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 Aetare wrote:
Nothing brings people together like the irrational fear of someone who’s even just a little different... sad.

An unfortunate aspect of reality. Definitely one of the cases of art imitating life.

Well let's face it, the imperium would see a thousand innocents die that one heretic go unpunished. So even f there is a benign xenos the imperium would still want to exterminate it for fear of a hostile xenos surviving.

 Grimskul wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
Nothing brings people together like the irrational fear of someone who’s even just a little different... sad.

An unfortunate aspect of reality. Definitely one of the cases of art imitating life.

Too true.

Well, to be honest...the Olamic Quietude was more than a little different from normal humans, lol.

But yeah. The main problem is that the Emperor is/was too far from human. Regardless of any good works, he's like the sociopathic android protagonist in a sci-fi movie. Otherwise you'd think he would have done something thousands of years earlier, when humanity wouldn't have needed to scrabble for so much that was lost just to recover.

Help stop the Men of Iron, much?

It always seemed strange to me that he sat back for so long, waiting for the right time. One would think that he would have grown more as a person interacting with his fellow humans more and that mankind would have progressed quicker into a space-faring and even psychic race under his direct guidance.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, to be honest...the Olamic Quietude was more than a little different from normal humans, lol.

Well i mention them because they mostly seemed to have wanted to be left alone. In fact, -alot- of the Human enclaves out there were just minding their own business until the Imperial Boot came down on them.

Makes you wonder if the Emperor's actions were self-defeating at the end of the day. Humanity was already thriving out there in the Stars, even though they weren't unified that may have been their advantage. There no Gigantic Bullseye on the whole Species, just a limited series of local threats.

The Imperium on the Other Hand is a Giant Target...

But yeah. The main problem is that the Emperor is/was too far from human. Regardless of any good works, he's like the sociopathic android protagonist in a sci-fi movie. Otherwise you'd think he would have done something thousands of years earlier, when humanity wouldn't have needed to scrabble for so much that was lost just to recover.

Help stop the Men of Iron, much?

This version of the Emperor, the Horus Heresy Novel version, isn't....... i mean... He's kind of an idiot.

Morgasm has it correct when he called him "Space-Stalin."

In truth, he's like every other person whose been "The Leader" in human history.

1.) Creates a Whole Set of Rules (Don't Interact with Chaos), which he Subsequently Breaks (Makes them Primarchs)

2.) Says there shouldn't be any Religion, but then Literally Goes out of His Way to Have Himself Treated like Space Jesus in all but name (pointed out again and again in Bruva Alfabusa's "If the Emperor Had a Text to Speech Device" Youtube Series). I mean, he literally Created the Role of the Omnissiah in the Mechanicum's Belief System Centuries Before he Showed up to Fulfill all the Prophecies of it when he Landed on Mars.

3.) Ostensibly is doing this Uplift All of Humanity to be Smarter/Faster/Stronger/Better and Independent in Thought..... Except they would have to Listen to Him of Course....

4.) Wishes the Primarchs to Form an Emotional Attachment to Him as their Father (if only to use them as tools)........but then doesn't do Any Fatherly Things to Build that Connection (you know... like he would have seen observing humanity for the last 45,000 years).


Essentially - for all his Grand Plans he's a Horrible horrible Executioner (as in he's a bad "Do-er")

 Aetare wrote:
It always seemed strange to me that he sat back for so long, waiting for the right time. One would think that he would have grown more as a person interacting with his fellow humans more and that mankind would have progressed quicker into a space-faring and even psychic race under his direct guidance.

I've always taken that the emperor has a hard time relating to the average human. since he's an immensely powerful psyker, wading through the tides of all the "normal" humans thoughts would be taxing to him. The fact that he's all things to all people and having to fight the warp at every turn would mean there is a definite disconnect. I think he was playing the long game and looking for the most opportune moment to become the master of mankind or when he thought humanity needed him most. if the DAOT hadn't of ended I could see him staying unknown to everybody . During the DAOT, he thought he could sit back and pull the strings from the shadows, but the men of iron rebelled and he had to shore up his position. Assuming he saw the warp storms beginning to clear, he probably saw an opening during the unification wars to finally play his hand. Taking the sum of his knowledge he began work on the Primarchs & Astartes programs.

