Drukhari

Consider Hell - the prison. I model it as the armed camp of janissaries beseiging the White City.

Theistic religion proposes that if you set your sights upon God, you are headed to God's presence. Critics like Nietzsche have noted that this can be corrupted, into temporal nihilism. And factions have exploited this temporally: they expect you to give up your possessions earning your way to Paradise, to die in battle, or (in Alcorn's Protestantism) to enslave yourself to the most charismatic pastor. But that is all they are: exploiters, and victims. The true Church knows what the Epistle of James is for.

Meta-mathematically, our cosmos is in a multiverse. We're protected from the Immaterium. The Warp isn't Hell - it's worse. And we know it's real, unlike Hell (or Heaven). But let's propose a universe like this one, with one difference: porosity.

In the porous universe, we haven't the luxury of hoping for a better one. We have two choices, against the null choice. The null choice is the Sea of Souls. As mentioned, that's gibbering chaos, not a choice. The real choices are: resist, or buy time.

Resistance looks... like what we got now, especially if the resistance be so effective we Earthlings don't see it. At the marches the Empire Of Terra reigns in the form of free-willed angels. If elevated saints accompany them, there's Vox Day's Level Two.

Immediately outside the marches, are those who have made their separate peace. They avoid getting into chaos themselves by being just that bit chaotic enough. This was Earth as the Aztecs envisioned it. Blood for the Sunbane, hearts for the Sun God.

There, I think, is classical Hell. A land where instead of getting ahead by doing and being good (naïvely), you get by - for one more precious moment - by doing evil. You tell the difference between Hell and Imperium - quite easily, most visibly by which way the swords are facing.

This is, incidentally, why Warhammer's Imperium has an Inquisition and why we in the real world cannot tolerate the Gamma Male.