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The Horus Heresy Novels keep touching on how the Legions were unprepared for Daemons. Its said if they had Psykers they could fight back more easily. This is mostly shown in Battle for the Abyss and Descent of Angels. So how did the Emperor expect to win with Librarians banned?
   
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If I remember correctly, humanity was just coming out of the Dark Age, where many planets had seen destruction due to psykers who’d lost control of their powers. There was (and still is) a lot of prejudice against psykers, and if I recall, the Emperor had essentially banned the use of psychic abilities (I believe this is partly what got Magnus into deep trouble).

It was the equivilant of a country deciding to ban and not use chemical weapons only to find out that the enemy was heavily using Mustard/Serin gas attacks.

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The Emperor's plan was not to fight Chaos directly but to undermine it. He had a 3-point plan for this:

1. Spread the Imperial Truth and suppress religion. This would weaken the flow of worship and belief that sustains the Chaos powers. The less people believe in them, the weaker they become. The irony is that this lie really would have actually become true if repeated enough times.

2. Access the webway via the Golden Throne. As well as making it easier and safer to travel across the Imperium, it would remove the reliance on travelling through the Warp and also on mutants like Navigators and Astropaths who have an understanding of what is really out there.

3. Control mankind's psychic growth. The HH novels seem to have moved away from having the Emperor trying to guide humanity's evolution into a fully psychic race. In one novel, he claims that the Eldar fell from power because they refused to reduce their reliance on psychics. Then again, he is shown telling different people different truths so this one at least is somewhat ambiguous.

The Emperor's plan was not fight daemons directly but rather to weaken them and cut off their access to humanity. Hence no need for Librarians in the Legions. Of course the Horus Heresy royally messed up those plans. Magnus broke the Golden Throne and it is rather hard to say that the supernatural does not exist when weird tentacle daemons keeping materialising and trying to eat your soul.

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I always found it strange that Lorgar, who was planning his Heresy against the Emperor by this point, came out in favor of the Librarius, despite psykers being so useful against his new best friends.


 Jon Garrett wrote:
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he didnt, the Edict was way always intended to cause friction in the legions, another reason for them to go to war with each other eventually, he didnt expect chaos to get involved like it did, he made a mistake.
   
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It’s weird that the Imperium classified Daemons as Xenos. I guess not weird if that’s their only reference point, but Librarians knew about Warp entities as well as their Primarchs.

Entities which bolters and plasma did nothing to. Yet when a Librarian hits it with mindbullets it blows up. Kind of weird to then say “Yup your evil, you should have let us all die.”
   
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DontEatRawHagis wrote:
It’s weird that the Imperium classified Daemons as Xenos. I guess not weird if that’s their only reference point, but Librarians knew about Warp entities as well as their Primarchs.

Entities which bolters and plasma did nothing to. Yet when a Librarian hits it with mindbullets it blows up. Kind of weird to then say “Yup your evil, you should have let us all die.”


Turns out that extensive warp use aids the chaos gods. Librarians channel warp energy into our reality, making it easier for daemons and stuff to manifest. Ships ripping holes in reality to enter the warp, even belief in the supernatural all help feed chaos.

Humanity is a naturally psychic race and is evolving into an extremely powerful one. With an unstable warp, the would spell disaster.
The Emperors goal was to save us from the inevitable hell that a psychic humanity would unleash on the galaxy by :

  • 1: Seize control of the galaxy. You might argue that war also feeds the chaos gods (and you'd be right) but humanity's existence in the galaxy was already a constant battle for survival against rogue AI, Xenos and pskyers. Killing all the orks and other blighters and creating a unified human effort against the horrors of the galaxy would bring about less war in the long run. It would also allow him to:


  • 2:Get a handle on the psykers. Compliance consisted of bending the knee, agreeing to support the Imperium / Imperial truth (turboatheism) and submit sweet sweet tithes including rounding up all the psykers. Worlds already quite wise to the PQ would have been eager to offload their population of wizards and telepaths. Secularism and suppression of faith was designed to stamp out worship of the gods.


