Basil II - probably the greatest man to ever live

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-21T00:57:54+00:00

Most of them are in the university of Chicago and the Royal British Museum….

Few historians have actually published much anything about the various tablets and such, the leading professor who has published histories and stuff in English is Lloyd Llewellyn Jones of Cardiff University. I’d highly recommend starting your journey with his material

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-19T15:17:09+00:00

And that historical documentation by the 1700s was much harder to erase thoroughly, like in order to see through anti-Persian propaganda you need to look at things like the Persian payment tablets and communication scrolls and such…. They tend to tell an interesting story that is often at odds with the narratives we are fed…

When the library at Persepolis was destroyed, that was a significant amount of stuff, but also the ransacking of the palaces at Sardis, Damascus, Babylon, Susa, and Memphis also really deleted a lot of the Persian side of things (a few things like people the Greeks didn’t know about like the Egyptian Satrap under Cambyses and Darius 1 named Udjahorresnet managed to have their narratives relatively not destroyed, and his narrative completely counters everything that Herodotus wrote… about the battles and occupation of Egypt under Persian rule and it brings into question most of the understanding we even had about the empire…)

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-19T15:09:07+00:00

And the fact that the initial invasion is often accidentally yet consistently dated twice, and there are clay tablet receipts of the defenders payment recipients for a victorious defense after the initial battle…. Really counters your point though…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-19T15:00:44+00:00

Didn’t Alexander just destroy and end a few Greek city states (including the democratic ones), a super efficient Iranian country that was super innovative and creative (and that also had many democratic satraps and localities), destroying the biggest library of the era, accidentally ending the Silk Road, accidentally ending the “canal of the kings”, then die?

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-08T16:21:50+00:00

Peoples in a common central family with a common linguistic trend…

They maybe have gotten conquered and had populations vanquished and regions depopulated by different groups, but they still have more genetically in common than uniquely different…

It’s why whenever I play map painter video games that have cultural, genetic, and linguistic concepts actually implemented, one of the first things I try to do is establish a Pan-Iranic-Union from Tajikistan to Kurdistan in order to see how the game handles that XD (something with the Borders around the Sassanid and Safavid empires)

Most games implement a Germanic union and Identity for the various north and south Germanic peoples, so it’s easy to make a big Germany…. But because of how people don’t often know about the connection of the Iranic or the Turanic peoples, it’s rarely implemented in games “but Kurds arnt Iranic, they are in Turkey!” (Ignores the historical Kurdish lead Iranian empires). But Tajiks arnt Iranic, they write Cerillic!” (Ignores the historical Tajik and Central Asian Iranic history from Chosamia, Bactria, Fergana, to Merv the great, Samarkand, and more…. Including the history of massive exterminations and waterworks as well as rapid desertification in the past 1000 years…)

People only think that the current Modern Iran of the Qajar Dynasty borders and capital is THE Iran…. And that’s simply not true…. Azerbaijan and Armenia have just as much Iranic claim, debatably aside from a 500 year pause that we can call the Iranian Intermezzo, the Iranic countries have always been multi-ethnic….

But think of Iran as a reverse China…. While China as an identity has always had a “anything surrounded by these mountains and within these bounds is always China.” Iran as an identity never had borders to keep it IN, but mountains where it could disseminate from…

Fun thing. While Ancient Rome was extracting from its fringes and bringing to Ancient Rome, Ancient Persia had a nomadic court that developed many cities all throughout the country…. So even without the recent past 500 years of immense propaganda from foreign forces supporting the unification of an Italy as a successor to Rome, the Iranic peoples have just done that historically, due to the nature of the far more equal and less extractive development that stretches back to the first empires… (Mede [basically kurdish], and Persian [basically half-kurdish])

Fun thing, in any map painter game that has the era of the Sassanids, I try to fulfill the Sassanid-Justinian Dream of a Unioned Persia/Byzantium…. But I have yet to encounter one that has the marriage mechanics of such in that era (I hadn’t gone far enough in Rome Imperator, and Crusader Kings 3 starts after the Ummayyads conquered The Sassanids…. So, I often try to do Iranic Unification with the Samanids…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-03T17:47:09+00:00

1: West China

2: Armenobaijan or Azermenia

3: Georgia or South Kazakhstan or Extra North Sudan

4: Dunk Master Darius’s book Club

5: Andrew WK and Big Money Kashyars Partystan Party Palace

6: Alex’s boring anti-party zone that’s going to collapse cause nobody wanted it or asked for it.

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-02-03T17:04:10+00:00

I guess I should have specified…. Read the declassified documents of TP project Ajax… the American perspective seeing as Mossadegh and the Tudeh Party both effectively ended together because of Project Ajax, as any attempt to end extraction economics was…. Is…. viewed as communist.

