Saturnine Implications Horus, Cabal, etc. SPOILERS

[Moonreaper666]

On Horus

 

It turns out that Horus WON THE HERESY... the first time around. When John Grammaticus used one of Eldrad's Warp-traveling devices to go to Terra he first arrived six months too late and saw the destructive aftermath of the Traitors' victory. This is the fate of the Galaxy had John and Oll Perrson not been at the Siege. John goes back in time in the middle of the Siege and tries to find Oll Perrson so they can prevent Horus from winning

 

Horus still could have been a sacrificial pawn, left to die by the Chaos Gods after serving his purpose as it wasn't clear what John specifically saw only it was endless carnage and horror. Or just like Archaon he becomes a demi-god in his own right. But is it clear that the Chaos Gods were content with either his victory or failure seeing as they would replace him with Abaddon should he fail. I guess it is the same thing should Abaddon fail, he gets replaced.

 

 

On the Cabal

 

Their attempt to sacrifice humanity to starve Chaos is idiotic beyond all levels, proving Eldrad right. John did not see the destruction of Chaos that the Cabal prophetize.

 

It never made sense that humanity dying would kill the Chaos Gods. The vast majority of Eldar died but it did not weakened Khorne, Tzeentch or Nurgle but instead awoken Slaanesh. Heck, it is implied that a few Hedonistic Eldar were turned into Daemons but that is something else.

 

Implications

 

Resistance is truly futile. Both the Emperor and Horus were just pieces on a game board. Taking them out would just cause other 'pieces' to take their place.

 

They are all just delaying the inevitable.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Because the death of the Eldar was caused by Slaanesh awakening and feeding off them, they didn't all just spontaneously die and that woke up Slaanesh.

 

Secondly, Khorne/Nurgle/Tzeentch are human gods, based off human warp reflections. Wipe out humanity, and those gods will have nothing sustaining them, and they would indeed die out. That's why Khaine got shattered by the Fall of the Eldar, given he's the Eldar equivalent of Khorne. Same with Isha/Nurgle, and Morai-Heg/Tzeentch. Killing the Eldar did to the Eldar Pantheon exactly what the Cabal say will happen to Chaos if humanity dies. That's why the creation of Ynnead would work. You either kill a god by wiping out its "food source", or by diverting the food source to someone else.

Khaine only exists now in his incarnated Avatars, separated from the Warp. Isha lives on only in the belief of one single Craftworld, living as a prisoner of Nurgle, exactly how the metaphysics of the Warp would rationalize it (like attracting like, the Eldar "life" belief being cannibalized by the human "life" god, existing in an incredibly diminished form as a part of the larger whole; ie, as a prisoner of the more powerful warp-being). Morai-Heg is entirely gone, although could be imagined to have been subsumed into Tzeentch the same way Nurgle took Isha. The only Eldar God that still exists in itself is Cegorach, and he's always been portrayed as a bit... strange. He certainly doesn't seem to be a "true" God, given the fact that he's often described as fully incarnated, and giving parts of his body that are fully physical.

 

And lastly, Grammaticus arrived 8 months too late, not 6.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Lord_Caerolion

[Noserenda]

This is probably better placed in the Black library forum, though i suspect it would be insta-locked there so *shrugs* 

We only got an extremely brief look at that "alternative future" (The siege may well still have been in progress given how vague it was) so this is all extremely speculative but...

1. Yes the Everchosen are always expendable, Abbaddon is just a lot more long lived due to his somewhat different perspective and transhuman biology, he wasnt even guaranteed to be the Everchosen in the first place as there was that Death Guard rival whose name i forget detailed in the second Black legion book.

2. As Lord_Caerolion said, the Cabals plan is also pretty speculative but there is no reason metaphysically it wouldnt work. It wouldnt work with a few days of Horus' victory like you seem to expect though, things would probably trundle on for another millenia or so at least before it all collapses.

3. Yeah the Emperor and Horus are just playing pieces, but they are Queens on the board, losing them is super painful and probably gonna lose you the game long term.

[Scribe]

We already know Chaos wins, it happens in the more truly pivotal capstone of the series.

 

Master of Mankind.

