Guess the Emperor!

[Daemon2027]

In one of the mark of calth story, Athame, someone who fits the emperors description turns up with a bunch of knights and fights someone called Gog. Gog is a biblical character, but also has an association with both England and Ireland. Now a king in Golden armour, supported by a group of knights, whose possibly hunting in the British isles puts me in mind of King Aurthur. Of course this is never stated. Also wasn't it implied the Emperor was st George, fighting the void dragon and dumping it on mars.

 

Also the emperor is not the only immortal human hanging around. Again in Mark of Calth, Ollanius Persson suggests he was one of the Argonauts, and already had knowledge of psykers, to the point he could point out Medea as one. Now while Oll states he liked to keep his head down and stay out history, he does say the emperor approached him with an off to help shape human history (or at least that's the impression I got) so maybe other perpetuals worked with the Emperor, and were important figures in human history.

[jeremy1391]

When khorne ascended to true god hood during the crusades who is to say that all the races of the galaxy weren't also going through a period of all out warfare? Think about it could be that the orks, squats, eldar, humans, and all the lesser known races could have been fighting and killing each other at the same time where rivers of blood were flowing throughout the galaxy leading to khornes ascension.

[jeremy1391]

Also is it possible that the heresy is what led to the birth of Malal? I mean fratricide and malice seems to be his thing.

[Vesper]

 

Now, as for the Crusades birthing Khorne, I have and always will

maintain that a galaxy spanning eldar empire causing Slaanesh to

manifest while one planet full of humans made the other three Ruinous

Powers is silly, and needs to be placed on the same pyre as half eldar

Ultramarine Librarians.

 

 

I prefer Khorne's description in the Black Crusade gamebook, "As long as

brother has slain brother, wolf has hunted wolf, and stars have

devoured their planets, Khorne has existed, and he will continue to do

so as long as these things still occur."

Thing is, Slaanesh was birthed by the Eldar. Mankind only awakened the three others from their slumber, meaning they were existing in a non conscious state. The first killing probably troubled the Warp, and that little thing it caused became Khorne as the Galaxy became red with the blood of every goddamn thing.

The 3 first gods were probably "born" when the Old Ones created all sorts of sentient races to defeat the necrons & co. They may have been different, back then, as the Galaxy itself was different.

[Kol Saresk]

Wasn't the human race created around the same time as the Eldar? Just that when the Eldar were created as warriors, humans were like some sort of experiment in "What will Happen"?

 

So it could end up being argued that the Eldar only gave birth to Slaanesh because of their knowledge of Chaos(despite their stupidity) while we in our ignorance were able to help three further along and at a faster rate. Or at least two. I don't recall if we brought Tzeentch to sentience and if it was just Khorne with the Crusades and Nurgle with the Black Plague.

[Conn Eremon]

I was going to write my lengthy reply a second time but Vesper basically said the gist of it. Without any drops in the ocean analogies but you know, nobody's perfect.

 

Also, I hate the mobile site's tendency to eat my posts.

[Onisuzume]

Quite certain he was Kim Il-Sung, trying out that whole cult of personality thing.

Praise the Great Leader, our Eternal President, may his descendants rule for ten thousand years.

[Legionator]

Didn't the Mongol Invasion wake Khorne up? Mongol Invasion was far more bloody than crusades though the numbers probably were exaggerated by Chinese, Persian and Arabian historians.

[Kol Saresk]

Could be both. Lexicanum says Khorne came to during the Middle Ages. Doesn't say when during the Middle Ages though. The Mongol Invasions happened in the 13th Century. The Crusades went from the 11th to the 13th Centuries. There was also the Normans invading England around the 11th Century I think. It's possible he started with one and topped off with the other. The Black Death was during the 14th Century I believe. All said, the Middle Ages(or to use the "showy" name; the Dark Ages) seems like an all you can eat buffet. You had people twisting religions, lording it over peoples heads and using whatever excuse imaginable to either kill someone or just leave them to the plague.

[GhostMalone]

I believe the emperor would have had a cult of other immortals like him, sort of like the pre shaman suicide cults.

 

Malice I think was born from the heresy ill confirm that once I go through all my fluff & wasn't the emperor formed after the shamans sensed that they weren't reincarnating because something awoke in the warp ie; our three beastly gods started stirring?

[Conn Eremon]

It mentions Warp predators attacking the Shaman spirits as the Warp becomes more and more unsettled. One or more of those predators may have become one of the Gods but they weren't at the time.

 

And Kol, Lexicanum may give a general point in time like "the Middle Ages" but I seem to recall people always quoting an old source as saying specifically that it was the Crusades from whence Khorne came. The Black Death paved Nurgle's path and the Spanish Inqusition, Tzeentch.

 

Granted, these people were elegan/tg/entlemen, my online 40k community before joining B&C and its not a source I have myself, so Lexicanum may be the more trustworthy.

 

I think humanity only brought their cups of power to overflowing by sheer chance rather than design. Their powers were growing at a prodigious rate and humanity's own trickle of support happened to be the last needed for ascension. It could help explain the Gods' interests in us, as a curiosity of sheer circumstance. While Slaanesh is utterly fixated on the Eldar because they broke the dam wide open into a freaking flood. That said, the Black Crusade quote is a good one. But they are Gods. There is always the possibility that, once ascended to such a lofty place, they . . . Uhm. Retro-ascended? Once a God, always a God. So while Khorne ascended in the bloodbath of such and such Crusade, he could have existed as a God during the War in heaven, self-aware that millions of years from now some miniscule worm of a species is going to shed that one droplet of blood that means all the difference between Khorne the particularly bloodthirsty Warp predator and Blood for the Blood God.

