Author's Note: This bit is dedicated to Erttheking for his stellar work on "How to avoid stupid Deaths in the 41st Millennium. You made me laugh. I made you this.
A Heretic's Un-lifting Primer:
Let me first tell you that I am not the original author of this work, I am only adding to it. The original author is an unknown infantryman that me and my associates have taken to calling "Killroy".
Killroy wrote a little piece of work called "How to avoid stupid deaths in the 41st millennium". My associates did not take kindly to this piece of work, not one bit, and are trying to have him found and killed for heresy. Except that there's a problem that my associates are forgetting: the knowledge in that little booklet (which me and my associates have taken to calling "The Heretics Un-lifting Primer") is actually quite invaluable to the standard fighting man of the forty first millennium. What this means is that this piece of literature has probably spread across half the Imperium by now, as soldiers are no doubt transcribing their own copies faster than we can burn them. And by the Emperor, this is a good thing.
However, the Heretics Un-lifting Primer needs a bit of refinement. Because while Killroy gives you many good ideas on what not to do, there is precious little in the Primer on what you should do. I have undertaken the task of writing these things you should do myself, under pain of an extraordinarily slow and agonizing death should my associates discover I did this. There are two reasons you should listen to me, and my addendum to Killroy's Primer.
#1: I outrank you. By a lot. My position in the Imperium must remain classified for my own safety, but rest assured that I have seen whole worlds burn. Some of those worlds, I burned myself.
#2: the first reason wouldn't mean anything without this second one: In order to attain the rank I have today, I had to do some extraordinarily dangerous work. How dangerous? Let me tell you that Killroy has seen nothing, absolutely nothing compared to me. So please listen when I tell you something. So without further ado, here is the advice I have for you.
And Killroy, if you're reading this, know that I would shoot you (but not without torturing you first) for your transgressions. This is not because what you did was wrong, but merely because it is my job. My current assignment (and that of my hysterical associates) is to run damage control on the fissures you have deepened between the command structure and the common fighting man. I do not think that revising and improving your primer is exactly what they had in mind, but it is the only thing I can do to restore the infantryman's faith in the command structure. So here goes.
Heresy is no laughing matter, son. If you see something, say something:
I can hear you cracking jokes already. "But isn't everything heresy?" you ask. Hardy har har. Very funny. Good joke. Wanna hear another funny joke? A bloodletter cutting through twenty of you camo-clad peons when you're in the trenches of an ork front. This actually happened, and one of my very first assignments was to investigate how and why. In one privates room we found an alter to Khorne. I killed this privates whole platoon on general principle.
You soldiers sleep together, eat together, for Emperor's sake, you bathe with each other. You can't sit there and try to tell me that nobody suspected something was up when this dude was requisitioning brass sculptures in the shape of skulls, drawing runes in blood, and speaking in archaic languages.
Maybe they didn't say anything because he had been a really friendly guy before he turned. Maybe they didn't say anything because they had a trigger-happy commissar. Maybe they thought they'd be purged by the inquisition for even knowing this guy. Maybe they were all blind and deaf and dumb. I don't really care. There are ways of getting rid of problematic soldiers without reporting it to command. Nobody attempted to deal with this problem. So I killed the whole platoon, and would happily do so again.
That being said, there are a number of things you need to remember in order to prevent these situations from happening.
#1: You worship the God-Emperor, not the death he brings: It's really easy to start worshiping Khorne on the front lines. Constant death and traumatic experiences need coping mechanisms. For many, this means becoming callous to death altogether, and even beginning to exult in those who kill more enemies. But we kill because it's necessary, not because death is inherently good (because it's not). Enjoying a clean kill is all well and good, you can pat yourself on the back for making that headshot at a hundred meters. But killing is not all that you are, and it's good to sit and enjoy being human once in a while (as opposed to a lean, mean, killing machine). The weak deserve your aid, not your contempt. Volunteer to help the medicae once in a while. Helping to heal something instead of constantly killing will help ease your mind.
#2: We all die eventually, and that's ok: I hate myself for saying this. No, I absolutely loathe myself for saying this...but it needs to be said: You are not going to leave the Front alive. Ok, yes. There are a teeny, tiny, absolutely minuscule number of soldiers who make it through a deployment to the front and return home to retire peacefully. But it is best to assume this is not going to be you. And here's the reason why: Nurgle. He's the reason. You cannot keep dodging duty and indulging in cowardice. You will need to face your own mortality. The number one reason people turn to the worship of the Plague Father is because they are afraid of dying. But, at risk of sounding like an ecclesiarchy zealot, we need to remember that death is most certainly not the end. Your soul is at stake here, and its frail trappings mean nothing. It is best to assume that you lost the privilege of living the moment you joined the Astra Militarum. The only thing you control now is whether you die standing honorably as a soldier of the Imperium, or if you'll make a pig's ear of it and force the commissar to shoot you in the back. Either your soul will be sent to the warp, or be sent to the Golden Throne. Your choice.
#3: If we could fix the Imperium, we would have done it by now: The Emperor never did anything wrong. Unfortunately, we are not the Emperor, and neither are you. And that means that a lot of things get mucked up. The Imperium gets a lot of things wrong, a lot of the time.
There are a lot of people telling folks that everything would be infinitely better if we just did X. Well, let me tell you right now that most of those populist fools are handily in the pocket of Tzeentch and the poor idiots don't even know it. They've never worshiped chaos a day in their lives, and Tzeentch is still using them. Listen people: nothing in this galaxy is as simple as "Just doing this one thing", especially not when it involves a galaxy-spanning government like the Imperium. If they start saying things like how Psykers are just friendly folk like you or I, then those are some serious red flags going up. Yes, the Emperor was a Psyker. No, that does not mean that every psyker is looking out for your best interest. There is a reason we round up these folks and have them shipped to special facilities.
