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 DarknessEternal wrote:
You're the one making the objective claim.

I'm not disagreeing that a citation is needed. I'm just saying, "citation needed" is the most accurate and concise review of the HH that I have ever read in my life.

Why would the most powerful psyker the galaxy had ever seen accept help from the Ruinous Powers that he wants to destroy in order to create a means to help him in his plan to destroy them?

The idea seems silly to me. If the Emperor used the power of the Warp, he would have almost certainly done it himself, not relied on Chaos.

washout77 wrote:What if the Chaos Gods helped the Emperor create the Primarchs so that they can later corrupt them (knowing full well what the Emprah was to do with them and the Space Marines) so that Chaos can begin waging war against everything? What if this giant thing is all just one big Tzeentch plan

Of course it's all part of one big Tzeentch plan. That's the entire point of Tzeentch. Everything is part of one of his grand schemes, because as the God of Scheming, he has literally nothing better to do. A common misconception about Tzeentch is that he's working towards some mysterious End, as if some day one of his schemes will suddenly complete and chaos will 'win'. This completely misses the point - the scheme is the point. If the universe ends, it won't last long, because one of Tzeentch's other schemes will come to fruition because the universe ended to replace it with something even more confusing and complicated.

reaper with no name wrote:Why would the most powerful psyker the galaxy had ever seen accept help from the Ruinous Powers that he wants to destroy in order to create a means to help him in his plan to destroy them?

The idea seems silly to me. If the Emperor used the power of the Warp, he would have almost certainly done it himself, not relied on Chaos.

Well, how about because daemons are warp energy? Every time you use a psionic power, you are ripping bits off a daemon to fuel it. That's why it's so easy for daemons to find psykers - they follow the trail of daemonstuff being ripped off themselves. If you're lucky, it's a eudaemon and will say, "oi, that's mine. Please be careful with it." If you're unlucky, it will be a daemon and say, "oi! FOOD!" and rip your soul apart to take over your body.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Well, how about because daemons are warp energy? Every time you use a psionic power, you are ripping bits off a daemon to fuel it. That's why it's so easy for daemons to find psykers - they follow the trail of daemonstuff being ripped off themselves. If you're lucky, it's a eudaemon and will say, "oi, that's mine. Please be careful with it." If you're unlucky, it will be a daemon and say, "oi! FOOD!" and rip your soul apart to take over your body.

Daemons consist of Warp energy but they do not embody of the whole of the Warp. That is, Daemons are Warp energy but not all Warp energy is part of a Daemon. Daemons don't necessarily find it easy to find Psykers or possess Psykers. Psykers can protect and hide themselves in various ways.

Technically, doesn't the fact that souls return to the Warp and dissolve back into it after death, or in the case of Psykers, reincarnate into new bodies, make souls count as Daemons as themselves?

 Admiral Valerian wrote:
Hasn't anyone ever considered the possibility that the Emperor and the Primarchs' physical appearances are just a projection of some sort?

And that their true appearances are something...inhuman?

Are you saying the Emperor is C'thulu.....??

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!!!!!!!

I've seen some fluff saying that the chaos gods always have been and always will be, even though we know the time when slannesh was fully manifested and "born". My explanation for this is that the warp is pure possibility. The chaos gods have always existed because there was always the potential for them to exist, and actions and feelings in realspace bring certain potentials to fruition. In a realm with no sense of time, one has to say that in a particular moment nothing is happening, and everything is happening. In real space with linear time, only what is happening in the present truly exists. Eternity shapes the present, and the present fullfills eternity, the vicious cycle of chaos. When the emperor used the warp to create the primarchs he tapped the sea of that potential. His dna blueprint, which was the basic structure for the primarchs, was allowed to be changed and "mutated" by the warp. In the same way that the emperors body was shaped in the womb by his own psychic power. The warps nature of possibility, along with the emperors dna as a starting point, gave the primarchs their great charisma, power, intelligence and also made them completely unique. I dont believe that the emporer speciffically designed each primarch, but left much to chance trusting in his power and dna to keep them good. they are the greatest, for they are an amalgam of the best possible traits many of which may never have existed in real space. Chaos is secondary and only a product of the warp in its natural state, a state which encompases everything that can ever happen, but exists in stillness. The emperor did not make any pacts with chaos to create the primarchs because chaos is only a part of the warp, and to do so would have limited their scope.

