What is the Emperor?

[Scribe]

43 minutes ago, Captain Idaho said:

Anyway, the conversation from Erda quite firmly lays out that she isn't even aware what a Perpetual is, with the Emperor being the most powerful of them but appears is to the Perpetuals that they are to humanity.

 

I think the takeaway here is, the Emperor is old, pre-History old, but what a 'perpetual' is, is not clear or even likely defined, as some seemingly are born, while others are made.

 

All of which just pulls me back to it being a clearly floundering, unnecessary side plot, a ham-fisted retcon, forced into a story that didnt need it. An effort by a particular author to put his stamp onto a work that was there before him, and didnt need this change.

[Kastor Krieg]

I just had a revelation about the Emperor (pun intended). The question shouldn't be who or what or why is the Emperor.

It really and honestly should be WHEN is the Emperor. Because the answer is "always, forever, truly eternal".

This is why the Emperor is Anathema for Chaos, as verbalized by demons many times and witnessed when his Light clashes with the Warp. He has always been the avatar, the point of focus of the idea of Order, not only on the social or historical, but on the cosmic scale.

 

We "know" that the universe can only increase in entropy, in Chaos. We have no idea, even in real life science, whether entropy can be manipulated, reversed, without additional work / power. If it were possible, it would imply existence of pure "Order energy". The most packed, ordered, simple state of the Universe was the singularity of the Big Bang - since then, entropy increases. However we also know, in setting, that the Chaos gods, as foci of energies of entropy, are a fairly recent creation. Slaanesh is but a baby in universal timescale. Khorne, Nurgle and Tzeentch, the human-induced creations, as well.

 

And it seems there are strong parallels between how the emergence, the entropic focus of Chaos into "gods" has coincided with the emergence and growth of the Emperor. If we assume the "100% Order" initial state of the universe and "100% entropy" final state ("heat death of the universe"), then the more entropy enters the universe, the more Order leaves it. But where does it go? If entropy seeps out of the quadruple Chaos God foci into the universe, then it follows that the Order gathers into the singular focus - the Emperor.

The power of entropy is split "by flavour" in the Four, but the power of Order is focused into The One, which is Anathema to Chaos, to entropy. When the universe ends, Chaos Gods will be entirely depleted and the Emperor will contain all the Order energy in it. He will be the singularity and will spend that power to create a new universe. The cycle will continue again as it has before.

 

He is Anathema, his Light annihilates the warp, specifically because he is the plus to the Chaos minus, he is the matter to their antimatter. Wherever his Light shines, Chaos has no hold. 

 

His attempted gambit in this situation was humanity which would Ascend instead of devolving into entropic worship of Chaos Gods. He seems to want to break the eternal loop of universe after universe, heat death after heat death, Big Bang after Big Bang.

Chaos Gods emerge once there's enough entropy out there. The Emperor is forever, he is the Beginning and the End. He is the first Light and the one who "turns off the light" once there is nothing else anymore, when even Chaos Gods are completely spent. He is the initial explosion and the cause of final implosion as he cannot exist as pure Order containing all the energy of the universe when there's not a thing to be ordered out of entropy anymore.

 

This is the eternal game of aeons and the Emperor doesn't want to play anymore.

[Captain Idaho]

I don't dispute much of what you said, but the Emperor has nothing to do, in representative and influential terms, to any race bar humanity. That would indicate he isn't an eternal force in opposition to the Chaos Gods since before the coming of Mankind.

 

He is definitely opposed to the Chaos Gods in some aspects, whilst not dealing with them at least (so the rumours go with regards to the Primarchs), being able to permanently destroy them or their avatars.

[Orange Knight]

He is a psyker of unbounded power.

 

Who, through the belief of countless billions, has been elevated to an actual God with power equal to the Pantheon of Chaos.

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, Orange Knight said:

Who, through the belief of countless billions, has been elevated to an actual God with power equal to the Pantheon of Chaos.

 

[Emperor Ming]

Actually, its beyond that now, previously faith was linked to the empyrean and could be nullified by noctilith

 

and the Emperor was at a stalemate with the chaos gods (or there abouts)

 

As of the Emperors psychic awakening, being empowered by the warp rift, the scales are now tipping his favour

 

and more importantly, faith is now so powerful it is detached from the warp, not being able to be amplified or nullified by Blackstone

[Scribe]

5 minutes ago, Emperor Ming said:

and more importantly, faith is now so powerful it is detached from the warp

 

How exactly does this work.

