The Emperor was wrong

[MrDarth151]

On the fanaticism = emotion aspect I briefly touched on above:

 

I'll use an analogy of sports fandom to illustrate my point.

 

The Imperial Truth is like a casual fan who gets excited when his team wins, but doesn't get out of hand about it. Maybe shouting something to the effect of "Yay! My team won the championship!" Possibly a little light trash talk to fans of the other team. Overall, they're happy, but had a rational response to that happiness.

 

The Imperial Cult/Creed on the other hand, is like the sports fans who riot and destroy tons of property because their team WON.

 

That kind of emotional response to being happy about something is completely irrational. And THAT is what feeds the Chaos gods. The casual fan does too, but not nearly as much as the rioters.

 

Fanaticism causes a much stronger emotional response to stimulus than merely believing in something.

 

And that is what the Emperor was trying to avoid by abolishing religion in favor of the Imperial Truth. Being happy your team won doesn't give Khorne as much power as you and thousands of your fellow fans flipping cars over it.

 

That comparison would work if the Imperial Truth Imperium was different in any significant way than Imperial Creed Imperium in their conduct.

 

The constant and pointless overindulgence in grimdarkness basically put any claims of moral superiority on part of pre-Heresy Imperium to the ground with bolt round through the skull.

[Kristoff]

That comparison would work if the Imperial Truth Imperium was different in any significant way than Imperial Creed Imperium in their conduct.

 

The constant and pointless overindulgence in grimdarkness basically put any claims of moral superiority on part of pre-Heresy Imperium to the ground with bolt round through the skull.

There are some differences.  The Ecclisiarchy for one, which seems to turn a lot of that grim-dakness up, and is quite counter to the actual proscriptions being discussed from the Big E in the first place.    Rather sad, don't you think?

 

But also the question keeps coming back to, if you know humanity would go down this route, and you think it may actually be a better result, would you still set it up to do so?

[Scribe]

The Imperium if 30K did as many if not more terrible things to unite humanity under the Emperor than the 40K version.

 

This is really not debatable if you look at the setting and what the goal was.

 

Unity, at any cost. If that means sending in a loyal force that would skin the majority of a city...so be it.

 

If faith is part of the human condition, and it probably is because of our sad development that is Conscious thought, then it would make sense to leverage it, unless faith, any faith, fuels powers in a realm that defies logic. :)

 

The Emperor knew of the risks of faith, it wasn't about faith in the Imperial Truth, because the goal of the Imperial Truth was cold, sterile, science. Not faith, but knowledge, and undeniable law.

 

Edit: I also must say, MvSs works are some of my favorite books, his timeline of 40k on Warseer was awesome.

[MrDarth151]

 

That comparison would work if the Imperial Truth Imperium was different in any significant way than Imperial Creed Imperium in their conduct.

 

The constant and pointless overindulgence in grimdarkness basically put any claims of moral superiority on part of pre-Heresy Imperium to the ground with bolt round through the skull.

There are some differences.  The Ecclisiarchy for one, which seems to turn a lot of that grim-dakness up, and is quite counter to the actual proscriptions being discussed from the Big E in the first place.    Rather sad, don't you think?

 

But also the question keeps coming back to, if you know humanity would go down this route, and you think it may actually be a better result, would you still set it up to do so?

 

 

No, I think it's laughable that The Emperor did not foreseen it as logical consequence of his stupid actions. You mean that when you are going to set up yourself as infallible three meter tall golden giant that invokes the feelings of adoration in every man, woman and child that gazes upon you, they might end up worshipping you? No way. How could a thirty thousand year old super-genius with the ability to read people's thoughts, precognition, knowledge of all human history and access to all human knowledge from the last thirty millennia predict such a thing!?

 

My answer was that it was an emotional flaw, but BL insists on portraying him without those nowadays, so that's gone.

 

And frankly, Ecclesiarchy is not substantially worse than Imperial Truth.

 

Also, my main beef is not that The Emperor was planning on getting rid of all of religion. My problem is that there is literally nothing to suggest he is capable of such a feat. Not even close.

