Ignorance of the Warp in early HH series

[b1soul]

So as I recall Loken was totally shocked by the Daemonic possession of (the Luna Wolf) Jubal...

 

but most if not all primarchs and Astartes already knew

- the Warp was used for space travel

- psykers used the warp

- view ports must be shuttered when traversing the Warp (and gellar fields must be up)

- there were even intelligent beings or entities of the Warp, like the TSon Tutelaries...was this rare knowledge? Surely many Librarians in every legion knew the Warp was "alive" to some extent, even if they avoided terms like "Daemon"? Terran veterans familiar with the abuse of sorcery? Primarch homeworld cultures with a solid grasp of the Warp's nature (e.g. Chogorians)?

 

So the Emperor's lie was vastly downplaying the terrifying power of these entities to corrupt/enslave human beings? No mention of The Four or the malevolent nature of Daemons in general? Kinda just pretend there are these unfathomable/neutral entities neither good nor evil floating around in the Warp, which you may come across every now and then? 

 

It's been ages since I read the opening trilogy of the HH series and always found this rather confusing. 

Edited April 15, 2023 by b1soul

[Arkangilos]

From Malevolence:

”A Denial of the Supernatural

The following is an excerpt of the essay Truth in all His Works, the Magnum Opus of the rationalist Terran philosophist, Alasteir Gundi As one of the first scholars of the Imperial Truth, Gundi was an early contributor to its ideals.

As an aside from this work on the merils of a single creed of Truth, I wish to discredit a popular theory as the foolishness it is. You see, I scoff at the primitive notion of demons I a tribute the stories of beings of darknes and purest, blackest evil to little more than the overblown fear mongering creations of the tyrants of Old Earth, dreamed up to keep the basest chattel of Mankind suppressed in servitude. The preaching of false prophets, the soothsaying of viziers and the curses of old hags are but the comical and dramatic methods for the feeble to appear strong and for the worthless to garner undeserved respect. The trinkets and charns peddled to keep such spirits at bay are little more than the mercantile exploitations of salesmen of serpents' oils. All of this, an economy of nonsense, is an exercise in obtaining and maintaining control over the weak-minded.

What of the tales of the gods, and their miracles and retributions? At best, these are simply coincidence attributed to divinity, unexpected hope or despair laid at the feet of certain menacing vet unextraordinary events. At worst, they are the herd behaviours of group hysteria and mass hallucination, or the spreading symptoms of mental infirmities caused by the radiological legacy of Terra. The words and deeds of such so-called gods as Magrese', 'Abundance, Dagriel, Khuratan and the Contagious King' are patent works of fiction, imagined from the minds of madmen. Nor can they be made to appear from thin air with babbling incantation, or the scribbled daubing of childlike symbols. Their names hold no power over us, for we are to be a galactic empire of Mankind unifed by our enlightenment

Claims that these illogical beings mean us grave harm and reside in the turmoil of the Warp too are falsehoods. The Empyrean is a necessary conduit for space travel and is simply another dimension yet to be fully charted, as like any other area of space. This galaxy is Mankind's birthright. The Warp falls within our domain and we shall master it also. Just as the seafarers of Old Earth once bulked at the depths and the gas divers of Jupiter avoided the hot jets of the Jovian zones, Mankind has, and will again, overcome its irrational, Immaterial fears.

We learn more of the xenos forms of the Empyrean with every voyage. They may appear to be drawn towards us, but are simply like shoals of harmless oceanic creatures, attracted by the blinking lights along the keels of our vessels. As in any ecosystem, there too are predators to be wary of, but these are simple star-spawn hunting the shoals, and harbour no malicious intent towards us.

I understand that sailors can be a superstitious lot, and so I must re-iterate: there are no demons in the Warp! This is one of the many reasons why the Imperial Truth is so critical to breaking the fear human minds experience when faced with the vastness of the Cosmos. Without it, we could never leave the light of Sol.'”

 

It seems to me that they believe there are creatures, but they aren’t anything special or worthy of supernatural attention (like worship), and are just another form of alien that should be ignored by most people.

 

Also if there are typos I apologize. I did a copy and paste from a picture I took of my book. (I learned if I take a picture of a page I can copy the text and then past it, which saves bucket loads of time).

Edited April 15, 2023 by Arkangilos

[m_r_parker]

I think when you go back and read the earlier HH novels, you really have to cut the authors and editors a lot of slack. It's really easy to read the later stuff and start to pick holes in what was gone before, and this is before there being multiple authors coming to a relatively fresh slate with their own ideas and little editorial oversight / "grand plan" of what the series should be. The example you've given above (the possession of Jubal by Samus) is literally book 1 in the series, about as "clean slate" as the series can get with little actually known (from the reader standpoint) about this period in the 40k / 30k timeline.

