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So this came up in another thread and I was wondering if there's a consensus on the story of the Emperor himself needing saving from an ork warboss by Horus.

Given his incredible psychic ability and origins, how could this have happened?

It didn't. Right after Horus "saving" the Emperor, the Emperor then went and instagibbed an entire Ork horde with no issue at all. He's capable of killing souls and unmaking enemies. Even a Beta Psyker like Khayon is capable of instantly killing enemies via dissolving them.

Unless you're on the same level of psychic power as the Emperor (which none are, as he's the strongest psyker in the galaxy/universe), you just roll over and die. Hell, not even Horus was a "true" threat, in that Chaos both knew he was going to lose, and intended for him to fail and die in the first place.

Not even Horus, empowered by the Chaos Gods and having just cast down Sanguinius (one of the strongest Primarchs considering that smacking down Bloodthirsters was a hobby of his), stood up to the Emperor. While we don't know the details of the fight, the Emperor completely erased Horus from existence despite all of his power.

The Ork was no match for the Emperor's psychic powers, and he would not have stood a chance normally. The Emperor did it to bond with Horus.

That doesn't mean the Warlord was weak. Far from it. Physically he was the most badass ork ever seen and from his descriptions he makes Ghazghkull look like a snotling.

Also I just looked at the material itself. The Emperor was never in danger, everyone just keeps taking it out of context lol. After being "saved", the Emperor then kills the entire Ork host with mind bullets in the same book.

This is why you actually get context on the event before spreading false rumors.

So this was covered in the Horus Heresy books?

 Scrabb wrote:
So this was covered in the Horus Heresy books?

It's from the Horus Heresy. Wolf of Ash and Fire.

I'd go with the Gork and Mork theory. It appears they are puppeteering and protecting Ghazghkull as he continues their plot to create enough Waaaagh! in the galaxy that Gork and Mork will be summoned forth and begin Ragnarork. More then once the Ork gods appear to have saved Ghazzy in a sudden burst of green energy. In the Warp the Ork gods are powerhouses able to shrug off hits from the other powers with a laugh (probably because Orks have the most population and seem unified, at least, in their religious beliefs). I assume for the vast majority of the time Gork and Mork are just preoccupied having Orky type fun in the Warp but recently the fluff is showing their hands being played through Ghazzy with the intent to increase the galactic waaagh! to some critical mass. I read here and there of psykers across the galaxy registering a momentary blip that was felt galaxy, the astronomicon even doing a very slight flicker. That was Ghazzy and his Orks after slaughtering all Tyranids on Octaria reaching extreme levels of Orky confidance. More orks are coming to his call and another tendril of Tyranids approaches. He's already making plans to leave when that conflict reaches a perpetual level so that he can increase the Waaagh! energy somewhere else in the galaxy.

So in conclusion I'd say Gork and Mork appear to, once every era or so, look up from whatever they are playfully killing and get involved with the material universe with actual plots. I'll go with the Gork and Mork theory and perhaps part way into that battle they got distracted and started playing 'Keep away' on Khorne allowing the Emporer and Horus the reprieve they needed.

Gods with ADHD, imagine that.

Probably a problem of adaptation of an older piece of fiction. In «modern» 40K the Primarchs and Emperor deeds are a bit overblown and inconsistent with older or outlier short story in my opinion. For exemple Angron is twelve feet tall but the 7 or 8 foot tall Kharn can wield his battle axe with one hand without any problem which means either Angron fights with hachets (unlikely) or the description of him has 12 feet tall are exageration caused by narrative biais and litterary language.

I think the idea of the Emperor letting himslef to bond or test Horus is properly ridiculous. Horus would know that the Emperor was more than capable of destroying that ork. I personnaly think that the powers and prestance of both the Primarchs, the Emperor and their Space Marines, to a certain extand, were exagerated by the author volonteerly to make the book feel biblical in style.

