactic location and just chance. As long as you're not a xenos race, a mutant or attempt to [[Badab War|cut ties]] [[Macharian Crusade|with the Imperium]], you have a chance of living a comfortable life. And with millions of worlds with ''trillions'' of people inhabiting them, those chances might actually be decent. The vast majority of worlds are Civilized Worlds (also known as "Imperial Worlds", but that is a stupid and confusing name so fuck that) and the vast majority of Civilized Worlds are quite pleasant places to be and are still pretty much what the Great Crusade created barring the addition of the Imperial Creed over the Imperial Truth. Most of the grimdark happens on a handful of worlds in the Imperium and even then only specific spots (like the Underhive of a particularly harsh Hive World). For all but a minuscule number of humans, life in the Imperium really isn't that bad. You have a guaranteed job, a standard comparable to living in a modern first world country (civilian technology is quite advanced still since nearly every world produces it so it can't really be lost, unlike advanced military tech), easy access to extremely cheap transportation, etc. So, as long as you can dodge the draft into the Guard, you'll be totally good (until the Commissar or local priest comes looking for you for dodging). Although, there aren't drafts for the Guard (depending on world, but it's rare). Conscription is performed on rare occasions to provide manpower to nearby warzones temporarily and once that battle is over they are returned home. This might seem oddly generous, but remember: '''the Imperium genuinely cares about its citizens.''' This humanity at its core is why most fans view it as "the good guy" of Warhammer 40,000.

==Anthems of the Imperium of Man==
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duYoKxb0IeI - The anthem of the Imperium of the 41st Millennium.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM_c_avPlx4 - Battle anthem of the Adeptus Astartes

==See Also==
* [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)]], for their slightly less grimdark and '''much''' smaller scale alleged Warhammer Fantasy counterpart.
* [[Skaven|The Underempire]] for their ''actual'' Warhammer Fantasy counterpart.
* [[Azyr]] for their [[noblebright]] [[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar]] counterpart.

==Summary==
[[grimdark|In the grim dark future of the 41st Millennium, there is only bleak, grim, black, hopeless, dismal, barren, gloomy, gray, joyless, dour, dreary, dark, cheerless, glum, oppressive, somber, grim darkness. And the sugar beet/cane is extinct.]]
[[File:DAoT.jpg|580px|center|thumb|What the Imperium would likely look like if the Mechanicus ever decided to get their head out of their collective ass. Except there would be skulls and gothic architecture everywhere (which is automatically superior in every way to stupid shiny smooth shit).]]
[[File:1342123121.jpg|580px|center|thumb|Ah, much better...]]

==External Link==
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM The history of the Imperium in about a minute and a half.]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUrSQNSN6_c The Story of the Imperium in a musical piece] - [[Great Crusade|Slow start that]] [[Horus Heresy|soon erupts into allout badassery]] [[Time of Ending|and is quenched in a desperate last stand against the mighiest threats,]] [[Grimdark|before it flickers and dies...]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHSvSZ-UEFc An (arguably) more optimistic but no less brutal take on the eternal Imperium and its history. Times of majesty, times of destruction, times of glory, times of despair, they all alternate and repeat with the one endless constant of war.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csu6vbWA-YQ A new song to herald the trying time of the Imperium] - [[Black Crusade|A slow, malevolent start]] [[Great Rift|to capture the spread of evil]] [[Cadia|over the closest thing to good in the universe]] [[Belisarius Cawl|followed by]] [[Saint Celestine|faint whispers of]] [[Roboute Guilliman| hope]] [[Indomitus Crusade|that erupts in an enormous cresendo,]] [[grimdark|before fading with a quiet whine.]]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1CQ7Vwz8Eo the Imperium of man's theme song, less serious, more accurate perhaps.]

{{Imperium}}
{{Template:40k-Governments}}
[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Noblebright

2020-06-20T00:21:12Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: /* More examples of works and their ranking */

{{topquote|Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.|Sir Terry Pratchett, “Let There Be Dragons” (A Slip of the Keyboard)}}

'''NobleBright''' is an adjective derived from the term often used to describe Warhammer 40k: [[Grimdark|Grimdark]]. Just as every hero has a "mirror opposite" version that is evil, it's supposed that there must be a mirror opposite version of the heroes of WH40k where everything goes RIGHT. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a noble/bright feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered noble or bright.

Where the GrimDark tag usually describes a setting in a slow, painful decline, the NobleBright tag usually describes a setting emerging from a dark age and either returning to or in the midst of a golden age.

== Example: WarHammer vs. BrightHammer ==

''"We do not need a Warmaster in this age. A Warmaster would fail us. We need a DADDY."'' - [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Custodes showing their appreciation to Captain-General Kitten]]

This alternate universe setting, [[BrightHammer40k]], comes with the tagline ''"In the Noble Brightness of the far future, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!"'' This is as opposed to the original tagline of Warhammer 40k, which stated, "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." BrightHammer40k's setting has strong 1920s-1940s pulp fiction themes, crossed with an "age of myth" bronze age culture.

Differences between WarHammer 40k and BrightHammer 40k include:
* The setting is loosely divided into city-states united by race, religion, philosophy or just simple common sense, rather than singular empires defined by paranoia.
* There is a wide variety in the type of characters, nations, flora and fauna, and major characters in the setting.
* Speaking of wide varieties of characters/nations, relations between different groups, whether cultural, political, racial, etc. are usually positive.
* There is an overall "pulp fiction" feel. Just like real life.
* The universe is old, in the process of rediscovering a forgotten golden age.
* Low level conflicts such as raiding are considered common, but war is not. Just like Mongolia.
* Everyone is in a perpetual cold war with everyone else, but almost never an active war.
* Technology is wildly inconsistent. Just like Alaska.
* Villains are over the top, campy, and rarely played seriously. Very much like North Korea.
* Leaders are usually diplomats or wise "philosopher-kings" like in North Korea.
* Heroes do most of the heavy lifting in society, and there are heroes, great and minor, at every level of society.
* There is a strong emphasis on individual strength.
* Good guys can be jerks, but are still good guys.
* Over-the-top heroism usually carries the day.
* Obvious, thinly disguised Secret Agents everywhere.
* The setting is entering a technological renaissance.
* Everything is bright or vividly colored.
* As seen on TV!

Compared to Warhammer40k, Brighthammer40k is generally brighter and a nicer place to live, but is by no means peaceful, always in a low level state of conflict, internal and external, never quite turning into war. The skull motif is replaced by wings, and colors are often brighter.

==[[MidHammer 40,000]]==
Strikes a balance between Noblebright and Grimdark. Basically, you don't matter much, but if mankind can put their back into it hard enough, it'll turn out okay in the end:
*Big E is alive, and regenerating.

*Primarchs still exist

*There is hope for a better future. Even if you don't live to see it, your children may well.

*While the AdMech got buttfucked twice, it's slowly getting it back together.

==8chan Explanation of the Grim/Noble and Dark/Bright Spectrum (by anons)==
[[File:Alignments.jpg|300px|thumb|An [[alignment]] chart.]]
Grim/Noble asks whether there are heroes that exist, may appear to change the world for good or ill.
* A noble setting isn't one where everyone is good, more like one where people are active. The actions of a single hero can change the world, and a single big villain can ruin it: there are important people, who are so either by birth, rank or sheer willpower, and every single one of these people MATTER.
* In a grim world, no matter what you do, an individual can't secure more than an individual victory, if even that, because the rest of the world is too big/scared/powerless/selfish to act upon his impulse.
Something like Morrowind or Berserk is noble (bright and dark, respectively) because it is about one man forcing destiny's hand and changing the world.
* Now, a bright world is one full of opportunity, of wondrous sights to behold. It doesn't mean that it has to be MLP, it can be dangerous, but your first instinct when looking at a new location should be awe and wonder: people may adventure to save the world, but they leave town with a smile upon their face, eager to see what comes next. The shadow of Risk is largely erased by the glint of Adventure. In a bright world, it's quite possible for people to go on adventure just for the hell of it, since the journey is its own reward. Resurrection, or at least means to heal grave injuries, is usually accessible, to counterbalance the fact that the risks out there are real.
* A dark world is one where life sucks, and something or someone is poised to kill everybody else in the story - whether it be demon overlords, 'nids, or even the lack of water, if this threat has its way everyone dies and they die for good. If you lose an arm, you play a cripple. In the extreme cases, even when you win a fight, your career is over (i.e. gangrene). This means that, even though people may be ready to help (noble), they'll need a damn good reason to do so, since stepping out of line is so dangerous (dark).
Given is an example of each type of setting to show how the combinations of noble/grim and bright/dark work;
*40k is (grim)dark because, no matter where you go, there is only war, and heroism's only reward is usually a notch on a gun or a corpse in a trench. No matter who you are, most of the galaxy probably wants you dead, and staying home today is the best choice you can make. Even if you make it to the end, you may have to sacrifice everything to save everyone, if you haven't already done so.
* Berserk is (noble)dark because, while there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, it takes men and women of insane willpower to get there: no matter whether you are big or small, even when you have nothing, the only thing that may save the world is the will within you screaming, "Go on!" And if hope was to fail, you're getting a book-long bloodbath-orgy, and all its consequences.
* Morrowind is (noble)bright because, even though the world is fraught with dangers, you can fix everything. The reason it isn't dark is because there is so much to see, so many interesting people to meet, so many cool things to experience that, at the end of the road, you'd do it all over again if given the chance to see it once again with virgin eyes.
* Sandman is (grim)bright because the incredible vistas and interesting people are all that can distract Dream from the dullness of his existence. He will tire of them all, but even he has to admit that he saw some cool shit. Also, notice how the relative freedom from consequences (people can get somewhat rezzed/healed/characters don't die much), a bright trait, reinforces the futility of the struggle in a grim world.

In short, grimdark and noblebright worlds both exist, and both are interesting to play in. So do grimbright (those are quite weird, I admit) and nobledark (my favorite : victory is so much sweeter when you have to fight for it). Every type allows for evil and struggles to exist, and for stories to be told. Evil can even triumph: it's less of a matter of who wins, and more of a matter of tone. In a bright world, the BBEG can win, but he won't skullfuck to death everyone the PCs know in front of a crowd without the mood turning to dark.

I'll leave you with some examples :

Grimdark : WHFB, W40K, Game of Thrones, Oedipus, E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, Gears of War 1-3, Killzone 2-3.

Grimbright : Sandman, The Sims, most Tycoon games, Mass Effect series, The Commonwealth Saga, Eclipse Phase, The Culture novels, Deltarune, most of Zeus' flings with mortals (from the gods' perspective).

Nobledark : Berserk, LotR, Starcraft, Dark Sun, Terminator, Fallout, the Iliad.

Noblebright : Morrowind, D&D/PF (usually), Magi, Warcraft, Star wars, Trine, the Odyssey, and of course, Star Trek.

== More examples of works and their ranking ==

Please be aware that the following list is a product of many different [[Fa/tg/uys|Fa/tg/uys]] personal [[Skub|opinions]].
[[Image:Helghan Revolution.jpg|thumb|right|Noblebright struggles have heroic sacrifices, copious amounts of bravery, and a just cause to fight for.]] [[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark wars are usually directionless, brutal, and the reasons for fighting are very obscure (When there is one, it's usually thrown away in the face of reality).]]

<center>
{|border=1 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0
|- align=left
! NobleBright
! ...and GrimDark
|-
| [[Brighthammer_40,000_(2nd_edition)|BrightHammer 40k]] OR [[Age of Sigmar]] || [[Warhammer_40,000|WarHammer 40k]]
|-
| [[Warhammer_40,000|WarHammer 40k]] 8th ED, but more like Nobledark || [[Xeelee Sequence|Xeelee universe]] OR Age of Sigmar 2nd Edition<br>(sorta. Could be considered approaching Noblebright->Dark)
|-
| [[Exalted]] (Well, Zig-zags between the two) || [[Vampire:_The_Masquerade|Vampire:tM]], [[Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse|Werewolf:tA]] ([[oWoD]])
|-
| [[Changeling:_The_Dreaming|Changeling:tD]] ([[oWoD]]) || [[Changeling:_The_Lost|Changeling:tL]] ([[nWoD]])
|-
|[[Geist: The Sin-Eaters]] ([[nWoD]]) ||[[ Wraith: The Oblivion]] ([[oWoD]])
|-
|[[D20_Modern|D20 Modern]] || [[Call_of_Cthulhu|Call of Cthulhu]]
|-
| Steven Spielberg||Quentin Tarantino
|-
| The West Wing || House of Cards
|-
| Special Unit 2 || Delta Green
|-
| [[Star Trek]] (in general) || Babylon 5 (closer to Nobledark)
|-
|[[Star Trek]] (in general) || [[Star Trek]] Picard (or even Discovery)
|-
| Star Trek: Voyager || Red Dwarf
|-
| Andromeda Ascendant || Farscape
|-
| Stargate SG-1 || The First Wave
|-
| Firefly (maybe not, see Discussion) || Blake's 7
|-
| Battlestar Galactica (1978) || Battlestar Galactica (2004)
|-
| Temeraire Series || [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones]]
|-
| Robocop || Judge Dredd
|-
| ReBoot || .hack
|-
| .hack || Sword Art Online
|-
| Previous season of Sword Art Online || Next season of Sword Art Online
|-
| [[Rogue Trader (RPG)|Rogue Trader]] || [[Dark Heresy]]
|-
| Osamu Tezuka || Go Nagai
|-
| The Wizard of Oz || Soul Eater
|-
| MACROSS (Robotech) || Mobile Suit Gundam
|-
| Mobile Suit Gundam || Neon Genesis Evangelion
|-
| Neon Genesis Evangelion || Bokurano
|-
| [[7th Sea]] || [[Poison'd]]
|-
| Zoids || Gundam
|-
| [[Spirit of the Century]] || [[Don't Rest Your Head]]
|-
| [[Traveller]] || [[Eclipse Phase]]
|-
| [[Dragonlance]] || [[Dark Sun]]
|-
| [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Avatar]] (not [[Avatar|Cameron's furfic)]] || Kaze no Stigma
|-
| [[Warcraft]] || [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]
|-
| [[Magic the gathering|Alara]], [[Theros]], [[Lorwyn]] || [[Innistrad]], [[Phyrexia|New Phyrexia]], [[Shadowmoor]]
|-
| [[Neverwinter Nights]] || Dragon Age
|-
| [[The Elder Scrolls]]<br>(Well, somewhat, if you ignore Kirkbride's EU-thing) || Gothic
|-
| Final Fantasy || Megami Tensei
|-
| Persona || Shin Megami Tensei
|-
| Guin Saga || Berserk (more Nobledark)
|-
| Forts || REDCON
|-
| Persona 4 & 5 || Persona 3
|-
| Red Alert 3 || Red Alert 2
|-
| Red Alert 2 || Red Alert
|-
| Wolfenstein || MachineGames Wolfenstein games
|-
| [[Command and Conquer]]: Red Alert series || [[Command and Conquer]]: Tiberium series
|-
| Animorphs || Terraformars
|-
| Fate/Stay Night || Fate/Zero
|-
| [[Starcraft]] II || [[Starcraft|Starcraft: Brood War]]
|-
| [[Diablo]] III || [[Diablo]] I & II
|-
| Grand Theft Auto 1 || Saints Row 1
|-
| Saints Row 3 || Grand Theft Auto 4
|-
| Fable III || Dark Souls
|-
| Cowboy Bebop|| Black Lagoon
|-
| Undertale || LISA
|-
| Kid Icarus || God of War
|-
| God of War 2018 || pre-2018 God of War
|-
| Mass Effect 1 || Mass Effect 3
|-
| Mass Effect universe || [[Setting:Halo|Halo universe]]
|-
| [[Setting:Halo|Halo universe]] || Dead Space universe
|-
| Dead Space Trilogy || Halo: Forerunner Trilogy
|-
| Spore || Darkspore
|-
| Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann || Getter Robo Armageddon
|-
| Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann || Kill la Kill
|-
| Rebuild of Evangelion (Well, Zig-zags between the two) || Neon Genesis Evangelion
|-
| Neo-Hunter Casshern || Casshern Sins
|-
| Dragon Ball || Hunter X Hunter
|-
| Mai-Otome || Mai-Hime (last 10 episodes at least)
|-
| Cardcaptor Sakura || Puella Magi Madoka Magica
|-
| Puella Magi Madoka Magica || Magical Girl Site
|-
| Power Rangers in General || Power Rangers RPM
|-
| Super Sentai || Kamen Rider (especially the Showa Era ones)
|-
| Kamen Rider (most Heisei Era ones) || GARO
|-
| Batman: the Brave & the Bold || Batman: TAS (first two seasons only)
|-
| [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars Episode I, IV, VI,<br>Star Wars: The Clone Wars Movie and Season 1,<br>and a decent portion of the Expanded Universe]] || [[Star Wars D20|Star Wars Episode II, III, V, VII,<br>Star Wars: The Clone Wars from Season 2 onwards,<br>and the other half the Expanded Universe, especially The New Jedi Order and Legacy]]
|-
| Little House on the Prairie || Deadwood
|-
| Full House || Married With Children
|-
| The Green Zone || The Hurt Locker
|-
| The Sarah Jane Adventures || [[Doctor Who|Torchwood]]
|-
| ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' || ''Black sails''
|-
| ''Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag'' || ''Risen 2: Dark Waters''
|-
| Justice League || Watchmen
|-
| Twilight Saga || Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
|-
| ''Lois and Clark'' or the 80's Superman Movies || ''Man of Steel''
|-
| ''Planetary'' || ''The Authority''
|-
| Cyanide and Happiness || [http://picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=132 pictures for sad children]
|-
| The Silver Age of Comic Books || The Dark Age of Comic Books
|-
| [[Steampunk|Steampunk Genre]] || [[Cyberpunk|Cyberpunk Genre]]
|-
| Raspberry Pi || OpenPandora
|-
| South Korea || <s>North</s> BEST Korea
|-
| [[Discworld]] || [[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
|-
| A Wizard of Earthsea || The Tombs of Atuan
|-
| Guilty Gear || BlazBlue
|-
| Mega Man (Classic, Legends, Battle Network,<br>ZX, Star Forces 1 and 2)|| Mega Man (X, Zero, Star Force 3,), The Protomen
|-
| The Chronicles of Narnia|| His Dark Materials
|-
| Anthem || Halo
|-
| Halo || Half-Life 2
|-
| Half-Life 2 || Resistance
|-
| Resistance || Gears of War (The first game especially)
|-
| Gears of War || Killzone
|-
| Just Cause 2 || Spec Ops: The Line
|-
| Plants VS Zombies || The Last of Us
|-
| Mirror's Edge || Assassin's Creed
|-
| Iron Kingdoms MKii || Iron Kingdoms MKi
|-
| Marvel Comics films || [[Grimdark#Grimderp|DC Universe films]]
|-
| DC comics || Marvel comics
|-
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer || Hellsing (any medium)
|-
| Hellsing (2001 series) || Hellsing (manga and OVA)
|-
| Marvel comics || Watchmen comics
|-
| Watchmen comics || Wanted comics
|-
| Warehouse 13 || The [[SCP Foundation]]
|-
| [[Eberron]] || [[Dragonmech]]
|-
| [[Planescape]] || [[Ravenloft]]
|-
| [[Wilderlands of High Fantasy]]|| | [[Forgotten Realms]]
|-
| InFamous || Prototype
|-
| Harry Potter 1-3 || Harry Potter 4-7 (ESPECIALLY 7th)
|-
| Deus Ex 1-2 || System Shock 1-2
|-
| RoboCop || Terminator
|-
| Homeworld 1 and 2 || Homeworld: Cataclysm<br>(when the Beast make their first appearance)
|-
| [[Fist of the North Star]] || Violence Jack
|-
| The Simpsons || South Park
|-
| The Glaive || Conan the Barbarian
|-
| The Hobbit || The Children of Hurin
|-
| American Revolution || Vietnam War
|-
| [[Mordheim]] || [[Malifaux]]
|-
| Civilization:Beyond Earth || [[Alpha Centauri]]
|-
| [[The New Testament]] || [[The Old Testament]]
|-
| Overwatch || [[Team Fortress 2]] (Especially Mann vs. Machine)
|-
| [[Team Fortress 2]] || Team Fortress Classic
|-
| Ghostbusters films and Real Ghostbusters || | Extreme Ghostbusters
|-
| Metal Gear (in general) || | Metal Gear Solid V
|-
| Girls und Panzer || Panzerfraulein Alteseisen
|-
| Far Cry 1 || | Far Cry 2 and 3
|-
| Overstrike || | Fuse
|-
| Pokemon Franchise || | Digimon Franchise
|-
| Digimon Adventure || | Digimon Tamers
|-
| Digimon Tamers || Shadow Star Narutaru
|-
| Bakugan || Kiba
|-
| [[Fallout]] series || | S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series
|-
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series || | Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light
|-
| Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light || | Metro 2033 (novel), Metro 2034 (novel),<br>and Metro 2035 (novel)
|-
|[[Approved anime|Slayers]] || | Bastard!!
|-
| Fast And Furious || | Death Race
|-
| Death Race || | Mad Max
|-
| Twilight || | Underworld
|-
| Y:the last man || | Children of men
|-
| Battlefield Bad Company || | Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy
|-
| Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy || | Call of Duty Black Ops III
|-
| Dead Rising series || | Left 4 Dead series
|-
| Left 4 Dead series || | Dead Island series
|-
| Dead Island series || | World War Z movie
|-
| World War Z Movie || | World War Z novel
|-
| World War Z Novel || | The Walking Dead comics
|-
| Super Robot anime|| | Real Robot anime
|-
| Real Robot anime|| | WAT Robot anime
|-
| The Go-Betweens|| | The Birthday Party/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
|-
| League of Legends|| | Dota 2
|-
| Rome: Total War|| | Total War: Attila
|-
| Freespace || | Freespace 2
|-
| Street Fighter franchise || | Mortal Kombat franchise
|-
| Star Wars Jedi: Outcast duology || | Star Wars: Battlefront 1 & 2 (2000's)
|-
| Minecraft || | 7 Days to Die
|-
| Blood Diamond || | Lord of War
|-
| Naoki Urusawa's Monster || ERASED
|-
| Casa de mi Padre || | Sicario
|-
| GammaWorld || | The Mutant Epoch
|-
| Konosuba || Re:Zero
|-
| Log Horizon || Overlord
|-
| Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? || [[Goblin Slayer]]
|-
| This Means War || Savages
|-
| Brave New World (more like GrimBright, really) || [[1984]]
|-
| Sailor Moon (old censored american dub) || Sailor Moon (original version)
|-
| Sailor Moon (original version) || Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
|-
| Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon || Revolutionary Girl Utena
|-
| Revolutionary Girl Utena || Puella Magi Madoka Magica
|-
| Egan's Diaspora || | Dukaj's Perfect Imperfection
|-
| Touhou Project || Crimzon Clover
|-
| Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and White Lantern Corps || Red, Orange, Yellow, Black, and Grey Lantern Corps
|-
| Pod Save America || Chapo Trap House
|-
| Jimmy Neutron, Back to the Future || Rick and Morty
|-
| World War II: Western Front || World War II: Eastern Front
|-
| World War II: Eastern Front || World War II: Pacific Theatre
|-
| World War II: Pacific Theatre || World War I: Western Front
|-
| World War II: French Resistance || World War II: Polish Resistance
|-
| Pork Chop Hill || Tae-Guk-Gi
|-
| [[Death Korps of Krieg]] || [[Xeelee_Sequence#Interim_Coalition_of_Governance|Interim Coalition of Governance]]
|-
| Parasyte || Devilman
|-
| Disney Channel || Cartoon Network
|-
| Cartoon Network || Toonami
|-
| E.T. || IT
|-
| Homo faber || Lolita
|-
| Maple Story || Made in Abyss
|-
| Ready Player One || 20th Century Boys
|-
| My Hero Academia || ONE PUNCH MAN (more like Grimbright, really)
|-
| Grand Theft Auto || Mafia
|-
| [[Superman | Metropolis]] || [[Batman | Gotham City]]
|-
| Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. || Jak 2 and later
|-
| Axis Powers Hetalia || Polandball
|-
| Soren Kierkegaard || Friedrich Nietzsche
|-
| John Stuart Mill || David Benatar
|-
| Noam Chomsky || Michel Foucault
|-
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau || Thomas Hobbes
|-
| Thomas Hobbes || Friedrich Nietzsche
|-
| Friedrich Nietzsche (before Thus Spoke Zarathustra) || Friedrich Nietzsche (after Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
|-
| Friedrich Nietzsche || Mark Twain (Best example being the Mysterious Stranger)
|-
| The American Revolution || The French Revolution
|-
| The French Revolution || The Russian Revolution
|-
| The Settlers || Civilization
|-
| Civilization || Tropico (Can be Grimbright if you are a "benevolent" dictator)
|-
| Sgt. Frog || Invader Zim
|-
| Adventure Time || Tigtone
|}

