How much did the Emperor tell the Primarchs

[Augustus]

I was just reading Scars and Russ is talking to Bjorn:

 

"Let’s be honest – we knew that something was wrong before Prospero. We’re used to spectres on Fenris. We never believed the myths my Father tried to tell us. Now that it’s come at last, we can’t feign surprise.’ 

 

The myths being what? a euphemism for lies? 

 

We know that he told Horus a version of the truth of the warp. Alpharius has a rudimentary knowledge of it. 

 

It seems a little implausible to have them crusade upwards to 200 years and not come into major Chaos contact and not be confronted with discrepancies. Or did the Chaos gods for the most part lay low during this period as part of some "long-term plan"?

 

Thanks

[Memento Of Prospero]

I was just reading Scars and Russ is talking to Bjorn:

 

"Let’s be honest – we knew that something was wrong before Prospero. We’re used to spectres on Fenris. We never believed the myths my Father tried to tell us. Now that it’s come at last, we can’t feign surprise.’ 

 

The myths being what? a euphemism for lies? 

 

We know that he told Horus a version of the truth of the warp. Alpharius has a rudimentary knowledge of it. 

 

It seems a little implausible to have them crusade upwards to 200 years and not come into major Chaos contact and not be confronted with discrepancies. Or did the Chaos gods for the most part lay low during this period as part of some "long-term plan"?

 

Thanks

 

They did encounter chaos, several times. The problem is how the Emperor used vague terminology for it, and they did not push the envelope. Several of the chaos tainted planets were shrouded in occult sects or religions beliefs. Case point : Colchis. How the Emperor missed that one is beyond me though.

 

Horus Explains this to Loken when they encounter the daemon Samus. They know just enough to feel safe in their knowledge of the warp. He even gave Magnus a rather limited account of the warp and his plans for him and the golden throne. which pushed him to search for more information and his eventual fall to Tzeentch.

 

Need to know basis seems to be is modus operandi. 

[hisdudeness]

There is also the fact that we see the big picture and know the out come.

 

Think of the hundreds if not thousands of races encountered and destroyed. It is easy at the time to just count a chaos contact as another race to be brought into compliance. They knew psychic powers existed and would also just count it as another psychic race to made to bow before the Emperor or erased from existence.

 

 

[Red Angel]

Expeditionary fleets might have some contact with chaos but it could be interpreted as another xenos, which in my opinion is not much of a stretch. After all demon and gods are just names - even Lion calls one of Tzeentch servants xenos. Despite this I feel it is Magnus who was closest to grasping the concept - he calls the warp powers sentient storms which I think is apt.

[Wade Garrett]

Technically, Magnus doesn't start calling them sentient storms until after the whole mess with Tzeencht and Russ on Prospero.

 

In A Thousand Sons, he seemed to think the warp entities were either:

 

A. Cute little Pokemon his Legion could use to clean their bolters with

 

B. Malicious but mindless predators he could either outthink or outfight with both hands tied behind his back.

[Memento Of Prospero]

POKEMANS!

- Bill Cosby

[Red Angel]

 @Wade Garrett: Well, yes but what matters is that he eventually came to this conclusion. I think it is quite good description of chaos pantheon. 

[Perrin]

The Khan seems to know a bit about it in Scars. He says the reason why he wasn't close with the Emperor was that he thought it was wrong to build an empire on lies... obviously the Emperor disagreed.

 

To put Primarchs who may have had some true understanding of the warp in list form, because I like listing things:

 

Horus

Magnus

Alpharius/Omegon

The Khan

Russ

 

Maybe the missing Primarchs?

[Felix Antipodes]

I believe the Emperor kept the truth about the Warp/Chaos as limited as possible because he knew all about their existence and the possible consequences of that knowledge becoming widespread.

In fact, I can see this as a reason for his war on organised religion and xenos races. Nothing gets human emotions more worked up, pro or con, than the former which would feed the Chaos gods quite nicely. The xenicidal aspects of the GC were primarily to prevent a repeat/give revenge for their excesses against humanity after the DAoT fell; however it gave a good cover story for eliminating Chaos tainted worlds while keeping those in the know about their true nature down to a minimum.

