Your Favourite Emperor Origin Ideas

[redmapa]

Ynnead was also aborted by the Deathwatch, its a god that was born dead and broken. 

[Lord_Caerolion]

Well, it's awakening was aborted. Ynnead still exists, he's just slumbering within the Infinity Circuit. He woke just enough to imbue Yvraine with his power, and she was able to awaken a portion of him, creating the Yncarne.

[Closet Skeleton]

Perpetuals are the dumbest thing in 40k and are the best reason for declaring the whole Horus Heresy novel series noncanon. Sensei were dumb and out of place too but Perpetuals are just more generic and more over-powered Sensei.

 

 

 

Actually, another thing puzzles me more in this. Why no other species attempted this? We know a lot more of them have more psychic talent than humans, why not create a uber being of their own, too? There was what, 65 million years between fall of old ones and birth of the Emperor, why no one had the same bright idea in meantime?

 

Also, where the thousands of shamans came from? We know psychic talent in humans is rare, but becomes more common with time - from which follows it was rarer in the past, yet, somehow, tiny early human population produced thousands of strong, capable psykers that could have attempted this, a ratio unseen on any 40K world...

 

 

Eh, I hate humano-centrism of early 40K, especially that ridiculously dumb and nonsense suggestion Khorne was created by Genghis Khan, who then produced Nurgle by ordering the start of Black Plague, I feel the shaman theory was just more of the same junk and I really hope GW will come up with something better during the Siege series

 

 

Who says other species haven't created beings equal in power to the Emperor? There was that Ork that almost killed the Emperor on Ullanor and the really powerful Eldar probably got wiped out in the fall. There's also Belakor, an ancient Daemon Prince of confused backstory who might predate some of the Chaos gods themselves.

 

The Shamans weren't psykers as exist today but something different. The Realm of Chaos books never says the shamans were strong, just that they guided humanity and could reincarnate. Its only after thousands of them end up in the New Man's body that their strength becomes important.

 

It was the growing psychic power of humanity that messed up the shaman's life cycle, that they couldn't over-ride a much weaker stage of human psychic development kind of implies that they weren't all that. Their one ability we actually know about also gave them hundreds of lifetimes to train so that kind of explains why they could do stuff mortal psykers with more raw power can't.

 

40k's 'psychic evolution' theme like most psychic powers in SF is derived (along with the 40k conception of gods and daemons being psychic projections of living or once living creatures) from Theosophy (the New Age movement of the latter 19th century) which tried to counter Darwinian theory with its own warping of Hindu Yuga cycles. In Theosophy spiritual evolution is cyclic, the original humanity were made of pure energy and migrated here from another planet, then 'fell' into increasingly degenerate forms until the current humanity who are at the start of an upswing where we'll gain more and more spiritual development and the resulting super powers until we ascend to beings of pure thought who will find another planet to start the cycle again. The Shamans in the first edition background kind of reflected that idea in that they represented a previous height of development who had to react to the fact that things were going to get much worse before new heights were attained.

 

Early 40k was not as human centric as a casual reading makes it appear today. The first three chaos gods being created by humans wasn't about humanity being important, it was a case of chaos being unimportant. There was no mention of Chaos in the Rogue Trader rulebook so the Realm of Chaos books had to introduce a new concept into the setting so they downplayed it by tying it to just humanity (and then the Eldar for Slaanesh). In first edition Chaos was a side effect of the human species' psychic development being in its teenage years and there was a potential for humanity to mature enough to defeat chaos.

 

This is why the most first edition post first edition book, the 3rd ed Necron Codex, had Enslavers as the most dangerous warp borne plague in the galaxy's history. That book confused a lot of people back in the early 2000s because it was deliberately reflecting an era of background writing where Chaos just didn't matter too much and the result was that people complained about the universe being too Necron centric.

 

In the 40k universe gods are created as the warp signature of species. Gork and Mork were created by the Orks, the massive Eldar Pantheon were created by the Eldar and the human Pantheon was Nurgle, Khorne and Tzeentch. That's what the chaos gods arising from human history meant, it didn't mean that humans created the ultimate evil in the setting, it meant that this evil was just an aspect of humanity. That's why Orks failed in their occasional attempts to worship Khorne, as a human god Khorne just doesn't have a hold on the Ork psyche the way Ork gods do.

