Heresy Outcome

[battle captain corpus]

 

I don't know if ADB is in team 'The Emperor engineered the Heresy' camp.

Wha.. Is that actually a thing?

Pretty sure it's not no. :)

 

Also....on the Thunder Warriors subject...The Emperor is essentially almost bound to the Throne Room and the Webway wars by this point. I doubt he had the time to resurrect, research and refine the gene tech needed to forge new TW.s in time. And remember, he'd already cast them aside like an old blade that's been blunted. He was relying on his sons to protect Terra and humanity. It just isn't feasible to have created them in time either.

 

BCC

[The God Empress Of Mankind]

 

 

I don't know if ADB is in team 'The Emperor engineered the Heresy' camp.

Wha.. Is that actually a thing?

Pretty sure it's not no.

 

Also....on the Thunder Warriors subject...The Emperor is essentially almost bound to the Throne Room and the Webway wars by this point. I doubt he had the time to resurrect, research and refine the gene tech needed to forge new TW.s in time. And remember, he'd already cast them aside like an old blade that's been blunted. He was relying on his sons to protect Terra and humanity. It just isn't feasible to have created them in time either.

 

BCC

 

 

Well then he was a fool for not leaving us a contingency should his "attention" be taken off his pet project. 

 

And as risk/reward what do we gain from having access to the webway?  A faster stable route for warp transits?  I have read (can't remember which novel) that the webway is inferior to normal warp travel as it is slower (no lost in warp etc) depending on the destination and how far apart the closese webway gates are.

[Gorgoff]

 

 

 

 

I don't know if ADB is in team 'The Emperor engineered the Heresy' camp.

Wha.. Is that actually a thing?

Pretty sure it's not no.

 

Also....on the Thunder Warriors subject...The Emperor is essentially almost bound to the Throne Room and the Webway wars by this point. I doubt he had the time to resurrect, research and refine the gene tech needed to forge new TW.s in time. And remember, he'd already cast them aside like an old blade that's been blunted. He was relying on his sons to protect Terra and humanity. It just isn't feasible to have created them in time either.

 

BCC

Well then he was a fool for not leaving us a contingency should his "attention" be taken off his pet project.

 

And as risk/reward what do we gain from having access to the webway? A faster stable route for warp transits? I have read (can't remember which novel) that the webway is inferior to normal warp travel as it is slower (no lost in warp etc) depending on the destination and how far apart the closese webway gates are.

Nope, that's not true.

There are crashed tunnels in the web but all in all it is way, WAY better then traveling through warp.

No more do the imperium need psykers to travel, they cannot be attacked by demons on board their ships, no one becomes mental while traveling and it is faster.

It was a grand idea and the stupid cyclops ruined it.

[Jackalwolf]

The theory of the Emperor expecting the Heresy is in a big grey area, only supported by an audio drama from Laurie Golding.

 

What does seem more likely is that he only intended a few group of legions to live past the crusade, and this has been amply theorised as part of the trifoil legions: space wolves, salamanders and alpha legion.

 

Regardless if he engineered, intended to take opportunity of or not, what's clear is that the Emperor couldn't care less about Horus's rebellion, for him the true fight was the Webway, that's pretty clear and has been stated by several authors.

 

Without Magnus breaking the plan, all would have probably been well.

[Vykes]

...

As for the Thunder Warriors and chaos, Arik says to the Navigator "that won't work on me" when referring to her warp eye so I have assumed the thunder warriors were immune to the warp. The warriors that Navigator killed at in the outcast dead were not thunder warriors they were gene bulked mutants with all the failings of normal men.

 

One for one the Thunder warriors totally outclassed Astartes putting them on the walls of the Palace to be used as Traitor/Deamon fodder would have played to their strengths perfectly. Their half life is irrelevant as this is a fight for the survival of mankind every resource will be used, on that note if Arik is not mentioned in the Solar War books at the siege I will be extremely -][- DELETED -][- off.

I'm not sure it's something intrinsic to the Thunderwarriors, the Emperor's original astartes and proto-astartes forces had the same thing in the early crusade.  There was some 'aegis of the Emperor' that kept them from mind proving and altering stuff (I seem to recall in... maybe Angels of Caliban, that one of Luther's lieutenants was a Terran veteran from the unification campaigns and he was completely unreadable because of the Emperor's direct influence).  

