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KamikazeCanuck wrote: This is why The Emperor purged psychics.

What are you talking about? The Inquisition did not form to pursue psykers until after the Heresy. Even after that, initially they were pursued to supply the Golden Throne, not because of the warp breaches.
They haven't covered the history enough to tell if the risk was always as high as it now is. I tend to think it was less likely in hte days of the Crusade.

I was speaking of evolution of the species. I see the current pursuit of psykers as one of fear, not necessity.
Rather than develop and educate psykers, the Imperium kills those it thinks it can't control, and subjugates the rest, falling back upon superstition.
There is a fear there of the "New Man" that transcendes the threat of chaos/demons.
What happens to most cultures when a new, more powerful one develops? It is destroyed.
The Imperium is desperately trying to hold back the ascension of man out of that fear.

I suspect that part of the Emperor's denouncing of religion/chaos/superstition was an attempt to foster an acceptance of the change of man,
as well as an attempt to reduce the power that chaos could impose on the material world.
If the Emperor was still around, I think there would have been reduced susceptibility to chaos, as well as having the ability being more acceptable.

I'm pretty sure the danger represented by psyckers offering the daemonic hordes a gateway into reality preceded the needs of the Imperium and the Golden Throne. Remember that Old Night was caused by the explosive appearance of psyckers. Plus, for reasons that are probably incidental, there seems to be a curious paucity of psyckers in the 31st millennium. Horus' expeditionary fleet, for example, seems to have one Astropath whereas relatively backwater planets in the 41st seem to have entire Astropathic choirs. That could just be the tendency of the Horus Heresy to focus on the minuitae at the expense of the big picture, but the whole warp portal for the legions of hell has been there since Rogue Trader.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Look dude, besides that Galaxy being destroyed by Enslavers the eldar who are not all psychic but have a strong warp presence once again destroyed the galaxy in their heyday. Basically anything to do with the Warp = Bad Times.

SO the Emperor and the astronomican and the Navis nobilite and the whole bunch of sanctioned psykers is bad times?



An uncontrolled warp isn't good times, but I am not advocating free unlimited use of the warp,dude.
The Empyrean can be mastered.
Not yet, but this 'new man' theory has its possibilities.

Counter proposal: evolve the human race to psychic blanks.
Eat this, chaos

skrulnik wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote: This is why The Emperor purged psychics.

What are you talking about? The Inquisition did not form to pursue psykers until after the Heresy. Even after that, initially they were pursued to supply the Golden Throne, not because of the warp breaches.
They haven't covered the history enough to tell if the risk was always as high as it now is. I tend to think it was less likely in hte days of the Crusade.

It is quite clear that human psykers have never been as prevalent (note: Prevalent, not powerfull) as they are in the 41st Millenium.

I was speaking of evolution of the species. I see the current pursuit of psykers as one of fear, not necessity.
Rather than develop and educate psykers, the Imperium kills those it thinks it can't control, and subjugates the rest, falling back upon superstition.

Welcome to the 41st Millenium, where superstition is the watchword.

There is a fear there of the "New Man" that transcendes the threat of chaos/demons.
What happens to most cultures when a new, more powerful one develops? It is destroyed.
The Imperium is desperately trying to hold back the ascension of man out of that fear.

And to be perfectly fair, there is little to suggest that such fears are entirely unfounded. Few 'New, more powerful cultures' take the shape of a single person that can (accidentally or purposefully) destroy cities and bring a torrent of deamons onto an unsupecting world.

I suspect that part of the Emperor's denouncing of religion/chaos/superstition was an attempt to foster an acceptance of the change of man,
as well as an attempt to reduce the power that chaos could impose on the material world.
If the Emperor was still around, I think there would have been reduced susceptibility to chaos, as well as having the ability being more acceptable.

Possibly, but it is likely that the emergence of such a radical entity as the New Man race was always going to be a painful birthing, lessened perhaps by the Emperor's Utopia. Woah, wait a second. You mean things would be better if the Emperor was still concious? Who'da thunk it?

I think the Emperor's Utopia was the Dark Age of Technology. That was Plan A, now he is on Plan B.

Warprat wrote:I think the Emperor's Utopia was the Dark Age of Technology. That was Plan A, now he is on Plan B.

You're quite mistaken. Dinosaurs was the Emperor's Grand Plan A. The Imperium is somewhere near Plan W[iv].