  • 3: Ultimately- the webway project would have freed humanity from warp travel.


  • The net result of strictly controlling what psykers could do and when they could do it and reducing man's reliance on them would be to calm the warp, starving the chaos gods of power and allowing the evolution to a psychic master race to occur in a controlled and non-apocalyptic way.

    Unfortunately Magnus thought he knew better.
       
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    tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam  
       
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     =Angel= wrote:

    Turns out that extensive warp use aids the chaos gods. Librarians channel warp energy into our reality, making it easier for daemons and stuff to manifest. Ships ripping holes in reality to enter the warp, even belief in the supernatural all help feed chaos.

    Humanity is a naturally psychic race and is evolving into an extremely powerful one. With an unstable warp, the would spell disaster.
    The Emperors goal was to save us from the inevitable hell that a psychic humanity would unleash on the galaxy by :

  • 1: Seize control of the galaxy. You might argue that war also feeds the chaos gods (and you'd be right) but humanity's existence in the galaxy was already a constant battle for survival against rogue AI, Xenos and pskyers. Killing all the orks and other blighters and creating a unified human effort against the horrors of the galaxy would bring about less war in the long run. It would also allow him to:


  • 2:Get a handle on the psykers. Compliance consisted of bending the knee, agreeing to support the Imperium / Imperial truth (turboatheism) and submit sweet sweet tithes including rounding up all the psykers. Worlds already quite wise to the PQ would have been eager to offload their population of wizards and telepaths. Secularism and suppression of faith was designed to stamp out worship of the gods.


  • 3: Ultimately- the webway project would have freed humanity from warp travel.


  • The net result of strictly controlling what psykers could do and when they could do it and reducing man's reliance on them would be to calm the warp, starving the chaos gods of power and allowing the evolution to a psychic master race to occur in a controlled and non-apocalyptic way.

    Unfortunately Magnus thought he knew better.

    Russ thought better too. Rune Priests aren’t Psykers? That lie is what Magnus should have done.

    Yet this is under the assumption that Chaos can’t retaliate. It would have been great if humanity not using the Warp would destroy Chaos, but we get to a few hypotheticals:
    • Assuming that the Librarian Ban went into effect and Magnus accepted it. Logar has already contacted the Warp entities/Chaos Gods and plans to use that power against the Imperium. Everyone who turned to Chaos still turns to Chaos, but Magnus doesn’t use Warp Powers to contact the emperor directly instead opting for a sanctioned way to do things. The message gets lost in Warp Storms or intercepted, the Emperor’s project isn’t destroyed, but likely won’t get done by the time Horus sieges Terra. Horus attacks Terra and the Emperor is unable to finish the Webway portal.
    • Additionally without Psykers the Legions begin getting wrecked by Warp Entities/Daemons. Without the Thousand Son in Battle for the Abyss the
    Spoiler:
    wrathful would not lasted against the Furious Abyss and would have not been able to stop the Word Bearers from Viral Bombing Macragge.

    • Additionally the Space Wolves and Thousand Son’s would be free up to fight the Traitor legions. But it would be the loyalists killing traitors with death by mob tactics. They would be lemmings to the Traitor Psykers and Daemons.
    • Without the deployment of Psykers the Imperium would have still won, but been more major losses. Mainly because so many of the encounters with Daemons required Librarians and Psykers to deploy their powers as a last resort.
    • The Divine nature of the Emperor was beginning to appear, such that some members of the Imperium could hurt Daemons with the name of the Emperor. Garro and the Saint being the prime examples. Perhaps this could have mitigated the loss of Psykers, but who knows...?
       
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    The TLDR was if the Big E would have finished his project before it got destoryed, Magnus did nothing wrong, he would not have needed paykers to defeat them. Humanity would have buggered off into their own human webway, which was secluded and protected from the infulence of chaos, so they literally could have just ignored it.

