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ChrisWWII wrote:In all honesty, I kind of see Cadians as basically the generic sci-fi soldier....if you threw a Cadian into almost any other universe they'd be considered a space marine of some kind......
I kind of like the examples provided in the Dark Heresy rule book as far as racism goes (I read it for the fluff, I swear!!) where it says that since planets are so far apart that the people on each planet looks different from everyone else. This tends to be bad, as if you visit a planet different from the one you're from you have a good chance of seeing a mob coming at you chanting 'KILL THE MUTANT! PURGE ITS FILTH!' because you look different.

Actually there was a very interesting thread talking about racism in 40K. Basically it summed up with most people thinking humanity is pretty united against the xenos threat and racism (between humans) is not at all common IIRC.

Here it is: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/293090.page

CrazyThang wrote:

Asherian Command wrote:1d4chan. Never heard of them. :/
I'm more of a stand-up comedian with intentions to make everyone chuckle once in a while its my job to make people feel better about themselves and also show a good point that helps everyone understand that its suppose to have humor life is a sitcom. But anyway. The Main thing I dislike about 40k is it's racism. And not only that but the influx of noobs.

I'm just trying to understand what you mean by racism. Do you mean how humans basically hate everything (and usually everything else hates everything too -.- ) or do you mean how the guard units (for example) are based off of real life militaries and that white seems to be the dominant race in 40k (of course each planet can have vastly different people)?

Yeah basically the skin color XD

Ok, if everyone is done derailing the thread, I'd like to know what people think about the Emperor being born near the birthplace of civilization.

Also, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of the Emperor being the reincarnation of all the shamans, magicians etc who sacrificed themselves. It explains nicely why we have no magic in this day and age yet have so many myths and legends with magic. It all stopped and entered just one man, the Emperor.

I like how the Emperor was born in Anatolia in like 8000 B.C. (And I apologize if there's some rule that we need to use B.C.E instead of B.C.....I grew up using B.C. and its hard for me to not use it) It fits very well with the whole 'shamans leave', as compared to the first civilizations in the Fertile Crescent, Anatolia is a fairly distant and remote area where people could easily go if they wanted to be hidden from everyone else.

Yeah, I love how basically any important figure in history could easily be the Emperor. Jesus? Emperor. Abraham? Emperor. Patton? Emperor. Rommel? Early version of CREEEEED!

It is cool he was born near the cradle of civilization however I don't buy the 8000 BC thing. I'm pretty sure The Emperor was born far into our future. Probably during the age of colonization.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:It is cool he was born near the cradle of civilization however I don't buy the 8000 BC thing. I'm pretty sure The Emperor was born far into our future. Probably during the age of colonization.

I'm pretty sure fluff is that the Emperor was born in the earliest ages of human civilization so he could guide humanity through its growth and development. To me, that makes more sense than him being born much later. Besides, he was supposed to have been born when the Warp was still (relatively) pure, and the Chaos Gods had not yet formed.

Indeed. 8000BC is the given date of the New Man's birth which can be found on page 174 in Realm of Chaos The Lost and The Damned,

It makes sense they would base the big E in Anatolia, since it's considered the birthplace of modern agriculture (and colony building). I think it sits right smack in the middle of the fertile crescent. Also, IIRC, the double headed eagle (Or Aquila) originated in Turkey (Anatolia).

Another thing of interest is that a civilization that smacks greatly of everything 40k culture wise is the Byzantine Empire - an Empire centered on Anatolia and Greece (essentially Anatolia, before the Turks came around can be seen as an extension of Greece until you hit about the eastern most third of the country, where Iranian and Mesopotamian influences begin to dominate.)

One leader I'd bet the Emperor ended up being is Constantine the Great.

Set up Constantinople as the New Rome, looked to restore the Roman Empire to its former but then already somewhat faded glory, began an era of religion based police state with the Emperor as the final and greatest civil, military, and religious authority in the western world. The concept of the 'temporal power of the Pope' relied on the concept of the Western Roman Emperor having seeded his right to be the highest religoous authority in the Empire to the Bishop of Rome- while that never happened in the East, and why the position of the Patriach of COnstatinople was, while important...

