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Lets play the what if game for a minute. Do you think there would have been a heresy if the Emperor had never punished the Word Bearers on monarchia? Or would chaos have found a new Primarch to stoke the fires of chaos with? Also if he had been open and honest about the perils of the warp instead of trying to sweep it under the rug would that have helped or hurt his cause in hindsight?

If the emperor had acted differently the heresy would be very different. Chaos would still have found a way to corrupt one of the primarchs but he could have reduced the effects. The emperor's action made the heresy a lot worse. He did a lot to push away many of the primarchs which would have fought for him otherwise. By acting differently he could have kept the World eaters, thousand sons and possibly the Night lords on his side.

Keeping chaos hidden from the avergae human made sense but he really should have told the primarchs everything. He should have expected chaos to target them. Not know about chaos stops you from choosing it but it won't protect you if chaos decides to try and corrupt you. They had no chance of fighting chaos when they had little idea what it really was. However much he tried to protect them the primarchs would eventualy encounter chaos because they were constantly interacting with foreign world and people. They were naturaly commanding and confident and upon finding something new would try to understand and control it rather than leaving it.

I agree by telling the primarchs of the threat of chaos may have made them more resiliant and able to relise when chaos was present. I am sure the Emperor had exstensive knowledge of the warp and its masters. By telling the primarchs Fulgrim may have never been turned and also since Magnus never had to warn the Emperor of Horus's betrayal the Imperium might even have access to the webway.

Malivon wrote:Lets play the what if game for a minute. Do you think there would have been a heresy if the Emperor had never punished the Word Bearers on monarchia? Or would chaos have found a new Primarch to stoke the fires of chaos with? Also if he had been open and honest about the perils of the warp instead of trying to sweep it under the rug would that have helped or hurt his cause in hindsight?

To me, what the Emperor was trying to accomplish on Monarchia would have been incredibly important. As I understand it, all strong emotions feed the warp. There wasn't a Slaanesh until the emotional excesses of the Eldar fed and coalesced into her/him/it.

Thus, the Emperor had some inkling that by spreading an increasing human population across the galaxy, he was potentially providing a huge amount of emotional energy into the warp. That energy would be available, whether the strong emotions were negative, like fear or hatred, or positive, like devotion, I assume.

Thus, it was really, really important that the growing Imperium not be dictated by emotion (even strong positive emotions like piety, adoration, and worship), but instead governed by rationality and intellect. The Word Bearers were directly undoing that careful plan.

The Emperor might have had a tough choice. Either allow understandable worship of him to increase, and definitely feed a gigantic amount of psychic energy into the warp, or make a stern effort to arrest this worship immediately, with the risk of it inciting rebellion of some sort.

I can't say anything intelligent about him playing his cards so close to his chest. I can see a lot of good reasons for doing so (if no one knows daemons exist, no one's going to deliberate summon them, etc.) and a lot of problems (how do you maintain trust when you have kept secrets). I don't feel that, even after all the stuff that has been written over the years, that we really have a good insight into the mindset of the Emperor.

I noticed that 4M2A said that 'not knowing' about Chaos doesn't protect you from corruption. Ironically, I think he's wrong about that. In our world, we don't view any data, itself, as inherently corrupting (for the most part). That assumption isn't part of the 40K universe. If you've ever read "The Lightning Tower" chapbook, Malcador even specifically says this to Rogal Dorn. He says, "Trying to understand it is a fool's errand. It would claim us too."

Now, if that is true, you can understand the Emperor a bit more. Not telling the Primarchs does leave them unprepared, but it doesn't expose them to Chaos. Think of a parent with an infectious disease (not that I'm claiming the Emperor was infected). Does the parent do more harm by neglecting their child, or by caring for it and exposing it to potential contagion? That's a hard choice, and a heart-breaking one.

Frankly I think the word bearers were already mostly corrupted...

Hmm but instead of shaming him infront of gulliman and making the entire legion kneel before him and in a sense striking at the only thing that has given his son a purpose in life. Why not explain to him why he should not do it and the reprecussions it would have if he were to continue. Magus peered into the warp on many occassions and kept its true nature a closely guarded secret. I belive if he had of just talked to him before burning down his world and laying him and his entire legion low then calling them failures in the presence of another primarch Logar would have understood.

