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I wish the HH was actually as well written as Dragonball (up to the end of the Frieza arc anyway).

There's a theory that the Emperor is actually 'leaking' those souls out in the Astronomican, which causes more psykers to be born into the galaxy. Those psykers are just being 'fed' back into their parent being.

The Emperor was originally a conglomerate of loads of psyker souls in one body. This could be them leaking out and being put back in.

Huh. I've never heard that theory before, but it sounds very cool and obviously touches upon an interesting detail in the background. The rise of psykers was always mentioned to be a matter of evolution, yet when the Emperor himself is supposedly a "gestalt being" of ancient Terran psykers, the human species must have always had this potential.

That being said, there are way, way, way more psykers born in the Imperium than there were even normal humans on Earth by the time the Emperor was (supposedly) born, so the numbers don't seem to add up. Does that theory discuss this? Or why the prevalence of psykers in a population seems connected to the location of its world?
I suppose it could be explained with a theory about souls being splintered before distribution, or even multiplying within the Emperor's sundered consciousness. And the worlds' location is only important insofar as the Warp acts as a sort of "telephone line" for the Emperor to "seed" his psychic influence.

DarthMarko wrote:Btw, you shoud really read Dune novels....

Hah, just last week I had the same thought after stumbling over one of the setting's wikipedia articles - something about the AI ban caused by a war against man-made machines in the ancient past. It's funny how much 40k seems to have adopted from Dune.

And I really, really love the original Dune movie. One of my alltime favs.

First I'll finish those Shadowrun novels, though.

I actually think that Chaos is the good guy of 40k, in lack of a better term.

They seem to be the only ones who see the Imperium for the horor that it is.

I know that with the death of the imperium, Chaos is strongr so needs something to be done about them, but I do think they have the best ideas going. Bar Tau/Crons, which seem to be doing only exactly what humanity did in the past: a conquest to gain/regain territory.

IHateNids wrote:They seem to be the only ones who see the Imperium for the horor that it is.

I always perceived it to be more of a case of (in their opinion) the Imperium not going far enough, hence it is weak and the stronger Chaos (whose strength stems from not being bound by any laws or even just the pretense of morality) is supposedly destined to topple it.
Not realising that the Chaos Gods care less for a victory, but more just for the struggle.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

 Endriu Death Coy wrote:
...they are commies in space. I live in a former Soviet republic and for all those who think they are noble goodies, no, they are more like Stalin's USSR, great if you really tow the party line, bad luck if you don't. The greater good is for the greater good of the Ethereals, then the Tau, with the other species far down the pecking order at best.

At the risk of derailing the thread, I just have to say that if someone from a former Soviet republic says the Tau are space communists, then damn Kroothawk and the other Tau fanboys: Tau are space commies.

Tau also remind me of a teenager...full of piss and vinegar over their latest favorite cause, but filled with naivety over how things really work in the world. The Tau seem to think that they can actually impose order in the galaxy. The IoM tries to impose order, but that's out of survival and not out of an idea that they can fix things. That died as soon as Horus turned.

 Lynata wrote:
Huh. I've never heard that theory before, but it sounds very cool and obviously touches upon an interesting detail in the background. The rise of psykers was always mentioned to be a matter of evolution, yet when the Emperor himself is supposedly a "gestalt being" of ancient Terran psykers, the human species must have always had this potential.

That being said, there are way, way, way more psykers born in the Imperium than there were even normal humans on Earth by the time the Emperor was (supposedly) born, so the numbers don't seem to add up. Does that theory discuss this? Or why the prevalence of psykers in a population seems connected to the location of its world?
I suppose it could be explained with a theory about souls being splintered before distribution, or even multiplying within the Emperor's sundered consciousness. And the worlds' location is only important insofar as the Warp acts as a sort of "telephone line" for the Emperor to "seed" his psychic influence.

DarthMarko wrote:Btw, you shoud really read Dune novels....

Hah, just last week I had the same thought after stumbling over one of the setting's wikipedia articles - something about the AI ban caused by a war against man-made machines in the ancient past. It's funny how much 40k seems to have adopted from Dune.

And I really, really love the original Dune movie. One of my alltime favs.

Ooo, there are lot of things which "were" borrowed

You like sisters IIRC ? Check their templats - http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Fish_Speaker

You like God emperor ? Check the one which is half man half god - http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/God_Emperor

You like real grimdark ??? Dune books are for you....Btw, I read heresy only when I want Dragon Ball setting :-) It kind of relaxes me....

The psykers for food/ psykers for the Astronomicon split was originally in the first edition of 40K. You had x number of psykers strong enough to be useful Imperial forces: Librarians, Inquisitors, members of retinues, other imperial agents. Then you had a second string of psykers who weren't strong enough without the Emperor's protection. Those became the Astropaths, whose souls were bound with the Emperor and their regular senses destroyed to stay alive as the Imperial communication system. Then you had the Astronomicon, the ones who were super-close to being demon-bait. Those were rounded up, taught to expend their life force as part of the Astronomicon and plugged in as old members died off.

After all of that, you had the real worst cases of uncontrollable psychic powers. Those were the great majority, who were consumed immediately by the Emperor for sustenance. Basically it was less than one percent useful enough and strong enough to live, 5-10 percent strong enough to die slowly in the Astronomicon, and the remaining 90 to 94.99999999 percent were Purina Emperor Chow.

Eating psykers to stay 'alive'?
This is the thing that convinced you he was a bad guy...
Not the genocide?

I have two things to say about this whole "Good v Evil":

1. Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.

2. What is Evil anyway? Is there reason to the rhyme? Without evil there can be no good, so it must be good to be evil sometimes.