Makes sense to a degree. It’s just hard to imagine a disconnect from your own species to that magnitude.

If not already discussed, here is the TL;DR as to why he hates xenos

The big E came to the nihilist conclusion that that only way for there to be peace for humanity, is to make it so that only humanity exists and there is no one to war with them. Which makes sense, his logical basing for this is that A) This brute force method worked pretty good in unifying the human race when he did join or die tactics. B) His choices of xeno races were either stuck up space elves who kinda summoned a chaos god, fish people who want to sterilize you, the rest are not feasible.

It also makes no sense when you consider things like Orks were still around when powers well beyond mankinds power ruled the galaxy and a fair few alien races worked well with humanity. Until the Big E came and butchered them all....

Curios about the point with the Olamic Quietude: they didn't seem that much different to the Mechanicum. Is it just another example of all round bad luck that they weren't recruited? Or maybe one can replace the term "bad luck" with the secret influence of chaos. This does seem to be the case with the Interex since Horus did look like he had earnestly tried to come to amiable terms with them. The Cabal was clear on the idea that the emperor was bad news in the long run and that if Horus won there was a good chance for chaos to be ended. It's like the emperor was just unwittingly playing both sides. Malcador on the other hand was very clearly taking a stance against chaos when he created the grey knights. If the emperor had himself created the grey knights well in advance of chaos turning Horus, his intentions would seem less muddled (or secretly influenced by chaos). At least when it comes to how the emperor handled Magnus, it is clear how chaos played him. So my theory is that the emperor did not originally hate aliens or mutants, but was led to take very strong measures to keep humanity pure unwittingly by his dealings with chaos.

Using the original background of the Emperor as a reincarnation of all the ancient human (proto-human?) shamans:

I would argue that the Emperor never did overcome his original Purpose or programming as a reincarnation of all the old shamans. All his attempts through the ages to try and encourage "harmony" for humanity failed because humanity had developed and advanced beyond the simple paleolithic or neolithic society of the shamans. He was trying to turn back the clock. Humanity was not so easily controlled and the Emperor's attempts at just influencing either did not have enough effect, or grew out of his control into things he did not want.

I see the Great Crusade and the Emperor coming out as a warlord and leader as an act of desperation or impatience. With events and humanity spiralling out of control and humanity spread across the galaxy, things were slipping further and faster beyond the Emperor's grasp and ability to influence on any large scale. The Crusade was one drastic attempt to control all of humanity. However part of the reason for its failure was the fact it was an externally imposed form of political control on the masses, with little change on their internal natures.

In short, the exasperated Emperor had lost patience with trying to slowly enlighten humanity and decided to browbeat humanity into obedience and compliance. That might account for his blindness to the discontent among the Primarchs. Having seemingly met with unmatched success with this new direct method of the Great Crusade after so thousands of years of failure, the Emperor was in a hurry to enact the next step in his plan and thus hurried back to Terra, missing or ignoring the discontent that would ultimately explode into the Heresy. A bit of succumbing to human affection for Horus would have compounded the blindness.

Iracundus wrote:
Using the original background of the Emperor as a reincarnation of all the ancient human (proto-human?) shamans:

I would argue that the Emperor never did overcome his original Purpose or programming as a reincarnation of all the old shamans. All his attempts through the ages to try and encourage "harmony" for humanity failed because humanity had developed and advanced beyond the simple paleolithic or neolithic society of the shamans. He was trying to turn back the clock. Humanity was not so easily controlled and the Emperor's attempts at just influencing either did not have enough effect, or grew out of his control into things he did not want.

I see the Great Crusade and the Emperor coming out as a warlord and leader as an act of desperation or impatience. With events and humanity spiralling out of control and humanity spread across the galaxy, things were slipping further and faster beyond the Emperor's grasp and ability to influence on any large scale. The Crusade was one drastic attempt to control all of humanity. However part of the reason for its failure was the fact it was an externally imposed form of political control on the masses, with little change on their internal natures.

