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 Manchu wrote:
I worked out my theory because the only other option I can see is that the Emperor is a complete idiot. And that does not fit with anything ever published about him. If someone has a third possibility (other than just saying "the authors are bad and don't know what they're doing") I'd be glad to consider it.

Unless he was a semi idiot and his prophetic abilities weren't quite as good as he thought them to be.

Do you really think the Emperor was a "semi idiot"? In fact, what is the practical difference between saying he is a semi idiot and saying he is a full blown idiot? My theory already accounts for him not being able to predict everything. As I keep noting, he took a risk. That risk may not make sense to some people but that is because they don't realize he had no other choice. As risky as his plan was, it was the one with the best chance of success. Amazingly, considering the capacity of his enemies, he may have even come very close to success.

I was offering up a third possible possibility.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
I was offering up a third possibility.

That being that his abilities failed? Or that they were manipulated?

 Pilau Rice wrote:
I was offering up a third possible possibility.

And I am asking how it is a third possibility. The first part, that the Emperor is a semi idiot, is not practically different from arguing that he is a total idiot. The second part, that he overestimated his foresight, is already part of my theory.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
I was offering up a third possible possibility.

And I am asking how it is a third possibility. The first part, that the Emperor is a semi idiot, is not practically different from arguing that he is a total idiot. The second part, that he overestimated his foresight, is already part of my theory.

Well what if, even with all his god-like abilities and that fact that he wasn't really human anymore, he still had a human origin (the mass human psyker coalescing thing) and still had something in common with humans, in that he could still make mistakes.

If anything, the Horus Heresy is a tale of hubris and of how pride comes before the fall. Despite his genius, the Emperor, in his arrogance, attempted to cheat the Chaos Gods out of their bargain and ultimately didn't anticipate what form their revenge would take. All the fluff seems to indicate he trusted his favored son, Horus, fully and so could not foresee his turn to Chaos simply by returning to Terra (besides, he made him Warmaster. What greater honour was there for him to give?).

This is supported by the fact that when he heard the warning from Magnus that Horus had turned, he ignored it and instead focused on chastising him (and well, he was super pissed off, for obvious reasons).

And the whole hubris thing applies to many of the traitor Primarchs, including Horus, Fulgrim, and Perturabo.

It's basically the biblical God and Lucifer here, except there are other gods in the equation as well (plus a dose of Greek gods and other mythologies).

This isn't necessarily theory three, I think it could easily be reconciled with theory one, where the Emperor is just neglectful and focused on the bigger picture, having no time for petty rivalries and jealousies. Doesn't this make more sense?

I am pretty sure that is indeed just another version of "the Emperor is an idiot," considering the "mistakes" you are talking about were completely obvious and obviously catastrophic. No, I don't think it makes very much sense to say that somehow a semi-, demi-, pseudo- or complete moron became the Master of Mankind. But rejecting that notion is not the same as saying the Emperor never made a mistake. I don't think he was or is a god, I don't think he was or is omniscient. But even considering these human limitations, the Emperor's achievements in no way indicate that he was dumb or blinded by love, pride, or whatever else. He simply had limits. He could only do so much at a given time, which is why I am suggesting he made these intricate plans to create a war that would be, for as long as possible, out of his way.

How are you guys not understanding this idea that Manchu is proposing?

Problem: the Emperor needed to hide the last stages of his Webway plan from the Chaos gods.

Solution: Deliberately engineer a massive civil war that would attract the investment of the Chaos gods between superpowered demigods and their posthuman armies on the other side of the galaxy.

That's the exact sort of cunning and ruthless plot I'd expect from someone of the Emperor's intellect. How else would he obscure what was happening on Terra? Throw a sheet over it? It's implied (perhaps outright stated? I'm not sure) that Magnus the Red's accidental damaging of the Golden Throne apparatus caused the proto-Webway portal to spew daemons into the throne room, so we (possibly) know that location already had the attention of the Ruinous Powers. The Emperor needed something that was a bigger deal than that to avert their gaze.

Yeah it is totally ruthless. If I'm right, he sent noble, faithful legions like the Sallies and RG into the jaws of doom.

 j31c3n wrote:
How are you guys not understanding this idea that Manchu is proposing?