[Claws and Effect]

There are a lot of differences, actually.

 

One of the other things not brought up much is the time spans involved.

 

We never got to see the result of the Imperium living by the Imperial Truth for any significant length of time.

 

The Imperial Cult became the state religion in M32, not long after the Heresy. The Imperial Truth didn't have much of a chance to flourish before it was subverted by it.

 

I often wonder what the Imperium would look like if the Truth were still in effect rather than the Cult.

[MrDarth151]

The Emperor knew of the risks of faith, it wasn't about faith in the Imperial Truth, because the goal of the Imperial Truth was cold, sterile, science. Not faith, but knowledge, and undeniable law.

 

That would be true if anyone portrayed it like that. The Imperial Truth is frankly more similar to faith than it is to any system based on knowledge, logic and law.

 

It's basically a giant appeal to authority on part of The Emperor, which boils down to "Do what I say because I say it!".

[Claws and Effect]

 

 

The Emperor knew of the risks of faith, it wasn't about faith in the Imperial Truth, because the goal of the Imperial Truth was cold, sterile, science. Not faith, but knowledge, and undeniable law.

That would be true if anyone portrayed it like that. The Imperial Truth is frankly more similar to faith than it is to any system based on knowledge, logic and law.

 

It's basically a giant appeal to authority on part of The Emperor, which boils down to "Do what I say because I say it!".

It did put the Emperor as the absolute authority, that much is true.

 

There was a pretty good reason for it though.

 

When someone says "Don't touch that, it's hot", you can learn for yourself not to do that by burning your hand.

 

When someone says "Don't worship things that claim to be gods", you don't get to learn that lesson the hard way. If you get corrupted you don't get the chance to not do it again. You just get to regret having done it.

 

You can't explain why the Chaos gods are bad using reason and logic, because their very nature defies those things.

[Volt]

The Imperial Truth certainly was poorly thought out simply because it is literally impossible to crush religious belief since the religious can always hide it within their minds. And even if you have psykers, they're still fairly rare within the far reaches of the Imperium and you would never be able to mentally check every single person. The best you can ever do is suppress it, which IMO is worse because that simply would lead to easier spread of Chaos Taint. It's always better to legalize something and try to regulate it yourself so you can try to guide it to fit to fit your ideals. As the Last Church showed the Emperor ultimately is still plagued by the weaknesses of great leaders who overstretch their goals and fall short of the dream, often oblivious to their own failure.

 

 

 

I've noticed a couple of points no one has mentioned so far, that might shed some light on the discussion:

1. The history of the 40k setting is reverse engineered from the general timeline introduced from the very beginning of the game.
2. As such, everything the Emperor has done was done to achieve the current setting.

My favorite Big E quote is, "you can be all knowing or all powerful, but not at the same time." At the beginning, in 8,000 BCE when the being that would become the Emperor was created, he saw the end of humanity. He was all knowing. Over the next 38,000 years, he set each piece into place tgat he would need in order to give humanity a chance at survival, and set everything into motion when he assumed the persona of "The Emperor". Every action, every inaction, every word, and every moment of pause was executed to give humanity a chance, including rebuking Lorgar because him needed to control when Chaos would come into play. Horus was found first and trained the longest so he could lead a rebellion against his father. Alpharius and Omegon figured it out, and decided to support the Emperor.

It's a glorious tapestry of cause and effect. The only question is, did he succeed?

SJ

I'd say creating a civilization that lasted for ten thousand years is achievement enough, considering no other culture could even dream of such an achievement in reality. The longest lasting civilization, Rome, which lasted a mere 1,956 years (Founding of Roman Republic to the Fall of Constantinople).

The Chinese had a 5000 year dynasty.

SJ

 

Wrong, the longest lasting Dynasty was the Zhou Dynasty; which lasted a total of 1.302 years. 

[SpecialIssue]

There are a lot of differences, actually.

 

One of the other things not brought up much is the time spans involved.

 

We never got to see the result of the Imperium living by the Imperial Truth for any significant length of time.