 

I definitely think that while the Thunderwarriors are probably a great warrior and inferior soldier class (and there may be some critical mass where an equal number of astartes simply becomes better and more effective than Thunder warriors due to their better coordination and adaptability outweighing the physicality advantage of a Thunderwarrior), putting them in smaller guard or garrison roles feels like it would be a good fit to alleviate their potential drawbacks.  So, perhaps there were other reasons, notably that Ararat fight may have been brought up in now-less-than desirable light. Again, it might also be expense: like why the Volkite charger was replaced by the bolter despite being a superior weapon. 

 

 

 

I don't know if ADB is in team 'The Emperor engineered the Heresy' camp.

Wha.. Is that actually a thing?

 

Yeah it was in the Malcador First Lord of the Imperium (If I'm not mistaken) with his confession to a dying adjutant that the Heresy was engineered: it just didn't go properly, happened too soon, and didn't seem to have the right factors in place when they thought it would.  Jackalwolf got it right, admittedly it's a pretty interesting notion (I'm all for more grey areas that may or may not be true) and it makes the Emperor out to be a less perfect and far more alien figure.

[MegaVolt87]

Having the Emperor apparently puppet master the heresy, and him naively thinking he would not need most of the legions around in the future even if he succeeds just is real fail IMO.  Lore and character wise for him. If the chaos gods took the primarchs at day dot, I don't see how he thinks anything is a certainty at that point. HH is way better as initially envisioned as it blindsided the Emperor, makes him have some regrets in his past actions etc. Much stronger narrative than "just as planned" hurr durr.  HH is fast approaching mass effect 3 ending "narrative art" as the authors for HH are getting a bit full of themselves at this point. 

[StruManChu]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the generally accepted interpretation of the events of the Malcador:FLotI story that he's making his dying friend feel better in their last moments, rather than justifying the Emperor as the Puppet Master theory?

 

The adjutant is bereft at the thought of the Heresy making their life's work pointless and then Malcs comes along for a visit and says "Actually, it's all going to plan!". He hints that the Emperor has always been aware of everything, and that it's all going to be totally fine so they can die feeling like they've accomplished something. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, as it's been a while since I listened to it, and I only listened once, but I've always felt that Malcador was giving his old friend some final peace rather than unburdening himself.

[Vykes]

Dunno Megavolt, some people just like the labyrinthine Machiavellian monarch side to the Emperor rather than the enlightened atheistic messiah angle.  Frankly, I fit somewhere in between, that he had plans to advance the human race as a whole and it all fell apart.  Legions may not have been part of a paradigm that fundamentally altered what the human paradigm is*.  Some primarchs might be spared and some may not be, but others were created to act as foils and learning opportunities for those selected to survive, etc.  Hence, the duality of the message and misdirection. 

 

Hmm, I'll admit I've actually never met anyone who took that view, StruManChu. Everyone I've met has took it as "Malcador keeps his promise."  It's been a while for me too, but it always struck me more as, "The Emperor isn't as divine and perfect as people take him for.  He needed my help to get where he was, he was a little blind and headstrong because he didn't always 'get' individuals but he did understand societies.  And people follow him.  His plans were complex, but they were good plans, grand plans even.  Then we got blindsided and now we're in trouble.  We're not beyond hope, we're just really... really not doing great."  It felt too much like he was shifting a lot of paradigms for the far less comfortable and doing almost anything but being the coddling figure to a dying woman. It genuinely felt a little more like "I respect you too much to lie to you."

 

*Whole swathes of long established human culture may well have been axed at the same time: Navigators, Mechanicum, for all we know, legions may have been destined to be supplanted by organization and structure perhaps persuent to something more akin to the Codex Chapter organizations who were only needed to stabilize existing territory rather than to conquer. Or maybe humanity would just become all psykers, etc.  

[Pacific81]

I'll need to listen to that audio drama!