Problem: the Emperor needed to hide the last stages of his Webway plan from the Chaos gods.

Solution: Deliberately engineer a massive civil war that would attract the investment of the Chaos gods between superpowered demigods and their posthuman armies on the other side of the galaxy.

That's the exact sort of cunning and ruthless plot I'd expect from someone of the Emperor's intellect. How else would he obscure what was happening on Terra? Throw a sheet over it? It's implied (perhaps outright stated? I'm not sure) that Magnus the Red's accidental damaging of the Golden Throne apparatus caused the proto-Webway portal to spew daemons into the throne room, so we (possibly) know that location already had the attention of the Ruinous Powers. The Emperor needed something that was a bigger deal than that to avert their gaze.

Cunning, but why go through the theater of prolonging the heresy rather than crushing it? Why manipulate troublemakers when you could bend that slight effort towards more loyal sons and just quash it?

... because you don't want to quash it ...

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah it is totally ruthless. If I'm right, he sent noble, faithful legions like the Sallies and RG into the jaws of doom.

And we know the Emperor is capable of that level of ruthlessness, it's implied he barely cared about the Butcher's Nails in Angron's head - even if he were to remain perfectly loyal in the best case scenario, Big E knew they were killing him. And then look what he did to the Thunder Warriors, his loyal troops and brothers-in-arms!

IIRC Lorgar confirmed there was no way to remove the nails. But the Emperor did abduct Angron and basically force him to watch helplessly as all his allies (and presumably at least some of them were his friends) were massacred by his oppressors.

And then he gave him an army of super warriors.

So ...

 Shidank wrote:
Cunning, but why go through the theater of prolonging the heresy rather than crushing it? Why manipulate troublemakers when you could bend that slight effort towards more loyal sons and just quash it?

I'm starting to believe y'all are being deliberately disingenuous. The Emperor did not stop the Heresy because he did not want to stop the Heresy. He wanted a huge, enthralling, destructive, high-cost civil war between his sons. He wanted them to beat the everliving gak out of each other. The entire purpose of the Heresy was to be a massive spectacle that would catch the attention and investment of the Ruinous Powers, distracting them from his true goal: eliminating the need for humanity to traverse Warp space.

All 18 of his Legions were expendable tools in pursuit of this goal.

Manchu, I understand your theory, but I still choose the other option. The Emperor is painted up as the savior of mankind and basically a god. I would rather believe that he was blinded by pride or foolishness than that he intentionally masterminded a civil war and sent his own soldiers to the meat grinder.

Nothing personal, but until some author writes out that the Emperor was behind it all, I'll choose to believe my own theory.

Yeah man, it is arguable. It just seems extraordinarily boring to me to say, this whole HH thing happened because all the characters, especially the guy who is supposed to be the very smartest, are actually dumb as gak.

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah man, it is arguable. It just seems extraordinarily boring to me to say, this whole HH thing happened because all the characters, especially the guy who is supposed to be the very smartest, are actually dumb as gak.

Yeah, that was one of my big problems with the entire Heresy story as well, especially as it's become more and more detailed through the recent novels. Before all that extra attention, the Crusade and Heresy had all the trappings of a grim and unintended tragedy, but as flavor is added, it becomes difficult to explain how beings as intelligent as the Primarchs and Emperor could so consistently be so incredibly foolish. Pride goeth before a fall, but I just can't swallow anyone having that much pride. I favor your theory over any other I've heard.

Maybe 40K just needed a rough backstory in 1989 for the Horus Heresy and Epic Space Marine.

And that it didn't matter originally why Angryon was the Daemon Prince of Being Really Angry or that Lionel Johnson was the primarch of the Dark Angels, or that the blue Space Marines were called Ultramarines.


I always kinda chuckle as people try to assign rational thought processes to actions that were defined before there was a definitive universe for them to have been made in.

Why is the Emperor terrible at Emperoring at some points and great at it at other points? Because all the motivations for his actions have been determined after he'd made the action.

I mean, all this supposing and discussion when the answer is "40K was a Universe by Committee" and some of its most difficult to understand decisions were made back when it didn't matter why they were made. The problems have arisen when subsequent writers at GW have tried (and often failed) to assign rational motivation to actions that don't make sense.

