The Truth in Erebus Words

[Draeden]

It's been on my mind since reading False Gods a few months ago. The legitimacy of Erebus' words.

 

It's Chaos, and despite being a devout follower of Chaos, I always take anything spoken by the warriors of the dark gods with a grain of salt. But I was curious as to others opinions on this matter.

 

As it stood to my understanding, back in RT era, the Emperor was born from a mass suicide of Shamans I believe but later this was retconned into just the Emperor turned up one day.

 

Erebus said in False Gods that the Emperor had made deals with Chaos in the past to gain his power then never fulfilled his end of the bargain.

 

The book that Loken was reading in False Gods lends support for this theory. Making indirect mentions of Screamers of Tzeentch, Plaguebearers of Nurgle (I think) being used in the War of Terra. And that the Eldar turned up to put a stop to it. This shows that the old Warlords of Earth were fully aware and capable of communing with Chaos.

 

And from what I have gathered of the Emperor over time he has the perfect warriors body (Khorne), immune to disease (Nurgle), with an eerily inspirational aura (Slaanesh) and is one of the strongest psykers around (Tzeentch), and above all, just another Terran Warlord. And whilst I know that Games Workshop will never come out and say whether or not this is true, does it seem possible? Favourable even that this is who the Emperor really is? A Terran Warlord that cheated Chaos and as such rightfully earned the ire of the denizens of the warp?

[Iron Man I]

IIRC back in the day, it was implied (Vaguely) that the Emperor was in essence the 5th Chaos power. Take it for what you will.

[happy clam]

some of the first daemon princes were from before the emperor, i think its mentioned in codex daemons, doombreed rings a bell!

[Starblayde]

My first thought would be 'Erebus said it, therefore it's worthless to anyone but him'.

 

Absolutely everything our esteemed First Chaplain said and did was to promote his own cause - i.e. promotion of the Chaos Gods who he had, for some reason, deemed a more appropriate target for worship than the Emperor. There may be a grain of truth in some of his explanations about why the four Gods are getting involved with bringing down the Imperium, but I don't read into it that the Emperor welshed on some sort of bargain with them.

 

From what I can tell, his experiments into the nature of the Warp bothered the Gods somewhat - whether he was disrupting their realm with the passage of starships, drawing too much power away from them, or whatever, he is part of the reason why they turned their eye to the material realm.

 

The hints that Loken reads in the book of... (Ursh, was it?) definitely conjure up descriptions of Chaos daemons, but we know (retconned or otherwise) that psykers with warp-influenced powers were on Terra long before the appearance of the Emperor, what with the Shamen ending up sacrificing themselves all at once to create him anywhere between 20,000 and 8,000 years BC.

 

I'm sure he knew about the warp and I'm sure the Gods had their eyes on him from a long time previously, but I don't quite catch the link that he may have been in league with them at any point. His idea was to have humanity conquer/take its rightful place in the galaxy, but not the immaterium too, right?

[Draeden]

See, the Emperor always to me seemed to know just a bit more about what was really happening then he ever let on. Mind you I've yet to read Mechanicum but I believe it is mentioned in there that he also knew about the existance of the C'tan. And on the next point I tend to get into conflict with many people at my LGS simply because even though the Old Ones seeded life on many planets including Terra, I attribute the creation of humanity to the C'tan as a weapon against Chaos and not to the Old Ones.

 

It could very well be true that the Emperor was trying to turn himself into a chaos god simply to wage war on the other gods. Or not. But Erebus' words make too much sense, at least partly. I'm torn between wanting to believe or not that the Emperor was in league with Chaos for a bit, even if it was just to serve as a chance to destroy Chaos from within, as per humanity's creation.

[Starblayde]

The Emperor, presumably, knew about the C'tan after bitch-slapping the Void Dragon and binding it under the surface of Mars. The dragon then, supposedly, began sending out 'dreams' to the inhabitants and teaching them how to create incredible machines, as well as worshipping it indirectly.

