Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

My personal interpretation is what ever the emperor was before getting put in place on the throne, he is something else now entirely. Between being attached to a complex machine for the rest of his days and having 1000+ souls a day feed to him to keep him going, his conscious and thoughts are likely very divergent from the man that he was.

The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

Talon of Horus shows he does work the Astronomican. Unless I am misunderstanding what you said or implied.


We can see that light. Those of us within the Empire of the Eye can actually see it. The Astronomican reaches even to our purgatorial exile, and to us it is no mere mystical radiance illuminating the warp. It is pain, it is fire, and it plunges entire Neverborn worlds into war.

It would be a mistake to believe the Emperor’s power battles the Four Gods’ forces, here. It is not order against chaos, nor anything as crude as ‘good’ against ‘evil’. It is all psychic energy, crashing together in volatile torment.

Most of the Radiant Worlds are uninhabitable, lost in the lethal crash of conflicting psychic energies. Armies of fire angels and flame-wrought projections wage war against everything in their path. We call this region the Firetide. What made the Avernus Breach so valuable was its path, not its destination. It cut through the systems forever bleached bare of life by the Firetide, and into the calmer Radiant Worlds beyond. These are the star systems bathed in psychic light without burning in it.

Entire centuries will pass without a single vessel sailing the region, for it offers little to us beyond yet another example of soul energies manifesting in ways mortals can barely control. On more than one occasion the Mechanicum has sought to use Neverborn spirits bound within arcane flesh-machinery to record the Radiant Worlds in an ever-shifting, evolving map. Such attempts have fared as poorly as you might imagine.

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

I'm not sure that distinction matters. He projects it, so he needs the fuel.
The fluff has consistently been that the souls are sacrificed/given to /eaten/ destroyed by the Emperor, not a separate thing that is the Astronomicon.

Voss wrote:

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

I'm not sure that distinction matters. He projects it, so he needs the fuel.
The fluff has consistently been that the souls are sacrificed/given to /eaten/ destroyed by the Emperor, not a separate thing that is the Astronomicon.

If you're arguing that eating people changes the Emperor's personality it matters a lot. The psykers die as the Astronomicon consumes their power which would happen without the Emperor. The Astronomicon is like a torch - the Emperor is holding it and shining it at things but the psykers are the batteries.

pm713 wrote:

Voss wrote:

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

I'm not sure that distinction matters. He projects it, so he needs the fuel.
The fluff has consistently been that the souls are sacrificed/given to /eaten/ destroyed by the Emperor, not a separate thing that is the Astronomicon.

If you're arguing that eating people changes the Emperor's personality it matters a lot. The psykers die as the Astronomicon consumes their power which would happen without the Emperor. The Astronomicon is like a torch - the Emperor is holding it and shining it at things but the psykers are the batteries.

And its said it takes a lot of power for the Emperor to do that.


1st Edition Rogue Trader said the Emperor is the only one can direct it.

Even if it's not accurate I actually love the idea that the Emperor's personality is changed by the souls he consumes. Kinda reminds me of another flagrantly evil character from a game I enjoy... Though the similarities pretty much end there.

epronovost wrote:
Celestine is just one other in a long line of "powered-up" Sister of Battle and Saint. To me. this seems to indicate that the Emepror either changed his mind about faith and godhood or he was liar all along.

According to Malcador, prior to the HH, the Emperor hoped that the Imperium would be ready to manage without him one day. My guess is the Emperor had a change of heart since being confined to the Golden Throne has left him with literally no other option than to accept godhood if he wants to see humanity survive.

 Karhedron wrote:

epronovost wrote:
Celestine is just one other in a long line of "powered-up" Sister of Battle and Saint. To me. this seems to indicate that the Emepror either changed his mind about faith and godhood or he was liar all along.

According to Malcador, prior to the HH, the Emperor hoped that the Imperium would be ready to manage without him one day. My guess is the Emperor had a change of heart since being confined to the Golden Throne has left him with literally no other option than to accept godhood if he wants to see humanity survive.

I like to see it in the opposite way. To keep on living, the Emperor, rightfully affraid of what could happen to a psyker of his power after his mortal demise (see how eldar perceive the concept of death), chosed to accept godhood to make sure humanity would keep on sacrificing all they have to His throne and thus avoid death and defeat. He loves the Sisters because they are willing to die and suffer senselessly for him no matter what (unlike the Primarchs who were "too much like him"). I don't think hte Emperor is any sort of altruistic, benevolent person. I don't see him "making sacrifices" for humanity, but the other way around.