To me, the truth is that the Emperor, a powerful and ageless psyker, got attack by a huge warboss who managed to crush him and almost kill him and was unable to use his powers to kill him because he needs concentration to use them. The warboss was about has big has an ork can get and would compare nicely with warbosses like Nazdreg or Ghazkhull who are the two most powerful orks warlord of 40K.

Cool. And it explains a story that predates these books? (I heard about this a long time ago and I'm trying to line up my facts)

The Emperor was taxed too much by powering the Asternomicon. Nearly killed him. Realized he needed to take a break and gave Horus the job to finish up with the Great Crusade while he went back and focused on building an Imperial webway to side step warp travel.

Inkubas is right. The Emperor was powering the Astronomicon from many light years away, thus using most of his psychic might. And the Orks were using some new kind of plasma tech, which overloaded the Emperors defenses. After Horus saved him the Emperor realized he couldn't continue being on the front lines AND powering the Astronomicon so he retired to Terra to power it and work on administration and the webway

Orks are the most psychically powerful creatures in the galaxy, they naturally distort the laws of physics and if a powerful enough ork were to face the emperor it wouldn't be inconceivable that his psychic powers would be unable to hurt him. And as far as natural strength goes orks have brute force in excess so one capable of besting a primarch isn't too far fetched, we must always take in to account the emperor can be hurt.

There is not ONE recorded instance of a Primarch being bested by an Ork.
The only thing I can think of is Thrakka fighting the Dark Angel Captain (Belial) and winning.

@Inkubas

Ghazkhull didn't fought Belial, he crushed him and his bodyguards very easily (in an older piece of fluff they allude to the fact that when they founded Belial body he had a broken back and ork graffiti on his armor). He has less respect for him has an ennemy than Yarrick.

But you are right up to certain point about orks and Primarchs. Yet, there is no record of Primarchs losing to anything and that doesn't mean they are invicible. The only exeption would be Daemon Primarchs which can be defeated by heroic Space Marines like Draigo, Calgar or Abbadon. In that spirit, a giant ork warboss like Ghazkhull or another of simillar size and intellect could resonnably pose a challenge.

Draigo is kind of an extreme example to use as a basis of ork warboss beating primarchs. He has some incredibly insane feats( like you know apparently being so strong that the chaos gods CANT kill him in the domain they have absolute power over wtf!)
Since you mentioned Yarrick you should remember that in the back story where he lost his arm and got the power klaw he also beheaded the warboss he was fighting with his power sword( he is a stink'n commissar for crying out loud!)
I find it HIGHLY unlikely that the emperor was actually in mortal danger from the ork that grabbed him, and I also firmly believe that it was a test for Horus.

@DoomShakalaka

From what I can see in the fluff, when it comes to heroic individuals, their origin doesn't really affect their prowess. Heroes are heroes no matter if they are human, orks, Space Marines or Primarchs. The exemple of Yarrick killing a minor ork warboss in single combat is a good exemple, so is the story of Canoness Praxedes killing two Hive Tyrant (one at a time) in duel. This seems to demonstrate that even «normal» human can accomplish feets that even great Space Marines could fail. There is pretty no difference between the heroes of various armies. It's a bit like the superhero genre, no matter how powerful the other one is the weaker one can always find a way to win.

True that epronovost, well said. It's a fantasy setting so never count out the heroes from any army. I don't see how a normal commisar could behead even a normal Warboss but Yarrick isn't a normal commisar. The Beast was no normal Warboss as Ghazghkull today is no normal warboss. They are heroes who will perform fantastically unrealistic heroic stuff to advance the plot. Of course this is all for the fluff. Gamewise I'd have used a much more simpler unit to kill Yarrick from the table and moved on.
I too wouldn't have called it a fight between Ghazghkull and Belial. Poor Belial and his entourage got themselves pinned in a can and you said, Thraka had no respect for that opponant and didn't even give him a chance to defend himself. Thraka has loads of respect for Yarrick as does most Orks nowadays, odd for a soft oomy, they aren't even impressed when they see him but still respect him.

epronovost wrote:
@Inkubas

Ghazkhull didn't fought Belial, he crushed him and his bodyguards very easily (in an older piece of fluff they allude to the fact that when they founded Belial body he had a broken back and ork graffiti on his armor). He has less respect for him has an ennemy than Yarrick.

