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This is something that has always bothered me about the story of the Horus Heresy, and about the Emperor's internment in general.
An alpha-grade psyker has enough power to affect an entire planet, and the Emperor is clearly above alpha level. In Dark Heresy, even a low-ranking Biomancer can heal wounds, on themselves and others. The Primarchs, while created from the Emperor's genes, are still inferior to him. And there's no end to number of life-extending technologies the Mechanicum have on offer, such as that used in Dreadnoughts (although I will readily admit these might not have existed at all in 30K).
So, taking all this into account, how does the Emperor even get wounded by Horus in the first place, given that he was likely powerful enough to crack the earth in two with his brain and could probably perform healing up to and possibly including raising the dead just as easily? How does he not only get grievously injured, but does not heal himself and does not get any form of augmetic surgery to replace damaged organs or tissue?
The only justification I can think of is dramatic license-- the whole father/son tragedy, plus the justification for this almighty being not really doing a lot in the grimdark far future and thus not giving the Imperium a huge edge. Otherwise I just can't buy it being a realistic turn of events given everything else that's been established.
Thoughts? If I'm missing some huge glaring detail that explains the whole thing, feel free to correct me.
I posed an identical question a while back, iirl people said that Horus was given more powers by the chaos gods, and the emperor wasn't THAT powerful.
I think there's no real justification for it, other than the poetic notion of 100,000 people sacrificed daily to keep the emperor alive.
Ever thought 40k would be a lot better with bears?
Codex: Bears.
NOW WITH MR BIGGLES AND HIS AMAZING FLYING CONTRAPTION
Horus was empowered by the 4 chaos gods. The enemies of the Emperor.
Horus disemboweled the Emperor and was stabbed in the face and turned to dust for his efforts.
The Emperor could very easily been healed and repaired but there would have been far too much doubt amongst the masses as to weather or not it was really him.
Putting him on the golden throne was not his own idea. The lords of Terra made the decision to further empower the new belief of the god-emperor for their own ends.
For a clearer meaning please check out the Inquisitor rule book.
And remember: Everything you've been told is a lie.
Well, in all the artwork I've seen, the Emperor is clearly not wearing a helmet...and those things save lives! That being said, its always bugged me too, but I think the key component is what you've already said, its the tragedy that is important, not the actual injury itself. He died of a broken heart...
4th company
The Screaming Beagles of Helicia V
Hive Fleet Jumanji
DeffDred wrote:For a clearer meaning please check out the Inquisitor rule book.
The brief exert on that page is probably my favourite part of the Inquisitor rulebook - it's a very well written piece that truly underliness your quote that...
...Everything you've been told is a lie.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/11/08 00:44:54
You know, I could have sworn reading/hearing about a short story that described some Heretic talking to an Inquisitor, telling how the Emperor had actually died, and it was Horus up on the Thone.
Thus, the whole 'Dead to the False Emperor' thing.
You know, I could have sworn reading/hearing about a short story that described some Heretic talking to an Inquisitor, telling how the Emperor had actually died, and it was Horus up on the Thone.
Thus, the whole 'Dead to the False Emperor' thing.
Oh snap! Really? That would be a very cool idea actually! If you remember the name of the story could you PM me a msg?
4th company
The Screaming Beagles of Helicia V
Hive Fleet Jumanji
I really hope they pull out one of these occasionally mentioned twists out when they finally do wrap up the Horus Heresy series. Both of those twists - it being Horus rather than the Emperor, or the Emperor being interred against his will to further the Lecitio Divinitatus would be great endings to the series.
IIRC it was because he couldn't fit a fat dreadnought ass on the golden throne, which is the only thing keeping Terra from being eaten by every known thing in the universe
Joey wrote:I posed an identical question a while back, iirl people said that Horus was given more powers by the chaos gods, and the emperor wasn't THAT powerful.
I think there's no real justification for it, other than the poetic notion of 100,000 people sacrificed daily to keep the emperor alive.
Yeah, that's what I figured. The narrative demanded it, but that doesn't justify the logical fallacies.
Also, I thought it was 1,000 (somehow I doubt even the Imperium could manage 100,000 psykers every single day).
DeffDred wrote:Horus was empowered by the 4 chaos gods. The enemies of the Emperor.
Horus disemboweled the Emperor and was stabbed in the face and turned to dust for his efforts.
The Emperor could very easily been healed and repaired but there would have been far too much doubt amongst the masses as to weather or not it was really him.
Putting him on the golden throne was not his own idea. The lords of Terra made the decision to further empower the new belief of the god-emperor for their own ends.