Da Butcha wrote:To me, what the Emperor was trying to accomplish on Monarchia would have been incredibly important. As I understand it, all strong emotions feed the warp. There wasn't a Slaanesh until the emotional excesses of the Eldar fed and coalesced into her/him/it.

Thus, the Emperor had some inkling that by spreading an increasing human population across the galaxy, he was potentially providing a huge amount of emotional energy into the warp. That energy would be available, whether the strong emotions were negative, like fear or hatred, or positive, like devotion, I assume.

Thus, it was really, really important that the growing Imperium not be dictated by emotion (even strong positive emotions like piety, adoration, and worship), but instead governed by rationality and intellect. The Word Bearers were directly undoing that careful plan.

The Emperor might have had a tough choice. Either allow understandable worship of him to increase, and definitely feed a gigantic amount of psychic energy into the warp, or make a stern effort to arrest this worship immediately, with the risk of it inciting rebellion of some sort.

I think this is a very good theory as to his motivations. Nice post!

Malivon wrote:Hmm but instead of shaming him infront of gulliman and making the entire legion kneel before him and in a sense striking at the only thing that has given his son a purpose in life. Why not explain to him why he should not do it and the reprecussions it would have if he were to continue. Magus peered into the warp on many occassions and kept its true nature a closely guarded secret. I belive if he had of just talked to him before burning down his world and laying him and his entire legion low then calling them failures in the presence of another primarch Logar would have understood.

Unlikely, Lorgar was convinced that faith was the most important force in humanity. He may have been less petulant if the Emperor hadn't destroyed Monarchia, but knowledge of the Chaos powers would stoke his curiosity. So in the end, you have the same result of the Emperor denying his godhood, and Lorgar going out to find something that would answer his devotion.

I think what the Emperor was trying to accomplish was to create the webway while his sons mindlessly annihilated anything that was different from the Emperor's idea of human perfection. Then, with the webway in place and all Chaos-humans in the universe obliterated, humanity could go along with none the wiser about the true nature of the warp. He simply ran out of time, and yes, his rash actions with various Primarchs probably contributed to that.

In any case, Lorgar didn't really do much at all personally to spark the Heresy. Kor Phaeron corrupted Erebus, who in turn orchestrated Horus' fall. Horus' pride took over and the rest is history. Horus' ambition and pride would have probably eventually turned him against the Emperor regardless. And eventually he would have come face to face with the Ruinous Powers and we'd end up with the Horus Heresy all over again (though the scale may have been different).

The Emperor's handling of Lorgar was perhaps excessive and exacerbated the situation, but Lorgar was on a course for damnation regardless. It could be argued that the Emperor wasn't harsh enough, in that he actually spared Lorgar and his Legion of fanatics. What's far worse, I think, is his handling of Magnus. He should have been up-front with the most intelligent and psychically-gifted of his sons. If he told Magnus all he knew, Magnus wouldn't have been operating under the assumption that although the Great Ocean is inhabited by nebulous powers, some nefarious and others benign, that none a serious threat to the material realm. Then again, Magnus' desperation to save his sons would have probably pushed him to make some dark bargain anyway.

So perhaps what happened couldn't have happened any other way. Humanity as a whole was probably better off going about their individual lives until the universe ended.

Da Butcha wrote:

To me, what the Emperor was trying to accomplish on Monarchia would have been incredibly important. As I understand it, all strong emotions feed the warp. There wasn't a Slaanesh until the emotional excesses of the Eldar fed and coalesced into her/him/it.

Thus, the Emperor had some inkling that by spreading an increasing human population across the galaxy, he was potentially providing a huge amount of emotional energy into the warp. That energy would be available, whether the strong emotions were negative, like fear or hatred, or positive, like devotion, I assume.

Thus, it was really, really important that the growing Imperium not be dictated by emotion (even strong positive emotions like piety, adoration, and worship), but instead governed by rationality and intellect. The Word Bearers were directly undoing that careful plan.

