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Something I've wondered about is that John Grammaticus has the capacity to see through illusion and saw something in the Emperor that terrified him. What did he see?

the true horror of the Emperors schemes?

or the big E had a booger hanging out his nose no one else could see

The Star Child?

Maybe that the Big E is really an Old One?

Countless other interwebs conspiracies surrounding the Big E that's pulled from a single sentence in some obscure fluff somewhere?

Gram being of a normal state of mind probably just bawked at the terrible violence the emperor was willing to unleash.. to unite the galaxy under his rule. Thats how I always took it.

He saw the Space Marines

Nurglitch wrote:Something I've wondered about is that John Grammaticus has the capacity to see through illusion and saw something in the Emperor that terrified him. What did he see?

It was also mentioned that he felt the Emperor touch his own mind and recognise his abilities. It could just be that John Grammaticus saw/felt just how powerful the Emperor actually was. If potent psykers can make those in their presence feel uncomfortable at times even when not known as such, the Emperor would be a thousand fold. He must have been able to shield his presence with that being felt by those around him (and that was very strong) being that he either let through or the fraction he couldn't conceal. Or both.

The thing is that there was a bit of exposition about how one of John Grammaticus' talents was seeing the truth of things and seeing through glamours. It also mentioned that there was something about the Emperor himself that Grammaticus recoiled from, rather than it being any kind of premonition

The idea of not revealing the Emperor in the Horus Heresy novels is...kind of weird considering that they're 'revealing' what actually happened during the Horus Heresy, something that they had previously declared had been hidden in the mists of time. It's show and tell time anyways.

I like the idea of him actually being really withered and ancient, using his psychic powers to project a glamour of vitality. Back in Rogue Trader days, worthless crap about "sensei" and "starchilds" notwithstanding, the Emperor hadn't been put on the Golden Throne to prevent daemonic incursion, but to sustain him against the ravages of extreme old age. The fact that he consumes thousands of psyckers a day to sustain him kind of hints at the Emperor having a darker side than simply being Battle-Jesus.

Then there's the whole Horus Heresy to begin with, which makes it look like the Emperor really dropped the ball unless:

(1) Like all other mortals he's playing played as a chump for the amusement of the Chaos Gods.

(2) He actually intended it to work out that way.

(3)

In "False Gods" (I think), Horus is shown the future by an emissary of the Dark Gods, a future in which his brother Primarch are venerated and the Emperor is deified. I get the sense that the Dark Gods didn't lie to him so much as editorialize his own role in that future into the marginalia. If their emissary claimed that the Emperor was making a play for true immortality, an independent daemon-hood free of the gestalts of any of the established Dark Powers, then I'd be inclined to believe

I personally believe (and incorporate it into my personal version of the background) that the Emperor himself had actually made a pact with the Dark Powers, and that they were active during the Great Crusade. The Emperor had, in fact, offered humanity to the Dark Gods in exchange for a seat at the table, a buy-in on the Great Game. Remember what the interex, in "Horus Rising", claim when things get straightened out between the interex commander and Loken, that the interex had assumed that the Space Marines were Chaos Warriors because the servants of Chaos tend to be bulky and warlike.

It's not as if going out and persecuting the followers of other Chaos Gods is proscribed by any commandment of any of the the four Powers; only the Word Bearers and a few other maniacs/idiots approach Chaos in an ecumenical way, and the fractious nature of Chaos is noted in Codex: Chaos Daemons; when any one Chaos God is ascendant, the others pull together to topple the front-runner. The Horus Heresy itself was a mass sacrifice to aid the Emperor in his ascension as the Dark Power of Hunger, a fifth power. His duel with Horus simply revealed the Emperor's own natural decrepitude, and the hungering chasm that he has in place of a soul.

Much like the decadence of the Eldar awakened Slaanesh into the material universe, the decadence of Humanity would awaken the Great Devourer. It's no coincidence that the Necrons are re-awakening, nor that the Tyranids are drawn to the Milky Way. Both races represent an ancient and immortal Hunger. They're being drawn in to create a psychic critical mass.

So there's my take on it, that John Grammaticus saw in the Emperor a nascent Chaos God.

I'd always assumed that it was because he saw just how powerful the emporer really was, and was in awe of his unfathomable power. Awe is similar to fear in most respects. Or perhaps just seeing that the emporer was that much more than human startled him. I don't know, that is just what I'd assumed.