 

The Imperial Cult became the state religion in M32, not long after the Heresy. The Imperial Truth didn't have much of a chance to flourish before it was subverted by it.

 

I often wonder what the Imperium would look like if the Truth were still in effect rather than the Cult.

 

The Imperial Truth had been implemented with a rigid iron boot for 200 years galaxy-wide. The culture of the late Crusade was what the Imperium would be much like at the end of Scouring as well. It then took 2 millennia for the Imperial Cult to become the state religion. 

 

The Imperial Truth had a chance, but lost when science and experience proved there were gods and daemons.

 

One of the FW Horus Heresy books also rightly notes that even while the Imperium espoused its godless nature and claim of belief in nothing but reason and cold logic, it nonetheless cloaked itself in the ancient trappings and signs of superstition and myth.

 

And yes, while the Imperial Truth advocated secularism, it did so dogmatically and mindlessly. It was implemented on the back of unthinking faith in the authority of the Emperor himself, which is absolutely sacrosanct and unquestionable, on the pain of death. Not the Imperial Cult, but a personality cult, if you will.

[Brother Captain Kezef]

 

There are a lot of differences, actually.

 

One of the other things not brought up much is the time spans involved.

 

We never got to see the result of the Imperium living by the Imperial Truth for any significant length of time.

 

The Imperial Cult became the state religion in M32, not long after the Heresy. The Imperial Truth didn't have much of a chance to flourish before it was subverted by it.

 

I often wonder what the Imperium would look like if the Truth were still in effect rather than the Cult.

 

The Imperial Truth had been implemented with a rigid iron boot for 200 years galaxy-wide. The culture of the late Crusade was what the Imperium would be much like at the end of Scouring as well. It then took 2 millennia for the Imperial Cult to become the state religion. 

 

The Imperial Truth had a chance, but lost when science and experience proved there were gods and daemons.

 

One of the FW Horus Heresy books also rightly notes that even while the Imperium espoused its godless nature and claim of belief in nothing but reason and cold logic, it nonetheless cloaked itself in the ancient trappings and signs of superstition and myth.

 

And yes, while the Imperial Truth advocated secularism, it did so dogmatically and mindlessly. It was implemented on the back of unthinking faith in the authority of the Emperor himself, which is absolutely sacrosanct and unquestionable, on the pain of death. Not the Imperial Cult, but a personality cult, if you will.

 

 

Yeah, it's the essential irony of the Imperial Truth in that secularism was turned into a religion.

[karden00]

I have not read the entire thread. But I find this perspective kind of redundant. We all know 40k was originally conceived as a dark, hopeless context. If the Emperor was right, and things went according to plan, it would take an inverse of the twist that was the calamity of the Heresy. If he was right, and everything went according to plan, he planned *GrimDark*

But the whole point of 40k is (was) that it is a dystopian future that was a tragic result of what was not supposed to be. Regardless of whether or not the Big E meant it, the Heresy has always been the tragic lynchpin around which the setting devolves into the awfulness that it was meant to be. 

Of course in a sense the Emperor was wrong. If he wasn't, it probably wouldn't have been the way it ended up being. 

[Kristoff]

I have not read the entire thread. But I find this perspective kind of redundant. We all know 40k was originally conceived as a dark, hopeless context. If the Emperor was right, and things went according to plan, it would take an inverse of the twist that was the calamity of the Heresy. If he was right, and everything went according to plan, he planned *GrimDark*

But the whole point of 40k is (was) that it is a dystopian future that was a tragic result of what was not supposed to be. Regardless of whether or not the Big E meant it, the Heresy has always been the tragic lynchpin around which the setting devolves into the awfulness that it was meant to be. 

Of course in a sense the Emperor was wrong. If he wasn't, it probably wouldn't have been the way it ended up being. 

 

Not necessarily.  There are many reasons why the Big E set it up the way he did, some of them are out of what he wanted as his ideal, and some may be that he expected for everything to happen exactly as it did.