[Marshal Rohr]

On Horus

 

It turns out that Horus WON THE HERESY... the first time around. When John Grammaticus used one of Eldrad's Warp-traveling devices to go to Terra he first arrived six months too late and saw the destructive aftermath of the Traitors' victory. This is the fate of the Galaxy had John and Oll Perrson not been at the Siege. John goes back in time in the middle of the Siege and tries to find Oll Perrson so they can prevent Horus from winning

 

Horus still could have been a sacrificial pawn, left to die by the Chaos Gods after serving his purpose as it wasn't clear what John specifically saw only it was endless carnage and horror. Or just like Archaon he becomes a demi-god in his own right. But is it clear that the Chaos Gods were content with either his victory or failure seeing as they would replace him with Abaddon should he fail. I guess it is the same thing should Abaddon fail, he gets replaced.

 

 

On the Cabal

 

Their attempt to sacrifice humanity to starve Chaos is idiotic beyond all levels, proving Eldrad right. John did not see the destruction of Chaos that the Cabal prophetize.

 

It never made sense that humanity dying would kill the Chaos Gods. The vast majority of Eldar died but it did not weakened Khorne, Tzeentch or Nurgle but instead awoken Slaanesh. Heck, it is implied that a few Hedonistic Eldar were turned into Daemons but that is something else.

 

Implications

 

Resistance is truly futile. Both the Emperor and Horus were just pieces on a game board. Taking them out would just cause other 'pieces' to take their place.

 

They are all just delaying the inevitable.

Wrong, Grammaticus arrived in the normal future where Horus killed the Emperor

[Sparika]

As I read it the first time it seemed to me Grammaticus arrived in a future that was different to the one which will actually happen (40k and all). But actually, now that I'm thinking of it, the second time around could be the same future as the first one!

At the moment, nothing is for granted I guess.

[helterskelter]

Is Blood Gorgons still an amusing response?

[Marshal Rohr]

As I read it the first time it seemed to me Grammaticus arrived in a future that was different to the one which will actually happen (40k and all). But actually, now that I'm thinking of it, the second time around could be the same future as the first one!

 

At the moment, nothing is for granted I guess.

ADB pretty much drove home the 40K universe is deterministic. There’s one place everything ends up (the island) and how they get there is a mystery. Anywhere Grammaticus could’ve gone would be forward or backward on one timeline, not to a different timeline because 40K doesn’t have those. The future without the Emperor’s guidance as mankind becomes a psychic race is the 40K universe. This is further reinforced by LG saying the Primarchs were always meant to turn on the Emperor and it was just a matter of when. Edited September 21, 2020 by Marshal Rohr

[SkimaskMohawk]

 

As I read it the first time it seemed to me Grammaticus arrived in a future that was different to the one which will actually happen (40k and all). But actually, now that I'm thinking of it, the second time around could be the same future as the first one!

 

At the moment, nothing is for granted I guess.

ADB pretty much drove home the 40K universe is deterministic. There’s one place everything ends up (the island) and how they get there is a mystery. Anywhere Grammaticus could’ve gone would be forward or backward on one timeline, not to a different timeline because 40K doesn’t have those. The future without the Emperor’s guidance as mankind becomes a psychic race is the 40K universe. This is further reinforced by LG saying the Primarchs were always meant to turn on the Emperor and it was just a matter of when.

 

 

The only thing I don't like with that take is that it makes Curze unequivocally correct; there was nothing he could have done to change his fate and it wasn't his fault he was the way he was.

[Marshal Rohr]

I think that’s part of the determinism, it was self-fulfilling. Kurze could’ve stopped literally at anytime, but knowing his future made him go to it like he was just living on autopilot. Like he knew he’d be killed by an Imperial Assassin and because he didn’t know why he filled in the blanks himself.

 

By extension, same with the Emperor. He feared a future where humanity began to ascend without his guidance, and made it happen himself because he couldn’t see himself causing it to happen without his guidance.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Marshal Rohr

[Uberlord Gendo]

But that doesn't fit anything else. Ork time travel produces all kinds of causality paradoxes, Cypher bucked the prophecy of a greater daemon, the Dark Angels are deeply involved in temporal nonsense, the Eldar select between different futures, and Orikan checks alternate timelines. Granted, I'm not particularly concerned with making it all make sense since this is BL we're talking, but it sounds like this is sort of a dead-end, since if things could be substantially changed and there was easy access to time travel, then we expect John to avert the whole thing, given his history with the Big E. While a different stream of evidence, AK tells us that the Emperor sees many futures and chooses among them as best he can, while Kurze could see only the one. The answer to the question of why the Emperor doesn't avoid certain things is handled by Dune and chaos theory.