 

The fact that the youngest Chaos god is so powerful and left such a dramatic mark on the galaxy with his birth kind of shows that the Eldar were a bigger deal than humanity. Removing the idea that the Chaos gods were human gods doesn't actually improve the setting, it just leads to confusion like; why does only one chaos god have a backstory, why is chaos irrelevant to the Necron backstory, why aren't there chaos worshipers of every species, why the Eldar don't see the non-Slaanesh Chaos gods as a threat worth allying with humans to defeat, are other gods in the setting, etc.

 

Lorgar's fall to chaos also makes a lot more sense if the Chaos pantheon is mostly a human one. He's literally rediscovered the true path of humanity.

[b1soul]

"Perpetuals are the dumbest thing in 40k and are the best reason for declaring the whole Horus Heresy novel series noncanon."

 

What about them rubs you the wrong way?

[Sete]

"Lorgar's fall to chaos also makes a lot more sense if the Chaos pantheon is mostly a human one. He's literally rediscovered the true path of humanity."

 

Nice try buddy, but we don't take kindly to that talk in here.

There is Only the Emperor, he is our shield and protector.

[Panzer]

"Lorgar's fall to chaos also makes a lot more sense if the Chaos pantheon is mostly a human one. He's literally rediscovered the true path of humanity."

 

Nice try buddy, but we don't take kindly to that talk in here.

There is Only the Emperor, he is our shield and protector.

 

And the Greater Good. Eventually all of you will come to terms with it. 

[Vykes]

I think Closet Skeleton does a right good job of representing and expressing a mode of thought that I generally concur with.  

 

Admittedly, I also vastly prefer a humano-centric universal theme as I just enjoy the stories that emerge from that stream of thought.  The 3E Necron codex is something that broke me, I loathed it, I still loath it, I have a massive vitriolic antipathy towards the necron backstory that may have faded but has never gone away.  

 

There has to be some admission on my part that I tend to view 40K as a refinement and extrapolation of many of Paradise Lost's themes which holds a tremendous amount of literary appeal.  Thus, the concept of the Emperor's creation as a sort of semi-divine paragon figure just works for me.  The notion that it's from some early revolutionary psuedo-psykers created a warp gestalt from some mass paleolithic pagan suicide ritual to bring in the New Man zygot era, mantling a new post-human messianic king-in-training isn't my jam.  Most notably, the supposed re-emerge as proper psykers in the 25th+millenium, spawning a 35,000 year gap between magic psykers and real psykers feels really out of place if humanity was such a psychic/magic race in its inception.

 

So much of the shamanistic mode of thought feels positively Kirkbridian, and I did enough of the writing and compiling of that 'Deep Lore' there to be sick and tired of it in the extreme.  Ultimately, the appeal will lie in how one wants to view the setting, right?

[Canadian_F_H]

Kirkbridian?

[Vykes]

Michael Kirkbride, he did all that insane deep lore for Elder Scrolls back in Daggerfall and Morrowind.  It's a bunch of metaphysics that is written to be a labyrinthine maze of reincarnation and distant pseudo-poetic concepts couched in obfuscated rhetoric.  It basically acts as a way to decentralize the plot and add credence to that prehistoric period that no one has any connection too in order to make the whole setting seem more grand.  Which it does by telling what amounts to a lunatics parable about the current story but set it as ancient historical fact with indeterminate but supposedly enormous time gaps between events.  

[Ishagu]

 

 

"Lorgar's fall to chaos also makes a lot more sense if the Chaos pantheon is mostly a human one. He's literally rediscovered the true path of humanity."

 

Nice try buddy, but we don't take kindly to that talk in here.

There is Only the Emperor, he is our shield and protector.

And the Greater Good. Eventually all of you will come to terms with it.

All the good we need is written in the "Nova Codex Imperialis" that Guilliman is about to publish. It's mandatory reading for everyone!