 

Consider what happened to Alpharious and Omegon at the end of Legion.  They made choices based on a future that they were introduced to, and they sought to handle it in their own way.  I don't know if their response was what was desired by those who presented it to them.  I won't say more as I don't want to do any more spoilers than I need to get the point across.

 

Now consider that the Big E also had similar abilities to see the future, for one reason or another.  And he may have seen different variations of futures and how he did things would have affected them.  If so, then Horus betraying and making him mostly dead was strangely better for Mankind over all.

 

A rather scary thought.

[cephalopod]

Master of Mankind does a wonderful job of explaining the Emperor's animosity towards religion. Explaining how chaos could take advantage of faith, insinuate itself and corrupt it. It shows how a person could fall to chaos without even knowing it.

 

It's a valid argument, but the biggest damn mistake he made.

 

Faith and religion is an inherent part of Human nature, the "Imperial Truth" was doomed to fail. If the big E had set himself up as a God-King from the start he'd of had far less problems.

 

Also, is he not a hypocrite? He humiliated Lorgar for worshipping him as a god yet accepted and even encouraged the priests of Mars to see him as their god.

 

I find this whole issue fascinating and one of the biggest plot holes of the series. The Emperor is so freaking old, knows Humanity, knows our history and still makes such a huge mistake in trying to suppress the human need for faith.

Religion is a mental illness. Hardly a strong point for humanity. No offense to anyone. The emperor's compassion and science is what brought the empire to it's zeneath. Compassion wisdom science and logic are humanity's greatest achievement. Religion is a collectivist idea made to control people. The council of necea rings a bell.

[mc warhammer]

No, I think it's laughable that The Emperor did not foreseen it as logical consequence of his stupid actions. You mean that when you are going to set up yourself as infallible three meter tall golden giant that invokes the feelings of adoration in every man, woman and child that gazes upon you, they might end up worshipping you? No way. How could a thirty thousand year old super-genius with the ability to read people's thoughts, precognition, knowledge of all human history and access to all human knowledge from the last thirty millennia predict such a thing!?

the fact that there were enough (potentially the majority) members of the imperium who only worshipped him as a man proves that such a thing is possible. we worship enough celebrities in current times without deifying them.

 

has the public perception of the emperor's "perfection" been explored? did he have an official explanation for his exceptional nature in the imperial truth? "i am awesome because science + protein shakes?"

 

My answer was that it was an emotional flaw, but BL insists on portraying him without those nowadays, so that's gone.

lack of emotion and inability to empathise is still an emotional flaw.

 

 

Also, my main beef is not that The Emperor was planning on getting rid of all of religion. My problem is that there is literally nothing to suggest he is capable of such a feat. Not even close.

do we have a clear outline of the plan and implementation of imperial truth? was it as simple as "get rid of all religion in one go"? or is it more complex than that?

 

i've only got horus rising and last church as clear examples but there might have been a more thorough exploration elsewhere?

[Closet Skeleton]

 

And yes, while the Imperial Truth advocated secularism, it did so dogmatically and mindlessly. It was implemented on the back of unthinking faith in the authority of the Emperor himself, which is absolutely sacrosanct and unquestionable, on the pain of death. Not the Imperial Cult, but a personality cult, if you will.

 

 

Yeah, it's the essential irony of the Imperial Truth in that secularism was turned into a religion.

 

 

The Imperial Truth isn't secularism. Secularism means the state takes no policy on religion accept from tolerance (hence why the American Secular movement was mostly a alliance of Catholics and Jews before those groups stopped being treated like hated minorities and the atheists took secularism over). The Imperial Truth was enforced state atheism which is just as opposite to secularism as a state religion would be.

 

Closest historical equivalent to the Imperial Truth would be the Cult of Reason during the French revolution (or the various religious purges under Communist governments).

 

Stalinism and Maoism both had elements of totalitarianism, enforced atheism, cult of personality and emphasise on progress.

 

Its only ironic that a philosophical creed would become dogmatic because if you're used to Christian influenced societies. The ancient Greeks would be confused by the idea that religion had anything to do with ethical codes which to them were the purview of philosophy while religion was limited to state rituals and making offerings for good luck. China's pretty similar, seeing how confused Jesuit missionaries were about whether or not Taoism and Confucianism counted as religions or not (according to most Chinese they don't but western encyclopaedias often say otherwise).