[Marshal Rohr]

But that doesn't fit anything else. Ork time travel produces all kinds of causality paradoxes, Cypher bucked the prophecy of a greater daemon, the Dark Angels are deeply involved in temporal nonsense, the Eldar select between different futures, and Orikan checks alternate timelines. Granted, I'm not particularly concerned with making it all make sense since this is BL we're talking, but it sounds like this is sort of a dead-end, since if things could be substantially changed and there was easy access to time travel, then we expect John to avert the whole thing, given his history with the Big E. While a different stream of evidence, AK tells us that the Emperor sees many futures and chooses among them as best he can, while Kurze could see only the one. The answer to the question of why the Emperor doesn't avoid certain things is handled by Dune and chaos theory.

The Emperor, Eldrad, various chaos daemons have all specific seen a certain future and then the viewer always ends up there. Horus saw the modern Imperium, Alpharius/Omegon saw the modern Imperium, the Emperor saw the modern Imperium. The Dark Angel temporal shenanigans caused Caliban to break apart, on and on it goes.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I seriously doubt there’s a document at Black Library HQ that lays out how time works in 40K and it’s authors constantly circling back to the literary trope of ‘man sees future, causes it to happen’ that’s been the keystone of many media projects like the new Watchman. But all that stuff about Eldar seeing a myriad of futures and then picking the best one would imply forward progress and they’ve made none, ie they were always going to pick that future because The Island is unchanging. Again, 40K isn’t an IP that deep dives into multiverses and time but there’s only one 40K timeline and it’s the one we always stay on.

 

Edit: Ork time travel doesn’t create causality paradoxes, it creates copies in the same timeline with the same endpoint. There were always going to be two Ghazghkuls at the same moment in time in two separate places Because that’s a function of the warp not the actual mechanics of 40K reality. It’s not just Orks, human fleets leave places and arrive before they left meaning there are two versions of the same person in two places, but the person at the start point will always end up on the ship that moves to the endpoint. There was a scene in a show called Devs that illustrates this where a dude plays the events one 1 second into the future and everyone sees themselves doing doing something and then immediately does it in reaction to seeing themselves do it. The ship that arrives before it leaves is the same way.

 

Edit 2: Also it’s worth pointing out GW/BL official position on answering questions like this is always ‘look at this nerd, he cares about the lore. Shut up and read, nerd’ so I doubt any answers will ever be forthcoming

Edited September 22, 2020 by Marshal Rohr

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think it's a mix of both. It's kind of a slap in the face to the Eldar to come out and say "lol jkz, your entire faction has just been play-acting, and your entire 'ruling class' has been utterly pointless". Instead, the way I see it is that what the Heresy has done is basically cut out a whole bunch of potential futures. Chaos cannot be defeated now. The "island" is set, yes, but the way in which that island is reached, and even the exact topography of that island, are not.

 

Ghazghkull was able to rise in place of another Ork Warboss because that wouldn't have jeopardized the end result, being a Chaos victory. 

 

Also, the Eldar have made forward progress, they've changed from being a scattered collection of shellshocked survivors of a psychic genocide, into being functional systems of their own. They've created the Infinity Circuit, they've created the Eldar Path and the Aspects.

[Marshal Rohr]

I mean, ‘your entire ruling class is utterly pointless and your faction has just been play acting’ is the SOP in 40K. That’s the whole ‘everyone is wrong’ thing. Also, it doesn’t take away anything from the Eldar to have the endpoint be fixed, they’re still manipulating events and using foresight to do it, but what we are talking about here is the fundamental nature of the 40K, is it stochastic or is it deterministic and not in a everything that can happen will happen multiverse way, but a this Eldar saw these six futures and picked the fourth one and now the craftworld wasn’t eaten by the Tyranids, but he picked that future because x,y, and z so on the metaphysical level the futures he saw are irrelevant because he was going to pick the fourth one and the craftworld was always in the future so it couldn’t have been eaten anyway. The latter is true, but not useful because you can’t make any decisions like that, so the Eldar still have to engage in future scrying just like the Emperor does.