...essentially second to the power of the Divinely crowned Emperor of Constantinople.

Constantine used a military system based around local militias and conscripts barely better then a poor rabble- and augmented by small mobile elite shock troop armies, and this system became more stream lined to where by the time the Western Roman Empire fell, the East was set up to play a game of losing/winning back territory that would see the Eastern Empire go on for another thousand years - based upon the local armies of peasants, the elite cavalry and heavy infantry forces sponsored directly by the Emperor.

And of course, the Byzantines (the medieval name of the Eastern Roman empire) used both the cross and the double headed eagle as national symbols...

Very cool analysis Carl. I now subscribe to the belief that Constantine the Great was one of the Emperor's past personas.

Agreed. Constantine was no doubt the Emperor in disguise, trying to the start the Imperium early. Didn't really work actually.......

Hmmm, given that Czarist Russia inherited the double eagle symbology....would that imply that after the failure of his first attempt, the Emperor went north to try again?

Rip Torn is the Emperor

Gogsnik wrote:It is never explicitly stated who the Emperor was but there is a section in Realm of Chaos The Lost and the Damned which tells us that the Emperor, or rather the New Man (He wasn't the Emperor until the Unification Wars) was various scientists, religious leaders, warlords, generals et cetera indicating that He could have been any or all of the most significant figures in History including Jesus, Richard I, Einstein, Hitler, Jethro Tull, Merlin and so on.

wait, wait, wait...


HITLER???

P4NC4K3 wrote:

Gogsnik wrote:It is never explicitly stated who the Emperor was but there is a section in Realm of Chaos The Lost and the Damned which tells us that the Emperor, or rather the New Man (He wasn't the Emperor until the Unification Wars) was various scientists, religious leaders, warlords, generals et cetera indicating that He could have been any or all of the most significant figures in History including Jesus, Richard I, Einstein, Hitler, Jethro Tull, Merlin and so on.

wait, wait, wait...


HITLER???

Yeah, I just saw that too. Since the Emperor's main goal has always been to preserve humanity and since Hitler had a tendency for, well, you know, human genocide, I think we can rule that one out.

Also, what Egyptian emperor may have been THE Emperor? Seeing as that civilization is so old, it could have been one of his first attempts.

Or perhaps all the the civilizations the Emperor started were intended to eventually fall and were meant to accelerate mankind's culture and introduce new technology.

HITLER???

Yeah, I just saw that too. Since the Emperor's main goal has always been to preserve humanity and since Hitler had a tendency for, well, you know, human genocide, I think we can rule that one out.

'Despite his best efforts to promote peace and harmony, the instinctive values of martial honour, ambition, defiance, and self-satisfaction could never be eradicated. Some of the New Man's plans were less than successful: seeds of wisdom often failed to flourish or grew into uncontrollable monstorsities leading to persecution and war.'


That passage could be interpreted in various ways about various events and various figures in history. As to whether or not the New Man was Hitler himself or acting as a guide is debatable, as Winston Chruchill said, 'The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance'; The New Man is certainly fallible, just look at Horus. You can never tell when Bryan Ansell is writing.

Gogsnik wrote:

HITLER???

Yeah, I just saw that too. Since the Emperor's main goal has always been to preserve humanity and since Hitler had a tendency for, well, you know, human genocide, I think we can rule that one out.

'Despite his best efforts to promote peace and harmony, the instinctive values of martial honour, ambition, defiance, and self-satisfaction could never be eradicated. Some of the New Man's plans were less than successful: seeds of wisdom often failed to flourish or grew into uncontrollable monstorsities leading to persecution and war.'


That passage could be interpreted in various ways about various events and various figures in history. As to whether or not the New Man was Hitler himself or acting as a guide is debatable, as Winston Chruchill said, 'The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance'; The New Man is certainly fallible, just look at Horus. You can never tell when Bryan Ansell is writing.

