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I am relatively new to 40k but have been completely engrossed with the lore behind the game and it occurred to me that the emperor of mankind being an alpha plus level psyker and strongest human psyker of all time, may have waged an unnecessary war to unite terra and end the age of strife. High level psykers are capable of controlling the minds of entire planets and in some cases I believe systems so why did he not simply use mind control to force all opposition leaders to either bend the knee or commit suicide. This method could be used against a lot of the opposition during the great crusade as well. I understand that the writers may have just wanted it this way. I hope this is not a duplicate I tried searching for this topic on the site as well as Google in several different ways if it is I would appreciate a link if possible.

Because GW doesn't think logically like you and I

In all seriousness, though, it's likely so that he could experiment with his Genetic Engineering and have actual battlefields to test his creations on. This was how he tested the Space Marines (1 Legion Astartes, along with several others, fought in the Unification Wars in its infancy), and Thunderwarriors. Also, had he just mind-controlled everyone into obedience, then he would undoubtedly be worshiped as a God due to his god-like capabilities; undermining the Imperial Truth.

@dusara217

You make a good point about the imperial truth, such a display of power would only invite comparison to the divine in lesser men. I suppose he could mind wipe those thoughts from citizens who are thinking of him as divine but that would not only be inefficient it would as you pointed out remove the possibility of testing his forces.

Because he either couldn't or wouldn't.

Wouldn't is a possibility - he's obviously not too bothered about the average human citizen's free will because....well....see most of his actions. But maybe he drew the line at direct control.

It had been tried (on a smaller scale) before, during the Age of Strife - a bunch of especially powerful telepaths set themselves up as kings, mind-controlling anyone who disagreed with them. It didn't work because (a) it's a brute-force approach, and the mass of the populace was always restive, and (b) someone [probably the Emperor from the description] led a coalition to stop them.

Personally I'd go with couldn't. There's never been any indication the Emperor could control an entire planet mentally at once (the biggest display we've seen has been forcing a hundred thousand or so word bearers to kneel simultaneously), and even if he could, psychic control in 40k has always been fairly brute force - so is useless without constant direction unless it's extremely basic commands.

The problem is that the Emperor can only be in one place at once. If he wanted to go places, meet interesting people, and order the custodes and thunder warriors to stab them, he needed people he could trust to manage things behind him - and that meant trust their loyalty and their competency. Which means they needed to be acting from their own free will.

Its quicker and easier to stomp your enemies into the dirt, than chit chat away.
He didnt have to worry about having them changing their mind's and try to usurp him years down the road, while he was gallivanting around the universe either.
At that point he was just another psyker warlord running around to joe schmo.

He simply may not have had the ability. Psychic powers manifest differently - e.g. Zahariel, John Grammaticus etc. They all have demonstrably different powers.

Even if he did, Dusara touches upon the Imperial Truth, though testing the Astartes he could do whenever/wherever. There were plenty of worlds to conquer.

Even if he could control an entire planet for extended period of time, that would require enormous concentration on his part, and would delay him from conquering the galaxy for humanity. We know he can bend armies down as he did that to the word bearers. But that trick was not something he could keep up forever.

Terra was a small scale experiment to figure out how to make soldiers to do that.

Because directly controlling a populace of slaves is pointless and limited in the extreme.

You end up with a civilisation that will never advance beyond its basic limits, because all of their drive and creativity has been crushed by the weight of mental tampering.

On top of that, its been shown that subjugating another's will only works for so long before that person breaks - either violently, such as Susan Halls, or self-destructively. Imagine that, but on a planetary scale, as a result of constant psychic domination.

I don't think the Emperor, nor any other psyker ever in 40k is that powerful.

Good points made all around there were several factors that I had not fully considered. I was under the false impression that all psykers have access to all the different abilities as ChazSexington noted different manifestations in different psykers. It could be it wasn't something he used often as he took the hands off approach before the unification wars.

The emperor forced 100,000 marines and a primarch to their knees against their will. He could probably stop a planet for a bit.

However I think what the emperor ultimately wanted was the exact opposite of himself in total control, I think he wanted an enlighten empire guided by science and logic, connected by the webway completely unrelated to the warp and eventually himself. I think he wanted a place where he would not be needed anymore.

While he could have done that, it was probably better to just conquer them the old fashioned way.

Mind-controlled people need to keep being mind controlled. That's not an easy thing to do. Better to conquer the area and let people see what a great leader you are. Over time they will come over to your side.

Saying "why didn't the Emperor just use his psychic powers!" to many obstacles is a little like asking why someone who lives in the suburbs doesn't have a cow for milk. Sure, they might be able to have one if they have a little land, but its easier and more efficient for them to just buy the milk from the grocery store.

"Sure, I could kill all these annoying orks with my powers right now, but that would be immensely tiring and I have an army of super-humans to do my bidding."

Honestly I think its simply patently clear he couldn't. After all if you start ascribing sufficient level of 'mind-control' powers to the Emperor without any basis in the fluff where does one stop. Couldn't he simply then alter their memories to make them believe the willingly chose to follow him of their own free will and that he isn't a god in any way or form? Why not extrapolate his powers of being capable of that instead of arbitrarily choosing to impose a limit upon it never seen in the fluff, particularly since we're already expanding it to a level never seen in the fluff before. He's never controlled the population of an entire planet psychically. Making a Legion of Marines kneel is far from making everyone on an entire planet (so far from line of sight) and numbering well into the billions become his supporters is a far more convoluted and involved procedure. I see no reason to assume the Emperor can do these things when he never displays the ability to mind control a planet. Simply making a, by the standards of populations of planets we are discussing, tiny group of individuals kneel displayed clear signs of resistance and conscious detestation on their behalf so even his limited capabilities for it seem a far cry from the ability to make an entire planet, possessing technology which has stymied him before, obey him.