 

Also, you’re not taking the point here. No forward progress doesn’t mean any progress, it means they can’t use precognition to successfully restore themselves or advance past a shattered race on big lifeboats which would mean their future is determined by what happened previously

Edited September 22, 2020 by Marshal Rohr

[Lord_Caerolion]

I guess it just depends what you consider to be incidental to the eventual endpoint. The "Big Picture" is set, from what we've been shown, although it could be argued how much of that was essentially just in-jokes between the author and reader (hey guys, see? Horus thinks he'll be stopping this future from occurring, when we both know that's what happens!)

If this really is the case then it raises the question of what does count as incidental. Farseers still work, and can use their typical trickery to save those who would have died, and kill those who would have lived, given they're not impacting the big end result, but where does this cut off, where they can no longer impact because of literal Plot Armour?

 

It's why my personal interpretation is that the future isn't so much an absolute set Chaos Victory that was always going to be, never could have been anything else etc, but that with the failure of the Webway Project it cut out a vital element from every potential end result of Chaos Losing. AD-B's afterword in MoM implies that if things hadn't gone as they had there, then things could have been different. 

Similarly, the arrival of Ynnead has mixed things up a bit too, albeit probably only for Slaanesh, and probably dooming the Eldar in a different way than before, but still ending with their extinction.

[Marshal Rohr]

As far as I understand it, the way time works in 40K is like this: an Eldar farseer sees three futures A, B, and C. In A a human world isn’t attacked by orks and they attack his craftworld, in B the Eldar drove the orks away from the craftworld to attack the human planet and their craftworld is saved, and in C the farseer is killed by orks. The Eldar chooses to manipulate events so A does not occur, but B does and C might. With the way time in 40K works, there isn’t a reality where A ever occurs which is the multiverse idea, that either for everything that can happen there is a universe or that every decision causes a new universe. So let’s say the Eldar saw himself dying in future C but he doesn’t die while achieving future B, future C isn’t out there as a reality where he did die and now there’s two parallel realities - one in which he is dead and one in which he is alive, he just glimpsed a future in which he might die as part of drawing his knowledge of the future from the warp, which is an imperfect method for seeing various points in time. This is similar to how chaos gods can show people themselves as great champions of the gods leading huge armies but they get booped with a power fist. They were always going to get booped with that powerfist because time outside of the warp has a set start and end but within the warp the future, past, present are not set at all. So it’s a major skill of the Eldar they can see the futures in the warp and know which ones to follow. Does that make sense? It’s not predestination in the theological sense but predetermined in the sense of cause and effect.

[Sparika]

If I can explain how I see it, don't forget that time travelling is obviously different than reading a story about time travelling. Why? Because, the story is actually set from the beginning to the end (unless it is a gamebook).

And in this particular case of 30k-40k, as a reader we already know the end. But whether we believe in determinism, I think it is left to the reader to decide. For instance, the Emperor failed in his master plan. Was it doomed from the start (deterministic) or did he actually failed on his own (non-deterministic) ? No one can now that because we can't actually travel into the story to try influencing it. And so, the only thing left is for the reader to decide what he wants to believe.

Actually, I quite like all of these time travelling stories. Like Marshal Rohr said, Curze have seen a future and decided their was no point fighting it. Horus also sees a future and try to fight it. I would also add that Sanguinius sees his death and accepts it. This theme of prophecy and time travelling is quite interesting and tragic. It reminds me of movies such as looper or 12 monkeys or even the old greek myth about self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Marshal Rohr]

Looper and 12 Monkeys is a good analogy, and I think it’s worth pointing out that with time travel And multiverse fiction There’s different schools of thought, lampooned in the newest avengers when Paul Rudd is told Back to the Future is BS. In 40K I don’t think the universe works in a way where you could time travel into a universe where the Emperor is alive and humanity ascended, for example, but because the warp is weird you could time travel from the 13th Black Crusade to the Age of Apostasy. Not sure if I’m being clear enough, but basically you can move forward and backward on one line, but not into a new line. And the line itself is really several lines branching and rejoining to itself like a rope that’s fraying. Edited September 22, 2020 by Marshal Rohr

[Uberlord Gendo]

I understand what you're saying, but the warp itself tends to support non-determinism. Like the Ork who kills himself for a second copy of his favorite gun clearly had to go back to kill himself, but that means that he survived the first time around. Unless causality isn't a thing and the Ork simply sprang from the warp with memories and all.