 

I think, as a way of planning to get rid of the Legions, having a galaxy wide heresy that kills almost everyone and destroys everything you have built over the past few centuries, and then results in you being 'Anarkin-d' and left as a flaming quadriplegic, interred in a corpse-throne, has to come quite far down the list in terms of planning and execution :) 

 

Just off the top of my head, engineering something into the Marine gene-seed so that it can't be re-used, getting the Mechanicum to fiddle with the warp drives, or even putting aside some farm land for your warriors to retire to, Thanos-style, have to be preferable options surely? :) 

[Ascanius]

I've posted this before, but on another forum Laurie Goulding once laid out the theory that the Emperor planned the Heresy thusly:

 

On a personal opinion level, I don't see how anyone can say the Emperor made bad decisions. He had a plan so complex that human minds can't comprehend it, and then Chaos threw the plan off-centre, and he never managed to recover, or things were done in his name that ended up ruining the plan.

 

Maybe, MAYBE, it was something like this?

 

1) So, I need to help mankind ascend. The way I do that is by unifying the Imperium, removing the need for warp travel and then dying gloriously. That's my divine plan, I move in mysterious ways etc.

2) First, unify Terra, except my Custodian Guard are too valuable and too few to do it quickly. Create army of gene-spliced barbarian Thunder Warriors.

3) Terra is unified. Have Custodians kill off key elements of Thunder Legion, rest will eventually die because I didn't build them to last.

4) Reconquer galaxy. Going to need to be in about 20 places at once for this, so create post-human primarch generals to lead my armies of transhuman Space Marines. Give them all unique traits to add variety and specialisations.

5) Make deal with UNKNOWABLE GODS OF DARKNESS. Part of the deal involves "accidentally" scattering the primarchs across the galaxy. That's okay though, because I'll end up finding all those worlds as I conquer the galaxy anyway.

6) Next phase after this is a new age of peace and prosperity for mankind, where we won't need Space Marines or primarchs. Hmmm... I can't build in a limited lifespan as I don't know how long they need to last... So instead I need something a bit more elaborate...

7) Part of new age will also be the webway, which will get rid of three of the most powerful parts of the crusading Imperium - the Navigators, the Legions and the Primarchs. None of them are going to be happy about that, and they will do whatever they can to stop it, if they find out.

8) Instead of risking an unpredictable rebellion, I will engineer a smaller one. I know, I'll put Primarch XVI in charge of the others - he's popular, and ambitious, and smart. He'll figure out what I'm doing, and I've given him everything he needs to rebel in a manageable way, AND gotten rid of the psykers in the Legions who might have been able to foresee it. There's no way this can all go wrong, especially because I abolished all religion and any possible interaction with those DARK GODS that I tricked earlier...

9) Leave Great Crusade, start work on the webway.

10) :cuss, MAGNUS. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? THIS WAS ALL CAREFULLY BALANCED, YOU DINGUS. Russ, go and fetch Magnus. What an idiot. I need to explain my secret plan to him. Hope that doesn't mess with the whole Horus thing... anyway, I need to deal with this. Dorn, Malcador, hold my calls while I go back downstairs. Sigh, daemons everywhere...

11) ...Wait, WHAT? I've been in another realm, unable to monitor the actions of my underlings, and you've all completely thrown this plan down the toilet. Right, I'll fix this. Let's just wait for Horus and his... four, five... NINE?!... traitor Legions to come here. It's fine, I can still have a glorious death, Chaos is now quite clearly the biggest danger to all sentient life, and humanity will do pretty much anything I say.

12) Deal with Horus. Hey Malcador, hold my beer...

 

This may or may not be what Laurie actually thinks himself, but it's worth stressing that this wasn't a statement of "the secret truth that guides the Horus Heresy writers and editors" - just one interpretation of events. I think it's probably demonstrable, if you scoured enough interviews and forum posts, that different writers and editors have different takes on the real truth of it all, but that they all get to work on it because Black Library considers it valuable to have multiple perspectives - the old "it's all true and none of it is" take.

[bluntblade]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the generally accepted interpretation of the events of the Malcador:FLotI story that he's making his dying friend feel better in their last moments, rather than justifying the Emperor as the Puppet Master theory?

The adjutant is bereft at the thought of the Heresy making their life's work pointless and then Malcs comes along for a visit and says "Actually, it's all going to plan!". He hints that the Emperor has always been aware of everything, and that it's all going to be totally fine so they can die feeling like they've accomplished something. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, as it's been a while since I listened to it, and I only listened once, but I've always felt that Malcador was giving his old friend some final peace rather than unburdening himself.

It directly contradicts the Emperor's own words to Ra, so I think so.

 

I think we'd have seen the Legions phased out, but over a long period as humanity evolved and grew past needing them.

