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That is, what was the government/world/civilization the Emperor was trying to create, compared with what actually has happened by current day Warhammer 40k?

I've only been able to peck at the Horus Heresy novels over the years, so my picture of his 'vision' isn't complete. Is anyone out there more well-read on the matter that can piece together what this 'paradise' of an Imperium was going to look like, supposedly in the Emperor's mind?

Somewhat like the Eldar civilization at the height of its power. No warp drive anymore, they were going to use the Webway instead. All humans would eventually become psykers. And with Chaos cut off from the galaxy somehow, likely through starving it of worship.

The Imperium was simply a means to an end, a protective cocoon for humanity to evolve in.

Animus wrote:
The Imperium was simply a means to an end, a protective cocoon for humanity to evolve in.

That's what all dictators tell themselves. I suspect the Emperor would have kept moving the goalposts, consciously or unconsciously, as an excuse to retain power. There would always be some potential threat that only the Emperor could foresee, and therefore regrettably he would have to hang on to power just a little longer to deal with it. Humanity would never be quite ready enough for the Emperor to let go.

The Emperor cares for humanity not for humans.

Also my impression is that his ultimate goal of power would be some form of feudal dictatorship hybrid. Him at the unquestionable top and then a rigid structure underneath him. Prolonged life and gene modification likely resulting in a near (or functionally near) immortal power structure that would not allow regular humans to advance socially upward above a certain point.


Which is essentially what the Imperium has, only its a twisted form. The Emperor is at the top almost only as a figurehead; the power structure underneath lacks his Primarchs (well all barring one now); religion has seeped back in on several fronts and there are multiple other failings.


But yes otherwise eventually reaching a point like the Eldar where their dominance is unquestionable; where nothing threatens them and where technology allows them to live a life of luxury. Imperium might have have more social classes and division and would likely have hit population issues as humans breed more readily and quickly than Eldar. So some kind of ultimate population control would likely have come out eventually.


Which is again leaning back to this idea that the Emperor doesn't care about the individual rights and desires of people, but about humanity as a whole.

As always? Look to the 500 Worlds of Ultramar. A microcosm of what was possible.

The overall aim was to have mankind as the sole sentient species in the galaxy.

From there? Genuinely no idea. Would he have ruled with an iron fist? Perhaps he’d disappear back into myth, leaving humanity to it.

It depends on what you believe. If you believe the Emperor then His plan was to create a human Webway and remove humanity's reliance on the Warp, thereby starving the Gods while allowing the species to evolve in the same manner as the Aeldari and become a fully psychic species. When humanity reached that point, the Emperor was just going to leave.
The merit or logic of this plan is up for debate.

As it is now but with the warp way, no cathedrals and less Xenos.

I think life would still be hell for many humans

Iracundus wrote:
That's what all dictators tell themselves. I suspect the Emperor would have kept moving the goalposts, consciously or unconsciously, as an excuse to retain power. There would always be some potential threat that only the Emperor could foresee, and therefore regrettably he would have to hang on to power just a little longer to deal with it. Humanity would never be quite ready enough for the Emperor to let go.

Except that's downright wrong. Emperor's plan was basically humanity where everyone was his equal. No dictator would willingly arm his subjects to the point central government has no power over them. Ditto with webway, Imperium can currently control space travel because Navigators are precious, limited resource. Emperor wanted to make space travel so easy and so hard to regulate it would basically rob the Imperium of any ability to control its territory outside of a few places they can physically occupy.