 

For me, the Emperor's overwhelming desire to have humanity conquer the known galaxy is his driving theme, uniting the scattered peopes of Terra under one galactic banner, wrapped in the protective empirical science of the Imperial Truth to protect the from the idea that daemons exist, all the while holding them at bay.

 

 

I'd also like to argue against anything that involves 'it was all a plot by the C'tan', even if it's GW canon carved in thousand-foot high letters on ceramite, as it's lazy and boring. Just because :lol:

[Draeden]

I didn't mean to imply by any way or form that the Emperor was a loyal follower of the C'tan. But simply learnt the truth behind humanities creation. But that part about the Void Dragon, it gets on my nerves so much.

 

Mars was the Dragons Tomb World. He had been there since the final days of the War in Heavens, (and slap me if I'm wrong on this part, might be confusing him with Nightbringer), wounded by Black Stone Fortresses. When humanity first struck out amongst the stars then lost contact with one another, I'm not sure how this affected the Martian/Terran relationship but from what I read even the Martians and Terrans cut contact cause Terran Warlords were too busy nuking themselves.

 

Which then begs the question. If the Emperor was around prior to this loss in contact, then why were the Terran Warlords fighting?

 

And if he came about mid-way through the Terran Conflict, when would he have time to pop over to Mars and explore an impossible cavern (keep in mind, Necron Tombs are bigger on the inside then the outside.) and beat down the Dragon for giving some cyborgs a few nightmares?

 

It's the one thing I don't like about what I've heard in regards to Mechanicum. You have this major plothole unless it was answered somewhere I haven't seen.

[Starblayde]

From what I gather, the Emperor imprisoned the Void Dragon within Mars before the warp storms that cut Mars from Terra and, somehow, did this on purpose so that he would have an awesome forgeworld to power his Great Crusade (powers of foresight helping much?) when the time came and the warp storms dissipated.

 

At this point, iirc, the Emperor was still acting as 'the power behind the throne', rather than actually ruling the planet. It was only during the Age of Strife that he decided that to get any job done properly, you have to do it yourself, therefore uniting/conquering all of earth and spreading out from there in the Great Crusade.

 

Quite where the Dragon came from, and how it was hanging around in Sol at the time, though, is beyond my fluff-fu.

 

Oh, and Erebus is still a liar :) The whole point, I'd imagine, is to give Horus believable lies in order to enhance his sense of loneliness, isolation and longing for his father, who had gone back to Terra for reasons he evidently didn't even want to share with his most favoured son. Mistrust leads to anger, anger leads to hate, you know the rest.

 

EDIT: Of course, the simple answer is to wait until Mechanicum comes out and then decide whether it's any good or not.

[Draeden]

Mechanicum is out, just yet to read it.

 

But there's a glaring oversight you made with the Void Dragon. He's little more then massive sentient energy. He was around long before Humanity came about and went to sleep on Mars right as the Deciever was coaxing apes out of the trees. Heck, taht might be way the Dragon chose Mars as his Tomb World, cause the Deciever was playing around nextdoor and you can't trust that guy either, gotta keep an eye on him.

 

But back to the point at hand. I'm not questioning whether or nor what Erebus was saying was definitively true or not, I'm questioning about the plausibility of it all. As was rightly pointed out earlier, Chaos and Humanity have been going around hand in hand since its early creation. Long before the Terran War and whilst it isn't evident when the Carrion Lord was born, it seems to be whether during the Terran Conflict or long before that, the Emperor could've been a pawn of Chaos. Which then branches off into multiple schools of thought. Was he misguided? Was he, as Erebus said, power hungry? Was he intending to wrong Chaos in the first place? Is he fulfilling his original purpose as a human? I don't know, but the evidence is there, I would say. The Emperor could most likely have been a disciple of chaos. And it has been proven by Zso Sahaal and Konrad Kurze, to remove the taint of chaos from oneself.

[Starblayde]

I think the idea is for the Emperor to be the shining light of humanity, untainted by Chaos of any description.

 

The visions shown to Horus by Erebus and Chaos while he was in the Serpent Lodge temple all, quite nicely I thought, showed him pretty much what the Imperium is today, a hellish place of bureaucracy and religious fanaticism that would come to pass if he did not act. So he acts, and brings it about, never knowing that irony will come and smack the galaxy's future the face with all the force of a Thunder Hammer.