You may now commence the throwing of rotten fruit.

 Happyjew wrote:
I have two things to say about this whole "Good v Evil":

1. Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.

2. What is Evil anyway? Is there reason to the rhyme? Without evil there can be no good, so it must be good to be evil sometimes.

You may now commence the throwing of rotten fruit.

At the risk of sounding like an immoral bastard, I re-iterate cosmicist principle: there is no good and there is no evil. Things simply happen.

I think the word evil is a matter of persepctive.

Even the most vile things performed are done because someone's motivation deemed it necessary. That person would certainly not deem his actions evil.

From the Emperor's point of view consuming 50-100 souls a day is necessary for all the reasons that have been stated. Not so much to the unfortunate who is born as a psyker unable to control his "gift" and is fed to the Emperor. To the average "person on the street" he probably doesn't really care as long as he can have a beer on a friday and watch Seinfeld on re-run on a weeknight. (I'm assuming not a lot really changes over the course of 38,000 years)

For the same reasons, all races in 40k can be considered evil and good at the same time. (Tyranids can both be considered evil (to a planet's inhabitants) and not (the hive mind))

Silver_skates wrote:
ITyranids can both be considered evil (to a planet's inhabitants) and not (the hive mind).

Personally, I consider the Tyranids' alignment as Chaotic Neutral.

 Admiral Valerian wrote:

Silver_skates wrote:
ITyranids can both be considered evil (to a planet's inhabitants) and not (the hive mind).

Personally, I consider the Tyranids' alignment as Chaotic Neutral.

I'd say True Neutral, concepts like good, evil, law and chaos are as alien to them as they are to a mantis shrimp.

Let's do the math here. It says the Emperor uses about 1,000 souls a day. Yes?

Let's assume the Imperium runs on a standard Terran year of 365 days. That's 365 thousand psykers per year.

The Imperium has been around for roughly 10,000 years with the Emperor having to consume these souls.

That comes out to 3.65 billion having been consumed over the course of 10,000 years. Which honestly if you think about it isn't that bad when you look at the numbers of people in the Imperium.

You have around 1 million worlds.Let's assume each one has given some psykers. The numbers average out to 3550 psykers have been given to the Emperor per planet over the last 10,000 years.

When populations sky rocket to hundreds of billions on some worlds and even the smaller ones still have millions, sacrificing less than one psyker a year per planet on average is pretty damn forgivable if in the name of keeping our species from being unable to travel the warp, and thus defend itself.

Apparently the Imperium has enough left over psykers to perform the remaining tasks required of them. This small sacrifice of a meager 1,000 souls on a daily basis is nothing compared to how over 150,000 people die EVERY DAY on this planet alone.

Let's not forget that the Emperor has not actually been stuck on the Golden Throne for 10,000 years exactly. In addition he did not need to feed on just 1,000 a day from the get go. Took a few thousand years in order for that to happen. (It's somewhere in the rule book on that little detail in the time line section).

Personally I think people are a bit too upset over a necessary sacrifice of so few people.

 Eilif wrote:
Yep, the Imperium is not a good place, and it's not just the Emperor. When you look at their approach to other races, or even any humans who don't want to serve the Emperor, as well as what little we learn about the government's control of the various parts of life and the economy it's really, shockingly Facist.

The writers attempt to justify it by telling us that in the 40k universe the Emperor is mankinds only hope. Still, it seems to me that the empire is equal parts 3rd Reich Nazism, and the worst parts of Medieval Western European culture.

I do enjoy much of 40k fluff and some of the novels and many of them do present Imperial charachters who are "good". However I'm not deceived enough to think of the Imperium as a whole as "Good Guys".

Which is rather the point; they're an awful, awful society, a feudalist-fascistic theocracy that attempts genocide against anything different from themselves and persecutes their own people, and the fact that they are the protagonists is supposed to reinforce what a horrible, twisted galaxy they inhabit.

The Great Crusade-era Imperium wasn't that much better either, they replaced theocratic rule with a dictatorial cult of personality, the only thing it really has over the modern Imperium is that at least in that era their massive atrocities had a potentially positive outcome, while the "modern" Imperium is just trying to marginally stave off its own slow, inevitable demise.

Tactical_Genius wrote:
Just found out that the Emperor constantly gobbles on the souls of imperial psykers...

WTF???

Sorry you can't blame him for that. It's the adeptus terra who allow it

 IHateNids wrote:
I actually think that Chaos is the good guy of 40k, in lack of a better term.

They seem to be the only ones who see the Imperium for the horor that it is.

I know that with the death of the imperium, Chaos is strongr so needs something to be done about them, but I do think they have the best ideas going. Bar Tau/Crons, which seem to be doing only exactly what humanity did in the past: a conquest to gain/regain territory.

Well the Imperium is still the lesser of 2 evils IMHO, and depending on where you live, live is not so bad (i hate to say it but Ultramarines seem to be quite good overlords).

Chaos is only good if you have been elevated to demonhood, otherwise than that your just a slave, a sacrifice or a bulletsponge.

and you aren't a slave, sacrifice waiting to happen or a bulletsponge as part of the imperium?

 IHateNids wrote:
and you aren't a slave, sacrifice waiting to happen or a bulletsponge as part of the imperium?

As was already said, it depends on where you live. You definitely don't have to be a slave, sacrifice waiting to happen, or a bulletsponge. Living in the "utopias" of Ultramar would be nice. Having a high-status helps too. You could always live on world's that are more 'free' and 'wild' that are still under Imperial control, and so on.

how dare you dis da mighty emprah