Then there is the fact that the Emperor could, with trivial ease, use his massive powers to become absolute god-king in any time before Dark Age of Technology. For a being supposedly so lusting power, he funnily enough decided to do nothing and just sit in obscurity, even when everything came crashing down. Even then, during the worst times of Age of Strife, he had about zero power and only reluctantly grabbed it when Chaos was just about to unmake the entire Galaxy. Somehow, that doesn't strike me as actions of someone who desires all the power.

mrFickle wrote:
I think life would still be hell for many humans

Seeing life in Imperium is only constant hell thanks to constant warfare, obscurantism, religion, ignorance and technological backwardness, all things the Emperor wanted to eradicate ASAP, not really. It's easy to make life of dumb, thoroughly indoctrinated slave hell, especially when you need every last bit of resources to not let actual forces of hell to win. It's much harder doing so in peace to educated citizen who can just strangle you with the power of his mind if you try something tyrannical.

There are worlds right now that are pretty peaceful and comfortable within the Imperium. We don't hear much about them because they are worlds where the story doesn't focus upon. Though a few novels will travel through or past them from time to time.

The likes of Necromunda Hive Cities are not the only way people live in the Imperium.



And yes much of why the Imperium is like it is right now is 10 Thousand years of war and combat and more.

 Overread wrote:
There are worlds right now that are pretty peaceful and comfortable within the Imperium. We don't hear much about them because they are worlds where the story doesn't focus upon. Though a few novels will travel through or past them from time to time.

The likes of Necromunda Hive Cities are not the only way people live in the Imperium.



And yes much of why the Imperium is like it is right now is 10 Thousand years of war and combat and more.

To be honest? The Imperium is so vast we are poorly equipped to comprehend it.

I mean…..at least 1,000,000 worlds, and on different levels of development. We absolutely can’t rule out there’s a solar system pretty much forgotten that has a pretty peaceful existence.

I see the Great Crusade and the Emperor coming out as a warlord and leader as an act of desperation or impatience. With events and humanity spiralling out of control and humanity spread across the galaxy, things were slipping further and faster beyond the Emperor's grasp and ability to influence on any large scale. The Crusade was one drastic attempt to control all of humanity. However part of the reason for its failure was the fact it was an externally imposed form of political control on the masses, with little change on their internal natures.

In short, the exasperated Emperor had lost patience with trying to slowly enlighten humanity and decided to browbeat humanity into obedience and compliance. That might account for his blindness to the discontent among the Primarchs. Having seemingly met with unmatched success with this new direct method of the Great Crusade after so thousands of years of failure, the Emperor was in a hurry to enact the next step in his plan and thus hurried back to Terra, missing or ignoring the discontent that would ultimately explode into the Heresy. A bit of succumbing to human affection for Horus would have compounded the blindness.

Where am I going with this? The Emperor was meeting unmatched success at seemingly achieving his plans for humanity after thousands of years of failure, all with the blunt instrument of just outright setting himself up as the ruler of all humanity. "I should have done this earlier!". Success breeds complacency and arrogance, especially success at such a scale in both size and swiftness. There were already fault lines in the 30K Imperium, which were papered over, ignored, or brute forced in the name of expediency. As the Dark Imperium novels show, Guilliman comes to the realization that the Emperor did not love individuals, but humanity, or rather the Emperor's idea of humanity or what it should be. He was chasing his dream but at the expense of addressing the more mundane issues within his Imperium. Arguably the Emperor going back to Terra to his secret labs to work on the next stage of his plans is reminiscent of the reclusive Star Wars Emperor Palpatine who spent his time delving into the Force rather than actually administering his Empire.

The Emperor may well have turned into a seldom seen recluse while the Primarchs and Administratum equivalent did the actual mundane task of running the Imperium, with the Emperor only occasionally turning up to ram some things through the way he wanted "all for the greater good of humanity". An absentee Emperor may well have seen the effective rise of warlordism among the Primarchs.

Iracundus wrote:

Animus wrote:
The Imperium was simply a means to an end, a protective cocoon for humanity to evolve in.

That's what all dictators tell themselves. I suspect the Emperor would have kept moving the goalposts, consciously or unconsciously, as an excuse to retain power. There would always be some potential threat that only the Emperor could foresee, and therefore regrettably he would have to hang on to power just a little longer to deal with it. Humanity would never be quite ready enough for the Emperor to let go.