[A D-B]

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it - was the Imperium's (and the Emperor's?) grand plan. There's something compelling in the idea that it's the mortal way an immortal's plans were carried out, inserting that first baroque and wayward misunderstanding in the long process of Warhammer 40,000, but it still knocked me back a bit the first time I saw it.

[mc warhammer]

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it - was the Imperium's (and the Emperor's?) grand plan. There's something compelling in the idea that it's the mortal way an immortal's plans were carried out, inserting that first baroque and wayward misunderstanding in the long process of Warhammer 40,000, but it still knocked me back a bit the first time I saw it.

i took it at face value, but HR was my first real exposure to the universe outside of watson as a kid and a few WD articles. my own approach towards entertainment is not to fight it, i tend to give the benefit of the doubt and patch any plot holes i find (unless they're deeper than africa by toto). it didn't require particularly exhaustive mental gymnastics to make it work with what i already knew.

 

how does it sit with you these days?

[choppyred]

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it

I call flaw as E-money was well aware of the beings that called the warp home but he also knew that they were not Gods but beings created by the thoughts and emotions of every living creature in the galaxy. He was also aware that they could offer power to mortals and that above all mankind craves power (lord of the rings I know ) So I would argue that the imperial truth was an effort to get mankind to look to their own power not the power of chaos which corrupts and furthers the schems and influence of the denizens of the warp.

[Marshal Rohr]

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it - was the Imperium's (and the Emperor's?) grand plan. There's something compelling in the idea that it's the mortal way an immortal's plans were carried out, inserting that first baroque and wayward misunderstanding in the long process of Warhammer 40,000, but it still knocked me back a bit the first time I saw it.

That brings me back to on my first point, that wealth and quality of living do more to make societies less religious than purging them. Church participation and atheism are falling and exponentionally increasing, respectively, across the Western World. You'll never find statistics on it's because it's not allowed by law, but in the Gulf (where you'd think there would be little to no agnosticism/atheism) millennial Arabs were atheist about as frequently as western millennials in the schools we went to. It's far more taboo, but because of the vast wealth you see the trend hold strong.

 

Since this seems to be pretty consistent, if the Emperor really wanted to get rid of religion he would've tried to make lives better. It's not a surprise religious extremist group originate in rural, poverty stricken areas even in the West. There is an argument to be made that by and large most imperials lived 'middle class lives' on the more established worlds by the time of the Heresy, but since the setting requires a little bit of 'teeming masses' to maintain its feel you only ever see the overcrowded, disgusting urban areas. BL also doesn't put out material on how society is organized, with socioeconomic information either (and why would they? That's not a fun topic for anyone but me :D)

[mc warhammer]

uh...i'd love it too.

[A D-B]

 

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it - was the Imperium's (and the Emperor's?) grand plan. There's something compelling in the idea that it's the mortal way an immortal's plans were carried out, inserting that first baroque and wayward misunderstanding in the long process of Warhammer 40,000, but it still knocked me back a bit the first time I saw it.

i took it at face value, but HR was my first real exposure to the universe outside of watson as a kid and a few WD articles. my own approach towards entertainment is not to fight it, i tend to give the benefit of the doubt and patch any plot holes i find (unless they're deeper than africa by toto). it didn't require particularly exhaustive mental gymnastics to make it work with what i already knew.

 

how does it sit with you these days?

 

It is what it is. I hate that phrase, but it fits. The twinned joy/problem with this stuff is that no one sees the holes in their unpublished stuff; a lot of the criticisms and solutions yelled for this subject into the aether of the internet think they and they alone are the magical souls that solve all the logical inconsistencies, that all of the people in the meetings are morons - when if their vision was published instead it would be torn mercilessly to shreds as more inconsistent and sillier than ever. 