Of course, not everyone was fooled as has been pointed out by others.

[carpediem]

Such as I understand it (I've only been able to get hold of a copy of Horus Rising so far) Horus and Magnus were told (or guessed) some of it by themselves. Beyond that, I suspect the Emperor told his kids bugger all; it seems to be within character. 

[Clewz]

Wasn't Malcador in one of the books (thinking scars) lamenting that they should of told the primarchs more

[Wade Garrett]

In fact, I can see this as a reason for his war on organised religion and xenos races. Nothing gets human emotions more worked up, pro or con, than the former which would feed the Chaos gods quite nicely.

Leaving aside the implications that atheism makes you an emotionless meat drone, in universe neither Perturabo nor Konrad Curze had any form of religous belief. ANGRON didn't have form of religious belief.

 

It really didn't seem to stop any of them from jumping on the old emotional roller coaster.

 

Also, any plan to get rid of a pantheon that includes Khorne, God of War and Blood whose power is drawn from warfare and bloodshed, by starting a galaxy spanning war seems to be just a tad flawed from the outset.

[Blindhamster]

i still dont believe that all fighting powers khorne, else Khain would have no reason to exist - and no, he isn't the same god as khorne.

[Perrin]

i still dont believe that all fighting powers khorne, else Khain would have no reason to exist - and no, he isn't the same god as khorne.

 

I agree, never liked the whole "all emotions go to Chaos" thing.

[FunkyMonkey]

I feel like Khaine, and all of the other Eldar Gods except for Ynnead and Slaanesh, aren't the same class of gods as Chaos Gods are.  It doesn't seem like the Eldar Gods are fueled by emotion.  Instead it seems like the Eldar Gods were actual beings that exist independently of the Eldar.  I mean, from the Eldar lore, the Eldar gods existed before the Eldar did, so it's clear that they don't need the Eldar, and they were more likely Old Ones/creations of the Old Ones.  This is contrasted with the Chaos Gods who didn't gain consciousness as distinct gods until obtaining critical mass in direct relationship with the activities of Humanity or the Eldar.  This also explains why Eldar Gods can be killed, while Chaos Gods in all likelihood can't.

 

So, I'm of the opinion that all emotions go to Chaos, though in actuality, it's really that all emotions go to the Warp, and most/all emotions in the Warp get co-opted by Chaos.

[Kais Klip]

*neighs*

 

By all technicalities chaos and it's denizens _are_ xenos, it's just that during crusade times contact with them was so infrequent that the mainstream body of the IoM wasn't caught wrong footed by underestimating them and classifying chaos encounters as just another mainstream xenos threat.

 

Apart from that, the shennanigans Loken underwent were just as likely as not eclipsed by other incidences involving some niche xeno race, be it farseers spinning some isolated squad around their finger or whatever else.

 

Apart from that, a small part of me understands the Big E's "what you don't know can't hurt you" approach. The mistake he made was underestimating the importance of the primarchs to the chaos gods, for all he knew they could have kept plotting for another 30 millennia.

 

And for all we know we could be singing a similar song where chaos replaced by another iron men uprising or whatever, I'm sure there are some forbidden biomechanics and cybertheorgy in the primarchs.

 

Just a matter of chance and hindsight, is what I'm saying.

[Aegnor]

@funkymonkey - disagree with that. The Eldar gods were Warp entities just like the Chaos gods. The myths of the Eldar are just that, myths. At most, they are mythologised versions of their limited understanding of the conflict between such beings.

 

The reason the Eldar gods died is that the living beings who supplied them with power, the Eldar, either forsook activities that powered them in favour of decadent excess (thus fuelling Sadness instead) or died during the Great Fall. I've always read the battle of the Eldar gods with Slaanesh as a metaphor for how the soul of the race was consumed. They stopped being interested in nature, in craft, in effect everything that made them Eldar except perverted pleasure. The only other emotions that survived en masses were bloodthirsty war-making and a black sense of humour, but the parts of the population embracing those were either scattered or forced to hide in the Web way. Which is exactly what the myths say happened to Khaine and the Laughing God.

 

The duels in the Warp didn't happen separate to what was happening in the real universe amongst the Eldar. They were two sides of the same coin.