Any reasonable Emperor would have just euthanized Angron and the 12th Legion would have joined the 2nd and 11th. Any reasonable Emperor wouldn't have had his best son smash his weakest son's favorite toy just because he was slow at conquering, causing the weakest son to search for validation elsewhere in a universe full of sneaky Chaos Gods the Emperor knew about. These were backstories created by writers who didn't think very hard about the implications of what those decisions were.

Thus you shouldn't think too hard about the implications of what those decisions were.

It's why writing about the World Eaters is always doomed to failure. Their back story doesn't make any sense. At all. No. Seriously. At all. I know somebody is starting to think "But Betrayer-" No. Stop. At all. Even Betrayer. It almost makes it worse because now irrational actions are being assigned rational intent. All of the World Eaters fluff that tries to assign rational motivations to the World Eaters ends up like zombie movies trying to explain how zombies work. They don't work. Just tell us there are zombies (World Eaters). The less we know about them, the better. Just like nobody tries to explain how the Orks remain a spacefaring civilization with leadership selected by might and not capability and no apparent concern for infrastructure. Because Mekboys. Check. That works. World Eaters. Because angry. Got it. All we need to know.

I mean, I know this is the Background forum, and it's all about discussing the background, but trying to assign rational understanding of cause and effect to decisions that weren't made using rational cause and effect is downright silly, lol.

I mean, why did he send the Legions to Isstvan? Who knows? Which version? The one the Thousand Sons were at before that was retconned? The one where the three legions were destroyed and their names struck from Imperial Record? The one with two As instead of two Ss?

Instead of euthanising Angron, I am more concerned by why the Emperor did not help Angron's rebellion instead to earn his trust and approval, and then let his super-techpriest friends dislodge the Nails.

If he could build the Throne, surely he could get the Nails out?

After doing those two things for Angron, it is likely that Angron would be as big fan of Empy as Sanguinius was.

What did the Emperor need with an army of psycopathic gladiators? That would be even less useful than Angron himself. They had no place in his Imperium. A stable, functional, taxpaying world does.

If anything, the Emperor would have forcibly removed Angron's Nails, adopting the Drago Philosophy.

I mean, seriously. Two primarchs were expendable. Imagine what must have been wrong with them if Angron was okay, lol.

@Veteran Sergeant:

 Manchu wrote:
If someone has a third possibility (other than just saying "the authors are bad and don't know what they're doing") I'd be glad to consider it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
If he could build the Throne, surely he could get the Nails out?

The problem with being so awesome is everyone assumes you can do anything whatsoever because you are so awesome and when you can't they immediately say, well you must be an idiot or evil. Or at least that what seems to happen when 40k fans discuss the Emperor.

 Manchu wrote:
IIRC Lorgar confirmed there was no way to remove the nails. But the Emperor did abduct Angron and basically force him to watch helplessly as all his allies (and presumably at least some of them were his friends) were massacred by his oppressors.

And then he gave him an army of super warriors.

So ...

Well, when you put it like that...

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Maybe 40K just needed a rough backstory in 1989 for the Horus Heresy and Epic Space Marine.

Vet, I love your posts and value your opinion (you even made me rethink my irrational Ultramarines hate), but this is seriously just a big "stop having fun guys." :(

We all know (or at least I'd hope so) that 40k as a setting is limited by its admittedly slapdash early story. I mean, come on. 85% of the Primarchs have the dumbest names (I think the worst is the Primarch of the Iron Hands legion being named IRON HANDS in latin).

But we know that and we're (or at least I am) having fun trying to salvage the backstory.

I remember when someone first explained Space Marines to me:

"Space Wolves? Like wolves in space? Is this a NFL team? You're kidding, right?"

 Manchu wrote:
I remember when someone first explained Space Marines to me:

"Space Wolves? Like wolves in space? Is this a NFL team? You're kidding, right?"

I had a similar response to Ultramarines.

"So, super soldiers called Space Marines? ...and these are what? ULTRA-Space Marines?"

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Maybe 40K just needed a rough backstory in 1989 for the Horus Heresy and Epic Space Marine.

And that it didn't matter originally why Angryon was the Daemon Prince of Being Really Angry or that Lionel Johnson was the primarch of the Dark Angels, or that the blue Space Marines were called Ultramarines.


