What would the average life of an Empire Citizen look like?

[Puppet Pal Clem]

Would it be something out of a horror movie or would it be so-so? Also what kind of emotion would the humans have on the battlefield when facing beastmen, greenskins, skaven. How do they have the courage/moral to hold the front line when seeing rampaging minotaurs burst through their front line or stomping out of the woods. Surely the men of the empire are made of tougher stuff than real humans. You'd have to sacrifice so many men just to kill 1 individual monster or whatever in a unit or nonhumans. Even individual greenskins are pound by pound stronger than like 10 humans put together.

[Chibbity]

Well, WW2 soldiers had to face tanks, and WW1 soldiers would charge machine gun nests across open ground; so it's not so far fetched for men to die in droves hopelessly trying to take something down they can have little effect on.

[Testikles]

Brandy can give a lot of courage...also, humans know, that such beasts can be slain if they just work together. Their ancenstors did it, Sigmar did it, so why shouldn't they?

[Lost Latios]

Don't forget they aren't 'just humans'. They've got gunpowder, which only two other races have, and they have magic. They also have some monsters of their own like Griffons and Demigrif Knights.

...But yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've seen a huge monster approaching and looked at my set of Halberds and said 'Damn, these guys are crazy brave'. Though when constantly faced with being wiped off the face of the planet...perhaps it has just become normalized?

[MrSoul]

Day to day life not TOO far removed from how like life would of been for folks in the Holy Roman Empire around the 1700's.

Their emotions, I mean just try imagine yourself in their shoes, are just normal, albeit archaic people.

Like first response said too, not like real world warfare is...fun...

[Puppet Pal Clem]

You guys do make good points, but i feel like only a handful of the most craziest individuals, bravest individuals, and delusion individuals would be the only ones holding the front line, your regular neurotypical might hesitate. Even with guns and seeing the most evil looking bastards with inhuman sounds charging at you would route some troops before the battle even began, no?

Also i wonder how it would feel being a regular human citizen and then hearing beastmen in the distance getting ready to raid your village. They took the women and R-word them to make their warherd bigger, right? Your sister and mother would be kidnapped.

Also how does chaos force humans to have beastmen babies? When two humans copulate, how does chaos corrupt them and how do beastmen even spread chaos? Is it mostly invisible? Is it in the land or air? What does someone do to spread it?

[Testikles]

Originally posted by No Serotonin:

You guys do make good points, but i feel like only a handful of the most craziest individuals, bravest individuals, and delusion individuals would be the only ones holding the front line, your regular neurotypical might hesitate. Even with guns and seeing the most evil looking bastards with inhuman sounds charging at you would route some troops before the battle even began, no?

Don't underestimate humans. The feeling, rush and adrenalin of being in a big group charging towards the enemy is a very strong factor, even in our regular historical warfare.

[Puppet Pal Clem]

Originally posted by Mr.Soul:

Day to day life not TOO far removed from how like life would of been for folks in the Holy Roman Empire around the 1700's.

Their emotions, I mean just try imagine yourself in their shoes, are just normal, albeit archaic people.

Like first response said like, not like real world warfare is...fun...

True thats if we look as tanks and machine guns as inhuman objects, but their are still humans behind those weapons. I mean don't get me wrong. Charging at a machine gun nest or tanks with bombs strapped to yourself is crazy, but only so few people are willing to do that. The average soldier is not 100% committed to sucidial tactics because they have a family at home, and see their life just as important as war if not more-so.

I guess the great thing about humans is that they are willing to swarm an extremely dangerous enemy, but doing that for nearly every war? That would be PTSD on a whole other level. Seeing your comrade being picked up by a giant and having his head plucked off, or slow pull his torso apart with his organs seeping through. Fighting spirits, knowing that a wizard could just drop a comet ontop of your head killing off your entire regiment.

Humans must be banging each far more than even irl medieval days. Even knights back then would stop fighting each other after just seeing a few knights die or a good amount. They'd mostly just rough each other up, peasants would die in great numbers, but it's only when the knights route is when the whole army retreats. Seeing your best soldiers die is a threat to moral.

[Puppet Pal Clem]

Originally posted by Rindenberg:

Originally posted by No Serotonin:

You guys do make good points, but i feel like only a handful of the most craziest individuals, bravest individuals, and delusion individuals would be the only ones holding the front line, your regular neurotypical might hesitate. Even with guns and seeing the most evil looking bastards with inhuman sounds charging at you would route some troops before the battle even began, no?

Don't underestimate humans. The feeling, rush and adrenalin of being in a big group charging towards the enemy is a very strong factor, even in our regular historical warfare.