[Kol Saresk]

@Cormac: fair enough. i don't have access to the Realms of Chaos or anything else that even hints about e gods' origins so I admit my knowledge is severely limited. I just saw one person say be Mongolian Conquests and another say the Crusades. I know Ghengis Khan is supposed(from what I hear) to be Doombreed. Well, the Middle Ages woulc constitute of all three events plus something like when the Normans invaded Britatin and who knows how many more smaller-scale major events that ended in blood. It may have been Lexicanum said "Middle Ages" because that time period not only covers his birth, but since it covers Doombreed as well, one could say it covers the building of his power base.

 

EDIT: This is all speculation on my part of course.

[Conn Eremon]

Covering their bases, I bet. Middle Ages is generic and broad enough to cover any slight errors.

 

About Doombreed, I think it describes a human warrior that, in our history, Genghis Khan fits perfectly but never gives any defining details. Personally, I'd see him as Chaos Undivided. His use of misinformation and his reliance on his people's more esoteric and occult beliefs is very Tzeentch-like. His use of the plagues in warfare and being a popularly believed cause for the spread of the Black Death to Europe probably earned Papa Nurgle's love, since that kind of makes the Khan his father. And the dude had one heck of a harem, man. What's the percentage of today's population directly related to the Khan? Wikipedia says .5%. That is one out of every 200 people. Descended from a guy who died almost a thousand years ago. Totally a Slaanesh freak

 

 

Aaaand sorry for going off-topic.

[Wade Garrett]

@Cormac:

It was an interesting digression, so no blood, no foul.

 

In general:

Didn't the Cabal in Legion claim to have seen humanity as the greatest weapon either for or against Chaos back when we were still apes that fell out of trees a lot?

 

Although there are many races besides Eldar in the Cabal, and given their interactions with the Alphas and the Dark Angels they seem to play fast and loose with the truth.

[Kol Saresk]

The Cabal has had contact with the Dark Angels? I thought the Lion was talking to the Watchers in the Dark?

 

But yeah, they said Humanity will determine the fate of the universe and our choices were to either die and take Chaos with us or survive and help Chaos flourish.

[Conn Eremon]

Certainly explains their stance or belief if they know it is us who triggers the births of the majority of the Chaos Gods. We may be young upstarts to them but that is the sort of thing that makes you sit up and pay attention. They might have seen how much of an impact we have with the Warp from a very early point. I'm sure the whole Shaman resurrection thing culminating in the birth of the Emperor was a damn big event that got some notice.

 

And, well. If we can feed them enough to make them Gods, perhaps we can starve them as well. Kind of makes me think the Cabal saw the infamous potato famine Ireland suffered through and had an epiphany.

[Kol Saresk]

That and while, according to the Necron 3rd Edition Codex, both our species and theirs were created at the same time, they were made fully aware, fully technologically advanced and if they weren't given the totality of the Old Ones knowledge, they certainly had a lot more than us. And that meant they started out with the knowledge of Chaos. Meanwhile, we had to start out from the bottom with nothing but ignorance. It may not necessarily be that we just naturally have a much larger presence in the warp, just that we made a much larger impact because we found a toy and just started playing with it instead of learning about it. As a result, we aided in the birth of three Gods while they only aided in the development of one. Kind of ironic, 40K seems devoted to proving that ignorance is not bliss. If anything, it is the worse thing one can have.

[Aegnor]

Now, as for the Crusades birthing Khorne, I have and always will maintain that a galaxy spanning eldar empire causing Slaanesh to manifest while one planet full of humans made the other three Ruinous Powers is silly, and needs to be placed on the same pyre as half eldar Ultramarine Librarians.

 

I prefer Khorne's description in the Black Crusade gamebook, "As long as brother has slain brother, wolf has hunted wolf, and stars have devoured their planets, Khorne has existed, and he will continue to do so as long as these things still occur."

THIS. So much this that it hurts. One of the pieces of old fluff most deserving of being written off as a misguided interpretation of events or propaganda. Given what we know about how Slaanesh was created and that Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle already existed, there is no way humanity in the middle ages created them.

[Redtoof]

Is it possible to take a less literal interpretation of 'created' or 'awakened' regarding the chaos gods and the middle ages? Perhaps the crusades drew the attention of Khorne to humanity - maybe this is when humans started forming Khorne cults? Khorne could have existed for millenia watching orks fight one another, but then suddenly there is a race that is actually willing to worship him.

[Kol Saresk]

Yes, those phrases are inaccurate as once the Chaos Gods are, they will always have been. At least, in the warp that is. But those phrases such as "awakened", "birthed, "created", or "reached awareness/sentience" are what are commonly used. They are the closest things that will come close to describing it. Even then, it is still widely inaccurate.

 

There is only one problem I see with your theory. In the same way that the Eldar focused their rage and hate into Khaine, the Orks have focused all of their emotions into Gork and Mork. In a way, they are just as dangerous to the Chaos Gods as the Necrons, just for different reasons. The only reason the greenskins aren't viewed as a major threat is because the Orks aren't the sharpest tools in the shed and can be easily manipulated into aiding the Forces of Ruin.

 

Still, when Slaanesh imprisoned Khaine, Khorne did fight to release his fellow war god so it is possible that while the lack of religious attention prevented Khorne from fully reaching his godhood, he still may have drawn some power from them.

[Augustus]

I think Cyrus the Great may be good candidate 

[No Foes Remain]

And some people wondered where Alpharius got his anonymity-ness from. Wouldn't it be eaiser to guess who the Empero wasn't?

[Conn Eremon]

Me. He's definitely not me.

[Wade Garrett]

Me. He's definitely not me.

Only the truly Imperial deny their Emperorness!

[GhostMalone]

My misses cat! He is definitely not the cat, although he has a tendency to sneak off to his secret lab.

 

Not sure if he's developing cat nip or primarch cats though.