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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
No, it's a book, where a Farseer of Ulthwe literally states that a god is a manifestion in the Warp, caused by a large outpouring of Faith.

That's it. A God is just something with an incredible amount of faith behind it. He said, the emperor is a god, Gman is a god, and the Saint C is a god, essentially. The book kinda ends on a cliff hanger of Gman realizing that the Emperor is a capricious and selfish god, that doesn't really care about humanity. And what should be done about that.

But…..

1) most humans were not worshiping the emperor before the end of HH yet he still manifested god like Powers. So there are 2 different states of the emperor, god and pre god, that are fairly similar

2) RG might be worshiped but his consciousness exists In The materium, not the warp. So that faith hasn’t resulted in a warp entity so not a god by this definition. Unless there are things I’m not aware of with RG


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Olthannon wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Gert wrote:
The Emperor being technically unable to drink milk is my favourite bit of accidental 40k lore.

I need some context for this

It's a good gag and only probably true. Basically the genome within certain populations evolved rapidly to allow us to continue to be lactose tolerant after childhood. In a lot of the world it never occurred. So a lot of Asian, African and South American populations are mainly lactose intolerant. Now based on current evidence the genome started to come into being around 10,000 years ago, started to spread rapidly a few thousand years after, but there was a paper which came out years ago that said 6,000 years ago. The Emperor is meant to have been "born" 8,000 years ago in Anatolia and thus might not have been able to drink milk!

Essentially it seems to have evolved in colder climes where milk stays like milk for a bit longer, whereas in warmer parts of the world milk turns into yoghurt which has less lactase in it. Interestingly, as soon as there is evidence for milk consumption in humans, you get evidence for cheese almost at the same time.


However, given that humanity regressed into some weird state after all the atomic war on Earth, who knows what they can and can't drink. I seem to recall that there's a whole bit where the Emperor basically regenerates the entire human population of Terra so that they are back to "normal" after the Unification War.


@sgt. Cortez thanks!

I thought north Europeans developed the ability to digest lactose because they farmed dairy animals and drank their milk, made cheese and butter etc so the body adapted. As other parts of the world perused other diets they didn’t develop it. The genes that allow digestion of lactose in adults were then spread to other parts of the world through the unpleasantness of colonialism.

But I’m no expert I just thought I heard that on a podcast.

However as it’s unlikely that lactose exists in animals on other planets I expect humans had evolved all sort of changes in the gut. Unless one of the things STC were developed to do is repurpose Xenos meat and vegitation to be digested by the Terran stomach.

mrFickle wrote:

I thought north Europeans developed the ability to digest lactose because they farmed dairy animals and drank their milk, made cheese and butter etc so the body adapted. As other parts of the world perused other diets they didn’t develop it.

Kinda sorta kinda. But it's not just Europeans who have it. Modern Chinese people don't tend to have dairy milk but Nepali and Tibetan people certainly do.

In Africa and the Middle East we have evidence of dairy consumption from like 9000 BCE, basically when pastoral farming and more obvious, permanent settlement happens in the Neolithic. Now it's likely this is processed into cheese and yoghurt because that decreases the amount of lactose and stops you cacking your pants. Why the lactase enzyme continued in adults prominently in some places is kind of a mystery. Lots of peoples eat dairy products but this idea of drinking milk is a bit rarer. What I said before about it possibly being down to climate is one theory, purely because it keeps a little longer.

I would suspect and put money on it, it's likely a cultural thing that has led to some people drinking milk and other people not, which has led to evolution of our guts keeping lactose processing into adulthood.

So anyway the Emperor probably ate cheese but maybe didn't drink milk.

 Olthannon wrote:

mrFickle wrote:

I thought north Europeans developed the ability to digest lactose because they farmed dairy animals and drank their milk, made cheese and butter etc so the body adapted. As other parts of the world perused other diets they didn’t develop it.

Kinda sorta kinda. But it's not just Europeans who have it. Modern Chinese people don't tend to have dairy milk but Nepali and Tibetan people certainly do.

In Africa and the Middle East we have evidence of dairy consumption from like 9000 BCE, basically when pastoral farming and more obvious, permanent settlement happens in the Neolithic. Now it's likely this is processed into cheese and yoghurt because that decreases the amount of lactose and stops you cacking your pants. Why the lactase enzyme continued in adults prominently in some places is kind of a mystery. Lots of peoples eat dairy products but this idea of drinking milk is a bit rarer. What I said before about it possibly being down to climate is one theory, purely because it keeps a little longer.

I would suspect and put money on it, it's likely a cultural thing that has led to some people drinking milk and other people not, which has led to evolution of our guts keeping lactose processing into adulthood.

So anyway the Emperor probably ate cheese but maybe didn't drink milk.

I bet he loves a baby bell

On Eldrad?

He’s a known liar. Especially to lower species. So we cannot take him as a Reliable Narrator.