Yea maybe if their best men were on the frontlines and leading by example. I mean if your gunpowder and artillery havent taken out some of the most dangerous threats than the only thing you're gonna think to yourself is "i'm gonna die on this charge." Imagine a Ghorgon coming at you, hasn't even taken a single shot, perfectly healthy and ready to kill and eat you, the sounds that it would make as it's coming closer. You'd feel the vibrations through your spine with each step and the sounds it would make.

I don't know if you guys have been to the zoo, but when a tiger roars really loud, it actually crawls through your whole body and you can feel it in your spine. It paralyzes you! Some of these monsters and beasts have way bigger voice boxes. You'd feel defeated before they even came near you!

[DarkFenix]

Men have millions of years of evolution-ingrained instinct telling them that almost any obstacle can be overcome through cooperation and that they are fundamentally expendable in the overcoming of said obstacle.

People can, and have throughout history, performed impossible acts via suicidal bravery for whatever greater cause they believed in.

[Gorwe]

No, not horror, no. Maybe some stories. Overall life is what you'd expect from Fantasy HRE. Maybe Dark Fantasy, but certainly not Horror. But it's a rich setting, it can accomodate most genres(action, war, adventure, horror, rpg etc).

[TheAlmightyProo]

Originally posted by Mr.Soul:

Day to day life not TOO far removed from how like life would of been for folks in the Holy Roman Empire around the 1700's.

Their emotions, I mean just try imagine yourself in their shoes, are just normal, albeit archaic people.

Like first response said too, not like real world warfare is...fun...

Pretty much this.

Daily grind in much of the Empire is just that, as we may know now, only more Renaissance-y. Folks do their jobs, with many very much seasonal, pay taxes and tithes, most time off is religious festival based, with beers/beef/wenches and a song and dance to kick off the doldrums... etc.

Then yeah, the occasional poop hitting the windmill, how badly and the results depending on where in the Empire and who comes knocking. For that, city life is probably both easier in some respects yet more stressful in others... nm that big cities make big targets for bigger baddies should they be so bold etc.

It's pretty much the same answer to the same question posed for the big Empire in 40K. A good many Imperial worlds aren't big deals nor receive much attention of the nasty kind (notwithstanding that from their own ppl)

[MrSoul]

Originally posted by No Serotonin:

-snip snip-

Oh ya, I mean I see your point think simplest answer is like can look to some of the passages from LOTR, man was informed by real world war to see how at least he thought people react to things like orcs and flying necromancers on doom dragons.

Of course though "cowardice" (self preservation) and routing have long been a thing in military history.

For example like when the Romans would go up against a horde of "barbarians" (migratory people more or less moving as one giant culture across land trying to find new homes as their lands were suffering from drought, soil degradation etc) like you're saying, and actually even more so, most military conflicts back in those days ended in one or both sides routing.

Romans were so effective and victorious because often once a few of the people they were fighting noticed the other guys actually had a plan in combat, they'd rout wholesale as they were neither professional, nor organised military units.

Also to the Tiger comment, that's cute at all being afraid of a caged animal, I live in rural area in foot hills of Rocky Mountains. I've walked through brush straight into the face of more than one Black Bear. Yes it is terrifying, but it triggers what is called your flight or fight response. You have no control over that, and that is why people will either book it, or snap in these instances.

Luckily for me black bears are actually more terrified of a bipedal carnivorous ape wandering through the woods than you might imagine, so WE always choose flight for each other. Had the bear attacked me? I mean...had a firearm on me...and a spear I'd made sooooo...sometimes your brain tells the only safe path for you is to eliminate the threat you face, adrenaline shoots out of* your endocrine system and you literally see red as I have also been in several fist fights growing up, that is no a metaphor for anger, it literally happens and you lose control.

Like I said, were bipedal meat eating, apex predator apes, we didn't get to top of food chain this planet by ALWAYS running at a threat, and neither did Rome build its borders by doing so.

[mrhyms]

What would the average life of an Empire Citizen look like?

Pretty hunky dory - until a man sized rat drags you into the sewers...

[Drache]

Humans are surprisingly resilient creatures. Your soft life is not representative of the existence of all humans currently living today, more or less, those who have lived in times of terror and turmoil in our past.

There is an old saying, "needs must when the devil drives."

[Hobo Elf]

Most normal people in WH Fantasy will never see Orcs, Chaos demons, Skaven and so on. Even Elves and Dwarfs are a rarity. Most of their lives are pretty mundane save for the occasional human cutthroat.

The same goes for 40k. Even things that are obvious to fans of the setting, like Space Marines, are really extremely rare to the point where most normal people think of them more as myth and legend rather than fact.