Also isn't there that story where Lorgar sees the Lion joining Horus? And isn't Chaos the same Chaos as in AoS? That'd imply many worlds. Wait! Argel Tal and Guilliman at Calth. In both cases, Erebus or Lorgar has a conditional prophecy and selects which outcome they want to choose. Unless you're telling me that Erebus had no option but to backstab Argel Tal when he did, it seems a bit odd to say that there was only one way that could have turned out, it was contingent on Erebus' decision. And a number of changes could result in major changes. The reason we're locked into the timeline is dramatic, not metaphysical.

[Brother Lunkhead]

 =][=

 

Correct, but the title of the post names a specific Black Library novel and the discussions about it, so it should go where book discussions go and not just get sent elsewhere because the mods on one part of the forum don't want to decide to either moderate it or close it.
 

Not a good precedent to just kick around moonreaper posts for others to deal with because of indecisiveness.

If they've decided that they wanted the Saturnine posts closed, because they closed the thread for various reasons, this one should be closed under the rule of attempting to open a new one under a different name after being closed by a moderator, not kicked somewhere else.

 

FYI: In spite of the title, this is strictly a speculative subject revolving around the Heresy timeline and as such this is it's proper home. Thus far, the discussion has been mostly friendly, constructive, and interesting. Let's keep it that way. If anyone has concerns or questions, I am just a PM away.

 

=][=

Edited October 3, 2020 by Brother Lunkhead

[Ryltar Thamior]

I suspect that as applies many of the questions around time-travel, the effective answer is "A Wizard Perpetual or Daemon Did It" ; with the last one of those including said daemon quite deliberately lying, and in various other cases, futures foreseen being ... foreseen with a certain lack of vision. A good example of this being Argal Tal and his vision of his own death occurring under great wings. Which we then wind up with an escalating pileup of near-death experiences occurring under various things that could be interpreted as 'great wings, until eventually it *does* happen. 

There is probably a joke about "Chaos Theory" and uh .. "Chaos Theory" somewhere in here as well. 

Now, in terms of the metaphysics , and the narrative theory - and really, it's one and the same - I suspect that the best answer is that the flow of events is like a river. Which you can endeavour to divert, attempt to swim against the current of, etc. ... but this is going to be escalatingly difficult to do the more powerful and more resonant the event is. Many causations all flowing together toward single points making it *seriously* difficult to do anything about unless you're somehow able to construct an equivalent of a dam across all or most of the river - or do something so far upstream as to probably be impractical, and requiring a helluvalot of effort to  get there. 

I phrase it thus, because if you are bobbing around in a river, or building a small projection out into its course at point x ... your efforts aren't going to have a huge amount of impact even a relatively small distance downstream. There'll be an eddy after the interrupted flow of the projection, sure. But the current actually becomes more forceful where you've attempted to bottleneck things, and will distribute itself out wide again rather swiftly. Taking you at *its* mercy rather than under your own power and direction, in direct proportion to the strength of that current ... and therefore, efforts at forceful intervention may cause a rather more vigorous snapback further on. 

This does, of course, imply something of a teleology - which, I again suspect, is not entirely inaccurate ... for the simple reason that the major powers and forces at work here are so immense as to have a pseudo-gravatic force to them. Call it .. gravitas. So, in a similar manner to how really large object exert a noticeable warping effect upon space-time , and can draw things in as a result ... well, these really large *narrative* objects are *also* exerting a bit of a "Warping" effect [in a different sense of 'warping', if I may be allowed my second five a.m after-an-all-nighter pun in questionable taste for explicative purposes] , and causing the flow of events to be induced *towards* them, *around* them, etc. 

The teleology, therefore, is built around the notion that in the Warp or in the flow of narrative of the universe , there are really big, heavy things ... that we hurtle towards. Like a river flowing downstream towards the sea - the point of less energy as compared to when higher up. And therefore taking quite a bit of energy to *keep* high up rather than flowing towards the sea. So, too, is it for the timestream - wherein quite a bit of energy is required to keep events from flowing 'downhill', a natural course. 