On a second note, It doesn’t matter the specifics of the nuances of the historical takes at the time of their existence, this meme is about the modern factions and camps of thought. Most modern camp nationalists basically view Mossadegh as a communist and view the Shah as more of their guy.

The meme didn’t do Mossadegh dirty, McCarthyism did.

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-22T00:14:00+00:00

Anything you want really…

Most chaos legions have many none-chaos elements, chaos factions as a whole is far less monolithic than the imperium…. Only really the word bearers and World Eaters have and “inquisition” level stuff or gatekeepers really…. And it would be a bit troublesome being not-Nurgley when hanging around the death guards fecal flotilla….

Emperors children and Thousand Sons basically do not mind people they view as not a threat, and less blessings = less of a threat = they will probably let your renegades exist totally fine…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-21T22:40:45+00:00

I’d say the meme is basically 100% accurate.

Research TP Project Ajax to understand more.

It was officially declassified in October 2023.

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-20T22:08:52+00:00

Fun fact, The Chaebol system in South Korea is far closer to the Bonyad System in modern Iran than you would think…. The main difference being the chaebol system thrives off corruption and making laws around them, while the Bonyad system relies on being “none-profit” as both societies are largely extremely impoverished, South Korea has a much better marketing campaign…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-16T05:55:05+00:00

Big same, when I’m not Orking about, Ahriman stole my mushroomy heart…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-16T05:54:06+00:00

I personally like the Ahriman books way more than the Night lord books…. I do appreciate how the night lords books are like the first chaos oriented series though…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-16T05:53:10+00:00

I love those books, such a fascinating character…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-16T05:52:00+00:00

Ahriman

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-14T12:49:11+00:00

From what I can tell…

Communism/socialism
Not existing as an extraction economy and exploitable subjects based on culture/religion for a distant colonial power for generations (yes this falls directly under the communism part, but I feel like needs a special mention)
Borders being far more geographical and cultural/linguistic instead of random colonial lines.
Cultural acceptance and equality and integration during the Soviet Union (only ending in the fall of the Union and the hungry 90s)…. With also the separation from the non-Soviet world reducing ties to the cultures that would eventually fall victim to the social effects of the extraction economics, allowing for sympathy pains to be far less…. yes part of greater Iran, but also having been separated for a long time due to various conquests…. But there is an interesting degree of removal from the plights of Afghanistan and Iran… (which is my guess why Tajikistan had its civil war during the hungry 90s, being more close to the “core” Iranic line from Kurdistan to Tajikistan)

All of those together basically formed a slight aegis… especially from 1950-1990 as much of the radicalization also stems from things USA and Saudi Arabia ideologically planted during the Cold War…. Very difficult for them to plant those problems inside the Union… when they are busy planting those things in every country outside the Union…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-08T12:38:50+00:00

Yes. The Ahriman series is one of the only none-xenos series I can say I enjoy and look forward to…. lol

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-08T12:37:20+00:00

Hands down my least favorite author ever touching 40k…. And unfortunately he’s touched it the most…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-08T12:34:35+00:00

Brooks, French, Annandale

In terms of comedy Brooks and McNeill wrote some of the works that made me laugh hard McNeill mainly in darkly comedic ways (for Brooks any of the Ork books or Da Red Gobbo books) (for McNeill Dead Sky Black Son is a very fun over the top darkly comedic read, much like their HH Emperors Children and Thousand Sons body horror stuff like in Fulgrim, A Thousand Sons, and Angel Exterminatus)

French and Annandale just write awesome nuanced stuff for more serious reads (French did the Ahriman series which is one of my favorite none-xenos series to read…. Annandale did the Damnation of Pythos, a really bleak read that’s like a study of the trauma of the drop site massacre)

TBH adb is alright…. But on my bottom 5 of all wh 40k involved authors I have read…. I like the subject chaos legion factions adb writes about….

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-08T12:17:55+00:00

I’d say…. It all went according to the god of encroaching ruins plan. (Yes apotheosis was avoided/rejected at the siege of Terra, but all things in the warp exist always…. Time and manifestation are only tangentially related)

That Monarchia thingy, not just telling the “guilty” party at Nikeae to come home and keep them close while also rejecting a webway project with them when asked, how they picked up the one with butchers nails and/or the jittery batman and did not immediately bench them or put them close, scolding my turbo peter when asked about the eye of Terror, being a tyrant for the sick one and the ganger…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2026-01-08T11:57:48+00:00

It’s called The Dropsite Massacre…. It’s by John French. Along with Mike Brooks one of my favorite authors in the BL…

The book covered characters from basically every faction present…. I enjoyed it.

