Just Dave wrote:
Edited by Manchu

I feel - and I don't mean to offend - that you are overreacting and jumping to conclusions.

You originally opened with a badly formatted, incomplete and vague post. Red' basically said as much, moved it to the right forum, and even allowed the thread to remain open; basically advising you on how to make a better thread and allowing you to do so. He's a sarcastic, but particularly funny IMHO, Mod, but he gave you all courtesy and frankly I'm shocked the thread was allowed to stay open.

I think Red deserves a lot more credit than you just gave him.

GreySkull wrote:My conclusions are based upon the discovery of the Dragon's cave on Mars in "Mechanicum," what was found there and discussed there. Also from what Magnus was shown by Tzeentch, he was to placed in a "soul-engine," eternally suffering. Also what John Grammaticus saw in the Emperor when he first met him a long time ago in "Legion." I understand the 40k Universe is dark with no light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see where you're coming from. To survive, one must wipe out the other competitors. This isn't simply a survival method I've seen, it was the Emperor's way of forcing his ideals on other humans cultures. He and his actions are no better than Hitler, Pol Pot, or Caesar and they're pogroms. I believe it WAS his ego and his addiction to the power out there that he knew he could gain if only he was willing to murder enough people to get it.

I'll make no bones about the threat the orks and tyranids posed, that was a given. However, the way he went about his war with the galaxy was what ultimately doomed his dream of godhood.

I think that there are two key problems here:
1. Generally, you can't really place much faith in visions or information provided by the Chaos Gods, and Tzeentch is certainly no different.
2. We seem to see different motivations regarding the imprisonment of the void dragon. Basically, by doing so, the Emperor defeated a malicious god (or shard of a god) and then used said god to improve innovation and production on mars. He's not going to reveal the truth, as it supports Xenos, the existence of gods and a very grand deception. Again, this seems to show a motivation of doing what he must for the 'greater good' of humanity. A side effect of this - and his healing the Knight for example - was the view of an Omnissiah, however.

Whilst - understandably - this could be seen as done for selfish reasons, I see it as furthering humanity. He's not a nice guy - afterall he's lied to just about the entirety of humanity and has gone out of his way to destroy everyone else - but again, he seems to be doing it to further humanity, IMHO.

 GreySkull wrote:

However, please feel frr to write up your own opinion of who he was, this is, after all, a forrum and I'd entertain any and all thinkers to do llikewise

 pretre wrote:
Wasn't the human shaman thing retconned out?

En Excelsis wrote:
To the best of my knowing, the Shaman Theory was never actually canon. It was not something that GW ever made official and was not in any GW publications. The origins of the Emperor are utterly unknown.

 pretre wrote:
Hooo boy. And Godwin'd in the first post.

The Emperor is an immensely powerful immortal being who is the only hope for Humanity in a horribly dark and dangerous universe.

40k is all about the ends justifying the means. He does what he has to in order to save humanity. Once he gets put into the throne, the rest of the Imperium does what it has to to save humanity. That is often not a pretty sight.

 Manchu wrote:
IMO, the Emp did it for humanity. I think the Emperor is what the Inquisition calls a Puritan Monodominant: i.e., someone who believes that mankind can only survive by dominating the entire galaxy (and beyond), including the wholesale genocide of other races. Sure, that doesn't make him a nice guy. But I don't think he did all he did just for the sake of his ego. Nothing I've read in the HH books point to that conclusion, at least.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Hooo boy. And Godwin'd in the first post.

The Emperor is an immensely powerful immortal being who is the only hope for Humanity in a horribly dark and dangerous universe.

40k is all about the ends justifying the means. He does what he has to in order to save humanity. Once he gets put into the throne, the rest of the Imperium does what it has to to save humanity. That is often not a pretty sight.

The Emperor was an incompetent buffoon. He overstepped his bounds and paid for it.

The Last Church does.

" He saw the ruthless ambition and the molten core of violence at the Emperor’s heart. In that instant, Uriah knew he wanted nothing to do with anything this man had to offer, no matter how noble or lofty his ambitions might be. "

 GreySkull wrote:
My conclusions are based upon the discovery of the Dragon's cave on Mars in "Mechanicum," what was found there and discussed there. Also from what Magnus was shown by Tzeentch, he was to placed in a "soul-engine," eternally suffering. Also what John Grammaticus saw in the Emperor when he first met him a long time ago in "Legion." I understand the 40k Universe is dark with no light at the end of the tunnel, and I can see where you're coming from. To survive, one must wipe out the other competitors. This isn't simply a survival method I've seen, it was the Emperor's way of forcing his ideals on other humans cultures. He and his actions are no better than Hitler, Pol Pot, or Caesar and they're pogroms. I believe it WAS his ego and his addiction to the power out there that he knew he could gain if only he was willing to murder enough people to get it.