Which does not necessarily mean that all 'moving parts' fall the same way all the time. Even without the metaphor of flipping a coin often enough so that it lands on its *side* , we have good reason to expect that as applies, say, various Primarchs becoming loyal or going traitor , different combinations of events could have contributed to these things (and thus given some rather important narrative objects a different 'spin' to uh .. perhaps get quantum physics up in hea)  ... yet neverthelss not prevented the really heavy narrative occasion that is the Heresy from actually occurring. 

Although interestingly, this actually affords quite some scope *within* the timestream for things to work out a bit differently here and there - whilst still keeping the overarching flow and key waypoints intact - that nevertheless may matter *quite a bit* for the individuals, small groups, and less 'weighty' narrative objects in question. 

So, as applies the Eldar with their farseeing ... I suspect that's a large part of how it works. They're few and far between enough (as well as good enough at what they do) that they're able to direct their own course in the river with much greater dexterity and success - seeing *exactly* where to stick their oar in so that they don't wind up with their group or their craftworld smashed apart on some rocks (metaphysical or otherwise) , without necessarily managing to affect the overarching galactic flow of events.

And, in the usual bittersweet manner, managing to stave off their own grouping's extinction for another day - without being able to overcome the eventual trajectory of events. With that eventual trajectory, nevertheless potentially being ... not the complete doom we might think, because Ynnead's Birth is evidently quite a heavy narrative event, etc. 

This may mean that, as applies smething like the iirc Eldar intervention that lead to Ghazghkull invading Armageddon ... yes, the sixteen thousand or so Eldar that would have died when the Waaagh! in question crashed into the relevant  Eldar holdings were saved. But Ghazghkull was *always* going to wind up at Armageddon , as we now know from more recent publications focused around just what Armageddon is/was (and really, I must submit that naming the planet "Armageddon" presumably increased its narrative weighting quite significantly, as well ... ) 

The difference, however, is that those Eldar were saved. [open question as to how many Eldar died as a result of the Armageddon conflict, but anyway]. 

Also, to speak briefly further toward Eldrad-related matters - the fact that we have two accounts of his involvement with Cadia , one wherein he dies and one wherein Cadia dies .... well, you can approach this through a strict out-of-universe perspective as GW winding back the timeline they'd set up in the Eye of Terror campaign, and then rolling forward with a different narrative. Although I'm rather taken with the idea a chap on here doing an Ordo Chronos warband came up with - that perhaps, just perhaps, time-line manipulation *in-universe* may have been a thing. It certainly lent itself to some interesting storytelling viz. personnel from a now-unremembered future/past. 

Anyway, there is one further metaphor to deploy: that of elastic. Insofar as ... the timestream may be rather like that substance - you can push it so far with your fist, before it snaps back and it - or, rather, you - hits you in the face. 

So, attempts at active and conscious  timestream manipulation involving time-travel are quite likely to lead to one of two things: either things happening exactly as they did before, precisely because your own actions of manipulation *caused* them, in a stable time loop ... or attempted deviancy from the course of the loop leading to the attempted intervener being pushed back *onto* the loop or spiralling off into irrelevancy as things progress as they largely would have regardless. [it may also be possible that the initial proposition viz. what Grammaticus sees - a 'different' future - is in fact part of the 'corrective' process to ensure that he gets back to where he's 'supposed' to be for the original progression to take place. I am not sure if that's a loop with a mobius strip in it or what. ] 

Which leads to where I'll leave it for now - a quote from a film I don't think's been mentioned yet here, 'Deja Vu' [starring Denzel Washington]: 

"I told you earlier I have a destiny, a purpose. Satan reasons like man, but God thinks of eternity. Well, I prostrate myself before a world that's going to hell in a handbag, 'cause in all eternity, I am here and I will be remembered. That's destiny. A bomb has a destiny, a predetermined fate set by the hand of its creator, and anyone who tries to alter that destiny will be destroyed. Anyone who tries to stop it from happening will cause it to happen, and that's what you don't understand. We're not here to coexist. I'm here to win. So you'd better have some divine intervention, buddy. You're gonna need it."

