HH 53: Titan Death by Guy Haley

[Scribe]

Because he doesn’t need to be a warp power to have power over the warp. The gods call him anathema, so that makes me think he is something other to them. The ork gods and Eldar gods don’t have that similar influence. The astronomicon itself is painful to them and is unique to the emperor, or his death wouldn’t matter because they could just go on sacrificing more psykers, and the lore has always stated more psykers are fed into it than ever before and still it wanes. It doesn’t make a mockery of the setting because the Emperor has always been a countervailing force to chaos, since the earliest lore. If he has unlocked the ability to stop souls from being absorbed into their essence, that could be the power he learned from the on Molech.

 

The Astronomicon as Warp Energy being painful to the creatures of the Warp, makes sense.

 

He was 'Anathema' because he wanted to deny the Chaos Gods everything, and in my Head Canon, he brokered a deal with them on Moloch, and then backed out.

 

a·nath·e·ma

/əˈnaTHəmə/Submit

noun

1.

something or someone that one vehemently dislikes.

"racial hatred was anathema to her"

synonyms: an abomination, an outrage, an abhorrence, a disgrace, an evil, a bane, a bugbear, a bête noire; More

2.

a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.

synonyms: an abomination, an outrage, an abhorrence, a disgrace, an evil, a bane, a bugbear, a bête noire; More

 

 

In my view, the other Warp Powers (Eldar Gods, Ork Gods) are within the domains of the Chaos Powers, I mean again, Khaine/Khorne, Isha/Nurgle, Slaanesh/Slaanesh, and Cegorach/Tzeentch. Ork Gods would be Khorne/Nurgle and Tzeentch/Slaanesh. Cult of Speed? Propensity to obsession as a race? 

 

His death would/should/could matter, if they carry out the the logical extension of the Starchild fluff. :p

 

I mean this is all speculation on our parts anyway, but the Warp, War in Heaven (Eldar version, not Necron) and the formation of the Warp Powers is by far the most interesting unexplored portion of the lore.

[Marshal Rohr]

If ADB did say that (I'd like to see where, what the context of that was), then it'd almost fly right into the bucket of what one author thinks versus another.

I could easily be misremembering and I’d never say he said something he didn’t. I’ve just be operating under the ‘sorry, all souls are fodder for the gods’ principle since MoM came out.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

Because he doesn’t need to be a warp power to have power over the warp. The gods call him anathema, so that makes me think he is something other to them. The ork gods and Eldar gods don’t have that similar influence. The astronomicon itself is painful to them and is unique to the emperor, or his death wouldn’t matter because they could just go on sacrificing more psykers, and the lore has always stated more psykers are fed into it than ever before and still it wanes. It doesn’t make a mockery of the setting because the Emperor has always been a countervailing force to chaos, since the earliest lore. If he has unlocked the ability to stop souls from being absorbed into their essence, that could be the power he learned from the on Molech.

The Astronomicon as Warp Energy being painful to the creatures of the Warp, makes sense.

 

He was 'Anathema' because he wanted to deny the Chaos Gods everything, and in my Head Canon, he brokered a deal with them on Moloch, and then backed out.

 

a·nath·e·ma

/əˈnaTHəmə/Submit

noun

1.

something or someone that one vehemently dislikes.

"racial hatred was anathema to her"

synonyms: an abomination, an outrage, an abhorrence, a disgrace, an evil, a bane, a bugbear, a bête noire; More

2.

a formal curse by a pope or a council of the Church, excommunicating a person or denouncing a doctrine.

synonyms: an abomination, an outrage, an abhorrence, a disgrace, an evil, a bane, a bugbear, a bête noire; More

 

In my view, the other Warp Powers (Eldar Gods, Ork Gods) are within the domains of the Chaos Powers, I mean again, Khaine/Khorne, Isha/Nurgle, Slaanesh/Slaanesh, and Cegorach/Tzeentch. Ork Gods would be Khorne/Nurgle and Tzeentch/Slaanesh. Cult of Speed? Propensity to obsession as a race?

 

His death would/should/could matter, if they carry out the the logical extension of the Starchild fluff. :p

 

I mean this is all speculation on our parts anyway, but the Warp, War in Heaven (Eldar version, not Necron) and the formation of the Warp Powers is by far the most interesting unexplored portion of the lore.