 

If you want to discuss the effects of travel in the Warp and the importance of Gellar fields, my personal opinion was that:

1. The events of the affected ship were so cataclysmic that they would often be attributed to the ship being "lost in the warp" - to the rest of the universe the ship enters the warp and is never heard from again.
2. If the ship were found, or managed to escape the warp and re-enter real space then there would likely be zero survivors. 
3. Depending on what you read, the effects of exposure to the warp / looking into the warp can vary from daemonic possession to instant death or plain going insane. Survivors, if any, are likely to be in no state of mind to concisely report on what had happened.
4. Any attempt to piece together the events of a ship travelling through the warp without it's Gellar Fields on, being found with survivors who aren't crazy, are likely to be explained with the knowledge they had at hand. As stated above, the Emperor tried to keep the Chaos Gods and Daemonic forces secret, but without knowledge of those entities how do you explain the events without it being seen as the ramblings of a madman and to be ignored? i.e. "Exposure to the Warp without protection drives people crazy."

If we really want to tug on the strings of "Why did the Emperor downplay the existence of the Chaos Gods" - well, that decision really does shape the entirety of the 30k main plot line. That's part of the "Tragedy" aspect of the series as a whole, the Emperor was likely operating with the best interests of Mankind at heart by restricting information about the true nature of the Warp, but by doing so acted in such a way as to alienate his own 'sons' and push them towards the danger he had hoped to save them from. I like to think of it as a version of the idiom "Not all publicity is good publicity", instead that by giving everyone all the information without filter or restriction you end up enabling those individuals to make bad choices that they wouldn't otherwise know they had. Expand on that idea for a second, and follow on with an alternate storyline where the Emperor told all the Primarchs about the Chaos Gods at earlier points in the timeline, and where does that end up? For one, Larger would still be in a position where he is told that a) the Emperor is not a god, and b) the gods that his civilisation used to worship before the coming of the Imperium are real. We're back at the start of The First Heretic, and of course someone with that much of a religious upbringing is going to go on a pilgrimage to find the 'gods', of course he's going to end up corrupted again. Maybe some characters swap sides of the Heresy to come, but the gods have already sown their seeds. If this is how Primarchs could operate, what about the common man? Someone has an exceptionally bad time of things of late, maybe they decide to call out to these 'gods' they've heard about (and maybe blame) and find that they get an answer. This is how you get rogue psykers, uprisings, etc - just that there's more common knowledge around them to tempt others to do the same.

 

At the end of the day, with any series as long as the 30k Horus Heresy, there's going to be plot holes, bad retcons, and ideas floated only to get dropped along the way. You can try to explain them away, make sense of them from an in-universe perspective, etc. Or, you can chalk them up to what they are and not let them spoil your experience of the series as a whole. It's part of the reason I don't go back and read a lot of the earlier books in the series, they're full of things that don't make sense by the time you get to book 50 in the series!

[Moonreaper666]

29 minutes ago, m_r_parker said:

I think when you go back and read the earlier HH novels, you really have to cut the authors and editors a lot of slack. It's really easy to read the later stuff and start to pick holes in what was gone before, and this is before there being multiple authors coming to a relatively fresh slate with their own ideas and little editorial oversight / "grand plan" of what the series should be. The example you've given above (the possession of Jubal by Samus) is literally book 1 in the series, about as "clean slate" as the series can get with little actually known (from the reader standpoint) about this period in the 40k / 30k timeline.

 

If you want to discuss the effects of travel in the Warp and the importance of Gellar fields, my personal opinion was that:

1. The events of the affected ship were so cataclysmic that they would often be attributed to the ship being "lost in the warp" - to the rest of the universe the ship enters the warp and is never heard from again.
2. If the ship were found, or managed to escape the warp and re-enter real space then there would likely be zero survivors. 
3. Depending on what you read, the effects of exposure to the warp / looking into the warp can vary from daemonic possession to instant death or plain going insane. Survivors, if any, are likely to be in no state of mind to concisely report on what had happened.
4. Any attempt to piece together the events of a ship travelling through the warp without it's Gellar Fields on, being found with survivors who aren't crazy, are likely to be explained with the knowledge they had at hand. As stated above, the Emperor tried to keep the Chaos Gods and Daemonic forces secret, but without knowledge of those entities how do you explain the events without it being seen as the ramblings of a madman and to be ignored? i.e. "Exposure to the Warp without protection drives people crazy."

If we really want to tug on the strings of "Why did the Emperor downplay the existence of the Chaos Gods" - well, that decision really does shape the entirety of the 30k main plot line. That's part of the "Tragedy" aspect of the series as a whole, the Emperor was likely operating with the best interests of Mankind at heart by restricting information about the true nature of the Warp, but by doing so acted in such a way as to alienate his own 'sons' and push them towards the danger he had hoped to save them from. I like to think of it as a version of the idiom "Not all publicity is good publicity", instead that by giving everyone all the information without filter or restriction you end up enabling those individuals to make bad choices that they wouldn't otherwise know they had. Expand on that idea for a second, and follow on with an alternate storyline where the Emperor told all the Primarchs about the Chaos Gods at earlier points in the timeline, and where does that end up? For one, Larger would still be in a position where he is told that a) the Emperor is not a god, and b) the gods that his civilisation used to worship before the coming of the Imperium are real. We're back at the start of The First Heretic, and of course someone with that much of a religious upbringing is going to go on a pilgrimage to find the 'gods', of course he's going to end up corrupted again. Maybe some characters swap sides of the Heresy to come, but the gods have already sown their seeds. If this is how Primarchs could operate, what about the common man? Someone has an exceptionally bad time of things of late, maybe they decide to call out to these 'gods' they've heard about (and maybe blame) and find that they get an answer. This is how you get rogue psykers, uprisings, etc - just that there's more common knowledge around them to tempt others to do the same.