The 'bomb' metaphor is a good one - because yes, that's pretty much it. Many attempts to 'avert' the Heresy may in fact lead to it being triggered. We see that with, for instance, Magnus' endeavours. You try defusing a bomb without knowing *exactly* what you're doing, then you *do* wind up defusing it ... because the fuse is no longer intact, as it's now all over the place along with everthing else within the blasst radius. The act of aversive intervention is the trigger - a self-fulfilling prophecy [and I should note that despite the attention this gets in a lot of recent films, Greek mythology and tragedy has us *well* beaten to the punch] 

But also, that notion of 'reasoning like a man' versus 'thinking of eternity' - yes. The God-Emperor of Mankind, while He is aware of a functional incompatibility (in theory) between being Omniscient and Omnipotent [and some may fairly argue that He is, in practice, neither to their ultimate, literal extent] - nevertheless seems to do a rather decent job of 'taking the long view' , in a manner that Horus simply can't. It is something of an open question as to whether the *other* gods involved in the scenario are truly gotten the better of by Him in these stakes, however. (indeed, I don't think it accurate that The Emperor be relegated to the position of a playing-piece upon the board as is Horus - even though The Emperor is *also* that as well. The Emperor is both Player *and* Piece at once) 

If I were running a rather Anthropocentric cosmo-chronology , then referencing that teleological enthusiasm again, the fact that 10-11 thousand years later there is still an Imperium managing to mount a vigorous resistance to not only Chaos, but *everything else* thrown at it repeatedly; still presided over by an Emperor ; and with a certain Primarch resurrecting just when He was needed ... well, I would say that whatever game the Emperor is playing against these immense ex-temporal adversaries (whether Paradox Billiards Vostroyan Roulette Fourth Dimensional Hypercube Chess Strip Poker or otherwise ) , at the very least, He has not *lost* . 

And sometimes, that in and of itself, is quite a mighty victory.

[Moonreaper666]

The time-travel with John is the only time its been used to change the lore in a big way. With John and Oll not in the Siege, Horus wins and outright destroys the Imperium while the Chaos Gods are alright. Keep in mind that the Chaos Gods can simply kill any of their minions, including Horus, Huron, Omegon and Abaddon, in an instant just by sucking the life and Chaos blessings out of them. They have done this in the lore, both 40k and Fantasy

Orikan, who like Trazyn was awake during the Great Crusade, goes back in time a lot but he has never used it against Chaos. The only victims of his time-travel are the Imperium and other Necrons

Cypher I feel is stuck in a time-loop doing the same things over and over again. No matter what he does he can't change the end

Eldrad gave John the device for Warp-time-travel yet he personally doesn't try using it to stop Chaos or any other threat to the Eldar for over 10k years

Eldrad and John believe that the Cabal's plan was a hail-mary and didn't put faith in it working
 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Brother Lunkhead
Off topic: WHF and AoS not part of the 30/40Kverse

[Moonreaper666]

Another thing that doesn't make sense about the Cabal's plan is that it relies on Horus not only winning but surviving the Siege. There are two ways I think off that can go wrong:

 

-Horus and the Emperor kill each other. After Malcador dies, the Webway breach opens up again leading to the entire Sol System corrupted by Chaos. Without the resources of Terra, Mars and Jupiter as well as the Astronomican the Imperium is doom

 

-Chaos Gods have a kill-switch on all of their followers. They can just turn Horus or any other champion into a Chaos Spawn, take away all of his powers or just kill them outright. After killing the Emperor the Dark Gods just destroy Horus and 'promote' Abaddon as his replacement. This has happened in the lore

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][=

 

If you disagree with an argument or a premise, please defend your point. Simply blurting out your frustration is not an argument nor does it add to the discussion. If you feel a view doesn't merit argument, then it doesn't merit comment either. You can always move on to what you feel are more worthwhile subjects. 

 

=][=

[Arendious]

I'm not certain spawndom is really a 'kill switch" on the Pantheons' champions. It's sometimes interpreted as a punishment, by those around the poor sod. Abbadon is a prime example - the Pantheon showers him with gifts, but he refuses to entirely play their game. So why haven't they just zapped him into a bag of eyeballs and found someone more pliable?

Likewise, just "boom, yer dead" isn't really a Pantheon play either. It's not their 'style', as it were. Insofar as paracausal manifestations of chaos and emotion can be considered 'constrained', the Pantheon is constrained by "narrative causality". Horus *can't* just drop dead of a stroke after killing the Emperor.

 

The Cabal's plan 'suits' the nature of their opponent. They know the nature of the Pantheon is self-defeating and are trying to give the gods enough narrative rope to hang themselves with.