I have to agree with you there. I could easily see the Emperor being a key adviser to Hitler, and hoped that His advice would allow him to use the Third Reich as a jumping off point to uniting Earth, or at least giving it a more martial outlook on life. Hmmmm, one idea I just had is that maybe Hitler was an early psyker. He did have a huge obsession with the occult and other things.....and his later insanity could be the result of the Warp finally getting to him over time.

I use BC... sorry for the off topic. But seriously, HITLER. I think Winston Churchill is more likely.

ChrisWWII wrote:Hmmmm, one idea I just had is that maybe Hitler was an early psyker. He did have a huge obsession with the occult and other things.....and his later insanity could be the result of the Warp finally getting to him over time.

That's a good point, Hitler wouldn't even have needed to be a psyker but a pawn of the Chaos Gods. If this were the situation in the 40K universe you'd think perhaps the Emperor might have prepared Himself a bit more. Still, it's like I say, the Emperor is a living weapon designed to destroy Chaos, He isn't a true person in that sense so His mistakes seem plausible in that light and make Him almost human in that regard.

Another Thread ruined by Hitler. Damn you Hitler!

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I remember reading something like that to. That the Emperor was Persian!

...Turkish.

ChrisWWII wrote:

Gogsnik wrote:

HITLER???

Yeah, I just saw that too. Since the Emperor's main goal has always been to preserve humanity and since Hitler had a tendency for, well, you know, human genocide, I think we can rule that one out.

'Despite his best efforts to promote peace and harmony, the instinctive values of martial honour, ambition, defiance, and self-satisfaction could never be eradicated. Some of the New Man's plans were less than successful: seeds of wisdom often failed to flourish or grew into uncontrollable monstorsities leading to persecution and war.'


That passage could be interpreted in various ways about various events and various figures in history. As to whether or not the New Man was Hitler himself or acting as a guide is debatable, as Winston Chruchill said, 'The whole world would rejoice to see the Hitler of peace and tolerance'; The New Man is certainly fallible, just look at Horus. You can never tell when Bryan Ansell is writing.

I have to agree with you there. I could easily see the Emperor being a key adviser to Hitler, and hoped that His advice would allow him to use the Third Reich as a jumping off point to uniting Earth, or at least giving it a more martial outlook on life. Hmmmm, one idea I just had is that maybe Hitler was an early psyker. He did have a huge obsession with the occult and other things.....and his later insanity could be the result of the Warp finally getting to him over time.

This makes sense, I doubt the Emperor would deliberately commit anti-semitic genocide, I can't think of any reason why he would without sounding discriminative.

Apologies for the necro, but this was simply the best place to put this.

Let's get citations out of the way first. Here are scans for page 174, 175, and 176 of the Lost and the Damned showing the Emperor's origins.

Relevant passages:

Of the birth and the early life of the Emperor, we shall say only a little, for space does permit us to examine every detail of a life-time spanning almost fifty thousand years. His mother and father were human, his brothers and sisters were mortals like any other, so when he was born his parents had no reason to think of him as anything other than a normal human child.

The Powers of Chaos began to grow even before the Emperor's time, but did not achieve their full power until many thousands of years later. During the Emperor's youth and early life the Chaos Powers were insufficiently strong to disturb the natural harmonies of the Warp. The warp's energy was still free to flow through the psyche of all living things, maintaining the oneness of nature and uniting all things under its care.

Since the first primitive humans evolved the species had developed a special relationship with the warp. The simple hunters and harvesters of early times recognized the natural forces which flowed through all living things like a great river of life bringing sustenance to the dead earth. Some of these humans were more sensitive than the others to the hidden movements of the warp. [...] The most successful of these humans assumed the role of shaman or tribal witch, and used their powers to benefit their people.

For as long as anyone could remember, when a shaman died his soul had flown into the warp and bathed in its energies, awaiting renewal in another body. Now, souls were being lost, chased and consumed by the malignant Chaos Powers.

Terrified for the future of their race, all the shamans of Earth gathered in one place and began the longest and most important debate in the history of humanity, lasting centuries and leading to the birth of the New Man.