grimdarklollipop wrote:
I've seen some fluff saying that the chaos gods always have been and always will be, even though we know the time when slannesh was fully manifested and "born". My explanation for this is that the warp is pure possibility. The chaos gods have always existed because there was always the potential for them to exist, and actions and feelings in realspace bring certain potentials to fruition. In a realm with no sense of time, one has to say that in a particular moment nothing is happening, and everything is happening. In real space with linear time, only what is happening in the present truly exists. Eternity shapes the present, and the present fullfills eternity, the vicious cycle of chaos. When the emperor used the warp to create the primarchs he tapped the sea of that potential. His dna blueprint, which was the basic structure for the primarchs, was allowed to be changed and "mutated" by the warp. In the same way that the emperors body was shaped in the womb by his own psychic power. The warps nature of possibility, along with the emperors dna as a starting point, gave the primarchs their great charisma, power, intelligence and also made them completely unique. I dont believe that the emporer speciffically designed each primarch, but left much to chance trusting in his power and dna to keep them good. they are the greatest, for they are an amalgam of the best possible traits many of which may never have existed in real space. Chaos is secondary and only a product of the warp in its natural state, a state which encompases everything that can ever happen, but exists in stillness. The emperor did not make any pacts with chaos to create the primarchs because chaos is only a part of the warp, and to do so would have limited their scope.

Well put.

Is the process of reproducing them impossible because it was a one time deal with the devils of 40k or impossible because the Emperor is... indisposed?

I didn't realize that psyker souls recycled into new bodies, that's interesting and explains why there is such a dramatic increase in the number of psykers every year.

 Silverthorne wrote:


I didn't realize that psyker souls recycled into new bodies, that's interesting and explains why there is such a dramatic increase in the number of psykers every year.

It's varies actually. For the Eldar, reincarnation is impossible; Slaanesh consumes any unshielded Eldar souls that enter the Warp. For Humans, they can reincarnate so long as they can avoid getting consumed by Daemons before reincarnation. Apparently it was much easier a long, LONG time ago, seeing as the Emperor is the gestalt, collective reincarnation of all Human Psykers in ancient times.

Nah he probably didn't.
Clever chap the Emperor, not too difficult to muck around with genes either if you know what you're doing.
Couple of centuries of trial and error and you're golden.
Incidentally psykers don't reincarnate after death. They have a much worse existence than regular human souls after death but they go the same way we all do... I've never seen it said that they reincarnate...

Slightly off-topic, but does anyoneknow where the Emperor actually came from?

Because one thing thats always struck me as odd is that a corpse can can beat back 4 fully-fledged gods at once. I think is more than possible for Emps to be a product of Chaos. after all, if the Big Four decided they were bored out of their minds, I wouldnt put it past them to say 'hey, lets create a guy to unite mankind into one big army, and then we have fun', and then for the big game to go wrong, so we (mankind) now need to be wiped out and for everything to start afresh.

After all, everything is part of a Scheme.
*Just as Planned*

 IHateNids wrote:
Slightly off-topic, but does anyoneknow where the Emperor actually came from?

As ADM Valerian pointed out- the emperor is the reincarnated consciousness of a group of psykers/wizards/medicine men whatever that constitued the entire psychic population of humanity. They did some cermony and all agreed to reincarnate inside the same body. Kinky.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Is the process of reproducing them impossible because it was a one time deal with the devils of 40k or impossible because the Emperor is... indisposed?

the heartbreak of the heresy for the emperor may have made him unable to perform the psychic process needed to create them, like how the emperor couldnt bring all his power on horus until the very end. or perhaps he gave the primarchs something more than his dna, but a part of his soul as well, and he cant give any more away.

 purplefood wrote:
Nah he probably didn't.
Clever chap the Emperor, not too difficult to muck around with genes either if you know what you're doing.
Couple of centuries of trial and error and you're golden.
Incidentally psykers don't reincarnate after death. They have a much worse existence than regular human souls after death but they go the same way we all do... I've never seen it said that they reincarnate...

