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Just a little background to explain this quote, originally, the Warp was just pure energy from every living being ever born. The Shamans of humanity harnessed this "pure" Warp energy for all of their psychic acts, and this was the reason that they never had to worry about things like Daemon possession, getting sucked into the Warp, etc. However, humanity and other species' disharmonic emotional energies went into the Warp, coalesced and created the Chaos Powers - the Gods of the Warp as we know them. While this was happening, lesser Warp creatures were created, as well, and these ones were NOMming the Shamans when they tried to reincarnate, so, long story short, the Shamans used the power of Order, they all commited suicide at the same time and were reborn into the Emperor. The Emperor had all of their memories from the last several million years.

Here's a quote about the source of the Primarchs' and Emperor's psychic powers, from the lost and the damned:

The Primarchs were to be shining examples of humans free from the taint of corruption. The Energy of the uncorrupted Warp would flow through them as it flowed through the Emperor himself, invigorating them and conferring special powers such as were possessed by shamans of old.

Alright, so, now that we've got this established, I believe that I have figured out why everything Emperor is anathema to everything Chaos - it's Order. I know, we've got nothing saying Order even exists in 40k, but we've got official fluff saying that the Emperor wields the "uncorrupted" power of the Warp - basically, we have non-Chaos Warp energy, which might also be the source of the Eldar Pantheon's power. With this, going off of the assumption that the Emperor is a God, the Emperor could just, basically, make his talismans conduits to this pure Warp energy, which would ward off the Daemons. Thoughts?

Because there's a feth-off huge psychic presence of him centered around Terra. Whether this is actually the once-living Emperor's psychic will or simply the nascent conglomeration of the beliefs of uncountable quadrillions of humans forming into what they believe the Emperor to be like... doesn't matter. Belief is power in 40K.

And, yes, it's Order. That goes all the way back to the very early days of Warhammer, when 40K was Warhammer Fantasy in Space. There have always been the Gods of Order in Fantasy, because the whole Chaos vs Law conflict was taken directly from the books of Michael Moorcock (even the 8-pointed star to represent Chaos is his invention).

know, we've got nothing saying Order even exists in 40k, but we've got official fluff saying that the Emperor wields the "uncorrupted" power of the Warp - basically, we have non-Chaos Warp energy, which might also be the source of the Eldar Pantheon's power.

It is related to the shaman dying, it is almost definitely not order. There is no reason to think that there is only one kind of thing that is "non-chaos," or that if there is only one thing that is "non-chaos," that it is also some way the opposite of chaos. There is no more reason to put things in dualist terms than to say that there are five or a thousand things in the warp that are non-chaos and non-each-other. There might be at least two things that are non-chaos, because besides the Emperor there are also Orks gods, who definitely have nothing to do with "order" and also cannot possibly be "anti-chaos" or chaos.

In addition to Orkiness, there are human alternates to "order" that are not chaos. It's easy to say that if you are chaos, you have devolved or regressed, because your civilization breaks down and you often become physically and cognitively degenerated like a spawn. However, the space wolves' canis helix causes them to regress to a less civilized, less cognitively able state, but these wulfen have been claimed to be actually more resistant to chaos than humans, not more chaotic.

One key word is civilization. The shamans were around during a time when humans were not really civilized, when they weren't really humans yet. At that time the warp was calm; Orks and ork gods existed, and eldar and eldar gods existed, but neither of those races were eaten by the three chaos gods when they died, and the eldar reincarnated. So while chaos means civilization malfunctions, being non-civilized means non-chaos.

It is not good to say that there are binary states of chaos and order, and it is also not so good to say some other things. Instead of saying there are binary states, order and chaos, you can say that there are pre-civilized, civilized, and de-civilized. However, it is hard to say that this is not wrong, that there might not be more than those three states.