I belive that Emperor's young looking body was the result of his powers since Chaos Gods or very powerful psykers can do anything that they want to body like in his case make it younger and is the Inquisition War fluff about him being composed of mulitple souls still valid.
Didn't the Emperor want to defeat the Chaos through all these years,after he won over them maybe he would ascend to the warp and become a god that Horus saw in his vision.
John Grammaticus was terrified by the Emperor's psychic power(I mean he was a warp god pre-heresy and imagine him now being worshiped by the quadrillions).
Emperor wanted to extinguish religion and turn humanity to science.
I believe that multi soul Emperor was the result of the Heresy because it is mentioned somewhere in the fluff that psykers are sacrificied because it keeps the Emperor's soul from fracturing.
Worship of the Emperor was inevitable because humanity had a savior after a millenia of repression by the aliens,chaos and other humans.
When he comforted Horus the Emperor could just raise a psychic shield and talk to the Horus even through Horus was supported by the whole Chaos and had a large amount of support from nine legions.

I didn't think the Emperor spent much time talking to Horus, that was what Sanguinius had been doing. Honestly, the only thing talking to Horus would have achieved at best was making him seeing what he'd done and for Horus to let himself be slain. >.> In which case mightn't have had that whole 'soul destruction' thing.

Speaking of that, what the Emperor did seems far closer to the powers of the Navigators than any psykic power I've seen. Just beefed up.

Nurglitch wrote:

In "False Gods" (I think), Horus is shown the future by an emissary of the Dark Gods, a future in which his brother Primarch are venerated and the Emperor is deified. I get the sense that the Dark Gods didn't lie to him so much as editorialize his own role in that future into the marginalia. If their emissary claimed that the Emperor was making a play for true immortality, an independent daemon-hood free of the gestalts of any of the established Dark Powers, then I'd be inclined to believe

I personally believe (and incorporate it into my personal version of the background) that the Emperor himself had actually made a pact with the Dark Powers, and that they were active during the Great Crusade. The Emperor had, in fact, offered humanity to the Dark Gods in exchange for a seat at the table, a buy-in on the Great Game. Remember what the interex, in "Horus Rising", claim when things get straightened out between the interex commander and Loken, that the interex had assumed that the Space Marines were Chaos Warriors because the servants of Chaos tend to be bulky and warlike.

It's not as if going out and persecuting the followers of other Chaos Gods is proscribed by any commandment of any of the the four Powers; only the Word Bearers and a few other maniacs/idiots approach Chaos in an ecumenical way, and the fractious nature of Chaos is noted in Codex: Chaos Daemons; when any one Chaos God is ascendant, the others pull together to topple the front-runner. The Horus Heresy itself was a mass sacrifice to aid the Emperor in his ascension as the Dark Power of Hunger, a fifth power. His duel with Horus simply revealed the Emperor's own natural decrepitude, and the hungering chasm that he has in place of a soul.

Much like the decadence of the Eldar awakened Slaanesh into the material universe, the decadence of Humanity would awaken the Great Devourer. It's no coincidence that the Necrons are re-awakening, nor that the Tyranids are drawn to the Milky Way. Both races represent an ancient and immortal Hunger. They're being drawn in to create a psychic critical mass.

So there's my take on it, that John Grammaticus saw in the Emperor a nascent Chaos God.

That is quite a good idea...

Shaman wrote:Gram being of a normal state of mind probably just bawked at the terrible violence the emperor was willing to unleash.. to unite the galaxy under his rule. Thats how I always took it.

This is how I took it, although the Chaos god idea is also interesting.

Indeed, I think Grammaticus just saw Hitler x1000 in the Emperor, and the fact that he was willing to kill hundreds of millions to reach his goals. I think Grammaticus saw how the Emperor would eventually rot away on the Throne, and how ten-thousand lives a day would be sacrificed for him, so on and so forth.

metallifan wrote:Indeed, I think Grammaticus just saw Hitler x1000 in the Emperor, and the fact that he was willing to kill hundreds of millions to reach his goals. I think Grammaticus saw how the Emperor would eventually rot away on the Throne, and how ten-thousand lives a day would be sacrificed for him, so on and so forth.

Hitler times 1000... god... thats...

Yes, Hitler000

I would have figured 1 Kilo-Hitler.

I think he saw first the power that the Emperor held. He saw the incredible capacity for destruction inherent in one venerated as both living god and head of state by 99% of all the innumerable masses of humanity in the known universe. He saw the incredible atrocities perpetuated by the Imperium in its efforts to save humanity from destruction. He saw the immense spiritual and physical sacrifices needed just to keep the Imperium alive. And he saw that in a world populated by horrifying swarms of alien creatures, dark gods with terrible powers, ancient fiends that consume stars, and terrible machines bent on nothing less than the consumption of all life, humanity was being held at the brink of oblivion by a being who was nothing more than a man. And he knew that even though he recognized the atrocities committed in the Emperor's name, these sacrifices, on the part of both the people of the Imperium and the Emperor himself, were all that stood between humanity and destruction. What John Grammaticus saw with horror was the Imperium that the Emperor had created, and that had he been in the Emperor's place, neither he, nor any other man, could have done any different.