"Foolish mon'keigh. Your Emperor cannot even consume milk and you think yourselves the masters of this galaxy."
- Eldrad (probably)

So what ya'll are saying is that the emperor is a soy boy?


Joke, im not actually one of those weirdos.

No, the Emperor is actually just an ork mek with a speech impediment and vitiligo.

Hmm. Further thoughts.

If The Emperor is indeed human? What does that mean for the rest of our species?

If He can command such frankly staggering power, where does humanity’s potential end?

Even if we end up all incredibly dead and extinct upon the path from Boring Ordinary (Hi!) to The Emperor, there’s still a frankly staggering scale of species potential.

By that, I’ll propose a real world, but crap, alternative for comparison. But one hopefully relatable.

Imagine The Emperor is baseline human. No special powers or tricks etc. But they are a Trilionare.

Literally more money than could ever be spent in a human lifetime, or potentially ever be spent.1

Yet. If every human being could be 1% as wealthy? According to a Google, we’re talking £10 billion.

Again far more than any of us could spend in a lifetime, even if we’re very very very stupid with money.

I thought it was canon the Emperor was the Star Child predicted by the Eldar or something, I don't know elf lore. But human is stretching it. How many Humans live past body death? How many humans can banish daemons with a thought? How many humans can do a single thing the Emperor did on a daily basis? None. Not one single human has ever been able to do what he's done. But it's all relative. For the record, I don't consider the Astartes Human, or the Ad Mech, or the Sisters of Battle. Nope.

Edit:

Wait, hold on. There was that one time Ted Nugent and White Snake stopped bullets through the power of rock and roll. And Ronny J Dio fought the Devil in the midnight sun, so.....maybe? Don't even get me started on Tenacious D and their powers over the warp.

Lol wut. The Sororitas are human, they're just buff and really into religion.
Astartes aren't human and whether or not the many different Magi of the Mechanicus are human is a philosophical distinction.

Can a commissar of the imperial guard stop bullets and manifest miracles by praying REALLY HARD? No. No one can. Except the women from a planet that was found by the emperor before the HH. That means they possess something more than human, i.e. not 1-1 match. I will grant they are humanoid, but seeing as how to only 100% scientific test is to see if they are sexually comparable, (Can they bear off spring with a human) is impossible, due to their vows, I guess we'll have to never know?

No human can do what they do. And don't tell me it's an ability they get once they're given powered armor and say a vow. That's bunk. If it's truely religious zeal, then how come ecclesiarchs can't manifest miracles on whim?

Premise 1: Sisters can do things a normal human cannot do.

Premise 2. It is not a matter of faith that gives the sisters their powers.

Premise 3. Their chief saint is a demon.

Conclusion: SoB are not the same species as base humans.

Addendum: "superhuman" and other such terms stray beyond the realm of reason. We are merely discussing their humanity.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Can a commissar of the imperial guard stop bullets and manifest miracles by praying REALLY HARD? No. No one can.

Considering the nebulous concept of faith and what does and does not count as a "miracle", yes a Commissar or Guardsman could feasibly pray really hard and not die after being shot. I'd also like to point out that generally speaking, the whole stopping bullets cos faith thing isn't actually accurate to what we see in the background 9/10 times. Faith is always attributed after the fact because that is how faith works. A Convent of Sororitas survives an enemy assault while singing battle hymns the whole time? Must be the protective grace of the Emperor. A Priest manages to root out the leader of a Chaos Cult seemingly by chance? Clearly, the Emperor guided their hand. There are individuals who can seemingly channel the power of the Emperor but we don't know what that is. It isn't Warp-based as shown by the events of the Pariah Nexus where the Sororitas forces were the only ones not affected by the "Stilling" phenomenon.
Of course, I suspect you are (once again) equating game and background, despite being told numerous times that's not how 40k works.

Except the women from a planet that was found by the emperor before the HH. That means they possess something more than human, i.e. not 1-1 match. I will grant they are humanoid, but seeing as how to only 100% scientific test is to see if they are sexually comparable, (Can they bear off spring with a human) is impossible, due to their vows, I guess we'll have to never know?

Dude don't be weird.

Premise 1: Sisters can do things a normal human cannot do.

Premise 2. It is not a matter of faith that gives the sisters their powers.

Premise 3. Their chief saint is a demon.

Conclusion: SoB are not the same species as base humans.

That is the shoddiest attempt at scientific reasoning I've seen in a very long time.
1 - Your first premise is absolute horse gak and could be applied to a thousand different things. Physicists who specialise in quantum theory can understand concepts "normal" humans can't so I guess they aren't human. Olympian Gold medalists can do things "normal" humans can't do so they too must not be human.

2 - Sisters don't have "powers", you just seem incapable of understanding that a mechanic to make an army unique doesn't perfectly translate to the background. They might have the ability to channel the power of the Emperor (whatever that is) but they themselves do not have abilities beyond superior martial prowess and faith compared to a baseline human.