In short, the exasperated Emperor had lost patience with trying to slowly enlighten humanity and decided to browbeat humanity into obedience and compliance. That might account for his blindness to the discontent among the Primarchs. Having seemingly met with unmatched success with this new direct method of the Great Crusade after so thousands of years of failure, the Emperor was in a hurry to enact the next step in his plan and thus hurried back to Terra, missing or ignoring the discontent that would ultimately explode into the Heresy. A bit of succumbing to human affection for Horus would have compounded the blindness.

Cool, but no mention of aliens/xenos? Although you do seem to have some sort of a point. I'm not aware of there being anything quite like the emperor to be found among the other factions. Yes, I know there are super aliens that could beat the emperor in a straight up fight, but there is nothing even similar to him. In theory the Eldar has the tech to do something similar to the whole shaman reincarnation thing. But back on topic, it essentially seem as if the emperor wants to keep humanity pure from aliens and mutations.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Well, to be honest...the Olamic Quietude was more than a little different from normal humans, lol.

But yeah. The main problem is that the Emperor is/was too far from human. Regardless of any good works, he's like the sociopathic android protagonist in a sci-fi movie. Otherwise you'd think he would have done something thousands of years earlier, when humanity wouldn't have needed to scrabble for so much that was lost just to recover.

Help stop the Men of Iron, much?

 Aetare wrote:
It always seemed strange to me that he sat back for so long, waiting for the right time. One would think that he would have grown more as a person interacting with his fellow humans more and that mankind would have progressed quicker into a space-faring and even psychic race under his direct guidance.

These two are the cornerstones of my headcanon theory that all of this 'created in 8000bc by the ritual suicide of early human psykers' is complete and utter fabrication, concocted by the Imperial Faith in the same way that present day religions (and all religions previously) concoct fantastic fables about their own prophets.

Why didn't the Emperor help with the Men of Iron? Why didn't he help during the Age of Strife? Because he wasn't around.

My theory is that the Emperor started his life as a regular old technobarbarian duder near the end of the Age of Strife. A brilliant mind, but still a comparatively regular duder, he conquered the other technobarbarian warlords of Terra in much the same way that Genghis Khan conquered his empire. With regular (comparatively) soldiers and regular tactics. Once he'd conquered Earth, he set about conquering the rest of the solar system (the next available target for his expanding empire). When he'd got close to the end of that, the Eldar finally have one murder-orgy too many and Slaanesh is born, clearing the warp-storms around Terra and the Great Crusade is started.

His rise to demigod-hood begins with the conquering of large numbers of human planets who wind up deifying him. Because of the low-level 'belief makes it true' effect of the warp, this regular duder starts becoming increasingly powerful. Perhaps he notices this. Perhaps he notices that he's starting to think and behave more and more how the fervent masses believe he should behave, and freaks out about losing himself so bans religion. That goes about as well as expected, and the rest is history.

Certainly has fewer logical leaps than the 'Emperor was a god all along' idea.

Oh, and just to bring the rambling back on point, I'm also of the opinion that the Emperor's crusade against xenos was 50/50 lingering bigotry from half-remembered legends of what occurred during the Age of Strife, and half needing a unifying enemy to motivate his armies on their crusade. By painting every xenos species as a terrible threat to humanity's existence, suddenly everyone has an 'other' to unite against. It's quite a common tactic in pretty much every level of political discourse, from the playground right up to the UN.

What I find neat about that is that by pointing his armies at anything xenos, he's probably turned his 'every xenos is a threat' thing into a self-fulfilling prophesy. They only xenos to survive this crusade would have had to be nasty enough to survive Astartes invasion, and would now have a solid gold reason to hate humanity. The rest of the not-nasty xenos would have been casually genocided. Cue galaxy full of ravenous slavering monsters (humanity included)

 Aetare wrote:
It always seemed strange to me that he sat back for so long, waiting for the right time. One would think that he would have grown more as a person interacting with his fellow humans more and that mankind would have progressed quicker into a space-faring and even psychic race under his direct guidance.

You assume that the Emperor would have wanted humanity as a space-faring and psychic race earlier (or at all). The Emperor's purpose, as gestalt of reincarnated shaman souls, (as per the original Realms of Chaos books) was to preserve the previous calm flow of the warp as the shamans had known it. It does not necessarily equate to technological advancement or every individual being able to fling psychic powers around.