Uh... Except for (at least) the glaring case of The Emperor's creation, no?

Valete,


JohnS

 cygnnus wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
Nah he probably didn't.
Clever chap the Emperor, not too difficult to muck around with genes either if you know what you're doing.
Couple of centuries of trial and error and you're golden.
Incidentally psykers don't reincarnate after death. They have a much worse existence than regular human souls after death but they go the same way we all do... I've never seen it said that they reincarnate...

Uh... Except for (at least) the glaring case of The Emperor's creation, no?

Valete,


JohnS

Somewhat different.
That was the Shamans committing suicide all at the same time and coalescing into a single being.
A single inexperienced (In terms of the shamans pretty much all humans are inexperienced) psyker is unlikely to be able to pull off that feat.
The Emperor is the exception not the norm.

I wonder if it's safe to assume that Psykers soul-bound to the Emperor are absorbed into his over-soul after death...

The Emperor was (is) maybe the last entity who experienced the lost ages of technology.
Virtually immortal, he has knowledge of genetics, biology, chemistry, biomolecular engineering.
He is The most powerful psyker in mankind (probably more than just mankind).

Did he make use of all ancient, arcane, obscure technologies to create that group of beings known as Primarchs?
Definetely.
Did he fiddle with warp/psychic/"magic" energies to better meld the technologies and/or upgrade them?
Highly probable.
Did he made a devil's contract with the ruinous powers to accomplish his task?
Unlikely.

Some Chaos avatars claimed that he did, sure, but they do to distort the perception of others (of the very same Primarchs, in many occasions).
If Chaos were used to create them, they all would have been already tainted by it, without necessity for attempts of corruption.
Chaos is not so dumb to help a powerful being without warping (no pun intended) his project. It's prone to errors, but Chaos's errors are generally an underestimation of normal beings, because they tend to focus on the bigger figures.
The Primarchs (and more than them, the Emperor) are definetely big figures.

 Kerrathyr wrote:

He is The most powerful psyker in mankind (probably more than just mankind).

More than likely. I find it all but impossible that the Eldar could not have foreseen the Emperor's rise to power and his plans than span millennia...and yet they never dared confront him directly. At least not that we know of...its implied Eldrad knew/met/fought the Emperor before he became the Emperor. If so, then the fact that Eldrad dared not meet/confront the Emperor directly afterwards is in a way evidence that even the Eldar are not confident enough in their abilities to directly confront the Emperor himself.

 IHateNids wrote:


Because one thing thats always struck me as odd is that a corpse can can beat back 4 fully-fledged gods at once. I think is more than possible for Emps to be a product of Chaos. after all, if the Big Four decided they were bored out of their minds, I wouldnt put it past them to say 'hey, lets create a guy to unite mankind into one big army, and then we have fun', and then for the big game to go wrong, so we (mankind) now need to be wiped out and for everything to start afresh.

After all, everything is part of a Scheme.
*Just as Planned*

Maybe the emperor can only resist the ruinous powers because hes still technically alive. In the same way that a living man can resist them, but if said man died his soul would be in far greater peril in the warp. Its a horrible thought that the emperor is terrified of dying because hell be consumed by chaos just like the eldar gods, or any other soul.
Isnt that a fairly orky idea? if any warp entity was gonna toughen up mankind for a good fight itd be gork and mork lol. I think chaos is too greedy for that.

 FeindusMaximus wrote:
Isn't the Emperor the 5th Chaos god? Or soon to be.

That would be malice, the god of anarchy,
The Emperor is not a chaos god, he is the combination of the consciousnesses of the Shamans.
He made a pact with an old one or any other gods that live in the warp. Not necessarily the chaos gods. There are always other gods in the warp, some good, some bad. He might of made a pact with a very powerful one.
The only 'god' that he made a pact with was with the void dragon.

You would think that if the Emperor made a pact with the Chaos gods more of them would show a link to the warp, outside of Magnus' lore there is little direct connection to the Warp. My thoughts are if the Emperor did make a pact, all the primachs would have shown some kind of Psychic abilities not just Magnus.

