You’ve pretty much got it. I’ll reiterate some points below.

The warp, or the sea of souls, is an alternate dimension in which the soul of nearly every living being goes when its corporeal form dies. It is a place that is theorized to have always existed, although for much of it’s history, was a relatively peaceful and dormant place. As sentient species, particularly humanity, spread across the galaxy, it made the warp more tumultuous. Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle have probably always existed in some lesser form, but as events transpire within real-space, they begin to grow in power. The cycle of life, death and decay fuels Nurgle, while Khorne grows more powerful as wars are waged. Tzeentch feeds on betrayal, schemes, plots, and change. These themes have been around since time immemorial, and so have these warp creatures that formed into the current day chaos gods.

The outlier is Slaanesh, who, as you noted, was pretty much murder-fucked into existence. Her birth was so catastrophic that she instantly killed most Eldar and and all their gods, and ripped open the galaxy in the heart of the Aeldari empire, which is why we now have the eye of terror.

Before I talk about Eldar, I need to talk about souls real quick. All souls reflect in the warp, and nearly every living thing has a soul. A plant probably isn’t going to show up in the warp, but a human soul will, though a human soul is barely a candle flicker. A human psyker however, will be a strong flame and be much more noticeable to daemons. An Eldar soul is a bonfire, and a delicacy for Slaanesh. Since the birth of Slaanesh, she saps the Eldar of their souls over time. If an Eldar’s soul is unprotected, over time, Slaanesh will turn that Eldar into a soulless husk. Each Eldar faction has a way of handling that problem which I’ll explain below.

Now this part may be kind of dense because Aeldari get a lot of representation within Rogue Trader. They come in several flavours - 3 main factions I can think of, but I’m sure there are additional smaller ones: Eldar (Aeldari), Dark Eldar (Drukhari), and Harlequins.

Eldar

After the birth of Slaanesh, some Aeldari believed they must renounce their hedonistic ways, which are your regular Aeldari you see today. They fly around on their craftworlds and generally refrain from murder fucking. They keep soulstones on them so that if they die, their soul can be captured by the stone before it departs to the warp and inevitably consumed by She Who Thirsts. These soulstones are placed into the craftworld itself, which forms a sort of Eldar-only purgatory called the Infinity Circuit. These fallen Eldar can be called upon for council, or even for war, as they can inhabit war constructs made of wraithbone, which is a psychoactive building material that Aeldari society relies on heavily. It’s essentially condensed warp matter that Bonesingers can form into shapes. If you’re curious, a wraithlord is an example of what I’m talking about.

Dark Eldar

The twisted kin of the Eldar took a different path after Slaanesh’s birth. Instead of protecting their soul using soulstones, Dark Eldar “steal” or siphon the souls of others. They perform massive raids on sentient species from their dark city of Commorragh deep within the webway. The webway is a sort of pocket dimension. It exists outside of realspace, and also outside of the warp. Typically anything within the webway is safe from Chaos, but you’ll find there are exceptions to that. Anyway these Dark Eldar leave their city, raid a human planet, steal a bunch of humans, and take them back home. Once home, they pretty much torture the living shit out of these poor souls. In doing so, they replenish a bit of their own soul that Slaanesh has fed off of. Much of Dark Eldar society is built around torture, and so they have these massive coliseums in which thousands will gather to have their souls replenished during some fucked up gladiatorial event where captives will have to fight and be tortured. Dark Eldar also have extremely advanced technology and can essentially keep their victims alive indefinitely. They are also able to regrow themselves. Haemonculi, which are a sort of chirurgeon, are able to regrow a Dark Eldar body from a small piece. If a finger is left over, that may be enough to bring a Dark Eldar back. The time period of this is short though, as the body will need to be rebuilt before Slaanesh eats the soil. So essentially, they don’t protect their soul like Eldar, they replenish it by way of torture as Slaanesh is constantly feeding off them.