[Ascanius]

Guilliman says outright that his legionaries must prepare themselves for what comes after the Great Crusade and how they can contribute to the Imperium when there are no more wars to fight. For me, the biggest irony of the Heresy is that he never got to find out that it (probably) wasn't going to have a place for them.

[Pacific81]

 

This may or may not be what Laurie actually thinks himself, but it's worth stressing that this wasn't a statement of "the secret truth that guides the Horus Heresy writers and editors" - just one interpretation of events. I think it's probably demonstrable, if you scoured enough interviews and forum posts, that different writers and editors have different takes on the real truth of it all, but that they all get to work on it because Black Library considers it valuable to have multiple perspectives - the old "it's all true and none of it is" take.

 

 

That's very true, the 'multiple perspectives' take. 

 

In that case, I'd put the likelihood of 'planned Heresy' somewhere between the outcome being a result of the machinations of the Slaan (who have been planning this all along, since they were 'dropped' following the Rogue Trader book, so as not to attract attention) and a bad dream of Bobby Ewing.

[Jackalwolf]

I've posted this before, but on another forum Laurie Goulding once laid out the theory that the Emperor planned the Heresy thusly:

 

 

 

On a personal opinion level, I don't see how anyone can say the Emperor made bad decisions. He had a plan so complex that human minds can't comprehend it, and then Chaos threw the plan off-centre, and he never managed to recover, or things were done in his name that ended up ruining the plan.

Maybe, MAYBE, it was something like this?

1) So, I need to help mankind ascend. The way I do that is by unifying the Imperium, removing the need for warp travel and then dying gloriously. That's my divine plan, I move in mysterious ways etc.

2) First, unify Terra, except my Custodian Guard are too valuable and too few to do it quickly. Create army of gene-spliced barbarian Thunder Warriors.

3) Terra is unified. Have Custodians kill off key elements of Thunder Legion, rest will eventually die because I didn't build them to last.

4) Reconquer galaxy. Going to need to be in about 20 places at once for this, so create post-human primarch generals to lead my armies of transhuman Space Marines. Give them all unique traits to add variety and specialisations.

5) Make deal with UNKNOWABLE GODS OF DARKNESS. Part of the deal involves "accidentally" scattering the primarchs across the galaxy. That's okay though, because I'll end up finding all those worlds as I conquer the galaxy anyway.

6) Next phase after this is a new age of peace and prosperity for mankind, where we won't need Space Marines or primarchs. Hmmm... I can't build in a limited lifespan as I don't know how long they need to last... So instead I need something a bit more elaborate...

7) Part of new age will also be the webway, which will get rid of three of the most powerful parts of the crusading Imperium - the Navigators, the Legions and the Primarchs. None of them are going to be happy about that, and they will do whatever they can to stop it, if they find out.

8) Instead of risking an unpredictable rebellion, I will engineer a smaller one. I know, I'll put Primarch XVI in charge of the others - he's popular, and ambitious, and smart. He'll figure out what I'm doing, and I've given him everything he needs to rebel in a manageable way, AND gotten rid of the psykers in the Legions who might have been able to foresee it. There's no way this can all go wrong, especially because I abolished all religion and any possible interaction with those DARK GODS that I tricked earlier...

9) Leave Great Crusade, start work on the webway.

10) :cuss, MAGNUS. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? THIS WAS ALL CAREFULLY BALANCED, YOU DINGUS. Russ, go and fetch Magnus. What an idiot. I need to explain my secret plan to him. Hope that doesn't mess with the whole Horus thing... anyway, I need to deal with this. Dorn, Malcador, hold my calls while I go back downstairs. Sigh, daemons everywhere...

11) ...Wait, WHAT? I've been in another realm, unable to monitor the actions of my underlings, and you've all completely thrown this plan down the toilet. Right, I'll fix this. Let's just wait for Horus and his... four, five... NINE?!... traitor Legions to come here. It's fine, I can still have a glorious death, Chaos is now quite clearly the biggest danger to all sentient life, and humanity will do pretty much anything I say.

12) Deal with Horus. Hey Malcador, hold my beer...