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    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.

    tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam  
       
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    pm713 wrote:
    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.


    Separate webway, plus the eldar during the heresy had no real direct beef with the imperium. It was more of a let's just stay outta each other's way. The eldar gain no benefit to fighting the imperium

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     Backspacehacker wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.


    Separate webway, plus the eldar during the heresy had no real direct beef with the imperium. It was more of a let's just stay outta each other's way. The eldar gain no benefit to fighting the imperium

    Even the dark eldar consider the webway sacred. Pretty strict no human policy plus the Imperiums "kill all of them" policy and the fact they wiped out at least one craftworld makes them pretty much enemies.

    If it's separate then it connects to Chaos so they need psykers for that. Or it's sealed so the Eldar can destroy it so it leads to Chaos.

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    pm713 wrote:
     Backspacehacker wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.


    Separate webway, plus the eldar during the heresy had no real direct beef with the imperium. It was more of a let's just stay outta each other's way. The eldar gain no benefit to fighting the imperium

    Even the dark eldar consider the webway sacred. Pretty strict no human policy plus the Imperiums "kill all of them" policy and the fact they wiped out at least one craftworld makes them pretty much enemies.

    If it's separate then it connects to Chaos so they need psykers for that. Or it's sealed so the Eldar can destroy it so it leads to Chaos.


    Eldar went out of there way to warn people about Horus's betrayal, the down side being the people they told were already down the path of corruption.


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     kinratha wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
     Backspacehacker wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.


    Separate webway, plus the eldar during the heresy had no real direct beef with the imperium. It was more of a let's just stay outta each other's way. The eldar gain no benefit to fighting the imperium

    Even the dark eldar consider the webway sacred. Pretty strict no human policy plus the Imperiums "kill all of them" policy and the fact they wiped out at least one craftworld makes them pretty much enemies.

    If it's separate then it connects to Chaos so they need psykers for that. Or it's sealed so the Eldar can destroy it so it leads to Chaos.


    Eldar went out of there way to warn people about Horus's betrayal, the down side being the people they told were already down the path of corruption.

    And? That doesn't mean they like the Imperium it just means they don't want Chaos rampaging around even more.

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    I think I might not have gotten the point across, the humans we're making their own webway, separate from the elders. They did not interact with one another.

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    I think it's similar to the 'tesseract' theory that's mentioned in the MCU.

    The usage of/interaction with the warp itself is what draws the chaos to them. By disallowing and furthering themselves from the warp, lesser the threat from chaos itself.
       
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     Backspacehacker wrote:
    I think I might not have gotten the point across, the humans we're making their own webway, separate from the elders. They did not interact with one another.


    except thats not the case at all, the master of mankind describes them actively fighting chaos in eldar ruins

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     Backspacehacker wrote:
    I think I might not have gotten the point across, the humans we're making their own webway, separate from the elders. They did not interact with one another.

    Well from what I know there was an Eldar city in the bit they already had and I'm pretty sure making the webway is beyond humans.

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    that said the IoM hadn't encountered any Eldar, and in fac it was seen as strange, some of the Custodes ahd expected a running battle from the start. My guess is the eldar where still reeling from the fall and thus simply could NOT mount a coherant defense, in fact... theory time...

    Maybe this is why the Emperor waited until he did? He needed the combined oppertunities of humanity being in a state one man COULD unite them (no easy task) a stablish warp, and most importantly the Eldar not being in a condition to check his end game

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    He waited until he did because that's when the Warp Storms stopped. Although it is true the Eldar could have pretty easily stomped Big E pre Fall.

    I think it's more likely they ditched the city because the Craftworlders were in space and the Dark ones had Commoragh and the city has no value anymore. So there's no reason to attack people over worthless ground unless they demonstrate they want all of the Webway.

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     Backspacehacker wrote:
    I think I might not have gotten the point across, the humans we're making their own webway, separate from the elders. They did not interact with one another.