As per my earlier post, I see the Emperor as having tried (and failed) to enlighten humanity because humanity had moved past the simple society of the shamans. Humanity's population had grown and society and minds had become more complex. By the time humanity had made it into space and spread across the galaxy, I would argue the Emperor could no longer influence humanity to any great degree anymore from behind the scenes. Humanity had become too far flung and complex for that. That was why he seemed powerless during the Age of Strife. Perhaps he had also gone into seclusion to think about his next step.

I see the Great Crusade as a radical change of strategy after giving up on his old methods. And then its rapid success compared to all those previous millennia of failure leading to a sense of over-confidence, complacency, and impatience.

I suspect that one of the lost primarchs ended up on an Ork world and raised by a Runtherd until the primarch fought his way up the Ork hierarchy until he became Warboss. Big E finds him and after giving the Orky Primarch a proper beat down, the Primarch accepts Big E as his Warboss. Of course as is the Ork way conflict is almost constant so the Orky Primarch was always getting into scraps with his brothers as well as teaching his legion the finer points of "Choppa Diplomacy" and constantly refering to the other Primarchs and their boyz as gitz. Eventually as is with any uppity Nob (or in this case the Orky Primarch) he sought to overthrow his boss (Big E). In turn Big E sent Russ and the Wolves to give them the Emperor's mercy as nothing seemed to get through to the Orky Primarch that he is the Emperor's son and a paragon of humanity and not some zogging Ork wannabe. This shame is why the records of this Primarch where expunged and nobody will speak of the events that transpired. Also of course this lead to a deeper mistrust of xenos and especially the potential corrupting influence on humanity these beings can have.

Iracundus wrote:

As per my earlier post, I see the Emperor as having tried (and failed) to enlighten humanity because humanity had moved past the simple society of the shamans. Humanity's population had grown and society and minds had become more complex. By the time humanity had made it into space and spread across the galaxy, I would argue the Emperor could no longer influence humanity to any great degree anymore from behind the scenes. Humanity had become too far flung and complex for that. That was why he seemed powerless during the Age of Strife. Perhaps he had also gone into seclusion to think about his next step.

I see the Great Crusade as a radical change of strategy after giving up on his old methods. And then its rapid success compared to all those previous millennia of failure leading to a sense of over-confidence, complacency, and impatience.

this seems to be a probable origin. he finally couldn't wait any longer and BAM, you have big e showing up when the tune was right

Yeah, he basically threw up his hands and went, 'Fine, I'm done helping from behind the scenes and seeing humanity fail. This time, I'll force them to be how I want them."

He's still a sociopath, unless you want to argue that he's so far beyond human he falls into 'Hush, you can't begin to fathom the mind of a god' territory. But that's always a cop-out to ignore good character flaws.

It's pretty obvious. The orks believe in a brutally kunning/kunningly brutal galaxy so it's only logical that Emps and his humies are brutally kunning/kunningly brutal.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, he basically threw up his hands and went, 'Fine, I'm done helping from behind the scenes and seeing humanity fail. This time, I'll force them to be how I want them."

He's still a sociopath, unless you want to argue that he's so far beyond human he falls into 'Hush, you can't begin to fathom the mind of a god' territory. But that's always a cop-out to ignore good character flaws.

In the emperor's case though I think it might be a legit argument. the guy by the great crusade era is a man who is over 30 thousand years old (assuming the hints in master of mankind are correct he was easily pre-christ) with psykic abilities including foresight, the guy likely doesn't think on the same level as humanity. The emperor likely thinks so far ahead of everyone else that he likely can do things that are hard to figure out.
Basicly he's proably as alien to a human as the eldar or the Orks

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Yeah, he basically threw up his hands and went, 'Fine, I'm done helping from behind the scenes and seeing humanity fail. This time, I'll force them to be how I want them."

He's still a sociopath, unless you want to argue that he's so far beyond human he falls into 'Hush, you can't begin to fathom the mind of a god' territory. But that's always a cop-out to ignore good character flaws.

