The problem of the Emperor?

[AekoldHelbrass]

I'm with Legatus, I really liked The Last Church.

First, it shows that there are no good sides in Warhammer, everyone is bad, you just have to choose your side.

Second, it shows that Emperor tried to force people to enlightenment, by censoring religion, some branches of technology like AI, and forcing people to cooperate. And he could have succeeded in few generations, when they are grown in this culture of full cooperation and enlightenment.

And of course this story was made to show the huge difference between what Emperor wanted Imperium to be, and what it really became. Just think of it, he denied humanity the right of free will and freedom of religion, trying to force people to evolve. Imperium today denies people the right of free will and freedom of religion, forcing them to be slaves for the dead Emperor or burn in flames. Is it not cool?

[Wade Garrett]

Honestly, the farther into the Heresy we get the more similarities I see between the Emperor and the Night Haunter, for example the twisting of Nostromo when Curze left as a small scale reflection of the decay of the Imperium with its master interred in the Golden Throne.

[Hephaesteus]

I am also with Legatus, and I thought 'The last church' was one of the best shorts in the series.

 

That may be as I am the ripe old age of 32 and was brought up with late night 70's sci-fi films on T.V, Mostly (I think) the dressing of sci-fi was to address real world issues and where they might lead, but with lasers! You might not agree with what each story says, but that was often the point. The aim is to make you think, question your stance; maybe ultimately change your mind or reaffirm what you thought in the first place. I thought 'the last church' echoed back to this sort of piece and was a welcome change of pace and style. > God, I sound old! <

 

I am also on the side of the big E, though he definitely has had some bad PR through the start of the series. I have mentioned before, that for the heresy to make sense; we have to believe why Horus and then the others fell. If the big E was around, it couldn't work.

We needed to follow Hours and understand the road he takes. As the series develops we have to see more and more of the Emperors view. I thought 'the outcast dead' did this really well. He is a guy who has known for 40k (-8BC to 30k) years what is happening around the corner and kept humanity along the narrow path of survival. ultimately he is the hero. It might not feel like it yet, but he is going to sacrifice everything to keep humanity going, from knowing every beat of forty thousand years to the terror of not knowing what will happen after he faces Horus. All that time and planning resting on a throw of the dice to see who wins.

Then, when struck down and having had to kill his own son, still having the compassion and humanity to enthrone himself in torment for the rest of time to keep the human race going.

 

I think this is the story I am waiting for, and can't wait to see how it pans out. If, by the end, we are not in on the Emperors side something has gone really wrong.

[Visitor13]

The problem of the Emperor? Completely forgetting about Chaos for a few hundred years. Or bad writing. Take your pick.

[Aegnor]

The biggest issue I think with how we see the Emperor's actions is forgetting the very clear binary choice he faced.

 

Forget about the harm the Thunder Warriors did, it's made clear that prior to him launching the Unification Wars, humanity on Terra was within a generation or two of extinction. Yes, they harmed humanity, but in the manner of a surgeon cutting and amputating to safe a patient. The alternative was the patient dying at the hands of homicidal lunatics.

 

Similarly, with his plan to conquer the galaxy. The Emperor - and everyone in 40K - has a completely different moral reality than us. There is no real shades of grey regarding the bad guys they face. No prospect of live and let live, or working peacefully together. Chaos and xenos species will remorselessly hunt, enslave, debase and destroy humanity, and there's nothing the Emperor could do to stop them apart from exterminate them. That's a scenario that's never really existed in real history - even the most vicious aggressive inhumane human regimes haven't been so utterly implacable.

 

When you consider that, a whole lot of stuff that's monstrous by our standards suddenly becomes more reasonable - even if to those who don't understand they appear awful.

 

With the priest in The Last Church, the Emperor couldn't offer his most telling argument - that worship serves Chaos - because the priest didn't, couldn't, understand what Chaos is. So he was left advancing what were ultimately straw men arguments hoping that they would be persuasive.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

That might have been his most telling argument but the Emperor was also wrong on that account in that the Imperial Truth eventually failed and was perverted by the real truth: there were deific-like beings in the shadows and they were not at all nice or caring. He propogated a lie and it was a poor one at that. It would have been better to accept Lorgar's mantle and ascend to God-hood of humanity. The Imperial Truth was meant to stop wars of belief but that led to more wars of belief. Ironic.

