i feel like the reason i like the chaos marines so much more than the Imperium when it comes to storytelling is that they're not afraid to play the "incredibly evil" bit straight. Sure, the Imperium is incredibly evil, but it's been sanitized so that people may have a 'good guy' to root for. However, I feel like the Traitors are so much more interesting because they ARE evil as shit, don't pretend they're not or that what they're doing is justified, and can still tell engaging stories. Let me use the Night Lords trilogy as an example, since it's peak fiction and everyone should read it, and because it illustrates my point pretty well. Spoilers down below for all three books.
As we know, the Night Lords trilogy follows a company of bloody killers and their human slaves. Already from the get-go you see just how 'kind' they are when Talos dispassionately assigns all his human property a number rather than a given name. For the first book, besides his POV, we see that of Septimus, someone who is already well acquainted with the toils of coexisting with the Night Lords, and Eurydice/Octavia, who basically gets stockholmed throughout the trilogy into liking the people who would shoot her were it not for the the fact that they need her. ABD presents a very interesting premise as we're given a look into just how pitiless and cruel the warband is, before making us follow them through their trials and tribulations, explaining their plights in ways that, though not relatable, are understandable to the reader.
Talos Valcoran is as much a victim of the setting as he is a perpetrator, having been stripped of all identity and purpose beyond a killing machine for a master that is now long dead. He has many moments showing him bonding with his captives and presenting him as almost a noble savage, who then turns around to performs acts of mindless, senseless violence. Probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire trilogy is the part where he forces a pregnant Octavia to murder scores of astropaths with her third eye, an activity we know is incredibly taxing for her both physically and mentally. There's not even a convenient 'ends justify the means' excuse ready to handwave why this obscene act had to happen - Talos' explicit goal was to perform as much suffering as he could and he did this with no regard to Octavia's will nor agency in the matter whatsoever. I don't think it's any coincidence that the first half of Void Stalker isn't a high-stakes raid on a prison or a fun adventure through a pirate port, but a bloody, senseless and petty campaign of mass murder upon a city for the great crime of settling a planet the Night Lords had abandoned ten thousand years earlier. For all his talk of a greater purpose, Talos exemplified the Night Lords in that moment: picking on those weaker than him with no remorse and delighting on the cruelty he was inflicting, all out of spite for a dying establishment that wasn't even looking his way. Talos' greatest moment was relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things: the Imperium is just too bloated to notice or care about one part of the galaxy going dark for a while, and any disrupted commercial or military lanes would have hardly affected the carrion empire anyway. The pointlessness of everything in the trilogy is probably one of its strongest aspects, and the protagonist's moment of glory is met only with horror by the audience.
Other characters exemplify these attributes very well: Cyrion, the wise-cracking, friendly, affable Night Lord that gave a weapon for a slave to defend herself is revealed at the tail-end of the series to have been a sadistic tormentor who pinned his deeds on an unstable brother, knowing he'd get away with it. Mercutian, the eloquent philosopher who often mused upon the state of his Legion, nonchalantly mentions to a man dying from a heart attack that it's a shame he won't get to experience the sensation of being flayed alive. Perhaps the only truly 'decent' member of the Legion was Malcharion, who spent his last remaining moments protecting someone lesser than him just because he wished to perform one good deed before his inevitable demise.
I could keep going on and on, but the point is that the Night Lords don't have to appeal to any sort of morality or righteousness to be some of the most beloved characters in the setting. In a way, their self-awareness about how shitty they are IS what makes them endearing. Although I disagree that 40k is some sort of fascist apologia, I feel like more often than not some factions (COUGH COUGH THE IMPERIUM) are portrayed almost heroically, with their more undesirable elements obscured or brushed aside. And sure, they can have those aspects! But always in spite of themselves, not because of it.
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