Harlequins

These are a pretty mysterious and secluded third faction. They are soothsayers, story tellers, fate weavers, and mystics. They also live in the webway, are keepers of the Black Library, and like the Aeldari, don’t partake in hedonistic acts. To protect their souls, they utterly devote themselves to the (likely) last remaining Aeldari god Cegorach. When a Harlequin dies, Cegorach snatches the soul before Slaanesh can. Not much is known about what actually happens with the soul or how Cegorach manages to protect and hide it from Slaanesh. Cegorach will try to do this for other non-harlequin Aeldari whose souls enter the warp, but it’s not guaranteed he can save their soul.

Ok that’s enough Eldar backstory, and should give a sufficient basis of knowledge in regards to the game.

The earth shaman story is the most likely theory, but it isn’t confirmed, or maybe rather it’s confirmed through an unreliable source. Anyway, there are other theories about how the emperor came into being, such as the Sigilites creating him. I won’t get into that theory here, but yes, the running theory is that a bunch of Shamans killed themselves simultaneously so their souls could coalesce and form the Emperor. I don’t think the Emperor ever gave the Chaos Gods a wallop, but he did deceive them and steal their power for his own plans, which is why we have the Primarchs. For what it’s worth, there are many references in both Warhammer Fantasy and 40k that state the Chaos gods are always playing their great game, vying for power among one another. The split seconds they look away from their great game is when calamity falls upon humanity, but a vast majority of time (not that it exists within the warp) is spent fighting each other. If the Chaos gods actually teamed up and spent more than a fraction of their power on wiping out the galaxy, they could do it. This however will never happen, as if the galaxy does not exist to feed the warp, they will cease to be as well.

Now, assuming the shaman theory is true, the Emperor guided humanity in the shadows for tens of thousands of years until he made himself known and created the imperium of man. The rest is as you say, space crusade, horus heresy, internment on the golden throne, blah blah blah. You’ve got it.

The rest of the Xenos factions don’t get a ton of representation in Rogue Trader. I won’t say what, I’ll leave you to discover it yourself, but I can quickly touch on Tau and Necros below as you mentioned them

Tau

Yep, galactic newbies, and a small empire. They are rapidly advancing, but are nowhere near anything that could be considered a threat to the imperium. They live simply due to the slow bureaucratic processes that prevent the imperium from properly mustering the miniscule amount of strength it would take to wipe the Tau off the playing field. If you take what they say at face value (which you probably shouldn’t), they might be the only faction that can be considered the “good” guys. I wouldn’t really call them space dwarves, that’s more Leagues of Votann.

Necrons

Necrons are pretty much (imo) the biggest xenos threat to the galaxy, aside from arguably Tyranids. Their technology is so advanced it is akin to magic by the imperiums understanding. They have devices that can simply delete planets from existence. Their basic gauss weapons rend organic matter down to atoms. The only reason why they haven’t dominated the galaxy at the current time is that they are still awakening after millions of years in slumber. A small fraction of the race is currently active and awake, while the vast majority still rests within their tomb worlds. In the early days, the Necrons killed their gods and turned them into batteries. I cannot emphasize how powerful this xenos faction is. To clarify your last sentence, they aren’t genetically engineering other races. They believe in racial supremacy. Necrons dominate, lesser races serve. They are the ones who were genetically engineered by their gods (the C’tan) in the early days. Once, Necrons were humanoid, made of flesh and bone. Their homeworld revolved around an irradiated sun. The Necrontyr (their name before they became robots) were highly advanced, but their lifespans were short due to their sun essentially killing them. Their goal was to seek immortality, something the Old Ones had figured out. Necrons waged war with the Old Ones in an attempt to learn these secrets, but were unsuccessful. As the Necrontyr were pushed back and driven towards extinction, they struck a deal with the C’tan. The C’tan promised immortality in exchange for alliance with the Necrontyr, as they told the Necrontyr they were also once at war with the Old Ones. This was a lie. The C’tan simply wanted something to feed on. Anyway a bunch of shit happened, the Necrontyr went through a biotransference process, ate a bunch of Necrontyr souls, and now you have Necrons. More advanced Necron forms have retained a larger portion of their soul, so your run of the mill necron warrior is essentially a soulless automaton, while overlords retain much of their former self.

