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Miraclefish wrote:
Horus only got his chance to slay the Emperor because he held back, hoping that some spark of his son remained. When he realised not, he killed him with a burst of psykic energy so powerful that the Gods fled Horus' body as they knew the blast would have destroyed them utterly. This is GW's take, not mine.

This. Seriously, GW>us and all our thoughts on the subject.

4M2A wrote:Who destroyed the necron fleet?

Mars' orbital defenses, and (possibly) battlefleet Solar, since Mars is its primary naval base.

Mars' orbital defenses, and (possibly) battlefleet Solar, since Mars is its primary naval base.

Then it doesn't disprove my earlier point. If the void dragon wanted to escape he could have called the necrons as soon as he was put there and they could get break him free and there would be no defences. If he wanted to escape why wait until there are huge defences around the planet. There are a lot of odd circumstances (like why is the void dragon helping the imperium) and my personal belief is that it's not just trapped but waiting.

Miraclefish wrote:
Horus only got his chance to slay the Emperor because he held back, hoping that some spark of his son remained. When he realised not, he killed him with a burst of psykic energy so powerful that the Gods fled Horus' body as they knew the blast would have destroyed them utterly. This is GW's take, not mine.

This.

AlmightyWalrus Wrote
Seriously, GW>us and all our thoughts on the subject.

GW have told specifically told us to take what they write with a pinch of salt.

If the emp could kill a chaos god why did he have use warding runes when working on the webway. It takes alot of his power to hold back the daemons and thats only a small amount of warp power trying to enter the real world compared to what the chaos gods would bring.

the reason for that is the Emperor didn't want to face the Chaos gods head on.

not because he couldn't do it, but because he choose the easy way to destroy them.


the Emperor's plan involved Humanity eventually using the abandoned Eldar Webway to move accross the galaxy instead of Warp Travel.


the Emperor would then stop all human psykers from using their powers and eventually there wouldn't be any more, at least using their powers.

Chaos then would be utterly cut off from the Material realm, and their source of playthings.

Humanity then would be safe and the Emperor would rule them for eternity.



if the emperor's body dies, he will likely revert to plan B. also known as the Big Chaos Beatdown.

4M2A wrote:

Mars' orbital defenses, and (possibly) battlefleet Solar, since Mars is its primary naval base.

Then it doesn't disprove my earlier point. If the void dragon wanted to escape he could have called the necrons as soon as he was put there and they could get break him free and there would be no defences. If he wanted to escape why wait until there are huge defences around the planet. There are a lot of odd circumstances (like why is the void dragon helping the imperium) and my personal belief is that it's not just trapped but waiting.

The Dragon was beaten handily, thus would be drained in power, possibly to the point of needing to feed before it could gather the strength to call for the Necrons. To gain strength, it began to create the Adeptus Mechanicus, the fusion of bionics and flesh being a more substantial meal/allowing it to feed easier. But, it miscalculated, and by the time it had the strength to call for the Necrons, the defenses around it were too strong.

Alternatively, simply it took this long for enough Necrons to awaken.

Both of these scenarios are also viable.

GW have told specifically told us to take what they write with a pinch of salt.

If the emp could kill a chaos god why did he have use warding runes when working on the webway. It takes alot of his power to hold back the daemons and thats only a small amount of warp power trying to enter the real world compared to what the chaos gods would bring.

Putting up counter-measures to not only keep him from having to give any assaults personal attention, and able to continue working, but to protect those who didn't necessarily have the power to deal with daemons is just smart thinking. Besides, the argument is whether or not he could kill a -single- Chaos God, not all four working in concert. That's another debate.

-----------

There seems to be misconceptions that the Chaos Gods can manifest themselves on the material plane. These are incorrect, it's one of the prime reasons Daemons were born, so they could influence events in the materium with a more hands on matter. It's not a matter of lacking power, but the nature of the very entities themselves.

