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This is not a thread to discuss the species of the Emperor.
It does not matter if he is a human, an Old One, the Hive Mind, or a lost C'Tan.
All I want to know is, in your opinion, is the Emperor a good guy or a bad guy?

A good Emperor would have humanity's well-being as his first priority.
A good Emperor could still be a manipulative er, but his messings around would be for the good of humankind.
A good Emperor wouldn't abandon the Great Crusade for a chance at godhood.

A bad Emperor would be trying to gain and hold power only for himself and not care about humanuty at all.
A bad Emperor would screw around with things for personal gain.
A bad Emperor would abandon his "sons" and his people in a moment.

This is what I am worrying about; the eventual reveal (during the HH series, probably) of what the Emperor is/was really up to. There is evidence that he is indeed a manipulative dunghill (Void Dragon) but this is offset by his apparent desire to hold humans together through any means possible. His actions during the Great Crusade seem to be noble, but he still forces his dogma on others and wages war with unwilling human populations with gusto. Is this him trying to get humanity put back together, or does he not care about the species he leads?
John Grammaticus saw into the Emperor's mind, and saw death and horror. Is this a reveal of the future, or is the Emperor a warmongering despot?
The visions that Erebus showed to Horus of the Emperor abandoning the primarchs to the warp were created by Chaos, but is there some truth to them?
Is the Emperor really pursuing godhood at the time of the Heresy?
What was he working on that is more important than fighting Horus?

These things bother me. Personally, I want the Emperor to be good; to be a protector of humans with noble intentions, even if everything went to pot in the end.
I don't want Erebus to be right.
I want at least one part of the horrific nightmare of the far future to be good and pure.
But this may not be the case.

Well, that's enough from me. What do you think? Good or bad?

(Sorry for any huge spelling errors)

Lost C'tan? Who came up with that theory lol

All these theroys are ridiculous we all know this "emperor" person is really THE EMPARAH!

"Good" and "Bad" are for people who have never taken a philosophy course. Or been living in a dream world all their life.

Humans need strict leadership or we will squabble and undermine each other. The Emperor is there to provide it. He asks for unquestioning obedience because dissent means hesitation. Hesitation means the death of the species. He's in the position of power to make sure things get done, all he needs is for people to get on board with human supremacy in the galaxy.

But I guess too many of the Traitors had ego issues and couldn't take a bit of criticism. Or they just felt like whining. Whatever. Good riddance.

He was a random tyrant that did what any other random tyrant could have accomplished with the giant pile of Power Armor and Bolter STCs the Emperor scavenged off of Earth, and a group of isolated human worlds unprepared for an invasion of STC-tech wielding soldiers.

Skip forward 10,000 years and his modest deeds have been exaggerated out of all perspective. You've got extremists who think he's a god because killing hundreds of psykers every day is noticable to other psykers and the Emperor somehow has some affect on that, or that he's some kind of shaman soul-katamari psyker thing that will be reborn as a spacebaby, or whatever. Neatly avoiding questions such as 'didn't humanity have a better empire during the 'dark' age of technology, before the Emperor lead things?' or 'what about that time an Ork would've killed the Emperor if Horus hadn't bailed him out?'

He was either a lucky but inevitably fallible warlord, or he's a psyker-buoy soul-katamari immortal ancient ultimate-scientist/warrior/leader with psychic powers great enough to destroy souls and fight off four chaos gods and the entirety of the warp simultaneously yet he gets beat down by random orks and can't see a chaos rebellion coming after being warned by ancient Eldar, his own sons, and seeing his opponents burning his worlds while flying flags that read 'I love Chaos, seriously dude I'm a traitor'.

Occams razor doesn't even begin to cut it.

Christ. Not another one of these threads.

alexwars1 wrote:Christ. Not another one of these threads.

i second that motion


also, good and evil dont exist, its all perspective.

Alex, your sig pretty much ends your comment. Example: "why aren't there female space marines?" Answer: "Oh god not again, quickly! SMASH 'EM UP BOYZ!!!"

Alex: I am sorry that I have created one of "these threads". In my defence, this topic is actually relevent in some way to the game, and isn't just random scribblings about gender roles among Space Marines.