I’d recommend reading the wiki on the C’tan if you want to know more. It’s quite a good read, especially if you want to learn about the earliest days of the setting. This is where I started my wiki rabbit hole.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/C'tan

Lmao. I’m leaving that one.

I guess it’s probably helpful to know what a rogue trader actually is. I think the game explains it somewhat, but just in case, here’s a (not so) quick rundown on some major components of the lore and game.

A lot of people think that rogue traders are just the captain of a big ship. They are not. They command nearly unimaginable power within the imperium. They have a warrant of trade sealed with the blood of the emperor from a time when he walked among men. It is both a holy relic, and a hall pass to do whatever the fuck they want mostly. They are pretty much outside the bounds of imperial law. They can recruit xenos and worse into their crew. They can befriend, dominate, subjugate, and exterminate entire systems if they wish. Not even the Inquisition can really boss them around, but Lord inquisitors are probably the only authority to actually influence a rogue trader. A rogue trader wouldn’t want to piss off a lord inquisitor and vice versa.

It is the duty of rogue traders to navigate unexplored space and claim worlds for the imperium. The world’s they claim are theirs by right of their warrant of trade, but those worlds are required to pay tithe to the larger imperium, which is non negotiable. The tithe is usually set by the high lords of terra or the administrators that work underneath them.

As for wizards/magicians, they do and don’t exist. They are called psykers, and their “magic” is derived from the warp, the nightmarish parallel reality inhabited by daemons and their respective gods. Using warp energy is extremely dangerous, and can cause the veil between realities to thin. If it thins, tears open up, and daemons can burst forth. This is usually a one way street, as anything non-daemon entering, or even seeing the warp, will pretty much instantly go insane, turn into a chaos spawn, or worse. There are very few exceptions, but they do exist. There is a lot more to the warp, I’d recommend looking into it deeper if you’re interested. Leutin09 on YouTube is a great source.

Now that we know what both rogue traders are and what psykers are, we can talk about navigators, which are a really important part of the game and lore. They are human, but mutated. They have a genetic trait that gives them a third eye on their forehead. They use this eye to see into the warp. It’s not perfect, but it can help ships travel through the warp, which is humanity’s form of faster-than-light travel. Pretty much every warp capable craft will have one. Ones that don’t take extreme risks even doing the smallest warp jumps. Without navigators, the imperium is screwed. It’s why they are one of the very few types of sanctioned abhumans.

As for the mechanicus, machines spirits, and the god they worship, it’s somewhat complex. The mechanicus at its height was technologically progressive, and significantly more advanced than the contemporary version. They understood how to create and innovate. During the age of strife, they lost much of their knowledge. Creations they once built, they have lost the knowledge to rebuild, repair, enhance, and sometimes even maintain. When dark age technology is lost, it is usually lost for good, which makes it so valuable. The current day mechanicus has stagnated, and are afraid to progress as innovation has caused problems in the past (see Age of Strife and men of iron).

The modern day mechanicus warships the omnissiah, which is essentially the avatar of the machine god, which they believe is the emperor. In a roundabout way, they do workshop the emperor, which is relatively in line with the imperial creed. The mechanics is technically separate from the imperium per the treaty of Mars that the emperor signed, which gives the mechanicus religious freedoms and rights to technological finds, such a STC fragments. I’m not going to talk about STCs here. Mechanicus likes the fragments. They struck a deal with big E, and now they are an allied faction to the imperium. For all intents and purposes, you can consider them a joint faction, but they are technically distinct.

As for machine spirits, they do exist. I think of it kind of like how orc psychic manifestions work, though, to be honest I’m foggy on the details as machine spirits did exist during humanity’s enlightened phase. Technology does have machine spirits, and the more powerful the machine, the more powerful the machine spirit. Tech priests sometimes must commune with and appease machine spirits. Angry machine spirits can cause their host machine to misfire, break down, malfunction, etc. Appeased machine spirits can greatly enhance the effectiveness of the machine they are bound to, with some spirits being so powerful they can control aspects of a machine, such as advanced targetting systems, defensive capabilities, etc.

