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 Selym wrote:

Ernestas wrote:

Well, whole Imperium and everyone in a galaxy is a pawn of Tzeentch then. I have no illusion that Tzeentch and his copies called Lords of Change manipulate everyone in every situation possible to them. But if that's true, then we can conclude that The Great Game is already won by Tzeentch. He and he alone will rule a galaxy as an only god without competition.
Surely, you can see that this simply cannot be true. Tzeentch must be making mistakes and adapting later otherwise Imperium would have fallen already to him.

Taking down the IOM is not Tzeentch's plan. If he/she/it were to do that there would be far less plotting for Tzeentch to feed from.
Tzeentch will never allow himself to "Win" because that would be the death of him: No plots/plans/stories = No Tzeentch.

He needs the competition to survive.

There is a quite healthy amounts of competition and ambition from others chaos followers. All of it will feed Tzeentch in any way no matter the outcome. Imperium can stand strong and Tzeencth will feed from it or it can to succumb to chaos gods and he would feed from their rivalies and ambitions. As for now, Imperium is crumbling. One or few more black crusade will shatter it. Where is your Tzeentch actual help to Imperium if he is interested in preserving it?

Actually, I have thought about it before. It would be an interesting and logical twist if Tzeentch would back-stab Abbadon's black crusade and he would ''side'' with the Imperium instead. I mean, no one can win the Great Game, but him. Allowing galaxy to be consumed by Khrone or worse- Nurgle is completely unacceptable scenario to him.

Malcador was strong enough to move Titan into the Warp and keep it safe there until it reemerged after the Heresy. and thus after he himself turned to dust (literally!). Snapping a Titan in two seems pretty easy compared to that TBH.

Of note, the Emporer was indeed taken down by something once.

The Beast, an epic warlord of the orks (Which had nobz the size of warbosses, so he was pretty damn huge)

Considering Horus had to save him from him..

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Of note, the Emporer was indeed taken down by something once.

The Beast, an epic warlord of the orks (Which had nobz the size of warbosses, so he was pretty damn huge)

Considering Horus had to save him from him..

And soon you have Empy fanboys telling how he was never in real danger and was just pretending for gaks and giggles. We had a giant thread on this a while ago.

 Crimson wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Of note, the Emporer was indeed taken down by something once.

The Beast, an epic warlord of the orks (Which had nobz the size of warbosses, so he was pretty damn huge)

Considering Horus had to save him from him..

And soon you have Empy fanboys telling how he was never in real danger and was just pretending for gaks and giggles. We had a giant thread on this a while ago.

No, soon we'll be telling you that the psychic power of a Waaagh! of that magnitude thinking that the Warboss at Ullanor (who wasn't the Beast BTW) is the baddest MF around means that he's actually the baddest MF around, because that's how Orks work. Doesn't change the fact that the Emperor would've destroyed him 1v1.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Of note, the Emporer was indeed taken down by something once.

The Beast, an epic warlord of the orks (Which had nobz the size of warbosses, so he was pretty damn huge)

Considering Horus had to save him from him..

And soon you have Empy fanboys telling how he was never in real danger and was just pretending for gaks and giggles. We had a giant thread on this a while ago.

No, soon we'll be telling you that the psychic power of a Waaagh! of that magnitude thinking that the Warboss at Ullanor (who wasn't the Beast BTW) is the baddest MF around means that he's actually the baddest MF around, because that's how Orks work. Doesn't change the fact that the Emperor would've destroyed him 1v1.

Oh right, the one there was Urrlak Urruk wasn't it? My mistake.

Regarding the discussion about Tzeentch:

Tzeentch does not desire victory. It desires ambition and plots. The Imperium is full of both, therefor Tzeentch sees no reason to destroy it. Just as Khorne doesn't really seek to DESTROY the Imperium... just to bathe it in massive amounts of bloodshed (he's doing a good job, isn't he?). Same with Nurgle and diseases, or Slaanesh and hedonism.

Their goals are much less materialistic than just "victory".