I don't think anyone who calls themselves Emperor needs to move goalposts. They are claiming ultimate authority with the title Emperor. Dictator is a rather plebian title in comparison.

Nobody in the Imperium, even during the Great Crusade, was under the impression that this was anything but an Empire with 1 man at the helm for eternity.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Animus wrote:
The Imperium was simply a means to an end, a protective cocoon for humanity to evolve in.

That's what all dictators tell themselves. I suspect the Emperor would have kept moving the goalposts, consciously or unconsciously, as an excuse to retain power. There would always be some potential threat that only the Emperor could foresee, and therefore regrettably he would have to hang on to power just a little longer to deal with it. Humanity would never be quite ready enough for the Emperor to let go.

I don't think anyone who calls themselves Emperor needs to move goalposts. They are claiming ultimate authority with the title Emperor. Dictator is a rather plebian title in comparison.

Nobody in the Imperium, even during the Great Crusade, was under the impression that this was anything but an Empire with 1 man at the helm for eternity.

You missed my point entirely. It's not about the Emperor justifying to others. I mean he would likely have kept moving the goalposts even for himself. He tells himself and this closest circle like Malcador that one day he would relinquish power once humanity was ready. However I think he is deceiving himself and that what would have happened is he would have kept finding excuses to hang on to power for just a little longer, because to his mind humanity (or rather his idea of what humanity needs to be) would never be ready. There would have been always be one more threat, one more milestone, one more stage, to reach or overcome and he would be needed to ensure that (at least in his own mind). "Just one more turn" syndrome.

 Irbis wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
That's what all dictators tell themselves. I suspect the Emperor would have kept moving the goalposts, consciously or unconsciously, as an excuse to retain power. There would always be some potential threat that only the Emperor could foresee, and therefore regrettably he would have to hang on to power just a little longer to deal with it. Humanity would never be quite ready enough for the Emperor to let go.

Except that's downright wrong. Emperor's plan was basically humanity where everyone was his equal. No dictator would willingly arm his subjects to the point central government has no power over them. Ditto with webway, Imperium can currently control space travel because Navigators are precious, limited resource. Emperor wanted to make space travel so easy and so hard to regulate it would basically rob the Imperium of any ability to control its territory outside of a few places they can physically occupy.

Then there is the fact that the Emperor could, with trivial ease, use his massive powers to become absolute god-king in any time before Dark Age of Technology. For a being supposedly so lusting power, he funnily enough decided to do nothing and just sit in obscurity, even when everything came crashing down. Even then, during the worst times of Age of Strife, he had about zero power and only reluctantly grabbed it when Chaos was just about to unmake the entire Galaxy. Somehow, that doesn't strike me as actions of someone who desires all the power.

mrFickle wrote:
I think life would still be hell for many humans

Seeing life in Imperium is only constant hell thanks to constant warfare, obscurantism, religion, ignorance and technological backwardness, all things the Emperor wanted to eradicate ASAP, not really. It's easy to make life of dumb, thoroughly indoctrinated slave hell, especially when you need every last bit of resources to not let actual forces of hell to win. It's much harder doing so in peace to educated citizen who can just strangle you with the power of his mind if you try something tyrannical.

Hell yes. This is where I'm at. Or at least, this is what I've always believed, and what I've wanted to believe. I think - controversial idea - that the Emperor really did love humanity for all these reasons, and likely even cared for essentially every individual human along the way. BUT...I think that, yeah, eventually seeing all that he did about Chaos, the scale of their threat, and maybe some other warp-based events and visions from the dark gods (or what have you) gradually or even suddenly changed him, and forced him to look past all of that with the most proven method of dominance - becoming a horrible, powerful, singular ruler. Everything justified the means, of course. BUT...I think, in private, he suffered immensely. I don't think he was inwardly okay, and was in a constant inner battle to justify his actions whenever he was alone. Always second guessing himself, but only secretly. *I* want to believe that he cared a lot more than he let on.