This may or may not be what Laurie actually thinks himself, but it's worth stressing that this wasn't a statement of "the secret truth that guides the Horus Heresy writers and editors" - just one interpretation of events. I think it's probably demonstrable, if you scoured enough interviews and forum posts, that different writers and editors have different takes on the real truth of it all, but that they all get to work on it because Black Library considers it valuable to have multiple perspectives - the old "it's all true and none of it is" take.

Very much in line with what I believe, I would like more novels to dwell on the betrayal of the Navigator cast, since that was hinted during the Darkglass incident.

 

Points 11 and 12 are very interesting too, the Emperor having to resort to a last ditch plan that he himself hated: the ascent to godhood as the only possibility to stop Chaos now that his original plan lies in shambles.

 

Beautifully ironic.

[MegaVolt87]

The galaxy has billions of stars, they would have systems that humanity would be interested in. There is no reason the crusade would ever need to end. Look at the 40k timeline, Imperium is strongest as they are expanding/ on the offensive, vulnerable when they are being stagnant, not expanding. I believe the primarchs and Emperor told themselves the crusades would end, legions put down their arms and live in peace, as not to go mad with the prospect of eternal war as a result of their state policies. Also hypno indoctrination less common in 30k for marines, they were more human as a result. Telling a 30k legionary there is an eternity of battle and a 40K marine the same thing, 30k marine would be more likely to freak out. Obviously some legions would cope differently, but you get the gist. 

[The God Empress Of Mankind]

 

Great points. As many mention we're working backwards here, trying to add a sensible story to a one liner except 30 years ago that became canon but I think there's one option on how and why can this make sense thanks to Laurie Goulding and ADB:

 

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SPOILERS + SPECULATION

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1. The Heresy was planned to wipe out space marines in a manner that the Emperor doesn't look like a monster for killing the heroes of the galaxy

2. The Emperor never was worried about Horus attacking, the only war that mattered was the Webway, and it was going great before the Cyclops

3. After the Webway is broken the gene tech is lost already and the Emperor is bound to the throne forever

 

Why not do the Webway in some backwater world? He actually did: Darkglass, that's how the Khan gets to Terra by bypassing the enemy lines.

 

Terra would always be the centre, and the tech worked. Magnus was the only unexpected variable that destroyed a perfect plan.

 

 

Yeah he should have kept it on Darkglass & remember the Navigator who tried to blow it up with Vortex grenades, the Navigators would likely attempt to do it on Terra to. And why do we need the stupid webway, I remember old lore about the Fraal saying that had true FTL travel not using the warp, so it is possible to not need the warp at all. The old Necron lore also had them use FTL, which was retconned. Oh and the webway doesn't go everywhere nor is it stable branches are lost all the time & there is no reason a warp breach could not complete destroy it & does it extend beyond our galaxy? Mankinds only hope for survival long term is to colonize other galaxies.

 

 

We also have in-universe opinion from a Custodian, who was one of the very first, that the Thunder Warriors would have been annihilated by the horrors which the Legiones Astartes prevailed against.

 

 

Not as much as the Imperial Army, you could simply use them as shock troops along side the Astartes. Oh & I forgot to mentioned I would turn every guardsmen into a terminator style cyborg with a metal endoskeleton & muslce fibres, this would have easily been doable, they already do with servitors, just don't mind wipe them.

 

 

30k marine would be more likely to freak out. Obviously some legions would cope differently, but you get the gist.

 

Some more so then others, the Warhounds would have loved that prospect, but not the Iron Warriors, they didn't even last 200 years. I think the Legions that encourage their Marines to have "hobbies", eg. Blood angels are more stable. Faith is also powerful you only need to look at the real world and what fanatics will do, he should have let Lorgar worship him. I don't understand why the Emperor didn't want to be worshipped as it would have empowered him just as it does the chaos gods.

 

 

Guilliman says outright that his legionaries must prepare themselves for what comes after the Great Crusade and how they can contribute to the Imperium when there are no more wars to fight. For me, the biggest irony of the Heresy is that he never got to find out that it (probably) wasn't going to have a place for them.

 

Never going to happen as Sigimsund said we would need to hold our conquests & I can't understand why they did not consider extra-galactic threats.