The success of the direct approach and the Great Crusade went to his head IMO. "I should have done this millennia ago!". His very success may have led to the overconfidence and blindness when it came to the Primarchs. Perhaps it was also impatience about proceeding to the next stage of his plans. The completion of the conquest of the galaxy was clearly by then an afterthought and mere mopping up operation in his mind.

In the Dark Imperium novel, Guilliman thought that the Emperor had lost whatever subtlety and human facade he might have had before. I think this reinforces the view that the human aspects did not come naturally to the Emperor and were a learned skill or front he presented to the outside world. A skill that he no longer used either because he had forgotten from millennia of disuse or that he had decided to drop intentionally, after perhaps failing prey to human weaknesses like sentimentality or affection for Horus.

No one pointed out simplest explanation? 40K started as parody of between others, this comic book:



Really, if you look at it, this one page is like 50% of 40K lore basis sto... 'borrowed' from just one story.

That poor alien looks like a sweet, stupid sheep. Very 40k.

OP

I think its because the Emperor is like Khaine, he is or has become a being in the warp which is the expression of humanity's consciousness in the warp. So everything he does is in their interest, or at least what he thinks is the Greater Good for their interest. In Master of Mankind I got the impression that he thinks VERY long term and the Imperium was only intended to be a short term measure. Create a brutal militaristic society led by a supreme leader to conquer the galaxy to eventually lead to a better future. A sci fi Prussia/Rome. The Great Crusade was meant to free humanity from xenos rule and unite them. The webway was meant to protect humanity from Chaos. However, Chaos happened and so the Imperium gets stuck as this militaristic machine with anachronistic organizations like the Admech bolted onto it.

However that means the Emperor can only act on behalf of humanity, not Eldar or the other races. So he has no compulsion or reason to integrate or even destroy the xenos. With his entirely human centric nature, he couldn't or would not have the desire to, envisage something like the Federation from Star Trek.

I mean the impression I get is that the Imperium only attacked xenos when they were either a direct threat or ruled over humans. They didn't really go out of their way to, for example, hunt down every Eldar Craftworld unless it interfered with their plans. They went for the Orks at Ullanor because they were attacking human worlds. The Word Bearers ruse was that the Orks were amassing for a Waagh. Plus, a lot of alien races like the megarachnid are put across as monstrous. Theres very few sentient species who the Imperium is shown as able to reason with; they tend to just be monsters who attack them. Whereas when Eldrad wants to talk with Fulgrim they are willing to do that. So I don't think they really waste time wiping out every xenos race in the galaxy. In fact am sure one of the black books refers to them being quarantined or even reduced to vassal status. So I think the ultra xenophobia comes in later with the Ecclesiarchy.

The Imperium attacked any Xenos they found including ones happily allied with humans as equals and they killed the humans too. The Imperium has never been after peace only the death of everything else.

The Emperor definitely isn't after what's best for Humanity either. Too much of his behaviour runs counter to that.

pm713 wrote:
The Emperor definitely isn't after what's best for Humanity either. Too much of his behaviour runs counter to that.

That idea is based on the assumption that people generally think and believe what is in their best long-term interest, which is a very optimistic assumption!

If we're going for the 'the Emperor thinks how humanity believes he should' route, then no wonder he's messed up. How many people do you know who just know what's good for them in the long term and then religiously stick to it? Yoyo diets and climate change wouldn't be a thing if that was a trait humanity as a whole actually possessed (and we're quite well educated compared to your average 40k human).

So yeah, agree with you

pm713 wrote:
The Imperium attacked any Xenos they found including ones happily allied with humans as equals and they killed the humans too. The Imperium has never been after peace only the death of everything else.

The Emperor definitely isn't after what's best for Humanity either. Too much of his behaviour runs counter to that.

In MoM he talks about how he planned to save humanity from chaos by using the webway and killing all psykers. He calls this the Eldars mistake that they had the webway, so were not dependent on the warp but did not make the logical leap and so were destroyed.