For a clearer meaning please check out the Inquisitor rule book.
And remember: Everything you've been told is a lie.
That would have to be an awful lot of power, and if it was enough to kill the Emperor it should have been enough to keep Horus alive afterwards. Instead, one gets the impression the Chaos Gods sort of backed out right at the end for no discernible reason.
And thanks for the tip; I'll look into that book.
You know, I could have sworn reading/hearing about a short story that described some Heretic talking to an Inquisitor, telling how the Emperor had actually died, and it was Horus up on the Thone.
Thus, the whole 'Dead to the False Emperor' thing.
I love this. It completely boats over the entire Imperial Creed and would break blood vessels throughout the Ecclesiarchy; it actually answers a number of questions about the Imperial faith and that of Chaos (it changes their motivations from a hate of the Emperor to a hate of Horus for having destroyed the Emperor to whom they remain faithful; it gives them a new outlook and adds a whole new level of tragic heft to their struggle).
TheAngrySquig wrote:I'm pretty sure that the False Emperor thing comes from him having no right to rule, not being Horus in disquise
That's obvious, but a twist like that would be really, really awesome. Ending it with the whole 'noble Emperor died to save us' thing would be obvious and boring.
Though in the end, we all know it's Alpharius on that throne.
This just in Dakkanaughts, Alpharius is the Emperor's toilet.
Also the black rage is caused by visions of Sanguinius falling to Chaos and being struck down by the emperor, and Mephiston only overcame the rage by accepting his fate and ascending to daemonhood.
I had heard somewheres abouts (this is hearsay, so not a whole lot of value unless it can be supported)
That first the Emp was all, oh no, not my favorite son.
Then Horus was like, stab smash kill, die daddy die!
Then the Emp was like noes! I must kills you.
Then Horus was all like die daddy die!
The the Emp zapped horus from all of existence.
Then the Emperor got dumped into the golden thone.
Anyways, I believe the act of removing Horus from the grip of the Chaos gods and totally erasing him in any fashion (so he might not be brought back by Chaos) drained the damaged Emperor beyond repair.
Ixion wrote:This is something that has always bothered me about the story of the Horus Heresy, and about the Emperor's internment in general.
An alpha-grade psyker has enough power to affect an entire planet, and the Emperor is clearly above alpha level. In Dark Heresy, even a low-ranking Biomancer can heal wounds, on themselves and others. The Primarchs, while created from the Emperor's genes, are still inferior to him. And there's no end to number of life-extending technologies the Mechanicum have on offer, such as that used in Dreadnoughts (although I will readily admit these might not have existed at all in 30K).
So, taking all this into account, how does the Emperor even get wounded by Horus in the first place, given that he was likely powerful enough to crack the earth in two with his brain and could probably perform healing up to and possibly including raising the dead just as easily? How does he not only get grievously injured, but does not heal himself and does not get any form of augmetic surgery to replace damaged organs or tissue?
The only justification I can think of is dramatic license-- the whole father/son tragedy, plus the justification for this almighty being not really doing a lot in the grimdark far future and thus not giving the Imperium a huge edge. Otherwise I just can't buy it being a realistic turn of events given everything else that's been established.
Thoughts? If I'm missing some huge glaring detail that explains the whole thing, feel free to correct me.
There was a first person perspective story of the Emperor's attack on Horus' Battle Barge in one of the REALLY REALLY old books. A White dwarf maybe? It was colossally long, like 5-6 pages of magazine text.
Basically, The Emperor faced Horus over the body of Sanguinus. They fought evenly in a physical sense, as Horus was a Primarch, the closest thing to the emperor in the galaxy, and was powered by the full might of all 4 of the chaos gods, but not in a psychic sense. Horus couldn't contain enough of the Chaos God's power to reasonably kill him 1 vs 1. Even so, the emperor could not bring himself to kill his favorite son, even after seeing what he had become and what he was doing and so held back. In return Horus inflicted massive physical damage, melted an eye, gutted him, broke and maybe even severed one of his arms (don't remember) and still the emp held back on the hope he could save him. As he was down on the ground and about to be finished by Horus a lone terminator entered the room and opened fire on Horus. Needless to say he did nothing, and Horus gleefully incinerated him in the most painful way possible. It was at that moment that the Emp realized his son was truly and completely lost to him forever. He gathered up what strength he had left, focused it into "a beam of unimaginable power, focused like a laser" and hit Horus full on. The emperor wouldn't just stop at killing Horus, as if he were to perish he couldn't risk Horus surviving or being reborn by the chaos powers and regrouping the traitor forces. He had to annihilate his soul for all time. This is no easy feat, especially since he was reinforced by the powers of chaos, but the emperor was so powerful that his attack frightened even the chaos gods, and they withdrew their power at the last moment and left Horus to his fate.