But you are right up to certain point about orks and Primarchs. Yet, there is no record of Primarchs losing to anything and that doesn't mean they are invicible. The only exeption would be Daemon Primarchs which can be defeated by heroic Space Marines like Draigo, Calgar or Abbadon. In that spirit, a giant ork warboss like Ghazkhull or another of simillar size and intellect could resonnably pose a challenge.

People really should actually bother too look up and read material before they talk about material they clearly no nothing about. Draigo didn't beat Mortarion in a fight. He was on the edge of death when he basically poked Morty in the eye with psyker powers, then banished Mortarion by speaking his Daemon name. Draigo otherwise was immediately about to die before he ripped out the daemon name from Mortarion's mind.

I do know that he also carved his predecessors name into Mortarians heart though. I don't know if it was easy or not as the previous poster claimed. Still an impressive feat though even if he just barely banished him.

Besides Draigo has plenty of OTHER stupidly over the top feats it's still not fair to put a ork warlord, or anything other than primarch level + , on the same level as him.

Where can I read Belial being beat up and desecrated by Thrakka ? I love DA lore and with the exception of a few things am really open to a lot of the fluff.

Uhmm...Golgotha after Ghazghkull left Armageddon the first time. Bit fuzzy on the memory, Ghazzy almost kills Belial, got him caught in a tight place if I recall. A broken drop pod seems to come to mind but I can't remember.

 Wyzilla wrote:
It didn't. Right after Horus "saving" the Emperor, the Emperor then went and instagibbed an entire Ork horde with no issue at all. He's capable of killing souls and unmaking enemies. Even a Beta Psyker like Khayon is capable of instantly killing enemies via dissolving them.

Unless you're on the same level of psychic power as the Emperor (which none are, as he's the strongest psyker in the galaxy/universe), you just roll over and die. Hell, not even Horus was a "true" threat, in that Chaos both knew he was going to lose, and intended for him to fail and die in the first place.

Not even Horus, empowered by the Chaos Gods and having just cast down Sanguinius (one of the strongest Primarchs considering that smacking down Bloodthirsters was a hobby of his), stood up to the Emperor. While we don't know the details of the fight, the Emperor completely erased Horus from existence despite all of his power.

By that logic, the Emperor could have done the entire Great Crusade and have stopped the entire Horus Heresy on his own. The Emperor is extremely powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make him. Horus certainly was a threat, considering that he actually killed the Emperor. The Emperor was able to defeat Horus only by focusing his entire psychic might. If the Ork overpowered him, he might not have been able to pull something like that off, especially not considering that Orky 'souls' are very different from Human ones, if Orks even have souls.

Horus was indeed a terrifying threat, but some of the hurt Horus did was because the Emperor didn't want to kill his favorite son, but no matter what, Horus empowered with the Chaos Gods is a huge foe. I mean, he killed Sanguinis and practically killed the Emperor in short order, so it wasn't like the Emporer was fighting a grot or anything.

To those wondering.

DA codex, 6th edition. Forget the page. But Belial and a small marine detachment (with some pfd) are attacked by telly porta from ghazgkulls warkrooza. Belial (like a DA) defends a power plant (thatnghazzy wanted to power his porta to bring in his bigga guns) loses the fight (quite handily. )

But then, is found by the rallying marines, formulated a different approach and eventually cuts off reinforcements to ghazzy and holds them back long enough to "win".

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
It didn't. Right after Horus "saving" the Emperor, the Emperor then went and instagibbed an entire Ork horde with no issue at all. He's capable of killing souls and unmaking enemies. Even a Beta Psyker like Khayon is capable of instantly killing enemies via dissolving them.

