khurdur Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Well, I've been thinking. Ultimately, who was right back in the horus heresy? Loken and co or Abaddon and co? Yes, chaos is bad and all, sacrifices and using people as slave and hosts for daemons, but isn't chaos ultimately more powerful? Chaos can save humanity form the myriad terrors of space better than the imperium can. Minor spoiler ahead: despite the emperor's "no gods no supernatural things exist" maxim, didn't he start to be worshipped even before the heresy occured? On some system I can't recall the Sons of Horus were attacked by a daemon when such things don't exst?? And, the emperor did abandon them, and already wanted a tithe from conquered worlds. The great crusade was not a friendly expedition. it was join us or die. After the heresy, the imperium is a bloody as chaos is. (well, almost) And thousands are sacrificed to the emperor to keep the golden throne functioning. But, do these things justify the depravity of chaos, which seems to be destiny of humanity? Part one over! And now, just how traitorous ARE the traitor legion. Ie, do they capture human stock, geneseed them, make them space marines with Sons of horus geneseed, and givr them their own power armour and corrupted bolters from Ghalmek or someplace. Would such a warrior be called a traitor, as he has never worshipped the emperor, he was put straight into the service of chaos ! Ideas, thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellios Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 The thing is the Emperor isn't saying warp entities don't exist but that they are not daemons as daemons are classically defined! They are supernatural they are just crazy aliens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Lord Shamrockius Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 This is a complex myriad of questions... This is my two penny's worth on a collaboration of answers. It seems as if the Emperor didn't want to be worshipped (First Heretic), and the fact he was is based upon basic human misunderstanding of what he has done/created and his higher level of understanding of science and the universe as a whole. Secondly, I don't think his intention was ever to use the Golden Throne as his own personal life support, or for it to be a sacraficial altar for the millions of psychers it takes for the throne to keep working. It was meant as a way of having a basic beaconing system for the ships of the imperium to be able to navigate the warp and a way for humanity to access the Webway. (wow, that actually sounds like a defense of the Emperor... now I'll balance...) However, he did declare that there was nothing supernatural in the universe and everything could be explained by scientific rationalisation, when he was clearly aware of the Gods of Chaos, Daemons and the true nature of the Warp. His plan for reunification of humanity through the Crusade was clearly very misalighned. I agree that it was a case of "join us or die" as well as "if you had to work with aliens to survive on your own through the Age of Darkness and Age of Strife then you die". That, in itself is the basis for any crusade. It's a variance of views that can put you on one side of the war or another. Building an army of "super-soldiers" for the sake of "reuniting humanity under one banner" is clearly an act of intimidation. The age old arguement of "you don't take a gun to the streets unless you intended to use it" kind of applies here. Why send a soldier to be an ambassador? Respect is to be earned through compassion, not commanded by fear. His intentions were clearly for good but his motivations and his execution were also possibly the worst ways of doing it. He also clearly looked down upon basic human understanding and capabilities as being less than his own and could not comprehend the basis of the universe, what it was made of and how the human population, and to an extent he clearly felt the same way of the Space Marine populace, could actually understand this. Is Chaos really the worst of humanity or it's base intentions and instincts? There is one thing in trying to stop each member of humanity from falling to what you perceive as a dark life, but that depends on two things; your point of view and your own belief systems. Those that turned to Chaos believed the Imperium, the Emperor and the task they had been sent to do as wrong, corrupt and immoral. If the Emperor had been confronted by one of the Primarchs who told him he had encountered a section of human civilisation spreading across the galaxy that showed all the good of humanity but was clearly corrupted by greed and a zeal for power, was worshipping their leader as a god, lying to their citizens and was slaughtering other humans in the galaxy for not believing what they believed, how would he react? He would declare to that Primarch that they needed to round up every Space Marine, Primarch and Weapon and turn it upon that branch of humanity as they are clearly beyond saving. Moral of the story; having an ideology is great, all power to you for it, but don't try to force it down anyone else's throat as if it's gospel (pardon the pun). Surely if your ideology is based upon peace or scientific understanding, you should practice those beliefs by learning about those you don't understand, and you can't learn from them if you've killed them all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minigun762 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 As far as the Emperor crushing worship/religion and denying the existence of warp powers, I had always understood it to be part of his long game to weaken the forces of Chaos by undermining the fact the very fact that they exist. If a warp entities power is related to the number of followers or believers, you