Rube: So, a vote for "overrated"? I'd buy that.

Atrox: Yay! Someone else who thinks the way I do about Chaos! It seems that, if you are using my criteria, you've voted for "good".

Retribution: I just made up the theory about lost C'Tan. It seemed about as plausable as anything else.

Do not FEAR!

Buy your definition the Emperor is good.

SPOILER THOUSANDS SONS

Rube wrote:He was a random tyrant that did what any other random tyrant could have accomplished with the giant pile of Power Armor and Bolter STCs the Emperor scavenged off of Earth, and a group of isolated human worlds unprepared for an invasion of STC-tech wielding soldiers.

Skip forward 10,000 years and his modest deeds have been exaggerated out of all perspective. You've got extremists who think he's a god because killing hundreds of psykers every day is noticable to other psykers and the Emperor somehow has some affect on that, or that he's some kind of shaman soul-katamari psyker thing that will be reborn as a spacebaby, or whatever. Neatly avoiding questions such as 'didn't humanity have a better empire during the 'dark' age of technology, before the Emperor lead things?' or 'what about that time an Ork would've killed the Emperor if Horus hadn't bailed him out?'

He was either a lucky but inevitably fallible warlord, or he's a psyker-buoy soul-katamari immortal ancient ultimate-scientist/warrior/leader with psychic powers great enough to destroy souls and fight off four chaos gods and the entirety of the warp simultaneously yet he gets beat down by random orks and can't see a chaos rebellion coming after being warned by ancient Eldar, his own sons, and seeing his opponents burning his worlds while flying flags that read 'I love Chaos, seriously dude I'm a traitor'.

Occams razor doesn't even begin to cut it.

We need to keep in mind that even if the Emperor was the most powerful psyker/warrior/genius to ever walk amongst men, he was still human.

Maybe he ignored the Eldar warning because the Eldar are filthy, arrogant xenos? Maybe he underestimated the power of Chaos? Maybe his love for all humanity, even his super-engineered sons, drove him to blindness towards their actions? He has feelings and he can make mistakes.

I believe that the Emperor did not want to become a god; and even if he had to it would be for the sake of humanity. He obviously likes to rule with the point of a sword, but that is simply the steps that need to be taken to ensure the survival of humanity in the Grimdarkness.

I doubt that most of the Dark Ages of Technology were a happy paradise, I'm sure there was just as much, if not more, death and destruction.

As for getting almost beaten by an ork...well those things can get pretty fething big.

Also, if the Emperor was a warmongering death-machine, don't you think he would be a little more inclined to chaos? Maybe a champion of Khorne? Or was he immune to Chaos? (which would make him something pretty special)

Anywho, for taking the necessary steps to ensure the survival of the species (one that most of us belong to...I think) I suppose he would be considered "good". If you think that people who allow you to exist are "good"

As to the question of what the Emperor was working on right before the Heresy in his secret underground super-lab...no idea. maybe the new HH books will deliver some insight. Or just tell us the Emperor was an evil bastard.

He's human, and therefore as fallible as the rest of them. I vote Neutral!

steempunk wrote:Maybe he ignored the Eldar warning because the Eldar are filthy, arrogant xenos?

If he was as great a psyker and as ancient as the Imperials believed, surely he would've known that the Eldar's perceived perfidiousness was due to their own potent psychic farseeing potential? Also, wasn't he supposed to be working with the Eldar on his webway gate on Terra?

steempunk wrote:Maybe he underestimated the power of Chaos?

Which is contrary to how he is portrayed... that's kind of my point!

steempunk wrote:Maybe his love for all humanity, even his super-engineered sons, drove him to blindness towards their actions? He has feelings and he can make mistakes.

Generally speaking, you don't take things you love and fling them toward the ass-end of the galaxy to live a life of unceasing hellish war in the full knowledge that they will eventually, inevitably fall in battle, dying on some forsaken alien world in a pool of their own blood.

steempunk wrote:I doubt that most of the Dark Ages of Technology were a happy paradise, I'm sure there was just as much, if not more, death and destruction.