The last thing I’ll touch on is the emperor. Some comments say he’s dead, some say he’s alive. The truth is that he is neither. He is a husk that resides on the golden throne - a dark age of technology device that is a psychic amplifier and a life support system. It maintains his decript body and allows him to remain in a state of undeath. His psychic abilities are so powerful that he cannot really die. There is a lot more to this, as the emperor is a perpetual. I can expand on this more if you want, but I’ll leave it out for now as it’s complicated. Anyway, he is so powerful a psyker that he is the focal point or source of the astronomicon. This is essentially a psychic lighthouse in the warp that navigators will use a point of reference to know which way holy Terra is. They also say the emperor wages and eternal psychic war in the warp with the chaos gods, which keeps chaos from taking over the imperium of man.

You’ve got the gist of the foundation of the lore down, so my breakdown above is a little more comprehensive. Feel free to ask any more questions or DM me. I also wrote all this at 2am in the dark so if there are typos, inconsistencies, or things that need further clarification, I apologize and in advance.

I switched from Windows to Bazzite on my main rig 2 weeks ago. Likely won’t go back to Windows for gaming as I’ve had pretty much no issues with Bazzite.

I did also get a Steam deck recently, so anecdotally, both above answers are right.

Insert “I’m doing my part” meme

Surprised it’s not mentioned yet.

Severance.

To add to this with my own anecdotal experience: I got into a trade at 18, right outta high school. Had mediocre high school grades, and decent college grades for electrical. Got a job in a place I didn’t wanna work for about a year, but made good connections and got good experience. Used that to get a job in my home town, and literally jumped from job to job, or was able to keep my job through intense layoffs by being a good bullshitter.

Some of the best advice I ever received was “it’s not the grades you make, it’s the hands you shake”

Get into something that might interest you, and network with people. Networking for me from a trades background as a young guy got me a work from home job doing IT in my 30s.

Best of luck mate, you’ll figure it out. Time is on your side, just don’t be idle for too long if you can help it. Older you will thank you.

The actual end goal is how much science per min can you pump out to flex on other autists. If you think the game ends when you launch a rocket, or when you get to the edge of the solar system, you are certifiably not autistic enough.

Haha damn, totally missed it.

It’s actually significantly more expansive than it looks. Part of the bridge you see runs under our deck, and then on the other side there is an enclosed ramp up to our kitchen window. Another part of it forks off to the front of the deck so they have a primo sunbathing spot .We simply unlock the little cat door that was installed in the window screen, and they are out.

Thanks for the kind words. We feel good about the compromise of letting them outside, but not letting them kill all the surrounding wildlife.

I made a catio in my backyard (3rd one attached the house) because our little bastards will kill everything in a kilometre radius. Not that we’ve ever tested that, but we’ve seen how they act when creatures smaller then them are out and about within their purview.

I can provide no further information that is going to help you see the point.

God speed.

You’re missing the point, especially if you think a fair and just system even exists within the US. If you want to take the stance that “murder is illegal”, sure, what he did was illegal. Jury nullification is a way we peons can still hold an iota of power. It’s spitting in the face of unjust systems.

Let me ask you this. Would you prefer a situation in which Luigi was convicted for murder, sentenced to life in prison, and the system never changes? Or would you prefer a situation in which exceptions are given in exceptional circumstances in an attempt to change a fundamentally broken system?

If your answer is the former, you might just want to apply at United and work your way up.

I’m going to copy WoodScientist’s post. Don’t know how to tag, sorry, but credit goes to him for this.

"I would say that jury nullification isn’t just some accident of the legal system, but the primary reason we have juries in the first place.

