History TearJerker / Warhammer40000

** What about the ending of Void Stalker, where you discover that [[spoiler: Uzas wasn't, in fact, a Khornate Bezerker after all. His mind was clouded and had no idea that everyone thought he was a tactical psychopath, and as such Cyrion, who suffered from psychic vampirism, took the opportunity to blame him for the hundreds of crew that he had killed and got away with it? And then Uzas is killed moments after this revelation? That made me shed a tear.]]

* What about the ending of Void Stalker, where you discover that [[spoiler: Uzas wasn't, in fact, a Khornate Bezerker after all. He was just very, very confused, and as such Cyrion, who suffered from psychic vampirism, took the opportunity to blame him for the hundreds of crew that he had killed, and got away with it? And then Uzas is killed moments after this revelation? That made me shed a tear.]]

->In the grim darkness of the far future there is ''more'' than war. There are real people there too.

* At the end of the {{Night Lords}} novel Blood Reaver, the death of [[spoiler:Hound. Who knew that we could feel sorry for the mutant heretic?]]

** Oddly enough, [[spoiler: Bequin's]] death didn't seem all that tragic to this troper, even if it was made worse by the gamble that cost [[spoiler: her her]] life not working, but it was [[spoiler: Fischig's]] death that brought tears to his eyes. Right up until the end, [[spoiler: he truly believed he was saving Eisenhorn, and ''almost'' realized he was mistaken for summoning the Inquisition, but then he's nearly driven mad when the daemonhost shows up and nearly ''kills Eisenhorn himself''.]]

*** Dear lord the line "There should be no more of us" gets me every time.

* A similar scene plays out in the novel ''Literature/GreyKnights''. Thanks to a conspiracy hatched by a rogue Inquisitor, an Imperial battlefleet was fooled into thinking that the Grey Knights were actually an enemy force. Unwilling to engage his fellow Imperials, Justicar Alaric ordered his ship, the ''Rubicon'', to charge straight for the planet where the Inquisitor was hiding, ignoring all of the damage they were taking from the Imperial ships. It's a suicidal order, but the over one thousand men and women that was the ''Rubicon's'' crew did their duty without hesitation. Thanks to their efforts, Alaric and all his Grey Knights made it to the planet, even though the Rubicon and the entire crew perished in the process. Just before they died, Alaric realized that he never really got to know any of the crewmen. He recognized an officer over the radio, and this was their final conversation:

---> '''Officer:''' ''None'' of us have names. Deployment in six minutes, brother-captain. The Emperor Protects.

---> ''We do not know what our chances of survival are, so we fight as if they were zero. We do not know what we are facing, so we fight as if it was the dark gods themselves. No one will remember us now and we may never be buried beneath Titan, so we will build our own memorial here. The Chapter might lose us and the Imperium might never know we existed, but the Enemy - the Enemy will know. The Enemy will remember. We will hurt it so badly that it will never forget us until the stars burn out and the Emperor vanquishes it at the end of time. When Chaos is dying, its last thought will be of us. That is our memorial -carved into the heart of Chaos. We cannot lose, Grey Knights. We have already won.''

---> '''Ravenor:''' + I told you closure was overrated.+

* ''{{Warhammer 40000}} DawnOfWar: Winter Assault'' has a tear jerker [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKIAMAqGNIY here]] that invokes true ManlyTears at its [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome awesome.]]

** Many of the endings for {{Dawn of War}} Dark Crusade. Especially the Tau, Eldar, and Space Marine ones.

** The same goes for [[TheCaptain Gabriel's]] execution of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Isador]] in the first game.
*** Castor gets a speech almost as good as Sturnn's in Retribution.

** [[spoiler: ''Exterminatus'']] You can tell no one wants to do it. Not even [[spoiler: the Deathwatch Marine at the trigger.]] And just before there's this beautiful picture of [[spoiler: Typhon Primaris]], lush and green with waterfalls spilling over, and you ''know'' what's about to happen and you can't stop it...

** Considering [[CrapsackWorld what sort of world]] ''Warhammer 40000'' takes place in, a Tear Jerker is probably a ''good'' thing.