 

At the end of the day, with any series as long as the 30k Horus Heresy, there's going to be plot holes, bad retcons, and ideas floated only to get dropped along the way. You can try to explain them away, make sense of them from an in-universe perspective, etc. Or, you can chalk them up to what they are and not let them spoil your experience of the series as a whole. It's part of the reason I don't go back and read a lot of the earlier books in the series, they're full of things that don't make sense by the time you get to book 50 in the series!

 

The Emperor, Malcador and Vulkan believed all the Primarchs can be corrupted by Chaos

 

Malcador told Dorn that he lied about the Warp because telling the Praetorian the truth would lead to his corruption

 

The Heresy was inevitable. When you pissed off Four of the most powerful beings in the setting you get what you deserve

[EverythingIsGreat]

Good day,

 

t seems that the Emperor and Malcador (and perhaps few others in the 30K Imperium who knew) had successfully established as part of the Imperial Truth that chaos entities were xenoforms. The Adeptus Mechanicus were calling them that even as they were manifesting before the Palace walls in SoT. Btw, nowhere, AFAIK does the Emperor or Malcador refers to the Four as "gods". They do call them "false gods" occasionally, but in general they use dismissive language.

Outside of the occasional, rare first-person musings of the Emperor or Malcador in the HH/SoT series (and assuming that such musings are honest on the part of the character) the only other seemingly objective testimony in relatively recent lore are the FW black books, especially Malevolence, that was quoted from above.

The author (AK) is a regular, unenhanced human, with the evidence pointing that he/she was one of Malcador's Chosen. Although he/she does not know every detail of the conflict or the heresy, he/she was apparently a highly informed participant & eyewitness. AK's bias is obvious and not hidden, but in any case he/she tries to record history as experienced, not opinion. AK does not seem a principal mover with any sense of undue self-importance or hubris, and therefore does not need to explain or rationalize his/her actions like a main player perhaps would.

The claim made in the Preface of Malevolence by AK, that the Emperor believed humanity would have never attempted interstellar travel if it knew what was truly lurking in the Warp is interesting and plausible. Supposedly just the fear of chaos would make space travel taboo, something that is heavily slanted towards failure with little hope of any profit.

Plotwise, the narrative would be tremendously complicated if the "true" nature of the Warp was shown to be common knowledge. To fit all that coherently into the series would probably require another 54 volumes. Or more.

[b1soul]

@m_r_parker

Valid points definitely

 

I would clarify that although I've criticised the work of some authours before, that's not the intent here. Just trying to reach clarity on what the "common belief" was among the primarchs and Astartes (and other elements of the Imperial military) pertaining to the nature of the Warp.

 

It seems the great lie was more along the lines of:

The Warp is the home of many intelligent or semi-intelligent entities. These entities of the Warp can be hostile to humans, like predatory Xenos breeds...but any mention of The Four is strictly omitted, and people are strongly discouraged from viewing Warp beings as Daemonic or Supernatural.

 

Frankly, if this was the line...it's not such a bad "white lie". Loken may just have been shocked by how powerful the entity lurking in the Whisperheads was...and how it felt so intrinsically wrong and evil. I'd have to go back and re-read, but it probably made him question this sanitised framework of understanding the Warp. He knew he wasn't supposed to think of it as a Daemon or something supernatural, but heck, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

 

[wecanhaveallthree]

The simple fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no difference except semantics between 'daemons' and 'aliens from another dimension'. 

 

What the Emperor was attempting to do with the Imperial Truth - and I'm surprised people consistently miss this point - is not to paper over the dangers of the Warp. The Warp is explicitly dangerous. Everything in the OP is correct: every ship travels with Gellar generators, runed shutters, and encounters the occasional manifestation (or catastrophic failure). Everybody understood on a real and true level that the Warp was not safe territory and contained malevolent creatures that could, and would, attack. Horus talks about this with Loken after the Whisperheads. Every Legion has encountered 'witches' and 'witchcraft', they've seen possession and manifestation. Loken's problem is that he didn't believe it could happen to him (or, rather, to Space Marines in general). Less 'lie' and more 'ignorant self-confidence'.

 

The Emperor wanted to remove the mind-ending mystique of the Warp. The word 'supernatural' implies something cannot be understood, rather than cannot be understood yet. The creatures dwelling in the Warp are no more 'evil' or 'malignant' than, say, the Rangdan. They've just had more time to get really good at it. The Emperor wanted to institute a culture of understanding - striving to understand, acknowledging that something may not be understood yet, but that it was simply a matter of figuring out how it operated - rather than a culture of fear and worship, which are the enemies of understanding. Fear and worship don't just empower the Warp, they neuter understanding and resistance of the Warp. 

 

The Warp is another dimension with particular physics. We've seen time and time again that certain symbols, certain gestures, sorcery in general, impact the Warp. It's complex, but it's understandable. It's not supernatural. It's not mystical. It has rules like anything else. It's a faraway land ruled harshly by four princes locked in a great game. 

