Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

One of the key points of the crusade was that the bile xenos would need to be wiped out otherwise humanity would forever be at risk or at war. However considering that old xenos exist I guess that this wasn’t so important during the golden age when humanity was all over the galaxy.

So what happened to make him such a xenophobe? Girlfriend leave him for an eldar?

I think it was simply the same egotism that propelled the rest of his work - Emps planned to rule, and not just be stuck on the throne, so *he* wasn't going out up with xenos.

It was that same drive to have a completely unopposed empire, with him as the head.

I think its much like how the Imperium distrust AI to the point of making servitors instead of true AI. One uprising hurt them hard with the Men of Metal rising up against them.

I believe the same was true of a Xenos race attacking them which resulted in dogma that became xenophobia to obliterate all that was not humanity. In many ways the Imperium is fearful of all it cannot control - Xenos, Machines etc... Anything that might rise to challenge it is an enemy to be destroyed.

It’s pretty much scorched earth.

First, remember that the Galaxy is unimaginably vast. Mind bogglingly huge. And even during the height of the Imperium, man’s domain was pretty far flung.

So the answer makes a certain amount of sense when you’re aiming to conquer the whole of the thing. Vast as your resources may be, they remain ultimately finite.

Better to do a thorough job on your first pass, than risk leaving any part exposed to raiding etc,, because as you expand further, those supply lines will be ever more stretched.

You also still require a certain level of Rule by Consent. The more secure your realm, the happier your populace. The happier your populace, the lower the risk of rebellion.

If you sweep through, make grandiose promises of fraternity and protection, then fail to follow through on that? Poor show, and makes further compliance ever trickier.

Plus, The Emperor was/is by our measure completely insane, as he simply exists on a level beyond our comprehension. So to second guess his actions seems tricky!

 Overread wrote:
I think its much like how the Imperium distrust AI to the point of making servitors instead of true AI. One uprising hurt them hard with the Men of Metal rising up against them.

I believe the same was true of a Xenos race attacking them which resulted in dogma that became xenophobia to obliterate all that was not humanity. In many ways the Imperium is fearful of all it cannot control - Xenos, Machines etc... Anything that might rise to challenge it is an enemy to be destroyed.

If you had to guess which race had him scared which would it be? I’d say Orks. Part of me thinks that the eldar have such a good knowledge of humanity because there was a time when they coexisted to some extent. But the. They caused the warp storms so maybe Emps blames them for the empire being cutoff off.

But imagine the first time a waaaaaaaaaaagh comes to the front door

I dont think the relationship between races in the golden age has ever been elaborated on, nor do I think his xenophobic mindset. Makes a lot of sense from pure empire building perspective. Why let them live and cause trouble, potentially forever?

But if I was to put money on what actually made him so hardlined on it I would pick the Birth of Slanneesh.

Imagine being the emperor at the time. The Golden Age is in full swing. Knowledge, expansion, reason define the human race at the time. For the most part his ideal. Then watch as it is all destroyed in a moment. Also the kind of crazy pain he must have had to endure as a psyker alive during the birth screams of a god. Yikes.

His goals seem to align with molding the human race into something that can put an end to the chaos gods and all Xenos. Seems like a logical line of reasoning after watching the galaxy tear itself apart due to their actions and knock the human civilzation near back to the stone age as a happy accident.

mrFickle wrote:
One of the key points of the crusade was that the bile xenos would need to be wiped out otherwise humanity would forever be at risk or at war. However considering that old xenos exist I guess that this wasn’t so important during the golden age when humanity was all over the galaxy.

So what happened to make him such a xenophobe? Girlfriend leave him for an eldar?

The Age of Strife.

 Halfton wrote:
I dont think the relationship between races in the golden age has ever been elaborated on, nor do I think his xenophobic mindset. Makes a lot of sense from pure empire building perspective. Why let them live and cause trouble, potentially forever?

But if I was to put money on what actually made him so hardlined on it I would pick the Birth of Slanneesh.

Imagine being the emperor at the time. The Golden Age is in full swing. Knowledge, expansion, reason define the human race at the time. For the most part his ideal. Then watch as it is all destroyed in a moment. Also the kind of crazy pain he must have had to endure as a psyker alive during the birth screams of a god. Yikes.

His goals seem to align with molding the human race into something that can put an end to the chaos gods and all Xenos. Seems like a logical line of reasoning after watching the galaxy tear itself apart due to their actions and knock the human civilzation near back to the stone age as a happy accident.