The Primachs did receive something that made them more extraordinary than Space Marines, Space Marines being the height of genetic alteration. Primarchs would probably have received a part of the Emperor to make them greater to lead the legions, it's entirely possible that the Emperor some of himself into the primachs. There has never really been anything out of the realm of possibility when it comes to 40k lore, which is why we read about Primachs choking Wraithlords to death or going up against impossible odds.

There is an old white dwarf story that shows us the internal organs of a deamon, it's interesting to note that these did match descriptions of some astartes organs.. But that could simply be that we expect guts to fall out when we cut a deamon in half, so that belief manifests as internal organs in a deamon

This topic is full of speculation. It's expected of course, considering that GW has provided virtually no evidence to support any of the theories swirling around. It's important to remember that there is no right answer in this kind of debate. The story is written in such a way that it can actually please everyone by speaking from each faction's unique perspective.

Think about it like this. Every race in 40k shares the same Galaxy. There is a "true" or "real" version of what actually occurred every second of the many thousands or millions of years of the game's history. However, none of the factions know that truth or reality. The Necrons will tell you only their version of history, just as the Eldar & Dark Eldar will. The same is true of the Imperium.

I'll cite the Codex: Space Marines & Codex: Chaos Space Marines. Each of these two codices recounts the events of the Horus Heresy. And each of them tells a similar story up until the story begins to close. The verbiage may differ a little, but the books ultimately tell us the same thing: Horus betrays his father and his Empire, and starts a civil war, fighting his way back to Terra until he sieges the Imperial Palace. There a lot of sources for this information, each with a unique spin on it so I will not ruin it by retelling it here and I'll just skip to the end: The Emperor teleports on board Horus's flagship and confronts him on the bridge... Up until this point, the contents of the story are mostly uniform as told from either perspective. But this final duel is radically different as each side tells it. Is either one of them true?

Per Chaos, the Emperor and Horus duel, but the Emperor is no match for the combined might of all for Chaos gods and his own favored son. His body is broken, he is utterly defeated, and his last effort is to deal Horus a fatal blow that kills him, and the Chaos Gods abandon the corpse of their puppet.

Per the Space Marines, the Emperor and Horus duel, but the Emperor is unable to bring himself to kill his own son. He allows his body to be broken, hoping that his son will reconcile his deeds when he sees what he has done. Enter some random filler character (named in some older editions, just a Custode or IG in more recent tellings) who finds his unlucky way onto the bridge. Horus just blows his ass up with a thought and the Emperor finally realizes that his son is lost. With a single psychic thought, he removes Horus from existence but not before all 4 Chaos gods "Flee their mortal pawn in terror".

I had to spend a little longer telling the SM side of the story since there is simply more written about it in their codex. This not to say that I discount the Chaos perspective (which I find just as interesting) but that less is officially written about it.

I must now apologize for having retold what must be the most commonly known story in all of 40k. You're reading a post on a forum dedicated to this hobby and I'd be shocked if had not already read one of the two sides to that story before finding yourself here. I didn't recant that to be a douchebag, but because I think that story in particular captures the vast discrepancy that can be found in the telling of history from the perspective of a given faction. That is especially pertinent in this debate.

Did the Emperor make a pact with the ruinous powers to create the Primarchs?

I find that notion to be discountable on far too many levels. Both in-universe and out. Firstly, the Emperor is a singular figure in the 40k lore. The setting is grimdark, it's bleak, hopeless, and gothic. This is by design. There can be no altruism, no "good" in this world. For this reason, the Only character possessed of those traits was written out. He is no longer an active part of the story. He exists as part of it's history. Him being a perfectly "good" being is integral to the plot because it ground all perspectives against it. This would all be terribly cliché if he were playing superman and romping about the universe thumping daemons on the head willy-nilly. But that is not the case... his body is broken, his form is now a shriveled husk kept together only by his indomitable will. It is left to us to choose what to believe.