* In Eisenhorn, this happens in one instance at the Thracian Gate when a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming get subverted ''hard''. A space marine cradles an injured child, intending to carry him safety. [[spoiler: It turns out the child was one of the captured psykers that got loose in the confusion, and he made old Gregor kill the marine, and very nearly himself if it weren't for Voke's [[BigDamnHeroes Big Damn Hero]] moment.]]

* A similar scene plays out in the novel ''GreyKnights''. Thanks to a conspiracy hatched by a rogue Inquisitor, an Imperial battlefleet was fooled into thinking that the Grey Knights were actually an enemy force. Unwilling to engage his fellow Imperials, Justicar Alaric ordered his ship, the ''Rubicon'', to charge straight for the planet where the Inquisitor was hiding, ignoring all of the damage they were taking from the Imperial ships. It's a suicidal order, but the over one thousand men and women that was the ''Rubicon's'' crew did their duty without hesitation. Thanks to their efforts, Alaric and all his Grey Knights made it to the planet, even though the Rubicon and the entire crew perished in the process. Just before they died, Alaric realized that he never really got to know any of the crewmen. He recognized an officer over the radio, and this was their final conversation:

** ''[[{{TearJerker/Ptitle6mc33q878da1}} Gaunt's Ghosts]]''

--->'''Kantor:''' You did well to bring them this far....It is time that someone carried you now.

* In Eisenhorn, this happens in one instance at the Thracian Gate when a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming get subverted ''hard''. A space marine cradles an injured child, intending to carry him safety. [[spoiler: It turns out the child was one of the captured psykers that got loose in the confusion, and he made old Gregor kill the marine, and very nearly himself if it weren't for Voke's BidDamnHero moment.]]

* This troper found a TearJerker moment in ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' literature, of all places. The moment in question was the death of [[spoiler:Colonel Colm Corbec, treacherously stabbed in the back by Lijah Cuu]], in the [[GauntsGhosts Gaunt's Ghosts]] novels. After finishing that book, he was unable to get the scene out of his head (and thus unable to sleep) for at least an hour.

* The ending to BenCounter's HorusHeresy novel ''Galaxy In Flames'', where Saul Tarvitz stands with the surviving members of the Luna Wolves and loyalist Emperor's Children, having bled the traitor armies so badly that even Horus' incredible hubris has been broken, and Horus orders his fleet to bombard the Space Marines into oblivion rather than defeat them on the ground. Even faced with complete and certain annihilation, Tarvitz and his men ''won''.
** For this troper, it was the scene where the virus bombs get dropped in ''Flight of the Eisenstein''. Death Guard captain Ullis Temeter and Dreadnought Fal-Huron try to get their own troops to the shelters. Fal tells Temeter to get in as well, since his Dreadnought armor will protect him from the virus. Temeter tells him to eff off as he shoves one last marine into the shelter, then locks the door. As the bombs drop, Temeter realizes that Fal has a couple of cracks in his armor that means the virus will still get him anyway, and the two exchange "you too, huh" one-liners before dying. Made worse by the fact that the defining trait of the Death Guard is their resilience to toxins and disease. Hell, the fate of the entire Death Guard legion could qualify - the traitors got lost in the warp and caught by Nurgle, who made mockery of their vaunted immune systems. The loyalists become the Inquisition, arguably one of the reasons why life in the Imperium sucks as much as it does.
** Three simple words had this troper having to put the book down and go for a walk; "We are betrayed"
** In ''Galaxy In Flames'', the last parting of Loken and Tarvitz. Tarvitz says that it may be they will not meet again; Loken says he thinks there's no maybe about it. . . and then, in the scene described above. Tarvitz had desperately gotten to the Emperor's Children so that he could [[DyingAlone die with]] his brothers, in defiance of the breaking of brotherhood that Horus had imposed on them, but at the end, he looks about the survivors -- Emperor's Children, Luna Wolves, World-Eaters -- and realizes that he knows all their names, and that men who had been only faces to him had [[FireForgedFriends become his brothers]].