There was little evidence of human unity in the Dark Age of Technology, and little still to suggest the Emperor was driving the entire thing. Most sources, especially Horus Heresy novels, agree that before the Crusades the Emperor only dabbled in humanity's course, doing what he could here and there. It was only after the Age of Strife that the Emperor concluded "Bugger this, I'll show you lot how it's done."

Emperors Faithful wrote:

Warprat wrote:I think the Emperor's Utopia was the Dark Age of Technology. That was Plan A, now he is on Plan B.

You're quite mistaken. Dinosaurs was the Emperor's Grand Plan A. The Imperium is somewhere near Plan W[iv].

There was little evidence of human unity in the Dark Age of Technology, and little still to suggest the Emperor was driving the entire thing. Most sources, especially Horus Heresy novels, agree that before the Crusades the Emperor only dabbled in humanity's course, doing what he could here and there. It was only after the Age of Strife that the Emperor concluded "Bugger this, I'll show you lot how it's done."

The game is 40K and covers a full 10,000 years. But the Emperor had 30K plus years before that. Do you really think he just dabbled?

The Dark Age of Technology had democracy and multiple governments. Alien races were tolerated and treatied with. Machines served man and did most of the labor, including fighting the wars, the Iron Men. Technology was made freely available with the Standard Templates. People looked to science for their answers, and not religion. It was Utopia.

But it all went bad when Chaos entered the picture and blew it all up. It all went bad when the Human race started evolving psychers, and evolving into New Man. The Emperor hadn't counted on the Reset Button being hit. He hadn't counted on warp travel being cut off.

What's the Emperor going to say? "OK everyone listen up, I messed up on Utopia, but this time I have it right?" That's awe inspiring... as they stand in the rubble of thier former civilazation. No, he's going to say he had little part in it and move on to Plan B with as much confidence as he can muster. And nobody is going to doubt it, because all the history has been lost.

He needed a way to allow man to evolve, and not implode like the Eldar. He needed to deal with Chaos. Simply uniting and expanding the human civilization again wasn't going to cut it. He had been there, done that... and working behind the scenes had taken him 30K years. He didn't have time for that with Plan B, because New Man was already starting to evolve. The biological clock was ticking.

He had no time, and needed to act quickly, and that meant he had to direct things personally. He had to expose himself and take a chance. Because he only had one chance before Chaos destroyed man.

I'm thinking he got it right. If only because it makes for an epic story...

@Warprat: I think you're mistaking my argument. The Crusades were the first time the Emperor ever took a direct role in Humanity's course. I am arguing that while the Emperor may have edged along the Dark Age of Technology he was not responsible for it, he was not the sole engineer, probably giving them a push in the right direction at times. The evidence of him being stuck on Earth rather than any other planet shows he stayed back a little. He was also not the first human psyker, only the most powerful. Blaming the Age of Strife on the New Race is not accurate. Furthermore, Chaos had existed for quite a while, before humanity came to its ascension (the Eldar Fall is evidence of that).

Warprat wrote:

But it all went bad when Chaos entered the picture and blew it all up. It all went bad when the Human race started evolving psychers, and evolving into New Man. The Emperor hadn't counted on the Reset Button being hit. He hadn't counted on warp travel being cut off.

I don't think chaos was the reason for the age of strife.
The near religious approach to machines and the fact of AI's beeing forbidden does support a rebellion of the AI's/machines causing
the AoS.

Your theory of the evolution of the 'new man' :

- the clock ticking and thus forcing the Emperor's hand seems plausible.
- the existance of enhanced warriors at the end of the unity wars at Terra may hint on a advanced level
of bio-engineering. The evolution to 'new man' could be artificial.
- the Emperor's heritage is old fluff, but 8000BC would give him 38.000 years pre-crusade to influence Mankind.
We don't know , what he did in these years ( assuming GW keeps this fluff ).
Its possible to change the fluff, so the Emperor becomes a scientific project from the DAoT.
- chaos obviously tried to benefit from the AoS, but such creatures are maybe acting as predators hunting the weak, not really going
on a frontal assault against the strong. Warp storms would be a tool to separate worlds.
- DAoT was utopia. But it was Imperfect and fell.
- the Emperor didn't reveal so much about chaos. Maybe he didn't know everything himself?
Chaos is millenia old, when Mankind steps out of the caves. And still, everyone is surprised in the HH when a person becomes possessed.

Abbrevations:

- DAoT = Dark Age of Technology
- AoS = Age of Strife


Could partially agree on some of your points. But I don't buy the whole package.