 Crimson wrote:
And soon you have Empy fanboys telling how he was never in real danger and was just pretending for gaks and giggles. We had a giant thread on this a while ago.

Do I really need to refute your arguments again?

I am not an Emperor fanboy, I just acknowledge the actual context behind the scene, rather than "lol Emperor got beat up".

The scene required a salvo of plasma weaponry explicitly above Imperial-grade, and it was after he slaughtered hundreds of the Xenos.

The Emperor was not invincible. But he was incredibly powerful.

So, in that Emperor did specialised? From that I have heard, he was some sort of psychic warrior excelling in personal duels. Or maybe...he did not even bothered in perfecting his talent? I mean, raw strength scales poorly. You need skill and other things in order to multiply your deadliness. Same goes and with psychic powers. You have to tie your will to spells in order to preserve your power, achieve something very specific and to go beyond your natural limits of your talents.

Ftr, I plan to answer your post, but it is long and I am lazy, so not now.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Ftr, I plan to answer your post, but it is long and I am lazy, so not now.

Of course. Just keep in mind that I have lore hole where tales of Horus Heresy should be. Only recently I had ordered first four books, so...feel free in enlightening me if needed.

I don't know. My own version of Emperor to me seems a better one than widely accepted version of him. I mean, how the hell he managed to come into existence? Mass-killings in short period of time and in same area can work, but certainly not to that degree that some people like to think. While on the other hand, alpha psykers do born. Yes, most of them are insane and it's difficult to hide such powers then you are still just a baby or a child, so most are quickly killed by Imperium. But very few of them survive with their sanity more or less intact to use their powers. In the lore we already have examples of these psykers with their own personal talents, so why not write Emperor to same category as them? As it's now, warhammer's starting fluff is very weak one as it does not explain how the Emperor did born and even more, we have him runing around earth long before unification of earth doing stuff... (Mechanicus, Void Dragon)

Ernestas wrote:
I don't know. My own version of Emperor to me seems a better one than widely accepted version of him. I mean, how the hell he managed to come into existence? Mass-killings in short period of time and in same area can work, but certainly not to that degree that some people like to think. While on the other hand, alpha psykers do born. Yes, most of them are insane and it's difficult to hide such powers then you are still just a baby or a child, so most are quickly killed by Imperium. But very few of them survive with their sanity more or less intact to use their powers. In the lore we already have examples of these psykers with their own personal talents, so why not write Emperor to same category as them? As it's now, warhammer's starting fluff is very weak one as it does not explain how the Emperor did born and even more, we have him runing around earth long before unification of earth doing stuff... (Mechanicus, Void Dragon)

Eh? Weak starting fluff? The fluff technically starts with the Emprah bringing humanity back together after a massive warpstorm blows them apart. There's not supposed to be any detail here, because not even the Lords of Terra know what happened anymore. After that things get very detailed.

IOM Mythology:
-Humanity has empire.
-Empire is separated.
-Emprah brings Terra back together.

IOM History ("real" fluff):
-Emprah creates Primarchs
-Primarchs get scattered by the chaos gods.
-Emprah makes the SM
-The Great Crusade
-The HH.
-WH40k.

Exactly, you have to just accept it. Warhammer starts from unification of earth to a great crusade with a Treaty of Olympus. Dark age of technology and an age of strife is just a setting for further events. It might just be me, but I never did encountered a solid read about Emperor's origins.

Ernestas wrote:
Exactly, you have to just accept it. Warhammer starts from unification of earth to a great crusade with a Treaty of Olympus. Dark age of technology and an age of strife is just a setting for further events. It might just be me, but I never did encountered a solid read about Emperor's origins.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Emperor

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Emperor#.UXoZzrWyBxU

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Emperor_of_Mankind

Enjoy

Yes, I familiar with this fluff about him. My point is that it cannot explain itself with a later fluff.

Why Emperor had to conquer local warlords despite being so charming and powerful?
How he had grown to be so powerful? If mass-suicade is so effective then chaos would be just mass-producing these Emperors.
How he managed to produce astrates with their primarchs in a first place? How others failed to do the same?
How he wasn't possessed and eaten by demons then he was just a child?
How he had managed to imprison void dragon?