The Emperor could send a Daemon, even a Daemon Prince back to the Warp with a minor expenditure of his power. They are sent back by Astartes. Several of the Astartes books (Deus Sanguinius, Grey Knights....one is imprisoned in Ragnar's Claw using a single human psyker in combination with Eldar technology) feature the use of psychic powers or archaeotech to defeat demons ranging from smaller ones to a Greater Unclean One, a Lord of Change and Daemon Princes. Angron was defeated by a Terminator Company of the Grey Knights, along with a dozen Bloodletters and countless minor demons of Khorne during the First War for Armageddon. Hell, during the invasion of Mordian, a psychic choir (I'm unsure of the numbers, but I'd imagine it would at least be in the hundreds) was able to break the hold of Chaos on the planet, defying the Chaos Gods themselves for a few moments. The Emperor is the combined souls of hundreds of psykers, with countless years to perfect his control. From the reference point we have in the Horus Heresy books, he was born when Ancient Persia still existed!

As for Horus, the Emperor held out hope until the end that his favourite son could be redeemed. As soon as he resigned himself to the fact Horus had to be slain, he blasted him away. Yes, Horus did not have the full powers of the Chaos Gods, but he likely had as much as they could give him, beyond the level of a daemon prince. It was their best chance to slay the only one with the potential to challenge them. The only argument is that either Tzeentch or Slaanesh pulled out for some reason, as the other two would not have. Khorne would have done his best to slay his enemy, it's how he rolls, and the current 'Carrion Lord' aspect of the Emperor is an affront to the acceptance of death that Nurgle preaches.

----

Could the Emperor -kill- a Chaos God? No, at least not in a straight up battle. The very nature of them makes them nigh impossible to be slain unless you starve them of the emotions the need to survive.

Could he defeat one? Possibly. Could he hold them back? It's what he's said to be doing now.

Maybe the greenskin warlord on Ulinor is the piece we should be taking with a grain of salt, when it doesn't fit in with the power the Emperor has been written to have....or maybe he was pulling a Tzeentch, and making sure Horus would come to his aid .

How is he holding back the chaos gods? All he does is sit their projecting a psychic beacon. It does nothing to daemons, just gives the the navigators a point to use to locate themselves.

Angron took a lot of GK termies with him. The way the fluff describes it this was a big sacrifice by the imperium to stop him.

We aren't even sure if the Big 4 wanted the emperor dead. The emperor being stuck in the chair has been much more beneficial to them than his death would have been. Instead of destroying humanity they have it slowly falling apart and giving them power while it dies.

The emperor state is perfect for nurgle, he loves slow decay and refusal to change.

There are other cases of the emperor getting beaten by mortals. Russ beat him 2 challenges, horus nearly killed him.

The Emperor calms the Warp in addition to his Psychic beacon.


without him, Deamonic incursions would be far more common. Psykers that are normally fine would be in danger of getting posessed.


the Emperor keeps the veil between this world and the warp thicker. making it harder for Deamons to enter the material world.

For narrative purposes, the story of Horus saving the Emperor's life does two things: it provides a touchstone for how far Horus falls from the person he used to be, and it hints at the Emperor's ultimate humanity, his fallibility. I wish it would be told in more detail, though, in a short story or flashback.

Note, the Golden Throne was originally created to access and control the Webway. Part of the reason the Emperor is sitting there is to keep the portal closed, since that portion of the webway is now open to the Warp. In addition to whatever he's doing to combat Chaos in the rest of the galaxy, he's very literally holding them back from Earth.

Grey Templar wrote:the reason for that is the Emperor didn't want to face the Chaos gods head on.

not because he couldn't do it, but because he choose the easy way to destroy them.


the Emperor's plan involved Humanity eventually using the abandoned Eldar Webway to move accross the galaxy instead of Warp Travel.


the Emperor would then stop all human psykers from using their powers and eventually there wouldn't be any more, at least using their powers.

Chaos then would be utterly cut off from the Material realm, and their source of playthings.

Humanity then would be safe and the Emperor would rule them for eternity.



if the emperor's body dies, he will likely revert to plan B. also known as the Big Chaos Beatdown.