Emperors Faithful wrote:@Warprat: I think you're mistaking my argument. The Crusades were the first time the Emperor ever took a direct role in Humanity's course. I am arguing that while the Emperor may have edged along the Dark Age of Technology he was not responsible for it, he was not the sole engineer, probably giving them a push in the right direction at times. The evidence of him being stuck on Earth rather than any other planet shows he stayed back a little. He was also not the first human psyker, only the most powerful. Blaming the Age of Strife on the New Race is not accurate. Furthermore, Chaos had existed for quite a while, before humanity came to its ascension (the Eldar Fall is evidence of that).

I agree most whole heartedly that he was not the sole engineer. I'm sure that there were many, many players. But I do think he manipulated it to his satisfaction. He had so many lifetimes compared to normal people. With no need for childhood or dying during that time. Just super productive adulthood. Why he wanted to stay hidden I don't know. Maybe he just enjoyed the freedom to travel, live well, and not be noticed. Or, maybe he was hunted.

Earth was his home. And it was the center, or at least one of the centers for culture, government, history. A perfect location to pull strings from. A golden age. Perhaps the Chaos gods are busy with the much more psychic Eldar to even think about humanity. Or perhaps with so few human psychers, the Emperor is easily able to shield humanity for a while. For whatever reason, Chaos leaves humanity alone.

Anyway... At the end of the Dark Age, machines rebelled, we don't know why. But perhaps when they reached sentinence, they were vulnerable to Chaos. There is a huge war which humanity wins at great expense. What role the Emperor played, we don't know. But my guess would be that the Emperor had a hand in it, doing damage control.

Then the Eldar become decadent and cause the warp to form Slannish. Warp Storms cut off intersteller travel. The age of Strife begins as psychers are possessed and deamons appear. Most of the major worlds had been tollerant of psychers and were hurt badly because of it. The minor colonies were more fearfull of psychers and suffered less, but many of them were invaded by the other species.

It was too much for the Emperor to contain on his own, or with what ever group or groups he was with. And they are cut off by the storms. The Emperor forsees the birth of Slannish, the clearing of the warp storms, and prepares for it with genetic research.

So, yes while New Man was not directly responsible. That being Chaos, powerd by the Eldar. The psychers of New Man opened the door and sealed humanities fate.

I think this hypothesising is pretty cool.

Warprat wrote:
Earth was his home. And it was the center, or at least one of the centers for culture, government, history. A perfect location to pull strings from. A golden age. Perhaps the Chaos gods are busy with the much more psychic Eldar to even think about humanity. Or perhaps with so few human psychers, the Emperor is easily able to shield humanity for a while. For whatever reason, Chaos leaves humanity alone.

The Emperor does not 'shield' humanity, how can he? It was only through the Golden Throne and that whole mess (I assume you are aware of exactly how much Magnus dicked things up) that made him the Ultimate Guardian of Mankind from the Warp.
Before the Fall, the Warp was a gentle creature which was utilised by the Eldar at thier whim (alowing some form of reincarnation). It's hard to exactly guage when the Chaos Gods came into being, time flows strangely in the Warp, and Slaanesh is the only God which we are given an actual 'birthday' for.

Anyway... At the end of the Dark Age, machines rebelled, we don't know why. But perhaps when they reached sentinence, they were vulnerable to Chaos. There is a huge war which humanity wins at great expense. What role the Emperor played, we don't know. But my guess would be that the Emperor had a hand in it, doing damage control.

Machines attack becuase that was just going to happen. You do watch Sci-Fi movies right?

Then the Eldar become decadent and cause the warp to form Slannish. Warp Storms cut off intersteller travel. The age of Strife begins as psychers are possessed and deamons appear. Most of the major worlds had been tollerant of psychers and were hurt badly because of it. The minor colonies were more fearfull of psychers and suffered less, but many of them were invaded by the other species.

1) The Eldar Fall occured before the Dark Age of Technology. Humanity's initial expansion into the stars filled the power vaccum left behind by the Eldar, and even today much of the Imperium's Galactic West is located within the ruins of the Ancient Eldar Empire (The EoT being its very centre).
2) Again, the New Man is was not as prevalent back then. Why would the major colonies be tolerant while the minor colonies were fearful?

It was too much for the Emperor to contain on his own, or with what ever group or groups he was with. And they are cut off by the storms. The Emperor forsees the birth of Slannish, the clearing of the warp storms, and prepares for it with genetic research.

You contradict yourself here. First you blame the Warpstorms on the Eldar Fall, then you say they are cleared up by the Birth of Slaanesh. These are the same events.