</center>

[[Category:Gamer Slang]]

Noblebright

2020-06-20T00:15:42Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92:

Noblebright

2020-06-20T00:00:43Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92:

Noblebright

2020-06-19T23:25:01Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: /* More examples of works and their ranking */

{{topquote|Why does the third of the three brothers, who shares his food with the old woman in the wood, go on to become king of the country? Why does James Bond manage to disarm the nuclear bomb a few seconds before it goes off rather than, as it were, a few seconds afterwards? Because a universe where that did not happen would be a dark and hostile place. Let there be goblin hordes, let there be terrible environmental threats, let there be giant mutated slugs if you really must, but let there also be hope. It may be a grim, thin hope, an Arthurian sword at sunset, but let us know that we do not live in vain.|Sir Terry Pratchett, “Let There Be Dragons” (A Slip of the Keyboard)}}

'''NobleBright''' is an adjective derived from the term often used to describe Warhammer 40k: [[Grimdark|Grimdark]]. Just as every hero has a "mirror opposite" version that is evil, it's supposed that there must be a mirror opposite version of the heroes of WH40k where everything goes RIGHT. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a noble/bright feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered noble or bright.

Where the GrimDark tag usually describes a setting in a slow, painful decline, the NobleBright tag usually describes a setting emerging from a dark age and either returning to or in the midst of a golden age.

== Example: WarHammer vs. BrightHammer ==

''"We do not need a Warmaster in this age. A Warmaster would fail us. We need a DADDY."'' - [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Custodes showing their appreciation to Captain-General Kitten]]

This alternate universe setting, [[BrightHammer40k]], comes with the tagline ''"In the Noble Brightness of the far future, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!"'' This is as opposed to the original tagline of Warhammer 40k, which stated, "In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war." BrightHammer40k's setting has strong 1920s-1940s pulp fiction themes, crossed with an "age of myth" bronze age culture.

Differences between WarHammer 40k and BrightHammer 40k include:
* The setting is loosely divided into city-states united by race, religion, philosophy or just simple common sense, rather than singular empires defined by paranoia.
* There is a wide variety in the type of characters, nations, flora and fauna, and major characters in the setting.
* Speaking of wide varieties of characters/nations, relations between different groups, whether cultural, political, racial, etc. are usually positive.
* There is an overall "pulp fiction" feel. Just like real life.
* The universe is old, in the process of rediscovering a forgotten golden age.
* Low level conflicts such as raiding are considered common, but war is not. Just like Mongolia.
* Everyone is in a perpetual cold war with everyone else, but almost never an active war.
* Technology is wildly inconsistent. Just like Alaska.
* Villains are over the top, campy, and rarely played seriously. Very much like North Korea.
* Leaders are usually diplomats or wise "philosopher-kings" like in North Korea.
* Heroes do most of the heavy lifting in society, and there are heroes, great and minor, at every level of society.
* There is a strong emphasis on individual strength.
* Good guys can be jerks, but are still good guys.
* Over-the-top heroism usually carries the day.
* Obvious, thinly disguised Secret Agents everywhere.
* The setting is entering a technological renaissance.
* Everything is bright or vividly colored.
* As seen on TV!

Compared to Warhammer40k, Brighthammer40k is generally brighter and a nicer place to live, but is by no means peaceful, always in a low level state of conflict, internal and external, never quite turning into war. The skull motif is replaced by wings, and colors are often brighter.

==[[MidHammer 40,000]]==
Strikes a balance between Noblebright and Grimdark. Basically, you don't matter much, but if mankind can put their back into it hard enough, it'll turn out okay in the end:
*Big E is alive, and regenerating.

*Primarchs still exist

*There is hope for a better future. Even if you don't live to see it, your children may well.

*While the AdMech got buttfucked twice, it's slowly getting it back together.

==8chan Explanation of the Grim/Noble and Dark/Bright Spectrum (by anons)==
[[File:Alignments.jpg|300px|thumb|An [[alignment]] chart.]]
Grim/Noble asks whether there are heroes that exist, may appear to change the world for good or ill.
* A noble setting isn't one where everyone is good, more like one where people are active. The actions of a single hero can change the world, and a single big villain can ruin it: there are important people, who are so either by birth, rank or sheer willpower, and every single one of these people MATTER.
* In a grim world, no matter what you do, an individual can't secure more than an individual victory, if even that, because the rest of the world is too big/scared/powerless/selfish to act upon his impulse.
Something like Morrowind or Berserk is noble (bright and dark, respectively) because it is about one man forcing destiny's hand and changing the world.
* Now, a bright world is one full of opportunity, of wondrous sights to behold. It doesn't mean that it has to be MLP, it can be dangerous, but your first instinct when looking at a new location should be awe and wonder: people may adventure to save the world, but they leave town with a smile upon their face, eager to see what comes next. The shadow of Risk is largely erased by the glint of Adventure. In a bright world, it's quite possible for people to go on adventure just for the hell of it, since the journey is its own reward. Resurrection, or at least means to heal grave injuries, is usually accessible, to counterbalance the fact that the risks out there are real.
* A dark world is one where life sucks, and something or someone is poised to kill everybody else in the story - whether it be demon overlords, 'nids, or even the lack of water, if this threat has its way everyone dies and they die for good. If you lose an arm, you play a cripple. In the extreme cases, even when you win a fight, your career is over (i.e. gangrene). This means that, even though people may be ready to help (noble), they'll need a damn good reason to do so, since stepping out of line is so dangerous (dark).
Given is an example of each type of setting to show how the combinations of noble/grim and bright/dark work;
*40k is (grim)dark because, no matter where you go, there is only war, and heroism's only reward is usually a notch on a gun or a corpse in a trench. No matter who you are, most of the galaxy probably wants you dead, and staying home today is the best choice you can make. Even if you make it to the end, you may have to sacrifice everything to save everyone, if you haven't already done so.
* Berserk is (noble)dark because, while there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, it takes men and women of insane willpower to get there: no matter whether you are big or small, even when you have nothing, the only thing that may save the world is the will within you screaming, "Go on!" And if hope was to fail, you're getting a book-long bloodbath-orgy, and all its consequences.
* Morrowind is (noble)bright because, even though the world is fraught with dangers, you can fix everything. The reason it isn't dark is because there is so much to see, so many interesting people to meet, so many cool things to experience that, at the end of the road, you'd do it all over again if given the chance to see it once again with virgin eyes.
* Sandman is (grim)bright because the incredible vistas and interesting people are all that can distract Dream from the dullness of his existence. He will tire of them all, but even he has to admit that he saw some cool shit. Also, notice how the relative freedom from consequences (people can get somewhat rezzed/healed/characters don't die much), a bright trait, reinforces the futility of the struggle in a grim world.

In short, grimdark and noblebright worlds both exist, and both are interesting to play in. So do grimbright (those are quite weird, I admit) and nobledark (my favorite : victory is so much sweeter when you have to fight for it). Every type allows for evil and struggles to exist, and for stories to be told. Evil can even triumph: it's less of a matter of who wins, and more of a matter of tone. In a bright world, the BBEG can win, but he won't skullfuck to death everyone the PCs know in front of a crowd without the mood turning to dark.

I'll leave you with some examples :

Grimdark : WHFB, W40K, Game of Thrones, Oedipus, E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, Gears of War 1-3, Killzone 2-3.

Grimbright : Sandman, The Sims, most Tycoon games, Mass Effect series, The Commonwealth Saga, Eclipse Phase, The Culture novels, Deltarune, most of Zeus' flings with mortals (from the gods' perspective).

Nobledark : Berserk, LotR, Starcraft, Dark Sun, Terminator, Fallout, the Iliad.

Noblebright : Morrowind, D&D/PF (usually), Magi, Warcraft, Star wars, Trine, the Odyssey, and of course, Star Trek.

== More examples of works and their ranking ==

Please be aware that the following list is a product of many different [[Fa/tg/uys|Fa/tg/uys]] personal [[Skub|opinions]].
[[Image:Helghan Revolution.jpg|thumb|right|Noblebright struggles have heroic sacrifices, copious amounts of bravery, and a just cause to fight for.]] [[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark wars are usually directionless, brutal, and the reasons for fighting are very obscure (When there is one, it's usually thrown away in the face of reality).]]

<center>
{|border=1 cellpadding=5 cellspacing=0
|- align=left
! NobleBright
! ...and GrimDark
|-
| [[Brighthammer_40,000_(2nd_edition)|BrightHammer 40k]] OR [[Age of Sigmar]] || [[Warhammer_40,000|WarHammer 40k]]
|-
| [[Warhammer_40,000|WarHammer 40k]] 8th ED, but more like Nobledark || [[Xeelee Sequence|Xeelee universe]] OR Age of Sigmar 2nd Edition<br>(sorta. Could be considered approaching Noblebright->Dark)
|-
| [[Exalted]] (Well, Zig-zags between the two) || [[Vampire:_The_Masquerade|Vampire:tM]], [[Werewolf:_The_Apocalypse|Werewolf:tA]] ([[oWoD]])
|-
| [[Changeling:_The_Dreaming|Changeling:tD]] ([[oWoD]]) || [[Changeling:_The_Lost|Changeling:tL]] ([[nWoD]])
|-
|[[Geist: The Sin-Eaters]] ([[nWoD]]) ||[[ Wraith: The Oblivion]] ([[oWoD]])
|-
|[[D20_Modern|D20 Modern]] || [[Call_of_Cthulhu|Call of Cthulhu]]
|-
| Steven Spielberg||Quentin Tarantino
|-
| The West Wing || House of Cards
|-
| Special Unit 2 || Delta Green
|-
| [[Star Trek]] (in general) || Babylon 5 (closer to Nobledark)
|-
|[[Star Trek]] (in general) || [[Star Trek]] Picard (or even Discovery)
|-
| Star Trek: Voyager || Red Dwarf
|-
| Andromeda Ascendant || Farscape
|-
| Stargate SG-1 || The First Wave
|-
| Firefly (maybe not, see Discussion) || Blake's 7
|-
| Battlestar Galactica (1978) || Battlestar Galactica (2004)
|-
| Temeraire Series || [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Game of Thrones]]
|-
| Robocop || Judge Dredd
|-
| ReBoot || .hack
|-
| .hack || Sword Art Online
|-
| Previous season of Sword Art Online || Next season of Sword Art Online
|-
| [[Rogue Trader (RPG)|Rogue Trader]] || [[Dark Heresy]]
|-
| Osamu Tezuka || Go Nagai
|-
| The Wizard of Oz || Soul Eater
|-
| MACROSS (Robotech) || Mobile Suit Gundam
|-
| Mobile Suit Gundam || Neon Genesis Evangelion
|-
| Neon Genesis Evangelion || Bokurano
|-
| [[7th Sea]] || [[Poison'd]]
|-
| Zoids || Gundam
|-
| Digimon || Digimon Tamers
|-
| Digimon Tamers || Shadow Star Narutaru
|-
| [[Spirit of the Century]] || [[Don't Rest Your Head]]
|-
| [[Traveller]] || [[Eclipse Phase]]
|-
| [[Dragonlance]] || [[Dark Sun]]
|-
| [[Avatar: The Last Airbender|Avatar]] (not [[Avatar|Cameron's furfic)]] || Kaze no Stigma
|-
| [[Warcraft]] || [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]
|-
| [[Magic the gathering|Alara]], [[Theros]], [[Lorwyn]] || [[Innistrad]], [[Phyrexia|New Phyrexia]], [[Shadowmoor]]
|-
| [[Neverwinter Nights]] || Dragon Age
|-
| [[The Elder Scrolls]]<br>(Well, somewhat, if you ignore Kirkbride's EU-thing) || Gothic
|-
| Final Fantasy || Megami Tensei
|-
| Persona || Shin Megami Tensei
|-
| Guin Saga || Berserk (more Nobledark)
|-
| Forts || REDCON
|-
| Persona 4 & 5 || Persona 3
|-
| Red Alert 3 || Red Alert 2
|-
| Red Alert 2 || Red Alert
|-
| Wolfenstein || MachineGames Wolfenstein games
|-
| [[Command and Conquer]]: Red Alert series || [[Command and Conquer]]: Tiberium series
|-
| Animorphs || Terraformars
|-
| Fate/Stay Night || Fate/Zero
|-
| [[Starcraft]] II || [[Starcraft|Starcraft: Brood War]]
|-
| [[Diablo]] III || [[Diablo]] I & II
|-
| Grand Theft Auto 1 || Saints Row 1
|-
| Saints Row 3 || Grand Theft Auto 4
|-
| Fable III || Dark Souls
|-
| Cowboy Bebop|| Black Lagoon
|-
| Undertale || LISA
|-
| Kid Icarus || God of War
|-
| God of War 2018 || pre-2018 God of War
|-
| Mass Effect 1 || Mass Effect 3
|-
| Mass Effect universe || [[Setting:Halo|Halo universe]]
|-
| [[Setting:Halo|Halo universe]] || Dead Space universe
|-
| Dead Space Trilogy || Halo: Forerunner Trilogy
|-
| Spore || Darkspore
|-
| Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann || Getter Robo Armageddon
|-
| Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann || Kill la Kill
|-
| Rebuild of Evangelion (Well, Zig-zags between the two) || Neon Genesis Evangelion
|-
| Neo-Hunter Casshern || Casshern Sins
|-
| Dragon Ball || Hunter X Hunter
|-
| Mai-Otome || Mai-Hime (last 10 episodes at least)
|-
| Cardcaptor Sakura || Puella Magi Madoka Magica
|-
| Puella Magi Madoka Magica || Magical Girl Site
|-
| Power Rangers in General || Power Rangers RPM
|-
| Super Sentai || Kamen Rider (especially the Showa Era ones)
|-
| Kamen Rider (most Heisei Era ones) || GARO
|-
| Batman: the Brave & the Bold || Batman: TAS (first two seasons only)
|-
| [[Star Wars RPG|Star Wars Episode I, IV, VI,<br>Star Wars: The Clone Wars Movie and Season 1,<br>and a decent portion of the Expanded Universe]] || [[Star Wars D20|Star Wars Episode II, III, V, VII,<br>Star Wars: The Clone Wars from Season 2 onwards,<br>and the other half the Expanded Universe, especially The New Jedi Order and Legacy]]
|-
| Little House on the Prairie || Deadwood
|-
| Full House || Married With Children
|-
| The Green Zone || The Hurt Locker
|-
| The Sarah Jane Adventures || [[Doctor Who|Torchwood]]
|-
| ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' || ''Black sails''
|-
| ''Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag'' || ''Risen 2: Dark Waters''
|-
| Justice League || Watchmen
|-
| Twilight Saga || Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
|-
| ''Lois and Clark'' or the 80's Superman Movies || ''Man of Steel''
|-
| ''Planetary'' || ''The Authority''
|-
| Cyanide and Happiness || [http://picturesforsadchildren.com/index.php?comicID=132 pictures for sad children]
|-
| The Silver Age of Comic Books || The Dark Age of Comic Books
|-
| [[Steampunk|Steampunk Genre]] || [[Cyberpunk|Cyberpunk Genre]]
|-
| Raspberry Pi || OpenPandora
|-
| South Korea || <s>North</s> BEST Korea
|-
| [[Discworld]] || [[A Song of Ice and Fire]]
|-
| A Wizard of Earthsea || The Tombs of Atuan
|-
| Guilty Gear || BlazBlue
|-
| Mega Man (Classic, Legends, Battle Network,<br>ZX, Star Forces 1 and 2)|| Mega Man (X, Zero, Star Force 3,), The Protomen
|-
| The Chronicles of Narnia|| His Dark Materials
|-
| Anthem || Halo
|-
| Halo || Half-Life 2
|-
| Half-Life 2 || Resistance
|-
| Resistance || Gears of War (The first game especially)
|-
| Gears of War || Killzone
|-
| Just Cause 2 || Spec Ops: The Line
|-
| Plants VS Zombies || The Last of Us
|-
| Mirror's Edge || Assassin's Creed
|-
| Iron Kingdoms MKii || Iron Kingdoms MKi
|-
| Marvel Comics films || [[Grimdark#Grimderp|DC Universe films]]
|-
| DC comics || Marvel comics
|-
| Buffy the Vampire Slayer || Hellsing (any medium)
|-
| Hellsing (2001 series) || Hellsing (manga and OVA)
|-
| Marvel comics || Watchmen comics
|-
| Watchmen comics || Wanted comics
|-
| Warehouse 13 || The [[SCP Foundation]]
|-
| [[Eberron]] || [[Dragonmech]]
|-
| [[Planescape]] || [[Ravenloft]]
|-
| [[Wilderlands of High Fantasy]]|| | [[Forgotten Realms]]
|-
| InFamous || Prototype
|-
| Harry Potter 1-3 || Harry Potter 4-7 (ESPECIALLY 7th)
|-
| Deus Ex 1-2 || System Shock 1-2
|-
| RoboCop || Terminator
|-
| Homeworld 1 and 2 || Homeworld: Cataclysm<br>(when the Beast make their first appearance)
|-
| [[Fist of the North Star]] || Violence Jack
|-
| The Simpsons || South Park
|-
| The Glaive || Conan the Barbarian
|-
| The Hobbit || The Children of Hurin
|-
| American Revolution || Vietnam War
|-
| [[Mordheim]] || [[Malifaux]]
|-
| Civilization:Beyond Earth || [[Alpha Centauri]]
|-
| [[The New Testament]] || [[The Old Testament]]
|-
| Overwatch || [[Team Fortress 2]] (Especially Mann vs. Machine)
|-
| [[Team Fortress 2]] || Team Fortress Classic
|-
| Ghostbusters films and Real Ghostbusters || | Extreme Ghostbusters
|-
| Metal Gear (in general) || | Metal Gear Solid V
|-
| Girls und Panzer || Panzerfraulein Alteseisen
|-
| Far Cry 1 || | Far Cry 2 and 3
|-
| Overstrike || | Fuse
|-
| Pokemon Franchise || | Digimon Franchise
|-
| Digimon Adventure || | Digimon Tamers
|-
| Bakugan || Kiba
|-
| [[Fallout]] series || | S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series
|-
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series || | Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light
|-
| Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light || | Metro 2033 (novel), Metro 2034 (novel),<br>and Metro 2035 (novel)
|-
|[[Approved anime|Slayers]] || | Bastard!!
|-
| Fast And Furious || | Death Race
|-
| Death Race || | Mad Max
|-
| Twilight || | Underworld
|-
| Y:the last man || | Children of men
|-
| Battlefield Bad Company || | Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy
|-
| Call of Duty Modern Warfare trilogy || | Call of Duty Black Ops III
|-
| Dead Rising series || | Left 4 Dead series
|-
| Left 4 Dead series || | Dead Island series
|-
| Dead Island series || | World War Z movie
|-
| World War Z Movie || | World War Z novel
|-
| World War Z Novel || | The Walking Dead comics
|-
| Super Robot anime|| | Real Robot anime
|-
| Real Robot anime|| | WAT Robot anime
|-
| The Go-Betweens|| | The Birthday Party/Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
|-
| League of Legends|| | Dota 2
|-
| Rome: Total War|| | Total War: Attila
|-
| Freespace || | Freespace 2
|-
| Street Fighter franchise || | Mortal Kombat franchise
|-
| Star Wars Jedi: Outcast duology || | Star Wars: Battlefront 1 & 2 (2000's)
|-
| Minecraft || | 7 Days to Die
|-
| Blood Diamond || | Lord of War
|-
| Naoki Urusawa's Monster || ERASED
|-
| Casa de mi Padre || | Sicario
|-
| GammaWorld || | The Mutant Epoch
|-
| Konosuba || Re:Zero
|-
| Log Horizon || Overlord
|-
| Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? || [[Goblin Slayer]]
|-
| This Means War || Savages
|-
| Brave New World (more like GrimBright, really) || [[1984]]
|-
| Sailor Moon (old censored american dub) || Sailor Moon (original version)
|-
| Sailor Moon (original version) || Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
|-
| Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon || Revolutionary Girl Utena
|-
| Revolutionary Girl Utena || Puella Magi Madoka Magica
|-
| Egan's Diaspora || | Dukaj's Perfect Imperfection
|-
| Touhou Project || Crimzon Clover
|-
| Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and White Lantern Corps || Red, Orange, Yellow, Black, and Grey Lantern Corps
|-
| Pod Save America || Chapo Trap House
|-
| Jimmy Neutron, Back to the Future || Rick and Morty
|-
| World War II: Western Front || World War II: Eastern Front
|-
| World War II: Eastern Front || World War II: Pacific Theatre
|-
| World War II: Pacific Theatre || World War I: Western Front
|-
| World War II: French Resistance || World War II: Polish Resistance
|-
| Pork Chop Hill || Tae-Guk-Gi
|-
| [[Death Korps of Krieg]] || [[Xeelee_Sequence#Interim_Coalition_of_Governance|Interim Coalition of Governance]]
|-
| Parasyte || Devilman
|-
| Disney Channel || Cartoon Network
|-
| Cartoon Network || Toonami
|-
| E.T. || IT
|-
| Homo faber || Lolita
|-
| Maple Story || Made in Abyss
|-
| Ready Player One || 20th Century Boys
|-
| My Hero Academia || ONE PUNCH MAN (more like Grimbright, really)
|-
| Grand Theft Auto || Mafia
|-
| [[Superman | Metropolis]] || [[Batman | Gotham City]]
|-
| Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. || Jak 2 and later
|-
| Axis Powers Hetalia || Polandball
|-
| Soren Kierkegaard || Friedrich Nietzsche
|-
| John Stuart Mill || David Benatar
|-
| Noam Chomsky || Michel Foucault
|-
| Jean-Jacques Rousseau || Thomas Hobbes
|-
| Thomas Hobbes || Friedrich Nietzsche
|-
| Friedrich Nietzsche (before Thus Spoke Zarathustra) || Friedrich Nietzsche (after Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
|-
| Friedrich Nietzsche || Mark Twain (Best example being the Mysterious Stranger)
|-
| The American Revolution || The French Revolution
|-
| The French Revolution || The Russian Revolution
|-
| The Settlers || Civilization
|-
| Civilization || Tropico (Can be Grimbright if you are a "benevolent" dictator)
|}