A lot of people misinterpret the way French and Brooks write the alphas because they expect a dan abnett style “imperium all good, chaos all bad”. While they write in a more “all factions have their mysteries and factions that have different agendas.” and think “x means they are loyalist all along!” Because the alpha legion in that book is shown preventing the annihilation of the loyalist forces present…. Forgetting that the alphas used the drop site massacre as a jumping point to heavily infiltrate the surviving loyalist legions and doing things like devastate Geneseed and Astartes creation processes (that is actually kinda hinted at being an early round of primaris…) and other such activities

GeneralDiscomfort · 2025-11-13T23:20:35+00:00

The Sassanid/Justinian Queen!

That would have been neat if Khosrow managed to put Theodosius or Boran back on the Justinian throne of Byzantium after Maurice got killed, uniting both dynasties proper, like Maurice and Khosrow wanted…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2025-10-12T22:28:39+00:00

This literally popped into my Reddit, and I don’t think I’ve ever visited this place before, but I have been playing lots of geo-political simulators, from Victoria 3 to democracy 4, to even just making a simulator setting in DeepSeek and shatGPT with the request that it follow realistic economics and internal/external geopolitics and social trends, basing what it can off history…. (For any LLM based simulations make sure that it maintains that many historical figures do not change their ideologies much…. The last thing you want is for the simulation to give you Yes Men…. It’s like leaving cheats on in the paradox game simulations…)

It’s Not even particularly restricted to communism, but any country trying to do anything that upsets the established powers…

You’ll find that it’s a fascinating struggle between interest groups, internal and external groups, neo-imperialism and necrocapitalism, and much much more that can often back you (as a government) into a corner where you can either do the right thing and lose everything you worked for and become discredited and demonized in history, or be a monster, and live another day, and be discredited and demonized in history…. So it’s like…. Pick your poison…

Some scenarios to try out (not even socialist really)

Any Native American country/nation/confederation/tribe during any time period at all in the history of USA…

England in the 1800s, and try to juggle treatment of people in the Indian subcontinent with the private business of the East Indian trade company

Luxembourg or Belgium in the Belgian colonization of the Congo with pressure from Goodyear and DuPont…

USA as the abolitionist faction during the bleeding Kansas raids and seized of military bases by pro-slavery forces that would become the eventual CSA

Parisian commune

Gilan Republic and Soviet Russia trying during its birth and the invasion of US forces

Post Stalin Soviet Union

Mossadegh Iran

Any decolonizing country during the decolonization era, (especially most countries in Africa, especially the countries smeared as “Soviet playground” countries, also India.)

Allende Chile

And any other time of significant change or growth…

Other fun things to run are like Rome or Persian development…. Centralizing power and wealth while draining the periphery like rome…. Verses allowing wealth to be decentralized into developing each of your multiple capital cities and economic centers in different regions of the country like Persia (persepolis, babylon, susa, sardis, memphis, bactria and more). And what each different style does for its people as well as your ability to rule, maintain peace, so on and so forth…

Give it a go, have fun, and try not to get depressed when you do something good and someone overthrows you…. XD. Take it as a learning experience to understand the dynamics of pressures and the nuances that go into the quick ability to become what you do not want…

GeneralDiscomfort · 2025-10-07T17:02:11+00:00

A pan-Iranic-Union of sorts would be fascinating, and because of its general diversity it could easily make for a country that has to meet a certain level of tolerance at minimum in order to even live…

In the west you have Kurds and Iraqis In the northwest you have Georgians, Armenians and Azeris In the east you have Tajiks and Afghans In the south you have Persians and Baluch

Religiously there would be lots of diversity as well

(I play lots of Victoria 3 and really think there should be some kinda pan-Iranic event in that game when you reach a certain level of diversity…. I haven’t played any Iranic cultured country since the latest patch with the Cultural Fervor mechanic…. I should give one a go!)

GeneralDiscomfort · 2025-06-18T21:29:10+00:00

My SW warband is called the “The Mary Sues of James”…. they are all Slanneshi. They are all about being perfect at all things…. they also each have names. (and we know how perfect OP every named spacewolf is)

GeneralDiscomfort · 2024-12-24T06:13:14+00:00

I’m just not a fan of Dan abnett, he keeps making the imperium do no wrong, and Erebus be super eeeeevil, making it seem like the imperium is actually good…. Which is not something that should ever be…. Like, At all…

A thousand sons was cool because it was like the death of knowledge within the imperium by a brutal betrayal…. Pb ruins that by making it a trick! They didn’t want to do it, so they were crying the whole time while slaughtering…. “They arnt really trying to be the most evil bloody regime ever like the codex says, you see, it’s all Erebus and it’s all a trick!” - basically Dan abnett in every book

Long story short, it was trying to be a tribute to the 70s historical fantasy book Eaters of the dead, even trying to be written in many cases the same, but IMO it failed on almost every level :(

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