IIRC wasnt the emperors grand plan to guide humanity to there next step of evolution where theyd be a much more psychically proficient race as a whole, rivaling if not surpassing the eldar. I think the whole point was to make humanity so warp conscious / proficient that daemon possession / chaos corruption would not longer be a viable threat, a sort of racial mastery of the warp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the Op wouldn't the emperor be unconceivably stronger now then he was during the horus heresy, what with the 1000 psykers a day sacrificed in his name and the 10000 years of worship at the hands of masses of the imperium, since hes now an entity in the warp worship does make him stronger.

I think that his physic might is all that is holding back the Warp exploding into real space, but theorectically, with the thousands of physkers being sacrificed to him, don't their souls and abilities become part of him, and the emporer was created when thousands of physkers killed themselves at the same time, so that they would be reborn as a single entity, now, when the Emporer dies, and he is reborn ( as it says that everything that dies is reborn, as its essence and soul have to go somewhere), wont he be massively more powerful than he was before?

4M2A wrote:How is he holding back the chaos gods? All he does is sit their projecting a psychic beacon. It does nothing to daemons, just gives the the navigators a point to use to locate themselves.

Who knows how, but the chaos daemons codex says that he DOES.

Also, dont underestimate orks ... As was said earlier the finishing of the orks and the end of the ullanor crusade was so significant it marked the turning part of the entire great crusade.

This tells me it was an ork empire larger than anything imaginable with da boss making ghazgkull look like some weedy lil grot... like all orks in the galaxy now x10 in 1 sector kind of massive, and orks will never cease growing stronger and tougher in combat and dont die of old age. and the ork at the top of all of this? fighting for probably thousands of years? with massively powerful weirdboyz to offset the emps mighty psychic power because of the latent psychic field generated by trillions to the tenth power of orks nearby?

Not so unlikely really, use your imagination.

Yes it's not unlikely for the ork to be bigger than any ork we currently see, but it's still nothing compared to a god. Even a giant squigoth is insignificant compared to the chaos gods.

Yes, but when the monstrously gigantic ork has millions of weirdboyz all channelling da waagh energy of trillions and trillions of orks to nullify the emps power it just becomes a straight up slugfest. Which orks are just better at

Yes but there isn't any information suggesting that. We can bring up a lot of possible situtations, that doesn't make them correct.

Maybe it's as simple as the fluff shows it and the Ork just beat him.

No info suggesting it, but it is THE ONLY plausable explaination, if it isnt something along those lines, then its no better than a c.s goto fluff piece.

Wait, only plausible explanation? Or he just isn't as amazingly powerful as you think he is.

There are other cases of the emp making stupid mistakes, showing he has his limits just like everyone else.

You can go with the simple idea - The ork was just more powerful than him

or

You can choose the idea that requires a lot of long winded explanations which have no evidence supporting them - the ork psykers managed to lower his psychic shield so that the ork warboss could beat him.

Up to you.


I doesn't really matter much because if an ork can neutralise his powers a chaos god could easily do it. The ork may have had billions of orks behind it, the chaos god has much higher control over its powers and has the power of all of that emotion since the begining of the galaxy.

@VenerableBrotherPelinore: Very well thought-out and written post. You raise good points founded on solid data.

4M2A has the gist of it, it matters not what exactly happened. The fluff states the result and there you have it. Speculating is healthy, but not necessary to stay on topic in this thread.

To bring it all back around, who is in the party of "The Emperor will be reincarnated" and who is in the party of "The Emperor's soul will coalesce into a new warp entity" when he dies?

Personaly I think he will just die. There is a very large difference between the chaos gods and the emperor. The chaos gods feed of emotion. Worship alone doesn't do it because it doesn't provide emotion. This is the reason all chaos worship involves actions- to stimulate emotion. The emperor hasn't got an emotion. The big 4 have the whole spectrum of emotion covered, thats why they are so powerful, whatever the emotion is it falls into one of these categories. Smaller chaos gods cannot reach the power of the big 4 because however large they get they emotion they feed on is also powering a bigger god.