Voss wrote:

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

I'm not sure that distinction matters. He projects it, so he needs the fuel.
The fluff has consistently been that the souls are sacrificed/given to /eaten/ destroyed by the Emperor, not a separate thing that is the Astronomicon.

There have always been two tithes of psykers. One is a mass of untrained psykers who power the golden throne. The other is the personnel of the adeptus astronomican, who train for years in a monastery in the Himalayas to be skilled enough to join the choir in the chamber of the astronomican, where they will intentionally expend their lives over several months.

Onething123456 wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Voss wrote:

pm713 wrote:
The souls are for the Astronomicon not the Emperor.

I'm not sure that distinction matters. He projects it, so he needs the fuel.
The fluff has consistently been that the souls are sacrificed/given to /eaten/ destroyed by the Emperor, not a separate thing that is the Astronomicon.

If you're arguing that eating people changes the Emperor's personality it matters a lot. The psykers die as the Astronomicon consumes their power which would happen without the Emperor. The Astronomicon is like a torch - the Emperor is holding it and shining it at things but the psykers are the batteries.

And its said it takes a lot of power for the Emperor to do that.


1st Edition Rogue Trader said the Emperor is the only one can direct it.

That....that's what I said.

the emperor says he doesnt want to be a god, yet commands an entire legion to kneel before him. sounds very 'Xerxes' to me. plus only a bit of a turd humiliates a leader before his men, got what he deserved in my opinion.

I just finished Dark Imperium by Guy Haley and it convinced me more than ever, whatever the Emperor was before, he's something very different now. Whether he wanted that is debatable depending on were you fall on the whole heresy was planned to a T, versus the Emperor racing at speed chess and coming up a little short.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I just finished Dark Imperium by Guy Haley and it convinced me more than ever, whatever the Emperor was before, he's something very different now. Whether he wanted that is debatable depending on were you fall on the whole heresy was planned to a T, versus the Emperor racing at speed chess and coming up a little short.

Where does "the Emperor thought he was winning 3D chess with chaos but then realized he was actually losing at checkers" fall on that scale?

Master of Mankind strongly implies that, whatever the Emperor's original plan was prior to losing the Imperial Webway, that plan is now completely dead. Whatever he is doing now is new, possibly entirely unrelated/incompatible with his original plan.

It is even possible that he's doing it without the benefit of the psychic foresight he relied on for the previous 38,000 years. Once the Imperial Webway went to Hell (in a very literal sense), his visions just flat-out stopped. And we've had no indication that they've started up again, AFAIK.

He might just be playing for time at this point, trying to keep humanity alive long enough to work out a new plan to defeat Chaos, without any guarantee that such an outcome is even possible any more.

MoM also seems to give us an inkling of how the Emperor ended up as a god. Watch how ADB uses the word 'Choir'. He starts out using it as how daemons describe the Chaos Gods ('the Four Choirs'). A god is the song of praise sung by the souls/daemons that make up that god as a gestalt. It's very Douglas Hofstadter. Then he uses it to describe the psyker harvest fed into the Golden Throne. They aren't screaming, but singing. They are a fifth Choir.

So the Emperor might be a gestalt of billions of souls by now. A thousand a day for ten millennia soon adds up. The part of him that was once a few mesolithic shamans would be a really small fraction by now.

In any case, any interpretation of the Emperor that makes him out to just be a selfish, power-hungry donkey-cave is fundamentally flawed. We know enough about how Chaos works to know that such a person would have fallen to Chaos millennia ago. The Dark Gods actively seek such people (especially if also powerful psykers) to serve as their champions. So we know that there's something special about the Emperor that caused him to not just reject Chaos but actually become the Anathema, whose very presence annihilates daemons.

He could just be cutting up Sisters and painting himself with their blood. We know that works, for some reason.

 Duskweaver wrote:
In any case, any interpretation of the Emperor that makes him out to just be a selfish, power-hungry donkey-cave is fundamentally flawed. We know enough about how Chaos works to know that such a person would have fallen to Chaos millennia ago. The Dark Gods actively seek such people (especially if also powerful psykers) to serve as their champions. So we know that there's something special about the Emperor that caused him to not just reject Chaos but actually become the Anathema, whose very presence annihilates daemons.

He did fall to Chaos. Quite catastrophically, even. He never started putting spikes on his armor but he was so consumed by his hubris that he thought he could make a bargain with them and come out ahead. Now he's the figurehead of a regime as theocratic as it is oppressive, a perfect breeding ground for new heretics.