 

Warp is Souls. The Gods are Souls. Daemons are Souls, but Faith is...different? I'm trying to keep it together here, but that doesnt really fit. I mean it really doesnt fit when we think about what Faith is...but whatever.

[Emperor Ming]

Oh I completely agree, it could do with explaining

 

Or if they could clarify that it is warp related, but its just so powerful that it works differently

 

 

[Closet Skeleton]

4 hours ago, Kastor Krieg said:

We "know" that the universe can only increase in entropy, in Chaos.

 

You're just throwing unrelated meanings together to create nonsense sentences.

 

Chaos in warhammer is just a fantasy fiction trope with a cool sounding name used so bits of folk Christianity can be used in a new context without reflecting actual real world religious concepts, it has nothing to do with the mathematical concept of chaos, which in turn is not the same thing as the concept of entropy in physics.

 

How 40k works is that there's a material universe with an adjacent alternate universe called the Warp. The emotions of animals in the material universe creates ripples in the warp. Some animals have a greater ability to effect the warp than others and some can use their ability to influence the warp to in turn influence the material universe and they get called psykers.

 

The warp has its own inhabitants, some of whome are just the warp's version of animals while others are created directly by the emotions of material animals. These are called gods and exist in numerous pantheons. Chaos is just one of these pantheons, its just a club a bunch of warp entities joined that happened to become the most powerful when they defeated the Eldar gods and got a new 4th member.

 

The less control over their emotions more psychically active animals have, the more the Warp gets stirred up and goes from being a pristine expanse of energy to something with actual features and terrain. The most emotionally mature psykers can calm the warp just by being calm in the material universe. Since daemons are created from stirred up emotions and feed off them, calming the warp around them is like if the water flowing around a moving shark suddenly stopped. That's literally all anathema is, its just having a high emotional intelligence.

[Sete]

On 11/4/2022 at 1:40 PM, Karhedron said:

Godblight contains a very good description of the possible options for what the Emperor is 40K. Spoilers for those who have not read Godblight yet.

 

  Hide contents

The Eldar are probably the race with the best understanding of the Warp in 40K and even they do not know what the Emperor is. The Farseer Natasé explains that the Eldar cannot see the Emperor directly or divine what he is as his presence in the Warp burns away the strands of fate. Natasé says there is no single definition of what constitutes a "god" and it really comes down to power. In those terms, the Emperor is a god, as are the Chaos gods and the C'tan.

 

Natasé explains that there are several theories as to what the Emperor is now. He could be the soul of the same being that led the Great Crusade. It might be a reflection created in the Warp by the focussed belief of countless trillion human souls. It might even just be the power of the Golden Throne, sustained by sacrifice and essentially running on autopilot. This section almost feels like teasing the fans to some extent as it lists pretty much all the popular theories that we discuss on sites like this without giving any concrete answer.

 

Natasé sums up by saying that whatever the thing they call the Emperor in the 41st millenium actually is, it is real. It has power and it responds to faith. Therefore it is something Guilliman can tap into if he can bring himself to believe in it. 

 

As always Black Templars are correct. ;)

 

Don't Tau have a god in the Warp now aswell? Due to the human faith in the greater good? Bit off topic I know. 

Edited November 9, 2022 by Sete

[Scribe]

5 minutes ago, Sete said:

Don't Tau have a god in the Warp now aswell? Due to the human faith in the greater good? Bit off topic I know. 

 

I believe it was a Daemon?

[gaurdian31]

19 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I believe it was a Daemon?

The entity was first described in the IMO rather terrible book War of Secrets. They don't out right call it a demon It is described as more of an impression of sentience kind of like the Chaos Gods, so more powerful than most demons. It is basically what humanity and other psychic races belonging to the Tau worship. There's a decent amount of info in this reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cmoyh6/why_did_the_tauva_warp_entity_reveal_itself_to/ and hopefully that helps. It could be a demon or it could be a god.

[Sete]

That opens up a few distinct possibilities. Is the Emperor in the Warp the same as the one in the golden throne? Or just a reflection  of the human faith? Is the Emperor absorving that Warp faith juice? How does the golden throne impact the ultimate apotheosis of the Emperor? 