Judges will say that juries are meant to just decide the simple facts of the case. But what sane person would ever design a system that assigns 12 random untrained nobodies to do that task? If all that mattered was judging the facts of the case, why not have 12 legal scholars instead? Why isn’t “juror” a profession, just like being a lawyer or judge is? If we want people to just apply the letter of the law to the facts of a case, why not fill juries with professionals, each who had a legal degree, and who have sat as jurors hundreds of times? Judging evidence and reading law is a skill. And it’s one that can be educated on, trained, and practiced. Why do we have amateur juries, when professional juries would clearly do their purported job so much better? Or why not just do what some countries do, and have most or all trials decided solely by judges? What exactly is the point of a jury? Compared to everything else in the courtroom, the jurors, the ones actually deciding guilt or innocence, are a bunch of untrained amateurs. On its face, it makes no damn sense!

No, the true reason, and really the only reason, we have juries at all is so that juries can serve to judge both the accused AND the law. Juries are meant to be the final line of defense against unjust laws and prosecution. It is possible for a law itself to be criminal or corrupt. Legislative systems can easily be taken over by a tiny wealthy or powerful minority of the population, and they can end up passing laws criminalizing behaviors that the vast majority of the population don’t even consider to be crimes.

The entire purpose of having a jury is that it places the final power of guilt and innocence directly in the hands of the people. Juries are meant as a final line of defense against corrupt laws passed by a minority against the wishes of the greater majority. An unaccountable elite can pass whatever ridiculous self-serving laws they want. But if the common people simply refuse to uphold those laws in the jury box, those laws are meaningless.

THAT is the purpose of a jury. It is the only reason juries are worth the trouble. A bunch of rank amateurs will never be able to judge the facts of a case better than actual trained legal scholars with years of experience. But by empowering juries, it places the final authority of the law firmly in the hands of the people. That is the value of having a jury at all.

Jury nullification is not just some strange quirk or odd loophole in our justice system. It’s the entire reason we have juries in the first place."

Had my eye on Children of the Sun a while back. Thanks for the reminder it’s on sale, I think I’ll pick it up too.

It’s less money in their pockets and more money in ours. That’s not going to be a double win in their books.

Getting Epic’s money isn’t a slam dunk for profit. You’re hedging your bets taking guaranteed Epic money for lower potential sales vs non-guaranteed Steam money for higher potential sales. Having a bad exclusivity deal on Epic and then selling your game at a loss (90% discount) on steam isn’t profiting both ways, and sometimes isn’t profiting either way.

I also disagree with the sentiment that you’re reinforcing bad behavior. If anything, you’re signalling to them that you won’t support exclusivity deals, and are happy to wait for a deep discount on Steam. Ultimately, that’s a win for consumers.

That said, fuck exclusivity deals, and I’m much in the same boat where I’m hard pressed to support developers that take them.

It was supposed to be the “universal language”. According to Wikipedia, up to 100,000 people speak it globally.

If I remember correctly, it was adopted by the League of Nations, a precursor to NATO, in the early 1900’s.

Here’s the article if you’re interested. I didn’t really read through it to fact check myself cause I’m poopin’ on break, but there you go.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

You can play Nintendo games on PC, with the added bonus of not giving money to that ghoulish company.

I played BotW and TotK on my PC, and let me tell you friend, with the increased frame rate, and the ability to run reshade, it looks and feels better than ever.

I realize in hindsight I should have worded my comment more specifically. I’m NOT talking about the dude. I’m talking about all the comments at the girl.

I will never not condone clowning on rich assholes. Nobody gets that kind of money without some form of exploitation, and those kinds of people are fair game.

My comment was regarding all the other cringe comments in the thread that are saying shit like she’s not that hot anyway, or she looks fake, etc.

I can generally agree with that if it’s something someone can’t change. However: fuck billionaires

I don’t think a group of FOSS Linux bros are having supermodel girlfriends lol, but anyway…

I’m not even puzzled as to why people think she looks bad. I’m puzzled as to why people think anything about her looks at all.

Seems some people here are projecting their insecurities.

I don’t even care, either. I just hate hypocrites. Don’t throw stones from glass houses.