Fast forward to current day Emperor. He's been fed countless souls over countless ages. What Guilliman spoke with was a hollow shell of his former self, basically an echo, that has likely been heavily influenced by those that have sacrificed themselves to him for the Golden Throne's beacon. I don't think we can truly conclude who the Emperor was in 'life' from what we see today.

As for his giving up his power one day? Who is to say. He WAS in that mode of course, so, it's possible he never would have given up his place as Emperor. But I think there's strong argument he wouldn't have. It's possible he went to the Golden Throne *when* he did not because he couldn't give the Crusade a few more years, but rather because he wanted to take a step towards giving up his power because he genuinely did not want to keep it any longer than he felt he had to. Who is to say for sure though?

Iracundus wrote:
I see the Great Crusade and the Emperor coming out as a warlord and leader as an act of desperation or impatience. With events and humanity spiralling out of control and humanity spread across the galaxy, things were slipping further and faster beyond the Emperor's grasp and ability to influence on any large scale. The Crusade was one drastic attempt to control all of humanity. However part of the reason for its failure was the fact it was an externally imposed form of political control on the masses, with little change on their internal natures.

In short, the exasperated Emperor had lost patience with trying to slowly enlighten humanity and decided to browbeat humanity into obedience and compliance. That might account for his blindness to the discontent among the Primarchs. Having seemingly met with unmatched success with this new direct method of the Great Crusade after so thousands of years of failure, the Emperor was in a hurry to enact the next step in his plan and thus hurried back to Terra, missing or ignoring the discontent that would ultimately explode into the Heresy. A bit of succumbing to human affection for Horus would have compounded the blindness.

Where am I going with this? The Emperor was meeting unmatched success at seemingly achieving his plans for humanity after thousands of years of failure, all with the blunt instrument of just outright setting himself up as the ruler of all humanity. "I should have done this earlier!". Success breeds complacency and arrogance, especially success at such a scale in both size and swiftness. There were already fault lines in the 30K Imperium, which were papered over, ignored, or brute forced in the name of expediency. As the Dark Imperium novels show, Guilliman comes to the realization that the Emperor did not love individuals, but humanity, or rather the Emperor's idea of humanity or what it should be. He was chasing his dream but at the expense of addressing the more mundane issues within his Imperium. Arguably the Emperor going back to Terra to his secret labs to work on the next stage of his plans is reminiscent of the reclusive Star Wars Emperor Palpatine who spent his time delving into the Force rather than actually administering his Empire.

The Emperor may well have turned into a seldom seen recluse while the Primarchs and Administratum equivalent did the actual mundane task of running the Imperium, with the Emperor only occasionally turning up to ram some things through the way he wanted "all for the greater good of humanity". An absentee Emperor may well have seen the effective rise of warlordism among the Primarchs.

You could of course be entirely right, what do I know? But I personally believe that the Emperor didn't leave out of impatience or desperation save for only in the loosest sense. I believe what Irbis said before is more correct; that he HAD every opportunity to be the Emperor, and KNEW that he could, existing on Earth for all that time. It would've been a trivial matter. Again, supporting what Irbis said.

It is of course written that he tried to give a helping hand from time to time and guide humanity though. Why wouldn't he? I think that was more out of compassion than anything. I'm sure he was concerned about chaos in some measure back then, so to that point you're right I'm sure in a general sense - by the end, he just couldn't wait anymore. But perhaps these paranoias were also seeded in his mind by the dark gods, and only eventually manifested into something truly evil. I've written a number of stories like this, so, I get how that goes.

But you guys are starting to touch on the specifics of the Emperor's envisioned 'world' of humanity, with its government and civilization. I want to piece that together even more. Its bureaucracy, its rules and regulations, the way it would have maintained order or not. Its structure... Everything in the interim before 'enlightened psychic webway-using race'. How much does the Horus Heresy even specify about that, by now?