</center>

[[Category:Gamer Slang]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-19T23:07:47Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: /* Shothragot */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of them are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
</gallery>

=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
<gallery>
File:D7b59ix-5a1ad7e3-73d6-4cfc-ab6d-46b7825f13f2.jpg
File:Tumblr inline oyely8D2qp1robfbt 500.png
File:RagnorraFanart.jpg
</gallery>

===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must enter inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s.
=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Elder Evils

2020-06-19T23:05:18Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: /* Kyuss, The Worm That Walks */

[[Elder Evils]] are ancient evil beings of immense power whose existence threatens the world. Some Elder Evils are gods, while others are merely god like beings, such as extremely powerful [[Fiend]]s and creatures of the [[Far Realm]]. The concept of Elder Evils was first talked about in the book [[Lords of Madness]], which lists five beings of immense power that are respected by the Aboleths as the closest thing they have to gods. Later, the [[Splatbook]] Elder Evils went into detail about how to use Elder Evils in a campaign. Elder Evils are also mentioned in 4th and 5th edition.

=3rd Edition=
==Lords of Madness==
While most [[Aboleth]]s do not worship gods, there are five godlike beings that they pay respects to, which are described in the book [[Lords of Madness]].
* [[Bolothamogg]], Him Who Watches from Beyond the Stars: A primal force that keeps the multiverse separated from the outer dimensions.
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below: A gigantic centipede squid thing that eats its way through the material plane, leaving behind a black substance that can be compressed into Bilestone, a substance that debilitates non-aberrations.
* [[Piscaethces]], The Blood Queen: The origin of aboleths. She wanders throughout the multiverse spawning new aboleths. If she were to ever return aboleths would see it as proof that the multiverse isn't infinite.
* [[Shothotugg]], Eater of Worlds: A mass of liquid that travels between worlds, poisoning and parasitizing them and slowly changing the laws of the multiverse as it does so.
* [[Y'chak]], The Violet Flame: A pillar of violet flames concealing a form so horrifying it would destroy anyone who looked at it (a relative of [[Pale Night]] maybe?). It encourages mortals to worship evil gods and may be responsible for the creation of many of those gods.

==Elder Evils (the book)==
The book Elder Evils was released near the end of 3.5 edition as a tool for dungeon masters wanting to end their current campaign and switch to 4th edition. The Elder Evils described in the book are entities with the potential to end the world, and thus end the campaign if the players fail to stop them, or act as a satisfyingly epic final boss for the players. The book instructs the DM on how to base a campaign around stopping one of these beings. The book does not describe every detail of the campaigns like most books, but instead gives a general outline of the plot, plus the stats for major enemies the players will encounter, and details of the final dungeon, and what adjustments to make if the campaign is set in [[Faerun]] or [[Eberron]]. Many of them are not stated, as they are too powerful when fully unleashed for the players to stop, but instead only have stats for an aspect of them.

===[[Atropus]]===
Known as The World Born Dead, Atropus is a moon sized undead creature that is as old as creation and desires the end of all life. It destroys worlds by crashing on them and then draining them of all positive energy. Atropus cannot be destroyed, but the players can drive it away. As Atropus approaches the world necromancy spells become more powerful and the dead begin to rise as undead spontaneously. Atropus itself has no stats, but the Aspect of Atropus is a CR 23 undead. Atropus is also infested with many kinds of undead, including famine spirits, advanced deathshriekers, rage winds, angels of decay, nightcrawlers, nightwalkers, nightwings, dread wraiths, and a single dread boneyard. Atropus is also a very hostile environment with no atmosphere unless it is about to collide with the world, and has a variety of effects that harm the living and boost the undead.

In the suggested campaign, Caira Xasten (human, level 5 bard, level 5 rogue, level 10 [[Ur-Priest]]) wants to attract Atropus to destroy the world to get revenge on the gods, blaming them for the death of her husband who was killed by a falling meteorite. To do this she and her cult first seek out a book about Atropus, then try to obtain the [[Book of Vile Darkness]] in order to learn the ''apocalypse of the sky'' spell which she will attempt to cast on a large city to attract Atropus with the mass death. Meanwhile, the world is also invaded by a powerful general of [[Orcus]] who also wants to summon Atropus named Gorguth ([[Bodak]], level 2 ranger, level 1 fighter, level 9 blackguard), who rides on a powerful construct named Skyshadow and leading his own army of the undead to cause mass death. After failing to stop either one of them, the players then must travel to Atropus and battle against a variety of undead monsters until they find and defeat the aspect of Atropus, which will cause Atropus to retreat.
<gallery>
File:Atropus.jpg
File:Map of Atropus's Face.jpg|so big that his face has a travel map.
</gallery>

=== [[Father Llymic]] ===
Father Llymic is an entity from the [[Far Realm]] that sleeps in an icy prison that melts in darkness and thickens in sunlight. It wants to remake the world to be more hospitable to itself and its children, which it then creates by spreading a plague that turns the infected into creatures like itself known as brood spawn. The more people Father Llimic infects, the more he comes out of his sleep, and as it awakes the sun starts to go out, and darkness spells grow stronger while light spells weaken. He is called Father Llymic because he often projects an illusion of a friendly old man. Its true form is a massive demon like creature with scythes for arms, three eyes, and skin covered in icy crystal, with a CR of 18. Beings converted into brood spawn gain similar features.

In the suggested campaign, the player are sent to investigate the disappearance of a caravan that was attacked by a tribe of barbarians that worship Father Llymic. After this a huge glacier and icy weather spreads down from the mountain where Father Llymic is imprisoned and strange ice monsters start attacking people. Soon whole towns and villages are transformed into brood spawn as the weather gets worse and worse while the sun gets darker and darker. The players must travel up the mountain while battling through mad cultists and many kinds of brood spawn to face and defeat Father Llymic.

<Gallery>
File:Father Lymic.jpg
</Gallery>

===[[The Hulks of Zoretha]]===
The Hulks of Zoretha are five giants made of stone from another world that plan to exterminate all life on this plane to make room for them to repopulate it with their own kind. As they awaken, the moon turns red, causing people to experience uncontrollable rage. Four of the hulks are female and are each associated with a different element while the last one is male and has wings. They are also completely indestructible as long as they are asleep. All of them are CR 16.

In the suggested campaign, Soelma Nilaenish (elf, level 7 wizard, level 10 loremaster, level 1 rogue) hires the party to recover a copy of the Zoretha Scrolls, then later hires them again to protect the scrolls. She then travels with the party to stop the leader of the cult of Zoretha, Janwulf the Soulbiter (ice giant, level 11 bard). But after Janwulf is defeated Soelma betrays the party and takes control of the cult herself. Soelma is in fact horribly depressed and wants the world to be destroyed, while the old leader of the cult, Janwulf actually had no interest in waking up the hulks and just wanted power. The party then stops Soelma from completing the ritual to wake up the hulks but the moon doesn't return to normal and the whole world is at war. A single cultist escapes from the players and finishes the ritual to wake up the hulks and the players must then destroy them.

===The Leviathan===
An immense sea monster that will destroy the world if it ever wakes up. As it gets close to awakening, the world is affected by extreme weather. The Leviathan does not have stats, as it is too big for the players to fight, but the players may battle against aspects of the leviathan, which are CR 16, or an advanced aspect, which is CR 20.

In the suggested campaign, the players save a port town from a disaster and are sent to investigate the cause of the strange weather. The party then encounters an defeats a cult that worships the leviathan, but their leader, a mysterious man named Enshaddon, escapes. Enshaddon is actually an advanced vampiric [[Ixitxachitl]] with 16 cleric levels named Axihuatl. He is a worshiper of Demogorgon and wants to partially wake up the leviathan using a shard of chaos in order to flood the world. After the players first disrupt his plans, he sends Marcus Hape (human, level 4 rogue, level 4 assassin, level 4 thrall of Demogogon) to kill them. With the help of a sage named Mytus who provides the players with magic and equipment for underwater travel, the players attack a temple located in a hollow spine on the leviathan's back and interrupt Axihuatl's ritual to wake up the leviathan, causing him to lose control of the beast. Axihuatl then allies with the players because he does not want the leviathan to completely destroy the world. They must then travel deeper into the temple and throw the shard of chaos into a pit at the bottom to put the leviathan back to sleep.

=== [[Pandorym]] ===
In ancient times, a group of wizards wanted to blackmail the gods. So they summoned a powerful eldritch abomination from "the space 'between' the planes" named Pandorym, contracted it to destroy all the gods, immediately sealed it away before it could do so by imprisoning its mind and body separately, and used the threat of its reunification as the divine blackmail. Fortunately the wizards didn't implement a deadman's switch or anything, so the gods smote their stupid asses when they heard their first demands and wiped the group from the face of history. If made whole, Pandorym will first take revenge on the descendants of the wizards that imprisoned it, then kill all the gods as it was contracted to do. If the contract's completion doesn't return it "home", it'll destroy the universe out of frustration/boredom.

Pandorym's mindless body resembles a huge [[Sphere of Annihilation]] that moves towards anyone that tries to control it, which is kept in an unknown extradimensional prison. Pandorym's mind is sealed within a large near-indestructible crystal and is immensely powerful even without its body; the tiny leakage through the crystal is enough to corrupt nearby high level characters and obliterate the minds of weaker-willed folks, a small "fragment" of its mind is a ''CR 25'' Psionic threat, and the fully released mind is an unstatted behemoth that only divine intervention could stop...

...so far, so first-edition [[Tharizdun]]. It's unfortunate that Pandorym's sign interferes with the planar connections of the world (via a sky-spanning glyph) and makes conjuration+divine magic increasingly difficult as its mind gains influence. Presumably its fully released mind would completely block the world off and make divine intervention near impossible.

In the suggested campaign, Tune Majii (human, Level 2 bard, level 2 wizard) hires the player to find her missing father Lucather (quell, level 8 enchanter, level 10 loremaster), who has become enslaved to Pandorym. Meanwhile, the gods begin sending their mortal followers warnings that somebody is trying to unleash an unimaginably powerful evil. This person turns out to be the [[Inevitable]] named Obligatum VII (kolyarut, level 3 [[Hexblade]], level 5 [[Occult Slayer]]), our wiki's literal poster child of [[Lawful Stupid]]. Obligatum VII wants to release Pandorym because the poor old eldritch abomination entered into a bad-faith contract and ''must'' receive rightful legal remedy for the indignity, [[Lawful Stupid|regardless of the god-ending possibly-universe-ending consequences]]. The players will have to travel to the prison where Pandorym's mind is kept and defeat Lucather and Obligatum VII before they can smash the crystal open with Obligatum's adamantine sword. If the players succeed, they may have to travel to [[Mechanus]] and prevent Obligatum VIII's creation (who'd start this shit all over again).
<gallery>
File:Pandorym.jpg
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=== [[Ragnorra]] ===
Ragnorra is an entity of corrupted life that wants to remake all life to fit her own ideals of what life should be. She travels between worlds in the form of a red comet, which crashes down on the world and begins spreading her skin and nerves over the planet, warping all creatures into aberrations. As Ragnorra gets closer to landing, positive energy spells become stronger but also cause gross blemishes, Ragnorra's spores start to fall from the sky that turn things into swarms of pests, living things gain healing abilities but are slowly corrupted into aberrations, and eventually even the dead start rising as aberrations, while undead are forced to flee unless they are underground. When Ragnorra crashes onto a planet she is reduced to a fraction of her full size but is still gargantuan size and has is CR 19 in both her initial form after landing, and her True Mother form taken when she merges with the neurotangle.

In the suggested campaign, a cult that worships Ragnorra called the Malshapers attempts to attract Ragnorra to the player's world using kidnapped people and other stolen living entities as bait to guide her on her path to the world. The leader of the cult is Irthicax Vane ([[Zenythri]], level 17 monk), whose world was destroyed by Ragnorra and once fought against her, but eventually went mad and turned to worshiping her, though the players may be able to convince him to help stop her. As Ragnorra approaches, mysterious springs with healing properties start popping up everywhere that are controlled by the Malshapers. Swarms of vermin begin appearing in cities, and in response to this undead beings start showing up to fight them. As the red comet continues to get closer the undead all start leaving. While the players are investigating to see if the undead are planning anything, they get repeatedly attacked by low rogues sent the Malshapers. Then an [[Aboleth]] mage with the ability to breath air falls from the sky and enslaves the risen corpses of the Malshapers. Then Ragnorra crashes into the earth and creates an enormous crater full of aberrations and corrupt flesh. The players must travel across this crater to reach the center and confront Ragnorra. Once she has transformed into her True Mother form, the players must defeat her by breaking her connection with the planet, and thus forcing her to leave.
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===[[Sertrous]]===
Sertrous was a powerful [[Obyrith]] that was killed in the distant past, but whose spirit clings to life in his severed skull. He was first killed for refusing to serve [[The Queen of Chaos]] but his spirit escaped to the material plane where he possessed a snake an made it into his new body. After he sent armies of snakes and monsters to attack mortals because he was jealous of the worship the gods received from them, he was then killed again by a Solar named Avamerin, but not before Sertrous revealed the secret that divine magic is possible to gain from any kind of faith, not just faith in a god. Avamerin at first didn't understand what Sertrous had said and shared the words with others, and when godless clerics started appearing as a result he was punished by being demoted to a Planetar. Avamerin then turned on his god and began working to bring Sertrous back to life. Avamerin now leads a cult of heretical [[Yuan-ti]] called The Vanguard of Sertrous that claims Sertrous is the true creator of the Yuan-ti. As Sertrous gets closer to returning to life, encounters with snakes and snake-like monsters become more and more frequent. Sertrous does not have stats because he is nothing but a immobile skull, but the players may fight against a CR 23 aspect of Sertrous.

In the suggested campaign, the players are hired to find out why a merchant has cut contact with his business partners and discover that he has fallen under the sway of a group of Yuan-ti who are lead by somebody named Seghulerak (Yuan-ti abomination, level 10 cleric, level 5 thaumaturgist) and do not worship the traditional Yuan-ti gods. Seghulerak and the Vanguard of Sertrous seize control of a major Yuan-ti city and start setting up ''serpentgates'' in temples around the world from which to launch invasions. The players investigate an infestation of snakes and interfere with the creation of one of these gates. The players eventually makes their way to the city where the Vanguard of Sertrous is based after many battles against Yuan-ti and other snake monsters and defeat Seghulerak, but her body vanishes when she is killed, leaving behind a pile of dead headless snakes. After some investigation the players learn about the Serpent Reliquary, an extradimensional temple that is the true base of the Vanguard. The players locate the portal the Reliquary and defeat Seghulerak again. After this they meet Avamerin, who will try to trick the players into leaving by lying that Sertrous never existed and this was all a test by the gods. If the players attack and defeat him, he is transformed into the aspect of Sertrous which the players must destroy. If the players are dumb enough to fall for his trick, he might send them to a layer of the abyss disguised as their home.

===[[Kyuss]], The [[Worm That Walks]]===
The Worm That Walks is an evil demigod named [[Kyuss]] that wants to conquer the world and bring about the age of worms to become a full god. As get gets closer to escaping his prison, the world becomes infested with giant centipedes and other worm-like monsters. [[Kyuss]] was once a prophet of an evil god who attempted to ascend to godhood by sacrificing all of his followers and transforming into a great monster made of worms, but he got stuck between mortality and godhood and trapped inside an obelisk. The Worm That Walks is a CR 20 aberration.

In the suggested campaign, Edwin Tolstoff (human lesser worm that walks, level 3 necromancer, level 3 cleric, level 10 true necromancer), escapes from his prison by having his grandchildren kill their mother and release him, causing spawn of Kyuss to start appearing. Edwin wants to released Kyuss from his prison because he hates being a worm that walks and hopes that Kyuss will either kill him or restore his humanity. The players are called to solve a murder mystery, whose culprit is a wererat named Draen, who works for Katarin Tolstoff. After solving this mystery, people are kidnapped and the players track them down to find an [[Avolakia]] who is turning his captives into spawn of Kyuss. Though the players defeat him, people continue disappearing all over the nation. When the party's spellcaster visits a local wizard's guild, they find that it has been ransacked and most of the wizard transformed into undead by Edwin. The most notable item he has stolen is a [[Well of Many Worlds]]. The Herald of Kyuss (Avolakia, level 8 cleric) working for Edwin then poses as an NPC ally the players know and tells them that a wizard named Emirikol the Chaotic is planning to destroy the universe by putting a [[Sphere of Annihilation]] into the well. This is a trick by Edwin to give him the chance to steal a Talisman of the Sphere from Emirikol while the players are fighting him. But Edwin is unable to find a sphere of annihilation, and so anonymously hires the players to go to the [[Tomb of Horrors]] and secretly follows them so that he can steal the sphere from the tomb. The players then must chase him to Wormcrawl island to stop him from using it to break Kyuss's prison. When he reaches the obelisk he completes the ritual and places the sphere of annihilation into the well of many worlds, creating a black hole and releasing Kyuss. The players will have to defeat Kyuss and stop the black hole from destroying reality if it isn't stopped by divine intervention. If you don't have the [[Exemplars of Evil]] book, which includes the stats and description of Edwin's grandchildren and Drean, it suggests replacing Edwin with a different villain. The book also suggests combining this plot with the [[Adventure Path]], ''Age of Worms'' from [[Dungeon Magazine]], which also features Kyuss.

===[[Zargon]]===
Zargon is an ancient evil who once ruled over [[Baator]] as the father of the [[Baatorian]]s before Baator was conquered by Asmodeus and his [[Baatezu]]. Although he was defeated by Asmodeus, he could not be killed even by the gods and was imprisoned on the material plane. His horn is nearly indestructible and he will regenerate from it if the rest of his body is destroyed. Now he has given up on reclaiming Baator and wants to conquer the mortal world. As he gets closer to awakening the world is affected by extreme weather, including rains of slime that pollute water sources with a contagion that can turn people into [[slime]]s called Whelps of Zargon. Zargon is only CR 16, though according to the fluff he is capable of killing gods due to them being vulnerable to his powers.

Dorn (Cynidicean, Level 1 rogue, level 3 fighter, level 3 ranger, level 7 thrall of Juiblex), the son of Zargon's high cultists, flees from Cynidicea, only to be captured by gnolls and rescued by the party. Zargon begins to wake up as his cultists dig him up. Dorn then gets captured by the cult of Juiblex who tortured and eventually brainwashed him into joining them. The players are then hired by an archeologists named Vanessa (Tiefling, level 7 [[Archivist]], level 7 [[Entropomancer]]) to take her to Cynidicea. However she gets separated from the party on the way and finds her way to Cynidicea alone, where she ends up joining Zargon's cult. The awakening of Zargon attracts the attention of [[Juiblex]], who sends Dorn to make an alliance with Zargon. [[Zuggtmoy]] attempts to stop Juiblex by having their own cult frame the Juiblex's cult for murders, which the party investigates. Vanessa convinces Dorn to take control of Zargon's cult with her, and they sacrifice Dorn's father to speed up Zargon's revival. Several factions try to manipulate the players into leading them to Zargon's resting places and the players must play them against each other to find out about Zargon and where to find him. The players eventually make it to Zargon's tomb just as he is fully revived and defeat him and his cultists and ooze servants. But in order to destroy Zargon permanently, they will have to throw his horn into the Eye of Zargon deep underground.

==Dragon Magazine==
Two more being described as Elder Evils appeared in [[Dragon Magazine]].

Zurguth, The Feasting Vast is mentioned in the article Ecology of the Kaorti, in issue #358. Zurguth is an extremely powerful monster of the [[Far Realm]] in the form of an ocean of flesh. It accidentally created the [[Kaorti]] just by looking at a group of wizards who entered the Far Realm.