I'll make no bones about the threat the orks and tyranids posed, that was a given. However, the way he went about his war with the galaxy was what ultimately doomed his dream of godhood.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:
So going against the Chaos gods if buffoonery and incompetence now?

That doesn't show that the Emperor conquered the galaxy cause of ego. If you fail to remember, DAoT humanity pretty much conquered the galaxy before. The Emp was simply reclaiming all that lost space and uniting under one rule. And destroying anything Chaos like which if you go with HH visons states that Chaos corrupted worlds were burned from orbit IIRC.


Anyway, I have some free time at last !

 Omegus wrote:

He tried for thousands and thousands of years to get mankind to put aside their self-destructive ways, to no avail. Finally, he determined the only way to do so is to rule everything with an iron fist (and even then before the outbreak of the Heresy, he was transitioning rule to human councils, which is why Horus and company were so butt-hurt).

Your high-minded ideology may be appropriate for our world, but in the 40K world, the devil is real. Niceties like "human rights" and "appreciating different cultures" cannot apply.

 Omegus wrote:
He tried for thousands and thousands of years to get mankind to put aside their self-destructive ways, to no avail. Finally, he determined the only way to do so is to rule everything with an iron fist (and even then before the outbreak of the Heresy, he was transitioning rule to human councils, which is why Horus and company were so butt-hurt).

Your high-minded ideology may be appropriate for our world, but in the 40K world, the devil is real. Niceties like "human rights" and "appreciating different cultures" cannot apply.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


The Emperor's intolerance of other's points views and opinions are what really kicked off the heresy.

That and Horus being unusually dumb for someone with superhuman intelligence.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:
IIRC, it was cause of all his secrets.

He fell to Chaos. They can make anyone fall if they make an effort. So he gets a break for that.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Exactly, his lack of trust for those closest to him, and his not giving a feth about what they thought.

This also extended to doing gak like mindraping the Fabricator General of Mars into doing some gak he didn't want to in Mechanicum (I honestly can't remember what), then making him forget what he had learned, but interestingly, not that the Emperor had telepathically forced him to do it.

If he wants to be a brutal autocrat, fine, but he should learn to suck ass at it less.

He fell because apparently he felt the future Imperium didn't fear and respect him enough.

ile Erebus entered his mind disguised as the deceased Hastur Sejanus. This image of Sejanus showed Horus horrifying visions of the future, where the Emperor ruled as a god and had discarded the Primarchs once they had outlived their usefulness. Erebus also told Horus that the Gods of Chaos were peaceful beings with little interest in the Materium, and it was the Emperor that was intent on destroying their realm on his quest for godhood. Most disturbing for Horus, he was told that the Emperor had used the powers of the Warp to create the Primarchs. Despite realizing early on that this Sejanus was but an impostor, Horus nonetheless accepted these revelations and his bitterness towards the Emperor, already growing from his fathers isolation and Secret Project on Terra as well as the formation of the Council of Terra (essentially subordinating the Primarchs to mortal humans), finally manifested in outright hostility. The only attempt to stop the conversion of Horus came from his brother Magnus the Red, who entered Horus' mind but was unable to interfere with the powerful rituals of the Davin Cultists or convince Horus to remain loyal to the Emperor.

 Omegus wrote:
I don't think he was all that intolerant, if the complex politics we see in Outcast Dead are any indication. He basically had a parliament. He also allowed the Primarchs to propagate the Crusade as they saw fit, and was influenced enough by others' concerns to call the Council of Nikaea. Hardly the actions of an inflexible autocrat.

Really, his approach to other human cultures was no different than Alexander the Great's or the Borg. Submit freely and add your distinctiveness to our own, or die.

If anything kicked off the heresy, it was him not being intolerant enough. The Heresy was started because he tolerated Lorgar's nonsense, and because of the raw ambition of Space Marines like Erebus and Kor Phaeron. The Emperor should have given Lorgar a warning immediately, instead of waiting around for a few centuries for him to come around, and tossed him out of an airlock if he stepped out of line again. And when the Emperor read Magnus' mind and did decide the Sons had gone too far, the Emperor should have soul-bound/lobotomized the whole lot of them right off the bat, instead of issuing a fancy warning he knew was going to be ignored. All Marines in general should have been brainwashed/mega-indoctrinated like in the older fluff/Terra-based recruits. A fair number of them saw themselves as superior to "mere mortals". That attitude shouldn't have been allowed, so if anything, he is an idealist that put far too much faith in the innate loyalty and goodness of his children.