In the eyes of the imperium the emperor doesn't stand for one emotion, he stands for everything human/ good. Because he is worshiped in such a variety of ways there is no common emotion for a god to form from. Sometimes he symbolizes hope (tzeentch), sometimes hatred of the xenos (khorne), sometimes love for humanity (slaanesh) and sometimes defences of humanity (nurgle). If the emperor stood for one emotion it would be possible to create a god devoted to that emotion. unfortunately that would still empower one of the 4 and there is no way to be sure that emotion would go to the emp. I don't think it has even been specifically said that worship directs the emotion. It may be possible that all the imperiums worship is going to form an new chaos god seperate from the emperor.

If there was no chaos he could reincarnate like the shamans or the eldar. With chaos being more powerful than ever I don't think his soul would survive. A snack as good as the emperor's soul will get noticed in the warp. The chaos gods will want this soul and to at least stop him from ever returning. Killing him would be pointless if they let him return immediatly afterwards. The shamans had trouble reincarnating and the warp was nowhere near as active as it is now. His death would stop the calming effect of the astronomicon making the daemons even more active.

I guess he could reincarnate but he would have to fight off four very angry chaos gods and I don't see him winning.

There is already a part of his soul drifting unnoticed (because of its own power to remain that way) through the warp. It is the part of his soul that he was forced to throw away to be able to utterly destroy Horus. This is the Star Child.

I believe that the Emperor does embody an emotion. That emotion of joy borne of fighting for something more than yourself, of fighting for something you believe to cosmically and inherently right

If the Emperor were to become a warp entity (note that I do not say "God". I don't because I agree that [if this situation were the case] he doesn't have the significant emotional following to fuel the rise of a new "God") it would be one that embodied the force that is necessary to bring the Chaos Gods in check. They have been running wild since the Horus Heresy like unruly children. Eventually there must be something that brings them back under reign and, if anything, I think it would be the Star Child.

If he reincarnated, I think it would ultimately reset him to a new body, a younger version of his pre-heresy self. One that is stronger as well. I think he would become the Emperor he was supposed to be. The Emperor that the Imperium needs to be able to climb out of this rotten dark cesspit it has become.

*Edit:

Sorry, I seem to be getting beyond off-topic myself. By posing my previous question (who is in the party of "The Emperor will be reincarnated" and who is in the party of "The Emperor's soul will coalesce into a new warp entity" when he dies?) I'm not talking about whether the Emperor could, at the height of his power, kill a Chaos God. I apologize for this.

To answer OP's posted question though, no. At the height of his power would be pre-heresy of course. At that time the Chaos Gods were not near their current power-level (over 9000??) and even then the Emperor wasn't foolish enough to attempt to outright vanquish them. Fight them yes, withstand them yes, and hold them at bay yes. Defeat them no.

If the Emperor had truly wanted to defeat Horus, he could've, very easily. He just didn't think that he was in danger. He thought Horus would give in.

If he wanted to, he could have frozen time and taken him apart piecemeal. It's well within his power.

Put it this way
This is the man who took down one of the most powerfull Ctan, which is best described as something that cheats the law of reality, using a silver spear

Blackstone fortress or no , the Ctan survived multiple blackstone fortress, but got sealed in MARS by the emperor

Hm, as far as determining scope of the Emperor's power compared to the Chaos Gods, one must take into consideration two points.

The first point is that 40k has no 'true' gods. That is to say, you don't have a single all-powerful deity, or a group of deities that are literally 'responsible' for a particular aspect of existence(for instance, a 'wind god' who is responsible for the literal existence of all kinetic energy and every thing related to movement in general). Yes, you have Chaos powers of specific facets of reality, but those facets existed long before they themselves did(for instance, although Khorne is the Chaos god of violence, violence existed long before Khorne did). So you don't have true gods, but just beings of such extraordinary power and influence, that you may as well label them such.

The second point is that the Emperor's power really just depends on what fluff you're talking about--'official'(codices) or otherwise(novels, etc.). And even with 'official' sources, the
'truth' is actually very subjective.