===[[Shothragot]]===
Shothragot is detailed in issue #362, in an article written similarly to a chapter of the Elder Evils book. Shothragot is an avatar of [[Tharizdun]] sealed beneath the temple of the Elder Elemental Eye, who works to free Tharizdun from his prison by collecting the 333 gems of Tharizdun. Shothragot itself is too big for the players to defeat and so doesn't have stats, instead, the players must ender inside of Shothragot and fight the Essence of Shothragot, which is CR 22. As Shothragot gets closer to completing is the goal the sky is covered in a Seal of Binding, similar to the one produced by Pandorym.

=4th Edition=
{{Dnd-stub}}
During 4th Edition, several of the Elder Evils were adapted by Dragon Magazine as potential sources of power for [[Warlock]]s.
=5th Edition=
Zargon the Returner was listed as a possible patron for great old one warlocks in the Players Handbook. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes describes the Elder Evils as the source of monsters known as [[Star Spawn]] and it includes a list of Elder Evils, which include both the elder evils from Lords of Madness, a few from the Elder Evils book, and some new ones.

* [[Ityak-Ortheel]], the Elf-Eater
* [[Dendar]], the Night Serpent
* [[Borem]] of the Lake of Boiling Mud
* [[Kezef]], the Chaos Hound
* [[Zargon]], the Returner
* [[Carmnod]], the Unseen
* [[Holashner]], the Hunger Below
* [[Piscaethces]], the Blood Queen
* [[Shothotugg]], the Eater of Worlds
* [[Y'chak]], the Violet Flame
* [[Bolothamogg]], Who Watches from Beyond the Stars
* [[Hargut]], of the Gray Pestilence
* [[Haask]], the Voice of Hargut
* [[Ragnorra]], the Mother of Monsters
* The Hulks of [[Zoretha]]
* [[Kyuss]], the Worm That Walks
* [[Tharizdun]], the Elder Elemental Eye
* [[Atropus]], the World Born Dead
* [[Pandorym]], the Utter Annihilation
* [[Haemnathuun]], the Blood lord
* [[Maram]] of the Great Spear
* [[Tyranthraxus]], the Flamed One
* [[The Queen of Chaos]]
* [[Father Llymic]], the Alien Thought Given Flesh

{{Template:D&D-Nonhuman-Deities}}

[[Category:Roleplaying]]
[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]]
[[Category:Game Books]]
[[Category:Splatbook]]

Yu-Gi-Oh

2020-06-19T22:28:11Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: /* Monster Cards */

[[File:Poogioh.jpeg|500px|thumb|right|With a [[pokemon]] backdrop, too.]]
{{Topquote|The only thing intricate about [[Paradox poker|this game]] is its ban list.|[[Magnus the Red]], ''[[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device]]}}

'''Yu-Gi-Oh''' (also written '''Yu-Gi-Oh!''') is a [[Collectible Card Game|CCG]] (stands for "Children's Card Game", according to the popular Abridged Series) produced by Konami which is based off a [[Anime|shonen battle manga]] of the same name (literally meaning King of Games in Japanese). It can be surprisingly fun, and while confusing at first, it becomes second nature to most after just a few games.

While it does have some major rules problems thanks to idiotic rulings by Konami (i.e. missing the timing, semi hidden information going into hidden information zones, and an errata policy based mostly on what cards get reprinted), Yu-gi-oh is not as bad as some people have been led to believe; it has a quite interesting amount of game styles to choose from in the way you use the cards in your "deck" which is quite customisable.

...At least, unless you are playing in a tournament, in which case the majority of players will be playing 3 different deck styles max, because power creep 'n' seep is a bitch like that. The [[#Formats and Ban Lists|banlist]] has usually been the primary means of balance, meant to keep the best current playstyle(s) from overruning the meta for TOO long. In addition to outright banning cards that completely fuck the balance (ideally, anyway), other cards are limited so that the play styles that aren't completely gimped can still perform their strats reliably, without surgically excising chance from the game altogether like several older infamous combos, a few of which necessitated the creation of its Forbidden section.

Unlike most trading card games, Yu-Gi-Oh has no set rotation. This means you can play every card released in your region since the game started in 1999/2002 today if it isn't banned. While most of the useful cards from this era have been banned or power crept, cards like Dark Hole (released in Volume 1, the very first OCG product) can remain options. Further, old cards often get new cards as support that allows them to see continued use. This is especially so since many of these early cards are very iconic, like Volume 1's Dark Magician. A card need not be iconic to get support (though that makes it significantly more likely), and even really random old cards can get some attention. Supporting this is the lack of a Reserved List, and Konami's ability to reprint any card (except Tyler the Great Warrior, a one off gift to a dying child, and a handful of Japan-only cross promotion cards that were just normal monsters) at any time, even re-releasing promos to the generic public. Even entire sets can be reprinted at once, and while full on reprints of much older sets are primarily seen in Korea and certain facsimilie promos (that will likely never happen in the west due to the lawyer encouraged renaming of "Magic Card"s to "Spell Card"s) packs that combine two or more older sets have been released with some frequency. The upside to this is that the card pool is huge, currently exceeding 10,000 cards, and can provide limitless combonations. The downside to this is that the card pool is huge, and those 10,000+ cards are impossible to keep track of and can combine with new cards in unexpected combos that destroy the game. One notorious example is Grinder Golem: Once a trash card that blew your summon to give yourself two weak tokens and your opponent a large beatstick, it got banned after Link Monsters came about and used it in multiple infinite or otherwise degenerate combos.

At first it was just played by a few groups of people over the world, but then it got a major increase in its player base after its anime dropped in the West. It is a relatively simple to play game that can keep you entertained for hours thanks to deck building and combo opportunities. It's an alright game for playing with friends, but the competitive scene for it is awful, partly due to the community being [[That Guy|kinda shitty]]; while something of an understatement, it's to be expected from a long-running grog magnet, to say nothing of its various anime and [[Weeaboo|some of the fans]] THOSE have attracted.

Mostly, though, it's due to Konami's usual practice of releasing new stuff, often in the form of 'structure' (i.e. preassembled) decks that generally fall into one of two categories: they're A) broken as shit, which sells more packs while potentially buttfucking the meta until the next banlist; or B) gimmicky as shit and thus utterly useless outside of select reprinted cards, even on a casual level (which was the case for many of the first ones released). In that regard, they're akin to good ol' Games Workshop - which, if you consider their reputation outside of this TCG, is being EXTREMELY generous. This has also given birth to the ''Yu-Gi-Oh! Meta Cycle'':

#Did the company release a structure deck or set containing cards that are either new or powering up an old archetype?
#If yes, do said cards make a new deck which dominates the meta completely and warps the game?
#If yes, sit back and await a sudden update to the Limited/Forbidden list, and take a shot for each of those new cards that make it. Try not to die of alcohol poisoning.
#Enjoy the new format until new overpowered cards are released, which brings you back to step 1. Rinse and repeat.

==How to Play==
Yu-Gi-Oh is rather similar to [[Magic the Gathering]] in terms of play; in fact, it was introduced in the manga as a sort of Magic clone that was one of many featured games (it's even called ''Magic and Wizards''), from which point its popularity took off and changed the manga's entire focus as the game was fleshed out and became something more relatively unique. You can guess how much a [[Skub|point of contention]] this is for the respective fanbases.

Each player starts with a 40-60 card deck plus a 0-15 card extra deck (both of these ''used'' to have no maximum, but someone actually took a 2000+ card deck to a tournament) and tries to take his opponent's 8000 life points down to 0. If you are playing a best 2 out of 3 match, you can also use a side deck of up to 10 cards. It also is possible to win by making the opponent run out of main deck cards, as they also lose if they must draw but have no cards left. There also are a small number of cards that allow you to win automatically by meeting a difficult condition, such as the Exodia cards, which make you win if you have all 5 of them in your hand, or Final Countdown, which makes you win in 20 turns. Players take turns to play creatures and spells, attack the opponent's creatures and deal with some of the most badass cards brought to play.

The number of cards you can have in play is currently limited as follows: you can have five monsters (and one which you summon from the extra deck!), five spells/traps and one field spell in play at the same time. If you have five monsters you cannot summon additional ones without sacrificing others; you also can't play spell/trap cards if you already have five of them active, but you can play a field card if you already have one (in which case, the former field gets destroyed).

Note that 8000 is a really fucking huge number of life points to keep track of: you might want to bring a notebook, calculator or app along to keep track of your life points. The manga and anime starts with 2000 instead (later 4000 due to power creep).

Notable compared other TCG's, Yu-Gi-Oh lacks a 'cost' mechanic the way Magic has with lands, [[Pokemon]] has energy, or Hearthstone has with mana. The limiting factor for powerful monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh are (generally) that they need other monsters to be 'spent' to bring them out, either on the field or with the aid of a spell card, you need to expend some monster to bring out a bigger one, and you can normally only normal summon once per turn.

===The makeup of a card===
The three basic types of cards in Yu-Gi-Oh are Monster, Spell and Trap.

====Monster Cards====
These cards are your warriors who will do the fighting for you. Monsters have levels, which affects how you summon them. Monsters from level 1 to 4 can be summoned normally. Monsters of level 5 and 6 require you to sacrifice one of your monsters, 7 or higher require two sacrifices. Monsters also have Attributes (think the colors from Magic the Gathering, except there are seven, and they are less important), Monster Types (like creature type, there are 23, including fish, aqua and sea serpent), Attack and Defense (Strength and Toughness). There are eight types of them (or nine if you count tokens). The first four (or five) are from the early days of the game, with the latter four being added in 2008 and onwards:
*Normal - Coloured yellow. A straightforward card with no abilities. They used to be pretty common place as the "basic" units in the earliest stages of the game, but became increasingly rare with the rise of good Effect Monsters. Has received support cards at times, and modern ones typically have higher attack for their levels, but Effect Monsters remain the most commonly used. Note that monsters that do not have effects do not necessarily count as Normal Monsters, for example, a Fusion monster without an effect is a non-effect Fusion monster, not a Normal Fusion monster.
*Effect - Coloured orange unless they also belong to another class of monster. A monster that has a special ability. These are the most commonly used monsters. In the early days of the game the effect monsters were balanced by typically being weaker than normal monsters but eventually powerful effect monsters started showing up. It's almost a rule now that every monster must have an effect.
*Token: Colored grey. Token monsters are a special class of monster which are not kept in any of the decks and do not required that you even have the card to play them). Although most tokens that can be summoned do exist as cards, [[Proxy| you can instead place any form of marker on the monster zone to represent it]]. Because of this, cards that have the ability to summon tokens will always tell you the token's properties. Tokens always count as normal monsters, even if the card that summoned them gives them effect-like properties. Tokens cannot be turned face down and are treated as ceasing to exist if they are removed from the field. Tokens cannot be used as overlays for summoning XYZ monsters, but they can be used to pay the cost for summoning other kinds of monsters, unless the card that summoned them puts a restriction on what they can be used for, and a few cards forbid using tokens to pay their costs. They also cannot be used to pay an effect cost if the effect specifically says to send the paid card to a specific place, since they can't exist off the field. For example, they can be used as a tribute to pay a cost, which would normally send the card to the graveyard, but they can't be used to pay a cost that specifically says to send the paid card to the graveyard. Because they do not exist as actual cards in the deck, it is possible to summon more than three copies of the same token. Most tokens are extremely weak, so their primary purpose is for stalling the opponent or for paying costs.
*Ritual - Coloured blue. A ritual monster is summoned using a ritual spell card and tributing monsters. They are placed in the main deck and cannot be summoned without a ritual spell. Usually has an effect, but not always.
*Fusion - Coloured violet. A fusion monster is one where you have to combine two or more cards in order to summon it. This combining is done by the special abilities of other cards, usually the spell card, Polymerization, though not always. Modern fusion monsters usually have effects, but rarely did early on. Since alternative extra deck monster types were created, the support they've gotten in the form of actually good fusion monsters and better Polymerization searchers and replacements has actually caused them to be ''more'' used than they originally were.
** Early Fusion Monster- In the early days of the game, nobody used them without cheating them out since, while high attack, they required at least ''three'' specific cards, generally bad/useless on their own, be in your hand/field simultaneously for what most of the time was just a normal monster with a high attack that still died to any removal and was generally still weaker than just giving Gemini Elf an axe (two cards that can be used without the other). Few still get some play because of Instant fusion giving you an easy material for another card and there are not many newer low-level Fusions, but otherwise the only one that sees any play is Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon because it's the best target for Fists of the Unrivaled Tenyi.
**Contact Fusion - A variation of Fusion that involves either sending the cards that make up the fusion material into the graveyard or the banishment zone, or shuffling them into the deck. Polymerization is not needed; this effect is inherent to the Contact Fusion monsters in question. This effect is commonly found on A-to-Z monsters, the Neos, Gladiator Beast and Ritual Beast archetypes, and a few other cards. This means that while the lack of dependency on Polymerization cards makes them easier to play, these cards require their tributes to be on the field instead of either on the field or in the player's hand.
**Transformation Summon - Limited to the Masked HERO archetype, Transformation Summons requires a tribute of one card in favor of another, more powerful one. This requires the play of a Change-type spell, of which there are three. Because all Change cards are Quick-Play, you can play them during the Battle Phase in order to avoid negative effects or targeted destruction by your opponent, as well as attack several times in a single turn.
*Synchros - Coloured white. They go in the fusion deck, now known as an extra deck, and are summoned by sending monsters with a total level equal to theirs to the graveyard, including one tuner monster. These quickly dominated the meta when they came out because of how easy they are to bring out with the number of cards that make it easy to bring the lower level monsters needed to summon them by time they were released and Konami made sure to make all the initial ones ''really'' good.
**Dark Synchros (anime and ''Tag Force'' video games only)- Used to summon Dark Synchro monsters. Instead of adding the values of the Tuner and the non-Tuner monsters together the level of the Tuner monster is ''subtracted'' from the level of the non-Tuner monster. This matters a lot more in the anime, where they are treated as their own card type. When the cards were adapted to the CCG the became just Synchro monsters that required specific materials.
**Double Tuning - The rare Synchro monsters that require two Tuner monsters to summon. There are only five of them in the game.
**Accel Synchro - Just like regular Synchro summoning, except all material cards have to be Synchro cards themselves.
*XYZ - Coloured black with streaking stars. Pronounced "Exceeds", and summoned by placing two or more cards of the same level on top of each other and can expend them to activate its effects. Instead of a level they have a rank that reflects the level of the monsters that must be "overlayed" to summon them from the extra deck. Like Synchros, these are largely the dominant force in competitive play with how easy it is to summon two monster of the same level.
**XYZ Evolution - XYZ Evolution monsters can be XYZ summoned as normal, but they can also use a single specific card as XYZ Material. This can be either from the effect of the XYZ monster itself or a Spell card. Many XYZ Evolution monsters are either CXYZ or Number-C monsters.
*Pendulum - Coloured the same colour as the other monster type they are in their top half and green in their bottom half, with a transition between the two, to show how they're like a mix of monster and Spell. Thus you can have Normal Pendulum monsters, Effect Pendulum monsters, XYZ Pendulum, Fusion Pendulum, etc. There are currently no ritual pendulum monsters or link pendulum monsters in existence, though this may change in the future. These are monsters that can also be played as spells in the pendulum zones, and go to the extra deck when they're destroyed while on the field. With the release of Link monsters, the rules have changed to remove the Pendulum zones, so now they are played in the same zones as regular spells. They have a number called a scale, which is used when they are played as a spell card. They also allow you to summon a bunch of monsters in one turn, as long as the levels are between the scales of the two pendulum monsters you have in your pendulum zones. Newfags.
*Link - Coloured blue like Ritual monsters, but in another shade and with a hexagonal background. They have a link rating instead of a level or rank and have no DEF and can never be in defence position. They go in the extra deck, and are summoned by sending a number of monsters you control to the graveyard whose total Link Rating is equal to the summoned monster's Link Rating (monsters that do not have a link rating count as 1). They have Link markers that point to other monster zones, and you can summon other links monsters (formerly required for ''any'' extra deck monster) from the Extra Deck to the zones pointed at by the markers. Their effects often relate to the zones pointed to by the arrows. Newerfags.

On top of that, there are several secondary monster types that said monsters have on top of their normal type:
*Flip - When a Flip monster is attacked when it is face down or turned up by its controller or an effect, it triggers its own effect. Having the monster destroyed or exiled outside of being attacked, the effect does not trigger. Can trigger multiple times if an effect turns it face down.
*Gemini - A Gemini monster is played as a regular Normal monster. It can later (either a later turn or outright, depending on what other cards its controller plays) be summoned again as if it entered the field from a player's hand. When it is, it triggers its effect. And no, Gemini Elf is not a Gemini monster.
*Spirit - When a Spirit monster is summoned, it returns to its owner's hand from the field during the End Phase. This means that Spirit monsters have little staying power, and they cannot be Special Summoned.
*Toon - Toon monsters resemble existing monsters in the game in a cartoony style. They rely on the Toon World card, and they are frequently destroyed if Toon World is.
*Tuner - These monsters are mandatory if you want to run a Synchros deck. While it is tempting to make a deck of nothing but Tuner monsters to make sure you always have one, most Synchros monsters require at least one non-Tuner monster or a monster of a particular type instead.
*Union - Often weak on their own, Union monsters can equip themselves to another monster to grant said monster a special effect. If that monster were to be destroyed, its equipped Union monster is destroyed instead.

====Spell Cards====
These cards are for support, augmenting monsters, giving you more cards or life points, stunning the opponent...etc, anything to give you an upper hand in the battle. They are coloured green. They have have six subtypes:
*Normal - A one-time use card that is discarded after its effect is completed
*Continuous - The effect persists, so long as the card is still in play
*Equip - Equipped on a monster card to augment their stats or give them special abilities
*Quick-Play - Like a normal spell, but can be played in response to other card or card effect activations. If they are set they can also be activated during the opponent's turn like a trap card..
*Ritual - A card which lets you sacrifice monsters whose total levels are a certain amount in order to bring forth the patron of the ritual, a ritual monster (see above).
*Field - Changes the attribute of the playing field, which can give certain monsters buffs or penalties (I.E: Water monsters benefit from Umi and Dark monsters benefit from Yami). It used to be that only 1 field spell may be active at a time, but later rules made it that each player may have their own field spell at the same time. Unlike other types of spell cards, you can place a field spell on the field even if your field spell zone is already occupied, which destroys the card in it.

====[[Trap]] Cards====
Trap cards can't be played directly and have to be deployed in the face-down position. As their name implies; they're traps for your opponent, which can be triggered either by your decision or once your opponent meets certain conditions. Thanks to the animu's flair for the dramatic, you're required to say "[[Meme|YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!]]" in a loud and smug fashion when activating, while dramatically flipping your trap card. Verbally explaining the trap's effects in a dramatic fashion is optional. They are coloured pink. Trap Cards exist in three kinds:
*Normal - This sort of card can be used once and discarded after its effect is completed
*Continuous - This kind of trap persists so long as the card is still on the field.
*Counter Trap - A trap used to counter other cards; the only thing that can stop a counter trap is another counter trap. Also single-use like normal traps.
*Trap Monster - A trap card that has the ability to summon itself and become a monster. They may be treated as a normal monster or an effect monster depending on the text of the card. Most trap monsters are continuous traps and are treated as a monster and a trap at the same time while they are on the field, and take up two zones instead of one (a monster zone and a spell/trap zone). A few which may be called pseudo trap monsters are normal traps instead and are not treated as a trap at the same time when summoned as a monster and only take up one zone. This changed in the 2020 rules and now ''all'' trap monsters don't take up a trap card space when activated.

===The Turn===
*The turn starts with a '''Begin of Turn''' phase where some things can happen depending on the cards in play, but most of the time this turn is just filler.
*The '''Draw Phase''' allows you to draw 1 card from your deck. Again, some abilities might be triggered in this phase, but it's not all that flashy.
*The '''Standby Phase''' the phase that happens between the Draw and Main Phase. Nothing really happens here, but some abilities use this as part of their trigger requirements.
*The '''First Main Phase''' is where it all happens: you can play 1 monster and as many magic/trap cards as you like. Monsters can either be '''Summoned''' or '''Set'''. Summoning means they are placed in a face-up upright position; this makes their Attack stat the number used in the combat phase. If a monster is set it is placed in a face-down position turned 90 degrees to the right; this makes their Defense stat the number used in combat. You can only summon one monster normally, although card effects may allow you to conduct a "special summon" which is basically the same except that they are almost always summoned face-up and they don't take up your normal summon
*The '''Battle Phase''' has four sub phases. Again it has a Start and End step in which some effects trigger, but most of the time they're just there to look pretty. The big part of this is the Battle and Damage steps: you choose one of your monsters and attack one of your opponent's monsters. You then compare your monster's Attack to the other monster's opposing stat. If it is in Attack Position you compare the two Attack scores: the monster with the lowest Attack is destroyed and its controller loses life equal to the difference in Attack. If the scores are equal both monsters are destroyed. If the monster is in Defense Position you compare your Attack to the other's Defense: if yours is lower or equal then you lose life (but not your monster) equal to the difference (obviously you can't lose zero life), if yours is higher the other monster is destroyed but the opponent does not lose life. If the scores are equal nothing happens. If you attack a face-down monster this way then it flips up: either to reveal a weak monster that your opponent put down to stall for time, an effect monster that does something beneficial when flipped or destroyed, or a large blocker that might deal you damage. All monsters you control may attack only once (Unless an effect says otherwise), one by one; you are allowed to attack the same monster several times.
*After this is the '''Second Main Phase''', which is identical to the First Main Phase. You don't get another summon, so you can't usually summon unless you never summoned in your first main phase (generally done to avoid certain effects that can only be activated in the battle phase, or because you only got a monster in your hand after an effect in the battle phase), so it's mostly just used to set traps and quick play spells to use in your opponent's turn.
*Finally there is the '''End Phase''' where effects might be triggered and where you have to discard cards from your hand if your hand is over the current hand size cap of six to meet it.

==The Metaplot==
Some sets of cards will depict the stories of recurring characters.
Usually forming in the Duel Terminal Storyline but also shifting into other characters.
the Metaplot of Yugioh while usually interesting is often ecstatic and while often interesting winds up being hard to compact without a Konami made meta-books.
Particular ones include the story of Gagagigo setting from Dark Revelation all the way to Abyss Rising and Memory of the Adversary.