[Canadian_F_H]

Regarding the shaman thing. When was the last time it was officially mentioned? (passingly by an employee with the clout to validate the affirmation) And when was the last time it was officially included in canon? (as an actual in setting "tgis is how it is/was or at least an in setting theory as least known to someone in the setting)

[b1soul]

The 90's I think...hasn't been brought up in a long while

[Canadian_F_H]

Well. The 90s could be 1st, 2nd or 3rd edition. Release years being '87, '93, '98 respectively.

[Domhnall]

The Emperor is the Chaos god of imaginary friends. 

Back in the day a shaman named Twizle had a 'friend' who went everywhere with him and he talked about him any chance he got much to the embarassment of the other shaman. 

People started talking, rumours began that all shaman were a bit mad and they began avoiding them. This just couldn't be. So all (but one) of the shaman got together to discuss what they should do to stop Twizle and his 'friend'. Unfortunately for them, due to the nature of the Chaos realm, just talking about his 'friend' is as good as believing in him themselves... *Poof* A thousand shaman are sacrificed to summon a Greater Daemon of Whimsical Fancy, and Twizle has a real friend to play with. 

[Slasher956]

Well. The 90s could be 1st, 2nd or 3rd edition. Release years being '87, '93, '98 respectively.

 

it was either RT or 2nd ed... I started playing 3rd ed and dont really remember this clearly.

[Cactus]

As far as I can recall the shaman gestalt origin was only ever published in Realms of Chaos volume 2: The Lost and the Damned. That predates 2nd edition by a few years.

 

It hasn't been repeated, but neither has it been flat-out contradicted by a later source.

[Canadian_F_H]

As far as I can recall the shaman gestalt origin was only ever published in Realms of Chaos volume 2: The Lost and the Damned. That predates 2nd edition by a few years.

 

It hasn't been repeated, but neither has it been flat-out contradicted by a later source.

This is what I suspect is the case.

 

I started playing 40k in 98 and jumped in right when 3rd edition launched. So there were tons of 2nd books around at the time. I dont remember running across any theories about the emperor's origin at the time. Honestly looking back... The emperor was the origin story for the setting. The setting is and was largely writen from human perspectives especially imperial. And their and thus our experiance grows from the Horus Heresy. Everything from unification and the great crusade is/was spoken of as the prelude to the HH. and the "present" of the setting prior to 8th edition (40,000 to 40,999) was the steep rising to a climax that had been building slowly in the aftermath of the HH.

 

So. GW doesn't talk about the origin of the emperor. They talk about the origin of their story. The story is the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. And the emperor is the center of the origin of nearly everything in that story.

[b1soul]

Lost and Damned was published in 1990...so this origin is way old

[Rik Lightstar]

Really, the entirety of the human history of the 40k universe as we know it begins with:

 

"In the beginning there was the Emperor, although then he wasn't called that until much later........."

 

Although a lot of the 1st and even 2nd Edition stuff hasn't been flat out contradicted, it has been left to wither on the vine. It won't be removed until there is something to take its place, but that may be some time.

 

Rik

[sairence]

So...the Emperor is Jesus? :p

[Kastor Krieg]

The shaman thing bothers me.

Why can't a bunch of psykers just do the same again? Just grab a few hundred thousand psykers and boom. Super Emperor.

One might argue that the chaos god's weren't as active back then, but the warp itself was already dangerous.

 

Edit: I would prefer the theory of just a psyker highlander that worked towards getting power, cheated the chaos gods at molech and now is working towards proper godhood.

Hilarious thing is, Molech the god of Canaan took child sacrifices and was depicted as a bull on a golden throne.

[Canadian_F_H]

Well, that's a cool connection. The GW writers are largely some big time history buffs, so I know they had that connection in mind.

[Jackalwolf]

My key takeaway from the connection with Molech is that the price to seal the past pact he made there was the life of one of the two missing Primarchs.

[Slasher956]

So would that have been before the emperor found Horus?  Or did Horus (and other primarks) know that he (the Emperor) bumped them off?    Plus how does that interact with what Dorn says about them in the Dark Tower story?

 

I take the Molech connection to be the sacrifices are the psykers feed to the Emperor whilst he's on the throne

[Canadian_F_H]

OK... Getting spoiled... Just tell me what book the Molech story is in and use spoiler tags for any further details. Thanks.