 

The Imperial Truth starts at the first step, the first principles. The Warp is dangerous. The Warp has hostile xenos in it. These hostile xenos come from a different dimension and don't operate on the exact same physics as our own. Scary, yes. Supernatural, no. 

[b1soul]

Thinking in terms of "daemons" is thinking, non-rationally, of these entities as supernatural powers (and has the effect of strengthening them), but thinking of them more rationally as extradimentional xenos...not so much.

 

So a good lie (for the greater good) has to be believable, but watered down to conceal the most dangerous truth. The lie would probably treat Warp entities more like a population of intelligent tigers or raptors prowling the huge jungle next to an expanding settlement (dangerous predators, one might even say hostile...if they develop a taste for human, i.e. man-eaters), but would avoid framing them as the vast, god-like intelligences of The Four (and their lesser extensions), playing a grand game to enslave all humanity like string puppets.

 

A white lie to strip the Warp of its mystique and thus de-fang it to an extent, discouraging Chaos worship...doesn't seem silly, and might have been what the authours intended, but some readers, including me early on, could've missed the nuance.

It's akin to the debate of whether the Emperor is a god among men or an extremely powerful man. The crux is not what he "is", it's how people think of him...do they have a worshipping, religious mindset (Ecclesiarchy) or a rational, scientific mindset (Custodian Guard).

 

So the Great Crusade was waged on physical and psychological levels. On the latter level, it was trying to replace mystical, religious thinking (worship of the Dark Gods being the worst kind) with scientific rationalism among humanity numbering in the trillions, with a long history of Warp dabbling and worship, especially during Old Night.

Edited April 16, 2023 by b1soul

[DukeLeto69]

Some great posts and brilliant thinking in this thread. Here’s my, admittedly less well thought out, two pence worth...

 

is there not also some aspect of the “don’t talk about it then it won’t exist”

 

What do I mean by that? The Warp is manifested emotions. The Chaos “Gods” only exist because sufficient sentient beings generate the “emotions/actions” that allow them to manifest. If people knew about them and started to believe in them and worship them, then that increases the amount of emotion creating them increasing their power.

 

in the same way that The Emperor becomes a God (Emperor) by virtue of so many humans believing him to be a God and “releasing/experiencing” the emotions of worship and veneration.

 

So instead use a time of supposed science and reason to remove religion, veneration and worship that creates the emotions feeding the existence of the Big Four by not telling people this “other” true nature. It is just dangerous xenos!

[EverythingIsGreat]

3 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

What do I mean by that? The Warp is manifested emotions. The Chaos “Gods” only exist because sufficient sentient beings generate the “emotions/actions” that allow them to manifest. If people knew about them and started to believe in them and worship them, then that increases the amount of emotion creating them increasing their power.

 

 

Well, we don't exactly know what the Warp is (I mean apart from being a convenient literary device in some fiction). But it is repeated in the Warhammer lore that one of Chaos' main ingredients is intense emotion. It is a clever depiction, since intense emotion overtakes reality in fact as well as in fiction and produces its own dynamics in both. In the lore it is made clear that the few who know the truth understand the dependent relationship and do not consider the Chaos entities alien (xenos). 

[Moonreaper666]

4 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Some great posts and brilliant thinking in this thread. Here’s my, admittedly less well thought out, two pence worth...

 

is there not also some aspect of the “don’t talk about it then it won’t exist”

 

What do I mean by that? The Warp is manifested emotions. The Chaos “Gods” only exist because sufficient sentient beings generate the “emotions/actions” that allow them to manifest. If people knew about them and started to believe in them and worship them, then that increases the amount of emotion creating them increasing their power.

 

in the same way that The Emperor becomes a God (Emperor) by virtue of so many humans believing him to be a God and “releasing/experiencing” the emotions of worship and veneration.

 

So instead use a time of supposed science and reason to remove religion, veneration and worship that creates the emotions feeding the existence of the Big Four by not telling people this “other” true nature. It is just dangerous xenos!

 

The more you know of the Warp, the more likely you will be corrupted

 

That is why Malcador concealed the truth from Dorn. His curiousity would get the better of him and WHAM, one more Primarch and Legion goes Traitor!

[b1soul]

8 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

So instead use a time of supposed science and reason to remove religion, veneration and worship that creates the emotions feeding the existence of the Big Four by not telling people this “other” true nature. It is just dangerous xenos!

 

I think it makes sense NOT to share knowledge of The Four with the general populace, yes! Their existence and nature are the most dangerous truth, so to speak.

 

As for daemons (which will be encountered periodically), it also makes sense to encourage a more rationalist attitude toward them...they're not extensions of the "Chaos Gods", they're extra-dimensional xenos which can behave in predatory fashion toward humans. Greater Daemons? Trickier to play off as Warp predators of limited intelligence/power: they tend to resemble their patrons more...but you could suppress knowledge (easier as such encounters should be very rare) or under tricky circumstances, perhaps frame them as big alpha predators. 

 

Top priority is to discourage/eliminate Chaos worship, and the scale of The Four's intelligence and power (nigh omniscient and omnipotent from a mortal's perspective), and perhaps even that of their most powerful servants, is a strong invitation to little mortals to engage in mystical thinking, worship, and religiosity.