 

Still, I will agree that the Big E tried his best to do what he thought was right for humanity and it's supremacy amongst the stars but the road to damnation is paved with good intentions. The lie He spread through his Truth was more damaging than the actual truth; Lorgar turns, Magnus consorts with powers beyond his understanding, Horus feels betrayed and disowned. Besides, the Emperor was just a tyrant on a larger scale; we have had plenty of dictators in our Earth history who wanted to make golden civilizations from their visions of hubris and what they thought was best for the world. The Emperor just had the means, power and science to make it happen; there were plenty of shades of grey as shown in Horus Rising with the Interex or the mini-Imperium of Man. Big E just wanted all his geese in a row and had no bones about using a big stick to herd them into line.

[Wade Garrett]

Also, just worshipping SOMETHING doesn't empower Chaos, otherwise the Ecclesiarchy would have torn a second Eye of Terror in the galaxy by now.

 

Chaos runs on emotions manifested in the Immaterium, how worshipping the Ruinous Powers works is that the service of, for example, Khorne, causes you to be boiling over with rage and hate all the time, increasing the net amount of Khornate emotions in the Warp.

[Aegnor]

Re: his plan not working out well, if you assume he has a degree of foresight and was rational, then it follows that so far as he could tell, alternative strategies would have produced worse results. The question then is to what degree he could tell what the ultimate outcome would be - and I suspect that will never be resolved.

 

Re: the Ecclesiarchy serving the existence of Chaos - it isn't exactly harming Chaos. Chaos is doing better than ever. Humanity's slip back into faith-based dogma likely explains why there is such a high rate of heresy, deviency and all the emotions Chaos feeds on in 40K. That's part of what the Emperor was trying to avoid.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

The outcome of his own dogmatic Truth was wrong though unless you thought he wanted to be interred in the Throne. It was obvious with Magnus, his thoughts of changing the outcome of the chess match in Outcast Dead and other instances that it was not a result he wanted. The fact that it was an acceptable outcome lends credence to his good intentions for Mankind by taking on eternal torture for the greater good but it does not make him right or justified in his decisions. He should have been better at reading people and their motives instead of believing that one system of belief and avoidance of the Warp would defeat the 4-Powers but he was not (maybe that is where the Lion gets it from). Instead He pushed people and Primarchs around, alienated them with his decisions and lies, forcing them into situations which led to the destruction of his dogma of Imperial Truth to be replaced by the dogma of Imperial Faith.
 

Also, to believe that violence, hedonism, plague and forbidden knowledge would not be fuelled because humanity had no religious systems to believe in is a fallacy. It is human nature to have these things present and are just by-products of society in small or large scale. Perhaps the Emperor was so disconnected from humanity by his very being he failed to understand this? Bio-weapons will still be made, wars still waged for resources, cultural differences, or any reason, science and philosophy perverted for ends that are less than noble, and deviant sexual behaviors and secrets still a cultural currency. Even the most controlled system will always breed Chaos.

[Legatus]

Chaos is doing better than ever.

Well, not as good as during the Age of Strife, where Chaos had dominion over large parts of the Galaxy. In earlier descriptions of the Great Crusade, that had been one of the main objectives of it, to turn back the tide of Chaos that had befallen the galaxy and was plagueing the isolated human worlds.

[Wade Garrett]

Counterpoint:

During the Age of Strife, Chaos didn't have 9 Legions of Supersoldiers and Daemon corrupted Titans.

[Legatus]

It didn't need to. It already dominated everywhere. 

[Aegnor]

True - change my comment to read "better than it has at anytime since the depths of the Age of Strife"

[Wade Garrett]

 

It didn't need to. It already dominated everywhere.

I would argue with this, but we've danced this dance before, it resolved nothing, and the only way I can come up with TO solve the situation is for you to grab your copy of Collected Visions and such older codexes as mention the Heresy, me to grab all the Horus Heresy novels I can hold, and we charge towards each other and bang skulls like angry bighorn sheep.

 

Admittedly this solution still has some kinks to be worked out.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

 

It didn't need to. It already dominated everywhere.

I would argue with this, but we've danced this dance before, it resolved nothing, and the only way I can come up with TO solve the situation is for you to grab your copy of Collected Visions and such older codexes as mention the Heresy, me to grab all the Horus Heresy novels I can hold, and we charge towards each other and bang skulls like angry bighorn sheep.

 

Admittedly this solution still has some kinks to be worked out.

 

Said kinks can probably all be solved if you charge for admittance to the event.  I'll pitch in for a front row ticket.

