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 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Andykp wrote:
Not a big reader of Horus heresy books. I’ve always quite like the mysteries and contradictions and don’t want too much explained but you could answer this as it seems you lot know a lot more about this eras canon than I do. Is it possible that some of the empowered anti worship and anti religious stance was because he knew the real tangible gods were the chaos ones and was trying to stop inadvertent chaos worship? Just an idea that came to me while reading this thread. Could be absolute rubbish. I always believed he was against being a god himself and would be unhappy with the way he is seen now but has no basis in any text I know of.

That is exactly why the Emperor tried to eradicate religion. He thought if he would eradicate religion to a sufficient extent that the Chaos Gods would be weakened beyond recovery. The Chaos Gods actually present themselves as victims to Horus iirc because of the Emperor trying to usurp their power and eliminate them, to achieve godhood. I think one of the visions shown is that in the future the Emperor has a huge personality cult and the Chaos Gods use it to argue that Horus is going to be abandoned by the Emperor and that Empy is a hypocrit. Of course this actually happens but only because of Horus kinda killing him.

As demonstrated, him wanting to actually be a god or not is debatable, the HH series seems to contradict it so far at least.

Cheers for the reply. That’s cool thanks. Makes sense. I heard that the emp told guiliman in his little chat that the marines weren’t sons but were tools to serve humanity, (don’t know iff that’s true or not). I liked that as it turns a lot of marine ethos on its head, not all though. And if true kind of proves the chais gods right.

Well he certainly sees marines as tools and thought regular humans were meant to rule and lead the Imperium. As for the Primarchs, his attitudes shift between parts, sometimes he seems to see them as only tools and at other times (like during the final showdown with Horus) he genuinely seems to care about at least some of them. Although that might get changed if the HH gravy train actually has a final book in the next decade or two..

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Sybolism doesn't mean destroying an incredibly promising opportunity to pave the way to godhood. What the WB were doing was effective without much blow back. They were converting loyal populations. The Emperor censored them because he only cared about speed, hence his use of the Ultramarines to cast down their works. The Word Bearers were amazing at it, they converted whole worlds that were very loyal to the Emperor and the Imperium. After Empy censored the WB they highly effectively converted the other worlds they conquered to Chaos worship as well as spreading it to other legions. Again, he didn't have to impose it on other Primarchs, he could have just let the WB work and slowly convert the population. He actively undermined said peaceful efforts and destroyed a world of his faithful, what does that show to your future worshippers?

And again, plenty of worlds saw the Emperor as a tyrant violently bringing them into compliance and casting down their religions. Imposing his worship on them wouldn't have exactly made it any worse, he could have just indocrinated the populations if he really wanted (which he technically already did with his opposition against religion seeing as in 40K gods are real).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

pm713 wrote:
Why the focus on mind controlling planets? All you need is to mind control the knowledgeable people and tell them to write their knowledge down.
As for not knowing about Chaos marines that's very easy to explain. He didn't check. The Emperor doesn't check things. That's why he has dumb plans like the Webway project and galactic genocide.

Because you started off talking about the Emperor killing of the Cult of Mars, in which the whole planet is indoctrinated. You were talking about the Emperor just casually mind controlling all the tech priests on Mars. To kill off that belief you would have to be able to control everyone spreading/active in that faith to stop it from spreading to the next generation. And again, we have no idea if mind control which is akin to puppeting can make you force people to write down knowledge, that seemingly isn't how it works, you control their bodies, not their minds.

Also those plans aren't dumb, he has very sound reasoning in universe for both, the webway for reliable troop transportation and the genocide because he believed that as the long night showed it was either the aliens or humans. He had no interest in the surivival or Eldar or any other race.

No he didn't the Emperor censured them because they were not conquering worlds fast enough but mostly because they spent all their time making their planets, planets of worship. I've already gave an example of why 'letting the word bearers carry on' wouldn't be beneficial if he wanted to become a God. It would have to be mandated that the Imperium was a religious crusade, which would involve tonnes of blow-back. The WB were able to do it probably because Lorgar had genuine faith, he wasn't dictating that become religious, but if the Imperium sought to be a religious crusade the galaxy would see the Imperium as dictating their religion on everyone else, a religion they know nothing about. If the Emperor took over the galaxy and then started to work on influencing the worlds it would take longer than the faith being spread naturally, plus if it was being spread naturally its better in every way than forcing a religion on the populations which evidently will have a whole host of problems, and the fact is that it did spread naturally so its possible that he could have engineered it to some degree, or taken it as the opportunity came and used the faith for his own ends its not impossible for him to have foreseen that..

Slipspace wrote:
IIRC, there are quite a few hints, most obviously in The Last Church, that the Emperor has two problems with religion. Firstly, and most obviously, it's often just Chaos worship in disguise. More subtly, though, there seem to be suggestions that he Emperor doesn't understand religion on a fundamental level - not in the sense that an atheist might just decide they don't believe in a higher power but in a much more basic way. The Emperor has never had to answer certain fundamental questions about life and the universe because his intellect allows him to know the answers. He doesn't have to grapple with concepts like where humans fit into the universe, which are often the sort of things that spark religions into life. It's a bit like a 2-dimensional creature having no way of truly understanding a 3-dimensional world.