I do believe that the Emperor is now a fully fledged God and only the Golden Throne keeps him anchored to his mortal shell, preventing his rebirth on the Warp. Trillions of humans feed his form in the Warp. A fraction of that number created that greater good entity. And the Imperium covers most of the known galaxy.

[Scribe]

Thanks @gaurdian31 based on that, and what @Sete mentions here, things are going to get weird in the next few editions...

[Karhedron]

10 hours ago, Sete said:

That opens up a few distinct possibilities. Is the Emperor in the Warp the same as the one in the golden throne? Or just a reflection  of the human faith? Is the Emperor absorving that Warp faith juice? How does the golden throne impact the ultimate apotheosis of the Emperor? 

I do believe that the Emperor is now a fully fledged God and only the Golden Throne keeps him anchored to his mortal shell, preventing his rebirth on the Warp. Trillions of humans feed his form in the Warp. A fraction of that number created that greater good entity. And the Imperium covers most of the known galaxy.

 

Definitely interesting questions. One key point is that the Emperor did not tell Guilliman to unplug the Golden Throne. This implies it is not holding back the Emperor as he clearly believes he is better off where he is than either regenerating or ascending to full godhood. Maybe this is simply because the Imperium needs Terra and the Astronomicon so he has to stay put and hold the broken webway portal closed. However one of the BL authors mentioned that retaining a corporeal form was actually an advantage for the Emperor. As long as he remains anchored in the physical world, he has a focal point for his consciousness which the Big 4 lack.

[Jings]

My read for about a year now based on the information I've gotten from novels/discussions is that the Emperor is the creation of shamans (the first human psykers, likely with reincarnation abilities given the relative calm of the warp at this period) pooling their collective psychic power/souls through a ritual sacrifice into the Emperor - this likely granted him his Perpetual nature. At this point, however, I doubt he was even Malcador strength, and given the existence of further perpetuals, similar rituals have occured through history (or through the process of ressurection which apparently does the trick too). 

 

He probably guided humanity from the shadows from there, up until the Golden Age. Some point between then and the Age of Strife, the Emperor was captured by these post-scarcity humans and subject to experiments to understand the nature of psykers and the warp. These experiments may have had multiple results, and there's strong possibility that he was used as a psychic weapon during the AI uprising (and it can be inferred he had a power boost from the experimentation/weaponization/practice). 

 

From a character perspective, this capture/weaponization is likely why he switched to a more direct hand in guiding humanity after his reemergence. The subsequent power boost from Moloch is what brought him to where he is as of 30K, and his partial death is what makes him whatever the creature he is today. 

 

At his core, the Emperor is as the Marines believe - the best of men, but a man nonetheleast. But also so much more. In much the way he created the Primarchs from warpstuff, he too has supplemented his own body (and power) in a similar fashion. He's now partially a warp-based entity well on its way to godhood proper, but anchored in realspace by what remains of his humanity. 

[Snazzy]

On 11/4/2022 at 8:29 AM, N1SB said:

 

We have clues as to what the Emperor once was.  Perpetual, from the very first kingdoms of humanity, etc.  Very powerful, but DEFINITELY NOT a god.  The whole Great Crusade was about the advance of reason.  He told Guilliman to make Word Bearers kneel in the ashes of their broken cathedrals at Monarchia so everyone knew He wasn't a god.

 

 

That was the cover story.  In reality, the Emperor used Imperial Truth as a mechanism of Compliance.  Lorgar worshipping the Emperor, no matter how well intended, was tantamount to treason.  Tolerance of the practice would give regular humans the idea that they could ignore the Imperial Truth.  The nascent Imperium had to integrate an untold number of tribes, sects, nations and civilizations.  It was far easier to obliterate existing religion than to sort through all of human belief and decide what gets to stay.

 

Meanwhile, the Emperor knew about the Chaos Gods, better than anyone.  The Primarchs were made with their stolen power.  One wonders what Guilliman would think if the truth of his own origins were revealed to him.

[Spyros]

I had asked a similar question in the past here: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/363570-what-exactly-is-the-emperor-spoilers/

I 'm reposting what I found.