I always kinda chuckle as people try to assign rational thought processes to actions that were defined before there was a definitive universe for them to have been made in.

Why is the Emperor terrible at Emperoring at some points and great at it at other points? Because all the motivations for his actions have been determined after he'd made the action.

I mean, all this supposing and discussion when the answer is "40K was a Universe by Committee" and some of its most difficult to understand decisions were made back when it didn't matter why they were made. The problems have arisen when subsequent writers at GW have tried (and often failed) to assign rational motivation to actions that don't make sense.

Any reasonable Emperor would have just euthanized Angron and the 12th Legion would have joined the 2nd and 11th. Any reasonable Emperor wouldn't have had his best son smash his weakest son's favorite toy just because he was slow at conquering, causing the weakest son to search for validation elsewhere in a universe full of sneaky Chaos Gods the Emperor knew about. These were backstories created by writers who didn't think very hard about the implications of what those decisions were.

Thus you shouldn't think too hard about the implications of what those decisions were.

It's why writing about the World Eaters is always doomed to failure. Their back story doesn't make any sense. At all. No. Seriously. At all. I know somebody is starting to think "But Betrayer-" No. Stop. At all. Even Betrayer. It almost makes it worse because now irrational actions are being assigned rational intent. All of the World Eaters fluff that tries to assign rational motivations to the World Eaters ends up like zombie movies trying to explain how zombies work. They don't work. Just tell us there are zombies (World Eaters). The less we know about them, the better. Just like nobody tries to explain how the Orks remain a spacefaring civilization with leadership selected by might and not capability and no apparent concern for infrastructure. Because Mekboys. Check. That works. World Eaters. Because angry. Got it. All we need to know.

I mean, I know this is the Background forum, and it's all about discussing the background, but trying to assign rational understanding of cause and effect to decisions that weren't made using rational cause and effect is downright silly, lol.

I mean, why did he send the Legions to Isstvan? Who knows? Which version? The one the Thousand Sons were at before that was retconned? The one where the three legions were destroyed and their names struck from Imperial Record? The one with two As instead of two Ss?

Good post Vet, raises some interesting points

There are good points, but it does kinda nip any discussion in the bud haha. I like trying to make sense of it all.

I dunno, I think most of us are aware that the HH novel series started long after the HH itself had been sketched out in Rogue Trader. Of course 40k fans are going to come to the 40k background section of a 40k forum to try rationalizing it. This is exactly what got BL on the NYT Best Seller List after all.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Going to have to lean on fool then

That is totally implausible.

The Emperor was a genius in every sense of the word.

Also - regarding the point that some of the primarchs have overt psychological disorders - keep in mind these were not merely the product of neglect. The Emperor seems to have actively caused some of them. Remember that he chose when and how to meet up with the primarchs. The way he chose to meet Angron, Mortarion, and Curze traumatized them. He also seemingly withheld information about Chaos from Magnus and did nothing to prevent Magnus from dealing with Tzeentch to save XV Legion. He humiliated Lorgar in front of his own legion and had the UM destroy one of his greatest accomplishments.

It is pretty clear that the Emperor was intentionally fething with some of his sons.

He stepped in for Angron and Mortarion because they were about to die, not because he wanted to intentionally traumatize them. I just don't see any proof of that. And Curze had his crazy visions the moment he saw the Emperor. The Emperor didn't do anything particularly interesting other than making a grand entrance and literally blinding the natives with his sparkly magnificence.

He withheld knowledge of Chaos from Magnus to shield and protect him, not to make him resent him. Magnus made the deal with Tzeentch behind the Emperor's back. The whole Council of Nikeaa thing was to prevent more tampering with the Warp.

Really? A being of such genius that he was able to conquer a planet, subsequently a solar system and a galaxy, and form an alliance with a faction that was strictly oppose his policy of atheism was an idiot? Because it would take an idiot to not see that he was causing irreperable damage to his sons. It seems to me that he could have saved Magnus by sending down his Marines to protect him and his people. I don't know enough about Magnus and Curze to comment on that.

He couldn't have saved Magnus by sending down marines. Magnus/ his men weren't in any danger like that, there was a hung called the flesh change, basically rapid mutation, and most of his men were dying from it so he made a deal with Tzeench to stop it.