 

So yeah, the "great lie" should be to suppress the nature of The Four, not to tell people that the Warp is this tranquil, not-dangerous realm (which would be irresponsible and easily discredited). There's some good nuance to it, and new readers might get confused at first (as I was)...plus the very early HH novels were where the authours were still testing/developing such ideas.

 

EDIT: there was quite a bit of nuance even in Horus Rising...

 

The Warmaster took another sip. ‘It was the warp, Garviel.’

‘The… warp?’
‘Of course it was. We know the power of the warp and the chaos it contains. We’ve seen it change men. We’ve seen the wretched things that infest its dark dimensions. I know you have. On Erridas. On Syrinx. On the bloody coast of Tassilon. There are entities in the warp that we might easily mistake for daemons.’
‘Sir, I…’ Loken began. ‘I have been trained in the study of the warp. I am well-prepared to face its horrors. I have fought the foul things that pour forth from the gates of the Empyrean, and yes, the warp can seep into a man and transmute him. I have seen this happen, but only in psykers. It is the risk they take. Not in Astartes.’
‘Do you understand the full mechanism of the warp, Garviel?’ Horus asked. He raised the glass to the nearest light to examine the colour of the wine.
‘No, sir. I don’t pretend to.’
‘Neither do I, my son. Neither does the Emperor, beloved by all. Not entirely. It pains me to admit that, but it is the truth, and we deal in truths above all else. The warp is a vital tool to us, a means of communication and transport. Without it, there would be no Imperium of Man, for there would be no quick bridges between the stars. We use it, and we harness it, but we have no absolute control over it. It is a wild thing that tolerates our presence, but brooks no mastery. There is power in the warp, fundamental power, not good, nor evil, but elemental and anathema to us. It is a tool we use at our own risk.’
The Warmaster finished his glass and set it down. ‘Spirits. Daemons. Those words imply a greater power, a fiendish intellect and a purpose. An evil archetype with cosmic schemes and stratagems. They imply a god, or gods, at work behind the scenes. They imply the very supernatural state that we have taken great pains, through the light of science, to shake off. They imply sorcery and a palpable evil.’
He looked across at Loken. ‘Spirits. Daemons. The supernatural. Sorcery. These are words we have allowed to fall out of use, for we dislike the connotations, but they are just words. What you saw today… call it a spirit. Call it a daemon. The words serve well enough. Using them does not deny the clinical truth of the universe as man understands it. There can be daemons in a secular cosmos, Garviel. lust so long as we understand the use of the word.’
‘Meaning the warp?’
‘Meaning the warp. Why coin new terms for its horrors when we have a bounty of old words that might suit us just as well? We use the words “alien” and “xenos” to describe the inhuman filth we encounter in some locales. The creatures of the warp are just “aliens” too, but they are not life forms as we understand the term. They are not organic. They are extra-dimensional, and they influence our reality in ways that seem sorcerous to us. Supernatural, if you will. So let’s use all those lost words for them… daemons, spirits, possessors, changelings. All we need to remember is that there are no gods out there, in the darkness, no great daemons and ministers of evil. There is no fundamental, immutable evil in the cosmos. It is too large and sterile for such melodrama. There are simply inhuman things that oppose us, things we were created to battle and destroy. Orks. Gykon. Tushepta. Keylekid. Eldar. Jokaero… and the creatures of the warp, which are stranger than all for they exhibit powers that are bizarre to us because of the otherness of their nature.’
Loken rose to his feet. He looked around the lamp-lit room and heard the moaning of the mountain wind outside. ‘I have seen psykers taken by the warp, sir,’ he said. ‘I have seen them change and bloat in corruption, but I have never seen a sound man taken. I have never seen an Astartes so abused.’
‘It happens,’ Horus replied. He grinned. ‘Does that shock you? I’m sorry. We keep it quiet. The warp can get into anything, if it so pleases. Today was a particular triumph for its ways. These mountains are not haunted, as the myths report, but the warp is close to the surface here. That fact alone has given rise to the myths. Men have always found techniques to control the warp, and the folk here have done precisely that. They let the warp loose upon you today, and brave Jubal paid the price.’
‘Why him?’
‘Why not him? He was angry at you for overlooking him, and his anger made him vulnerable. The tendrils of the warp are always eager to exploit such chinks in the mind. I imagine the insurgents hoped that scores of your men would fall under the power they had let loose, but Tenth Company had more resolve than that. Samus was just a voice from the Chaotic realm that briefly anchored itself to Jubal’s flesh. You dealt with it well. It could have been far worse.’
‘You’re sure of this, sir?’
Horus grinned again. The sight of that grin filled Loken with sudden warmth. ‘Ing Mae Sing, Mistress of Astropaths, informed me of a rapid warp spike in this region just after you disembarked. The data is solid and substantive. The locals used their limited knowledge of the warp, which they probably understood as magic, to unleash the horror of the Empyrean upon you as a weapon.’
‘Why have we been told so little about the warp, sir?’ Loken asked. He looked directly into Horus’s wide-set eyes as he asked the question.
‘Because so little is known,’ the Warmaster replied. ‘Do you know why I am Warmaster, my son?’
‘Because you are the most worthy, sir?’
Horus laughed and, pouring another glass of wine, shook his head. ‘I am Warmaster, Garviel, because the Emperor is busy. He has not retired to Terra because he is weary of the crusade. He has gone there because he has more important work to do.’
‘More important than the crusade?’ Loken asked.
Horus nodded. ‘So he said to me. After Ullanor, he believed the time had come when he could leave the crusading work in the hands of the primarchs so that he might be freed to undertake a still higher calling.’
‘Which is?’ Loken waited for an answer, expecting some transcendent truth.
What the Warmaster said was, ‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He hasn’t told anyone.’