The use of anathema in context like that could easily explain your point to, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, at all. We agree on almost everything. I just don’t rule out the Emperor being something that isn’t a warp power but like a great sorcerer. Since he failed in his quest though, it doesn’t matter so much on the ground if he is or isn’t a warp power because chaos is ascendant and his grand scheme to defeat them evaporated.

 

I’m thinking of it like an ancient mythology. The emperor is the priest that broke the gates to ‘heaven’ and learned the gods secrets but his hubris doomed him, if that makes sense. So whatever power he ‘stole’ he can’t really use to anyone’s benefit and that is why the Imperium is a crap sack world.

[Scribe]

 

I’m thinking of it like an ancient mythology. The emperor is the priest that broke the gates to ‘heaven’ and learned the gods secrets but his hubris doomed him, if that makes sense. So whatever power he ‘stole’ he can’t really use to anyone’s benefit and that is why the Imperium is a crap sack world.

 

 

I dig this a lot. I would LOVE confirmation that he was as you put it breaking down the gates (Moloch) to learn the Secrets, but his power did not keep up with his arrogance (Primarchs, Heresy) and now he's screwed.

 

That would be about as 40K as it gets.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

The use of anathema in context like that could easily explain your point to, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, at all. We agree on almost everything. I just don’t rule out the Emperor being something that isn’t a warp power but like a great sorcerer. Since he failed in his quest though, it doesn’t matter so much on the ground if he is or isn’t a warp power because chaos is ascendant and his grand scheme to defeat them evaporated.

 

I’m thinking of it like an ancient mythology. The emperor is the priest that broke the gates to ‘heaven’ and learned the gods secrets but his hubris doomed him, if that makes sense. So whatever power he ‘stole’ he can’t really use to anyone’s benefit and that is why the Imperium is a crap sack world.

 

 

In my mind, though, when you're at that level of power, the differences between "powerful psyker" and "god" begin to blur anyway. Just take a look at Magnus during the Great Crusade, and he's basically an incarnated Daemon Prince. So no, the Emperor isn't a god in the sense that Khorne, Nurgle etc are gods, but his soul is powerful enough that it can stand against them on equal footing.

[Scribe]

 

 

The use of anathema in context like that could easily explain your point to, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, at all. We agree on almost everything. I just don’t rule out the Emperor being something that isn’t a warp power but like a great sorcerer. Since he failed in his quest though, it doesn’t matter so much on the ground if he is or isn’t a warp power because chaos is ascendant and his grand scheme to defeat them evaporated.

 

I’m thinking of it like an ancient mythology. The emperor is the priest that broke the gates to ‘heaven’ and learned the gods secrets but his hubris doomed him, if that makes sense. So whatever power he ‘stole’ he can’t really use to anyone’s benefit and that is why the Imperium is a crap sack world.

 

 

In my mind, though, when you're at that level of power, the differences between "powerful psyker" and "god" begin to blur anyway. Just take a look at Magnus during the Great Crusade, and he's basically an incarnated Daemon Prince. So no, the Emperor isn't a god in the sense that Khorne, Nurgle etc are gods, but his soul is powerful enough that it can stand against them on equal footing.

 

 

To me, thats nonsense. Just this part 'stand against them on equal footing'. Thats ridiculous, because if He could, it would invalidate the whole of the setting.

 

Is he 'god like' in some way? Certainly, but he's several rungs below the Chaos Gods, or it all starts to fall apart.

[Lord_Caerolion]

 

 

 

The use of anathema in context like that could easily explain your point to, and I’m not saying you’re wrong, at all. We agree on almost everything. I just don’t rule out the Emperor being something that isn’t a warp power but like a great sorcerer. Since he failed in his quest though, it doesn’t matter so much on the ground if he is or isn’t a warp power because chaos is ascendant and his grand scheme to defeat them evaporated.

 

I’m thinking of it like an ancient mythology. The emperor is the priest that broke the gates to ‘heaven’ and learned the gods secrets but his hubris doomed him, if that makes sense. So whatever power he ‘stole’ he can’t really use to anyone’s benefit and that is why the Imperium is a crap sack world.