3 - Celestine is certainly connected to the Warp but then by your garbage logic, every single Chaos Cultist isn't human either because they worship Warp entities.

Addendum: "superhuman" and other such terms stray beyond the realm of reason. We are merely discussing their humanity.

From a purely biological perspective the Sisters of Battle are objectively human. They don't have any extra organs like Astartes and aren't mutated like Ratlings or Ogryns.

My understanding is that sisters are literally just religious fanatics who are wearing power armor and that they're no more buff than guardsmen (hence T3). They believe so strongly in the emperor that it screws with the warp and the warp makes their beliefs into truths (i.e., their faith can stop bullets). So to answer your first question, yes, a commissar could stop a bullet purely with their faith. But they have to be a sisters-level fanatic.

We also need to go right back to Realms of Chaos, and original, erm, origins, of The Emperor.

Potted version is…

Shamans on Earth were Psykers. In pre-history, once their physical form died, their spirit passed into The Warp, which at that point was in balance, and be rejuvenated. They’d then reincarnate as themselves.

Warp goes into ever increasing turmoil. Realising the rejuvenation is at risk, the Shamans mass-suicide, come together in The Warp and reincarnate into a single being. That’s The Emperor.

We’re also told that most souls dissipate in the Warp. But, if one can retain consciousness, then you become a Warp Entity.

Warp Entities feed off emotions, hence we have the four major Gods, plus Gork & Mork.

With The Emperor now one foot in the grave, we don’t really know what he is, or what his potential might be. With untold trillions of humans with at least some level of faith, it’s arguable should he pass over into The Warp whether he might manifest into a new God, devouring the faith of his followers.

DeadliestIdiot wrote:
My understanding is that sisters are literally just religious fanatics who are wearing power armor and that they're no more buff than guardsmen (hence T3). They believe so strongly in the emperor that it screws with the warp and the warp makes their beliefs into truths (i.e., their faith can stop bullets). So to answer your first question, yes, a commissar could stop a bullet purely with their faith. But they have to be a sisters-level fanatic.

There’s an example in the novel Shadowpoint where one of the main characters’ life is saved by a lucky bolt shot from a commissar he’d left for dead. Later, when the medics pick up the casualties he’s told that the commissar has been dead for hours and couldn’t possibly have saved him.

Given the commissar died clutching his prayer book, the implication is that divine intervention kept him alive enough to fire that shot, even though he was clinically dead.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

With The Emperor now one foot in the grave, we don’t really know what he is, or what his potential might be. With untold trillions of humans with at least some level of faith, it’s arguable should he pass over into The Warp whether he might manifest into a new God, devouring the faith of his followers.

It is possible he already is that, while still retaining a lingering grasp on his original body. It is also possible that he has changed, as the Eldar Farseer in Godsblight suggests that a being might be changed by the faith that people have in them, so that the Emperor of 40K may be changed from the original Emperor in 30K, perhaps to conform more with what people believe.

As for the nature of faith based powers, it is uncertain about their warp based nature, as GW themselves have been inconsistent. Anything supernatural in the 40K universe seems to ultimately derive from the warp as it is not bound by the laws of physical reality. Celestine weakened when the Cadian pylons activated, suggesting that she is a daemon of the Emperor, as the other Chaos daemons present at the time also weakened. What does that say for the SoB faith powers though? Maybe they are different as they seemed to have been largely unaffected by the Necron Pariah Nexus. However even then there could be alternative explanations, such as the Necrons having a flawed understanding of the warp and how to block it. Other entities that seemingly are under supernatural effects I don't think are affected either, such as Plague Marines, which should not be alive given their non-functional biology. They don't immediately drop dead if they enter the Pariah Nexus.

Though game rules and interactions can always be unreliable with regards to drawing conclusions, faith based powers such as the prayers in the SoB Codex that cause Mortal Wounds (Refrain of Blazing Piety), can be resisted by things that resist Mortal Wounds. These are often explained as wards against psychic powers, which would seem to imply that at least those prayers might be based on psychic power.

My own headcanon explanation is that powers given as a form of blessing from a god, such as a Plague Marine's ongoing life while in violation of biology, or the SoB's powers, are normally immune to most forms of stopping psychic powers. The god's power overrides or penetrates psychic wards. Psychic powers which are basically a mortal psyker drawing upon the warp are susceptible to these forms of blockage. Maybe the Refrain of Blazing Piety and other things like it are weak enough divine powers that is susceptible as well.

My idea stems from the old RPG supplement Primal Order which posited that gods used "primal" power (a more powerful and refined form of power in the universe instead of magic, a lesser medium of power) to accomplish their divine supernatural effects, with primal powers piercing magic defenses as if they were not there, whereas magic powers could be blocked by magic and primal defenses. Magic was a lesser form of manipulating reality compared to primal, but its users were free and not beholden to the whims of the god granting the power.