Why is the Emperor's body deteriorating on the Golden Throne?

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**Psienesis**

Shidank wrote:
Alcibiades wrote:
People believing in the Emperor's divinity in no way turns him into a warp god. The warp is fueled by emotions, not belief.

This does seem like splitting hairs a bit. Faith can be considered a powerful emotion. The definition will vary from person to person, but I think it's futile to say it doesn't count as a strong human 'feel'.

Yep, this. People actively believing in the Emperor's divinity, and acting on that faith, from the Sisters of Battle down to the average Imperial Joe working in a mine on some Feudal World, will cause a reaction from the Warp which, yes, might coalesce into a sentience that will be a new Warp God.

**Rusty1990**

Psienesis wrote:
Swabby wrote:
You know I always thought of the emperor as a militant atheist. This thread has shown me that not only was he never a militant atheist, but how wrong atheists are in the 40k universe.

I now believe that this is a deep flaw in the fluff. The emperor wanted humans to be atheists to avoid belief and thus spawning more chaos-stuff but really he should have just wanted everyone to be emotionless.

Atheists can be just as irrational and full of emotion as their theist brothers.

Indeed.

There's lots of flaws in the "Imperial Truth" from an outside perspective. The main being that humans aren't the only sentient species in the galaxy, so even if they stopped believing in the Chaos Gods, there's plenty of other species out there. Another being that the Emperor didn't seem to be all that anti-theist. After all, there were billions of people on Terra during the GC who were venerating him as a living god, and he did nothing to stop or discourage this practice. Possibly a "better they worship me than something else" philosophy, possibly a "this is what I wanted all along" angle, or maybe even "I'll deal with that later I don't have the time right now" (even though he took the time to go all the way to Monarchia and deal with the Word Bearers... for reasons in which religion is a trapping, not a cause.). And, further, the pursuit of science is the pursuit of knowledge, which is the domain of Tzeentch. So even if you somehow got rid of the Chaos Gods, you'd still be feeding one of them in your quest for knowledge... and if you wanted to make something perfect, then you're now feeding Slaanesh... so in no way was the GC or the Imperial Truth ever going to end the Chaos Gods. What it might have done (possibly) is supplant the Chaos Gods with the Emperor.

You have a good point, but provide no solution. The Emperor have been dealing with this problem for 30,000 years and the Imperial truth might be the best solution for a difficult problem. The gods will always get the emotions and man got nothing in return, at least with Imperial Truth, they get science. Necron science created pylons to block Chaos...science is the key to beat Chaos.

**insaniak**

Majsharan wrote:
Devil's advocate here. When is the last time anyone as actually seen the emperors body and described in the fluff (in the real stuff preferably, Black library isn't regulated enough)?.

The Black Library is the 'real stuff'... GW don't differentiate between fluff sources.

In older fluff at least, people are still admitted for 'audiences' with the Emperor, although the queue is quite long and some apparently spend their entire lives waiting in line. Inquisitor Draco gets into the throne room by posing as a supplicant in the Inquisition War trilogy, and has a little one-on-one time in which he discovers that the Emperor is a little messed up, and his personality is fractured into multiple different streams to handle everything he needs to do.

Beyond that, I'm not aware of anything in-universe that refers to his condition beyond mentioning that the throne is slowly failing.

**Rusty1990**

insaniak wrote:
Majsharan wrote:
Devil's advocate here. When is the last time anyone as actually seen the emperors body and described in the fluff (in the real stuff preferably, Black library isn't regulated enough)?.

The Black Library is the 'real stuff'... GW don't differentiate between fluff sources.

In older fluff at least, people are still admitted for 'audiences' with the Emperor, although the queue is quite long and some apparently spend their entire lives waiting in line. Inquisitor Draco gets into the throne room by posing as a supplicant in the Inquisition War trilogy, and has a little one-on-one time in which he discovers that the Emperor is a little messed up, and his personality is fractured into multiple different streams to handle everything he needs to do.

Beyond that, I'm not aware of anything in-universe that refers to his condition beyond mentioning that the throne is slowly failing.

Any fluff mentioning Emperor as a corpse on the throne like the art work?

**koooaei**

Swabby wrote:
The emperor wanted humans to be atheists to avoid belief and thus spawning more chaos-stuff but really he should have just wanted everyone to be emotionless.