 

 

In my mind, though, when you're at that level of power, the differences between "powerful psyker" and "god" begin to blur anyway. Just take a look at Magnus during the Great Crusade, and he's basically an incarnated Daemon Prince. So no, the Emperor isn't a god in the sense that Khorne, Nurgle etc are gods, but his soul is powerful enough that it can stand against them on equal footing.

 

 

To me, thats nonsense. Just this part 'stand against them on equal footing'. Thats ridiculous, because if He could, it would invalidate the whole of the setting.

 

Is he 'god like' in some way? Certainly, but he's several rungs below the Chaos Gods, or it all starts to fall apart.

 

 

Fair enough, I may have overstated how powerful the Emperor is, but the point still remains. The Emperor, through the means of his psychic might alone (which may or may not have been strengthened by a deal made on Molech), has reached a level where the Chaos Gods consider him a threat. He's capable of influencing Warpstorms (or at least Sebastian Thor was able to influence them and claimed the Emperor was responsible for the miracle), return people from the dead (Saint Celestine), and could be argued to have his own daemons (the incarnation of the Astronomicon encountered in Talon of Horus).

[Scribe]

100%, He was powerful, and perhaps after 10,000 years of suffering, torture/sacrifice of fellow Humans for the Throne/Astronomicon, and deluded misguided faith, he could be something even more than He was.

 

God like? Certainly, I just wish they would make it clear, and let Him become the 5th Chaos God he was meant to be. ;)

[Roomsky]

It's like the Chaos Gods are you and your 3 friends against billions of dust mites, largely harmless so long as you don't start wading into them. One just happens to be the size of a bulldog and knows where you live.

[Marshal Rohr]

That’s why I like my priest stealing from the Gods analogy because it implies the level of disparity between the two. The Gods cannot simply open a rift and smite him, but neither can he just confront the gods. Hence the Webway project. If he could openly confront them he wouldn’t devote his power to undermining them. This isn’t to say the emperor is any normal sorcerer or anything, and I think even Scribe will agree he has the ability to oppose them, but not threaten them, if that makes sense.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Just to play devils advocate, though, the reason he's only undermining rather than directly confronting could be that the Emperor can indeed confront them, he just understands that he'll get utterly curb-stomped if he tried. As such, he's playing the long game, influencing human development until it gets to the point where he could comfortably take them on. During the Crusade, he was "just" an Alpha-Plus-Plus psyker, or whatever the terminology is for a psyker of his power, but after being deified, and drawing on the worship of a galaxies worth of psychic creatures, along with directly consuming the souls of thousands upon thousands of psykers? Could be he's bulking up for the biggest fight the Warp has ever seen.

[Scribe]

Well that was the plan..but it didnt pan out.

[Arkangilos]

But did he not confront all of the gods? I thought that they all possessed Horus in the final battle and he defeated them (albeit at great cost).

 

Anyhow, even if there is a soul heaven it doesn't get rid of the "consumed" part. The Black Crusade Roleplay Games all talk about how consumed souls are still there, they are just bound to an eternity of suffering to the whims of the gods. For example, when it describes Khorne's lair it talks about how they are always fighting. In Nurgle's garden they are stuck in a toxic sludge, and sometimes Nurgle will ask them to recount their life or some story, and if he is impressed he turns them into a daemon.

 

It would be the same with the Emperor, minus the suffering. They consume the soul in that the soul has nowhere to go, and they will keep feeding on it.

Khorne continues off of the anger of the soul he consumed, the emperor off of the adoration he receives.

[Scribe]

We will have to see at the final tally, but no. They were present, but once the shell they occupied was found to be breaking down, they left. Throw the Emperor into the Warp, in front of them all, and its going to be a different thing.

 

It reminds me of a story...a Wizard knew he could not defeat a God in their realm, so tricked them into the Real World, and killed them. I'm getting old, not sure why I cannot remember this...

[drooling blood]

A Quaestoris in low gravity vaults over debris, edit, and not like transformers where it’s an athletic jump. He just kind of pushes off the ground and gets up high enough to go over the obstacle. In low gravity.

Query? where did it say which ever garmon planet they were on was low grav? It was on the beach and that debris was a tank, was it not. So half its size.

Funny that the cultist dudes need mag hooks to assault a titan. Couldnt they have just jumped. You know low grav and all.

Just like the all power to the locomotion, run titan, run. Annoys me.

[bluntblade]

 

 

 

I don’t know how accurate that is given ADB has explicitly said all souls are consumed.