remove that power base and the entity is now less powerful. You do that on a big enough scale (e.g. across the entire galaxy) you might just be able to eliminate it as a potential threat to your new empire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Lord Shamrockius Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 As far as the Emperor crushing worship/religion and denying the existence of warp powers, I had always understood it to be part of his long game to weaken the forces of Chaos by undermining the fact the very fact that they exist. If a warp entities power is related to the number of followers or believers, you remove that power base and the entity is now less powerful. You do that on a big enough scale (e.g. across the entire galaxy) you might just be able to eliminate it as a potential threat to your new empire. That's good logic but it's a bit of a "Hail Mary" of trying to rid the galaxy of pure "evil". By denying that it exists, you make yourself look foolish if someone deemed to be a lesser being than you proves that it does. But as a point of what the Emperor was trying to achieve and how, it's a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AekoldHelbrass Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Another 2 kraks... First of all - yes, there is only one "good" side in WH40k - Tau. Everyone else is as evil as possible, including Imperium. So it is hard to say which one is worse - Chaos who will flare like a Nova and burn out in few hundred years or thousands of years of unstoppable agony Imperium is suffering. Additionally, I think Emperor said "no worship", but not "no gods and daemons". He was against religions, churches, sects, cults, but it does not mean that he wanted everyone to stay blind in front of daemons. And he was worshipped because of "average man"'s ignorance, in our world we can see the same thing, some fruit-related deceased person could be a good example of mass madness. We theoretically can add some conspiracy theories that lords or Terra exploited those believes to try to make Emperor actual god, rival to Chaos ones.... But they may or may not be true, depends on the distance to nearest base of Alpha Legion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodanshi Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Here’s a quote about this that I had kept which had made me think. I think someone called draeden had posted it originally. Firstly, I'm going to keep correcting people as this comes up... There are no Warp Gods. There are only Chaos Gods. Every Ruinous Power is a Chaos God, not every Chaos God is a Ruinous Power. Nurgle, Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, are all Ruinous Powers and Chaos Gods. Gork, Mork, Isha, Khaine, are all Chaos Gods but Not Ruinous Powers. Secondly, The Emperor was indeed but a man, but he tried to pull a Sigmar, and instead the Ruinous Powers caught on and messed his plans up (Thank you Magnus, and Horus) Now, thirdly, based on the reading of the Liber Chaotica, if the Emperor were to die now, he'd be dead. Dead dead. But all that collective belief in him would spawn a new Chaos God. So, the Emperor can not become a Chaos God because he can't enter the Warp himself, but he has created the belief needed to create a new Chaos God. Now, going back to your referencing to Euphrati Keeler and what she did to the Tzeentch Horror, simply belief. The Emperor had nothing to do with it, the Lectitio Divinitatus had been around for some time. Sindermann summoned a daemon from the warp without realising it, the Daemon was expelling massive amounts of energy trying to wreak havoc, and the woman had an aquilla on hand and fed off the collective belief of the Lectitio Divinitatus Cult of the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet. - Draeden Magnus just destroyed the Emperors Webway Gate. Now to your question, If you deny gods and daemons and angels and devils, you deny them their audience. The Emperor was a smart guy. Deny religion and cults, yet instill a singular belief in him. Not as a god, just as the one rightful ruler of all. Build the faith in his rule up so much whilst publically denouncing the existence of gods, then when he was able to enter the warp with enough faith behind him, then he would be able to blind side everyone. This goes into what I'm saying in the Librarian thread. No one expects him to enter the warp and focus the Belief in him into making him even more powerful, because they don't even know it's possible. Then those with the most faith in him, the followers of the Lectitio (whom he publically denounced but let run rampant), would become enslaved to his very whims, then using their conciousness to increase his power further and then begin to affect others, then use those others to affect others still, he'd slowly turn the entire human populace into one giant battery for his own psychic schemes. Collapse a Web Way, you create a Chaos Gate. That's what happened with Magnus' spell, that's what happened with many other webway gates as the system is slowly breaking down. Magnus collapsed the Emperors Webway before the Emperor was ready to enact his plan. Step 1) Build a huge empire devoted to you Step 2) Build a webway gate Step 3) Build up fervor in you whilst denying god-hood Step 4) Collapse Webway, enter the Empyreon, become god Edit: To further build onto why he didn't just use a warp drive engine is that those would be too unstable in the gateways they built. Collapsing a webway gate into a chaos gate is far more stable if you know what you're doing. The Emperor wasn't ready yet, there was still much of the galaxy yet to conquer and imagine how much fervor he could build for himself if he went "Look! I've just built an entirely new way to travel that ditches the warp!" Once again I'm referencing the Liber Chaotica. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellios Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 First of all - yes, there is only one "good" side in WH40k - Tau. Everyone else is as evil as possible, including Imperium. So it is hard to say which one is worse - Chaos who will flare like a Nova and burn out in few hundred years or thousands of years of unstoppable agony Imperium is suffering. The Tau are not good... a common misconception... Join us or die is not the catch phrase of good guys... For the greater good is more difficult... Some things that might be bad could be seen as good for the right reasons... But if the Tau have enslaved an entire alien race... I doubt people would classify that as good. Hell I would argue that the Craftworld or Exodite Eldar are closer to good/neutral than the Tau. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodanshi Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Don’t the Craftworld Eldar go around massacring people who have done absolutely nothing, on the basis that the Farseers have seen that those people WILL do something in the future that will mess up things for the Eldar? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the jeske Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 but not their own people . technicly the eldar see very few other races as on their level . necrons [and they hate them] are one of them . For eldar other races are like animals . you dont say people are evil because they kill milions of animals each day . neither do the eldar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellios Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Don’t the Craftworld Eldar go around massacring people who have done absolutely nothing, on the basis that the Farseers have seen that those people WILL do something in the future that will mess up things for the Eldar? If I built a time machine and killed Hitler (for example) and his friends to stop WW2 and the like... That would make me a murderer but I'm sure that a lot of people wouldn't have a problem with it. Even I killed them before they became bad... I don't want to talk about how this could mess with time :down: that isn't my point. The problem with humans is that we tend to leave things until late on... The Eldar can't afford that and as Jeske says the Eldar don't even see most sentient creatures as being on the same level as them. Combine those facts together and you have a situation much like you have in modern times when a Human population will wipe out a dangerous animal species just because it might do something... They don't really have the option of a human relocation scheme because the humans have the technology to come back. 40K has some bad people but many of them are shades of grey! Even some of the Chaos marines are not pure evil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeller Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 If what the Liber Chaotica says is true then I'm feeling very wrong having loyalist armies only because the Chaos Marine point of view makes so much more sense in the long run. Fighting for the Emperor only to one day see that he used the entire human race as a tool for his own ascension and real-world strengthening seems like a gross mistake. Are these generally just trains of thought with a little basis here and a little basis there or are both the Emperor as a God-wannabe and the Emperor as a powerful human to be ruler of mankind ideas both mostly true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Icarsun Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 If what the Liber Chaotica says is true then I'm feeling very wrong having loyalist armies only because the Chaos Marine point of view makes so much more sense in the long run. Fighting for the Emperor only to one day see that he used the entire human race as a tool for his own ascension and real-world strengthening seems like a gross mistake. Are these generally just trains of thought with a little basis here and a little basis there or are both the Emperor as a God-wannabe and the Emperor as a powerful human to be ruler of mankind ideas both mostly true? (I'm Draeden, tl;dr at bottom) What I was quoted above stating was primarily my own conclusions as to the goals of the Emperor. My primary sources were Liber Chaotica, which whilst written in the setting of WFB, discusses in great detail the workings of the Warp and regardless of which army you follow is a good solid read for trying to understand the incomprehensible. The book speaks primarily of the Ruinous Powers as well as describing how Warp Entities gain their power, and how they are formed. I started reading it with an understanding that the Warp was the psychic mirror of every sentient creature in the Universe (Necrons and the like not-withstanding due to the nature of their races). I took away from the book that in the warp, like thoughts attract and promote like and even the idea and belief in someone, if it is strong enough is capable of causing the spawning of new chaos entity. Khorne was created from the War in Heaven. Tzeentch was created by the young races seeing their collective might pushing back the hordes of Necron. Nurgle was spawned from said races collective dismay at facing such a powerful foe.Slaanesh was spawned much later as the Eldar, a powerful psychic race pursued pleasure, pain, and experience. (As a side note, for all the insights the book granted me I am still thoroughly confused as to the difference between fuel of Slaanesh and fuel of Khorne) It also mentions in the book that when a Daemon inhabits a persons body, it is primarily focused on increasing the emotion/thought that spawned it. Using Fulgrim for an example, the daemon in the silver sword nudged Fulgrim