He probably wanted humanity to not waste perecious time on rituals, supersticions and church-buildings but do something useful instead. But humanity screwed it up and turned good intentions into a religion once again.

**insaniak**

Rusty1990 wrote:

Any fluff mentioning Emperor as a corpse on the throne like the art work?

It's been a while since I read the Inquisition War trilogy, but I'm fairly sure it describes him as looking a little threadbare, yes. Draco's communication with him is all psychic, and even that is supposed to be very, very rare.

**Deadshot**

Rusty1990 wrote:
Psienesis wrote:
Swabby wrote:
You know I always thought of the emperor as a militant atheist. This thread has shown me that not only was he never a militant atheist, but how wrong atheists are in the 40k universe.

I now believe that this is a deep flaw in the fluff. The emperor wanted humans to be atheists to avoid belief and thus spawning more chaos-stuff but really he should have just wanted everyone to be emotionless.

Atheists can be just as irrational and full of emotion as their theist brothers.

Indeed.

There's lots of flaws in the "Imperial Truth" from an outside perspective. The main being that humans aren't the only sentient species in the galaxy, so even if they stopped believing in the Chaos Gods, there's plenty of other species out there. Another being that the Emperor didn't seem to be all that anti-theist. After all, there were billions of people on Terra during the GC who were venerating him as a living god, and he did nothing to stop or discourage this practice. Possibly a "better they worship me than something else" philosophy, possibly a "this is what I wanted all along" angle, or maybe even "I'll deal with that later I don't have the time right now" (even though he took the time to go all the way to Monarchia and deal with the Word Bearers... for reasons in which religion is a trapping, not a cause.). And, further, the pursuit of science is the pursuit of knowledge, which is the domain of Tzeentch. So even if you somehow got rid of the Chaos Gods, you'd still be feeding one of them in your quest for knowledge... and if you wanted to make something perfect, then you're now feeding Slaanesh... so in no way was the GC or the Imperial Truth ever going to end the Chaos Gods. What it might have done (possibly) is supplant the Chaos Gods with the Emperor.

You have a good point, but provide no solution. The Emperor have been dealing with this problem for 30,000 years and the Imperial truth might be the best solution for a difficult problem. The gods will always get the emotions and man got nothing in return, at least with Imperial Truth, they get science. Necron science created pylons to block Chaos...science is the key to beat Chaos.

If humanity doesn't believe or know about Chaos but dedicate their actions to The Emperor as a Warp Spirit then all their actions would go to the Emperor. Look at the Orks, all of whom's fightingf powers Gork and Mork when by rights it should give Khorne a hit like cocaine and red bull.

**koooaei**

Deadshot wrote:

If humanity doesn't believe or know about Chaos but dedicate their actions to The Emperor as a Warp Spirit then all their actions would go to the Emperor. Look at the Orks, all of whom's fightingf powers Gork and Mork when by rights it should give Khorne a hit like cocaine and red bull.

It doesn't cause orks are not bloodthirsty or hateful. They don't kill out of rage or something. They just love a good scrap!

Tyranids are not feeding Khorne either. Probably for the same reason. Just replace the word "scrap" with a word "meal".

**Deadshot**

koooaei wrote:
Deadshot wrote:

If humanity doesn't believe or know about Chaos but dedicate their actions to The Emperor as a Warp Spirit then all their actions would go to the Emperor. Look at the Orks, all of whom's fightingf powers Gork and Mork when by rights it should give Khorne a hit like cocaine and red bull.

It doesn't cause orks are not bloodthirsty or hateful. They don't kill out of rage or something. They just love a good scrap!

Tyranids are not feeding Khorne either. Probably for the same reason. Just replace the word "scrap" with a word "meal".

I wòuld say they are pretty bloodthristy. Plus, Khorne isn't just about rage, the act of killing and war fuels him.

**koooaei**

Deadshot wrote:
koooaei wrote:
Deadshot wrote:

If humanity doesn't believe or know about Chaos but dedicate their actions to The Emperor as a Warp Spirit then all their actions would go to the Emperor. Look at the Orks, all of whom's fightingf powers Gork and Mork when by rights it should give Khorne a hit like cocaine and red bull.

It doesn't cause orks are not bloodthirsty or hateful. They don't kill out of rage or something. They just love a good scrap!