The Emperor's previous methods of fighting the Chaos gods by influencing from the shadows did not work, as described in the original Realms of Chaos. Over all the thousands of years, the Chaos gods got stronger, not weaker, as humanity spread across the stars. Trying to influence things from the shadows for a species spread across the galaxy is hard if not impossible as compared to when it was all still on one planet.

For thousands of years the Emperor had tried one path and it had failed. Then he tries path B, that of taking overt control, and it seems to succeed tremendously. Pride comes before a fall and that is what happens to the Emperor when the Heresy takes him by surprise.

Now if you go by the latest Perpetual fluff, even in ancient times, the Emperor had that kind of arrogance of believing only he knew what was best for humanity, even if he didn't overtly take over humanity. That is why it is written that the other Perpetuals all eventually left and stopped working with him, because the Emperor never listened to others' ideas and advice. Not really listen. He would hear out the other opinions but then just keep going on his original path. There is very little evidence the Emperor had compassion for anyone as an individual. As Guilliman realized, the Emperor is in love with an idealized dream of humanity (and only the Emperor's vision, not that of others), and is chasing this dream regardless of what individuals get sacrificed along the way.

Many humans would still live in hell because the emperor was a utilitarian psychopath. There was an imperial truth that was designed to maintain compliance and if it wasn’t compliance was maintained by force.

There was no imperial health care, imperial welfare state or minimum wage. Some planets would be utopia and some planets would have populations dedicated to heavy industry or pumping out soldiers and bon one would care about the human cost as long as quotas were maintained.

You have to think where the modern imperium got most of its ideas. The religious cult of the emperor is not that different to the atheist imperial truth

My headcanon is that the Emperor is basically just really lonely. Like, his nature is so alien that nobody really gets him. I like to think that his long-term hope (after securing humanity's safety) was to encourage the psychic awakening of humanity until more beings comparable to himself could be created. So that he could stop being *THE* Emperor and finally satisfy the longing for human connection that his inhumanity had denied him for so long (save perhaps in that oh-so-rare fellow Malcador.)

It would explain the alleged desire to see humans evolve; if he just wanted to sit atop a mountain of slaves, he could do that just fine without going to nearly so much trouble. It would also add some extra melancholy to the primarchs; his sons who are the closest beings in the galaxy to him and yet *still* can't properly comprehend him and who are, themselves, so alien to their own sons. Horus who might have finally achieved a state of existence that could somewhat comprehend the Emperor, but twisted in the worst ways.

Galactic conquest/domination just seems like a really boring end goal for a creature as mysterious, alien, and (supposedly) intelligent as the Emperor.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
My headcanon is that the Emperor is basically just really lonely. Like, his nature is so alien that nobody really gets him. I like to think that his long-term hope (after securing humanity's safety) was to encourage the psychic awakening of humanity until more beings comparable to himself could be created. So that he could stop being *THE* Emperor and finally satisfy the longing for human connection that his inhumanity had denied him for so long (save perhaps in that oh-so-rare fellow Malcador.)

It would explain the alleged desire to see humans evolve; if he just wanted to sit atop a mountain of slaves, he could do that just fine without going to nearly so much trouble. It would also add some extra melancholy to the primarchs; his sons who are the closest beings in the galaxy to him and yet *still* can't properly comprehend him and who are, themselves, so alien to their own sons. Horus who might have finally achieved a state of existence that could somewhat comprehend the Emperor, but twisted in the worst ways.

Galactic conquest/domination just seems like a really boring end goal for a creature as mysterious, alien, and (supposedly) intelligent as the Emperor.

This is something that I've been thinking about. Except for a few individuals like Malcador, the Emperor could not relate to anybody. Somebody with powers that extreme, having lived for tens of thousands of years, probably can't relate to many people. Also, anybody that they would get to would die off, and so why make friends to begin with? By the time of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor may well have just lost the ability to form meaningful human connections with anybody else. The only 'individual' that he could relate to was humanity as a whole, as it was permanent while individual people are not. This might at least in part explain why he had no problem with engaging in countless genocides; for him, individual people, or even whole planets, just meant nothing to him in a personal level. Having an entire world massacred might to him have been like popping a zit or scraping off dead skin.