So as far as the Emperor goes, I think there are some things we can all agree are true about his power:
- He projects the Astronomicon several thousand light-years in every 'direction' from Terra.
- 'Maintains' the souls of living saints and grants them power
- Emperor's Tarot
- Soul-binding of psykers

Subjectively, one could also argue that he does the following:
- Directly guides select individuals with visions or just sheer good fortune
- Keeps the Warp from pretty much flooding into realspace

^That last one is really just up for debate, with no solid evidence in favor of it or against it, as far I know.

So my personal opinion is that the Emperor is definitely an extremely powerful being, whose power is bolstered by worshipers(hey, it's my opinion), but considering just the sheer amount of malevolence in the galaxy, the Chaos powers are more 'powerful'.

I don't think we actualy know he is behind living saints. I thought it was just the priests claiming that. I didn't think there was any solid proof for this.

Its not just the emperors power creating the astronomicon. It uses his psychic skill to push the psychic powers of 1000 of psykers.

Driven by all the force of his rage and pain and hatred the Emperor wills Horus's death. He senses the forces of Chaos retreat, disengaging themselves from their pawn. As they do so sanity returns to the Warmaster. The Emperor sees realisation of the atrocities he has commited flicker across Horus' face. Tears glisten there.

Pretty sure Horus was possesed by the chaos gods.
I will find a better source for this though

kill dem stunties wrote:Yes, but when the monstrously gigantic ork has millions of weirdboyz all channelling da waagh energy of trillions and trillions of orks to nullify the emps power it just becomes a straight up slugfest. Which orks are just better at

^ People tend to underestimate the power of the collective psychic energy of Orks. They do have fleets made of scrap metal and terrible planning which work only because Orks collectively believe they do.

The emperor constantly holds off the full power of the chaos gods and he could probably kill one of them in pitched combat.

-Cypher- wrote:To bring it all back around, who is in the party of "The Emperor will be reincarnated" and who is in the party of "The Emperor's soul will coalesce into a new warp entity" when he dies?

There's a few hints that he will reincarnate. Mainly - the Golden Throne appears to be doing exacty what the old Shamans did to create the Emperor. They realized that because of Chaos, they could not reincarnate individually, so pooled their psychic energy to reincarnate into one being - the Emperor. The Emperor is on a huge machine that every week consumes thousands of psychic souls. It's not a stretch to assume that the Golden Throne is accumulating enough souls until it reaches a critical mass to allow the Emperor to reincarnate again.

While this is reaching into controversial territory, the original Inquisition Wars book - which was not labelled a Heresy publication or whatever they did to Space Marine and was even altered to try to make it fit the current fluff - has Draco approach the Emperor and speak to him. He speaks as many individuals. Again, not a stretch to assume the many individuals are the many souls already accumulated by the Golden Throne waiting to reincarnate into the Emperor Mk II.

It also has great 'story advancement' potential. If interest in 40k begins to seriousl wane, they could release a new edition where the story is advanced. The Emperor is reincarnated. Humanity is reunited and a new Great Crusade begins. This lets them keep all of the armies the same, small fluff alterations aside with Imperial Guard and Space Marines, and have a whole new lot of fluff begin. It's just good business sense. Not having an 'escaperoute' to build ever more interest in your key IP is bad business sense.

-Loki- wrote:
There's a few hints that he will reincarnate. Mainly - the Golden Throne appears to be doing exacty what the old Shamans did to create the Emperor. They realized that because of Chaos, they could not reincarnate individually, so pooled their psychic energy to reincarnate into one being - the Emperor. The Emperor is on a huge machine that every week consumes thousands of psychic souls. It's not a stretch to assume that the Golden Throne is accumulating enough souls until it reaches a critical mass to allow the Emperor to reincarnate again.

No, its not a stretch at all. No more so than anything else.

-Loki- wrote:While this is reaching into controversial territory, the original Inquisition Wars book - which was not labelled a Heresy publication or whatever they did to Space Marine and was even altered to try to make it fit the current fluff - has Draco approach the Emperor and speak to him. He speaks as many individuals. Again, not a stretch to assume the many individuals are the many souls already accumulated by the Golden Throne waiting to reincarnate into the Emperor Mk II.

As I read it, the many voices weren't separate people. The impression (IMHO) is more given that the many voices are the different emotions, or parts, of his soul. Since the Star Child is the part of the Emperor's soul that had to be cast away to destroy Horus, this seems feasible.