* Speaking of GauntsGhosts -- ''Only In Death'' is a particularly grief-filled book. The time when [[spoiler: they find Gaunt, still alive despite [[ColdBloodedTorture his sufferings, blinded, and desperate to know if anyone else had survived]] at the hands of the Blood Pact]] would be a tear-jerker, if it weren't competing with the point at which Hark discovers [[spoiler: Soric as a [[BlindSeer sanctioned psyker]], [[ManlyTears cries]], and [[ICannotSelfTerminate kills him]]. Doubly so in that Soric is generous and good-hearted to the end: in face of Hark's horror at what the Black Ships did, he tries to reassure him, though he had clearly suffered torments, and even before he asks for death, he assures Hark that he had been trying to help them, not hurt them; he tells Hark he has nothing to forgive him for and warns him to do it properly, so he won't be punished; and finally he ensures that Hark knows Gaunt is alive]]. Hours of shock and grief for this troper.\\
Then, I did not find [[spoiler: Corbec]]'s death at the end of ''Sabbat Martyr'' to be half as tragic as [[spoiler: Soric]]'s [[FateWorseThanDeath fate]] there.
* [[spoiler: Caffran]]'s death in ''The Armour of Contempt'' hit ''hard.'' Even though this troper knew it was going to happen well in advance (sucker for spoilers), the part at the very end where Zweil is speaking out last rites had me sobbing.
** I started to get tears in my eyes as soon as the kid had the gun... that he got killed due to trying to save the child because it reminded him of [[spoiler: Dalin]].
* Even nameless mooks get quite a few tear-jerkers in the ''Gaunt's Ghosts'' series. In ''Sabbat Martyr'', in particular, a platoon of about 20 Ghosts found themselves stranded outside of an Imperial fortress. ''Half a million'' enemy troops were heading for them. Grimly, the platoon turned around to ''[[LastStand fight]]'' [[LastStand the overwhelming enemy force]]. The last words ever written about them were as follows:
---> Nineteenth [Platoon] lasted seventeen minutes from the time the gates closed. They accounted for '''one-hundred and eighty nine''' enemy casualties. [[WhatYouAreInTheDark No one witnessed their heroism]].

* For this troper, on the Warhammer 40K note, it would have to be the ending of the Horus Heresy novel ''Descent of angels'' where [[spoiler:Zahariel, the hero of the Dark Angels first battle as a legion (not to mention almost 413 pages of story), is sent back to Caliban with Luther, while his cousin Nemiel stays with the main force because their Primarch distrusts psykers. Anyone who knows their fluff knows what happened at Caliban...]]

* In the Gaunts Ghosts novel 'Straight Silver', there are two true Tearjerker moments:
** Once when Trooper Gol Koela, who had been brain-damaged in a previous battle seemingly gained fleeting recollection of his children, only to reveal he was making a cold observation on the age of the P.D.F soldiers with him.
** The second heart-wrenching moment was the death of Trooper Piet Gutes. He spends much of the novel reminiscing about his wife and children, killed back on their homeworld, and adopts a world-weary attitude for the majority of the novel. When he and a squad are defending an isolated, abandoned cottage in the forest, he rushes to defend a hole blown in the wall of the living room. As he runs out of ammunition, he sees a vision of his family, comforting him and assuring him that he doesn't have to fight any more. He settles-down into an armchair and is shot with his eyes closed and a smile on his face.

--->'''Apothecary:''' The Chapter will honor you, brother.
--->'''Space Marine:''' [[HeroicSacrifice There is no honor to be had in defeat. But someone must deliver the targeting beacon.]] [[LastWords Orbital control, lock onto this beacon and fire. Full power.]]

* The [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone remorse]] and despair of the [[TheGrotesque Lord of the Unfleshed]] near the end of The Killing Ground, after being posessed and used by a vengeful revolutionary. [[YouAreNotAlone Uriel comforts him]] and shows him a holy icon of the God-Emperor; the Lord of the Unfleshed's visage is reflected as the boy he once was before the forces of the Ruinous Powers [[IWasOnceAMan turned him into a monster]]. As the Lord of the Unfleshed sobs in joy, believing that the Emperor never abandoned him, Uriel [[MercyKill grants him the Emperor's Mercy]].