 

 

I first found a curious reference about the Emperor in the Horus Heresy book "The Master of Mankind" by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. I kept it in mind but didn't think too much about it, semi-dismissed it as an open ended plot line that may or may not be used in the future.
Then, the same reference appeared again, on a contemporary book by a different writer, "Belisarius Cawl - The Great Work" by Guy Haley.
 
I don't know what it means, but it's interesting. Tread lightly...

Spoiler

THE MASTER OF MANKIND
Aaron Dembski-Bowden
 
‘So it seems. If you have any last words, I will ensure they reach the Emperor’s ears.’
Koja Zu’s lip curled. ‘Emperor. How I loathe that title.’
‘He is the ruler of this world and the master of our species. No title is more appropriate.’
She bared her teeth in an expression too ugly and defiant to be a smile. ‘Have you ever considered just what kind of creature you serve?’
‘Yes.’ The dark eyes stared on. ‘Have you?’
‘The “Master of Mankind”.’ She shook her head, feeling the welcome flare of righteousness. ‘He isn’t even human.’
‘Minister Zu.’ The golden warrior made a warning of her name. One she didn’t heed.
‘Does He even breathe?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me that, Custodian. Have you ever heard Him breathe? He is a relic left over from the Dark Age. A weapon left out of its box, now running rampant.’
Valdor blinked once. The first time she’d seen him blink so far. That rare human movement was unnerving – to her it felt false, like it had no right taking place upon his statuesque features.
 
-.-
 
BELISARIUS CAWL – THE GREAT WORK
Guy Haley
 
Zarhulash the Potentate, a C’tan:
"These are the gods of your time. God of Machines. Gods of Chaos. God of… men? Men."
It paused, evaluating the word.
"There is weakness in this era. You are a man. You are weak. Your species is weak, far removed from the original plan of our enemy. These are not gods you worship, this Machine-God, these entities in the warp, this Emperor. We will explain. The first is a lie. The second are emergent consciousnesses caused by etheric disturbance. The third is a weapon."
It paused at this.
"There is war. The… rift? A rift has opened. The purity of reality is polluted. The war continues. Our war. You fight it. But you are weak. You are echoes. Echoes of might. Blots on purity. Glory has left this galaxy."

 

[Karhedron]

1 hour ago, Spyros said:

I had asked a similar question in the past here: https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/363570-what-exactly-is-the-emperor-spoilers/

I 'm reposting what I found.

 

 

I first found a curious reference about the Emperor in the Horus Heresy book "The Master of Mankind" by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. I kept it in mind but didn't think too much about it, semi-dismissed it as an open ended plot line that may or may not be used in the future.
Then, the same reference appeared again, on a contemporary book by a different writer, "Belisarius Cawl - The Great Work" by Guy Haley.
 
I don't know what it means, but it's interesting. Tread lightly...

  Hide contents

THE MASTER OF MANKIND
Aaron Dembski-Bowden
 
‘Does He even breathe?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me that, Custodian. Have you ever heard Him breathe? He is a relic left over from the Dark Age. A weapon left out of its box, now running rampant.’
 
-.-
 
BELISARIUS CAWL – THE GREAT WORK
Guy Haley
 
"There is weakness in this era. You are a man. You are weak. Your species is weak, far removed from the original plan of our enemy. These are not gods you worship, this Machine-God, these entities in the warp, this Emperor. We will explain. The first is a lie. The second are emergent consciousnesses caused by etheric disturbance. The third is a weapon."

 

Just my thoughts on these points. I am not arguing against, just giving my own take on those quotations (which I agree a fascinating snippets to consider).

 

Spoiler

Firstly, ADB has a noted fondness for having characters give opinions which reflect their biases and are not in-universe facts. I have always taken Zu's comment about the Emperor in this light. She believes the Emperor is a some sort of DAOT monster but that does not make it true. Both Erda and Oll claim to know the Emperor from long before the DAOT. Oll in fact knew him from the Bronze age.

 

In The Great Work, the C'tan comments that humanity is far removed from the plans of the Olds Ones. Now remember that the Old Ones seeded the Galaxy with Psykers to fight against the C'tan and the Necrons. So the C'tan would reasonably view all psykers as weapons. That does not mean that the Emperor is a weapon in the sense that would consider it.

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by Karhedron