#4 Lust and luxury are dismissible. Perversion and Opulence are something else entirely: Everyone has sexual drive. This is basic biology. This often turns even the mundane into a giant sexual innuendo. This is why there are pictures of Sisters of Battle indulging in the heretical with a priest or two. I won't tell you there's anything wrong with that (However I will still shoot you, because it is lamentably my job to do so) However, if somebody seems absolutely obsessed with nudity and sexuality, then there is something wrong. Slaanesh is called "Prince of Pleasure" for a reason. If the women in these fantasies have male genitalia, then then have the artist sent to your commissar. The accumulation of wealth and obsession with the opulent are also signs of cultist activity.
Now, if all four of these italicized warning signs sound incredibly common, vague, and ubiquitous, then let me welcome you to my world. This is why it is a running joke that everything is Heresy. So please endeavor to make things easier for folks like me.
Don't start collecting skulls just because it is frakking "Cool". There is absolutely no doubt that skulls of your enemies make neat trophies. But since it's also one of the primary hallmarks of a dark god of violence and bloodletting, we tend to think you're a heretic. Don't. Do. It.
If you think that the obsession with wealth and opulence describes virtually every noble you've ever met, then you should be able to reason out why I'm always crabby all the time. If you understand that not every populist clamoring for a more equitable system could possibly be a cultist of Tzeentch, then you know why I want to kill myself when I get up in the morning. If you know that not every goldbricking bastard is necessarily a servant of papa nurgle, then maybe can understand why I really, really hate my job.
Make my job easier. Don't be a coward, a pervert, a populist or a psycho. If everyone followed these simple rules, we wouldn't have a problem with the Chaos Gods.
Try working with your officers before you begin working around them:
Rule 36 is a great one in the Unlifting primer...if your commander is an idiot. But information comes down on a need-to-know basis, trooper. And believe me, you don't need to know. Not unless you believe "Compartmentalization of information" shouldn't be a thing. In which case, please report to your nearest commissar. But seriously, you have zero idea what the wider stakes are, what you're fighting for, and why it matters that you hold your ground even if you think, even if you know you're going to die. But you don't know your commander is a turd, you just think he is because you're in a really shitty battle and not many of you are going to live through it.
Here's the rub, buddy. You don't want to die. I get that. But grow some fracking self-awareness. We are fighting a war, and not everybody makes it out alive. This should be pretty basic stuff. Believe it or not, there are reasons why we instituted the bloody commissars. And we know some of them are psychopaths. We know this, and we have them anyways. This lesson was driven home when I watched the an entire regiment, the linchpin of our plans, shoot their commissar and run like a bunch of gretchins. We didn't have anything to plug the hole because we were kinda thin, and waiting for reinforcements from out of system. The Orks broke through, destroyed our basilisks, and deprived us of any artillary support. The entire front was lost, and we had to exterminatus the planet by the end of the week. Because one bloody regiment lost it's shit and the orks "LOLCHAOS'd" all over us. Thanks guys. It was fun reporting that one to the Lords of Terra. We had some of the finest units in the Imperium there, and we were beaten by Orks. Do you have any idea how much I died inside that day?
Some Secrets aren't worth knowing:
This is closely related to that last bit of advice above. There are things you don't know. And then there are things you definitely shouldn't know. My position lets me know things. Dark things. Terrible, world-shattering shit like you would not believe. And I've killed people (and would do so again) to keep those things secret because it would cost the imperium entire star systems. And even still there are things that I am not allowed to know. One of these things, which neither you nor I were allowed to know, was leaked. I purged an entire continent for it. Because that's what I do. It's my job.
When a file says "Classified information" how about you walk away nice and quickly before you get yourself hurt?
A Positive Outlook is essential:
Defeatism is a thing. It shouldn't be, but it most definitely is. You need to understand that moral can literally make or break a battle. Hell, the Sisters practically breathe faith in the God Emperor, and look at the miraculous shit they manage to pull off. It's not just their training or their equipment. It's what they believe that makes them so damn scary. They will win, even if they have to be martyrs to make their goal.
So when Jeff tells you "Bugger the war effort, bugger the Astra Militarum, bugger the uniform" just do me a solid and punch him right in the fragging mouth. Shut him up. That outlook spreads like cancer, and it rots whole units into rebellion.
If you think we treat you like you're disposable, it's because you are (and here's why that's ok):
You remember how I told you to grow some self-awareness earlier? I'm doubling down on it here. Because it's important. It is really really really really really really REALLY important that you understand this: The titan who's flank you're screening? He can do much, much more than you can to turn the tide of the battle. The Space Marines you're fighting with? One of them is literally worth a thousand of you. And the Baneblade, it's totally worth throwing your whole regiment to the wolves to keep that thing running.
If it sounds like you're getting a raw deal, remember that I am much older than you are, and I honestly wish I weren't. I have lived several times my allotted span of human life, and I fragging hate myself for it. I have seen centuries of death. I have seen crusades begin, march off to war, sputter off, and burn out. I have seen entire ecosystems devoured. I know secrets that have taken men's sanity, I have witnessed betrayals that have shattered star systems.
Listen to me now: you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. I am the villain. Not because I wanted to be, but because I had to be. And yet there is nothing I have seen to contradict the claim that our souls go to rest with the emperor when we die, you lucky schmucks. I only keep breathing because self-assisting my own death would probably get my eternal soul thrown to the warp. So go ahead and take a lasbolt for a sister of battle. Throw yourself in front of the rokkit for the Rhino. Stay behind to buy time for your unit to escape the Tyranids.
Because your soul goes to the throne, you lucky bastard. No Heretic, and no Xenos scum, can make that claim.