Tyranids are not feeding Khorne either. Probably for the same reason. Just replace the word "scrap" with a word "meal".

I wòuld say they are pretty bloodthristy. Plus, Khorne isn't just about rage, the act of killing and war fuels him.

Are you bloodthirsty for killing a mosquito?

**Psienesis**

Rusty1990 wrote:
Psienesis wrote:
Swabby wrote:
You know I always thought of the emperor as a militant atheist. This thread has shown me that not only was he never a militant atheist, but how wrong atheists are in the 40k universe.

I now believe that this is a deep flaw in the fluff. The emperor wanted humans to be atheists to avoid belief and thus spawning more chaos-stuff but really he should have just wanted everyone to be emotionless.

Atheists can be just as irrational and full of emotion as their theist brothers.

Indeed.

There's lots of flaws in the "Imperial Truth" from an outside perspective. The main being that humans aren't the only sentient species in the galaxy, so even if they stopped believing in the Chaos Gods, there's plenty of other species out there. Another being that the Emperor didn't seem to be all that anti-theist. After all, there were billions of people on Terra during the GC who were venerating him as a living god, and he did nothing to stop or discourage this practice. Possibly a "better they worship me than something else" philosophy, possibly a "this is what I wanted all along" angle, or maybe even "I'll deal with that later I don't have the time right now" (even though he took the time to go all the way to Monarchia and deal with the Word Bearers... for reasons in which religion is a trapping, not a cause.). And, further, the pursuit of science is the pursuit of knowledge, which is the domain of Tzeentch. So even if you somehow got rid of the Chaos Gods, you'd still be feeding one of them in your quest for knowledge... and if you wanted to make something perfect, then you're now feeding Slaanesh... so in no way was the GC or the Imperial Truth ever going to end the Chaos Gods. What it might have done (possibly) is supplant the Chaos Gods with the Emperor.

You have a good point, but provide no solution. The Emperor have been dealing with this problem for 30,000 years and the Imperial truth might be the best solution for a difficult problem. The gods will always get the emotions and man got nothing in return, at least with Imperial Truth, they get science. Necron science created pylons to block Chaos...science is the key to beat Chaos.

Tzeentch is the god of Knowledge. Science is the pursuit of knowledge. One feeds the other. Slaanesh is the god of art, perfection, perversion, vice, and obsession. Mad scientists, of which there are plenty in history, are fixated on their obsessions. Even scientists who are not mad can have their own obsessions, their personal quests for perfect understanding and so forth. For Chaos, all things are a means unto an end.

What the Necrons have done is create technological devices that hedge away the Warp. They have not "beat Chaos", they've simply refused to fight it. Of course, they sacrificed everything of their culture in doing so. Was it worth it? Signs point to "no, not really". The number of sentient, thinking Necrons in the galaxy is less than the population of a single Imperial World... and of those Necrons, not a single one of them is a philosopher or artist.

**BlackTalos**

Psienesis wrote:
Shidank wrote:
Alcibiades wrote:
People believing in the Emperor's divinity in no way turns him into a warp god. The warp is fueled by emotions, not belief.

This does seem like splitting hairs a bit. Faith can be considered a powerful emotion. The definition will vary from person to person, but I think it's futile to say it doesn't count as a strong human 'feel'.

Yep, this. People actively believing in the Emperor's divinity, and acting on that faith, from the Sisters of Battle down to the average Imperial Joe working in a mine on some Feudal World, will cause a reaction from the Warp which, yes, might coalesce into a sentience that will be a new Warp God.

I am absolutely appalling at referencing the fluff, but from memory, i thought that the Emperor was (or thought himself at least) on equal footing as the Warp Gods. Or that he was very close at least, and that this was related to the Terran Webway and "Warp Crusade" he seemed to be planing which was completely forgotten after the HH.

If he does coalesce into an entity "just as powerful" as a new Warp God, i'd say that the Emperor would not be very far from what he was. And linking the two outcomes (regenerate + Spawn a Warp God) as pretty much the same outcome: he comes back, 50/50 chance he's stronger than before or just the perpetual he used to be (which is not far off - but if he returns to infant stage, might get tricky...)

**chazz huggins**

Why does he have a robotic eye and why only on one eye answer cus it looks cool