John saw too much grimdark in the emperor?

Or that he was a woman. THAT would probably freak out the collective Imperial social consciousness.

I might look at it as reminiscent of Paul of DUNE; a venerated mortal God that commits unfathomable atrocities in the name of survival, and he loathes it.

You know personally i think that the Emperor being Hitler times 1000 is an under estimate... i think he is more like Hitler times 2356, i dont even know what that is!

corpsesarefun wrote:You know personally i think that the Emperor being Hitler times 1000 is an under estimate... i think he is more like Hitler times 2356, i dont even know what that is!

Without the Imperium most of the human race would be killed because the nids,crons and other aliens would find them an easy prey.Things like Internex and other advanced human civlizations would survive,but even they would be destroyed by them.
No Imperium a giant vacuum in power.
Emperor is a 2k Hitler because he accepted the truth that if the humanity had to survive in the hostile galaxy the deaths of millions innocents were nothing compared to the destruction of the whole human race.

I personally believe (and incorporate it into my personal version of the background) that the Emperor himself had actually made a pact with the Dark Powers

In my personal version of the background as I've understood it from reading everything written about it, is that the Emperor attempted to destroy the Chaos Gods. Not just fight them, but actually kill them. That is why he never told anyone about the Chaos Gods and didn't want even himself to be venerated as a god. When there is noone left to remember and worship the Chaos Gods, they will die, and this has been stated by GW authors a few times. For example, if all sentient beings would die from the known universe, the Chaos Gods themselves would die as there would be no emotions, actions and veneration to sustain them. Naturally the Emperor didn't want everyone to die just to beat the Daemons, but he wanted to create a completely atheist society. The Word Bearers wanted Emperor to be their god, but the Emperor wanted a triumph of the material universe over the warp dimension of gods. He was against the Cult of the Emperor all along because in a world where there are good gods there are always evil gods or atleast a state of conflict. When Horus Heresy began and people started openly worshiping the Chaos Gods, the Imperium started openly worshiping the Emperor meaning that basically everything he attempted failed in the end and now there's very little chance of victory. Maybe he's a C'tan, maybe he's an Old One, doesn't matter, but he certainly was/is an enemy of the Chaos Gods. The Chaos Gods felt extremely threatened by this and probably even feared the Emperor because their very existence was under attack, and by playing into mortal humans' vanities they engineered a civil war in an attempt to create a new extremely religious society where the denizens of the warp are ascendant. They succeeded in a way because the Emperor's dream of an atheist universe was crushed, and what follows is a completely new version of history than what the Emperor aimed for. Since the Emperor is now considered a god by billions of billions of people, he might actually now become one in the warp (or already has, since he grants divine gifts to the most faithful like the Sisters of Battle), pretty much alike the theory that the bitter desire for revenge of the Eldar is forming into an Eldar god of retribution against Chaos in the warp.

As far as why the Emperor destroyed Horus and didn't let Chaos conquer Terra and destroy itself in an orgy of destruction like described in the Legion, because he surely saw all the futures and what would happen, maybe he was a human afterall or loved the human race enough that he just couldn't allow it to happen just to save the Xenos species, and chose to defeat the material manifestation of Chaos for the time being and let humanity to fend for itself.

MekanobSamael wrote:I think he saw first the power that the Emperor held. He saw the incredible capacity for destruction inherent in one venerated as both living god and head of state by 99% of all the innumerable masses of humanity in the known universe. He saw the incredible atrocities perpetuated by the Imperium in its efforts to save humanity from destruction. He saw the immense spiritual and physical sacrifices needed just to keep the Imperium alive. And he saw that in a world populated by horrifying swarms of alien creatures, dark gods with terrible powers, ancient fiends that consume stars, and terrible machines bent on nothing less than the consumption of all life, humanity was being held at the brink of oblivion by a being who was nothing more than a man. And he knew that even though he recognized the atrocities committed in the Emperor's name, these sacrifices, on the part of both the people of the Imperium and the Emperor himself, were all that stood between humanity and destruction. What John Grammaticus saw with horror was the Imperium that the Emperor had created, and that had he been in the Emperor's place, neither he, nor any other man, could have done any different.

The only problem with your theory being that John Grammaticus met the Emperor on Terra prior to the advent of the Great Crusade...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Therion:

Where does it say, in any of the background material, that the Chaos Gods are in any way dependent upon humanity believing in them?

Where does it say, in any of the background material, that the Chaos Gods are in any way dependent upon humanity believing in them?