Unless you're on the same level of psychic power as the Emperor (which none are, as he's the strongest psyker in the galaxy/universe), you just roll over and die. Hell, not even Horus was a "true" threat, in that Chaos both knew he was going to lose, and intended for him to fail and die in the first place.

Not even Horus, empowered by the Chaos Gods and having just cast down Sanguinius (one of the strongest Primarchs considering that smacking down Bloodthirsters was a hobby of his), stood up to the Emperor. While we don't know the details of the fight, the Emperor completely erased Horus from existence despite all of his power.

By that logic, the Emperor could have done the entire Great Crusade and have stopped the entire Horus Heresy on his own. The Emperor is extremely powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make him. Horus certainly was a threat, considering that he actually killed the Emperor. The Emperor was able to defeat Horus only by focusing his entire psychic might. If the Ork overpowered him, he might not have been able to pull something like that off, especially not considering that Orky 'souls' are very different from Human ones, if Orks even have souls.

The Emperor could not have done the Crusade by his own. He is just one person, he can't hold any territory at all. He can only be in one place at a time and he had more things to do than fight and dig out holdouts to mindbullet them.

Mostly "fluff inconsistency, power should be reduced in other stories", except that kind of misses the point. The Emperor is supposed to be an exaggerated hero, much like the heroes of real-world mythology. Reducing his power in other stories would be missing the point. Even if he could have been killed by an ork in the "real" 30k, that's not who his character is in the 30k stories that exist in the "modern" setting.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
It didn't. Right after Horus "saving" the Emperor, the Emperor then went and instagibbed an entire Ork horde with no issue at all. He's capable of killing souls and unmaking enemies. Even a Beta Psyker like Khayon is capable of instantly killing enemies via dissolving them.

Unless you're on the same level of psychic power as the Emperor (which none are, as he's the strongest psyker in the galaxy/universe), you just roll over and die. Hell, not even Horus was a "true" threat, in that Chaos both knew he was going to lose, and intended for him to fail and die in the first place.

Not even Horus, empowered by the Chaos Gods and having just cast down Sanguinius (one of the strongest Primarchs considering that smacking down Bloodthirsters was a hobby of his), stood up to the Emperor. While we don't know the details of the fight, the Emperor completely erased Horus from existence despite all of his power.

By that logic, the Emperor could have done the entire Great Crusade and have stopped the entire Horus Heresy on his own. The Emperor is extremely powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make him. Horus certainly was a threat, considering that he actually killed the Emperor. The Emperor was able to defeat Horus only by focusing his entire psychic might. If the Ork overpowered him, he might not have been able to pull something like that off, especially not considering that Orky 'souls' are very different from Human ones, if Orks even have souls.

I suggest you actually read books featuring the Emperor before discussing with zero information on him. He is indeed fully capable of soloing entire armies of enemies, and wiped out an entire horde of super Orks after he sliced apart the super Ork Warboss and destroyed his soul. FFS, a "normal" alpha psyker's qualification is that they can destroy planets or solo armies. The Emperor is above this level of power, and he breaks the scale and forcing the creation of the "Alpha Plus" category.

Also, Horus didn't kill the Emperor, and he was never even supposed to win the fight in the first place. The whole goal of the Horus Heresy was to render the Imperium into its current state, with the Empeor stuck in a catatonic state.

Oh, and I completely forgot, but the Emperor is almost certainly a perpetual, meaning that being killed isn't even a problem for him.

When the truth is revealed that the emperor didn't actually finish off the ork war host, but he finally rolled a 4+ for Marbo's reserve roll.

When I read pre heresy Novell its always feals like a propaganda and religious writings . Don't get me wrong that's awesome and ads so much flavor to those books. But I feel like it's all to encourage imperium and so on... I think that Ork warboss could take out emperor or hours in a heat of the battle . I always remember begining of lotr when souron is defeated by an broken man with a broken sword svining it in a blind despair. It's always feals fine when we defeat god like creatures or gods in game's or movies because we are heroic humans! I think that a random ork rokit could wound or kill emperor but at the same time I can believe he survives a nuclear blast in the face ...