    Nope, same webway. The only human-built bit was the spur from the existing webway to the Golden Throne on Terra.


    Automatically Appended Next Post:
    DontEatRawHagis wrote:
    • Assuming that the Librarian Ban went into effect and Magnus accepted it. Logar has already contacted the Warp entities/Chaos Gods and plans to use that power against the Imperium. Everyone who turned to Chaos still turns to Chaos, but Magnus doesn’t use Warp Powers to contact the emperor directly instead opting for a sanctioned way to do things. The message gets lost in Warp Storms or intercepted, the Emperor’s project isn’t destroyed, but likely won’t get done by the time Horus sieges Terra. Horus attacks Terra and the Emperor is unable to finish the Webway portal.

    The big difference in this Scenario is that the Emperor is not stranded on Terra holding the Webway portal closed while Horus rampages about as he pleases. If the Emperor had taken out a fleet of Custodes and whatever other loyalist forces were available, he could have confronted Horus sooner. If he had managed to face Horus before he reached Molech, it would have been game over for the Traitors. The only reason Horus could face the Emperor 1-on-1 by the time of the Siege was the massive power boost he picked up on Molech. Prior to that, the Emperor would have stomped him (or maybe even removed the Chaotic influence from his mind).

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/04/13 22:09:56


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    pm713 wrote:
     kinratha wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
     Backspacehacker wrote:
    pm713 wrote:
    Shame about the fact Eldar would kill them all.


    Separate webway, plus the eldar during the heresy had no real direct beef with the imperium. It was more of a let's just stay outta each other's way. The eldar gain no benefit to fighting the imperium

    Even the dark eldar consider the webway sacred. Pretty strict no human policy plus the Imperiums "kill all of them" policy and the fact they wiped out at least one craftworld makes them pretty much enemies.

    If it's separate then it connects to Chaos so they need psykers for that. Or it's sealed so the Eldar can destroy it so it leads to Chaos.


    Eldar went out of there way to warn people about Horus's betrayal, the down side being the people they told were already down the path of corruption.

    And? That doesn't mean they like the Imperium it just means they don't want Chaos rampaging around even more.


    The Eldar were not nearly as unified, or powerful, during the Great Crusade/Horus Heresy as they are in the 41st Millenium. If the Heresy hadn't happened and the Emperor gained access to the Webway with 18 Legions at his disposal the Eldar would've been toast.
       
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    That's really completely inaccurate considering all the huge advantages the Eldar have there on top of their ability to just destroy bits of it.

    tremere47-fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to triple riptide spam  
       
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    Halandri

    An untrained psyker using his powers is like a flood gate for daemons to enter reality.

    Sure, a psyker may be able to easily dispatch a couple of daemons with mind bullets, is it worth the risk of engulfing otherwise uncorrupted planets?
       
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    Yes. There are years before that becomes a risk where you can nab them and train them. It's a much better thing than genocide and moving into a completely hostile environment they can't survive in.

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    The Emperor did try to produce Psycher Marines, twice. First the Thousand Sons Legion are exclusively Psychers. Second was the Librarious Project that introduced Psychers to all the legions. Unfortunately, Magnus and the Thousand Sons went too far into their use of Psychic Powers, forcing the Emperor into the Edict of Nicea that ended the Librarious Project and instituted the ban against Marine Psychers. It was too late.
       
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    Maybe someone taking half an hour to write an email about Tzeentch would have helped. The flaw doesn't lie in the Thousand Sons it lies in the giant idiot running things.

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    pm713 wrote:
    Maybe someone taking half an hour to write an email about Tzeentch would have helped. The flaw doesn't lie in the Thousand Sons it lies in the giant idiot running things.

    I liked how John Grammaticus talked about infiltrating a City of Chaos worshippers. The ignorant Imperium leadership said to him to wear the local clothes and perfumes. He didn’t use perfume because it reeked of a ritual to Chaos Gods and even though he knows what they can do that simple act could cause him to fall.
       
     
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