[Legatus]

The Horus Heresy series does not go into much detail concerning the Great Crusade, does it? It mentions a campaign against a specific world here and there. But does it explain the broader goal and intent behind the Crusade? (Other than muddying the watter by alluding that the goal was to rationalize the galaxy, rather than to get rid of an eldrich evil.) You can certainly point to one specific example where, look, that civilisation survived the Age of Strife intact and untainted. But to use such examples (which were used in the Horus Heresy series strategically by the authors to get some kind of effect from it) as an argument why the Age of Strife really wasn't that bad and the Great Crusade was really unneccessary would be erroneous.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

Well it is very hard to say "We were Crusading against those Powers that our magnanimous and glorious leader, The Emperor of Terra, has disavowed, silenced and kept most knowledge of secret,  not only from the general public but his Primarch-Sons as well. We were definitely fighting against that" or "We were seeking to rationalize the Galaxy from worship of uh.... stuff. *wink wink[for those few in the know]*" It is hard to call knowledge of the 4-Powers and Chaos secret if everyone is on a Crusade against the Powers of the Warp. It is one thing to have a crusade against warpspawn, it is something else to have a Crusade against the defic-beings who rule the warp and goes contrary to what the Emperor seemed to have wanted in the fluff for several editions now. Most of the older fluff states the Great Crusade as throwing off the yokes of Alien Oppression by the way who were present even in the Sol system on several moons.

[E.G.J.]

So, what are your thoughts on the matter. Is the Emperor some mighty being, simply a ordinary psyker who has the power to take advantage of that fact, or something else?

 

AC 

 

In reply to the OP's question, I think it depends on how you see the Emperor and how the fluff one has been exposed to shapes one's perceptions.

 

The way the Big E was portrayed in the early incarnations of the franchise was very much as an all powerful, benevolent, and mighty being.  One  got the impression (or at least I did) that 40K was in the state that it was because the Emperor had been confined to the Golden Throne and had he been free to act out his will, the the Imperium would not be nearly as oppressive, monolithic, and paranoid as it had come to be.  The tragedy of the Horus Heresy was that it robbed humanity of the Emperor and all the promise and hope that went with it.  40K has always been a brutal and hopelessly callous setting.  That is the charm of 40K.  The moral ambiguity of it all.  But the Emperor's place in the story was not ambiguous from the start.  In the beginning he was the "good guy", the loss of whom led to the grim dark reality of the 41st Millennium.  While he still walked there was hope.....But that was in the days of yore.

 

Today, I think the lines are more blurred.  In part because of the introduction of the Horus Heresy Series.  In part, because the more stories abound of the Imperium, and especially the Inquisition, the more the original motives of the Big E are called into question.

 

The portrayal of the Emperor has thus also become a matter of shades of grey.  Was he a bloody-handed tyrant or was he a benevolent all-father etc.?  Personally, I think any illusion of the Emperor as a benevolent protector and father-type figure of humanity has been tarnished by the Horus Heresy Series.  I can overlook some of the typical speculations about why he "saved" Angron when he should have known it would make him recentful, or why he didn't tell his sons about chaos, or why he wasn't "more" explicit with Lorgar about the whole not worshipping him thing.  Those are matters of both perspective and a lack of supplemental information.  What is harder to overlook is his behavior during the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade.  Here it is difficult to reconcile an image of the Emperor as a benevolent ruler on the side of humanity.  The creation, use, and ultimate discarding of the thunder warriors is not an act of a kind and compassionate ruler.  There's nothing remotely humanitarian or munificent about using super humans to one's own ends only to intentionally have them destroyed afterwards.  Similarly, the prosecution of the Great Crusade, as it has been written, is not a reuniting of human worlds, but a bloody war of conquest.  One would think that with the might of the Emperor's war machine he could target the leaders and organizational structures of "non-compliant" worlds, but the wars we have been privy to as readers have been wars of annihilation and genocide.  That is a far cry from how these events were alluded to in earlier versions of the fluff.  Reuniting humanity among that stars sounded a whole lot more attractive than the image we get in the Heresy Series where the Great Crusade can equally be characterized as a ruthless prosecution of endless war and conquest for the sole purpose of making other human worlds cry "Uncle".  To me, these portrayals outstrip any conversations during a chess game, any philosophical waxing about divinity, or any perceived lapses in parenting, in cracking the good-guy patina of the Emperor.

[Chaplain ChonkE]

Agreed. My perceptions of the Emperor have changed from a benevolent savior into a sometimes benevolent tyrant. His intentions as a whole are good for humanity's dominance in the galaxy but hardly good or worthwhile for the citizens or those He wanted to bring into the Imperial fold. Powerfist in a velvet glove and all that.