This is a good point, perhaps the birth of slaneesh was quite traumatic to a psycher of his power and he never never the same again.

The emperor wasn't twisted into a bad person, he just was a bad person. Nobody who sets themselves up as a prospective dictator of the entire galaxy is going to be a good guy, it doesn't matter whether he wears a big suit of shiny golden armor and makes pretty speeches.

In fact, it probably makes it more certain he'll be pretty much pure evil if he does.

The Emperor wasn't in charge during the Golden Age, but was scheming in the background (going to Molech for example).

Are we considering the Golden Age and the Dark Age of Technology as the same thing - the time immediately before the Age of Strife?

Yea just to echo what others have said; the Emperor has humanity's best interests at heart and Xenos present a constant and dire threat to humanity.

He hasn't done a heel turn or been twisted, he has always been portrayed as prioritising humanity and taking any necessary steps to ensure it's ascendance!

the_scotsman wrote:
The emperor wasn't twisted into a bad person, he just was a bad person. Nobody who sets themselves up as a prospective dictator of the entire galaxy is going to be a good guy, it doesn't matter whether he wears a big suit of shiny golden armor and makes pretty speeches.

In fact, it probably makes it more certain he'll be pretty much pure evil if he does.

Unless his prescience shows him that said dictatorship is necessary to guide humanity through an exceptionally hazardous period. See Emperor Leto II and the Golden Path. It's important to note that the Emperor didn't seem interested in ruling all of humanity until the Age of Strife.

 gorgon wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The emperor wasn't twisted into a bad person, he just was a bad person. Nobody who sets themselves up as a prospective dictator of the entire galaxy is going to be a good guy, it doesn't matter whether he wears a big suit of shiny golden armor and makes pretty speeches.

In fact, it probably makes it more certain he'll be pretty much pure evil if he does.

Unless his prescience shows him that said dictatorship is necessary to guide humanity through an exceptionally hazardous period. See Emperor Leto II and the Golden Path. It's important to note that the Emperor didn't seem interested in ruling all of humanity until the Age of Strife.

This ^

I always saw it as inspired by The Golden Path.

beast_gts wrote:
The Emperor wasn't in charge during the Golden Age, but was scheming in the background (going to Molech for example).

Are we considering the Golden Age and the Dark Age of Technology as the same thing - the time immediately before the Age of Strife?

Yes as far as I am aware they are the same thing but golden if you were there at the time and dark if your looking back. I totally believe that the emperor was content pulling the strings from behind the curtain and humanity’s expanse was one of prepare defenders rather than onslaught. Something changed both those things and it was either frustration at the loss of progress or something or someone did something so bad that the emperor decided to go full paycho


Automatically Appended Next Post:

beast_gts wrote:
The Emperor wasn't in charge during the Golden Age, but was scheming in the background (going to Molech for example).

Are we considering the Golden Age and the Dark Age of Technology as the same thing - the time immediately before the Age of Strife?

I thought molech was sometime Just before or after the unification wars and not during the golden age. If it’s true that the emperor gained a lot of his powers from the chaos gods at molech then that takes prescience during the age of strife off the table

 gorgon wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The emperor wasn't twisted into a bad person, he just was a bad person. Nobody who sets themselves up as a prospective dictator of the entire galaxy is going to be a good guy, it doesn't matter whether he wears a big suit of shiny golden armor and makes pretty speeches.

In fact, it probably makes it more certain he'll be pretty much pure evil if he does.

Unless his prescience shows him that said dictatorship is necessary to guide humanity through an exceptionally hazardous period. See Emperor Leto II and the Golden Path. It's important to note that the Emperor didn't seem interested in ruling all of humanity until the Age of Strife.

There's no "unless" there. regardless of whether a fascist dictatorship is set up due to a prescient divine vision or, as it always has in the real world, someone lying about having a prescient divine vision, the consequence is identical and the actions you took are identical.

In fact, when discussing morality generally, most people place a thoroughly pre-planned heinous act above a spur of the moment/accidental one in terms of immorality.

mrFickle wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
The Emperor wasn't in charge during the Golden Age, but was scheming in the background (going to Molech for example).

Are we considering the Golden Age and the Dark Age of Technology as the same thing - the time immediately before the Age of Strife?