 

The plausibility of Erebus' words are what makes it so easy for Horus to fall, something that Magnus' appearance doesn't particularly help. It's all still a pack of lies, imho, but a beautiful pack of lies nonetheless.

[Solid Zaku]

The beauty of Erebus' vision to Horus was what it left out. Yes, the world that Erebus showed him WAS the future, where the Emperor was deified, and the Imperium made a sprawling hellscape. What he DIDN'T show him was how, specifically how it all would come to pass if Horus did what he did anyway, tricking him into thinking that he could be the solution to this nightmare world instead of the cause.

 

Brilliant writing.

[Greyhunter77]

i think Erebus's words are meant to be plausable, as are all the lies of Chaos. Its the very plausablilty of what he says that draws Horus further away from his father towards Chaos. If the lies had been outrageous then Horus would just have slain Erebus without thought especially after he imitated has favourite marine.

 

Spoiler Mechanicum gives a vision of how the Emperor "captured" and imprisoned the Void Dragon on Mars.

[randian]

At this point, iirc, the Emperor was still acting as 'the power behind the throne', rather than actually ruling the planet. It was only during the Age of Strife that he decided that to get any job done properly, you have to do it yourself, therefore uniting/conquering all of earth and spreading out from there in the Great Crusade.

What was he doing for the 5,000 years between the end of the Dark Age of Technology and the beginning of the Unification Wars? Why did he let Terra lose its technological base? Just because you can't leave Terra anymore doesn't mean you should forget the technology you already have. "Let things to go to hell, wait a few thousand years, then take over" isn't what somebody who has humanity's interest, rather than his own, at the heart of his actions.

[Conor The Great]

Its also possible that the big E was like the other Terrans and was aware of them but(to put it simply) stuck his nose where it wasnt wanted,mabye he wasnt content with just depending on brooding gods to give him power and sought the source for himself?

[c-wrex]

Remember, the 'Chaos Gods' are just very powerful warp entities. All this talk all over the place of evil chaos gribblies is just a way of describing warp creatures. The Emperor would not be a chaos god, much like Khorne is not a chaos god. He is a mighty mighty mighty mighty mighty (morphin :cuss ) warp entity. Khorne just happens to have...questionable motives. I personally love the "CF'tan made me do it!" plot hook, because it adds another layer of inescapable gloom to the setting, and makes the struggles of the Imperium more endearing, to me anyways.

[Sons of Horus]

I had a thought. If the emperor made deals with the Chaos Gods, what if his end of the deal was actually to create 20 super-human 'perfect' soldiers for them in exchange for victory in the unification wars and the safe-guard of humanity. then the emperor thought he could pull a fast one on the Chaos Gods and used his psychic powers to try and eliminate the facility where the Primarch Project was based but was too weak and ended up scattering them instead. but he couldn't let the scattered Primarchs fall into the hands of Chaos because he knew that the Gods would seek vengeance on him and his imperium so he decided to search for them and use them as his generals instead. but the Chaos Gods are fickle and powerful and were able to manipulate half of the Primarchs anyway :P just a thought though :)

[Rindaris]

Even as a loyalist player I've never been a fan of the big E. So I kind of like the idea of him being just a Terran Warlord that made a deal with the chaos 'gods' for his power. Then he broke his deal.

 

The only problem I see with that theory is why if the chaos gods gave him the abilities that made him what he was... why didn't they strip him of the powers once he broke his word?

[Draeden]

Same reason why the Nightbringer didn't go into the warp to fetch his scythe back.

 

The Dark Gods are nothing more then sentient warp stuff. Passing their powers off into the materium means they can't get it back easily. If the Emperor went into the Eye of Terror, then they could probably strip it right outta the guy. But he didn't, so until the Emperor dies completely or Terra becomes a daemon world (which will happen apon his death), the Dark Gods can't get at him directly.

