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Another thing to consider: IF the Emperor is turning into a Chaos God equivalent, then as soon as he is "born" he will be no longer restricted by time, which means that he was always a god, since the beginning. Same that happened with Slaanesh. And if you read Betrayer or Angel Exterminatus you will find something funny: in order to achieve immortality, both Angron and Fulgrim had to die, and quite violently. By keeping him sort of alive, the Emperor is kept from divinity.
And yes, there are many hints in the background about the Emperor knowing what was going to happen before the Heresy, and actively manipulating the events according to a plan we do not know.
This is from white dwarf 261 US 131 UK, a brief tale by William King about the final battle between Horus and the Emperor.
Spoiler:
From his throne the Emperor watches his warriors mill around in confusion. This hall holds ten thousand men, seasoned veterans, and all now panicking. He knows they are more frightening by his silence than by the enemy. They look to him for leadership and he can give them none.
For the first time in his millennia-long life the Emperor knows despair. The magnitude of his defeat stuns him. The lunar bases have fallen. Most of the earth is under the Warmaster's heel. Rebel Titans, towering 30 feet high, surround the palace and are held at bay only by the desperate efforts of a few loyalists. It is only a matter of time before the palace's defences fail and the last bastions of resistance fall.
"Sire, what are your orders?" asks Rogal Dorn, massive dark-haired Primarch of the Imperial Fists. His golden armour has lost its lustre, is dented in a dozen places by bolter shells. The Emperor doesn't answer. He is lost within himself seeking answers to his own questions.
He has come at last to the dark place, the time of testing, the era hidden from his precognition vision and beyond which he cannot see. The moment he has always dreaded has arrived. Is my time over, he wonders? Is this where it all ends? Is this why I have reached the limits of my prophetic powers. Is this where I die?
He felt bewildered. Even now, the Traitor Warmaster's forces were battering at the gate, he finds it difficult to believe that he has been betrayed.
Horus was more than a trusted comrade, more like a favoured son. Of all the Primarchs the Emperor relied on him most. Not for a second had the Emperor doubted him, not even when word had come from the Savage Worlds that the Warmaster was gathering forces. He had deluded himself that Horus must have good reason to do so without consulting him. I should have been warned by the failure of my precognition, he thinks.
"Sire, what are your orders?" asks Kane, acting Fabricator-General of the Adeptus Mechanicus. He stares at the Emperor, a trick of light turning the glass slits of his brass mask into accusing eyes. Once more the Emperor does not reply. Kane's presence reminds him that not even the head of the Adeptus is to be trusted. His superior, the former Fabricator-General, has chosen to side with Horus.
On Mars civil war rages between factions of Tech-Priests. Ancient, forbidden weapons are being deployed. Viral plagues kill millions. Fusion bombs scar the earth.
So much will be lost. He thinks of the slow piecing together of the old science. The Librarium Technologicus is in flame now, ancient core data systems in meltdown. The time of re-building is over. The Great Crusade, as much a quest for lost knowledge as a war to reclaim the human worlds, is ended. The Warmaster's treachery has seen to that.
"Sire, what are your orders?" asks Sanguinius, angel winged Primarch of the Blood Angels. He gazes at the Emperor with blazing eyes, his face a mask of terrible beauty.
The Emperor knows they rely on him for guidance. They still believe in him. They think he can lead them from this trap. They are wrong.
Horus is the greatest general the galaxy has ever known. Who should know better than his creator? He is schooled by a century of warfare. There will be no way out, no loopholes, no flaws in the plan. The Warmaster would have to be mad to leave one.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
da001 wrote:And yes, there are many hints in the background about the Emperor knowing what was going to happen before the Heresy, and actively manipulating the events according to a plan we do not know. This is from white dwarf 261 US 131 UK, a brief tale by William King about the final battle between Horus and the Emperor.
Hmm - I know it's a popular fan-theory, and an interpretation possibly pushed forward by some novels, but I don't really see anything in that WD excerpt supporting it.
Quite the opposite:
He felt bewildered. Even now, the Traitor Warmaster's forces were battering at the gate, he finds it difficult to believe that he has been betrayed.
Horus was more than a trusted comrade, more like a favoured son. Of all the Primarchs the Emperor relied on him most. Not for a second had the Emperor doubted him, not even when word had come from the Savage Worlds that the Warmaster was gathering forces. He had deluded himself that Horus must have good reason to do so without consulting him. I should have been warned by the failure of my precognition, he thinks.
You're probably referring to the last line, but to me this just seems like a realisation, or rather the fear, that he has made Horus too clever to leave any "loopholes or flaws" for the Emperor and his forces to exploit.
But as the setting's history has shown, the Emperor was wrong even about that.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/11/25 20:17:21
On the one hand, Lynata is right. Those passages suggest the Emperor is blinded at this moment, which I've always said and I believe is written somewhere in the CSM Codex actually, by grief at what his favored son has done. However towards the middle of it we hit this paradox of being a "Chaos God" in that you have always existed and never existed, due to time having no meaning in the Warp. So here...
"So much will be lost. He thinks of the slow piecing together of the old science. The Librarium Technologicus is in flame now, ancient core data systems in meltdown. The time of re-building is over. The Great Crusade, as much a quest for lost knowledge as a war to reclaim the human worlds, is ended. The Warmaster's treachery has seen to that."
Here we have this incredibly clear and lucid moment and who knows what else came with this acknowledged epiphany turned real. Where time perhaps stops for him? Perhaps he sees beyond this moment that he is blind, where his precognisence returns and perhaps he sees the fate of his Empire, as was shown to Horus by Erebus?