All these questions are ignored. Emperor is just there doing stuff and we have to accept as a starting point of lore without trying to expose it to a same logic of w40k.

Ernestas wrote:
Why Emperor had to conquer local warlords despite being so charming and powerful?

It's a plot hole, mostly. Similarly, Kor Phaeron should have been executed on the spot once the Emperor met him. A cursory glance at his mind would reveal him for a Chaos cultist.

How he had grown to be so powerful? If mass-suicade is so effective then chaos would be just mass-producing these Emperors.

Current HH series is not concrete on this part, but the Emperor is a "perpetual", a human possessed of longevity.

How he managed to produce astrates with their primarchs in a first place? How others failed to do the same?

Chaos claims the Primarchs were created from a pact with Chaos, but then, Chaos lies.

How he wasn't possessed and eaten by demons then he was just a child?

THE EMPEROR WAS NEVER A CHILD.

How he had managed to imprison void dragon?

This is actually easy to answer. The Void Dragon, by that point, was starved and weakened, regaining its power through eating sacrifices. The Emperor managed to defeat it in this weakened state, but still had a tough time of it, and suffered many grievous injuries.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

THE EMPEROR WAS NEVER A CHILD.

Why?

He's a gestalt psychic being brought into existence through the mass suicide of all of humanities psykers at once...
There are no Gods in 40k but there are beings that might as well be Gods...
The Emperor is not quite that level (Though he may be now)
but he was close...

 Crimson wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:

THE EMPEROR WAS NEVER A CHILD.

Why?

Indeed

Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned

THE EMPEROR IS BORN
Of the birth and early life of the Emperor we shall say only a little, for space does not permit us to examine every detail of a life-time spanning almost fifty thousand years. His mother and father were human, his brothers and sisters were mortals like any other, so when he was born his parents had no reason to think of him as anything other than a normal human child.

Ernestas wrote:

Why Emperor had to conquer local warlords despite being so charming and powerful?

Power is a hard thing to give up, the likes of Kalagann or Cardinal Tang weren't just going to allow some upstart to take away what they had created.

 purplefood wrote:
He's a gestalt psychic being brought into existence through the mass suicide of all of humanities psykers at once...
There are no Gods in 40k but there are beings that might as well be Gods...
The Emperor is not quite that level (Though he may be now)
but he was close...

Except that is only one of five different potential beginnings of the Emporer, None of which are fully canon (Except the Star Child one of course, )

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 purplefood wrote:
He's a gestalt psychic being brought into existence through the mass suicide of all of humanities psykers at once...
There are no Gods in 40k but there are beings that might as well be Gods...
The Emperor is not quite that level (Though he may be now)
but he was close...

Except that is only one of five different potential beginnings of the Emporer, None of which are fully canon (Except the Star Child one of course, )

Nothing is fully canon...
This is 40k remember?
I'd love it if things were nice and tidy but GW seems to love poorly made intrigue and confusion... that and it kinda gave up bothering a while back...

You have to assume then that Mag'ladroth - the dragon were aware of him then he chose his hiding place and it once again proves that all god like beings tend to ultimately die or loose not because they were out-powered by other god-like being, but because they were very arrogant in a first place.
On the other hand, it raises further questions about dragon's imprisonment and his trip to Mars with him. Also, it's said that this C'tan was a reason why adeptus mechanicus had formed meaning he was imprisoned long time before unification of Earth. That places Emperor in an interesting position: what the hell he was doing all that time?


My point is that this early fluff has a lot of holes in it and should be treated as a mere legends, tales for children. It's just lore's starting point that should not be seriously taken.

Ernestas wrote:
You have to assume then that Mag'ladroth - the dragon were aware of him then he chose his hiding place and it once again proves that all god like beings tend to ultimately die or loose not because they were out-powered by other god-like being, but because they were very arrogant in a first place.
On the other hand, it raises further questions about dragon's imprisonment and his trip to Mars with him. Also, it's said that this C'tan was a reason why adeptus mechanicus had formed meaning he was imprisoned long time before unification of Earth. That places Emperor in an interesting position: what the hell he was doing all that time?