==Archetype==
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Unless you possess some sort of post-human intellect that allows you to see synergy between otherwise unrelated cards and have supernatural luck to make these combinations work, you'll want to stick to an archetype for your deck. Archetypes are series of cards of a similar theme or kind, often with a series of related monsters. Through their interwoven and complementary mechanics a deck can become greater than the sum of its parts. There are dozens upon dozens of archetypes in the game, with many of them having their own sub-archetypes. Also, there is fluff of sorts for many of them, but this tends to have no real bearing on the game. Some of the archetypes are:
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* '''Ally of Justice''' - A series of cards that shut down LIGHT monsters and suck at absolutely everything else despite not being any good at fighting LIGHT monsters either. If you're wondering how why allies of justice hate light monsters, its because in lore they're robots built to fight invading aliens who happen to be LIGHT. Their only good card (to the point one can forget there is an archetype at all) is Ally of Justice - Catastor: An easily splashed Synchro monster that's a good toolbox option for removing any non-DARK monster that can be targeted for a battle.
* '''Arcana Force''' - A series of cards based on the Major Arcana of [[Tarot]] decks. Unfortunately, all of them coin flip effects that at best give you a meh monster at best and backfire horribly on you at worst.
* '''Blackwing''' - A bunch of birds focused on summoning a bunch of monsters quickly, then using them as synchro fuel or transferring their attack power of the member that can attack the opponent's life points directly. Was broken when it came out (and still can be) so it quickly became a tournament staple and actually resulted in executives forcing rewrites to the anime so that a minor recurring character who used it joined the main cast to promote it further. Even Tag Force, an official video game, openly calls it broken.
* '''Blue-Eyes''' - Based on the famous Blue-Eyes White Dragon used by Seto Kaiba in the first series, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon itself has the distinction of being the most powerful main deck Normal Monster in the game at 3000/2500. With its plentiful support a well-built Blue-Eyes deck can [[meme|summon a bunch of monsters in one turn]] and lay a massive smackdown through regular monsters and powerful Rank-8 Xyz monsters and do it well enough to win high level tournaments. This archetype is very old, so it includes a lot of awesome but impractical cards such as "Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon". With its light scales and disintegrating breath the Blue-Eyes is based on [[Bahamut]] from [[D&D]].
* '''Burning Abyss''' - Taking its inspiration from the Inferno part of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Burning Abyss archetype is based around swarming the field, then summoning its Xyz, Synchro, Fusion and Ritual boss monsters. On their own the Burning Abyss monsters (called Malebranches) are not very strong: except for the boss monsters they are all Level 3 and top at 1700 ATK and 2000 DEF. On top of that, if you control a non-Burning Abyss monster all of them go to the graveyard, and if you don't have a spell or trap card on the field you can special summon them. The Malebranches have a variety of effects to help them not immediately crumble come your opponent's battle phase.
* '''Phantom Knights:''' -

* '''Chaos''' - Uses a lot of LIGHT and DARK monsters and revolves around banishing cards (like destroying them, but they will super duper never come back, totally, unless you play this or several other banish-based archetypes). Technically only an archetype because of one card which only works for Rituals, given the number of cards in Japanese that don't have the name of the archetype in English. Just UDE things. The Black Luster Solder monster, another of Yugi's favorites, is part of this. Home to a shit tonne of previously broken cards, including an upgraded version of Black Luster Soldier, and Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End, a broken card which [[Exterminatus|blows up everything]] and is half the reason (with Yatagarasu being the other) Konami started banning cards instead of just limiting them to one and would ''still'' be OP today if it weren't errataed to death. Even the nerfed version of these two cards, Chaos Sorcerer, spent a decade on the ban list.
* '''Charmer''' - Cute elemental themed magical girls with partner monsters that focus on stealing your opponent's monsters of the correct attribute and using it to fuel effects. Unfortunately, while cute and a relatively early release, they were never very good at any point in the game's history due requiring your opponent be running a particular attribute and being exceptionally fragile even if you did correctly match them. The most notable thing about them aside from being cute girls is that several of their support cards can summon themselves directly from the main deck, being home to two thirds of the cards capable of doing that. A structure deck with some really powerful support has been announced for the OCG, but time till tell if that saves them from being meh.
* '''Cyber Dragon''' - The original Cyber Dragon is Power Creep: The Card, to the point that there's still a popular fan format, GOAT Format, which is "everything that came before Cyber Dragon" (though other cards from the same booster are also serious power creep, Cyber Dragon is the one on the cover that ''Cybernetic Revolution'' is named for). Being used by the only competent rival in GX, they've gotten enough of support through the years to play in any format since their release. Their first main strategy is quickly summoning the above Level 5 2100 ATK monster to the field (without Tributes) and then using the "Power Bond" card to create an 8000+ ATK Fusion Monster that runs over everything. In later formats they might try to create a Rank-5 Xyz Monster or a number of other tactics.
* '''Dark Magician''' - The signature monster of Yugi Muto from the original series. On its own, the Dark Magician is... not very good. 2500/2100 for a two-Tribute monster is middling, even back in the day. Summoned Skull provided the same ATK for only one Tribute, and for two Tributes you could instead get a Blue-Eyes White Dragon. To mitigate this the archetype includes a fair number of Monster/spell/trap cards to summon, support, and protect the Dark Magician. Once got a card called Dragun of Red-Eyes, shared with Red-Eyes with an effect so bonkers it was limited to one per deck before it was released in English.
:* '''Dark Magician Girl''' - A sub-archetype based around gaining power and summoning more Spellcaster-type monsters. The Dark Magician Girl is notable for being one of the most popular [[waifu]]s of the game.
* '''Egyptian Gods''' - Giant God-Soldier of Obelisk, Sky Dragon of Osiris and Winged God-Dragon of Ra, aka Obelisk the Tormentor, Slifer the Sky Dragon and Winged Dragon of Ra. The only three monsters in the game with the Divine-Beast type, they are legendary monsters based around the Egyptian gods Ra, Osiris and... [[Wat|Obelisk]]. They all require THREE Tributes to summon normally but they are beefy: their summoning cannot be negated and no cards can be activated as a reaction to their summoning. Obelisk has a hefty 4000/4000, cannot be targeted by spells, traps or card effects (but can still be destroyed by non-targeted effects). By tributing 2 monsters Obelisk can destroy all monsters your opponent controls, but Obelisk cannot attack that turn. Slifer's has all monsters your opponent summons lose 2000 ATK (if they hit 0 they are destroyed), and Slifer's ATK and DEF are equal to the number of cards in your hand x1000. Ra starts out with 0 ATK/DEF, and by paying all but 100 of your LP Ra's ATK and DEF becomes equal to the paid. By paying 1000 LP you can destroy one monster on the field. It's obvious that these two abilities are difficult to use at the same time. While powerful they're difficult and risky to use. Suffers from how destruction effect heavy Yu-Gi-Oh is and how only one of them has any protection from it
* '''Elemental HERO''' - Used by Jaden Yuki from GX, the HERO monsters (based on superheroes) require extensive use of Fusion Summoning to get your good monsters on the field and attack with them. A serious source of [[skub]] because of the heavy reliance on summoning, the fact that they were used by the GX protagonist, that they were in every set of the GX era meaning that they clogged up booster space, and there were a LOT of them. Seriously: about two dozen in the main deck, over three dozen in the Extra Deck, and that's not even counting all their support cards and sub archetypes. On top of all that the HERO monsters are terrible, with only a few being worth running. Has some of the worst support cards in the game thanks to mediocre effects tied to overly obtuse activation requirements
:* '''Destiny HERO''' - Like the Elemental HERO monsters, except 50% more [[British Empire|British]] and 50% more [[edgy]]. Used by Aster Phoenix from GX.
:* '''Evil HERO''' - As above, but less Britishness and with extra edge. Used by Jaden Yuki once he goes evil in the third season of GX.
:* '''Masked HERO''' - Based on [[Mantis Warriors|Kamen Rider]], the Masked HERO cards use Transformation Fusion to turn Elemental HERO monsters into Masked HERO monsters, who have powerful effects. The three transformation cards are all Quick Play cards, allowing you to change your monsters mid-turn to attack over and over again.
* '''Exodia''' - The most famous win condition, Exodia comes in five pieces. If you have all pieces in your hand you win the duel. While on their own it's very unlikely to obtain all parts, when combined with a wide variety of draw and search engines you become able to draw just about your entire deck in one turn and obtain all the parts. This means that playing an Exodia deck automatically makes you [[That Guy]], even in the eyes of other That Guys with their own That Guy decks. There are a number of monsters based on Exodia and are supported by him, but they're mostly even more difficult to use than regular Exodia. Its tendency to reduce matches to [[Patience|solitaire]], even if not consistent enough to be competitive viable without an otherwise broken draw engine, would have gotten it banned over a decade ago if it weren't so highly iconic.
* '''Gem-Knights''' - A gemstone-themed archetype of warriors who can combine to create more powerful beings in order to face more powerful opponents. And before you ask: the Gem-Knights came around just over three years before Steven Universe became a thing. The Gem-Knights are [[Paladin|a bunch of honorable warriors who fight to protect the weak]]. They are very reliant on Fusion Monsters: of the 24 monsters in the archetype there are 12 Normal, Effect and Gemini monsters, 11 Fusion monsters and one Xyz monster. To aid in this they have access to six cards that allows Fusion for Gem-Knights in a variety of ways.
* '''Gishki''' - A revival of the long neglected Ritual summoning method, they are built around finding both Ritual Monsters and the Gishki Aquamirror Ritual card, which allows them to summon all of their monsters. They are one of the archetypes featured in the Duel Terminal arcade machines, where they made their debut.
* '''Golden Castle of Stromburg''' - An unusual archetype with no shared names between the cards. Instead all of them reference Golden Castle of Stromburg in their text or target cards that reference it in their text. This field spell card requires you banish 10 cards each turn or destroy it, but protects you from battle damage while its up and lets you special summon monsters of its archetype from the deck.
* '''Gravekeeper''' - One of the oldest archetypes and one of the few that play up the Egyptian aspect of the game, Gravekeeper Monsters resemble Egyptians protecting tombs and those who rest in them. Some of the artwork resembles characters from ancient Egypt as depicted in the anime/manga. They heavily depend on the Necrovalley Field Spell, which shuts down just about anything having to do with the graveyard. Despite being able to mess over many other archetypes this way a well-placed negation or card destruction will leave them quite vulnerable.
* '''Harpie''' - The signature archetype of Mai Valentine from the original show, the Harpie monsters resemble, well, [[Harpy|harpies]]. Attractive winged women who don't wear a lot of clothing, their archetype is built on swarming the field with monsters and beat the opponent down that way. Originally the archetype was kinda sucky, but with later support cards it became a decent deck. Not great, just decent.
* '''Ice Barrier''' - A shit archetype which spawned two broken cards that aren't even used in it. They have no well-defined strategy at all (the nearest they get is some passable walls) but they have Synchro Monsters (Brionac and Trishula) that can be used in other decks and have superb effects: Brionac allowed the player to repeatedly bounce their own cards back to the hand and reuse on-activation effects, which was so broken they had to issue an erratum, and Trishula removes 1 card each from the hand, field and Graveyard when summoned.
* '''Jar''' - Just about the biggest middle finger you can play to your opponent, Jar monsters are weak (except for Pot of The Forbidden) monsters resembling jars with a grinning creature inside. They all have very powerful but annoying flip effects, from discarding your hand and drawing a new card to wiping the board followed by forced revealing of cards, playing some of them and putting the rest in the graveyard. These are all supremely annoying effects, and the most annoying ones are outright forbidden. Playing them automatically makes you [[That Guy]] on the same level of an Exodia player, except even Exodia players think you're being That Guy because Jars get rid of Exodia pieces so easily.
* '''Jinzo''' - A small archetype dating back to the early days, Jinzo (short for the [[Japan]]ese ''jinzoningen'', which means cyborg) itself is a Lvl 6 2400/1500 Monster that stops the activation of and negates all Trap cards on the field. Given that Trap cards were a notable part of the game, Jinzo was quite feared back in the day for outright shutting down an entire type of card. At one point it even was Limited to stave off its reign of terror, but in the modern day it is Unlimited because it is easier to get rid of, and traps are relatively rare. Jinzo spawned a few spinoffs that either shut down Trap cards as well or aid in summoning other Jinzo monsters. But with the fact that there are only five Jinzo monsters and one Equip card they are better suited as support for a deck rather than a standalone archetype. Jinzo became one of Joey Wheeler's signature monsters halfway into the Battle City arc of the original show.
* '''Kaiju''' - GOJIRA! Yes, of course Godzilla and Friends were adapted into the game. Their gimmick is twofold: you can summon one to your opponent's side of the field to make it easier to summon one of your own (because Kaiju do love to battle one another, and because this is done by tributing one of their pre-existing monsters), and their non-Monster cards generate Kaiju Counters which can be spent for a variety of potent effects. Their roster includes expies of Godizlla, Mothra, Gamera, Gigan, Kumonga, Ghidorah and Mecha Godzilla, and strangely enough Dark Lugiel from Ultraman as well.
* '''Kozmo''' - You know what's neat? The Wizard of Oz. You know what's also neat? [[Star Wars]]. So what happens when you slap those two together? You get the Kozmo archetype. Oh yes. Luke Skywalker is now [[promotions|a smokin' hot redhead]], R2-D2, C-3PO and Chewbacca are the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion, Ben Kenobi has been replaced by a rather attractive Good Witch of the North and even the Darth Vader and Darth Maul of the set (The Wicked Witches of the West and East respectively) are pretty. You'd think "Oh [[Japan]]" at this, but the archetype is actually exclusive to the TCG. The archetype consists of two kinds of cards: the "pilots" are used to summon the second type, the spaceships. Summoning the spaceships is as easy as banishing the pilot in order to get a spaceship on the field. In turn, a spaceship that's in the graveyard can be banished to summon a pilot from the deck. This means that it's ridiculously easy to get extremely powerful cards on the field, and aimed destruction is easily avoided. There was even a very easy one-turn kill available that lead to several Kozmo cards being Limited.
* '''Kuriboh''' - One of the contenders for the title of series mascot, Kuriboh are a series of Lvl 1 300/200 or lower monsters with a series of effects that involve negating your opponent's attacks. Yugi, Jaden and Yuma from the first, second and fourth series all have their own Kuribohs which saw frequent use. Because of their low stats Kurioh have great difficulty standing on their own, and require support from powerful monsters in order to win a duel instead of avoiding losing it. Despite the support, only one Kuriboh was ever used seriously and that was purely as an effect.
* '''Monarch''' - A series of tall humanoids dressed in armor, the Monarch archetype consists of a series of six 2400/1000 Monsters supported by two 2800/1000 Monsters and upgraded versions of the core six, a series of Spell/Trap cards, weaker 800/1000 Monsters and a few other cards built around Tribute Summoning. When you successfully do so the Monarchs destroy or otherwise remove cards from your opponent's field, giving you the advantage. They can Tribute Summon at a relatively high speed and can even shut down your opponent's Extra Deck, but this is at the cost of many Monarch cards revolve about you either not using or having an empty Extra Deck on your own. They can be frighteningly effective and fast, filling their field while emptying their opponent's, and were a top deck in the final years before synchro (though that may have been largely due to heavy restrictions on other forms of removal during this era). Monarchs are a rather large archetype, with around 40 cards (but don't build a deck of 1 of each of these cards: it won't work very well). Exactly what they are monarchs of is unknown. Their ability to remove stuff from the field while generating a beatstick that only requires a monster tribute to fuel them makes the cards in the archetype without extra deck restrictions extremely splashable, especially in decks focused on special summoning.
* '''Nekroz''' - see "Gishki", but insert the words "broken" and "busted" as necessary between all the words. Technically not in Duel Terminal, though, but they were part of the follow-up to the Duel Terminal story that was being rolled out between 2014-17, to the point that their Ritual Monsters were corrupted versions of Duel Terminal story favorites.
* '''Neo''' - An archetype built around Elemental HERO Neos, Jaden Yuki's signature monster. The archetype revolves around using Contact Fusion involving Neos and a Neo-Spacian Monster to summon a better monster. These monsters are not spectacular on their own, and they're made even worse by the fact that they return to the Extra Deck at the end of the turn. This made an already iffy archetype drop even more in use. Its best monster, Neo-Spacian Grand Mole, has nothing to do with the archetype in the slightest but sees use because its ability to repeatedly bounce both itself and whatever it fights to the hand makes it really good at screwing over any deck that used anything more than their normal summon to bring a monster out (read: almost all of them).
* '''Number''' - Central to the plot of ZEXAL, the Numbers are Monsters whose names start with a number. While they are all Xyz monsters this is the only thing they have in common: their archetypes, attributes, types and effects are all widely different. Some of them are generic, while others work exclusively in certain archetypes. In the anima only they did also had a ''Number claws'' which they can only be destroyed in battle by another number.
* '''Odd-Eyes''' - The archetype used by Yuya Sakaki, the protagonist of ARC-V. The Odd-Eyes monsters are a group of dragons with heterochromia, giving them mismatched eye colors. The archetypes consists of a large number of high level, high power (7+, 2500+ ATK) dragons and their support cards, which includes the Magician archetype. A large number of them are Pendulum cards designed to summon a large number of them onto the field quickly. There are also several cards that are both Pendulum and another type: Fusion Pendulum, Synchro Pendulum and Xyz Pendulum.
: '''Supreme King''' - Near the end of ARC-V a new sub-archetype was introduced to reflect the series' villain: the Supreme King archetype. The main card of this archetype is Supreme King Z-ARC, a Fusion Pendulum monster that requires you to tribute 1 Fusion, 1 Synchro, 1 Xyz and 1 Pendulum dragon-typed monster. In return, you get a 4000/4000 beast that cannot be destroyed or targeted by your opponent and can Special Summon a Supreme King Dragon card from your (extra) deck if it destroys a monster. With the changes made to the game regarding Link Summoning, this archetype has become next to unusable.
* '''Spellbook''' - An odd archetype that has a ''single'' monster card (not that central ''and'' also a member of an otherwise unrelated archetype as well), and is entirely (bar one trap) spell card-based. They focus on tutoring other cards of the archetype out and supporting Spellcaster monsters but are prevented from spamming them by only allowing one of each card name to be activated per turn. Due to their ability to thin the deck and support monsters they don't have, they are typically combined with other archetypes. Had Spellbook of Judgement, which led to one of the most broken decks of all time that only avoided dominating the game because the equally broken Dragon Rulers were around at the same time.
* '''Ojama''' - Named after the Japanese phrase Ojamashimasu ("pardon me for interrupting"), the Ojamas resemble small ugly imps in tiny speedos. ''Oh you, Japan.'' They are the main archetype used by Chazz Princeton, one of the main characters of GX, and the spirit of Ojama Yellow acts as Chazz' sidekick in the show. Standing at a weak 0/1000 each, the core Ojama monsters are not very tough. Instead, they rely on a mix of spell and trap cards to clog up the opponent's side of the board with tokens that they cannot tribute and stall the battle, allowing for the summoning of the Ojama King and using their field spell to switch around the ATK and DEF of all Ojama monsters, followed by either a wipe of the opponent's side of the board or destroying all other Ojamas on the field to make the Ojama King unreasonably buff. A gimmicky and not very powerful archetype by it self that's fun to play but annoying to play against. Later on to synergies with Chazz's other cards, Ojama also becomes an engine to spit out ABCXYZ monsters.
* '''Performapal/Performage''' - One of the most broken archetypes of its time and a contender for the most powerful deck of the game pre-nerf, Performapal and Performage are based on circus animals and circus performers respectively. The former is the other archetype of ARC-V's Yuya Sakaki, who uses the circus animals for his signature Entertainment Dueling style. Both archetypes are based on Pendulum Summoning and shenanigans in the battle phase that break the game so utterly, Konami was forced to employ the second emergency ban list in the game's history. ''Even then'' it remained powerful enough to remain a meta staple until the [[power creep]] set in. It's safe to say that a lot of people did not like them a lot, with the cartoony art being the least of their complaints.
* '''Red-Eyes''' - The Red-Eyes Black Dragon (Red-Eyes B. Dragon because they wanted to avoid the association with black magic) is one of the game's most famous cards and the signature card of Duelist Kingdom's Joey Wheeler. On its own the Red-Eyes is not very impressive: 2400/2000 at level 7 is just not worth it, even with its good attribute and type: outclassed by the Dark Magician and the Summoned Skull alike it's just not up to par. What it makes up with however is its support and mind-boggling versatility: Gemini, Burn, Pendulum, Toolbox and more are all options for the archetype. This means that the archetype is capable of a great many things, but herein lies the trap: an improperly built deck will only get in its own way. A good Red-Eyes deck is the result of a great degree of finetuning to make a specialized deck. The archetype is also lacking in defensive measures and doesn't have a large number of good trap cards to support it, so a powerful opponent will simply steamroll a Red-Eyes deck. Shares broken Dragun of Red-Eyes with Dark Magician, and Red-Eyes Fusion as support made it even crazier.
* '''Six Samurai''' - An unimpressive archetype that focused on shifting what monster was destroyed by battle with a bit of swarming.
: '''Legendary Six Samurai''' - A much better archetype that focuses primarily on swarming and deck searching to fuel that summon. This surplus of monsters on the field is then used to summon their quite good boss monster, and supporting it with tribute monsters (they're also good at summoning utility synchro monsters from outside the tribe). Since it so heavily focuses on a single card it's very vulnerable to limited list changes and Master Rules 4.
* '''roid''' - Cars with faces. A deck that sucks, played in GX by a character who sucks. Sometimes called "Vehicroids" so as not to be confused with...
: '''Speedroid''' - These are technically roids, but they look completely different and have a completely different strategy. This gave them a headache when it came to attempting to making Vehicroids not garbage, as they had to support them in a way that didn't help Speedroids. Their strategy somehow managed to hurt the Vehicroid deck. But hey, it's Konami.
* '''SPYRAL''' - A TCG-only set that's two parts [[James Bond]], one part [[Metal Gear]] and a nod at the Spyral agency from DC Comics. The archetype revolves around getting its core monster, SPYRAL Super Agent (or one of the many, many, cards counted as it on the field), onto the table followed by using a set of support cards to keep it on the field. It also involves looking frequently at your opponent's hand (which fits with the spy theme) to trigger effects. This means that the SPYRAL archetype suffers from a few weaknesses that, if exploited, can utterly shut it down. While it saw play with relatively frequency, it was never ''that'' popular till years of support eventually built up and it suddenly became a tier 0 (65%+ of tournament placements used it) strategy in 2017.
* '''Shaddol''' -