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
It didn't. Right after Horus "saving" the Emperor, the Emperor then went and instagibbed an entire Ork horde with no issue at all. He's capable of killing souls and unmaking enemies. Even a Beta Psyker like Khayon is capable of instantly killing enemies via dissolving them.

Unless you're on the same level of psychic power as the Emperor (which none are, as he's the strongest psyker in the galaxy/universe), you just roll over and die. Hell, not even Horus was a "true" threat, in that Chaos both knew he was going to lose, and intended for him to fail and die in the first place.

Not even Horus, empowered by the Chaos Gods and having just cast down Sanguinius (one of the strongest Primarchs considering that smacking down Bloodthirsters was a hobby of his), stood up to the Emperor. While we don't know the details of the fight, the Emperor completely erased Horus from existence despite all of his power.

By that logic, the Emperor could have done the entire Great Crusade and have stopped the entire Horus Heresy on his own. The Emperor is extremely powerful, but not nearly as powerful as you make him. Horus certainly was a threat, considering that he actually killed the Emperor. The Emperor was able to defeat Horus only by focusing his entire psychic might. If the Ork overpowered him, he might not have been able to pull something like that off, especially not considering that Orky 'souls' are very different from Human ones, if Orks even have souls.

I suggest you actually read books featuring the Emperor before discussing with zero information on him. He is indeed fully capable of soloing entire armies of enemies, and wiped out an entire horde of super Orks after he sliced apart the super Ork Warboss and destroyed his soul. FFS, a "normal" alpha psyker's qualification is that they can destroy planets or solo armies. The Emperor is above this level of power, and he breaks the scale and forcing the creation of the "Alpha Plus" category.

Also, Horus didn't kill the Emperor, and he was never even supposed to win the fight in the first place. The whole goal of the Horus Heresy was to render the Imperium into its current state, with the Empeor stuck in a catatonic state.

Oh, and I completely forgot, but the Emperor is almost certainly a perpetual, meaning that being killed isn't even a problem for him.

No need to be so heated about it chill man no one is attacking you. I understand you are passionate about this but take it easy.

Anyway I think it is fair to say that between the immense amount of psychic focus he needed to commit to the Astronomicon a feat only he could manage even in his Alpha Plus class (Malcador turned into warp dust doing it ON the throne for a short period of time compared to the emperor's years of doing it during the cursade light years away), and the fact that this wasn't the beginning of the battle it is quite possible that he could have been "killed" as much as someone who is probably a perpetual can be killed anyway.

With that You have to consider that this Ork Warlord was probably not alone. Typically Warbosses are surrounded by an entourage of the strongest and meanest orks in his warband. It would also be fair to assume that he was accompanied by several Warboss sized orks as one with an army strong enough to get through to the emperor would have to be even bigger than typical Warbosses. With that in mind The ork warlord probably wouldn't have even touched the emperor in a 1v1 no holds barred fight. But a preoccupied and straining emperor being caught off his guard by a massive and monstrous ork Warlord the likes of which hasn't been seen since isn't too far fetched. Many a great man and/or army has been ended by letting their guard down, underestimating their foe and/or spreading their strength too thin.

Look at the incident where orks looted a tau craft passed a bunch of authentication codes and checks(something highly impressive for the dull greenskins typical behavior) and managed to get on board and destroy their docking station allowing the rest of their forces to take out the now undersupplied superior Tau fleet. Not taking the utmost care especially when fighting the highly unpredictable orks can prove a fatal encounter. Again in a 1v1 the Warlord would more than likely die faster than a snotling shot through a Shokk Attack Gun into an Imperator Class Titan. But under the conditions presented I think it could be possible. Hell one ork warlord in recent history looted an entire fething planet. Anything is possible with orks.