There was war, certainly, but by all accounts it was a golden age for humanity! The moniker 'dark age' was appended by the current progress-fearing Imperium. It was the apex of humanity, when they initially colonised and terraformed the worlds that the Emperor merely reclaimed and built the STCs that he took.

steempunk wrote:As for getting almost beaten by an ork...well those things can get pretty fething big.

Seriously... gestalt immortal psyker capable of destroying souls > ork of any size! ;P

steempunk wrote:Also, if the Emperor was a warmongering death-machine, don't you think he would be a little more inclined to chaos? Maybe a champion of Khorne? Or was he immune to Chaos? (which would make him something pretty special)

Yeah, he could've been a Chaos champion.

steempunk wrote:As to the question of what the Emperor was working on right before the Heresy in his secret underground super-lab...no idea. maybe the new HH books will deliver some insight. Or just tell us the Emperor was an evil bastard.

He was working on either gaining access to the webway, or building a new webway (can't remember exactly). The golden throne is supposed to be a gateway sitting on the entrance, and a psyker needs to sit on it to keep the gateway closed so that daemons don't pour out and into the Imperial palace. That's how Malcador died, sitting on the throne while the Emperor was getting his lungs handed to him by Horus.

Grotzooka wrote:This is what I am worrying about; the eventual reveal (during the HH series, probably) of what the Emperor is/was really up to.

I doubt GW will ever reveal anything definitive. They will want to keep all of us speculatic and adding to the mystery.

Good guy for sure. It's not really his fault the imperium became corrupt in his... indesposal

the emperor is a corpse which should be left to rot. the humans should get their thumbs out of their arse and actually start looking out for each other and get a move on. F**k the lazy gakkers who sit in their hover chairs drinking amasec. they should also forget the cult mechanicus and bring back all those *heretical;xenos;witchy* stuff and actually look in the back room archives to realise that the ritual of lower-rear cleansing is just wiping your arse with toilet paper, just with more gusto and emphasis added.

now onto topic, the emperor is bad in my opinion. mainly because he sits around doing nothing (since he is a corpse) and really the thing which is keeping the warp going or whatever is just electrics plugged into him. ofcourse they couldnt do the same to a human as it would fry their brain, so they just did it to anything static. a skelington is good enough.

dark6spectre wrote:the emperor is a corpse which should be left to rot. the humans should get their thumbs out of their arse and actually start looking out for each other and get a move on. F**k the lazy gakkers who sit in their hover chairs drinking amasec. they should also forget the cult mechanicus and bring back all those *heretical;xenos;witchy* stuff and actually look in the back room archives to realise that the ritual of lower-rear cleansing is just wiping your arse with toilet paper, just with more gusto and emphasis added.

now onto topic, the emperor is bad in my opinion. mainly because he sits around doing nothing (since he is a corpse) and really the thing which is keeping the warp going or whatever is just electrics plugged into him. ofcourse they couldnt do the same to a human as it would fry their brain, so they just did it to anything static. a skelington is good enough.

About the first part: I think you have just provided an answer to the question of how to achieve world peace. If only we had known all along that it was this simple! Maybe we can start by calling the lads in the Middle East and tell them to "get their thumbs out of their arses and start looking out for eachother?

About the latter part: judging by what you typed I am not quite sure you have a good understanding of what the whole Golden Throne/Emperor concept is. Why all the fuss when just a "skelington" with electrics does just fine too

TBD i felt like saying gibberish ok ^_^. i didnt think that much either....

The Emperor is not good or evil.
The Emperor is Chuck Norris.

Our Emperor suffers pain beyond comprehension ever second of every day, his life is a neverending experience of constant agony and he'd want nothing more than to let go and die.

But he doesn't.

He carries on for HUMANITY, for his children.

That's why he's better than Jesus, since Jesus just died once innit... Oooh, I might go repost this as a controversial post...

MekanobSamael wrote:The Emperor is not good or evil.
The Emperor is Chuck Norris.

QFT!

the more i read of the HH Books the more i start to dislike the imperium.

I like how its not as black and white as it used to be,
chaos are dirty traitors done
Imperium are good and pure done
its nice to fel sympathy toward the primarchs that fell

I FEEL THE WARP OVERTAKING ME !!!!!!
it is a good pain

MekanobSamael wrote:The Emperor is not good or evil.
The Emperor is Chuck Norris.