* '''Red Dragon Archfind/Resinator''' -

* '''Orcust''' -
* '''Watt''' - A seemingly random (their Japanese names all start with キ/ki, but this is impossible to convey in English) series of animals with electrical parts on them. They focus on attacking directly and inflicting addition pain on the opponent for doing so successfully. Unfortunately, the most relevance they ever got was one of the video games had them used by the default partner, a game only character that’s prime waifu fodder.
* '''World Legacy''' - An archetype notable not for its game effects, but because of how (alongside World Chalice, Krawler, Mekk-Knight, Knightmare, and Orcust) its art and names tell a surprisingly complex story that could have been its own vidya. How complex? The official Master Guide series takes multiple pages across tens of pages each in multiple installments to cover it (and the latest additions post-date the newest so it doesn't fully cover it). There's multiple videos telling the full thing that take an ''hour'', and even the ultra condensed version takes several minutes.
* '''Photon/Galexy''' -

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===Non-Archetype Deck Themes===
Notable deck themes that ''aren't'' based on card archetypes. Most of these are either based on the effects of a particular card (which can quickly be killed by banlist changes), interactions between two specific cards, or Type based tribal (which has been supported since before there was a real card game in the original manga).
* '''Burn''': Do direct damage to the opponent's life points and stall till they die instead of trying to smash them with monsters. Some archetypes support this but burn decks without an archetype are common.
** '''Nurse Burn''': Both Darklord Nurse Reficule and Bad Reaction to Simochi have an effect where anytime the opponent would gain life, they lose it instead. Nurse Burn decks combine this with effects that give your opponents life points, something that is pretty easy since it's often included on otherwise good cards as a drawback, or on apparent joke cards that do nothing ''but'' give your opponent a bunch of life points.
* '''Cyber-Stein''': Cyber-Stein was an earlyish card that allowed special summoning nearly any fusion monster without polymerization or the materials at the low cost of 5000 life points. This was really good, since a good fusion monster on its own could deal almost that much damage in one turn while Megamorph would boost that attack enough for a OTK (and later it had a lot of toolbox options it could choose on demand). While a common card in Japan and a guaranteed inclusion in the Kaiba starter deck (alongside the best abuser, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon), for some bizarre reason it wasn't released in the west for years till it was given out as a tournament prize card. It was later released as a rare card, just in time to cause the tournament finale to end in three turns and promptly get it on the next ban list. It's merely limited today, but power creep, only working on fusion monsters, and more counters has rendered it less useful.
* '''Dinosaur''': [[Meme|Holy fucking shit, it's a dinosaur, Jesus Christ, what the fuuuuck.]] A whole lot of Dinosaur monsters slapped together to form a deck, supported by spells/traps. These are dinosaurs that do not fit into any of the existing archetypes, so they band together to form a large toolbox with many different ways to essentially do the same thing: rush and beat down your opponent.
*'''Dragon:''' With age and popularity, Dragon has a lot of strong cards that spam these beat sticks. Although many were intended to support a particular archetype, they are usually generic enough to be used with any dragon card.
* '''Empty Jar''': Morphing Jar is a card that forces both players to discard their entire hand and draw 5 cards when it's flipped. Since you were constantly getting new cards it was quite easy to repeatedly flip and unflip Morphing Jar with these cards to rapidly to deck out your opponent just by having slightly more cards in your deck and some ways to return cards from the graveyard to the deck. Since this could win the game on the first turn, the combo components have repeatedly been subjected to the banlist. Still possible today with Morphing Jar (currently limited to one per deck) being easily searched, but hand traps can easily disrupt it and it's non-trivial to recover if disrupted.
* '''Final Countdown''': The card Final Countdown gives its user a win 20 turns (opponent's turns included) after its activation. Final Countdown decks focus on getting that spell out and stalling till they win.
* '''Goat Control''': The card Scapegoat loads your field with level 1 token with zero attack and defense that can block attack. The card Metamorphosis lets you turn a monster on your field into a Fusion Monster of the same level. Thousand-Eyes Restrict is a level 1 Fusion monster that's really hard to bring out normally (requiring a useless monster, a hard to bring out ritual monster, ''and'' Polymerization) with a powerful effect of absorbing one of your opponent's monsters and gaining their attack and defense. After combining those three elements, the deck focuses on flipping TER upside-down then up again to destroy the stolen monster and let it absorb another before crushing the enemy. The signature and namesake deck of the "GOAT Format", a format consisting of everything in the TCG prior to Cybernetic Revolution's release on August 17, 2005 that is still played regularly today. Nowadays while Metamorphosis has been banned for over a decade, TER is unlimited (after spending forever banned) and a valid target for Instant Fusion, though changes to the game since its been gone mean its merely an option instead of a central focus.
* '''Gren Maju''': Gren Maju Da Eiza is a card with a really simple, and really good, effect that grants it a bunch of attack for every banished card. At first it was just an unofficial member of the Golden Castle of Stromberg cards, but when Konami decided to print a bunch of cards that banished cards from your deck as a cost people started making entire decks around it (though it still overlaps with Golden Castle decks).
* '''Normal Monster''': Once Konami realized Normal Monsters no longer really had a point, they started releasing a bunch of for support them. This is a deck type that focuses on the support that would be powerful if it wasn't designed for such bad monsters. Support was never enough to make it that great a deck type, but it has its fans. The support for swarming normal monsters saw use once link monsters were a thing, but that was always just an engine to special summon effect monsters.
* '''Zombie''': Focuses on the excellent support the Zombie type has received. One of their big things is graveyard revival, often letting you pull out monsters who are normally hard to summon properly.

==Formats and Ban Lists==
Yu-Gi-Oh has a strange relationship with what cards are legal or not. Unlike the two other big card games, [[Pokémon]] and [[Magic: The Gathering]] Yu-Gi-Oh does not have a "standard" format that says "all cards in sets X, Y and Z can be played and the rest cannot". This means that every single card, printed from ''Legend of the Blue Eyes White Dragon'' to the latest set can be used in a deck, as long as they're not on the ban lists. This means that in effect there are several thousand cards legal to use in your deck, with only a fraction being limited and only a handful being outright banned. Cards have four levels of legality, determining how many you can have of any one card in your Main, Extra and Side Decks:

* Unlimited: 3
* Semi-Limited: 2
* Limited: 1
* Forbidden: 0

There are also Illegal cards: cards that were never intended to see use in official duels or tournaments. These are often promotional materials, with the vast majority of them having conditions that allows their player to win the match. Not the duel: ''the best-out-of-three match''. This is less useful than it sounds because the opponent can forfeit before the effect goes off. The remaining ones are cards based on the anime, one being a promotional card handed out during the World Championship of 2007 that is quite useful in the right kind of deck, and the last three remaining cards being the unofficial versions of the three Egyptian Gods. There's also one special version of ''The Seal of Orichalcos'' with all the anime powers, including the "The soul of whichever Duelist loses this Duel is forfeit to the winner" part, intact. It was an internal novelty for Upper Deck Entertainment employees when they were distributor.

Exactly which cards are of what legality is determined by the region you're in. Yu-Gi-Oh has two regions where the game has different names: the Official Card Game and the Trading Card Game, shortened to OCG and TCG respectively. The OCG is played in Asia while the TCG is played in the rest of the world. Both regions have their own ban lists, some exclusive cards on either side, and (at times) different rulings, meaning that a deck that is played in one region might not work as well or is perhaps not even legal in the other. This separation stems from the card backings being different, and Konami farming the western release out to Upper Deck Entertainment for its early history. Originally the two were fairly similar, just with a delay on cards being released for the western game (with many promo cards in particular not showing up for half a decade!). After a decade of near identical ban-lists (there's less than a dozen differences in OCG/TCG bans before this), the two diverged a good deal in 2012, largely because Shock Master was completely broken, but a valuable promo card in the OCG and merely rare in the TCG, resulting in Konami of Japan stalled its banning for the rest of the world.

This is even further complicated that while the OCG has only one format, the TCG has two: Advanced and Traditional. The difference between the two is akin to the difference between Legacy and Vintage: Advanced restricts more cards to create a more balanced experience and has quite a few cards that are illegal in the format. Traditional is a friendlier kind of game: all Forbidden cards are Limited. If you want to use Illegal cards then you need your opponent's permission first due to the amount of [[cheese]] found in the banlist. Advanced is the format used in official tournaments and events, making it akin to Standard. In other words, Traditional and no banlist at all are for fun games with friends, and Advanced is for more serious games.

Beyond the "standard" tournament rules, Konami has also recently introduced the Generation Duel format, where players pick a Forbidden and Limited list for their decks from a set corresponding to the cards that were new when the various cartoons were released. This is the closest Yu-Gi-Oh comes to having an explicit list of legal cards, as every Generation Duel banlist has entries that ban card types that weren't extant when that list's cartoon was airing, and some ban ''all'' effect monsters that don't have a list entry. This never really took off due to Konami adding various unnecessary shit that detracted from the entire point.

=== Goat Format ===
GOAT Format (Named for both "Greatest of All Time" and the prominence of Scapegoat in it) is the the TCG as it was prior to the release of ''Cybernetic Revolution'' in 2005. This demarcation point is chosen because of that expansion's power creep and being closely followed by an extensive banlist change. This period has been immortalized due to the period boasting heavy competition, having a surprisingly diverse number of decks, and representing a much earlier era of the game that played significantly differently from the modern one. The revival is not officially supported by Konami, but it remains the most played historical format (unless one counts video games)

=== Master Rules 4 ===
Introduced in 2017, Master Rules 4 (or "New Master Rules") made big changes to the game. The most obvious being the introduction of Link Monsters and there's an extra monster zone for extra deck monsters (which you can only have one of without work). This change would be widely despised due to its massive balance problems: Every existing deck type was screwed massively and needed to buy new link monsters to even have a remote chance of working '''except''' the ones that were ''already'' OP as shit anyways. Most early generic link monsters were total garbage except for their arrows, a stark contrast with early synchros offering plenty of good and generic options. Link monsters lacking face down position, defense position or levels made a lot of older cards that changed cards to those positions or did things based on level completely and utterly useless. High level Yu-Gi-Oh already was heavy into board wipes where monsters never really fought each other that much, and MR4 made it far worse since link monsters were ''all'' about summoning a bunch of monsters in one turn and sacking them for OP shit before your opponent could really do anything to counter it. Problems were further compounded by Konami taking years to support a lot of "lesser" archetypes. So widely despised was MR4 that MR3 was still widely played on unofficial simulators.

====Master Rules 5====
In December of 2019 it was announced they'd '''finally''' be ending MR4 after years of that shit. Starting April 1st 2020 (with unofficial simulators moving over almost entirely as soon as it was announced), "Master Rules (April 1st 2020 Revision)", which everyone will just call Master Rules 5, were implemented. Now Fusion, Synchro, and Xyz monsters may be placed in either the Main Monster Zones or in the Extra Monster Zone, while Link Monsters and Pendulum Summoning from the Extra Deck are still dependent on summoning in either the Extra Monster Zone or link arrows pointing to their Main Monster Zones. Also a bunch of other minor rules changes, mostly just clearing up a bunch of crap.

=== Speed Duel ===
Speed Duel was an alternate ruleset in the game for years that was primarily used for spin-off video games (''Duel Terminal'', ''Saikyo Card Battle'' and ''Duel Links'') and has lower starting LP/hand size/deck minimum, only three slots each for monsters and spell/traps, no extra monster zone (though this is at least in part due to predating that rule), and no Main Phase 2. The one unique thing about this format is that in the most recent incarnations each player has a skill card that is always activate-able if the conditions are met. One odd consequence of the lower deck size is that mill decks are actually quite good, and some cards [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Cup_of_Ace that are absolutely horrible] [https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Hiro%27s_Shadow_Scout in the normal game] (because they give your opponent free cards) are actually used since you need to mill less than 16 cards to win. Likewise, the smaller field means giving your opponent cards they can't get rid of to block them from putting something useful on the field is also viable.

There's several variants of this format with their own card pools.

The most prominent is Duel Links, Konami's gotchapon mobile game adapation of the franchise. The card pool for this is fairly eccentric, containing reprints of OG anime era cards, some synchro era stuff, some new cards that are weaker in the normal game, and a few anime cards that don't exist in the real world. These cards are selected to make a format based on moderately hard to bring out beatsticks instead of getting into crazy chains to wipe the opponent's field while summoning a bunch of monsters in one turn.

The reason this is getting a section is that in 2019 it was used for a soft reboot of the game in the west. Taking the skill cards from Duel Links with a completely different card pool that only allows cards printed with a Speed Duel watermark (these cards are also legal in normal TCG matches), though the core rules haven't really changed so casual matches with the full TCG card pool are possible. There's actually a few physical cards that have exclusively been released for this format, but they're just really old normal monsters that were never released physically in the west before because they were terrible (though they have shown up in video games).

===Rush Duel===
Another alternate ruleset, similar to Speed Duels in that there are only 3 spell/trap slots and no Main Phase 2, but extra monster zone. In addition to being only able to use Rush Duel specific cards there are certain ''Legend'' cards that you can have only 1 copy of in your deck. Both players begin a Rush Duel with 8,000 LP and 4 cards in their hand. During your Draw Phase you draw until you have 5 cards in your hand. You can normal summon as many times as possible in a Rush Duel, although tribute summoning restrictions still apply. All cards and effects can only be activated once per turn, not counting field spells. In contrast to the original game, every card except normal monsters has a requirement to activate it. Some of these are passive, like controlling a monster of a particular type, while others require actions like discarding certain cards. A player can also only activate one effect per trigger.

==Simulators==
Since Konami <s>is</s> was primarily a video game company, Yu-Gi-Oh has far more video game versions than any other TCG. Indeed, it's one of the video game franchises with the most released games, clocking in at over 50. These can be simple games with nothing to do but fighting opponents and navigating a menu, repeats of the anime storyline or, more rarely, completely original plots set in the same world as the anime. Unfortunately, these games vary wildly in quality, with many being shit, almost always due to cheating AI and gimmicks that aren't card games. Among the ones considered best are ''Stairway to the Destined Duel'' (OG), ''World Championships 2008'' (GX) and ''Over the Nexus'' (5Ds), which coincidentally were all released near the end of one of the anime series and before the next round of gimmicks were introduced to the card game. ''Over the Nexus'' in particular has a surprisingly high degree of effort put into it, with an original story, customizable avatar, a bunch of side-quests and tons of shit to find. There's also a bunch that play by the anime "rules", many of which were made prior to many of the actual card game's rules being codified.

Unfortunately with Konami's move to focusing on pachinko, they stopped making many games at all, including Yu-Gi-Oh ones, and so we only have Duel Links, which is unfortunately a mobile game and thus a relatively stripped-down experience and (far more pressing) is riddled with microtransactions. Years after this move to pachinko, Konami walked this stance back in September of 2019 in wake of anti-addiction laws that would cripple pachinko stating "high-end console games are the most important" and they were working on "multi-device titles for [...] Yu-Gi-Oh".

There's two main fan-made simulators for players to use without having to buy expensive cardboard. Duelingbook is an browser-based manual simulator, while EDOpro is a downloaded automatic one. (So it moves the cards for you, if you're too lazy to do that.)

==The Anime/Manga==
[[Image:Banditkeith.jpg|450px|thumb|right|This is what the rest of the world thinks all people look like... IN AMERICA.]]
Yu-Gi-Oh was clumsily "advertised" by a cartoon for children about adults playing a children's card game, which shared the same name. Made even worse in the West where 4Kids Entertainment americanized the show and badly censoring anything violent, such as banishing characters to ''The Shadow Realm'' instead of dying in the story. However 4Kids was found to have withheld royalties from Konami, [[Fail|leading them to terminate their Yu-Gi-Oh contract and 4Kids' eventual bankruptcy.]]

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'''Season 0''' as fans refer to it was the first anime made for the series based on the early chapters of the manga, notably more darker in tone yet equally as silly compared to the second anime most people are familair with. Yami Yuugi is a well known follower of [[Tzeentch]] (as if the Egyptian gig wasn't enough of a give away). Mostly it was about Yami Yuugi punishing local bullies and scumbags by challenging them to a "Yami No Game", a dark and demented game of Yami's making with a stringent set of rules (dependent on the current challenge) that are meant to test the person's true character. If the person looses a Yami Game, or breaks the rules in any way, he will either kill them or [[Grimdark|give them such realistically horrifying hallucinations that they turn into a gibbering, hapless wreck]]. As an example, Yami once played table hockey with a puck full of nitroglycerin and blew the other guy to bits. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWXTZ8zuuDQ In another game in the anime, he tricked an armed criminal holding his girlfriend hostage into pouring 180 proof vodka all over himself and putting a lighter on his hand. Ensuring that if he did anything wrong, he'd burn a horrible death]. Subsequent Yamis... well, he IS the King of Games, but his punishments weren't AS horrific so he arguably drifted away from it somewhat, but outside of the DURO MONSTA CARDO scene where he invokes [[Khorne]], he's still in [[JUST AS PLANNED]] territory.
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:Yugi Moto is a [[Neckbeard|lonely high school kid]] with few friends but covets his "treasure" - an ancient Egyptian puzzle inscribed with the message that the one who solves the puzzle will be granted [[Chaos|dark powers.]] Although no one has been able to solve it Yugi is close to completing it after 8 years of trying. One day at school while fawning over the puzzle, a bully named Jonouchi (known [[Meme|IN AMERICA]] as Joey) secretly snatches a piece while messing with Yugi and throws it into a river. However this attracts the attention of Ushio, a huge malicious hall monitor, who takes it upon himself to be Yugi's bodyguard and beats Jonouchi and Honda (Tristan) - who Ushio thought was also bullying Yugi - to a pulp. Yugi however intervenes, claiming that they're his friends, which surprises Jonouchi and earns his respect. Ushio shrugs and says Yugi must pay up for his bodyguard services and when Yugi can't pay he beats him as well. Jonouchi retrieves the missing piece from the river, allowing Yugi to complete the puzzle. Immediately the spirit of puzzle [[Daemonhost|possesses Yugi]] and challenges Usio to a Yami Game where they hang from the roof by a rope. When Usio loses he tries to throw Yugi off the building but instead hallucinates himself falling into the river and getting eaten by monsters. Yugi, Joey, Honda, and Anzu now forming a close group of friends - and occasionally a second girl named Miho who existed for 1 chapter in the manga but was added into the cast of the anime.

:Many episodes then follow a similar format, where a bad guy antagonizes Yugi or his friends, Yugi is possessed by the spirit & challenges them to a Yami Game, where they usually try to cheat and suffer the penalty. Famously as mentioned before when an escaped convict holds Yugi's friend Anzu (Tea) at gunpoint in the restaurant she is working at. The possessed Yami Yugi challenges him to a game where they try to kill the other with one finger. The criminal obviously chooses his trigger finger while Yami chooses his thumb, offering to light the gunman's cigarette while he pours himself a shot of vodka. Yami dropping the lighter on his wrist pouring the drink, meaning if he shoots he'll drop the lighter in the vodka he's now spilling all over himself. In the manga he actually does die agaonizingly, while in the anime [[Pretend|he only hallucinates catching fire.]]

:What skyrocketed the series to popularity was the introduction of Duel Monsters, originally a homage to [[Magic the Gathering]] before taking over the series completely and the eventual drop of other games from the series. Yugi's grandpa owns the [[FLGS]] and has a rare limited edition card: the Blue Eyes White Dragon. This attracts the attention of the billionaire transfer student Seto Kaiba, who offers to trade an entire suitcase worth of cards for it but Yugi's grandpa refuses. Kaiba manages to trick Yugi so he can steal the card, but Yami Yugi challenges him to a Yami Game of Duel Monsters for it where the monsters in the cards come to life. Kaiba and Yugi trade blows, but Kaiba gains the upper hand with the Blue Eyes White Dragon card. Just before he's about to win though Blue Eyes [[What|refuses to attack and kills itself because Yugi's Grandfather's heart was in the card.]] Kaiba manages to end the duel in a draw, leaving the Blue Eyes card and vowing to defeat Yugi.

:Yugi also meets other people who possess different Millennium Items in the series, including Shadi, a mysterious figure who wields both the Millennium Scales and Key. Able to see into people hearts and control people with his items, Shadi challenges Yugi to a Yami Game to test his worthiness of wielding the Millennium Puzzle. Making Anzu walk onto a plank high up, held only by ushabti statues that represent Yugi's heart in the game while a ushabti connects to Shadi's Millenium Key that will free her if he loses. Shadi torments Yami Yugi trying to break his spirit, but Yugi keeps his composure believing in his friends while Shadi doubts his faith. For the final test Shadi summons a phantom of Jonouchi to be Yugi's opponent, but Yami refuses to play against it. Shadi is shocked when the phantom also refuses to play as the real Jonouchi saves Anzu, causing his ushabti to break and lose the game. Shadi admits defeat and leaves, claiming that Yugi is indeed worthy.

:Later in the series Kaiba returns, kidnapping Yugi's grandpa. Challenging Yugi for a rematch if he wants his grandpa back at his new amusement park: Death-T, specifically designed to ''murder'' Yugi and his friends. Kaiba hiring professional hitmen and murderers for the challenges, and several traps that would electrocute, cut, or crush them all to death. After defeating and saving Kaiba's younger brother Mokuba from Death-T, Yami/Yugi learns that Kaiba once cared about [[Timmy|having fun]] but became cruel over time. Mokuba and his brother were once orphans but Seto challenged a chess master and president of KaibaCorp, Gozaburo Kaiba to a chess game with the promise that if they won he'd have to adopt them both - which Gozaburo loses. Furious Gozaburo puts incredible strain on his new adoptive son, making him study advanced subjects and business throughout his childhood. Eventually Seto grew to be a cold and ruthless business tycoon, overthrowing Gozaburo from his own company. Gozaburo congratulates Seto before jumping out of the window of the KaibaCorp building, ingraining the lesson to Seto that [[Grimdark|defeat equals death.]]