If the Emperor does anything well, it's play the long game. A nudge here, a word in the ear there, it was all a build up to a point where humanity needed someone to save them and to get behind, if there wasn't that need and feeling that without him all would perish, he would have just been another tyrant or despot come to enslave the human race.

Ernestas wrote:
My point is that this early fluff has a lot of holes in it and should be treated as a mere legends, tales for children. It's just lore's starting point that should not be seriously taken.

But according to GW, this is all fluff, all of it is legend, even the recent stuff.

That is quite loose and apologistic stance. I do not see how long game was any better than a quick power grab which would have avoided many pointless wars. Also that would have allowed him to build up his fleets and armies and at the same time to guide development of mechanicus.

We all are free to follow our own versions of warhammer. There is little actual fluff that would be a hard evidence against specific, certain things and that allows it to be bend and twisted to your liking. I for example, will ignore parts that do not make sense and will try my best to denounce them.

Somebody mentioned towards the bottom of the first page an answer to the OP's question that kind of got lost: the second Eisenhorn book contains descriptions of what Alpha+ psykers are and what they can do. That's probably your best bet for info on them.

We will likely never see the Emperor's origin story, and I think it's better that way. He should remain a mystery, and is probably the only thing in the 40k background I prefer unexplained (still want to know about the Lost Legions and the other perpetuals like John Grammaticus and Ollanius Pious). At this point, I don't think there's anything GW or BL could do to properly explain him, or do something that would live up to the legend. The closest we're going to get, in the near future, is likely some vague hints in ADB's upcoming Master of Mankind, although I expect (and hope) that to be more about Malcador.

As for more pre-Heresy history, I would love to see a Unification War book/series, maybe in 50 years when the Heresy series is done...

Ernestas wrote:
That is quite loose and apologistic stance. I do not see how long game was any better than a quick power grab which would have avoided many pointless wars.

So he should have lived along side the Tyrants and the Techno barbarians and risk his plans and people not getting behind him the way they did during Unification?

Ernestas wrote:
Also that would have allowed him to build up his fleets and armies and at the same time to guide development of mechanicus.

The way he did it, it was already pretty much founded already, all he had to do was take over.

Ernestas wrote:
We all are free to follow our own versions of warhammer. There is little actual fluff that would be a hard evidence against specific, certain things and that allows it to be bend and twisted to your liking. I for example, will ignore parts that do not make sense and will try my best to denounce them.

And that's fair enough, but it still doesn't change that those version do exist.

Best way to build up an army is to wage a war with it? And yes, given the state that lore is in that period I could say that he lived with all those tyrants and techno barbarians. Even more, he served in their armies until "a career opportunity" had come and he assumed command of his previous master's forces.

reaper with no name wrote:
I've seen some sources suggesting that Alpha+ psykers can snap Titans in half. Then again, Tigurius is supposed to be among the strongest psykers in the galaxy simply because he accessed the Hive Mind and lived.

So, exactly how strong are higher level psykers? If they can really do things like level cities, then why aren't Librarians the ones leading space marine chapters?

And what does a Mastery Level X map to, anyway?

Depends on whom you ask. They can go from just being a city level threat to "hey look at all these nice solar systems, I think I'll mind control 'em all."

It also depends on who had trained that psyker. Pre-Heresy Thousands sons tended to be subtle, enduring, focused while Space wolves on the other hand just burn out their energies like supernovas. Also, it's very important that natural talents psyker in question has. One can level entire cities with a thought, another mind control others, there are ones talented in daemonancy. More rarely some even focus on such subtle things as future telling. So, alpha psyker can be crushing titans with their minds, summoning hordes of demons or seeing a future like a Tzeentch. Despite their talents, all of them represent an apocalyptic threat level to anyone faced to fight them.