[Conn Eremon]

The Horus Heresy series does not go into much detail concerning the Great Crusade, does it? It mentions a campaign against a specific world here and there. But does it explain the broader goal and intent behind the Crusade? (Other than muddying the watter by alluding that the goal was to rationalize the galaxy, rather than to get rid of an eldrich evil.) You can certainly point to one specific example where, look, that civilisation survived the Age of Strife intact and untainted. But to use such examples (which were used in the Horus Heresy series strategically by the authors to get some kind of effect from it) as an argument why the Age of Strife really wasn't that bad and the Great Crusade was really unneccessary would be erroneous.

 

The series doesn't necessarily say that the goal is to 'rationalize the galaxy.' It's just one of the tools being used. The series hasn't refuted the original goal of ridding humanity of Chaos. In fact, it's pretty much stuck to it pretty solidly. The biggest threat to humanity is the xenos, as everyone believes. But to those 'everyone,' the Warp and its spawn is just another form of xenos. These are men of science, who don't believe in gods. Though these beings are powerful, they won't see speak of them using religious terms. Xenos of a different breed, nothing more. Orks and Bloodletters, Eldar and Daemonettes, they're all Xenos. Those who actually encounter these beings might realize that there's something more about those from the Warp, but they're led to believe that they are just another breed of aliens. The Emperor, the guy who did know and took all those measures to ensure he was the only one to know, withdrew from the Crusade to start working on projects that would remove humanity from the Warp's grasp. We know he was working on a webway, but thanks to the Horus Heresy we have no idea if that was the full extent of his plans or just Step 1.

 

The series has shown a Great Crusade that focuses entirely on rapidly and forcibly collecting all of humanity willing to be completely subservient to the Emperor and utterly exterminating all threats to them. Which is exactly what everyone expected it to be when the old fluff about it came about. It's the blatantly obviously necessary first step, but it appears that the Emperor went to great pains to keep the reasons behind it under wraps, though the series has made it obvious that the reasons are still valid and in effect. Considering that his project was a secretive one, the authors and members of the board who advise them, including the master of 40k's fluff, seem to have to taken that as to mean that the Emperor has taken the Warp and its Gods and kept their threat a secret from his Imperium. They fight his wars, and his war is first and foremost with them, but only he knows that. I'm trying to remember a quote from one of the books, but I'm terrible with this sort of thing so I'll just paraphrase from cloudy memory and you can all take it with many grains of salt. "Humanity has one chance for survival, and one path to reach it. It's a knife's edge that only the Emperor sees, and he does what he absolutely must to keep them on that path." The Emperor has made some seemingly bad decisions (and they may very well be just bad) but it's possible that he does what he does because it's what he must do to keep humanity on this path that he sees. And only he sees, so he doesn't let anyone else in on his plans.

 

As for how well the Emperor has been portrayed, as my personal opinion, I'm mixed on it. For one thing, I understand that a proper portrayal would be next to impossible. Especially for 40k fans. That being said, I've been frankly disappointed by some more than others. The Last Church was absolutely horrendous. That the Emperor acted arrogant was fine, he's supposed to be. Removed from normal human though processes, that's fine. He's "above us" anyways, so that kind of makes sense. But the Emperor was in the Last Church was downright dumb. I get that he couldn't understand the priest, but the conversations just made him seem exceptionally unintelligent. Though the priest was pitifully ignorant, he was an intelligible, understanding character. I got why he did what he did, chose as he did. He saw what he saw, felt what he felt, and he didn't know any better about it. He was wrong, as his god wasn't what he thought it was, but you couldn't fault him for being wrong. The Emperor . . . Well, for a being that's lived untold millennia, he was surprisingly childish and immature.

[Reinholt]

A few brief thoughts...

 

1 - I think the Emperor as well-intentioned, but ultimately a bloody tyrant is not unintentional. He is the apotheosis of man, and man is a conflicted, self-contradictory species. Why should the Emperor not be the same?

 

2 - The scientific rationality of the Imperial Truth was probably the best way to fight Chaos; if Chaos thrives off negative emotions and worship, what better way to fight it than to eliminate the worship and try to create the best society possible to eliminate negative emotions? The Emperor may have been manipulating humanity to weaken the entities of the warp.

 

3 - I do agree he's bloody and vicious. To some extend, the nature of the foes justifies that (Chaos cannot be reasoned with, for example), but to some extent, it is an extension of the exact same behavior he decried in others. I think, again, this contradiction is intentional in his character.

