Germany’s world-first Warhammer academic conference is happening now with talks about ‘authority and pluralism in the grim darkness of the far future’ and ‘Tyranid xenobiology’

This weekend, my partner and I will be attending one of the fall festivals in the area. I expect a delightful bacchanal of apple cider donuts, perusing local crafts, and sampling the offerings from regional distilleries—all of which I’ll need to distract myself from the knowledge that, across the Atlantic, at the University of Heidelberg, enlightened minds are convening for panels like “In the Name of the Emperor? Authority and Pluralism in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future” and “Are We the Baddies?: The Ethical Implications of the Imperium’s War with Chaos and the Inverted Meaning of Order.”

The Warhammer Conference, which bills itself as “the world’s first academic conference dedicated to all things Warhammer,” is hosting over 50 presentations where theorists and philosophers are presenting their scholarly appraisals of Space Marines, Genestealer cults, and 40K fanfic. The two-day conference ends tomorrow, and frankly, I have never been more upset that I didn’t pursue academia. Sure, I’d have consigned myself to a harrowing life of anxiety and financial turmoil, but I’d have a lot more excuses to listen to the world’s most studied sickos do the deepest possible dives on their fascinations of choice.

I mean, one of the panels is called “Tyranid xenobiology compared to real-life eusocial insects” and will “examine the possible mechanisms that determine the Tyranids, whether they are influenced by external factors such as diet and chemical signals, or are genetically determined” through comparisons to primitive and more evolved termite species. Hello? Not even the wealth and splendor of writing for digital media could hope to compare to that.

Meanwhile, I’ll probably be in the cider donut line for upwards of forty minutes.

Luckily, while the timezone difference means I can’t easily make the conference’s free-to-attend online panels, the website does say “all sessions will be recorded and we will endeavour to share them after the conference.” And thank god for that. Otherwise, I’d be looking at a $2,000 flight if I wanted to make it to Germany in time for “What happened to the Lost Primarchs? Or, a case of invitational incompleteness.”