[Vykes]

 

 

.... ++Lots'a good stuff++

 

Yeah he should have kept it on Darkglass & remember the Navigator who tried to blow it up with Vortex grenades, the Navigators would likely attempt to do it on Terra to. And why do we need the stupid webway, I remember old lore about the Fraal saying that had true FTL travel not using the warp, so it is possible to not need the warp at all. The old Necron lore also had them use FTL, which was retconned.  Oh and the webway doesn't go everywhere nor is it stable branches are lost all the time & there is no reason a warp breach could not complete destroy it & does it extend beyond our galaxy?  Mankinds only hope for survival long term is to colonize other galaxies.

 

 

 

++Also true++

 

Not as much as the Imperial Army, you could simply use them as shock troops along side the Astartes. Oh & I forgot to mentioned I would turn every guardsmen into a terminator style cyborg with a metal endoskeleton & muslce fibres, this would have easily been doable, they already do with servitors, just don't mind wipe them.

 

 

The Webway is eminently more stable than the warp, less prone to aetheric disturbances, less dangerous, perhaps more far reaching or connectable with other settlements, and without the requirements for warp drives or geller field generators which take time and resources.  Much like the reason why not every guardsmen is a super terminator cyborg with disruptor cannons and grav belts over aurite armoured flex mesh suits, or legionnaires don't get even get volkite chargers; the Imperium is vast and growing but that means it has growing pains.  They don't have unlimited supply and equally unlimited capacity, they merely have enormous potential if harnessed properly.  They also don't have Star Trek replicator tech as a normal part of every day life: STC was still being discovered and the Great Crusade was as much about technological regrowth towards Dark Age tech as it was about material growth. 

 

Mankind's heyday is gone, the Dark Age was the pinnacle and the Imperium was still clawing its way back towards that peak.  Even the 40K timeline isn't as powerful or advanced as the Dark Ages even in its monolithic state.  

 

As a weird point, I seem to recall Path to Heaven mentioning the Darkglass project and a glimpse of the Deep Warp, a region of sedate calmness where the 'old gods' slumbered while looking at the tumult of the warp mankind knows as that thin skein that intersects where the immaterium brushes against the materium (and the old stuff mentioned that the webway was somewhere in between).  Thus, it's safer, it's faster.  

 

As for Sigismund: it's static thinking.  Things are now as they always shall be, and thus the requirements and efforts of today will be much the same as tomorrow.  It doesn't feel solid when there's a paradigm shift in methodology (As Horus said, Dorn is hidebound, I kinda figure Sigismund might well be too).  It's as much tied to the notion that we don't require 10 million man standing armies with rifles and bayonets as defensive forces anymore, the strategic assets nullify any enormous manpower differentials.  Though, I 100% agree that the only hope for long term survival is heading to other galaxies, notably Andromeda and the like.  But how would they get there? That remains a real question. 

[Ascanius]

 

Never going to happen as Sigimsund said we would need to hold our conquests & I can't understand why they did not consider extra-galactic threats.

 

I don't agree with this line of reasoning. To the first point, the idea of the Great Crusade was to unify all of humanity into one harmonious system. The whole point was to achieve Unity, so to assume that would necessarily crumble once achieved, or be impossible to achieve, suggests that Sigismund doesn't believe in the vision of the Emperor, or at least is so cynical about humanity that he believes they can be brought to Unity but cannot be forced to live it. In any case, cute references to the game's tagline aside, the idea here is that the Space Marines were tools of conquest, not intended to be a standing army. They are actually pretty ineffective as an army of occupation for the same reason modern armies of occupation aren't just 600 tanks instead of 6,000 soldiers.

 

To the second, consider the Emperor's perspective. If he was born about 5,000 years BP, at the dawn of human civilisation, by the time of the Heresy he's been alive for 35,000 years*. He's ready, or at least believes it's possible and more importantly necessary, to conquer the galaxy with a rapid expansion - which is one of two reasons why he's using Space Marines in the first place rather than a more patient campaign involving generations upon generations of Imperial Army troops, the other being that there are threats out there which are especially deadly and you don't bring a pistol to a bazooka fight.

 

Once that conquest is achieved and the Emperor has 1) control of the whole galaxy 2) safeguarded humanity from the Warp by abandoning it in favour of the Webway, he has all the time he needs to come up with a better solution for defeating any intergalactic threats than throwing roided-up posthumans in heavy armour at it. He could take the time to develop the Custodians into the army they never were, if nothing else, rather than rely on the mass-produced Legiones Astartes.