That is evil. Its probably very mistaken for a host of reasons, since a recurring them of the Horus Heresy is that the Imperium arrogantly assumes it won't make the same mistakes the Eldar did and get wrecked by Chaos. But, he is motivated by a compulsion to free humanity from Chaos. He comes across as an extremely logical, utilitarian, almost soulless "machine man with a machine mind". Whose vision of the future and perception of time is so otherworldly and ethereal that he does not think in terms of individual lives being significant; only the "future of the human race".

For example, its increasingly being inferred or stated that Horus fear that the Emperor would get rid of them after the Great Crusade and that he didn't care about them was entirely correct. The Emperor only wanted the marines as a tool to solve a problem to further humanities development. Which fits with the idea that his lack of compassion and trust is a major reason why Horus is corrupted to Chaos.

Its a bit like saying Stalin had the interests of the Soviet Union in mind with his decisions. Its not incorrect. The problem was that they were the wrong decisions and very few Soviets were okay with them. I don't think Stalins behavior makes sense unless he believed he was creating a socialist society and protecting it from outside threats. Its an end justifies the means thing.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

For example, its increasingly being inferred or stated that Horus fear that the Emperor would get rid of them after the Great Crusade and that he didn't care about them was entirely correct. The Emperor only wanted the marines as a tool to solve a problem to further humanities development. Which fits with the idea that his lack of compassion and trust is a major reason why Horus is corrupted to Chaos.

The books did not do a good job really showing this fear of Horus or about the fundamental conflict of civilian control of the Imperium vs. the warlordism of the Primarchs and their Legions. Although Horus and his followers might have feared being discarded, the daemon worlds in the Eye of Terror demonstrate the endpoint if they had had their way: Marines as a ruling class with the rest of normal humanity being oppressed slave class.

Returning to the topic of the Emperor, we can see from the Codex Custodes that the situation was similar to the Thunder Warriors being discarded at the end of the reunification of Terra. The Emperor was already then looking to his next project. The same thing occurred when the Emperor returned to Terra instead of seeing the Great Crusade through to its completion first.

In Dark Imperium, Guilliman thought that the Emperor loved the ideal of Mankind, but no individuals. Of course that is how the Emperor can behave like a complete sociopath, because everyone to him is a tool to be used and discarded. Since only he gets to decide what this abstract concept of Mankind's interests and welfare consists of, his own interests essentially are conflated and made synonymous with "Mankind's interests".

Virtually every tyrant in history has thought they were morally good, making the difficult choices for their subjects, and sacrificing some for the sake of others. However whereas human tyrants have still generally had family or other ties of some form to other humans, the Emperor is inhuman in his perceptions and his isolation from general humanity and human ties.

Iracundus wrote:

Virtually every tyrant in history has thought they were morally good, making the difficult choices for their subjects, and sacrificing some for the sake of others.

I kinda doubt that. Most of them probably did some mental gymnastics to justify their actions, but they knew it wasn't moral or good, just necessary to stay in the seat of power. Remember, once you're in the driver's seat, your options are to keep power or get killed, and at that point most tyrants are willing to do anything to survive.

The Emperor at least has an actual purpose he was literally made to do - defend humanity from warp predators. Most of what he does can be seen to flow from that purpose, and Space Marines are definitely just a tool towards that end. Lots of xenos are psykers that would enslave or corrupt humanity, which makes them just as bad as warp predators, so it's no wonder the Emperor views them similarly.

 John Prins wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

Virtually every tyrant in history has thought they were morally good, making the difficult choices for their subjects, and sacrificing some for the sake of others.

I kinda doubt that. Most of them probably did some mental gymnastics to justify their actions, but they knew it wasn't moral or good, just necessary to stay in the seat of power. Remember, once you're in the driver's seat, your options are to keep power or get killed, and at that point most tyrants are willing to do anything to survive.

The Emperor at least has an actual purpose he was literally made to do - defend humanity from warp predators. Most of what he does can be seen to flow from that purpose, and Space Marines are definitely just a tool towards that end. Lots of xenos are psykers that would enslave or corrupt humanity, which makes them just as bad as warp predators, so it's no wonder the Emperor views them similarly.

The only mental gymnastics required for a tyrant to view their actions as moral is to equate 'necessary' with 'good'.

Hardly a fantastic stretch of imagination, given that it's already a significant part of most people's moral compass anyway.