 

There's no reason he can't have good intentions and still do horrible things. Plenty of tyrants have done so.

[Wade Garrett]

 

The scientific rationality of the Imperial Truth was probably the best way to fight Chaos; if Chaos thrives off negative emotions and worship, what better way to fight it than to eliminate the worship and try to create the best society possible to eliminate negative emotions? The Emperor may have been manipulating humanity to weaken the entities of the warp.

Create a better society?

The slums in the shadow of the Imperial Palace were more or less ruled by ganger scum on a permenant "Murder-Rob-beat" spree. I know the Emperor has a lot on his plate, but come on! KONRAD CURZE managed to create a safer place to raise your kids (provided said kids didn't break one of the Night Haunter's rules, then Heaven help them) more or less single handedly!

[Conn Eremon]

Create a better society?

The slums in the shadow of the Imperial Palace were more or less ruled by ganger scum on a permenant "Murder-Rob-beat" spree. I know the Emperor has a lot on his plate, but come on! KONRAD CURZE managed to create a safer place to raise your kids (provided said kids didn't break one of the Night Haunter's rules, then Heaven help them) more or less single handedly!

 

One world compared to many, though. While the Emperor is far from benevolent, I don't think the Night Haunter's Nostramo can be considered an example of something better. In his short story in Shadows, it's talked about how he did little better than many of his brother Primarchs and with far less cruelty and suffering. Though there was no crime by the end of it, it required the wholesale slaughter of many, many people, including people innocent by the standards of anyone other than Curze. By Curze's own law, a child stealing bread to escape starvation would warrant an exceptionally violent, visceral execution that deliberately prolongs the pain and fear of this small criminal. It wasn't safer to raise kids, because if your kid was caught making a foolish childish mistake (like stealing something shiny and playing with it) he would be attacked by something that would make the Warp shudder.

 

However, I think that the Emperor and Curze did try for a better society. Though Curze's was misguided and violent and became a reflection of himself. The Emperor's Imperium is a better society, if we take for granted that humanity without the Imperium was doomed for extinction. Maybe not better than our present day societies, but better than their alternatives. Perhaps he could have led his people better, paid more attention and simply loved more, but he didn't. And since it's the Emperor that didn't, that means we also have to wonder if he didn't for a reason, that his lack of those things was a requirement for humanity to survive. Or he was a powerful man of arrogance who didn't bother to look so far down his nose to notice. It's all kind of up in the air on that one.

[E.G.J.]

Aye!  And herein lies a rub for the authors in portraying Big E and 30K.

 

40K's charm is its moral ambiguity.  Its, errr, I hate to say it, GrimDarkness (hangs head in shame).  Yet, if you portray the actual Emperor as entirely good and show Terra under his rule as some kind of sprawling utopia, you create a very black-and-white scenario that impacts the perception of morality in the future 40K setting.  

[Blood Angel Scout]

I've always interpretated the Last Church as showing the view of that myths/religious inspiration was the excuse used by a lack of understanding:

 

1st person "why did that lightening heal that guy?" 

2nd person who can't explain and instead of display ignorance/lack of understanding implies a higher force is at work "in the hands of the gods"

1st person "what are gods?"

2nd person "beings that sit and watch everything so behave according to what they say or else you live in perpetual torment"

1st person, now afraid "ok, i'll do as they say"

3rd person overhearing, "no, the lightning hit the rock because of the metal content inside, it was attracted to it.....so stay away from metal in a storm"

1st person "so no gods?"

 

...which is a simplification of the argument between the Priest and the Emperor but also have to take into account the priest's refusal to recognise that his god, who actually was the Emperor, who healed him at the battle and started the priest conversion to a man of religious persuation in the short story.... the key factor of the whole story, the Emperor revealing himself and saying ta-da! see no gods..... which shows the power in false belief, he "believed" in the Emperor but he didn't accept the Emperor.

 

Additionally, there is the mention of the "bloodthirsty tyrant" type description of the Emperor that also is referred to in Legion by John Grammaticus as why he distrusted him when they met but as the whole concept of 30-40K is that we, humanity, are at war for our survival, "Fight them on the Beaches" so we need a warlord to lead.

 

However, it's important to point out that when he made Horus Warmaster, the Council of Terra were in charge so he'd already had his D-Day and was preparing for the second front of the Webway he was building as it would have become the next theatre of war if not for the Chaos powers gaining a weapon to use in the mortal realm via the traitor legions.