The wounds the emperor suffered weren't regular knife or gun wounds, they were inflicted by a being as powerful as he was. I'm of the opinion that the physical damage could have been reasonably easily repaired via tech and psychic powers, but the attacks weren't just physical in nature, they were backed by the entirety of chaos and one of most powerful beings in existence. I think what "killed" the emperor was the attack on Horus, it burned him out, as it's scope had to be powerful enough to scare the chaos gods into retreat. Him being ripped up plus him being psychically burnt out is why put him into a coma. This is also why I think he's being fed "1000 psychics a day", it takes so much energy to repair his body the 1000 a day is just barely sustaining him.
The Emperor was fighting a being of psychic and physical might, having the massed power of the Chaos Gods within him, similar to him.
Not to mention, Horus did extensive physical damage to the Emperor's physical body. By the time the fight was over, he had a gaping chest wound, third degree burns all over his body, a burst/popped eyeball, his jugular ripped out, one of his arms ripped off, his remaining arm's wrist broken, and his spine broken in half.
Beyond that, consider that the Emperor had to use the last of his power to deal the finishing blow to Horus, expunging Chaos from him and blasting his soul to nothingness.
Also, the Emperor probably couldn't split a planet in two with a thought.
The Emperor pulled his punches. Until he saw a termie or guardsman or whatever get killed by Horus, Big E was fighting with one hand behind his back. For some reason, seeing Sanguinius dead wasn't enough - that's the only problem I have with the story.
If the Emperor had been able to repair himself it would've killed the story. Justify it how you want, but killing Horus and then self-repairing would've been silly.
Although the idea that the Emperor died and it's really Horus on the throne is really cool. Makes me wish I had a copy of Inquisitor so I could read the excerpt.
He had to placed on the Golden Throne, that's one thing that is very important to remember. If he wasn't on the throne, keeping it bottled up, there would be a warp rift...In the heart of his empire, humanity's home world, destroying everything he wrought.
As to being wounded in the first place, the attacks weren't as simple as lightning claw and mace blows (Though Horus seemed to have a nasty, nasty mace)...They were psychic too, affecting him on a whole other level, one not so easily fixed or even understood by science.
Noisy_Marine wrote:If the Emperor had been able to repair himself it would've killed the story. Justify it how you want, but killing Horus and then self-repairing would've been silly.
You say that like it would be a bad thing. I'd be perfectly open to a completely different sequence of events from there.
Hell, discard the entire Horus Heresy completely-- the Emperor never got into a fight, he just got old; the Golden Throne is a life support system he designed for himself in his younger days because he knew one day his vast longevity, which appeared to all others as immortality, would simply run out. Weirdness averted, and a lot of irrelevant history cleanly excised.
Emperor on the throne. -Damaged beyond healing -intentionally not healed by HLoT to sustain power -- Failing throne? -He's just old (edit) Horus on the throne. -Intentionally not healed, cause its, well, Horus. -Repenting after Chaos was expelled by dying emperor. Empty throne -Powered by all those dying Psykers
ALPHARIUS on/is the throne
Any theories I am missing? Right, he (in)conveniently got old.
edits for Alphy
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/11/09 01:22:08
TheAngrySquig wrote:Missed the theory about it being Alpharius up there
Yeah, he's hiding behind the throne, and he's got a bunch of strings attached to the Emperor's limbs so he can make him dance and sing!
Oh, and my favorite explanation for the Emperor's wounds is from '40k Lore in a Minute', where the Emperor is described as a 'sentimental old sod' and having kill Horus with 'mind bullets'.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2011/11/08 04:38:18
Ixion wrote:Tgiven that he was likely powerful enough to crack the earth in two with his brain and could probably perform healing up to and possibly including raising the dead just as easily?
Not even close. Find the actual occurrences of his psychic powers. They are not of this potency or variety.
"'players must agree how they are going to select their armies, and if any restrictions apply to the number and type of models they can use."
This is an actual rule in the actual rulebook. Quit whining about how you can imagine someone's army touching you in a bad place and play by the actual rules.
Freelance Ontologist
When people ask, "What's the point in understanding everything?" they've just disqualified themselves from using questions and should disappear in a puff of paradox. But they don't understand and just continue existing, which are also their only two strategies for life.
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The Screaming Beagles of Helicia V
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