Many of them could remember the dawn of their race, when in other bodies they had walked under African skies. Having survived so long, for millions of years, it was not their way to die without hope or purpose. They therefore decided to pool their own energies by reincarnating in a single body. In their thousands they swallowed poision, and in their thousands they died, and their kind was gone from the earth.

Within a year the man later to be known as the Emperor was born. As he grew older his powers began to manifest themselves and he gradually remembered the thousands of lives that lay behind him. He was the New Man. But he was also the past. His powerful mind could still sift the natural energies of the warp, enter the lives of plants and animals, promote harmony, and ease the suffering of others. And he rememebered how he was made to live forever, so that he would never have to reincarnate, but would survive unchanged for eternity. At least he remembered everything that led up to his birth, and he left his own people to begin his endless journey through the world and through human history.

For thirty-eight thousand years the New Man wandered over the Earth and through human history. At first he merely observed the world about him, but soon he began to help where he could, using his ancient wisdom to spread efficient government, crop management, technology, and peace. He always used his influence carefully, adopting the guise of a normal man, and without revealing his true nature.

[...] He traveled the entire globe, watching and helping, sometimes adopting the persona of a great leader or advisor. In times of trouble he became a crusader, a religious leader or messiah, at other times he remained a back-stage contributor to events, an advisor to kings, a court magician, a pioneering scientist. Many of the guises he adopted were very humble, others became monumental figures of world history and religion. At times of crisis he would be there, steering the human race along a narrow survival path that he alone could see.

Theorycrafting:

Anatolia is particularly fortuitous choice for GW, because of the discovery of Gobleki Tepe, the world's oldest temple. Almost 12 thousand years old, it predates agriculture.

Now, it is clear that 40k's history is not our own. It is somewhat of an anti-deterministic universe. Nevertheless we assume a similarity of events - the main difference being how they can be viewed in the lens of the Emperor's purpose, how could they have happened through deliberate intent instead of random chance and men's ambitions?

The thing to remember is that was we identify as crisis might be different from those of the Emperor's long view. Wars of conquest are a crisis only for the defeated, for the conqueror it is their growth. More important perhaps are the dissemination of ideas through history.

This is very very old fluff, but there are only a few points of contradiction.

-- 1) that the Warp was clean during the time of the Shamans
----- contradicted by the War in Heaven and the Warp becoming a raging hellscape
-- 2) the shamans all dying out
----- the existence of other Perpetuals in new canon
-- 3) the tiny populations of pre-modern humanity somehow influencing the growth of the chaos gods
----- as before, War in Heaven, and the other races in the galaxy, specially the orks and the eldar with their own gods in the warp
-- 4) Why is the Emperor so feth-powerful just from some thousands of shamans?

But what is also implied by these few points of contention is that it can still fit more-or-less neatly in new canon.


So here are my theories.

1) Upon the question of the clean Warp: Earth was protected.

Remember the passage:

During the Emperor's youth and early life the Chaos Powers were insufficiently strong to disturb the natural harmonies of the Warp. The warp's energy was still free to flow through the psyche of all living things, maintaining the oneness of nature and uniting all things under its care.

What does that sound like? The Gaia hypothesis. Or the Lifestream, if that's your game. Just as the artificial Geller Field can protect a ship in its passage through the Warp, and the Tyranid's Hivemind could silence the Warp around them, why not a living planet with a warp free of perturbations? Eldar, Old Ones, or Necrons, all had the capacity to do so for their ineffable reasons.

2) Upon the question of the Perpetuals: that the Shamans were NOT Perpetuals.
They die and they reincarnate. Some of them are so old, millions of years old, they are Homo Antecessor, the common ancestor of humans and Neanderthals.

If anything, the Emperor would be the first true human Perpetual, and for all we know his existence is the trigger that allows someone similar to be born in humanity. Perpetuals would not get awesome psyker power by default, and the strongest and oldest Psykers survive via self-directed biomancy. The Emperor is simply naturally god-tier at being both.