The Emperor might have had a tough choice. Either allow understandable worship of him to increase, and definitely feed a gigantic amount of psychic energy into the warp, or make a stern effort to arrest this worship immediately, with the risk of it inciting rebellion of some sort.

I can't say anything intelligent about him playing his cards so close to his chest. I can see a lot of good reasons for doing so (if no one knows daemons exist, no one's going to deliberate summon them, etc.) and a lot of problems (how do you maintain trust when you have kept secrets). I don't feel that, even after all the stuff that has been written over the years, that we really have a good insight into the mindset of the Emperor.

I noticed that 4M2A said that 'not knowing' about Chaos doesn't protect you from corruption. Ironically, I think he's wrong about that. In our world, we don't view any data, itself, as inherently corrupting (for the most part). That assumption isn't part of the 40K universe. If you've ever read "The Lightning Tower" chapbook, Malcador even specifically says this to Rogal Dorn. He says, "Trying to understand it is a fool's errand. It would claim us too."

Now, if that is true, you can understand the Emperor a bit more. Not telling the Primarchs does leave them unprepared, but it doesn't expose them to Chaos. Think of a parent with an infectious disease (not that I'm claiming the Emperor was infected). Does the parent do more harm by neglecting their child, or by caring for it and exposing it to potential contagion? That's a hard choice, and a heart-breaking one.

The Heresy couldn't be prevented but diminished.
IMO, the major fail of the imperial operation was to allow certain first captains to corrupt Primarchs and Legions.
A few "accidents" may have divided the efforts of chaos into peacemeal uprisings, something the ioM could handle.

I think that, if the Emperor had mae all the Primarchs aware of Chaos/the warp etc the Heresy woudl have still happned.

It just would have been different Primarchs that went "dark". I think having knowledge abotu all this power and the potential psykic weapons it coudl enable woudl have caused certain primarchs to pursue and explore it under the pretense of "for the good of the Imperium we need to know how to control it".

I think Magnus still would have fallen, with the Emperor endorsing psykers Russ might have been more on-side and even sided with Magus in finding a great weapon for the Imperium. Warfare purist Fulgrim would have most likely remained loyal.

There are certain Primarchs who would have fallen regardless of Chaos IMO (i'm thinking Perturabo and Nighthaunter specifically) since their falling was due more to how their legions were treated or their background and they kind of went along with the Heresy for those reasons.

Da Butcha- If chaos decided to get you on side not knowing about it won't help. They will still be able to send daemons to persuade you to turn- not knowing will make it easier for them to convince you it is a good idea. Understanding about chaos means you know that daemons lie and you should kill it. Not knowing stops you choosing chaos but it won't stop chaos coming to get you.

Praxiss- The Night Haunter was one of the primarchs that could have been truly saved. He had no loyalty to chaos and only joined because he disliked the emperor. Throughout the great crusade the Emperor used the NL very successfully and they always got results. They did exactly what he wanted and he supported there methods. However as soon as people complained that they went too far he let them take the fall rather than standing up for them. If he had amde it clear the NL were only doing what had to be done they wouldn't have joined Horus. The NL was more interested in doing the right thing than winning. When he saw the emperor would break his own rules to win he realised the emperor was as fallible as everyone else he decided to show everyone else.

Fair enough. I thought the NLs were basically psycho warriro who trived on terror. My fluff knowledge on them isnt great.

So, assuming that the Emperor had given the Primarchs all the detaisl abotu Chaos. Who do you think would have turned (coz i still think some of them would have).

My belief is that Russ and Magnus would have fallen. Magnus when he wanted to know more and control more about chaos; and Russ because he would have believed he could tame chaos in the name of the Emperor.

Angron might have fallen anyway due the fact that he is just plain mental. Also if he knew more about how dangerous psykers can be i can see him leading a crusdae to take them all out and falling to Khorne that way.