Tzeentch's best servants are people who believe they serve only themselves.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:
In any case, any interpretation of the Emperor that makes him out to just be a selfish, power-hungry donkey-cave is fundamentally flawed. We know enough about how Chaos works to know that such a person would have fallen to Chaos millennia ago. The Dark Gods actively seek such people (especially if also powerful psykers) to serve as their champions. So we know that there's something special about the Emperor that caused him to not just reject Chaos but actually become the Anathema, whose very presence annihilates daemons.

He did fall to Chaos. Quite catastrophically, even. He never started putting spikes on his armor but he was so consumed by his hubris that he thought he could make a bargain with them and come out ahead. Now he's the figurehead of a regime as theocratic as it is oppressive, a perfect breeding ground for new heretics.

Tzeentch's best servants are people who believe they serve only themselves.

Love that take on it, exalted this post....waiting for backlash from folk demanding quotes to prove it!

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:
In any case, any interpretation of the Emperor that makes him out to just be a selfish, power-hungry donkey-cave is fundamentally flawed. We know enough about how Chaos works to know that such a person would have fallen to Chaos millennia ago. The Dark Gods actively seek such people (especially if also powerful psykers) to serve as their champions. So we know that there's something special about the Emperor that caused him to not just reject Chaos but actually become the Anathema, whose very presence annihilates daemons.

He did fall to Chaos. Quite catastrophically, even. He never started putting spikes on his armor but he was so consumed by his hubris that he thought he could make a bargain with them and come out ahead. Now he's the figurehead of a regime as theocratic as it is oppressive, a perfect breeding ground for new heretics.

Tzeentch's best servants are people who believe they serve only themselves.

I had planned to post something like this but lacked the diction to describe it.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 Duskweaver wrote:
In any case, any interpretation of the Emperor that makes him out to just be a selfish, power-hungry donkey-cave is fundamentally flawed. We know enough about how Chaos works to know that such a person would have fallen to Chaos millennia ago. The Dark Gods actively seek such people (especially if also powerful psykers) to serve as their champions. So we know that there's something special about the Emperor that caused him to not just reject Chaos but actually become the Anathema, whose very presence annihilates daemons.

He did fall to Chaos. Quite catastrophically, even. He never started putting spikes on his armor but he was so consumed by his hubris that he thought he could make a bargain with them and come out ahead. Now he's the figurehead of a regime as theocratic as it is oppressive, a perfect breeding ground for new heretics.

Tzeentch's best servants are people who believe they serve only themselves.

I really like that view of it.

Arachnofiend wins!

Daemons call him the Anathema and are obliterated or driven insane by his presence. Seems unlikely that he's really just another champion/tool of Chaos...

I genuinely don't get this pseudo-cynical obsession some of you have with making the Emperor out to just be some random charlatan/idiot. The actual canon is that he really was an exceptional individual, but that he failed nevertheless, and that feels much more tragic and interesting to me than your "LOL nope, he was just some schmuck" headcanon.

It's hard to believe he's as awesome as the fluff says when you can look at what he does and he's acting like an idiot.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Daemons call him the Anathema and are obliterated or driven insane by his presence. Seems unlikely that he's really just another champion/tool of Chaos...

I genuinely don't get this pseudo-cynical obsession some of you have with making the Emperor out to just be some random charlatan/idiot. The actual canon is that he really was an exceptional individual, but that he failed nevertheless, and that feels much more tragic and interesting to me than your "LOL nope, he was just some schmuck" headcanon.

The whole thing works way better if indeed is an exceptional individual, but ultimately just a normal man. Genius, sure, powerful psyker, sure, master tactician of course. However, still just a man who can make mistakes, and be betrayed by those who he thought he can trust. It happens, Caesar was tactical genius and brilliant statesman and took over the most powerful empire to world had ever seen (then.) Yet he ended up dead on the senate floor.

Thing is, more powerful, more superhumanly intelligent and more prescient you make the Emperor, less sense the story makes. His failures seem implausible. And then you end up with the cop out that some BL authors seem to be pushing that Emperor actually planned whole Heresy, which pretty much destroys the whole narrative.

I much prefer the idea that the emperor was a nearly omnipotent/omniscient demigod, who was the ultimate manifestation of humanity's potential in the physical universe... And that he failed to guide humanity down the right path simply because he lost touch with what it means to really be human. That he couldn't see the primarchs needed him to be more like a father instead of a general or statesman... And that this failing threw the future of the entire human race into peril.

w1zard wrote:
I much prefer the idea that the emperor was a nearly omnipotent/omniscient demigod, who was the ultimate manifestation of humanity's potential in the physical universe... And that he failed to guide humanity down the right path simply because he lost touch with what it means to really be human. That he couldn't see the primarchs needed him to be more like a father instead of a general or statesman... And that this failing threw the future of the entire human race into peril.