3) Upon the question of humanity influencing the growth of the Chaos Gods: in grim dark far future humanity is Chaos' greatest tool
The strongest Chaos has ever been in the Materium was through the actions of Traitors and Heretics. The Warp around Earth becomes more turbulent, events are echoing through time.

4) Upon the question of the Emperor being so powerful: That Emperor is a synthesis of souls that can absorb more souls
I base this on how the Golden Throne and the Astronomican operates and the Emperor's dialogue with Jaq Draco. The Emperors refers to himself as 'We' and his attention must be fractured in multi-tasking all over the place trying to protect humanity.

His golden glow is pure power, but what would scare the gak more out of any warp creatures and psykers is the Final Death he could bring, even as he takes your power after killing you to add to his own. This VERY VERY MUCH NOT CANON, just my theory, but what makes it juicier why the Chaos Gods refer to him as the Anathema. He is making Order out of Chaos.

His powers post-Golden Throne are a topic for later.


So who in history might be the Emperor?

Before we begin, let's just get this out of the way - in Warhammer 40k, ALL religions are false. Any religion that does not have a manifest presence in the Warp will only feed the Chaos Gods. There will be no special considerations for present active religions. In THAT continuity, the oldest and truest religion is nature worship. It is just as likely for the Emperor to be any of the gods as he is any of the heroes. As has been noted, many of the Emperor's guises were very humble. It is much more likely for him to work through intermediaries than take the stage himself if it is not necessary.

1) Is the Emperor Jesus?
Sure why not. He might even be the Abrahamic God, since the Bible's dietary practices are surprisingly sensible as a health measure for their times.

2) Is the Emperor Alexander the Great?
Probably.

3) Is the Emperor Julius Caesar?
Probably not. Instead he is probably Gaius Octavius. Not only is the rise of Imperial Rome very similar to the Rise of the Imperium with bringing together squabbling provinces into one greater whole, Octavian was noted to be astoundingly competent for his age. His last words to the public were "Behold, I found Rome of clay, and leave her to you of marble" and in private "Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit". Very easy to imagine him as someone who was just pissed off at the death of a man he considered an excellent example of his kind.

4) Is the Emperor Lincoln?
I don't think so. The Emperor has lived through thousands of years wherein slavery was considered the norm, and while it is a crisis point in history many other countries had already outlawed slavery before the United States. It is likely he would have approved of Americans feeling so strongly about this that they would fight themselves for it, an event that would shine through history as an example, and the Civil War had a lot of absurd coincidences in it.

5) Is the Emperor Buddha?
Buddhism began five centuries before Christ, so sure, seems legit. It's interesting to note that many Buddhists are atheists.

6) Is the Emperor King Arthur?
No, he is most definitely Merlin. ('sometimes a court magician')

6) Is the Emperor (insert historical figure here)?
Assume maybe not.

The thing is, it must be important enough for the Emperor to do things himself instead of watching someone else live out their beliefs. The latter is actually stronger, because it would be the first test to the ideals he is trying to promulgate. He has lived for thousands of years, if one movement fails he can always try and try again. The Emperor coming out as himself is supposed to be the unique culminating act, because literally nothing else could make humanity survive that crisis point.



Thoughts?

Brilliant analysis! I'm having a great time just reading the original passages; they deserve some more thought.

Is Donald Trump the Emperor?

I kinda disagree with the idea that the Emperor was actual major historic figures like Napoleon or Jesus or Issac Newton. I see his pre-unification self as a much more "power behind the throne" kinda guy. Like not the Sultan but maybe his Vizer or another trusted confidant. Not the man or woman whose name goes down in history but someone close to them who helps to inspire the revelation or change that makes them move humanity further down its path to greatness (hopefully). Perhaps when things get bad enough he takes a more direct hand such as the allusion to him fighting the Dragon on Earth and casting him to Mars, or finally during the Long Night directly taking control of humanities fate as Emperor. Other than that though I see him more as the man (or woman since the big E can appear as anything or anyone he wants to) that was helping the greats along at pivotal moments in history.

Thread is being locked due to thread necromancy.