In a similar vein but with a slightly different spin?

Gather or create near-contemporaries, who for all their powers are less removed from common or garden humanity, create a sort of gradient of relation.

Top of the Gradient, The Emperor. So far removed from humanity he has little to no trouble Doing The Necessary Thing.

Next step down? Primarchs. More than capable of fulfilling His Will, but strong enough in their own will to offer their own perspective.

Step after that? Or possibly above. This placement depends? Malcacor. Powerful, but ultimately Human, and a long term trusted advisor. Someone who can point out “look, that is the most expedient route to Goal A, but it will come at avoidable political costs if we just take this other, somewhat longer route to Goal A”.

So kind of recognising he has, and never will have, contemporaries as such. So having his own version of a Mournival, he puts in place beings not predisposed to just being Yes Men? The ones who can relate to humanity in the way The Emperor just can’t.

In Dune, which was kind of a prototype of 40k, the God-Emperor Leto II didn't want a specific end in mind, just that humanity survived far into the future.

Nomeny wrote:
In Dune, which was kind of a prototype of 40k, the God-Emperor Leto II didn't want a specific end in mind, just that humanity survived far into the future.

Given GW and its staff made using others ideas a virtue (and it kinda is - look at the dirty dozen, virtually no character development required to tell a compelling story), I would suspect they would have nabbed this too. The original goal was an eternal humanity that could never be entirely ended, mixed in with dominance over any threat.

Iracundus wrote:
Now if you go by the latest Perpetual fluff, even in ancient times, the Emperor had that kind of arrogance of believing only he knew what was best for humanity, even if he didn't overtly take over humanity. That is why it is written that the other Perpetuals all eventually left and stopped working with him, because the Emperor never listened to others' ideas and advice. Not really listen. He would hear out the other opinions but then just keep going on his original path. There is very little evidence the Emperor had compassion for anyone as an individual. As Guilliman realized, the Emperor is in love with an idealized dream of humanity (and only the Emperor's vision, not that of others), and is chasing this dream regardless of what individuals get sacrificed along the way.

We're still a bit off topic here but yeah, that sounds like it all checks out. But I think you might be implying that this made the Emperor evil, and...I just don't know if absolute self-assuredness really brings him there, given all his power/knowledge/etc. Is it an indicator that he certainly could be? Absolutely. Am I arguing that he certainly isn't evil? Definitely not, that's of course a real possibility I totally acknowledge. I just...have yet to see any concrete evidence of it and I don't think this is it. Maybe I just believe that 40k is a much more interesting setting if the Emperor was, at his *core*, actually benevolent. That's just me, but it's also why I really would need something more concrete. (I do think modern day quasi-Emperor/whatever is on the Golden Throne actually probably is evil, but, I very strongly don't believe he was when he started the Great Crusade that way.)

mrFickle wrote:Many humans would still live in hell because the emperor was a utilitarian psychopath. There was an imperial truth that was designed to maintain compliance and if it wasn’t compliance was maintained by force.

There was no imperial health care, imperial welfare state or minimum wage. Some planets would be utopia and some planets would have populations dedicated to heavy industry or pumping out soldiers and bon one would care about the human cost as long as quotas were maintained.

You have to think where the modern imperium got most of its ideas. The religious cult of the emperor is not that different to the atheist imperial truth

That is pretty interesting. There definitely was that Imperial Truth ofc, I know that - but when you say it was maintained by force, I'm just curious - besides Monarchia, what examples of it are there? Monarchia was terrible and an evil act but there certainly was an unthinkable amount of consequence to what Lorgar was doing, too - and the repercussions his actions would have eventually wrought (regardless of the whole traitor thing). Ultimately your point is definitely valid but I'm just curious about any other examples you might know of.