So, yes while New Man was not directly responsible. That being Chaos, powerd by the Eldar. The psychers of New Man opened the door and sealed humanities fate.

No, the New Man was not responsible. Nor (if we are still talking about the catalyst for the Age of Strife) were the Eldar.

1hadhq wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Look dude, besides that Galaxy being destroyed by Enslavers the eldar who are not all psychic but have a strong warp presence once again destroyed the galaxy in their heyday. Basically anything to do with the Warp = Bad Times.

SO the Emperor and the astronomican and the Navis nobilite and the whole bunch of sanctioned psykers is bad times?

Yes, The astronimcon results in the Death of its members in just a few months. The Navigators are mutants and sanctioned psykers are reviled. They all fall under the catagory of "necesary evils". Not saying Navigators and Sanctioned psykers are evil but rather if there was any other way to traverse The Warp without The Astronomicon and Navigators then The Emperor would have been all over it (and indeed was working on it). Why? Cause warp = bad times.

Emperors Faithful wrote:I think this hypothesising is pretty cool.

Warprat wrote:
Earth was his home. And it was the center, or at least one of the centers for culture, government, history. A perfect location to pull strings from. A golden age. Perhaps the Chaos gods are busy with the much more psychic Eldar to even think about humanity. Or perhaps with so few human psychers, the Emperor is easily able to shield humanity for a while. For whatever reason, Chaos leaves humanity alone.

The Emperor does not 'shield' humanity, how can he? It was only through the Golden Throne and that whole mess (I assume you are aware of exactly how much Magnus dicked things up) that made him the Ultimate Guardian of Mankind from the Warp.
Before the Fall, the Warp was a gentle creature which was utilised by the Eldar at thier whim (alowing some form of reincarnation). It's hard to exactly guage when the Chaos Gods came into being, time flows strangely in the Warp, and Slaanesh is the only God which we are given an actual 'birthday' for.

Anyway... At the end of the Dark Age, machines rebelled, we don't know why. But perhaps when they reached sentinence, they were vulnerable to Chaos. There is a huge war which humanity wins at great expense. What role the Emperor played, we don't know. But my guess would be that the Emperor had a hand in it, doing damage control.

Machines attack becuase that was just going to happen. You do watch Sci-Fi movies right?

Then the Eldar become decadent and cause the warp to form Slannish. Warp Storms cut off intersteller travel. The age of Strife begins as psychers are possessed and deamons appear. Most of the major worlds had been tollerant of psychers and were hurt badly because of it. The minor colonies were more fearfull of psychers and suffered less, but many of them were invaded by the other species.

1) The Eldar Fall occured before the Dark Age of Technology. Humanity's initial expansion into the stars filled the power vaccum left behind by the Eldar, and even today much of the Imperium's Galactic West is located within the ruins of the Ancient Eldar Empire (The EoT being its very centre).
2) Again, the New Man is was not as prevalent back then. Why would the major colonies be tolerant while the minor colonies were fearful?

It was too much for the Emperor to contain on his own, or with what ever group or groups he was with. And they are cut off by the storms. The Emperor forsees the birth of Slannish, the clearing of the warp storms, and prepares for it with genetic research.

You contradict yourself here. First you blame the Warpstorms on the Eldar Fall, then you say they are cleared up by the Birth of Slaanesh. These are the same events.

So, yes while New Man was not directly responsible. That being Chaos, powerd by the Eldar. The psychers of New Man opened the door and sealed humanities fate.

No, the New Man was not responsible. Nor (if we are still talking about the catalyst for the Age of Strife) were the Eldar.

Well, not that I wouldn't love to discuss this... I would, but I have already hijacked the thread and probably bored the hell out of a few people.

PM me if you would like me to start up a new topic. Warprat

Amen to that!

I don't care. Hijack away. I thought that was all interesting.

1hadhq wrote:

Quick and painless and chaos in the same sentence? Sorry if they bougth into this, they're dumb.
Chaos doesn't need maknind. Their existance began when old ones and C'tan roamed the galaxy.

well chaos certianly wasnt created by the c'tan as far as i know they were trying to close it off from realspace. and if i recall correctly i think chaos actually DOES need humanity to exist. (correct me if im wrong)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

necrongod wrote:

1hadhq wrote:

Quick and painless and chaos in the same sentence? Sorry if they bougth into this, they're dumb.
Chaos doesn't need maknind. Their existance began when old ones and C'tan roamed the galaxy.

well chaos certianly wasnt created by the c'tan as far as i know they were trying to close it off from realspace. and if i recall correctly i think chaos actually DOES need humanity to exist. (correct me if im wrong)

um i am wrong (dangit i hate correcting myself ) seeing as i missed the whole "eldar stuff" i was waaaay wrong. but the c'tan didnt create the warp. so ha!