Because if this is not the case, then the gambit he played with the Ruinous Powers has failed, and he is now forever under their thumb, lamenting and suffering as they would have the Emperor do, suspended against his will on the Golden Throne, enduring who knows how unimaginable the horrors imposed on his psyche and spirit, as the Astronomicon. Essentially, the Astronomicon is omnipresent in the warp as well, acting as a beacon for Imperial Vessels. And the Emperor IS the Astronomicon? Then his mind, body and soul are completely immersed in the Warp.
And how great would that be, when, let's say a loyalist Primarch or Lord of Terra goes to awaken the Emperor, and out falls this husk that's screaming and babbling madness that shakes the very foundation of the Imperial Palace, and all of the Loyalists on the Planet deface themselves as their once thought Savoir has been reduced to a pile of dribbling and babbling, wasted flesh. Not even fit to be human, but worse for the energies it possess with the fractured remains could possibly destroy the whole of the Imperium as connected.
Grimdark indeed. +__+
Oh, and Abbadon is laughing has @zz off this whole time, with his boot on the Emperors head while he begs incoherencies before having his skull crushed.
"Well there's something I've been meaning to tell you about the college on the edge of the town. No one should ever go there. You know it's bad, bad, bad. It gets worse every school year, but man those freaking teachers are raaaaad! Yea-YEAH-yeah yeah." -Babycakes - China, Il.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/559359.page#6178253 <--Link to my CSM Army lists.
I suppose one of the strengths of the franchise is how it manages to appeal to so many different tastes, just by not only offering such a variety of material, but also allowing so many angles of interpretation so that we may often see what we'd want to see.
None of us is likely completely unbiased when reading such material as we would all like to see the setting in a certain way. For example, I have a marked tendency towards a more gritty and "down to earth" interpretation where there is no such thing as divine magic, and where not even the Primarchs were truly as awesome as certain legends make them out to be. So it would seem entirely fitting if the Emperor, too, was ultimately fallible, and was capable of making mistakes - including ones as grave as to underestimating Horus.
Heh, this makes me remember that piece of WD fluff about where a chief scientist introduces the Emperor to the Astartes project ... so much for the Emperor himself creating them, as it says elsewhere. But give it a couple thousand years, and who can say for sure what was truth and what is legend?
Lynata wrote: I suppose one of the strengths of the franchise is how it manages to appeal to so many different tastes, just by not only offering such a variety of material, but also allowing so many angles of interpretation so that we may often see what we'd want to see.
Indeed.
Lynata wrote: I don't really see anything in that WD excerpt supporting it.
Quite the opposite:
He felt bewildered. Even now, the Traitor Warmaster's forces were battering at the gate, he finds it difficult to believe that he has been betrayed.
Horus was more than a trusted comrade, more like a favoured son. Of all the Primarchs the Emperor relied on him most. Not for a second had the Emperor doubted him, not even when word had come from the Savage Worlds that the Warmaster was gathering forces. He had deluded himself that Horus must have good reason to do so without consulting him. I should have been warned by the failure of my precognition, he thinks.
It is a matter of interpretation, perhaps.
The measure of the power of a person is given by the limitations of the power itself:
"He has come at last to the dark place, the time of testing, the era hidden from his precognition vision and beyond which he cannot see. The moment he has always dreaded has arrived. Is my time over, he wonders? Is this where it all ends? Is this why I have reached the limits of my prophetic powers. Is this where I die? " "He had deluded himself that Horus must have good reason to do so without consulting him. I should have been warned by the failure of my precognition, he thinks. "
Up to that point, he was doing well. My interpretation of the sentences quoted is that he had foreseen most of what had happened in the previous thousands of years. However, there is a point where his ability to predict the future stops. Things go blurry and he wonders "is this where I die?". He is well aware of the existence of this blind point.
Another interesting sentence is : "The Emperor knows they rely on him for guidance. They still believe in him. They think he can lead them from this trap. "
My interpretation is: the Emperor has been using his prescience to solve his problems since for thousands of years. This is the way he is able to win the day, day after day. He wins every battle because he knows he already won, and how. Then he reaches the blind point.... and he does nothing. He remains silent, unable to reach a decision, the people surrounding him astonished at his silence. He is asked three times for orders, and gives none.
That is a measure of how much he relied in his prescience, and thus a measure of the accuracy of his visions. A major strength, and a major weakness when he is no longer able to use it. It is also telling how shocking is for him to find out that Horus is the traitor, and gives a hint of why he refused to give orders during the Heresy: he wasn´t sure of his own ability to make the right decision, not anymore.
‘Your warriors will stand down and withdraw, Curze. That is an order, not a request. (…) When this campaign is won, you and I will have words’
Rogal Dorn, just before taking the beating of his life.
from The Dark King, by Graham McNeill.
After the description Lorgar makes of the Emperor in "The First Heretic" I like to see him as all the potential of mankind merged into one person. And I am talking of everything: carisma, psykic power, martial hability, etc . Which is why he seemed so unhuman at times, he was planing at an absurdely large scale. Maybe he was planning not to destroy the Chaos Gods, but to simply deny them any influence in Mankind. Without necesity to travel through the warp, mankind united under the banner of progress and science, and no religion to eventually turn into a radical fundamentalism, the gods would have been turned into something without real power. Of course the Chaos Gods did not want that and once they had made sure that was not going to happen they returned to their usual doing.
This just my opinion and I could be wrong. The wonderfull thing about fluff in Warhammer 40.000 is that almost everything is purpousely vage so there is no real true answer.