 

That the Space Marines are one of the few things preserving humanity from extinction in 40K is not in dispute. That they, and only they, are the only tool that the Emperor could have used to safeguard humanity after the Great Crusade if everything hadn't fallen apart, is by no means a certainty.

 

* An interesting thing to consider is that 10,000 years of near-death on the Golden Throne is still only the last decade of a 45-year-old's life, if you compare a millennium of the Emperor's lifespan to one year of a normal human's. It's not nothing, but . . .

[carlisimo]

I don’t think moving to another galaxy would free you from the Warp. And if the Warp weren’t present there, you’d be stuck at sublight speeds and that’s no way to build a civilization.

 

The Webway’s great because it’s actively protected; Eldar Warp Spiders are named after the little spidery things that work tirelessly to keep Warp manifestations out of the Webway. It must not be complete protection, given what happens to the Dark Eldar, but the Emperor may have thought it could be augmented with human technology.

 

What I’d like to know more about is why the Emperor felt he had to rush the Great Crusade. Would he have feared Chaos picking up on his grand plan and acting against him even if he hadn’t created the primarchs and space marines, and was taking his time to unite human worlds? I suppose so, now that I think about it. So he created the primarchs to speed up the process, but that gave Chaos a faster way to interfere, resulting in an even greater rush.

 

One of these days I’ll have to run the math - just visiting a million worlds in 200 years with X number of expeditionary fleets sounds ambitious when Warp travel takes weeks or more in real time.

[MegaVolt87]

I don’t think moving to another galaxy would free you from the Warp. And if the Warp weren’t present there, you’d be stuck at sublight speeds and that’s no way to build a civilization.

 

The Webway’s great because it’s actively protected; Eldar Warp Spiders are named after the little spidery things that work tirelessly to keep Warp manifestations out of the Webway. It must not be complete protection, given what happens to the Dark Eldar, but the Emperor may have thought it could be augmented with human technology.

 

What I’d like to know more about is why the Emperor felt he had to rush the Great Crusade. Would he have feared Chaos picking up on his grand plan and acting against him even if he hadn’t created the primarchs and space marines, and was taking his time to unite human worlds? I suppose so, now that I think about it. So he created the primarchs to speed up the process, but that gave Chaos a faster way to interfere, resulting in an even greater rush.

 

One of these days I’ll have to run the math - just visiting a million worlds in 200 years with X number of expeditionary fleets sounds ambitious when Warp travel takes weeks or more in real time.

 

I would say he was in a rush, the chaos gods used Magnus to trash the webway project as a bonus as a foil for the Emperor. Emperor setting up an athiest state pretty big tell to chaos gods as well of what he was going for.  One million worlds with 18-20 legions of astartes, billions of Imperial armies and mechanicus seems doable. A lot of expedition fleets were just Imperial Army or mechanicus. 

[The God Empress Of Mankind]

Forgot to mention lore where the Mechanus I think looked beyond the limits of our galaxy & were distressed to only hear Ork signals, impling we would need to go there to wipe out Orks completely or they would just keep coming back if we did manage to wipe them out in the galaxy.  And I believe in the Dark Age we did manage to arrive in Andromeda, there is no reason we could not have real FTL travel, we already have a concept today that is possible, we just need lots of energy and negative mass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Note this The Alcubierre drive, however, remains a hypothetical concept with seemingly difficult problems, though the amount of energy required is no longer thought to be unobtainably large.

 

We just found the Higgs bosun, our knowledge of exotic particles is growing constantly, we can't imagine what we will have in the next 100 years, little own next 30,000.  Oh and it's already possible to have a drive to colonize the solar system, just not overly practical.  Stupid ISS we should be using NTR to go to Mars by now, we need test this design in orbit around the moon pointed away from earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
 

[Slips]

Lets not go beyond the scope of the boards now and also, bear in mind, that 40k is intentionally the way it is. 

 

Its all well and good to think about the stuff Humanity Achieved in the Dark Age but its also worth remembering that 40k, for how advanced and/or backwards it is, is a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery pale shadow of the heights humanity achieved during the Dark Age.

 

Theres a reason why STCs are so valuable to the Imperium: with a complete library (which, as far as we know in 40k doesnt exist; we only have fragments), an entire world, with just one, would be able to build everything and anythingthe Dark Age Human Civilization had access to using only the resources strictly available on that planet.