:Yugi arrives to face Kaiba, who has installed holograms to simulate their previous Yami Game for their duel. Kaiba summoning [[Powergamer|3 Blue Eyes]] while Yugi only draws weak pieces of a larger monster. Just before he's about to lose Yugi puts his faith in his cards and draws the final piece of [[Meme|the unstoppable Exodia]] winning the game. As penalty Yami Yugi shatters Kaiba's mind, but leaves the pieces in his heart promising Mokuba that if any kindness remains inside Kaiba he can put the pieces back together.

:The second and final Millennium Item user Yugi faces is a fellow classmate, Bakura who wields the Millennium Ring which also holds a spirit inside. However this spirit is cruel and torments both it's opponents and it's host, stealing the souls of those he defeats and putting them into game pieces. Yami Bakura plays a game of [[Dungeons & Dragons|Monster World]] with Yugi and his friends in an attempt to steal the Millennium Puzzle, [[Rocks fall, everyone dies|transferring their souls to their miniatures until there are no players left.]] Yami Yugi then gets up to Yami Bakura's surprise, taking up the dice rolls for everyone for the remainder of the game. The party eventually making it to the end of the dungeon, with the real Bakura sacrificing himself so that they can defeat the final boss. But then [[What|they revive his character in game which brings him back to life in the real world]], ending the series with Bakura making a diorama with all their miniatures.

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'''Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters''' was the main series most remember but is technically the second made. Completely butchered by 4Kids in an attempt to localize and edit it for a much younger audience, the only saving grace being Dan Green's performance as both Yugis. Made more infamous at the start of the series as the card game hadn't been created yet, leading to many cases where characters seem to make up rules on the fly, although by the second season this slowly becomes less of an issue. It's popularity going to spawn off several set of cards, spin-off series, and many, many memes.
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:[[Epic|Long ago, when the pyramids were still young, ancient Egyptian kings played games of great and terrible power. But these Shadow Games caused a war which threatened to destroy the entire world, until a brave and powerful Pharaoh sealed the magic away within the seven mystical Millennium Items. Now, 5,000 years later, a boy named Yugi unlocks the secret of the Millennium Puzzle. He is infused with ancient magical energies, for destiny has chosen him to defend the world from the return of the Shadow Games, just as the brave Pharaoh did, 5,000 years ago.]]

:Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters begins much the same as Season 0, minus the fact that Yugi has already completed the puzzle and made friends with the rest of the cast. While playing Duel Monsters against Joey/Jonouchi, Yugi invites them all to see his Grandfather's rare card, which the rich student Kaiba overhears and follows them to the [[FLGS]]. When his Grandpa shows off the one of a kind Blue Eyes White Dragon, Kaiba rushes in offering to trade or buy it outright, but is turned down. The next day Kaiba challenges Yugi's grandpa for the card and defeating him, [[Troll|only to tear the card in half in front of everyone.]] Yugi transforms into Yami Yugi and challenges Kaiba to a rematch, [[Powergamer|during which Kaiba summons 3 more copies of Blue Eyes.]] Believing in [[Tzeentch|the heart of the cards]] Yugi gathers the last piece of Exodia in his hand winning the duel.

:Word of Kaiba's defeat quickly spreads to the creator of Duel Monsters, Maximillion Pegasus, who sends a [[STC|VHS tape]] to Yugi's house. But when he plays the tape everything suddenly freezes around him as he's thrown into a Shadow Game. [[What|Through the prerecorded video Pegasus reveals he possess the Millennium Eye and challenges Yugi to a duel.]] Yugi manages to almost win [[Bullshit|but runs out of time on the tape before the last attack lands.]] Pegasus technically the victor of the Shadow Game steals his grandpa's soul, taunting Yugi that if he wants his grandpa returned to face him in the tournament on his own personal island.

:Yugi travels to Pegasus's island, fighting against opponents and the nonexistent rules at the time. Kaiba making a reappearance to save his younger brother Mokuba who had also been kidnapped by Pegasus in a plot to take over his company. Yugi faces him in a rematch on top of Pegasus's castle, but refuses to deal the finishing blow as Kaiba threatens to commit suicide if he loses - or fall off from the shockwave of the hologram in the 4Kids dub. Yugi is able to recover and eventually faces Pegasus in the finals. Switching between Yami and normal Yugi to throw off his mind reading powers, before throwing his hairy balls in his eyes to win the duel. Yugi is crowned king of games, but gives Joey/Jonouchi the prize money to pay for his sister's expensive eye surgery and saving his grandfather, Kaiba, and Mokuba. Pegasus however is attacked by another of Yugi's friends, Bakura, who is also in possession of the Millennium Ring with it's own dark spirit. Yami Bakura [[Grimdark|ripping out the Millennium Eye from Pegasus's skull]], stating his desire to posses all the items for his own purposes.

:Shortly after this Kaiba is approached by a woman named Ishizu Ishtar who claims he and Yugi are the reincarnations of ancient Egyptian kings, showing him an ancient stone tablet depicting Kaiba and Yugi dueling. She states her brother Marik possess the Millennium Rod and is after the rest of the Millennium Items and [[Power Nine|3 incredibly powerful god cards:]] Obilisk the Tormentor, [[Meme|Slifer the Executive Producer, and Mega Ultra Chicken]] - who are ironically terrible in the real life card game. Ishizu gives Kaiba Obilisk, managing to save it before her brother took the other two. This prompts Kaiba to hold a city wide tournament to draw out the god cards where the victor takes their opponents rarest card, and also as a chance to challenge Yugi for the championship title.

:The semi finals of this tournament being played on Kaiba's own personal dueling blimp, and the grand finals are played on yet another island. Through exposition and flashbacks Marik's and Ishizu's backstory is told during the finals. The Ishtar family guarding the pharaoh's tomb in the Valley of the Kings since ancient times. Marik's father was an old and bitter man because his wife was unable to sire him a son - only giving birth to Ishizu - so they adopted an orphan named Odion (Rashid). Ishizu's mother loved Odion like her own son, but just before he was to come of age she became pregnant. She died giving birth to Marik, leaving all 3 to their father's abuse. Eventually Marik became of age and was went through the tomb-keeper ritual, [[Grimdark|where they carve hieroglyphs onto the back of the child]] - or tattoo them in the 4kids dub. This trauma caused Marik to develop a split personality dubbed Yami Marik, murder his father, and eventually plan to get revenge of the Pharaoh himself as he believe he was the cause of all his misery in life.

:Jonouchi/Joey faces Marik in the semi finals, despite being physically tortured by the pain of the Shadow Game he is about to defeat Marik, but dies just before he declares the finishing attack - or falls into a coma in 4kids' dub. Yugi and Kaiba have their rematch, with Yugi using Joey's Red-Eyes Black Dragon card during the duel that eventually wins the game and heads to face Yami Marik in the finals. Yami Marik concocts a wicked Shadow Game where the loser's other half will slowly fade away as they lose points, taunting both Yugi and the real Marik with the fact he was the one who was responsible for the miserable parts of Marik's life. Though Yugi is able to defeat Yami Marik's god card, through a twist Yami Marik and the normal Marik switch places with Yami Marik now the one at stake to disappear and Marik in a position to defeat Yugi & the pharaoh. Marik however forgives the spirit of the Pharaoh and forfeits the duel as Yami Marik vanishes.

:Now having gathered all 3 god cards Yugi unlocks the pharaoh's memories sealed in the Millennium Puzzle through the previously mentioned stone tablet. Yami Bakura then makes his move, challenging Yami Yugi to a [[Dungeons & Dragons|Dark RPG]] for his Millennium Items, through which the events that happened in Egypt 5,000 years ago are repeated. Revealing that the Millennium Items [[Grimdark|were created by mixing the flesh, blood and bones of 99 human sacrifices with gold]], but that one boy survived the slaughter and became the Thief King Bakura. Thief Bakura returned to seek his revenge and took the 7 Millennium Items to summon forth a demon of darkness called Zorc Necrophades. However the pharaoh sacrificed himself to seal the memory of him and Zorc into the Millennium Puzzle. Unknown to him however both Thief King Bakura and Zorc had sealed part of their soul into the Millennium Ring: creating the modern day Yami Bakura.

:The goal of Yami Bakura's RPG is to allow Zorc to be victorious this time, releasing him into the modern world, while Yami Yugi's goal is to find his hidden name. Though also in the RPG world are Yugi and his friends helping to search for the pharaoh's name. Yami puts up his best fight, he is unable to stop Zorc from being summoned once again, but just as all seems lost Yugi and the rest of the party discover his true name - Atem. Atem now empowered swiftly defeats Yami Bakura and Zorc, erasing them from the Earth for good.

:While everyone is happy that Atem has regained his memories, he must now pass on since his mission is complete - having to be defeated in a duel by Yugi in the Valley of the Kings to ascend to the afterlife. Yugi is able to prove his growth in their duel, even destroying the 3 god cards, before finally defeating Atem. Though everyone is saddened by the Atem's departure they promise that he will live on in the memories they shared. Atem silently bidding them farewell as he walks into a literal door to the afterlife as the tomb starts to collapse, the Millennium Items falling into the abyss as everyone escapes. Ending the series by saying that their own stories are just getting started.

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'''Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged''' as previously mentioned offhandedly near the top of the page, is an abridged series of the second anime. An affectionate parody that "dubbed" episodes of the series into non-canon humor, it's so popular that enough imitators of it focusing on other media entirely happened for the "Abridged series"-style of fan parodies to be considered a genre on its own. Also, there's even ''more'' memes from it than the actual show.
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:Screw the rules

:Perhaps the most widespread joke spawned by the series is the use of the phrase "children's card game(s)" to underscore how silly everything revolving around card games is and how everyone takes it ''way'' too seriously. Not only has this has gained use within the larger fandom, it has quickly entered use to refer to other [[Card Game]]s. Other jokes of note are Seto's utterance "Screw the rules! I have money!", and 5ds as "Cardgames on motorcycles".

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The aforementioned program Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters was so popular, they released a spin-off sequel show called '''Yu-Gi-Oh GX''', about children attending a university that teaches students how to play a children's card game (really). This bad premise is made worse by being from an era where card design quality was rock bottom, giving main characters terrible decks ''and'' plot armor at the same time, leading to some really stupid duels. The main character's plot armor is such that he loses three times in the entire anime (Yugi lost more than that before the end of Duelist Kingdom!), one of those to Seto Kaiba's literal self-insert character, and another to a professional. Even the US dubbers noticed how stupid this series was, and would write dialog that mocked the franchise, making [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bml9_is-littlekuriboh-writing-for-yu-gi_fun#.Ub5g-_k3uSo some parts] of the show look like an Abridged parody. It's also infamous for randomly getting really good in the 3rd season. (You can skip most of the first season.) For real though, the Supreme King plot was awesome.
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:Sometime after the first series, Seto Kaiba created a university specifically centered around teaching children how to play the card game on a volcanic island. GX follows Jaden Yuki who narrowly misses the entrance exams to Duel Academy after bumping into Yugi from the Duel Monster series, who gives him [[Troll|rare]] Winged Kuriboh card. Jaden is given an opportunity to take the exam against one of the top professors and his Ancient Gear deck, Professor Crowler (or Chronos in the sub). Jaden is berated both in the duel and out by Crowler, but Jaden states that he is having fun dueling him. In the end Jaden manages to win and is accepted into Duel Academy as promised, albeit at the lowest hierarchy - the Slifer Red dorm. Although he quickly makes friends with several students such as Syrus and Chumley in Slifer Red, Bastion Misawa in the middlemost dorm; Ra Yellow, and Chazz Princeton & Alexis Rhodes in the top dorm Obelisk Blue. Each dorm named after their titular Egyptian god cards, [[Troll|Kaiba apparently placing his at the top and Yugi's at the bottom.]] Slifer's students living in a cramped and dirty apartment, Ra being a more normal dormitory, and Obelisk's essentially a luxurious mansion.

:The earliest season is notoriously bad, with many episodic, nonsensical plots [[What|such as a monkey being forced to learn to duel by scientists, a student being kept underground because when he duels he makes other people <s>high</s> sleepy when he duels them, and the group threatening to be murdered by Duel Monster spirits]] - and a semi serious subplot of several students going missing, one being Alexis's brother, and being covered up by Duel Academy. One of the ''few'' good decisions 4kids made when dubbing over the series was adding in dialogue making fun of the series itself it borders on being it's own Abridged Series. However they still did their usual over the top censoring on anything violent and other dumb localization changes like giving children adult voices and grown men the voice of prepubescent kids.

:Outside of Professor Crowler spending a few episodes trying to expel Jaden as revenge for embarrassing him, the only other stand out characters are [[Edgelord|Zane Truesdale]] - Syrus's older brother who called him weak for [[What|being afraid to play a card]] - and Tyranno Hassleberry who's entire deck and character is dinosaur themed because [[What|as a kid he had a dinosaur fossil grafted onto his broken leg after an accident.]]

:The main conflict of the season begins when the principal of Duel Academy approaches the cast and reveals that [[What|Duel Academy is merely a front to seal 3 powerful <s>not god cards</s> Sacred Beast cards underneath with seven spirit keys.]] He then gives each a key and says seven "shadow riders" will come to try and take them to unleash the Sacred Beasts. The shadow riders turn out to be mostly joke characters that are defeated the episode they are introduced. The only losses being against the vampire Camula because Syrus's soul would be sacrificed if she lost her duel against Zane, and Bastion lost his duel against a [[Musclegirl|Amazon]] who turned out to be a [[Furry|cat]] after she was defeated by Jaden in the episode immediately after. Despite beating everyone they couldn't end the arc without a climactic battle so the show makes Chazz steal the seven spirit keys to ask Alexis out on a date because <s>Sonic the Hedgehog</s> her brother told him it was a good idea. The one behind the plot turns out to be the chairman of Duel Academy, who steals the keys from Chazz and reveals he wants to use the power of the Sacred Beasts to obtain eternal youth. Jaden challenges him to save the world and defeats him after a tough duel, telling him he doesn't need [[Chaos|the powers of evil god cards]] to feel young - [[Fail|only to break his frail spine after giving him a hug.]]

:After graduating from Duel Academy in the second season Zane goes into the pro leagues, only to get humiliated by a duelist named Aster Phoenix who also uses a HERO deck like Jaden. Becoming a hasbeen, Zane goes into the [[Edgy|underground dueling scene where duelists fight in a steel cage and wear shock collars that electrocute them when they take damage.]] The main antagonist this time is Sartorius, a fortune teller who can "control destiny" through his Arcana Force cards (by predicting their coin flip effects) and mind controlling people he defeats in a duel to join his Society of Light. As a side job apparently he manages Aster Phoenix in the pro duel leagues and asks him to defeat Jaden so that he will be mind controlled. Aster actually defeats Jaden, but instead of being mind controlled he is left unable to see his cards.

:Jaden is depressed by this until he is abducted by an [[Furry|alien dolphin]] who explains that [[Pretend|The "Gentle" Darkness is the force of good and The Light of Destruction is evil]] and possessing Sartorius. Jaden remembers who the dolphin is, as a child he entered a card design contest hosted by Seto Kaiba [[What|where the winning designs would be turned into cards and sent into space to teach aliens dueling.]] Jaden finds his Neo Spacian cards and thus his sight and drive to duel is restored. Meanwhile back at Duel Academy the Genex tournament is beginning, which Sartorius uses the opportunity to mind control a random prince who just happened to attend this card game tournament with the launch codes to [[Exterminatus|an orbital laser]] that the possessed Sartorius will use to destroy the world (or mind control it in the dub). Although Sartorius's good half is able to regain control briefly and gives possession of the two keys needed to activate it to Jaden and Aster.

:At the final battle Jaden confronts Sartorius who has taken Aster captive after he tried to stop him, placing him in a scale that will drop him into a vat of lava unless Jaden hands over the keys. Jaden does so [[Troll|but then Sartorius has the mind controlled prince take the keys and activate the satellite]] despite Hassleberry's best efforts to stop him. [[What|Enraged, Hassleberry's inner dinosaur awakens as an astral projection and is joined by the spirit of Jaden's Elemental HERO Neos as the two fly off into space to destroy the satellite before it fires.]] Jaden is able to defy Sartorius's divinations and defeats him just as the satellite is destroyed, freeing everyone mind controlled including Sartorius.

:In the 3rd season Duel Academy hosts the Disclosure Duel tournament (shortened to Des Duels as a pun on ''Death Duels'') ran by [[Goge Vandire|a guy with the most evil sounding name ever, Thelonious Viper,]] under the guise to weed out duelists with weak fighting spirits. In actuality the bracelets they wear feeds off their duel energy to the point they either collapse or die from exhaustion, and sends their energy to the disembodied arm of a strange being in a tank. During the tournament Jaden becomes fast friends with Jesse Anderson and others from different schools. They eventually discover the truth behind the Des Duels thanks to a duelist named Adrian Gecko who had been investigating Viper, and they plan their counter attack.

:The group successfully overload the bands and head to Viper's hidden base, although Adrian secretly went ahead to confront Viper. They both take off their shirts and throw down fists instead of cards, though just before Adrian deals the finishing blow he's paralyzed by the demon in the tank with visions of his younger self [[Grimdark|contemplating killing his infant brother.]] Afterwards Viper duels Jaden with his venom deck, but Jaden manages to make a comeback and defeat Viper. The demon then appears as a glowing apparition aside from it's arm, as it had promised Viper to let him see his son who had died in a car accident in exchange for helping it recover. It does just that, giving Viper a vision of his deceased son and making him [[Grimdark|walk off the roof and fall to his death]], only for the demon to reveal it knows Jaden before teleporting the entire school to another dimension.

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This spawned another spin-off, '''Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's''', where angsty emo teenagers play a children's card game on motorcycles, in a setting that's some sort of attempt at dystopian [[cyberpunk]] (though surprisingly not ''that'' far in the future, as Tetsu Ushio, an early antagonist from the manga and first anime, is actually a signficant supporting character). Seriously, that's actually the premise. Not terrible. Surprisingly interesting and edgy at times. The dub is mediocre compared to the subbed, as 4kids of course excised the more "mature" parts from their localization. This is the show that introduced Synchro monsters to the game.
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:Card games on motorcycles

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This was followed by '''Yu-Gi-Oh! ZeXal''', which is basically [[anime|Naruto]] with card games instead of ninjas, set in an alternate universe from 5Ds where Synchros don't exist. Xyz monsters were invented here. It gets better after the Barians are introduced.
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:Get set to get decked

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Next up was '''Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V''', which seemed to have remembered the other series and summoning methods existed, but the promise the show had got butchered once they traveled to the Synchro dimension, a world similar to that of 5D's... and then literally shot itself it the foot with what could be considered the most nonsenical twist in all of anime.
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The final series produced by Studio Gallop beginning with Duel Monsters, '''Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS''' (which stands for Virtual Reality Artificial Intelligence Network System) introduces Link monsters. Its villains, the Knights of Hanoi, are basically [[Anonymous]] with a technomagical supercharge whose goal is to wipe out a race of AI at all costs believing them to be a threat to humanity. The protagonist is an antihero seeking revenge on The Knights of Hanoi for cruel experiment he was put through as a child. While the signature cards of previous protagonists were OK at best or (for Stardust Dragon) merely a good staple rather than a deck center, here the protagonist's signature card Firewall Dragon was stupidly OP and a cause of loads of degenerate infinite loops. Konami desperately tried to ban every other card in the loops to avoid banning such a prominent card before they eventually had to give up and ban it.
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:Seize the wind!

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'''Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens''' is currently the most recent series of the franchise, being the seventh series overall. Causing a lot of [[Butthurt]] over the new art style and direction to a far younger audience. Following the new protagonist Yuga Ohdo, an elementary schooler who's sick of [[Rules lawyer|all of the rules and restrictions]] placed on dueling, [[Pretend|deciding to make up his own Rush Duel rules.]] The Goha Corp being the antagonists in this world having control over not just dueling, but also influence over people's daily lives.
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:Future Card Buddyfight

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===Manga without anime counterpart===
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'''Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Structures''' actually sticks to the real rules of the game and doesn't introduce new cards as the plot demands. It stars Shoma Yusa and his older sister Ageha Yusa. Its side characters have actually appeared in one the video game ''Saikyo Card Battle''.
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???
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==[[TL;DR]]==
A decent card game that could have been better, even great, if not for the two-headed giant that is Konami's incompetence and the crappy player base. Hey, at least it gave birth to a memetastic set of anime and parodies thereof.

{{Card Games}}

[[Category:Weeaboo]]

The Imperium of Man

2020-06-19T16:06:39Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92: DON'T UNDO THIS CHANGE! SOMEBODY DOUBLED THIS SECTION AND I AM ONLY REMOVING THE EXTRA COPY.

Slime

2020-06-19T03:56:06Z

2601:203:480:4C60:AF:566D:6978:EB92:

[[File:The gelatinous green cube by shockbolt.jpg|500px|thumbnail|right|[[Halfling]] [[Rogue]] rolled a 1 to Intelligence...or should it be Wisdom? Or maybe both?]]

{{topquote|A slime draws near!|Every Dragon Quest game ever}}

The '''Slime''', also known as the '''Ooze''', the '''Gel''', the '''Jelly''', or the '''Goo''', is a humble form of monster that pops up in absolutely ''every'' frigging fantasy setting you can imagine, and even a few science-fiction settings. It is most famous in tabletop games for its many diffuse forms in [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and in videogames for [[/v/|Dragon Quest]] (in which it serves as the mascot and also has a fucking huge array of possible slime-forms), but, like we said, you can find a slime just about everywhere if you look.

Slimes are usually low to middle tier threat levels; they are mindless masses of animate sludge, and some higher-level variants may be made of elemental matter, such as water, "liquid ice", magma, molten steel, etc. They have no culture or higher purposes, they just ooze around eating anything organic they touch and growing bigger until they have to divide. Hardly likely to outwit most adventurers, but many games make them fairly resistant to certain kinds of attack, especially physical ones, so just assuming they're harmless is a good way to get dissolved. One prominent commenter described fighting a slime as "playing a terrifying game of 'guess the immunity'," referencing to the fact that unless you have your appropriate Monster Manuals memorised, you can rarely predict what will kill a slime variety outright. And guessing wrong can sometimes be worse than not trying, because using the ''wrong'' damage type can cause the slime in question to get stronger or divide into more slimes. And what they are or are not vulnerable to isn't always consistent between editions. A lot of them are also [[Gotcha Monster]]s because of their use of camouflage or near invisibility. This is often enforced by their slow speed that ensure an unsupported ooze can simply be fled from. Their lack of biological needs aside from hunger (solved by dropping scraps to them) means they are often used as part of mundane traps, like an ooze at the bottom of a pit trap.