Horus paused. For what seemed like an age, the wind banged against the longhouse shutters. ‘Not even me,’ Horus whispered. Loken sensed a terrible hurt in his commander, a wounded pride that he, even he, had not been worthy enough to know this secret.
In a second, the Warmaster was smiling at Loken again, his dark mood forgotten. ‘He didn’t want to burden me,’ he said briskly, ‘but I’m not a fool. I can speculate. As I said, the Imperium would not exist but for the warp. We are obliged to use it, but we know perilously little about it. I believe that I am Warmaster because the Emperor is occupied in unlocking its secrets. He has committed his great mind to the ultimate mastery of the warp, for the good of mankind. He has realised that without final and full understanding of the Immaterium, we will founder and fall, no matter how many worlds we conquer.’
‘What if he fails?’ Loken asked.
‘He won’t,’ the Warmaster replied bluntly.
‘What if we fail?’
‘We won’t,’ Horus said, ‘because we are his true servants and sons. Because we cannot fail him.’ He looked at his half-drunk glass and put it aside. ‘I came here looking for spirits,’ he joked, ‘and all I find is wine. There’s a lesson for you.’

I completely forgot about Loken's belief that only psykers could be preyed upon by Warp beings, not men of sound mind or Astartes.

Edited April 16, 2023 by b1soul

[Arkangilos]

2 hours ago, b1soul said:

‘What if we fail?’
‘We won’t,’ Horus said, ‘because we are his true servants and sons. Because we cannot fail him.’ He looked at his half-drunk glass and put it aside. ‘I came here looking for spirits,’ he joked, ‘and all I find is wine. There’s a lesson for you.’

[EverythingIsGreat]

In the setting, the characters can talk/act according to:

 

1. What they know

2. What they think they know

3. What they speculate/guess

4. What they tell others

 

I believe the passage from Horus Rising that b1soul quoted satisfies all four points above.

 

But in this setting there is also the "truth" or facts. An omniscient narrator exists, being the author(s) of GW IP, which encompasses a variety of things. The omniscient narrative is mostly present in rulebooks, campaign books, background material tied to these works etc. Usually these are (in-universe) factual statements written in a hyper-dramatic style that fits the over-the-top universe they describe. They are ultimately unattributed, to distinguish that they originate from the universe's creator (and only true God :) ). Historically the IP has evolved, but certain things remain constant up to the current WH40K edition. This is my reading of it.

 

The Warp was originally becalmed

Sentience at times acted in excess of what was required (emotionally), and the extra/unwanted/unwarranted baggage drained into the Warp

Instead of fading away into whatever primordial/base warpstuff is, some of that baggage in the warp kept being replenished and refreshed by more, similar, excess emotional dumps from realspace

Certain (not all) of that baggage in the warp eventually went through a certain evolution and became reactive, ie was able to interface back to its source

Such interface basically drops all that excess (ie irrational) emotional stuff back into realspace. Sentience not well-grounded in rationality (strong mental makeup) ends up in la-la land.

For humanity that interface works best with individuals that have so-called psyker-like abilities which may be either obvious or latent

It seems that more and more humans may develop heightened psyker-like abilities for some reason or other

The persona known as emperor somehow appears at some point thousands or millions of years ago. To, first, control that interface, in order to second, backstop and reverse the warp re-action into realspace before everyone ends up nuts, psycho or dead.

Start by bringing all humanity in the same page (Imperium). Try to outsmart Chaos by pretending it doesn't exist (Imperial Truth). Explain anything not fitting in the constraints of the doctrine as "anomaly" that will be resolved soon. Bonus: it is believed that such widespread denial impedes communication with the Warp.

 

Please correct me if I have misstated anything.

Isolate the enemy and deny him resupply (of excess emotion). Then move in and finish the job.

 

Considering that the novels are supposed to collect and embellish all that still-developing information in a readable, entertaining form, I think they overall didi a pretty decent job.

[Moonreaper666]

40 minutes ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

In the setting, the characters can talk/act according to:

 

1. What they know

2. What they think they know

3. What they speculate/guess

4. What they tell others

 

I believe the passage from Horus Rising that b1soul quoted satisfies all four points above.

 

But in this setting there is also the "truth" or facts. An omniscient narrator exists, being the author(s) of GW IP, which encompasses a variety of things. The omniscient narrative is mostly present in rulebooks, campaign books, background material tied to these works etc. Usually these are (in-universe) factual statements written in a hyper-dramatic style that fits the over-the-top universe they describe. They are ultimately unattributed, to distinguish that they originate from the universe's creator (and only true God :) ). Historically the IP has evolved, but certain things remain constant up to the current WH40K edition. This is my reading of it.