I thought molech was sometime Just before or after the unification wars and not during the golden age. If it’s true that the emperor gained a lot of his powers from the chaos gods at molech then that takes prescience during the age of strife off the table

Lexicanum wrote:Sometime during the Dark Age of Technology, it is said that the Emperor along with several other Perpetuals such as Alivia Sureka traveled to Molech on a one-way spacecraft. There, they found a gateway into the Realm of Chaos which the Emperor entered, making a bargain with the Dark Gods and becoming imbued with new powers and the knowledge to create the Primarchs. The Emperor left Sureka behind to look after the Gate.

The Age of Strife was after the Emperor's visit to Molech - I now wonder if his 'deal' with the Chaos Gods had anything to do with the start of the Age of Strife (warp storms, psykers & daemonic possession)?

Lexicanum wrote:Sometime during the Dark Age of Technology, it is said that the Emperor along with several other Perpetuals such as Alivia Sureka traveled to Molech on a one-way spacecraft. There, they found a gateway into the Realm of Chaos which the Emperor entered, making a bargain with the Dark Gods and becoming imbued with new powers and the knowledge to create the Primarchs. The Emperor left Sureka behind to look after the Gate.

The Age of Strife was after the Emperor's visit to Molech - I now wonder if his 'deal' with the Chaos Gods had anything to do with the start of the Age of Strife (warp storms, psykers & daemonic possession)?

mrFickle wrote:

Lexicanum wrote:Sometime during the Dark Age of Technology, it is said that the Emperor along with several other Perpetuals such as Alivia Sureka traveled to Molech on a one-way spacecraft. There, they found a gateway into the Realm of Chaos which the Emperor entered, making a bargain with the Dark Gods and becoming imbued with new powers and the knowledge to create the Primarchs. The Emperor left Sureka behind to look after the Gate.

It also begs the question was the emperor one of many like him and his only real power at some point was immortality.

Just another reason why perpetuals are a stupid addition to the setting.

Thinking about it further......

40k is ample justification for His xenocidal approach.

Look at The Imperium in its current state, where The Great Crusade failed in the most spectacular way. Xenos forces left, right and centre, leaving The Imperium in a constant state of warfare.

That causes a constant drain on resources, and prevents any meaningful stability outside of relatively few systems (such as Ultramar).

Had The Great Crusade fully completed? No Eldar. No Orks. No Traitors.

Nids, Tau and Necrons would be the only ‘big players’, and even then the Tau would’ve been wiped out long ago, whether or not they had a chance to get to the stage we see them at now.

Tyranids would be facing the full military might of The Imperium. Hive Fleets may be large, but not insurmountably so. In particular, heavy space borne defeats are the key to longer term eradication, as the Hivemind can not replace those losses without new biomass.

Necrons? Well.....bit trickier, as one could say they’re the ultimate infiltrator. But with piecemeal awakening, it’s be easier to deal with each Tomb as it awoke in turn.

I alway thought the purpose of the Great Crusade wasnt really about killing all the Xenos, but to create a stable enough status quo to buy time to finish the Webway project (dimly recall some fiction where some imperial admits the iom cant beat the eldar without a degree of control over the webway) as once thats done the material plane ceases to matter

So, the Emperor is a shadowy figure 'guiding' humanity for most of human history, including it's greatest height and it's fall through the Dark Age of technology. We know that human empires coexisted with alien races in this time, and we know that the Emperor was around in the shadows then.

The only point where he actually decides he's gotta go be a dictator and take over everything is the Age of Strife. Given his powers he probably COULD have done that at any point prior, and didn't. So there must be a reason why he went from 'guide humanity' to 'the only way is a completely unified humanity with me at the top;.

The obvious developments at this point is that the warp becomes way more turbulent, a new chaos god emerges, and (completely coincidentally?) humanity starts to begin the slow evolution into a psychic race.

I think that it's the emergence of psykers that is the catalyst. Humanity is, at that point in time, horribly weakened and divided, vulnerable to alien invasion, and new psykers could easily corrupt and warpify whole planets. At that point, he takes the decision that the ONLY way to save humanity is to remove all external threats (xenos), to stop using the warp for travel (webway project) and to ruthlessly control what planets do regarding warp-worship and psykers (imperial truth/black ships).

And since he borrowed power from the warp to do this (primarchs) he's only got a limited amount of time to get it done before chaos foil him. After the primarchs are scattered, he has even LESS time, since he has to lead the first part of the great crusade itself, and he needs every possible tool available to get this done as fast as possible. Hence, brutal dictatorship and ideas of manifest destiny.