In the Horus Heresy novels there is something like "order:" the Imperial Truth. However, this order never succeeds in combating chaos, indeed it somewhat permits chaos. What does combat chaos is something other than this, which is not order. I think there is something closer to the structural model of psychology in warhammer, where there is an id, ego, and super ego, where id is chaos, the ego is the Imperial Truth and "normal" Imperial behavior like human waves, summary execution, and intolerance, and the super ego, which are the acts of holiness that you are talking about in this thread.

This however is not something worth defending, because the warp has so many things in it that it should be as impossible to say there are three things like chaos - ego - super-ego as it is to say there are two things like chaos - order.

As for Michael Moorcock, there is every reason to think order does not exist in warhammer. The only thing that the borrowed chaos star proves is that they borrowed the chaos star. Dune, Tolkien and 2000AD are also transferable directly in many places, but that does not indicate that Smaug exists in 40k. If anything, all of the borrowing shows that Order does not exist, because citadel felt free to borrow any images they wanted without transferring any of the meaning or content. There is also this quote from Bryan Ansell to similar effect:

"Certainly, Michael Moorcock was an influence and inspiration. Michael Moorcock and Tolkien cast massive shadows over the whole fantasy industry: in my case Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith were equally important.
I don't think our vision of Chaos Warriors overlaps much with that of Michael Moorcock (although we did occasionally borrow his arrow symbol).
For me, all the roots of the Chaos Warriors that Citadel made over the years lie with Frank Frazetta's "Death Dealer" paintings and sketches, the first few "Chaos Warriors" that Tony Ackland made at Asgard (also the one that Stan Pochron made) and John Blanche's sketches from the early 80s...

"When I discovered fantasy, science and historical fiction in the 1960s Moorcock wasn't visible enough yet to make it into my local (Arnold) library....

"I didn't discover Moorcock until the Hawkmoon books in the early 70s. Tandem was publishing James Branch Cabell and getting him to me via WH Smith at round about the same time that Moorcock appeared: so I still associate them with each other"



Way more important than that is this quote, from the same interview, that says:


"We did not plan any other powers during my time: other than perhaps the Gods of Law "



This means that since they borrowed the chaos symbol and the idea of Chaos, that they decided they should consider borrowing Order, and then having thought about it they didn't do it. The very fact of having to think about it means it wasn't part and parcel with borrowing chaos and hadn't been planned all along. I think it's possible Order is a meaningful concept in 40k, but these pieces of evidence do not show that it is. I believe order is not meaningful to 40k.

Ansell is a fool if he thinks Chaos was not influenced by Moorcock. All of that artwork from the RoC books is basically the last 4 books of the Elric series, illustrated. Dudes sprouting bird-heads and tentacles or descending into mewling spawn or getting one huge, ripped limb while the other atrophies and turns puce?

That's Moorcock for you. That is the gak that went down in the Elric series, appearing in the first story in the 1960s, but getting its own series of novels in the early 70s.

Maybe he doesn't realize who/what Blanche was influenced by, but Blanche had to be aware of Moorcock. I mean, hell, since the very beginning, the random Rewards Table for Gifts of Chaos and such reads like someone went through the Elric series and just itemized all the random mutations and such that people/things had, and Blanche just painted it. I think there's even a suspiciously-Stormbringer-like sword in the Slaves to Darkness book in a sidebar.

 dusara217 wrote:
Alright, so, now that we've got this established, I believe that I have figured out why everything Emperor is anathema to everything Chaos - it's Order. I know, we've got nothing saying Order even exists in 40k, but we've got official fluff saying that the Emperor wields the "uncorrupted" power of the Warp - basically, we have non-Chaos Warp energy, which might also be the source of the Eldar Pantheon's power. With this, going off of the assumption that the Emperor is a God, the Emperor could just, basically, make his talismans conduits to this pure Warp energy, which would ward off the Daemons. Thoughts?