@Grey Templar: That's an incredibly simplistic way of framing the situation in a false equivalence. One could as easily say that simply saying 'the Emperor didn't do X because he had people to do X for him' is something never ever said in the fluff. Nor does the Emperor ever make such a point in any way or form or argue for such an idea. Thus simply assuming it to be the case is the creation of a motivation to fit your reasoning for why he patently never demonstrates X powers. Additionally, again, simply assuming he could have wiped out all Orks when time and time again in the Fluff he resorts to and depends on the use of armies, alongside himself, in direct confrontation with the Orks on the ground, or informing Horus quite bluntly that even he considers the permanent defeat of Orks a near if not impossible task, is an enormous assumption.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
I don't think the Emperor, nor any other psyker ever in 40k is that powerful.

There is such an example in the fluff: an alien cyborg going by Cacodominus, who mentally dominated not one planet, but a number of them
Black Templars managed to kill him anyway

Changing someones memories via psychic powers has usually been shown to lead to some brain damage especially if it's a very big change. I doubt the Big E wants an empire of braindead subjects.

Survivor19 wrote:

There is such an example in the fluff: an alien cyborg going by Cacodominus, who mentally dominated not one planet, but a number of them
Black Templars managed to kill him anyway

1300 systems if I recall correctly.

As for the Emperor tampering with memories, in one of the Horus Heresy books it's revealed that he removed the memory of a planet from Horus (and a couple of other Primarchs I think) and their men. Again, if I recall correctly.

 Anemone wrote:

@Grey Templar: That's an incredibly simplistic way of framing the situation in a false equivalence. One could as easily say that simply saying 'the Emperor didn't do X because he had people to do X for him' is something never ever said in the fluff. Nor does the Emperor ever make such a point in any way or form or argue for such an idea. Thus simply assuming it to be the case is the creation of a motivation to fit your reasoning for why he patently never demonstrates X powers. Additionally, again, simply assuming he could have wiped out all Orks when time and time again in the Fluff he resorts to and depends on the use of armies, alongside himself, in direct confrontation with the Orks on the ground, or informing Horus quite bluntly that even he considers the permanent defeat of Orks a near if not impossible task, is an enormous assumption.

Sure, its never directly said. But if it was true they never would actually come and say it, it would seem incredibly stupid to say something like that.

Of course he has limits, but to assume he was doing anything but holding back in the times we see him operating is foolish. He was definitely always holding back.

As an old saying goes, "Never do something you can have others do for you!". If I was the Emperor of the most powerful empire in the history of the universe I wouldn't do any more than I had to personally. Especially if the effort would be incredibly tiring.

Psychic powers are always described as being mentally taxing, and the Emperor would have been no exception. He could definitely annihilate a planet with his mind, but it would be an incredible pain. And the planet would be too valuable to himself. So he'd have his army do it instead. Plus its not like he could be everywhere at once.

Its not a false equivalence either. Its a good comparison, if a bit of a silly one, of being able to do something yourself, but it makes more sense to have someone else do it for you.

Why did he conquer militarily instead of psychically? The answer is simple. Logistics.

Once you conquer psychically, you either need to maintain a constant effort to subdue the willpower of the people, or to mindwipe/alter them in some way, shape or form that you no longer need to do so. What's more, you then need to do the same for all of their descendants.

The Big E could probably have done all that. But what about once he;'s left earth? All of a sudden, you'd have millions of humans being born daily outside of his psychic domination with free will again. Sure, he could swing back round the planet once a month to do another round of psychic indoctrination, but what happens when humanity has spread beyond a dozen or so planets? Suddenly, our big E is spending all of his time in the warp dashing from planet to planet, trying to maintain his control over the populace of each one, and refreshing his mind control. But there comes a point (could be 12 planets, could be fifty, depending on the time spent travelling between them) whereby humanity will be spread across too diverse a geographic location to maintain control that way.

The problem is, if psychci domination is the only way you managed to take control, none of your subjects have any loyalty to you beyond what you can enforce at the time. Even if you implant a fanatical loyalty to yourself, the minute you leave the locale, there's the possibility for those loyalties to be questioned by independent thought, and those newly born to question it after a set period of time.

If you really intend to control humanity across the universe, you need to set up systems to do it for you. Otherwise there is a numerical restriction on how far/much you can govern. It's as simple as that, without even mentioning the fatigue trying to do it that way would cause.

If history has told us anything, its that a ruler who forces his rule on others is a tyrant. If the Emperor had simply forced everyone to become his subject then he becomes villified, the war effort slows, he becomes the subject of opposition and rebellion leading to anarchy, revolution and more importantly, the intense emotion leads to Chaos growing, through the rage of oppression, the willpower and ambition of the people to escape, the desire for freedom and endurance to keep going.
On the other hand, unites the people andnleads them into galactic glory, raises children to gods and unites Mankind as rightful rulers among the stars, he becomes a hero and the people follow. Look for example at Monarchies in Europe.

The Monarch tries desperately hold their rule, people rebel. Whereas Hitler, who was "elected" and convinces the people that they chose their own fate was a national treasure even through the war. The Emperor could have forced his rule, but instead allowed to people to choose, which is much harder to argue against.