==Slimes in Dungeons and Dragons==
===Pre-3rd Edition===
* Gelatinous Cube: Perhaps the most notorious slime to come out of the tabletop game field is the gelatinous cube, a D&D monstrosity that takes the form of a huge cube-shaped mass of near-translucent gray or green jelly, perfectly sized for oozing through the typical dungeon corridor as a living, insurmountable barrier. It was originally created by Gary Gygax as a joke, being the exact size of one grid square. Like the [[Rust Monster]] and [[Owlbear]], it's one of those absurdities that everyone pokes fun at, but which has too much nostalgic fondness from the fanbase for anyone to seriously consider getting rid of it. Later, fortunately, it ''did'' come with a half-assed explanation: wizards breed them as living janitorial services to clean the garbage out of the perfectly-square corridors of their evil dungeons. As it's also mostly-transparent, save for the dissolving bits of armor floating in it like fruit in a jello dessert, walking straight into it only to be engulfed is an occupational hazard for dungeon-delvers. It has a paralyzing touch. Its weaknesses vary depending on the edition.

* Black Pudding / Deadly Puddings: Has nothing to do with the food called black pudding - this one has come to take Sam Tarly. Comes in other colors besides black, depending on what environment they are found in. All of the different colors are called Deadly Puddings. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning. Black puddings can dissolve organic material and metal. White puddings look identical to ice and snow and can instantly dissolve organic matter. Dun puddings live in deserts and can instantly dissolve leather, and can also eat metal. Brown puddings live in marshes and can instantly dissolve leather and wood. Stone puddings, grey puddings, and dense puddings all live underground. Stone puddings are slow moving and attack by dropping on prey from the ceiling, but can only dissolve flesh. Grey puddings can dissolve leather, wood, and metal, including magical armor, but they also are vulnerable to certain spells. Dense puddings are smarter than other puddings and infect people they attack with a debilitating disease, but are slower and not well camouflaged because of their blue color but they can only dissolve living flesh.

* Grey Ooze: Can rapidly corrode non magical metal similarly to a Rust Monster, but cannot dissolve stone. Is immune to cold and fire. Can camouflage itself as a puddle of water. In 5th edition they can sometimes develop the ability to use psychic attacks. Grey oozes are completely different in 4th edition. They have a foul smell that give an attack penalty and their acid attack can melt your bones.

* Green Slime: Green slimes are mostly immobile and are more similar to plants. Their only attack that they have is dropping on people who walk under them. Anybody who touches one will turn into one if they are not cured quickly. They are vulnerable only to fire, cold, and cure disease spells. They can eat through both metal and wood. The Green Slime returned in 4th edition but heavily changed. It is no longer immobile or able to infect people with a touch, but still prefers to surprise enemies by dropping on them. It is weak against fire and light. Green Slime returns again in 5th edition, but is now classified as a dungeon hazard instead of a monster and so doesn't have stats, though its traits are similar to how it behaved in early editions. It destroys metal and organic material on contact and can be destroyed by sunlight, anything that cures disease, or anything that does fire, cold, or radiant damage.

* Ochre Jelly: Similar to a black pudding but somewhat weaker. Only dissolves flesh. Can split if hit by weapons or lightning.

* Crystal Ooze: Native to the caverns of the Plane of Earth, these crystalline slimes usually subsist on the minerals found in rocks with the oldest being fuck hueg. While they're content to just leech what they need from their surroundings, Crystal Oozes will attack any living creature for the minerals in them and they're no push-overs either. Their slam attacks deal piercing and slashing damage and can crit on rolls of 18-20. They also give off a Subsonic Hum that can stun an opponent while the Ooze slithers over and engulfs them at their leisure. If the victim fails their Fortitude save, they become petrified and a new Crystal Ooze pops out in 1d4 hours. They're immune to the cold and electricity and resist fire; however, their bodies can shatter and split from bludgeoning and sonic attacks. Crystal oozes are completely different in second edition D&D. Instead, they are a variant of grey ooze that lives underwater and corrodes organic material, but not metal. Weapons can only deal 1 point of damage to a crystal oozes.

* Slithering Tracker: An intelligent slime that is nearly transparent. It paralyzes victims and slowly drains them of plasma. They are said to be created from humanoids who willingly gave up their forms to get revenge on somebody they hated.

* Mustard Jelly: What happens when an idiot wizard tries to polymorph into an Ochre Jelly. It produces poisonous fumes that smell like mustard and slow down those who breathe them in. It is intelligent and can split in two at will, instead of splitting when hit with weapons. It cannot climb up walls or squeeze through tight spaces like ochre jellies can. It is immune to normal weapons, takes half damage from cold and the magic missile spell heals it, and it can eat through wood.

* Olive Slime: A plant like slime similar to the green slime, but even more dangerous. Like the green slime it is immobile and attacks by dropping on people that walk under it, and it produces a venom that causes numbness so the victim may not even notice the attack. It possesses the victims it infects and slowly eats them from the inside out, turning them into plant like zombies that melt into olive slime when they die, and can spread the infection. It is immune to everything except acid, fire, cold, and cure disease spells, and spells that affect plants. The zombies are the same except they are weak to magic missile instead of cure disease. If a olive slime meets a green slime then one of them will destroy the other.

* Stunjelly: Similar to a gelatinous cube. It disguises itself as a stone wall, although remains semi transparent. It has most of the same weaknesses as a gelatinous cube, except that cold affects it normally.

* Aballin: Also known as "living water", aballins are a type of slime that resembles a pool of stagnant water, strangely devoid of life and full of metals like coins and armor. Despite looking like water, Aballins are composed of a weak acid, which it uses to digest their victims after wrapping around their heads and drowning them (which means water breathing is pointless). Due to their semi-liquid bodies, they prefer to live in water but slither like slugs (up to a 30 degree slope). Unlike most other slimes, its roughly as smart as a wild animal and can learn to hunt its prey. Legend has it that the first was a druid polymorphed by an archwizard's curse. They are immune to fire, cold, and electricity, but are vulnerable to spells that affect water, and when they are pretending to be a pool of water they cannot be harmed by anything that wouldn't affect a pool of water. They also cannot be damaged by piercing and slashing weapons, and if you try there is a chance you will hit the person the aballin is trying to drown instead.

* Lava Ooze: An ooze made of lava. They are immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. In third edition, it consumes metal and stone, but cannot digest gems, which become stuck its body until it is killed.

* Ghaunadan: An shapechanger that serves the god [[Ghaunadaur]] whose true form resembles an ooze but also can transform into a either a male human or a female [[Drow]] (So yes, this means that [[#Monstergirls|slimegirls]] are totally canon in D&D). In humanoid form they have a charming gaze and in ooze form their attacks cause paralysis. They are resistant to blunt weapons and while in ooze form can disarm enemies by trapping their weapons in its body.

* Flareater: A slime that likes to drop on prey from the ceiling. They are mobile unlike green slimes. While they can eat flesh, their favorite foods are light sources. They can increase their hitpoints by consuming both magical and non-magical light sources, and split when they reach enough hitpoints. They are immune to damage from light, heat, and fire, although long term sun exposer will kill them, and they are paralyzed by cold damage.

* Symbiotic Jelly: An intelligent slime that lives in a cave where it charms a carnivorous monster and uses illusions to make the monster appear as something less dangerous and add fake treasure to the cave to act as bait. When the monster it has charmed feeds on meat it somehow remotely feeds the slime as well.

===3rd/3.5 Edition===

* Bone Ooze: A massive ooze that feeds by sucking people's bones out. Its insides are filled with sharp bone shards and they're stupidly deadly.

* Flesh Jelly: A blob of flesh covered in a layer of skin. It grows by absorbing living creatures. Touching one can infect you with a disease called filth fever. [[Luke|It also has an overwhelmingly foul smell]].

* Reason Stealer: An unintelligent ooze with a craving for intelligence. When it delivers a killing blow it steal the victim's mind, gaining their stats, feats, skills, and prepared arcane spells for 24 hours, after which it becomes mindless again.

* Teratomorph: A reality warping slime. Although it is neutral aligned like most slimes it has a lot of chaotic abilities. Its touch can, at random, weaken your stats, polymorph you, make it stick to you, or, if you are really unlucky, instantly absorb you. It randomly opens portals to other planes in the area around it. It also warps the environment around it, making attacks and dexterity checks more difficult, and has a chance of hitting everything around it with two random spells. It has the ability to detect law. It is immune to chaotic spells, lightning, and acid. Weapons have a chance of completely missing due to the section of its body you are attacking suddenly shifting to another dimension before you hit it unless it is affect by a dimensional anchor.

* Arcane Ooze: Is immune to spells and can steal spells from arcane spellcasters to give themselves temporary hitpoints. Magical acid attacks heal them, and magical lightning attacks speed them up.

* [[Living Spells|Living Spell]] (Template): One of the newer additions to the family. Originating in ''Eberron'''s Mournlands, one of many results of the Day of Mourning, but since adapted to "generic" D&D Living spell is a template that is applied to one or more spells instead of a creature to make a creature based on that spell or spells. It is always typed as an ooze. Enemies that are slammed or engulfed by the living spell are affected as though they were hit by the spell or spells it is based on. Living spells are also very resistant to magic. In 5th edition they are classified as constructs instead of oozes.

* Snowflake Ooze: A snow like ooze that live in cold climates and inflicts cold damage. It is immune to cold and vulnerable to fire, piercing attack have a chance of harmlessly passing through it, and bludgeoning attacks cause it to split.

* Summoning Ooze: A inteligent living summoning circle created by a summoning ritual gone wrong. It has the ability to cast summon monster spells. Immune to acid and fire.

* Bloodfire Ooze: An evil ooze made out of burning hot blood. It is created through ritually mixing the blood of 100 good or neutral humanoids with a demon's ichor. Is immune to fire and resistant to acid and electricity, and vulnerable to cold. It attacks with fire, and can empower fire spells cast within 60 feet of it.

* Corrupture: An amphibious ooze made of acidic liquid flesh that appears in areas where nature has been defiled by magic or pollution and attacks by spraying acid.

* Conflagration Ooze: An intelligent ooze that attacks with a poison that causes your insides to burst into flame. Is immune to fire and vulnerable to cold. Some of them also explode when they die.

* Graveyard Sludge: A slime made of necrotic energies and powered by the souls of the dead.When powerful necromancy is used around the dead, usually at graveyards during rituals or a [[Lich]] accending (though a really strong spell will do), the slime is formed and begins to hunt down any corpses to feed on the spiritual energy. The energy is used to defend itself but Liches like to use them as a means to bolster themselves. Graveyard Sludges can also cast 5th level or lower spells if they've fed on enough spellcasters. Their abilities are somewhat different in third edition. Creatures that die within 20 feet of graveyard sludge come back as zombies with an acid attack. They can cause fear, and strengthen undead creatures. They are immune to acid, and they are both alive and dead, so they are healed both by heal and inflict spells.

* Bloodbloater: A tiny aquatic ooze that drinks blood and attacks in swarms. Looks like an oversized cell. Because they are a swarm, they are immune to weapons and single target spells.

* Flotsam Ooze: An aquatic ooze with a very sticky body which collects debris.

* Reekmurk: A huge black aquatic ooze that lives in the depths of the ocean or in underground lakes. They can dissolve wood and have a powerful stench. They are immune to cold, but have a vulnerability to sunlight and spells that act like sunlight.

* Ethereal Ooze: An incorporeal ooze from the ethereal plane.

* Bloodrot: Not actually a true slime, but is really a form of undead made from the remains of somebody who died by being completely dissolved in acid. Infects people with a magical disease called blood fever that causes the victim to melt into a puddle when they die which the blood rot eats. They can hide inside of the bloodstream of anyone who is infected with blood fever. They can also sense the location of anybody who is infected with blood fever within several miles, so if you escape from a battle with one but are infected then more will be attracted to you. Like many true oozes, it can split apart if hit by slashing or piercing damage.

* Brine Ooze: An ooze that lives in deserts. It either hides in salt lakes or pretends to be a pool of water. It has the ability to rapidly desiccate whatever it slams into and is immune to desiccation itself. Slashing and piercing damage causes it to split.

* Cesspit Ooze: An ooze found in impoverished urban areas that feeds on fear and misery. They form spontaneously from the corpses of people who decayed in sewage or refuse in places near strong sources of magic. Its acid can dissolve organic and metallic materials but not stone. Those who are damaged by its acid may be driven into an uncontrollable rage. They have an overwhelming stink that sickens those that get too close to it. When they die, they explode and splatter acid around them. Slashing and piercing damage makes it split. They are immune to acid and resistant to electricity and fire, but have a weakness against positive energy similar to undead creatures. It is also more intelligent that other kinds of oozes, and are considered to be chaotic evil instead of neutral unlike other oozes.

* Sentry Ooze (Template): An ooze that has been modified with magic to make it stronger and more intelligent so it can act a guardian for a dungeon.

* Welp of Zargon: Those infected by [[Zargon]]'s slime may transform into humanoid slime creatures. They deal acid damage and can also infect people with Zargon's slime. Creatures that get too close to one may be stunned by its horrific resemblance to its former self.

* Venom Ooze: A more dangerous glowing variant of the Ochre Jelly. They are immune to cold, acid, and electricity, and have the ability to poison large bodies of water.

===4th Edition===
* Slime Devil: A devil specializing in interrogation that is also an ooze. It engulfs people and asks them questions, inflicting psychic damage if they lie.

* Abolethic [[Skum]]: Sometimes when an [[Aboleth]] enslaves someone, the process goes wrong and turns them into an ooze. Abolethic Skums are invisible while in water and have an aura that makes enemies vulnerable to psychic attacks. It is a minion type enemy so it dies in one hit.

===5th Edition===
* [[Oblex]]: Has the ability to create exact copies of anyone it has eaten except for the cord of slime attaching the copies to the oblex.

===Pathfinder===
* Deathtrap Ooze: Reversing the ooze used as part of a trap gimmick, a deathtrap ooze ''is'' the trap. Able to transform into any trap with one or fewer moving part, a deathtrap ooze can pretend to be disabled and attack adventurers from the rear or attack the poor sap attempting to disable it outright, and that's assuming it's even found.
* Gunpowder Ooze: An ooze, made of gunpowder. Continuing the "guess the weakness" game above, it has vulnerability to fire but explodes and splits upon taking fire damage. It also coats people it attacks in gunpowder, making ''them'' liable to blowing up. The split and auto-combustion mean that this CR14 monster can be killed by nothing but two vials of alchemist fire creating a chain reaction of the split oozes blowing each other up. This means they're more living traps than anything.
* Hungry Flesh: An artifical ooze made of a huge pile of flesh. Thankfully they have very high nutritional needs (their own 3000 pound weight in food daily) so they'll quickly starve without support.
* Sapphire Ooze: A sapient, extraplanar, good aligned ooze that can talk?! This ooze can transform into living armor for a creature and buff things with saves against fear. Being the rare sapient ooze, they actually have a personality: [[Leeroy Jenkins|Overeager adventure seekers that often get into trouble themselves.]]
* Carnivorous Blob: Have you ever wanted to run a campaign based on the 80s version of “The Blob”? Use this, and accept no substitutes!
* Sewer Ooze: A low level ooze made of sewage that lives in the sewers under large cities.
* Slime Demon (Omox): A demon made of sewage that delights in desecrating bodies of water.

===Slime Deities===

* [[Juiblex]]: The demon lord of slimes and oozes.

* [[Ghaunadaur]]: The god of slimes and oozes, who may or may not be the same being as Juiblex.

* [[Zargon]]: An [[Elder Evils|Elder Evil]] associated with slimes.

* [[Bwimb]]: The [[Archomental]] of ooze. Got killed by [[Orcus|Tenebrous]] and replaced by his daughter Bwimb II.

==Slimes in Dragon Quest==
The slime is the mascot of the Dragon Quest video game series. Basic slimes are blue raindrop shaped creatures with cute faces. They come in a wide number of variants. One such variant are metal slimes, which give huge rewards for defeating them but are ridiculously difficult to beat due to their defensive abilities and tendency to run away before you can do any significant damage. Due to how iconic they are, [[TVTropes]] uses Metal Slime as the trope name for rare enemies in games that are tough to beat but give huge rewards. Not all slimes in the Dragon Quest are enemies. Good slimes usually introduce themselves by saying "I'm not a bad slime!"

==That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime==
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is an [[Isekai]] light novel and [[anime]], about a normal Japanese man who dies and ends up in the body of a slime in a world resembling the Dragon Quest games. Slimes in this world are normaly unintelligent and weak monsters, but this slime happens to have the most broken ability in the world: the ability to copy the skills and form of whatever they eat. They befriend a powerful dragon and become the chief of a [[Goblin]] village, which they expand into a new nation. It is actually surprisingly good by isekai standards.

==[[Monstergirl]]s==
{{Monstergirls}}
Surprisingly, slimes have long been given the [[monstergirls]] treatment: Slime Girls (also known as Goo Girls) are typically not very smart, but very affectionate and horny, and their gelatinous bodies have a ''lot'' of kinky shit they can do in the bedroom. In the more restrained versions a slime will engulf a guy while milking him dry, giving him a full body hug. This frequently results in cum floating around in the slime's body, often going towards a the slime's "heart", a core of a color that contrasts the body that is said to hold the slime's soul. It is often an erogenous zone [[/d/|because of course it is]]. In more extreme cases the slime will also penetrate the guy, engaging in stuff like sounding, or fucking him in the ass while he fucks her in the... well, [[Dark Eldar|everywhere is a hole for a Slime]]. There are also a few cases where [[vore]] starts to be involved, which would be a bit more true to nature for the slimes of D&D fame.

===MGE Slimes===
The Slime is one of the most profuse species in the [[Monster Girl Encyclopedia]] so far, second only to the [[Succubus]] family in terms of diverse members. The slimes of the MGE were heavily influenced by the slimes of the popular fantasy gaming series "Dragon Quest", with the Slime Queen and Slime Carrier in particular being derived from members of that series' vast array of slimes.

Your standard Slime in the MGE world is a dim-witted, happy-go-lucky aimless drifter that just squiggles around looking for a guy to sex. These stand out mostly via their blue coloration.

The Red Slime, in comparison, is smarter and more aggressive.

The green Bubble Slime has a unique chemical composition that causes her to constantly secrete bubbles of noxious-smelling gas. As a side-effect, she's no longer as sticky and cohesive as other slimes, making her grapples easier to escape. However, her substance is a powerful and addictive aphrodisiac, which eventually leaves her victim dependent upon regular ingestions of her drug-like mass. She was one of the first of the [[grimdark]] mamono.

The purple Dark Slime is an extremely powerful succubus/slime hybrid native to Demon Realms. The only slime-girl in the MGE with a core (thus far), they're also smart and predatory; they have the unique ability to corrupt human women, transforming them into new Dark Slimes, via a process that basically involves enveloping the women in their body, orgasmically digesting her alive, and then reforming her as a new slime.

Slime Queens are sometimes mistaken for normal slimes due to their being the same blue color. These slimes suffer a mutation that renders them incapable of physically dividing to reproduce like a normal slime; instead, they swell to massive proportions, and can manifest multiple slimegirl "bodies" from their central mass as they see fit, all of which are, of course, extensions of the slime's singular mind. The bigger she grows, the smarter she becomes. Kenkou Cross has asserted that there are actually Slime Queen variants for all of the standard slimes.

Sea Slimes are jellyfish-girls who live in the ocean, and so lack the shapeshifting prowess of their standard cousins.

Nureonagos are a Zipangu breed of slime whose name comes from a yokai that manifested as a soaking wet girl who comes wandering around on rainy nights. The Nureonago mamono is a slime with especially advanced mimicry abilities, allowing her to take the form of a solid human girl in clothes - but she can't deny her nature, and so always looks soaking wet.

Likewise, the Shoggoth is a slime-girl maid who specializes in shapeshifting, specifically in extruding pseudopods and shaping them into tools to help her do her various chores.

The Parasite Slime is a slime that can't take on a slime-girl form of its own, instead attacking human women and raping them until their mind breaks before using them as lures to attract human men to be their partners, turning them into the mindless fuck-puppets called "Slime Carriers". This is one of the two slimes that compete for the title of "most fucked-up mamono in the MGE".

The Humpty Egg is the ''other'' slime contender. See, in the region of the MGE world known as "Wonderland", there's a super-horny, busty and fluffy [[harpy]] species caled the Jubjub Bird. These harpies lay eggs, and if a man gets too close to an unhatched egg, there is a good chance that the unborn chick inside will become aware of his spiritual energies and react by ''bursting out of her shell as a horny [[loli]] slime-girl made of egg-guts'', essentially aborting herself to have sex faster. Consisting of a [[loli]] made up of goopy, semi-solid egg-yolk and surrounded by a malleable mass of egg-white they use to form the traditional slime pseudopods. These slimes actually lay eggs when they get pregnant, which usually hatch into new Jubjubs, but are more likely than "normal" Jubjub eggs to turn into Humpty Eggs. This species was met with considerable outcry when it was released, with even many [[loli]] fans going "seriously, dude, this is going too far!" (Was this supposed to be Rule 34 of Sanrio's Gudetama? If it is then it may be even more sick. Poor Gudetama! He doesn't deserve this.)

===Gallery===
<center>
<gallery>
File:MGE Slime.jpg|A normal slime.
File:MGE Red Slime.jpg|A red slime.
File:MGE Bubble Slime.jpg|A bubble slime.
File:MGE Dark Slime.jpg|A dark slime.
File:MGE Slime Queen.jpg|A Slime Queen.
File:MGE Shoggoth.jpg|A [[Shoggoth]].
File:MGE Nureonago.jpg|A Nurenago.
</gallery>
</center>

[[Category:Dungeons & Dragons]][[Category: Monsters]]