Emperor's Children were doomed from the moment Fulgrim found the demonblade. It's possible that One of the legions could have become Plague Marines if their primarch had thought that was the only way to save them. Magnus seems to have been leading his legion to its doom as well.
Though these would be isolated instances without Horus as the corrupt legions would not have been able to organise themselves and would have become more disasters for the emperor and struck from Imperial memory like the other two.
Angron and Peturabo could have been saved from the conspiracy had Horus not involved them.

As Warmaster, Horus was able to be used as a rallying point for the traitors, none of the other primarchs could have been as useful for the heresy due to them not being the man in charge. Without Horus involved he could have waged war against the traitors himself, there would have been no dropsite massacre, the loyalists amongst the traitor legions might have had a chance to get away too and they numbered in the thousands. With Horus at the head of an army consisting of the Sons of Horus (assuming he would have still changed the name), Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard and possibly the Iron Warriors and maybe the World Eaters too, the traitors could have been dealt with without a major civil war.

Praxiss wrote:
Angron might have fallen anyway due the fact that he is just plain mental.

Angron was liable to betray the Emperor because he disliked him and saw him as cowardly. While Kharn did much it dissuade him of this ntion, the fact that the Emperor remained on Terra would have furthered Angron's view that he was unworthy and like those who had forced him to fight as a gladiator.

cadbren wrote:Emperor's Children were doomed from the moment Fulgrim found the demonblade.

I disagree with this. If Horus hadn't been the one to lead the rebellion, then Fulgrim might not have turned. Without Fulgrim coming into direct conflict with a Loyalist brother that he loved so much, he'd be unlikely to give into the Daemon. I'd also suggest Sanguinius could also (had he chosen to) have launched a similar scale rebellion.

The Death Guard were doomed by Typhus, so I figure they'd have turned anyway.

How sweet would an alternate timeline story be with the BAs turning traitor? The whole legion succumbs to the black rage and goes off the deep-end. Things might have beena lt different.

Praxiss wrote:How sweet would an alternate timeline story be with the BAs turning traitor? The whole legion succumbs to the black rage and goes off the deep-end. Things might have beena lt different.

That wouldn't turn them to Chaos though, just renegade, and a Legion without a Primarch would struggle against those lead by one.

I admit I don't know much about what happened at Monarchia, but several sources in the fluff contradict this "Ignorance protects against Chaos" idea. While some may deliberately worship the ruinous powers, falling to Chaos is seldom depicted as a voluntary choice, rather as the (mostly) unwanted consequence of an individual's actions.

Take Cardinal Xaphan and his followers on Vraks, for example. They fell to Chaos by practising a fundamentalist deviation of the Imperial Faith. Giving in to Chaos was not a conscious decision for the Vraksians, it was their religious frenzy, the wave of uncontrolled fanaticism and emotion, what drew Chaos towards them.

the Emperor should have told his sons about the true nature of the Warp.


even Magnus didn't know the true nature of the warps inhabitants.




as far as the Thousand sons go, the Emperor should have played it safe and told Russ directly what to do rather then go through Horus(who Magnus had warned him about, and got in trouble for how he warned him)

the Emperor was too trusting of Horus, and the Galaxy in general, possably to the point of being concieted. Nothing could threaten him and everyone that was powerful liked him.


The Emperor could have taken some life lessons from previous rulers, paranoia keeps you alive.

Why would you think that The Emperor wasn't paranoid?

he clearly trusted horus completely.


so much so that it wasn't until the Emperor boarded Horuses Battlebarge over a burning Terra that he realized the truth. Horus was irredeemable

Praxiss wrote:How sweet would an alternate timeline story be with the BAs turning traitor? The whole legion succumbs to the black rage and goes off the deep-end. Things might have beena lt different.