 

The Warp was originally becalmed

Sentience at times acted in excess of what was required (emotionally), and the extra/unwanted/unwarranted baggage drained into the Warp

Instead of fading away into whatever primordial/base warpstuff is, some of that baggage in the warp kept being replenished and refreshed by more, similar, excess emotional dumps from realspace

Certain (not all) of that baggage in the warp eventually went through a certain evolution and became reactive, ie was able to interface back to its source

Such interface basically drops all that excess (ie irrational) emotional stuff back into realspace. Sentience not well-grounded in rationality (strong mental makeup) ends up in la-la land.

For humanity that interface works best with individuals that have so-called psyker-like abilities which may be either obvious or latent

It seems that more and more humans may develop heightened psyker-like abilities for some reason or other

The persona known as emperor somehow appears at some point thousands or millions of years ago. To, first, control that interface, in order to second, backstop and reverse the warp re-action into realspace before everyone ends up nuts, psycho or dead.

Start by bringing all humanity in the same page (Imperium). Try to outsmart Chaos by pretending it doesn't exist (Imperial Truth). Explain anything not fitting in the constraints of the doctrine as "anomaly" that will be resolved soon. Bonus: it is believed that such widespread denial impedes communication with the Warp.

 

Please correct me if I have misstated anything.

Isolate the enemy and deny him resupply (of excess emotion). Then move in and finish the job.

 

Considering that the novels are supposed to collect and embellish all that still-developing information in a readable, entertaining form, I think they overall didi a pretty decent job.

 

The Great Crusade's killing of Trillions fed Chaos, not weaken it

 

Chaos lost a lot of servants during the GC but it got new ones during and after the Heresy

[EverythingIsGreat]

Do we know there were "trillions" of deaths during the GC? IIRC one of the 3 Imperial edicts was that unsanctioned genocide was forbidden. Many human worlds complied without violence. Sentient xenos were summarily dispatched but it is  not clear whether the violent death of a Laer has the same chaos-impact on a human psyche that the violent death of a human has. The lore frequently suggests that like-impacts-like. Chaos designs on humans seem to work best with human subjects/sacrifices.

Secondly, most violent death would leave an imprint or residue on the Warp, but from the lore it seems that Chaos prefers a directed action which involves assembling the correct material for the correct ritual, to be correctly performed. Otherwise the emotional/chaotic impact disperses/attenuates/has lesser effect.

At least that is how I read the lore.

[Moonreaper666]

22 minutes ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

Do we know there were "trillions" of deaths during the GC? IIRC one of the 3 Imperial edicts was that unsanctioned genocide was forbidden. Many human worlds complied without violence. Sentient xenos were summarily dispatched but it is  not clear whether the violent death of a Laer has the same chaos-impact on a human psyche that the violent death of a human has. The lore frequently suggests that like-impacts-like. Chaos designs on humans seem to work best with human subjects/sacrifices.

Secondly, most violent death would leave an imprint or residue on the Warp, but from the lore it seems that Chaos prefers a directed action which involves assembling the correct material for the correct ritual, to be correctly performed. Otherwise the emotional/chaotic impact disperses/attenuates/has lesser effect.

At least that is how I read the lore.

 

Let's be real, the Imperium sanctioned a lot of genocides during the GC. Even the 'nicer' Primarchs like Sanginius and Dorn have sanctioned the brutal deaths of so many human kids

 

The World Eaters and Death Guard have systematically depopulated entire Hiveworlds throughout the galaxy so many of the Trillions of deaths are their fault

 

It's not like the GC was a cakewalk if it took 200 years and almost wiped out both the Salamanders and Ultramarines (before their Primarchs came and save their asses)

 

Even with lesser acts, if done enough times it will greatly power the True Gods of the setting. Besides, Chaos already had their emotional/thought buffet during the War in Heaven

[DukeLeto69]

9 hours ago, Moonreaper666 said:

 

Let's be real, the Imperium sanctioned a lot of genocides during the GC. Even the 'nicer' Primarchs like Sanginius and Dorn have sanctioned the brutal deaths of so many human kids

 

The World Eaters and Death Guard have systematically depopulated entire Hiveworlds throughout the galaxy so many of the Trillions of deaths are their fault

 

It's not like the GC was a cakewalk if it took 200 years and almost wiped out both the Salamanders and Ultramarines (before their Primarchs came and save their asses)

 

Even with lesser acts, if done enough times it will greatly power the True Gods of the setting. Besides, Chaos already had their emotional/thought buffet during the War in Heaven

 

“Let’s be real” made me laugh.

 

We are discussing a science fantasy setting. It isn’t hard sci-fi so it doesn’t really have to abide by the hard and fast rules that apply to the real universe. Whatever happens just happens because in THIS setting it is allowed to happen and can just be hand waved away by “magic” or “warpcraft” etc 

 

I think we are all trying to define the deliberately indefinable. 