I like that narrative. Implementation of such a narrative is difficult at best though, in a 40k setting, with everything else going on.

w1zard wrote:
I much prefer the idea that the emperor was a nearly omnipotent/omniscient demigod, who was the ultimate manifestation of humanity's potential in the physical universe... And that he failed to guide humanity down the right path simply because he lost touch with what it means to really be human. That he couldn't see the primarchs needed him to be more like a father instead of a general or statesman... And that this failing threw the future of the entire human race into peril.

That's my preferred interpretation too. There are hints he doesn't quite understand humanity now, if he ever truly did, and that could easily have led to a detached Emperor who, for all his intellect, lacks the emotional understanding required to guide humanity. That's a much more interesting idea for me, and much more tragic. He could well have been entirely correct about humanity needing to conquer the galaxy and how the Imperium would then be governed, and the whole Webway project to remove the need for the Warp. But his failing wasn't that he was mistaken about the goals, but wasn't equipped to carry out the process. It implies there could even be a paradox at work, where someone with the intelligence and power to understand what is required to save humanity will inevitably fail to save them because that level of knowledge and power would cut them off from their own race, emotionally speaking.

It seems pretty clear to me that the Emperor isn't making his decisions based on any understanding (or misunderstanding) of human nature, but on what his prescient visions show him of possible futures.

So, for example, his humiliation of Lorgar at Monarchia wasn't done out of some failing in his ability to be a good dad. He did it because he had peered ahead and seen that the possible futures in which he didn't do that to Lorgar are worse than the ones where he did.

Inasmuch as he is bad at understanding human nature, maybe it's because for 38,000 years he hasn't had to. Why bother developing 'people skills' if you can just look into the future and know exactly what to say or do to get the outcome you want?

But, as has been alluded to in the HH books at least a couple of times, the Emperor's foresight seems to be breaking down as time goes on (seemingly as he gains more temporal power).

The problem is that most of GW/BL's current writers lack the ability to effectively convey all that. So we're left with an Emperor that just looks like an idiot a lot of the time.

I guess I should clarify my previous post. I do actually get why people might legitimately think the Emperor is just a fool or a charlatan. What I don't get is why some people seem to want that to be the case, as though that was somehow more interesting or satisfying than the alternative: that he really was humanity's last, best hope and that he failed because Chaos outplayed him despite his brilliance.

I do like w1zard / Slipspace's interpretation, BTW, even if I don't entirely agree with it. It's the facile "he's just a psychopathic charlatan idiot warlord LOL" interpretation I take issue with.

In some ways it's typical tragedy he is undone by his flaws, the inability of both him and the people around him (custodians) to admit mistakes.

The short story magisterium has bith Russ ,in flashback, and Dorn question Valdor and he just can't concieve the idea he made an a mistake. Everything that goes is always someone else's fault.

The biggest enemy the custodians and Malcador failed to protect the Emperor from is the Emperor.

 Duskweaver wrote:
... that he really was humanity's last, best hope and that he failed because Chaos outplayed him despite his brilliance.

Because that is pretty fething dark and depressing, even by grimdark 40k standards. I think the setting has become so grimdark recently that it has almost become a parody of itself, and I actually really like the return of Guilliman injecting a little bit of hope back into the setting and refreshing the narrative. Don't get me wrong, the setting is supposed to be dystopian... but there is only so dystopian you can get before people's suspension of disbelief is broken, or people lose interest.

 Duskweaver wrote:
I do like w1zard / Slipspace's interpretation, BTW, even if I don't entirely agree with it. It's the facile "he's just a psychopathic charlatan idiot warlord LOL" interpretation I take issue with.

Oh yea, the emperor is by no means an idiot... I don't see how you can know the narrative and still think that. The emperor is powerful and cunning beyond measure, to the point where even greater daemons are pants pissingly terrified of him and call him the "anathema". He is somewhat psychopathic though... he will destroy any obstacle in his way to his goals, regardless of the suffering it causes, because in his mind that suffering (no matter how great) is ultimately transitory and less important than the goal of preserving and ascending the human race.

Slipspace wrote:
It implies there could even be a paradox at work, where someone with the intelligence and power to understand what is required to save humanity will inevitably fail to save them because that level of knowledge and power would cut them off from their own race, emotionally speaking.

I really like this, but I think that may be over-analyzing things.