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Is there anything anywhere that says where the Emperor came from? Was he created? If so, by who? Or is he a more evolved human? Or did he just appear with no explanation?

Possible major spoiler alert.

There is the Sensei theory from 2nd ed, I think, that says that the Emperor was created by a bunch of immortals binding their souls together in the Warp to create a being of immense power. I don't know that much about it though, you'd need to ask someone that's been around longer.

He only seems to be human in the loosest of terms. What people see when they look at him is just what he wants them to see, and he's pretty much immortal. He's essentially a warp god tied to a human body. The Star Child theory says that when his body dies, he'll become a god in truth, but the Inquisition has said that this theory was spread by Tzeentch, so whether or not it's true is questionable at best.

It's impossible to say where he came from, apart from the Warp. He was apparently pretty much every major religious figure in our history, appearing all over the world and even travelling to Mars some time in the Middle Ages to bind a C'tan there.

The people involved were immortal in the sence that they would be reborn with their memories intact after they die. As the warp became more dangerous with the rise of chaos a group of these 'shamans' decided to die on mass and combine their souls into one. What was reborn was the Emperor.

The old Realm of Chaos books have said the Emperor was born to mortal parents in Central Anatolia in the 8th Millennium B.C.. Since then though GW has never gone into it and his origins have been kept deliberately ambiguous, even in the HH series.

The source for the following material is the original Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness: The Lost and the Damned and spans multiple sections.

When humanity was still in the nomadic hunter-gatherer stage, there was a subset of humanity or perhaps a sub-race, of psykers. These are the shamans you hear about when people speak of this topic. They sensed the previously calm and harmonious warp was becoming ever turbulent, and that reincarnation was growing more difficult. Foreseeing that there would come a time when reincarnation would be impossible, they decided to all commit suicide and all reincarnate in one being, that would be immortal and that would have all their powers, in order to preserve and promote the state of the warp as they once knew it and to safeguard humanity. This being was born in Anatolia in 8000 BC. This being did not have any powers or recall any special knowledge until maturity, when his powers and memories awakened. This being was the being that would later be known as the Emperor.

During this time, the 4 great gods of Chaos had not yet been born. The Emperor worked behind the scenes to try and influence and guide humanity away from the thoughts, emotions, and actions that promoted the feeding of these still unborn gods. He was unsuccessful as first Khorne, Tzeentch, and then Nurgle were born in that order. By the medieval era, all 3 were fully awake and conscious (though I add nothing is said about how powerful or weak they were at the time). The Emperor continued to exist in the shadows of history and did not reveal himself until he unified Terra at the end of the Age of Strife and the beginning of the Great Crusade.

The "sensei", which you might hear mentioned, are descendants of the Emperor (though not explicitly said to be direct sons so it could be a recessive thing). The Emperor had many identities over the millenia and even children. The sensei are immune to the imbalances of emotion that feed the Chaos gods, and are naturally drawn to fight oppression. This means they often take up roles of vigilante heroes, revolutionaries, or corsairs. As their souls blend in with the original harmonious flow of the warp, they are also invisible to divination and scrying, rendering them invisible to detection by psychic means, even by the Emperor. The Emperor is therefore unaware of the sensei's existence.



The following is my own personal commentary:

The mass shaman suicide may explain why there are so few psykers for so much of human history. They had effectively wiped themselves out from the gene pool. Only the weakest psykers remained, accounting for the stories of magic in myths, and it took millenia before new mutations or breeding by those that the psyker genes led to new psykers.

The shaman explanation is the traditional one.

The new Heresy series throws up another possibility. In Know No Fear the Emperor is implied to be another, one of the strongest, perpetuals, immortal beings from ancient human times. Ollanius Pius is another perpetual and remembers battlefields throughout human history, once also serving with Jason, the Argonaut Jason (or the historical basis for the myth).

So, what your saying is that if the 40k universe was real, the emperor would have live during the twenty first century, and probably was a great spiritual leader?

In my minds eye i see him as an insurance salesman.
Can you imagine that?

Yes, although the Emperor would not be a visible figure. He would be just a normal joe, working from the shadows using his psychic powers to influence world events.

So he might have been an insurance salesman! But he had very busy weekends!

 Archon Tobias wrote:
So he might have been an insurance salesman! But he had very busy weekends!

thats right; he put down the pen to pick up the sword

In 21'st century Emperor was either:

-top scientist.
-leader of Iluminati.

He's the highlander.....*start music "Princes of the universe by Queen"*

Wouldn't it be crazy if the emperor is real and planted the idea for 40k at the guys in GWs heads and is just laughing his head off

The emperor is chuck testa!

 Lord General Cheese wrote:
Wouldn't it be crazy if the emperor is real and planted the idea for 40k at the guys in GWs heads and is just laughing his head off

you might have something going there...

 Lord General Cheese wrote:
Wouldn't it be crazy if the emperor is real and planted the idea for 40k at the guys in GWs heads and is just laughing his head off

Maybe the founder of GW is the Emprah and the idea of wh40k came to him because of his (not fully developed) precognition powers..

He's Dana Scully's child.

DUN DUN DUUUUUN.

I've always pictured him as being some of the more inspirational leaders and heroes through history who had "God Hood" proclaimed upon them, in a an effort to try to aid the world, and bring humanity together into one house - Hercules, Romulus, Tuthmosis, Alexander the great and perhaps Constantine. It's mentioned a few times, most recently in the Horus Heresy series that the Emperor himself tells Horus that he is from Anatolia, and given the ancient pre-occupation with the double eagle symbol in Anatolia before the Turks (brought to the fore by the Byzantine Empire in the middle ages) I'm inclined to think thats the best possible story line.

 Macok wrote:

 Lord General Cheese wrote:
Wouldn't it be crazy if the emperor is real and planted the idea for 40k at the guys in GWs heads and is just laughing his head off

Maybe the founder of GW is the Emprah and the idea of wh40k came to him because of his (not fully developed) precognition powers..

In which case, I give you the face of the Lord of Mankind:

Tales of Heresy from the HH series has got a short on the Emperor's backstory, focusing on the Unification wars.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yes, although the Emperor would not be a visible figure. He would be just a normal joe, working from the shadows using his psychic powers to influence world events.

I don't remember what book I read it from, but I distinctly remember the idea that the Emperor stood back and did just this for a good long time, and even then he only slowly manipulated events. It was only until we came close to total collapse that he "came forth".