 

It's like homebrew Codexes in that regard. We've all seen discussion of "suboptimal" units that "no one takes" in "the meta", and then you have whole threads based on solutions and rules changes - which are all completely different, where no one agrees on the specific changes, and everyone thinks their suggestion is the fair and balanced one.

 

I don't think it's much of a surprise to say that every author would have written Faction X or Explanation Y differently to how Author Z did it. (The example I always use on this is when I'm asked how I'd have written the Alpha Legion, and I say "Worse than Dan did." I love what he did with them, whereas I'd have stuck tediously close to the Index Astartes article; no surprise there.)

 

Sometimes the lore is the lore and you don't fight it, you just bring what sense to it that you can and work within the boundaries already established (I'd have loved the Emperor not to have teleported Angron away the way he did, for example, but that had been published lore for decades and already ensconced in one of the best stories of the HH). So I'm not against the notion of the Imperial Truth et al, but it did surprise me when I was first introduced to it in the series. There was a sense of "Uh, how was this ever supposed to work?" When, of course, all of it is future history and it was ultimately-kinda-sorta set up to show a system that didn't/wouldn't work. 

 

Sometimes, though, it's a matter of letting the story finish. It's why I'm amazed anyone can claim they draw specific answers or understanding of the Emperor from The Master of Mankind. Not only is there nothing new about the Emperor in that book, there's also nothing definitive. Most people got that, like you'd expect, but I find it fascinating to read the views of people that didn't, and insist their conclusions are "right". One of the reasons I hope I get time to write one more HH novel on Terra is to show a few more characters interacting with the Emperor outside the Webway, for some cool contrasts. There's so much tread in what you can show and the context it can give.

[choppyred]

The best thing is that we will probably never know (and for my part I hope we don't,) but it sure is fun to speculate .

[bluntblade]

Viz public views of the Emperor, the closest I am aware of is when Qin Xa sums up what he knows Ilya Ravallion thinks about psychic power - that it's merely "the expanding power of the human mind". So for the average Imperial citizen the Emperor is far beyond them, but He's simply the apex of what a human can be, and that carries the implicit promise that they or their children's children might one day realise that same potential. Which is quite different to Him simply being divine.

 

However, this is largely me extrapolating.

[MrDarth151]

 

 

The Emperor knew of the risks of faith, it wasn't about faith in the Imperial Truth, because the goal of the Imperial Truth was cold, sterile, science. Not faith, but knowledge, and undeniable law.

That would be true if anyone portrayed it like that. The Imperial Truth is frankly more similar to faith than it is to any system based on knowledge, logic and law.

 

It's basically a giant appeal to authority on part of The Emperor, which boils down to "Do what I say because I say it!".

It did put the Emperor as the absolute authority, that much is true.

 

There was a pretty good reason for it though.

 

When someone says "Don't touch that, it's hot", you can learn for yourself not to do that by burning your hand.

 

When someone says "Don't worship things that claim to be gods", you don't get to learn that lesson the hard way. If you get corrupted you don't get the chance to not do it again. You just get to regret having done it.

 

You can't explain why the Chaos gods are bad using reason and logic, because their very nature defies those things.

 

 

Yes you can, because Emperor does this to Ra and Ra notably doesn't fall to Chaos.

 

The whole "The entire knowledge about Chaos is dangerous! You can't even get the slightest idea, or you will be corrupted!" thing BL has been pushing lately would be more convincing if it wasn't constantly undermined by their own works.

 

 

I have not read the entire thread. But I find this perspective kind of redundant. We all know 40k was originally conceived as a dark, hopeless context. If the Emperor was right, and things went according to plan, it would take an inverse of the twist that was the calamity of the Heresy. If he was right, and everything went according to plan, he planned *GrimDark*

But the whole point of 40k is (was) that it is a dystopian future that was a tragic result of what was not supposed to be. Regardless of whether or not the Big E meant it, the Heresy has always been the tragic lynchpin around which the setting devolves into the awfulness that it was meant to be. 

Of course in a sense the Emperor was wrong. If he wasn't, it probably wouldn't have been the way it ended up being. 