No one created the Warp but the Old Ones (the Slann) weaponized it.

Maybe the same entitiy that created the galaxy also created the warp?
Or both came out of nowhere....

But that wasn't what I was trying to say.

My point ( should have been ? ):

- the old ones messed up the warp, before they created the eldar and orks. As both are intended to interact with the warp.
- the war between C'Tan/Necrontyr and old ones, made new weapons neccessary. But his happened before humanity existed.
- the eldar created one of the chaos-'gods' most likely without any other contributions.
- every soul is of interest to chaos. Humans have one ( except blanks ), but most sentient creatures have such thing too.
- Psykers exist outside humanity too.

Intended point:
Humans are not the only source of chaos. Mankind has the numbers to be a major opportunity to feed upon, but still other options
aren't impossible. If we look into that tome called BRB we find more races than these wellknown to us and I believe chaos would find a replacement for humans.

Ah, but did the Slaan weaponize the Warp, or did the Warp seduce them to weaponizing it? That's the interesting thing about atemporal entities like the Chaos Gods is that they can bootstrap their own subsistence.*

*The Chaos Gods don't exist, in the common metaphysical notions attributed to existence, so I'm using a terminology proposed to validate the truth-predicates of fictional entities in sense-reference theories of truth. The notion being that while they lack extension, they underlie the qualia of existing objects. I suppose I could quote the philosopher that proposed it, but I'm too lazy to go through my files at the moment.

No, you're outsmarting yourself. There was a time when sentience did not exist in the Immaterium. Then beings with emotions and desires were created through genetic engineering that had enough effect on the warp to screw it up.

I know what you mean about the warp's atemporal nature but if they really could manipulate the past effectively I think they would have won The Heresy and everything else they put there minds too. The vast majority of time related anomolies (big 4 related or not) involve giant leaps forward.

Something to remember is that the Chaos Gods did win the Heresy. The noble ideals of the Imperium were perverted (go Slaanesh), the galaxy was racked with war and plunged into 10,000 years of violent conflict (go Khorne), the Emperor's best laid plans were collapsed and the Chaos Gods successfully turned half of the Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs while preventing any permanent victory (go Tzeentch), and it left the Imperium a stagnating mega-state constantly on the edge of destruction (go Nurgle).

Nurglitch wrote:Something to remember is that the Chaos Gods did win the Heresy. The noble ideals of the Imperium were perverted (go Slaanesh), the galaxy was racked with war and plunged into 10,000 years of violent conflict (go Khorne), the Emperor's best laid plans were collapsed and the Chaos Gods successfully turned half of the Space Marine Legions and their Primarchs while preventing any permanent victory (go Tzeentch), and it left the Imperium a stagnating mega-state constantly on the edge of destruction (go Nurgle).

If the Gods only goal were to mess up the emperor's vision then yes I suppose they did. However, militarily their chosen champion was obliterated mind, body and soul and their army was routed. They fled into the eye of terror and then turned on each other.
It hard to say if they Chaos gods really can ever "win" or if "winning" is even a concept for them for all they really want and cause is just that: Chaos.

Exactly, they won, and continue to win.

No, the Imperium is very much the picture of order. Order to the point of Tyranny. So Chaos did not win, they just made everyone sad.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:No, the Imperium is very much the picture of order. Order to the point of Tyranny. So Chaos did not win, they just made everyone sad.

Isn't that them winning? To a point, at least?

The Chaos Gods didn't exactly 'win' the Horus Heresy. But they were happy enough to settle with the results of the draw.

And Humanity was happy not being made extinct. So everyone wins!

We must be reading different background materials if you think that the Imperium isn't a decaying disorganized mess.

Nurglitch wrote:We must be reading different background materials if you think that the Imperium isn't a decaying disorganized mess.

It probably has more to do with being the single largest empire the galaxy has ever seen AND being hated on by every single other race rather than any fault of the Imperium. Given the situation it has done remarkably well.

It's a decaying mess but i wouldn't say its disorganized. It's crippled by it byzantine bureaucracy. So its too organized!

Alpharius wrote:Attempting to speak from any position of absolute authority on this subject is foolish.

QFT and QFE.