 

Edit: To add further onto the subject, that's why dealing directly with the dark gods is harder then just conversing with the daemons. Since the daemons are much weaker warp stuff, that are, essentially just an extension of the god in question, they can pass into the materium briefly but at considerably reduced strength.

 

Seems to be, the more warp stuff a daemon is made up of - The more power they must expend to gain temporary access to the materium. The exception are daemons allied to the Great Forge, and familiars. Familiars feed off the psykers power to sustain themselves. Daemons of the Great Forge mix themselves with metal and machine, thus gaining a level of independance from warp entities. It's generally why beings like Soul Grinders are one of the last daemons to return to the warp after the warp rift closes. They can sustain themselves longer on less energy due to their half metal status.

[#13]

I think when GW lost the copyrights to Malal, the fifth chaos god bent on the destruction of the other gods, he died and was reborn as the Emperor on Terra. :D

[Tutteman]

Perhaps the Emperor let humanity lose it's tech in the dark age because then, when he rose to power bringing new tech and and began the golden age it would make him more likely to succed, after all, if you convice people you're their saviour from the dark age...more likely to follow you then if you just turned up in the middle of the golden age and said "follow me"..."Why, what you done for me?"

[TheDarker]

Also, maybe HE want´s the human to learn that technology alone wasn´t able to give them happiness and power if at the same time you put some kind of control on it (sentient machines, you know...), so he said "you know what, let´s wait until his technology throws them to nearly-extinction, and then I will come and say "now we´re gonna do this right"".

[Draeden]

Sounds more like an arogant <insert pg-13 equivilant of insult currently being though> then a benevolent protector if he was doing that kinda thing.

[Retributis]

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. People won't always logically follow what is best for them.

[TheDarker]

Emperor (Dressed like Adama)- "You must be careful, sentients machines could be dangerous"

Scientist-"Ha!, science is our friend, we created this robots, they will love us!"

Cylon- "Yeeeeees, we loooooooove you" (walks slowly to the armory)

[Soeven001M]

Wow I really like how this is clearly I made a good choice in coming here intelligent conversation. Anyway still new here still learning so hope I do this right.

 

Anyway from what you guys say it seems not that the "Immortal Emperor of mankind Beloved by All" HAHA was not a warp entity or anything like that. Perhaps more of something that is well an anomaly in the universe like a gigantic bobo that just happened to pop up not anything planed but a total wild card.

 

Though in his whole whenever time he was created he could very easily have figured out that well chilling and waiting a LONG time would be the best method to figure out how to rule. Clearly the guy found a history book or two and got the idea "hey if I wait a bit maybe just maybe I'll be able to not totally screw everything up like other monarchs do throughout history, and yeah if I let them suffer a bit they will see I am right and judge me a perfect leader which I am haha" Well arrogance aside seems like a good plan to let humanity stew in their own.... filth a bit and screw up REALLY BAD.

 

But how he got his powers I still say wild card though I love biology and all that it makes you wonder the Primarchs were genetically the perfection of any engineering program EVER!!! But how to do this hmm lets say we add in a little warp energy making them psykers in a way but what if we used some of the metabolism holes and fill them with warp energy to make up and boost them. Because lets face it something as God-like as a primarch, would totally need some extra boost other then just genetics to power them so maybe the one thing that got the "Chaos Gods" interested was that the Emperor in making his "Sons" psykerly poked little holes in the immateruim to let some raw power drain into his sons to make them and sustain them but with the strength of his sons use mental stability (not all of his sons of course) could in fact resist anything attempt to be manipulated by the chaos gods.

 

This all being my little theory on genetics of course but yeah, anyway also who is to say that the Heresy failed I mean the universe still is at war the gods must totally be getting power from the conflict at least Khorne anyway. It would make perfect sense that maybe all this turmoil and failure of chaos attempt at domination of humanity was exactly what they wanted maybe they wanted humanity not just as a massive slave but to fight with itself created two sides to humanity those for chaos those against and the chaos gods just feed off of the spoils.

 

Anyway Erebus told half truths with lies sprinkled on top just for the added flavor he served his use and was probably one of the Greatest of Manipulators but that is just me sorry for the long post hahaha.