 

This is where we disagree, because I don't believe HH comes of as tragic at this point. The tragedy of the Horus Heresy was supposed to stem from what was lost being better than what followed, and that idea does not follow what was written, because if anything the relentless pursuit of grimdark has turned Great Crusade era Imperium into something that was just as bad as the 40k Imperium that followed, to the point that you have to wonder why the more moral of Primarchs even followed The Emperor in the first place.

 

You can't even say that the loss of Big E's dream was tragic, because there is nothing to imply that he was capable of achieving it, barring the occasional stroking his ego by various character talking about how great he is. The Emperor is the biggest example of "Tell, don't show" in Horus Heresy, because I'm fairly certain we don't have a single example that would show him as actually great, or even competent ruler.

 

The tragedy of HH was supposed to stem from "Something that could have been, but was lost", and for that to work, you need to have something that could have been in the first place. And we don't. That's not tragic, that's nihilistic.

 

 

 

Sometimes, though, it's a matter of letting the story finish. It's why I'm amazed anyone can claim they draw specific answers or understanding of the Emperor from The Master of Mankind. Not only is there nothing new about the Emperor in that book, there's also nothing definitive. Most people got that, like you'd expect, but I find it fascinating to read the views of people that didn't, and insist their conclusions are "right". One of the reasons I hope I get time to write one more HH novel on Terra is to show a few more characters interacting with the Emperor outside the Webway, for some cool contrasts. There's so much tread in what you can show and the context it can give.

 

 

Is it really that weird? The characterisation of The Emperor in The Master of Mankind is incredibly easy to misconstruct as definitive characterisation of the man. He is fairly consistent across all of his scenes, there is no contrast to suggest that there are different facets to his character than fairly uncaring warlord/scientist, and the general tone of his when talking about the Primarchs and Ullanor scene is rather suggestive that the previous, less detached characterisation of him that we saw used by various authors, like McNeill and Thorpe, was a lie designed to give Primarchs and others what they wanted to hear, rather than an attempt at contrast.

[choppyred]

I remember when I first started on the series, I did wonder why the Imperial Truth - which is essentially a lie or massively flawed from half of the 800 ways you can look at it - was the Imperium's (and the Emperor's?) grand plan. There's something compelling in the idea that it's the mortal way an immortal's plans were carried out, inserting that first baroque and wayward misunderstanding in the long process of Warhammer 40,000, but it still knocked me back a bit the first time I saw it.

i took it at face value, but HR was my first real exposure to the universe outside of watson as a kid and a few WD articles. my own approach towards entertainment is not to fight it, i tend to give the benefit of the doubt and patch any plot holes i find (unless they're deeper than africa by toto). it didn't require particularly exhaustive mental gymnastics to make it work with what i already knew.

how does it sit with you these days?

It is what it is. I hate that phrase, but it fits. The twinned joy/problem with this stuff is that no one sees the holes in their unpublished stuff; a lot of the criticisms and solutions yelled for this subject into the aether of the internet think they and they alone are the magical souls that solve all the logical inconsistencies, that all of the people in the meetings are morons - when if their vision was published instead it would be torn mercilessly to shreds as more inconsistent and sillier than ever.

I think that is a little harsh A.D.B, all that we as a community have to go on is what has been written up until now so all that we can do is speculate and look for reasons why the characters act in the way that they do and make the decsions that they make. We have not had the privilege of looking behind the curtain as it were or actualy shape the story as you have. So for us " yelling into the aether of the internet" is all that we can do to try to figure things out, I personaly do not do this to say that I know best (I don't) or that I could do better (I couldn't) I just do it to provoke debate so that other brothers and sisters will offer their insight which is I think the whole point of this forum. I hope that you take this in the spirit of brotherhood with which it is meant as I love your work (first heretic was the book that got me in to the heresy ) and have great respect for you and the other authors of the heresy, and I think that it is great that you join in debates on this forum and offer insight that we would not otherwise have.

Getting back to the point is the imperial truth and the emperors reasoning behind it something that you and the other authors talk about in meetings and are you all in agreement or divided as we seem to be on this forum?