The whole thing needs to happen while chaos is still reeling after the birth of Slaanesh, as fast as possible before the gods realise what he's doing. This rush explains a LOT of the obvious 'mistakes' we see in the Heresy series.



.

You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

Except they did coexist, as the eldar still retained control of the galaxy during this time. I'd argue the reason the DAoT was even possible was because the eldar kept the orks away with their endless automata armies.

Humanity was at its most advanced during that time and even had empires across the galaxy. But it never challenged the eldar empire for supremacy and there was never a point where they fought a war of conquest against them. The Fall of the eldar relies entirely on their empire being so safe from attack, that they had 0 cares about anything, allowing them to focus on decadence. Having to be aware of fighting wars against humanity would have made this impossible.

The eldar automata armies were unassailable. They were able to keep the empire completely protected for the tens of thousands of years it took for them to Fall.

Aash wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
The emperor wasn't twisted into a bad person, he just was a bad person. Nobody who sets themselves up as a prospective dictator of the entire galaxy is going to be a good guy, it doesn't matter whether he wears a big suit of shiny golden armor and makes pretty speeches.

In fact, it probably makes it more certain he'll be pretty much pure evil if he does.

Unless his prescience shows him that said dictatorship is necessary to guide humanity through an exceptionally hazardous period. See Emperor Leto II and the Golden Path. It's important to note that the Emperor didn't seem interested in ruling all of humanity until the Age of Strife.

This ^

I always saw it as inspired by The Golden Path.

One of the most fascinating characters ever written. Love that book.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

How do you know this?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

Except they did coexist, as the eldar still retained control of the galaxy during this time. I'd argue the reason the DAoT was even possible was because the eldar kept the orks away with their endless automata armies.

Humanity was at its most advanced during that time and even had empires across the galaxy. But it never challenged the eldar empire for supremacy and there was never a point where they fought a war of conquest against them. The Fall of the eldar relies entirely on their empire being so safe from attack, that they had 0 cares about anything, allowing them to focus on decadence. Having to be aware of fighting wars against humanity would have made this impossible.

The eldar automata armies were unassailable. They were able to keep the empire completely protected for the tens of thousands of years it took for them to Fall.

Perhaps the men of iron and the eldar automata created a status of even power and security that meant war wasn’t necessary

mrFickle wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

How do you know this?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
You need to understand something.

DAOT Humanity were scary. Really scary. They didn't need to co-exist with anything.

The Eldar look at humanity and think "at least they've toned down the xenos genocide recently."

Except they did coexist, as the eldar still retained control of the galaxy during this time. I'd argue the reason the DAoT was even possible was because the eldar kept the orks away with their endless automata armies.

Humanity was at its most advanced during that time and even had empires across the galaxy. But it never challenged the eldar empire for supremacy and there was never a point where they fought a war of conquest against them. The Fall of the eldar relies entirely on their empire being so safe from attack, that they had 0 cares about anything, allowing them to focus on decadence. Having to be aware of fighting wars against humanity would have made this impossible.

The eldar automata armies were unassailable. They were able to keep the empire completely protected for the tens of thousands of years it took for them to Fall.

Perhaps the men of iron and the eldar automata created a status of even power and security that meant war wasn’t necessary

I belive the term you're looking for is "mutrally assured destruction"

And although the destruction was mutual the humans never got to fire back......until now

The Emperor's 'deal' with the Ruinous Powers could explain it somewhat. Yes, he was under pressure to unite humanity before Chaos could definitively strike back, but as we all know, coming into contact with Chaos in and of itself is corrupting. The Emperor of course kept his overall agenda, but his willingness to go to any lengths to complete it and his seemingly lack of interest in individual human life could be a symptom of coming into contact with the Chaos gods, hollowing out part of his humanity.

 ArcaneHorror wrote:
The Emperor's 'deal' with the Ruinous Powers could explain it somewhat. Yes, he was under pressure to unite humanity before Chaos could definitively strike back, but as we all know, coming into contact with Chaos in and of itself is corrupting. The Emperor of course kept his overall agenda, but his willingness to go to any lengths to complete it and his seemingly lack of interest in individual human life could be a symptom of coming into contact with the Chaos gods, hollowing out part of his humanity.

We also don't know if anyone else was manipulating him - Malcador came up with the name / title 'Emperor', for example.

We also don't know if anyone else was manipulating him - Malcador came up with the name / title 'Emperor', for example.

I didn’t realise that. Is this recent or old information, and what was the context of it?