 

A dimension of pure emotion that has currents and eddies and flows according to what is happening in real space. That somehow, when there is sufficient types of particular emotions, coalesces into a “creature” that is somehow sentient and able to influence. Surely a “thing” that is made of certain pure emotions could only ever act according to that emotion(s)? It couldn't reason or plot or even interact with the other “Gods” because they are fundamentally different?

[Krelious]

I think really to stop the inevitability factor the Emperor could just place kill switch brain bombs in all the primarchs heads and just say "If you ever think of turning against me or siding with Chaos ill turn your brain into slop on the walls of your flag ship and then ill likely have Russ exterminate your legion. Im also going to put a chip implant in your brain that monitors all your thoughts and there will be a secret room on every flagship that monitors your brain output with a servitor that is hard wired to blow your brain up if it ever detects the wrong sequence of words in your thought patterns."

 

"So given that information here's the the truth about Chaos, that you need to know and that ill allow you to know. I know this is a bad situation but the fate of humanity is at state, oh and if you ever refuse my orders or fail to do your duty ill paint the walls of your flagship with your brains. All you have to do is ask Malcador what happened to the 2nd and 11th primarchs."

[Moonreaper666]

18 hours ago, Krelious said:

I think really to stop the inevitability factor the Emperor could just place kill switch brain bombs in all the primarchs heads and just say "If you ever think of turning against me or siding with Chaos ill turn your brain into slop on the walls of your flag ship and then ill likely have Russ exterminate your legion. Im also going to put a chip implant in your brain that monitors all your thoughts and there will be a secret room on every flagship that monitors your brain output with a servitor that is hard wired to blow your brain up if it ever detects the wrong sequence of words in your thought patterns."

 

"So given that information here's the the truth about Chaos, that you need to know and that ill allow you to know. I know this is a bad situation but the fate of humanity is at state, oh and if you ever refuse my orders or fail to do your duty ill paint the walls of your flagship with your brains. All you have to do is ask Malcador what happened to the 2nd and 11th primarchs."

 

Chaos can just bypass all that and then corrupt the Primarchs

 

In fact, your plan ensures that Corax, Khan, Ferrus, Vulkan, Guilliman and Lion join Horus in his Heresy

 

Chaos would have done whatever it took to stop the Webway Project and the Emperor

[Scribe]

On 4/16/2023 at 2:32 AM, DukeLeto69 said:

Some great posts and brilliant thinking in this thread. Here’s my, admittedly less well thought out, two pence worth...

 

is there not also some aspect of the “don’t talk about it then it won’t exist”

 

What do I mean by that? The Warp is manifested emotions. The Chaos “Gods” only exist because sufficient sentient beings generate the “emotions/actions” that allow them to manifest. If people knew about them and started to believe in them and worship them, then that increases the amount of emotion creating them increasing their power.

 

in the same way that The Emperor becomes a God (Emperor) by virtue of so many humans believing him to be a God and “releasing/experiencing” the emotions of worship and veneration.

 

So instead use a time of supposed science and reason to remove religion, veneration and worship that creates the emotions feeding the existence of the Big Four by not telling people this “other” true nature. It is just dangerous xenos!

 

They are not just dangerous xenos though. You dont have to worship the Big 4, they exist regardless because its the most basic of thoughts/emotions, which fuel them. Nobody is calling out to Nurgle to grant him power, until well after they have already been fueling him. Same goes for the rest, and the minor powers and daemons as well.

 

To try and go with the 'first rule of Chaos is, we dont talk about Chaos' gets right to the heart of why it all fell apart anyway. The Primarchs are not basic line soldiers. They are demi gods. Design and empowered with the aid of the Warp/Chaos (likely) anyway. The Emperor could no more have told them 'its just xeno' than he could have told Horus to just chill and go on a time out.

 

The Emperor was a power before he became 'God-Emperor' before he stole even more power from the Warp. He wont be a God of Worship when/if he finally ascends, he will be a god of Hate/Ignorance/Xenophobia because those are the emotions by which he is being fueled thanks to a Galaxy at war, and the standard response to an alien being 'kill that one'.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Scribe

[Moonreaper666]

21 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

They are not just dangerous xenos though. You dont have to worship the Big 4, they exist regardless because its the most basic of thoughts/emotions, which fuel them. Nobody is calling out to Nurgle to grant him power, until well after they have already been fueling him. Same goes for the rest, and the minor powers and daemons as well.

 

To try and go with the 'first rule of Chaos is, we dont talk about Chaos' gets right to the heart of why it all fell apart anyway. The Primarchs are not basic line soldiers. They are demi gods. Design and empowered with the aid of the Warp/Chaos (likely) anyway. The Emperor could no more have told them 'its just xeno' than he could have told Horus to just chill and go on a time out.

 

The Emperor was a power before he became 'God-Emperor' before he stole even more power from the Warp. He wont be a God of Worship when/if he finally ascends, he will be a god of Hate/Ignorance/Xenophobia because those are the emotions by which he is being fueled thanks to a Galaxy at war, and the standard response to an alien being 'kill that one'.

 

The Emperor is less of a god than Sigmar from AOS. And he is struggling against Archaon

 

The Chaos Gods are always the top dog in both settings. Their bickering with each other is 99.999% of their time and energy.

 

They can overpower their enemies and subvert them at the same time in ways the other factions can't