Or is Chuck Norris the Emperor?

Anyway, I beleive that he is doing what he beleived is right, same as everyone else in the galaxy. I mean, I don't care who you are, killing entire planets to destroy small cults in Exterminatus could never be classified as good. Nor could things like Commisars. It's one of the things that makes me like Warhammer 40k so much: They may be the easiest to identify with, but Humans are in no way, shape or form "good guys"

The Emporer is pro-humanity. So, from my point of view, good.

The Emporer is vehemently against any sort of religion. So, from my point of view, bad.

He's kind of a grey area.

Personally I think if some of the things humanity does in 40k are the emperors doing then he is bad.

Exarch_Nektel wrote:The Emporer is pro-humanity. So, from my point of view, good.

The Emporer is vehemently against any sort of religion. So, from my point of view, bad.

He's kind of a grey area.

So being an atheist can cancel out loving humanity? What weird world do you live in, where the only way a person can be good is by loving Jesus/Yahweh/Allah/Satan/Krishna/Buddha/Zeus/Odin?

The word bearers were evangelist. They invented the Cult of the Emperor. He opposeed this, and all other forms of religion, because he knew what the chaos gods were. Chaos GODS.

Klawz wrote:

Exarch_Nektel wrote:The Emporer is pro-humanity. So, from my point of view, good.

The Emporer is vehemently against any sort of religion. So, from my point of view, bad.

He's kind of a grey area.

So being an atheist can cancel out loving humanity? What weird world do you live in, where the only way a person can be good is by loving Jesus/Yahweh/Allah/Satan/Krishna/Buddha/Zeus/Odin?

The word bearers were evangelist. They invented the Cult of the Emperor. He opposeed this, and all other forms of religion, because he knew what the chaos gods were. Chaos GODS.

QFT.

Also find it amusing that being against religion is the main qualm one could have... as opposed to exterminatus, genocide, etc.

BrotherAtrox wrote:"Good" and "Bad" are for people who have never taken a philosophy course. Or been living in a dream world all their life.

Humans need strict leadership or we will squabble and undermine each other. The Emperor is there to provide it. He asks for unquestioning obedience because dissent means hesitation. Hesitation means the death of the species. He's in the position of power to make sure things get done, all he needs is for people to get on board with human supremacy in the galaxy.

But I guess too many of the Traitors had ego issues and couldn't take a bit of criticism. Or they just felt like whining. Whatever. Good riddance.

Well if I were Magnus and I saw what the Emperor had planned for me, I wouldn't be too keen in keeping with his flag either.

The Emperor is a toolbag. Sorry, but he is. He is the ultimate manipulator and deceiver. I mean look at how he has the Adeptus Mechanicus fooled on the whole Machine-God thing...talk about epic lie.

When the Alpha Legion learns what it learns, what choice did they have? And if the Alpha Legion found that out, then how the hell does the Emperor still try and persevere (surely he must know the outcomes as well?!)? Because he is the ultimate douche bag who wants complete and utter control over humanity one way or the other. He might be opposed to gods and such in life, but in his eternal slumber I am sure he is just fine with all these ignorant masses worshiping him.

The 40K universe is that much more bleak when the only answer to humanity's survival is to worship an overwhelmingly dickheaded tyrant and to let him rule over you with an iron fist.

In our world, the Tau "greater good" concept would be the accepted one (I would hope) not the Emperors heavy handed fascist state.

Feth the Emperor.

In our world, the Tau "greater good" concept would be the accepted one (I would hope) not the Emperors heavy handed fascist state.

Feth the Emperor.

The emperor was a big enough threat to chaos to the point that they got involved and twisted Horus and most of the other primarchs to turn against him. I think the emperor should at least told Horus of his plans of the gateway before he decided to leave the battle. I think Chaos wanted the emperor gone because he was a bit on the atheist side and against religion. Chaos needs humans to worship them to give them strength. So the emperor had to go. I don't think the emperor was evil. He could of taken over humanity at anytime if he was truely the power hungery type. In the future he saw that there were bigger threats to humanity and if we were to stay divided we would of been wiped out by the 'nids, orks, Tau, and other aliens.