Same sort of thing with the imperial health/welfare/minimum wage - definitely checks out with my limited read of the material in that I haven't personally seen examples of it, but there's also been lots and lots of talk about forging a 'utopia'. Did anything say that wasn't coming? If anything I would think that it was...

Wyldhunt wrote:My headcanon is that the Emperor is basically just really lonely. Like, his nature is so alien that nobody really gets him. I like to think that his long-term hope (after securing humanity's safety) was to encourage the psychic awakening of humanity until more beings comparable to himself could be created. So that he could stop being *THE* Emperor and finally satisfy the longing for human connection that his inhumanity had denied him for so long (save perhaps in that oh-so-rare fellow Malcador.)

It would explain the alleged desire to see humans evolve; if he just wanted to sit atop a mountain of slaves, he could do that just fine without going to nearly so much trouble. It would also add some extra melancholy to the primarchs; his sons who are the closest beings in the galaxy to him and yet *still* can't properly comprehend him and who are, themselves, so alien to their own sons. Horus who might have finally achieved a state of existence that could somewhat comprehend the Emperor, but twisted in the worst ways.

Galactic conquest/domination just seems like a really boring end goal for a creature as mysterious, alien, and (supposedly) intelligent as the Emperor.

Definitely agree the Emperor must be lonely, I can't possibly imagine that isn't true. And I think your motivation sounds right, but I would imagine that's more of an instinctual level thing. I.e. I doubt he knowingly decided "I will make frenz now" and did all that he did. But as a small but significant subconscious motivator? Sure, definitely.

I have the controversial opinion that the Emperor actually *loved* humanity. Even if, yes, perhaps less so on an individual level (though that Last Church novel seems to show him connecting just fine with folks 1-1 in a basic sense). Not so sure about Golden Throne era Emperor, I think things have quite possibly changed in some very important ways.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:In a similar vein but with a slightly different spin?

Gather or create near-contemporaries, who for all their powers are less removed from common or garden humanity, create a sort of gradient of relation.

Top of the Gradient, The Emperor. So far removed from humanity he has little to no trouble Doing The Necessary Thing.

Next step down? Primarchs. More than capable of fulfilling His Will, but strong enough in their own will to offer their own perspective.

Step after that? Or possibly above. This placement depends? Malcacor. Powerful, but ultimately Human, and a long term trusted advisor. Someone who can point out “look, that is the most expedient route to Goal A, but it will come at avoidable political costs if we just take this other, somewhat longer route to Goal A”.

So kind of recognising he has, and never will have, contemporaries as such. So having his own version of a Mournival, he puts in place beings not predisposed to just being Yes Men? The ones who can relate to humanity in the way The Emperor just can’t.

Sounds about right. Though I still suspect that after he established everything, the Emperor might *actually* have stepped down in the end... And I'm still really interested, though, in what laws might apply to his people/how this utopia would truly be 'shaped', in place of the Administratum and all the other 'wings' of the Imperium, or as a far better realized version of it.

Nomeny wrote:In Dune, which was kind of a prototype of 40k, the God-Emperor Leto II didn't want a specific end in mind, just that humanity survived far into the future.

Extremely fair point, and maybe one of the best in this thread. It could be that the Emperor of 40k actually did *everything* just as an interim step. *Nothing* was truly final. But rather, all just to do the best they could to ensure humanity survived to that better point and place in the galaxy.

The_Real_Chris wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
In Dune, which was kind of a prototype of 40k, the God-Emperor Leto II didn't want a specific end in mind, just that humanity survived far into the future.

Given GW and its staff made using others ideas a virtue (and it kinda is - look at the dirty dozen, virtually no character development required to tell a compelling story), I would suspect they would have nabbed this too. The original goal was an eternal humanity that could never be entirely ended, mixed in with dominance over any threat.

What's this dirty dozen?