The Black Rage didn't exist until after Sanguinius' death. Out of all the Primarchs, Sanguinius was by far the least likely to rebel.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Agent_Tremolo wrote:I admit I don't know much about what happened at Monarchia

When the Emperor first arrived to find Lorgar, they threw weeks of religious celebrations in his honor, and the Emperor didn't make a peep about it. For the next century of conquests, the Emperor was fully aware of Lorgar's MO, and still never made an issue of it. Then, all of a sudden, the Emperor sends the Ultramarines (Lorgar and Guilliman had a lot of friction between them) to massacre half the population of Lorgar's home planet, and then annihilate the city with an orbital bombardment. Then the Emperor sent down Malcador to dress Lorgar down, and when Lorgar refused to listen to some punk-ass human, the Emperor finally showed up himself, made Lorgar and his entire Legion kneel in the dust of their annihilated city (while Guilliman and the Ultras remained standing and watched), and said everything Lorgar had won and done was worthless and without merit and out of all the Legions, Lorgar and the Word Bearers were the only utter failures. Then he assigned 20 Custodes (who in private conversation referred to Lorgar as 'that weakling primarch') to babysit the Legion, and peaced out.

Grey Templar wrote:he clearly trusted horus completely.


so much so that it wasn't until the Emperor boarded Horuses Battlebarge over a burning Terra that he realized the truth. Horus was irredeemable

He trusted Horus for obvious reasons, that's a single person which does not make The Emperor a generally trusting person, which leads to thinking he was naive, which is actually naive to think that could be true. The Emperor clearly wasn't naive. Forgetting the whole plan about Chaos?

I think he was indeed naive, naive to believe that his sons wouldn't be possessed by all too-human frailties.

Naive in some parts, but it's odd to think of him as that generally, as he's written as a being that transcends any human failings like naivety.

The whole idea of creating primarchs was a bad idea. He created a group individuals who had his power and drive but that lacked his knoweledge and experience. He had time to overcome his flaws before he gained power, but they didn't. Expecting people who had been gods on their own planets to follow him without question is naive.

The whole idea of creating the Primarchs was a great. The only problem with it was what happened out of The Emperors control, it wasn't his intention for them to end up stranded on huamn planets where they were shaped by their environments.

The Astartes weren't a brilliant leap either. I mean, yes, the galaxy is a scary place and you need some even scarier SOBs to conquer it, but assuming you've won, what then? Do they become jailers and police officers? That question is what drove Horus to the brink.

The whole idea of creating the Primarchs was a great idea. The only problem with it was what happened out of The Emperors control.

The Horus Heresy suggests otherwise. The emperor should have known they would have human flaws (like he did) so giving them complete power without them gaining experience is stupid. The IoM work because it had one unquestionable leader. It didn't matter if he made the occasional mistake because no one would question him so the imperium would continue. If anyone question his authority they would be ignored because he viewed like a god. By making the primarchs he created his own competition. They had all the ambition of the emperor and the power to question his actions. People won't notice if a human questions the Emperor but if a primarch disagrees they may follow them instead.

The Space marines are ok because they are restricted. They don't have any power over the imperium, if they turn on the IoM they would be destroyed. Sure they less effective this but it's not worth the risk. Unlike the primarchs they are still treated like humans (albeit very powerful ones) and aren't given complete authority.

Praxiss wrote:How sweet would an alternate timeline story be with the BAs turning traitor? The whole legion succumbs to the black rage and goes off the deep-end. Things might have beena lt different.

A group of posters on the B&C forum actually covered something similar to this in a "what if" fanfic called the Dornian Heresy. There were a few nudges in different directions which caused the Traitor and Loyalist legions to swap places. It actually wasn't a bad read.

FYI, in their version the Blood Angels succumbed to Nurgle while the Space Wolves were the ones to turn to Khorne.


More to the point though, IMO, the Emperor had wanted some of his sons to fall to Chaos with an eye to having the chaos gods investing too much of themselves into their chosen champion Primarchs, and then being eternally weakened when those champions fell. There's simply no other way to explain how badly he handled some of his sons (Angron, Motarion, and Lorgar immediately come to mind).

The problem was that he hadn't anticipated as many of his sons falling as did.

As mighty as the Emperor was he should have been able to fly out to Istavvan and laid waste to all the legions with his powers I am sure if he can put 10000 marines and a primarch on their knees without breaking a sweat Istavvan would not have taken much more effort. IMO its seems that he held back in hopes of redeeming his sons namely horus. Then again as rampant as chaos was running through the whole galaxy leaving the palace may have put him at the mercy of the gods if he tried to intervene in any other way other than fighting above terra.