to let his emotions flow a little more freely. To partake in and promote in his every whim and fancy to the point that Fulgrim hadlittle to no self-control. I know that the wording on this wont be the best and others here would argue that Fulgrim did still retain some self-control, I wont debate that, it's just easier for this example and to keep it short to state he had no self-control. Now, my other main sources for the Emperors plan was the Horus Heresy series, and debates over the exact nature of various technologies and principles at work in 40k. When I wrote the above post about the Emperors plan, I worded it in a way that made the Emperor seem like one of the most controlling and ill-minded beings in all of 40k. That is how I intended it to sound. But I'll offer the mirror side for a bit of dichotomy. If the Emperor went through with the above plan successfully, he would collapse and enter the Webway Gate he was constructing into Chaos Gate on the eve of his victory, concentrating the belief in him around himself in the warp. Using this power he was now grasped inside the warp he would carve out his own "daemons". Dispatching the creatures to possess members of the Lectitio Divinitatus, he would use them as his intermediaries as he would now reside within the Warp. The nature of the daemon being little more than an extension of the God itself would allow the Emperor to be everywhere at once in the galaxy. Steadily he would be capable of extending his "possession" to others, so he could personally oversee more and be more present in the minds of men. This would further the belief in him and strengthen the Emperor whilst weakening the Ruinous Powers. The added benefit of him being everywhere at once was that it would be easier for him to oversee and better humanity on a whole but if he extended himself to far he would risk turning Humanity into something akin to Tyranids. Sorry for the long post, it has been some time since I last had an indepth discussion on 40k and trying to effectively communicate my message might be a little difficult to understand. But what I'm saying is in the tl;dr The Emperor could use mass possession after turning into a Chaos God to help humanity work as one whole instead of factionous entities for the betterment of all and reducing the strength of the Ruinous Powers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randian Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Those that turned to Chaos believed the Imperium, the Emperor and the task they had been sent to do as wrong, corrupt and immoral. Conquering planets for the Emperor: immoral Conquering planets for Chaos and subjecting the inhabitants to its depredations: moral I surely hope that wasn't their thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randian Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Fighting for the Emperor only to one day see that he used the entire human race as a tool for his own ascension and real-world strengthening seems like a gross mistake. So the daemons say. Trusting Chaos to tell you the truth seems like a bigger mistake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristoff Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Fighting for the Emperor only to one day see that he used the entire human race as a tool for his own ascension and real-world strengthening seems like a gross mistake. So the daemons say. Trusting Chaos to tell you the truth seems like a bigger mistake. Truth is subjective. And facts are often used to disguise a bigger lie, especially if you don't have all the facts. That having been said, trusting aliens over family usually is not the smart way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
randian Posted December 14, 2011 Share Posted December 14, 2011 Truth is subjective. And facts are often used to disguise a bigger lie, especially if you don't have all the facts. I'd agree that Chaos was disguising a lie with the truth, if their claims that the Emperor was abandoning his Legions and using them for his own ascension were facts. Since we have no independent verification for said claims, they are not yet facts, just like Ingethel's claim that the Emperor made a pact with Chaos and reneged on it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kodanshi Posted December 15, 2011 Share Posted December 15, 2011 like Ingethel's claim that the Emperor made a pact with Chaos and reneged on it. That’s what troubled me about the Word Bearers in The First Heretic — that they never even contemplated the fact that the beings they had encountered may have been trying to trick them. I suppose all the manipulation of their lives led them to the point that they believed the Chaos powers were telling the truth. If the Emperor went through with the above plan successfully, he would collapse and enter the Webway Gate he was constructing into Chaos Gate on the eve of his victory, concentrating the belief in him around himself in the warp. Using this power he was now grasped inside the warp he would carve out his own "daemons". Dispatching the creatures to possess members of the Lectitio Divinitatus, he would use them as his intermediaries as he would now reside within the Warp. The nature of the daemon being little more than an extension of the God itself would allow the Emperor to be everywhere at once in the galaxy… The added benefit of him being everywhere at once was that it would be easier for him to oversee and better humanity on a whole Very interesting! You’re an extremely thought–provoking poster. Thanks for this spin on the Emperor’s plans. It does make it sound rather open to abuse. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, as the old saying goes… Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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