I can dig it up for you, but it's a short story in one of the earlier Black Library 40K short story collections. The story is mostly about Tyranids, but goes on to discuss the extreme threat that the possibility of a galaxy wide sentient race destruction poses to the Chaos Gods. I thought this one was obvious to you however. Afterall, most of the old Chaos fluff mentions this when it discusses the relative power of the different Chaos Gods, and how one God diminishes to almost non-existance at times while the other one prospers. It's been shown that Chaos Gods aren't ones that have always existed and that new ones have and will be born. It's also been said that many of the lesser ones have died, and hinted that even the largest ones could die, for example in the scenario I described. There might be other reasons for them to die too, for example the Emperor Warp God or the Eldar Death God might just outright destroy them in the warp once they become strong enough, but that's background that hasn't really been written about and is purely speculation. Khaine tried to fight Slaanesh when Slaanesh was born, but he failed. The new one might do better.

Chaos Gods aren't necessarily dependant on humanity as in the human race specifically, but they are dependant on worship and remembrance by sentient species that are psychically active. The Emperor naturally wasn't too kind on xenos races especially if they worshipped warp deities. Afterall his crusade was to eradicate all non-Imperials human and xenos alike from the Milky Way and beyond. Convert and join an atheist Imperium where bibles are burned and all record of gods lost and forgotten, or die. All for the good of mankind, because the only other alternative is to be a slave and sustenance to creatures from the other dimension. The survival of humanity and the destruction of Chaos was the Emperor's goal and he had his plans laid out already 40 thousand years before the events of the Horus Heresy. If the book Mechanicum can be trusted, he even needed the unwilling help of a C'tan to ensure Man will be at a sufficient level of technology to succeed in the Emperor's mission. During the heresy, he realised he couldn't have both the survival of humanity and the destruction of Chaos, but he could have one. He chose the survival of humanity and the off-chance that Chaos could be defeated later. The xenos species wish he would've chosen differently. He devoted tens of thousands of years to save the human race and paid the ultimate price in the end, and for all this the Emperor is justly loved by his people.

corpsesarefun wrote:You know personally i think that the Emperor being Hitler times 1000 is an under estimate... i think he is more like Hitler times 2356, i dont even know what that is!

No, nobody does...

Therion wrote:

As far as why the Emperor destroyed Horus and didn't let Chaos conquer Terra and destroy itself in an orgy of destruction like described in the Legion, because he surely saw all the futures and what would happen, maybe he was a human afterall or loved the human race enough that he just couldn't allow it to happen just to save the Xenos species, and chose to defeat the material manifestation of Chaos for the time being and let humanity to fend for itself.

With this explanation it shows the real reason why the Alpha Legion are traitors. They chose xenos survival over that of humanity's. Regardless what people say about hidden agendas, the fact is that the Alpha Legion turned against the human species on the mere offchance that it would allow the xenos species to survive. Where were these xenos when the eldar fell, where were they when Slaanesh was born? Perhaps if the eldar had been wiped out eons ago the universe wouldn't be plagued by chaos in the current era.

I think what John Grammaticus saw was the same as the priest in the last church, that the Emperor would bring in an era where there was only one right way to do things and those who thought otherwise would be destroyed. I don't think it was anything beyond that, it would be like someone in a democratic country seeing a foreign dictator arrive at the head of an army and knowing that everything they believed in was finished, that there would be no compromise, no blending of ideas, no debate, only the will of the dictator.

cadbren wrote:

With this explanation it shows the real reason why the Alpha Legion are traitors. They chose xenos survival over that of humanity's. Regardless what people say about hidden agendas, the fact is that the Alpha Legion turned against the human species on the mere offchance that it would allow the xenos species to survive. Where were these xenos when the eldar fell, where were they when Slaanesh was born? Perhaps if the eldar had been wiped out eons ago the universe wouldn't be plagued by chaos in the current era.

If I remember correctly the Alpha Legion didn't choose survival of the Eldar over that of Humanity, they Chose the destruction of Chaos over Humanities survival. The Eldar are dying and they know it, their race will eventually die out from shear lack of number to defend themselves.

It's the same thing. No point in destroying chaos just for the sake of destroying chaos. It would be the xenos who would benefit from humanities destruction. Space Marines were not created to defeat chaos but to protect humans, in that they betrayed their reason to be.

What is the point of destroying yourself to defeat an enemy if nothing of you survives to benefit from your enemy's defeat? Alpha Legion are traitors and morons.

Destruction of the Imperium, yes. Extinction of humanity? Actually, I don't think Horus could have pulled that off, certainly not in the short timescales that would be involved. There would be some planets where humans survived. But we're talking a few dozen planets well populated and likely quite separated. Back to the pre-Crusade days.

Without a significant chaos presence and warp storms inhibiting them though, humans would still survive.