Out of universe my complaints with this notion are of a more literary notion. I find the proposition that he is so corrupt to be both distasteful, and poorly executed. As a wrtier, what end is served by marring an icon such as the Emperor? Does it improve the setting to lose contrast? If all things are equally corrupt and "evil" than the perspective is lost and the Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines may as well share a rulebook. Furthermore, I feel that the Emperor working with the Chaos gods places them in too great a position of power. They, like the Emperor, are finite beings. They follow many rules and structural elements that define their existence. It's illogical to assume that share a common link to the Christian God in that that he "always was and always will be". These Chaos gods are simply daemons. Albeit very powerful ones, but daemons still in the context of the game. They are the arch-nemesis of the Emperor... the 4 of them combined represent one end of the spectrum, while the Emperor represents the other. They are, at least in that regard, equals.

Is a writer myself I am not implying that all elements within a story must be equal... but this story contains many elements outside the comparison of the Emperor to the Chaos gods. If the chaos gods are powerful enough that the Emperor was unable to perform his part in history without them, than they come into conflict with other established part of the story: The Eldar are the foremost example. It is established that they "Freely" moved through the warp in the past. As their bodies died their souls would enter the warp peacefully and find wither way back into new mortal bodies later... that seems very unlikely to me if the warp were full of malicious Chaos gods and their servants.

I could go on and on about why I personally think this idea is silly but it still ultimately falls to you to decide... but not based on Imperical evidence. You'll have to decide based on which outcome you like most. Or which one does the least damage to the story you like.

For me, this idea represents too many additional plot holes, and too many additional assumptions about the characters involved. I choose to think that the Emperor did not involve Chaos at all in his experiments. It suits my vision of the story more to think of him as a singularly wise, and intelligent man who achieved the Primarch Project with his vast understanding of science and technology. They were truly a frightening notion to the realm of Chaos, and for that reason the powers that would normally have been preoccupied with infighting, combined their efforts for a time to scatter the 20 Primarchs. Along the way, some of them were affected by the warp or other exposures which manifested as either heightened psychic powers or mutations.

For myself, I think that the Emperor definitely made use of sorcery in creating the Primarchs, but whether the Chaos gods were directly involved is unclear. It may be that he just drew upon the power of the warp in creating them, either to allow the process to work at all, or to grand them their supernatural powers (I think the latter myself). Or he may have made pacts with something. He may not have even fully understood what Chaos was at that stage. It's not like the imperium as a whole was all too well informed about it.

I know he kept it secret, which implies he knew more about Chaos than anyone else, but still, it clearly shows his own overconfidence. He thinks he can forge a galaxy spanning empire and that Chaos isn't going to be a threat to him to the extent that he doesn't warn anyone about it; I'm not surprised if he thought he could outwit them and use them in the creation of the Primarchs without it turning out badly.

But in truth, I don't think there's any official standpoint on what role Chaos had in the creation of the Primarchs, other than daemons are telling people that they were. And who trusts daemons?

I think, whether intentional or by mistake, the HH authors have made clear that there was some pact made with the chaos gods in the creation of primarchs.

Some people brush that off as "oh it's just daemons talking" but 1) it doesn't invalidate the point to have an evil character reveal a fact, and 2) ignores the only source of a fictional situation.

As far as my reading goes the whole situation where Horus is explained to why there were not a 1000 horus' is clear enough that the emperor bargained something to get the energy/knowledge/power/etc. to create his generals.

What also seems clear, though, is that the Big E had no intention of keeping his side of the bargain which explains why the scattering seemed to happen as revenge when it became clear that the master of humanity had betrayed them.

The final question is what exactly the Emperor bargained for the creation of his primarchs. Good guesses seem to be his future sight (since he seems blind to his own fate) but I like to think from the rancor of the daemons in the HH books that it was in fact Humanity that was bargained for. It explains why daemons always seem to refer the humans as theirs, and why the cabal felt they might actually kill chaos if they could kill humanity as well.

Just my $.02.

See what nobody realizes is while he did make a deal with a god, it was not one of the 4 Chaos Gods. It was in fact

the Eldar Laughing God?

The Deceiver?

didnt see that one coming...

*Just as Planned*