Yeah, it's not a stretch to say Order comes from within us, and is projected and made sense of outwards. Have you heard of the quantum physics tests where protons behave differently whether they're being observed or not by humans? It's some heady stuff, but basically the act of observing as a human creates more ordered and predictable results when they do these tests with protons by shooting them through some kind of filter. This is compared to the less predictable results when they simply acknowledge the results rather than actively watch the process.

As such, the Emperor is the pinnacle of Humanity, and the Order projected from within him, in and of itself, is detrimental to the existence is Chaos. By simply desiring Order, we as sentient beings bring it about.

Trippy.

Its simple really. Orks see humans believing these prayers and trinkets should work and occasionally an ork (probably a Blood Axe) accepts the belief and thus the thing protected them. Other Orks see these things sometimes protect the humans so they learn that these human prayers and trinkets can sometimes save them. So now the prayers and trinkets sometimes protect humans anywhere in the galaxy because out there in the vastness of the universe their are untold numbers of Orks that believe that those things will sometimes work. In short the Emperior protects because some Blood Axe gitz think he does and are mucking up the fun for the other boyz.

The emperor has an immense psychic presence. One aspect of this is the astronomicon. This psychic expression into the warp damages and terrifyies daemons. They refer to the emperor as the anemetha. Daemons are naturally superstitious(coming from a realm not bound by physical laws).
When humans align themselves psychically with the emperor(via worship etc) then they take on some of the psychic energy that daemons are terrified of.

The Emperor is a psychic anathema to Daemons, his very presence pains them. So doing the correct Warp rituals that conjure up his psychic presence will harm a Daemon.

 pax macharia wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
Alright, so, now that we've got this established, I believe that I have figured out why everything Emperor is anathema to everything Chaos - it's Order. I know, we've got nothing saying Order even exists in 40k, but we've got official fluff saying that the Emperor wields the "uncorrupted" power of the Warp - basically, we have non-Chaos Warp energy, which might also be the source of the Eldar Pantheon's power. With this, going off of the assumption that the Emperor is a God, the Emperor could just, basically, make his talismans conduits to this pure Warp energy, which would ward off the Daemons. Thoughts?

Yeah, it's not a stretch to say Order comes from within us, and is projected and made sense of outwards. Have you heard of the quantum physics tests where protons behave differently whether they're being observed or not by humans? It's some heady stuff, but basically the act of observing as a human creates more ordered and predictable results when they do these tests with protons by shooting them through some kind of filter. This is compared to the less predictable results when they simply acknowledge the results rather than actively watch the process.

As such, the Emperor is the pinnacle of Humanity, and the Order projected from within him, in and of itself, is detrimental to the existence is Chaos. By simply desiring Order, we as sentient beings bring it about.

Trippy.

What you mean energy manipulation? You think that's trippy, you should see when an electromagnetic Traveler causes a massive blackout trying to light a candle with her mind. I may have said too much....

 Vankraken wrote:
Its simple really. Orks see humans believing these prayers and trinkets should work and occasionally an ork (probably a Blood Axe) accepts the belief and thus the thing protected them. Other Orks see these things sometimes protect the humans so they learn that these human prayers and trinkets can sometimes save them. So now the prayers and trinkets sometimes protect humans anywhere in the galaxy because out there in the vastness of the universe their are untold numbers of Orks that believe that those things will sometimes work. In short the Emperior protects because some Blood Axe gitz think he does and are mucking up the fun for the other boyz.

This.

It's funny though how the different codexes contradict each other in religion a bit. Even fluff books contradict, Horus Heresy books seem to say one thing, other Black Library stuff is so dogmatic about the Cult of the Emperor it hurts. I still don't think the individual Emperor that launched the crusade is in any shape or form alive or a god nor was he ever one. That said maybe humans' (particularly psykers) belief in such an entity has caused one to come into existence (but more likely thanks to the orks belief in it). We all end up arguing for the side presented in our codices and end up sounding like fanatical zealots since the Tau book makes the Tau look right, the marines book the marines, chaos book for chaos, etc.