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disregarding the events of Davin and the ruinous powers....


What do you guys think of an alternate version of the Horus Heresy where the Emperor was really trying to ascend to Godhood and become a benevolent deity that could crush the powers of Chaos forever, but Horus and the other Primarchs who rebelled against the Emperor did so for all their lives they had been taught about leading mankind into a secular golden age and the Great Crusade was a secular one, and so they betrayed their father and drove to Terra to stop him from ascending into Godhood.

I.e. the entire Horus Heresy was a huge misunderstanding and it wasnt good guys fighting against Chaos, but good guys fighting against good guys?

And only after their defeat were the traitor legions forced to withdraw into the Eye of Terror as their only refuge or face annihilation and thus ultimately they accepted Chaos

I think it certainly sounds interesting, but is totally not in keeping with the irony of the situation we have in M40, compared to the intent of the Great Crusade and what we know of the Emperor in M30.

'Cause if the Emp was going to ascend to god-hood, intentionally, why would he bother with the facade of secularism? He crushed entire worlds under his heel, he could simply show up and say, "This place is mine now, worship me, or know damnation." And if people didn't? He'd sic the World Eaters on them.

what I mean is that somewhere in the middle of the GC the Emperor realizes that he needs to augment (I never asked for this...) his presence in the Warp a thousandfold to be able to enter the Empyrean and battle the chaos Gods himself.

Like a Buddhist monk achieving divinity through meditation, he goes back to Terra to start transferring his physical manifestation more and more into the empyrean and also strengthening it to be powerful enough to take it up with the Big Four.

Isn't there something like this on 1d4chan?

Well, he'd probably tell at least some of the Primarchs what was going on, Guilleman and Dorn, maybe Russ and Magnus, too, depending on when, exactly, this was going down.

There probably would never be an Edict of Nikea. He'd tell Lorgar to start *really* cranking up the temple-building, if he knew it was the adoration of mortals that was the ticket to his augmentation, probably tell Malcador to make that throne super-comfy, and then get on with it.

Horus would probably be named Regent in his stead, being the favored son, a sort of mortal representative of the ascended God-Emperor... a Throne Angel, if you will, with the other Primarchs given roles and duties befitting their talents.

Why would the otherwise-Traitor Legions turn against the Emperor? Chaos doesn't quite have the hooks that they do in the normal narrative... and even if they can get a couple Primarchs to fall, I doubt it would be Horus, and without Horus the rebellion is a relatively minor thing. The other Traitor Primarchs don't really have what it takes to be serious contenders to the throne.

Well, there is enough in the Horus Heresy novel series that, should you wish, the Emperor can have foreseen the outcome of the Heresy and His deification in the aftermath. He allowed Horus and His other sons to turn knowing it would bring about His deification.

Previously I would say that the Emperor genuinely thought that destroying all religion was the only answer but, having had the opportunity to see the future again, after having had a blank spot due to the Heresy events, decided being deified might not be so bad afterall.

Ironically, the Legion that was already worshipping Him as a god, needed to fall in order to bring that realisation about.