You say he was a Nazi, I say he wasn't Nazi enough.

 Omegus wrote:
I don't think he was all that intolerant, if the complex politics we see in Outcast Dead are any indication. He basically had a parliament. He also allowed the Primarchs to propagate the Crusade as they saw fit, and was influenced enough by others' concerns to call the Council of Nikaea. Hardly the actions of an inflexible autocrat.

Really, his approach to other human cultures was no different than Alexander the Great's or the Borg. Submit freely and add your distinctiveness to our own, or die.

If anything kicked off the heresy, it was him not being intolerant enough. The Heresy was started because he tolerated Lorgar's nonsense, and because of the raw ambition of Space Marines like Erebus and Kor Phaeron. The Emperor should have given Lorgar a warning immediately, instead of waiting around for a few centuries for him to come around, and tossed him out of an airlock if he stepped out of line again. And when the Emperor read Magnus' mind and did decide the Sons had gone too far, the Emperor should have soul-bound/lobotomized the whole lot of them right off the bat, instead of issuing a fancy warning he knew was going to be ignored. All Marines in general should have been brainwashed/mega-indoctrinated like in the older fluff/Terra-based recruits. A fair number of them saw themselves as superior to "mere mortals". That attitude shouldn't have been allowed, so if anything, he is an idealist that put far too much faith in the innate loyalty and goodness of his children.

You say he was a Nazi, I say he wasn't Nazi enough.

Corporal_Reznov wrote:
Which as Emperor(I'm talking about the position itself) is his perrogative. Honestly I can understand about the Chaos part. Why should he have to tell them about the Webway project though?

He's called Emperor. Of course he's an autocrat. And so what if he mindraped the mechanicus? He did a lot of other worse things.

What? Uh no. I remember that Chaos did the following from Lexicanum:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Also, Kor Phaeron should not actually be alive. A cursory glance of his mind when he found Lorgar would have stopped the Heresy.

And frankly, I think that the presence of the Primarchs make the Emperor going all-out like you are proposing inadvisable. They would not tolerate the Emperor so brutally fething around with them and their legions, because he made them independent from himself. That said, perhaps doing that in of itself was not a great idea, perhaps he should have tampered with their minds before birth to make them all super loyal to him no matter what.

Because doing so promotes trust, even if you don't really care about them, and makes them infinitely less likely to strap spikes onto their armour and rebel.

It was her prerogative sure. He had every "right". His right to do that had him bound to a chair for ten thousand years.

That's not what I said.

Mindrape the Fabricator General into doing what you want, regardless of his wishes? Sure, go for it. Mindwiping what he revealed to you from his mind? Sure. Leaving the knowledge that you tampered with his mind and forced him to act against his wishes? No, that's fething idiotic, either go all-out or don't do it at all.

In False Gods, the pivotal moment when Horus began to really feel anger and turn was when he saw statues of many of his brothers, venerated (The loyalists), but none of him, the "best son".

apparently came from HH novel "Deliverance Lost wrote:On the left door, the woman held a babe in the crook of one arm and a sword in her hand, her hair flowing like a waterfall, mingling with a billowing dress that in turn merged with the long grass at her feet. On the right, the man, dressed in a worker’s overalls, a chain with the crossed lightning bolt of Unification hanging around his neck, had a wrench in one hand and a pistol in the other, looking to the skies. Between them burned a stylised star, surrounded by other pinpricks in the sky.
Ornate scrollwork held a caption across the heavens, in one of the Terran languages of old. Corax had not been much of a scholar and had studied little of pre-Imperial Terran culture, unlike many of his brothers. He had felt little interest in the past, preferring to concentrate his thoughts and actions on the proper shaping of the future. Despite that, he could instinctively decipher the emblazoned message, crudely translating it as "People of Earth, Together."
...
Given the name of the place, Corax had expected to see lines of battle honours and banners, displays of armour and weapons lining the walls. Instead there were many glass cabinets varying from those small enough to fit in Corax’s palm to some the size of battle tanks, arranged in rows across the hall, each containing an object from across the galaxy and dating back centuries, millennia, tens of millennia.
..
Enclosed within was a small circuit board, its function unknown. On the stand below, a small steel plate etched with plain text revealed its importance:
Navigational Circuit from the first warp-capable starship
Corax stepped back in surprise. Intrigued, he turned around and found himself looking at the skeletal form of a wheeled vehicle, barely large enough for a normal man to sit inside. Its balloon tyres made up the greater part of its bulk. Corax stepped up to examine the title plate.
Titan Rover