 

Imagine that, a computer that could tell you "Ah, you have no plutonium on the planet? well, this is how you can build a Void Shield anyways". Theres also accounts of the Baneblade, for the DAoT Humanity, being the equivalent of a Predator Tank to them.

 

The point of 40k, at its core, is that we've lost ALL of that and have no real way of ever re-attaining those heights. Thats why the Mechanicum is the way it is, thats why the Emperors plan was what it was, etc.

 

Thats why Warp Travel exists. Its easier for the Imperium to make Space Vessels that tear a hole through reality and plunge you through hell to cross the gulf of space than it is to create an Alcubierre Drive and Achieve Negative Mass coupled with a folding of space time ahead of the vehicle and an expansion behind it to achieve FTL travel.

 

Think about that.

 

One will also have to quickly come to terms with the Warhammer 30/40k universe just being what it is because reasons.

 

Lets also not forget that the DAoT Humanity's fall was so spectacular that it literally knocked whole civilizations on colonized worlds back into the stone age.

 

For the sake of it, if you haven't yet, just read the Dune Series by Frank Herbert because that alone will inform you on a lot of what makes 40k...well, 40k.

[bluntblade]

And the Heresy is the definition of a Greek tragedy in the classical sense. To ask why the Emperor made mistakes in His hubris is to rather miss the point.

[SpecialIssue]

The entire point of the premise and setting of 40k has always been The Decline and The Fall. Unlike most other scifi tropes which depict us as on the cusp of achievement or amidst a grand age, the Warhammer universe is focused on what comes after that - because everything (empire, civilisation, species) has an end, whether it take 100 years, 10,000 years, a million years or the heat death of the universe.

 

It doesn't really matter when we are, or what we used to have, the original creators of 40k would have still set the same parameters of the universe and framed it within the failings of humanity, because the point was to place it after the enlightenment, because the 'after' is inevitable.

[The God Empress Of Mankind]

The entire point of the premise and setting of 40k has always been The Decline and The Fall. Unlike most other scifi tropes which depict us as on the cusp of achievement or amidst a grand age, the Warhammer universe is focused on what comes after that - because everything (empire, civilisation, species) has an end, whether it take 100 years, 10,000 years, a million years or the heat death of the universe.

 

It doesn't really matter when we are, or what we used to have, the original creators of 40k would have still set the same parameters of the universe and framed it within the failings of humanity, because the point was to place it after the enlightenment, because the 'after' is inevitable.

 

You are correct but there is always a rebirth after the fall, which is why we have seen the return of Gulliman etc & the effective recreatioon of a legion withteh unumbered sons.

 

Consider.

 

Hard Times create great men.  (Age of Strife led to the rise of the Emperor).

Great Men create good times. (The Great Crusade).

Good Times Create weak men.  (The traitor Primarchs).

Weak men create hard times. (Everything up to now).

Hard Times create great men. (Revived Gulliman & every guardsmen/women that has held the line for 10,000 years, I :cussen love this whoever made this and voiced it is genius it never fails to bring tears to me eyes!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv7SDUHAOEA as I recently found out my great grand father fought in WW1 (he survived) and I can picture him as a guardsman in the trenches hiding from an artillery bombardment of the great enemy!!  But how he would turn in his grave at what we have become, lest we forget we will never see their like again).

 

For great men have now returned and we will begin a new great crusade to cleanse the galaxy of the taint of your dark gods.

 

This reflects the real world somewhat as how long did it take us to crawl out of the dark ages after the fall of the ancient world into the renascence, only to have begun to throw it all away after the glory we achieved in technological development in the 20th century (dark age of technology), with the stagnation we are facing in the west (another subject and I know this is not the place to discuss politics and the culture war, suffice to say I am not hopeful for the future of the west as we will be discussing what pronouns to use when the barbarians are at our gates so to speak, thats all I will say).  Which is another reason I love 40k the fall, rise, fall & coming rebirth are reflected in the real world or 40k is a reflection of the real world.

 

Off topic but why does bolter censor swearing?  I'm Aussie we swear heaps eg. depending on the context the C word is the greatest term of endearment you can call a bloke or the worst insult.  All my mates call me a crazy mad & I don't get offended as this is a show of affection/friendship etc in this context.  I guess you can't convey the tone it's said in writing.  I still think you are all a bunch of prudes for not swearing as much as we do.