-Loki- wrote:It also has great 'story advancement' potential. If interest in 40k begins to seriousl wane, they could release a new edition where the story is advanced. The Emperor is reincarnated. Humanity is reunited and a new Great Crusade begins. This lets them keep all of the armies the same, small fluff alterations aside with Imperial Guard and Space Marines, and have a whole new lot of fluff begin. It's just good business sense. Not having an 'escaperoute' to build ever more interest in your key IP is bad business sense.

And indeed in the business sense this is also correct. We can't forget that the driving force behind 40K is a business. In the end it all comes back to the bottom line. So I agree.

Have read many pieces of fluff (huge fan) from novels, codexes and WDs over the past decade and have the following to add.

Part 1: The nature of the warp and the Emperor's plans.

The 4 chaos powers do not represent the warp. Imaging the warp as a vast ocean and the 4 most powerful & large entities swimming in it ARE the chaos gods. There are other entities in there too, just not as significant.

The Emperor from fluff has made extensive journeys into the warp and has tried to master it. His conclusion at the end of his research is "no man can master the warp." (Thousand Sons)

Since the warp is fundamentally a reflection of the darker side of humantiy, one effective way to combat them is to turn us all into logical, star trek Vulcans.

Hence the need for quick compliance, mastery of the webway and the eventual technological enlightenment of the human race. This is the outcome most feared by chaos.

The chaos gods cannot be killed. They were created by us. However, they can be dramatically weakened and rendered ineffectual through neglect and ignorance.

I imagine that when the emperor goes on his warp journeys, the 4 powers would try to kill him. He is not easy prey however and can retreat before any real battle begins. Any daemon the powers send against the Emperor in the material plane would get b*tchslapped.


Part 2: What else the Emperor is doing now

The webway portal on earth is a major nexus. Due to Magnus's ignorance, that doorway protecting the nexus from the predations of the warp has been blown wide open and much of the Emperor's energies is devoted to keeping that doorway closed. This means withstanding unending assault as well as maintaining the light of the astronomicon. Malcodor, one if not the most powerful human psyker in existance (Alpha + at least), was completely consumed by the time the Emperor was interred into the throne (half a day, hours?!).

Overworked and under-appreciated. Thats my Emperor!


Part 3: The Ork that strangled the Emperor

In my other thread "Defending the Emperor", I am confident any single ork in mortal combat with the Big E (with his full faculties) would last say, 2 secs? However, imagine the following:

"Using typical orkish cunning, the ork overlord and his army of nobz teleported into the lightly defended imperial compound where both the Emperor and Horus were in war counsel. Taken completely by surprise, the defenders reeled before the brutal onslaught. The Emperor, distracted from his deliberations made ready to take decisive action.

Unbeknown to the Imperium, all this was only a distraction. A space hulk in orbit has destabilised and was on track to smashing directly into imperial lines. Such a kunning act if allowed to succeed, would decapitate the imperial offensive and no one was sure if even the Emperor could survive the impending apocalypse.

Sensing the danger, the Emperor froze the plummeting space hulk in air through the sheer power of his bared might. The earth shook and the very skies boiled purple at this unprecedented act, an affront to the laws of gravity. For the barest moment, the astromomicon dimmed as the Emperor directed almost all of his will into the destruction of the space hulk. In a soul scorching flash, the space hulk exploded into millions of still lethal fragments.

Raising a kinectic shield of momentous size, the Emperor prevented an imperial catastrophe. However, in the Emperor's moment of exertion, the ork overlord seized this opportunity to close his power klaw around his neck and..."

Sorry for the badly written story. Just wanted to say that the Emperor was mighty indeed but the man could have had a lot on his mind when the strangulation occured.

Hrm....

I think there's more truth to the Emperor being something akin to the Chaos Gods than is being given credit for here.

In the Horus Heresy books, when Lorgar and his ilk are being shown the "truth" of the past and future, the Chaos Gods refer to the Emperor (can't remember the exact words) but basically as an immortal deity akin to them.