[FunkyMonkey]

Not all warp entities are like the Chaos gods.  For example, the Enslavers are warp xenos, but certainly are not warp daemons.  While the example of Cegorach and Khaine's shattering do make sense, others don't make quite as much sense through the lens of a pure metaphor, such as Isha and Nurgle, Khaine and Khorne, and Khaine and the Nightbringer.

 

Furthermore, in my opinion, the fact that the Eldar gods died because they were no longer worshipped due to the rise of the Slaaneshi pleasure cults makes me feel that they were not the same type of gods like the Chaos gods.  The Chaos gods don't need worshippers, nor do they need people to actively continue to feel the emotions that feel them.  What makes a Chaos god is not merely a coalescence of pure emotion.  In my opinion, another requirement for a Chaos God is that the emotion can sustain itself upon the races that feed it.  This means that they become so base and so powerful that they merge themselves into the fundamental nature of the race to the point that no matter how the race changes, the stain of the constituent emotion cannot be removed.  Khorne goes stronger because I naturally feel wrath, whether or not I intend to.  I can teach myself to be calm to counteract my rage, but the rage is not something that can permanently be removed.  If a race can change its nature so fundamentally as to no longer feel the involuntary pull of a base emotion, then that emotion was never base to begin with. 

 

If we look at the concepts that the Eldar attribute to their gods, we can see that they aren't really base emotions.  When we have gods like Kurnous, who is the god of the hunt, it seems silly that such an emotion as "the hunt" (or whatever emotion is behind the hunt) can be a base emotion strong enough to create a god of the same class as the Chaos gods.  It seems that the Eldar Gods are merely the gods of their race, and not the universal emotion gods that are the Chaos Gods.  

 

 

 

 

And to answer the earlier question directly about whether or not the Chaos gods are the gods of ALL emotion, from all races, just look at Slaanesh.  He/She/it was born of Eldar emotion, but was fed by a multitude of races including humanity and the Laer.

[Aegnor]

Agree that they were different from the chaos gods in that they were embodiments of aspects of the Eldar psyche. They, clearly, weren't as strong as the big 4 chaos gods, probably in part because they seemed to be specifically attuned to the Eldar alone, as opposed to all sentient life.

 

Remember, the Warp is basically infinite, and there's all sorts of denizens there. There are race specific gods, Khaine, Gork and Mork, etc as well as indiscriminate gods like Khorne and Nundle.

 

I think saying that Warp gods can only be based on emotion is too narrow. Many are, and the most powerful ones are based on our strongest, most base emotions. But they can also represent part of the psyche that isn't just emotion - e.g. the urge of the Eldar to hunt, to build, etc. It's just that when it came to the crunch, those parts of their collective psyche were overcome by the desire to revel in excess/those gods were killed by Slaanesh.

[Karthak]

 

The reason the Eldar gods died is that the living beings who supplied them with power, the Eldar, either forsook activities that powered them in favour of decadent excess (thus fuelling Sadness instead) or died during the Great Fall. I've always read the battle of the Eldar gods with Slaanesh as a metaphor for how the soul of the race was consumed. They stopped being interested in nature, in craft, in effect everything that made them Eldar except perverted pleasure. The only other emotions that survived en masses were bloodthirsty war-making and a black sense of humour, but the parts of the population embracing those were either scattered or forced to hide in the Web way. Which is exactly what the myths say happened to Khaine and the Laughing God.

How does that fit with Isha being saved from Slaanesh by Nurgle, and then held captive by him?

[Kol Saresk]

Isha represents life. Nurgle is a perversion of life that continues in death. To him, making her suffer by trapping her in a place of death and using her very tears to create some of his most virulent poisons and plagues actually gives him power. Similar to how Slaanesh took power when he defeated and captured Khaine. The Chaos Gods feed off of making their antithesis suffer and be perverted. It's one of the reasons Khorne sought to claim Khaine for himself. They both fed off of the same source, and as such, when Khaine became weakened, so too did Khorne. They may not be the same, but they are similar and are related.

 

On topic, I think the Emperor did what any overprotective parent did. He told them enough that he thought would keep them out of trouble, but at the same time left them ignorant enough that they wouldn't know what they were really getting into until it was too late.