Cyrene's soul was returned from the warp this would not have been possible had her soul been consumed

You're willing to trust a ritual involving Erebus?

Given that he puts us in her head later on, and Argel Tal knows what Erebus is doing with his ritual, I'm inclined to take it at face value for once.

[Beren]

 

A Quaestoris in low gravity vaults over debris, edit, and not like transformers where it’s an athletic jump. He just kind of pushes off the ground and gets up high enough to go over the obstacle. In low gravity.

 

Query? where did it say which ever garmon planet they were on was low grav? It was on the beach and that debris was a tank, was it not. So half its size.

Funny that the cultist dudes need mag hooks to assault a titan. Couldnt they have just jumped. You know low grav and all.

Just like the all power to the locomotion, run titan, run. Annoys me.

I don't know about your first point, as obviously I don't have the book, but as to your second I think that there's a fair bit of difference between jumping over something half your size and vertically scaling something many times your size.

[godking]

 

 

I don’t know how accurate that is given ADB has explicitly said all souls are consumed.

Cyrene's soul was returned from the warp this would not have been possible had her soul been consumed

You're willing to trust a ritual involving Erebus?

 

It  still happened.

[1ncarnadine]

It  still happened.

 

Yes, she's back and we have a POV section in Betrayer. That it happened isn't in contention and never was. But... was her soul returned intact? What does a soul consumed by the dark gods go through, and what effect does that have on it if it's returned? 

 

Here are some other fun possibilities:

-she's back, but something else is back in her too

-her memories, feelings, and behaviors were consumed, and what's come back is just a very, very good facsimile that is itself completely convinced it's Cyrene

-there is some dark destiny Erebus has seen that she will fulfill by being back, and the Gods want it to happen

 

 

Given that he puts us in her head later on, and Argel Tal knows what Erebus is doing with his ritual, I'm inclined to take it at face value for once.

 

[bluntblade]

I just feel that we'd have seen some clues if her soul had been flayed, devoured, what have you.

[1ncarnadine]

I just feel that we'd have seen some clues if her soul had been flayed, devoured, what have you.

 

 

 

Cyrene Valantion, She Who Lived Twice, dreamed of swimming through fire, chased by howling daemons clawing at her ankles. Her own screams woke her each night, sitting bolt upright in her new quarters, sheened with cold sweat

 

Yeah, you're right. We would have seen some clues. 

[bluntblade]

It doesn't sound quite being been devoured and flayed. I know I'm reeeally splitting hairs here, but...

[godking]

 

It  still happened.

 

Yes, she's back and we have a POV section in Betrayer. That it happened isn't in contention and never was. But... was her soul returned intact? What does a soul consumed by the dark gods go through, and what effect does that have on it if it's returned? 

 

Here are some other fun possibilities:

-she's back, but something else is back in her too

-her memories, feelings, and behaviors were consumed, and what's come back is just a very, very good facsimile that is itself completely convinced it's Cyrene

-there is some dark destiny Erebus has seen that she will fulfill by being back, and the Gods want it to happen

 

 

Given that he puts us in her head later on, and Argel Tal knows what Erebus is doing with his ritual, I'm inclined to take it at face value for once.

 

 

Or her soul escaped being consumed.

 

My personal theory is that some souls will escape being consumed no matter how powerful the gods are there will always be some souls that escape being devoured or de gods hold of on devouring a soul because they will use it in the future.

 

My second theory is that some souls are simply to strong to be easily devoured i suspect that the soul of a powerful psyker could probably hold of being devoured for a while.

[Taliesin]

But did he not confront all of the gods? I thought that they all possessed Horus in the final battle and he defeated them (albeit at great cost).

 

 

 

It states in Visions of Heresy that Horus had the power of all Chaos gods being poured into him as I recall, and after a great confrontation, when they sensed Horus' downfall, they abandoned him/fled his body.

 

That always suggested to me though that the Master of Mankind at full effort is not far removed from a Chaos God at all.

[Scribe]

 

 

But did he not confront all of the gods? I thought that they all possessed Horus in the final battle and he defeated them (albeit at great cost).

 

 

That always suggested to me though that the Master of Mankind at full effort is not far removed from a Chaos God at all.

If that was true, then the Heresy would make even less sense, and the Emperor failed even harder.