So I don't think he was trying to be a god, I just don't think he was properly equipped to steer humanity away from religion so ended up doing a bunch of things that were possibly counter-productive. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have understood why people worshipped him either.

This right here, 100%. The emperor doesn't even view the chaos gods as gods... he views them just as extremely powerful daemons... because to someone of his power they really aren't gods, but more like equals. The emperor does not consider himself a god, but he is so far removed from the human condition that he has trouble understanding things that mere mortals take for granted... like a son's need to be loved by his father, and a human's need to find a purpose by serving a higher power then himself, whatever that higher power may be.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
It isn't a 100% fact that it is a C'tan shard.

It is outright stated in one of the necron codices that it is. Not just a shard either, the WHOLE unshattered C'Tan.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

No he didn't the Emperor censured them because they were not conquering worlds fast enough but mostly because they spent all their time making their planets, planets of worship. I've already gave an example of why 'letting the word bearers carry on' wouldn't be beneficial if he wanted to become a God. It would have to be mandated that the Imperium was a religious crusade, which would involve tonnes of blow-back. The WB were able to do it probably because Lorgar had genuine faith, he wasn't dictating that become religious, but if the Imperium sought to be a religious crusade the galaxy would see the Imperium as dictating their religion on everyone else, a religion they know nothing about. If the Emperor took over the galaxy and then started to work on influencing the worlds it would take longer than the faith being spread naturally, plus if it was being spread naturally its better in every way than forcing a religion on the populations which evidently will have a whole host of problems, and the fact is that it did spread naturally so its possible that he could have engineered it to some degree, or taken it as the opportunity came and used the faith for his own ends its not impossible for him to have foreseen that..

Their speed was an important part of their censorship. The Emperor believing they were wasting too much time in spreading faith in him. Its why he used one of the most succesful legions in that aspect, the Ultramarines, to punish them. Afterwards its noted that the Emperor is satisfied with the increased rate with which the WB conquer worlds, of course not knowing that they are also seeding them with Chaos cults.

But letting the WB do their thing wouldn't have made it a religious crusade. The blowback argument makes no sense in that regard because the Emperor also had an army of psychotic serial murderers running around in the form of the Night Lords committing unspeakable atrocities on people. The Emperor was never a friendly guy, he waged horrible wars and more than once compliance had to be reinstated at the business end of a bolter. The Emperor could mandate what the rest of the Imperium would have heard about the WB progress as most expeditionary fleets were very independent. They were spreading it naturally through their conviction and the work of Lorgar provided the foundation on which the later religion was build. So cracking down so harshly on Lorgar and those converted is incredibly counterintuitive to the long term converting idea. Were already talking about a gap of 50 years I believe between the censorship and the HH, the GC stretched across at least 2-3 human generations, what the WB were doing wasn't exactly at breackneck speed threatening stability, seeing as the fluff tried to paint WB planets brought into compliance were amongst the most loyal.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

No he didn't the Emperor censured them because they were not conquering worlds fast enough but mostly because they spent all their time making their planets, planets of worship. I've already gave an example of why 'letting the word bearers carry on' wouldn't be beneficial if he wanted to become a God. It would have to be mandated that the Imperium was a religious crusade, which would involve tonnes of blow-back. The WB were able to do it probably because Lorgar had genuine faith, he wasn't dictating that become religious, but if the Imperium sought to be a religious crusade the galaxy would see the Imperium as dictating their religion on everyone else, a religion they know nothing about. If the Emperor took over the galaxy and then started to work on influencing the worlds it would take longer than the faith being spread naturally, plus if it was being spread naturally its better in every way than forcing a religion on the populations which evidently will have a whole host of problems, and the fact is that it did spread naturally so its possible that he could have engineered it to some degree, or taken it as the opportunity came and used the faith for his own ends its not impossible for him to have foreseen that..

Their speed was an important part of their censorship. The Emperor believing they were wasting too much time in spreading faith in him. Its why he used one of the most succesful legions in that aspect, the Ultramarines, to punish them. Afterwards its noted that the Emperor is satisfied with the increased rate with which the WB conquer worlds, of course not knowing that they are also seeding them with Chaos cults.

But letting the WB do their thing wouldn't have made it a religious crusade. The blowback argument makes no sense in that regard because the Emperor also had an army of psychotic serial murderers running around in the form of the Night Lords committing unspeakable atrocities on people. The Emperor was never a friendly guy, he waged horrible wars and more than once compliance had to be reinstated at the business end of a bolter. The Emperor could mandate what the rest of the Imperium would have heard about the WB progress as most expeditionary fleets were very independent. They were spreading it naturally through their conviction and the work of Lorgar provided the foundation on which the later religion was build. So cracking down so harshly on Lorgar and those converted is incredibly counterintuitive to the long term converting idea. Were already talking about a gap of 50 years I believe between the censorship and the HH, the GC stretched across at least 2-3 human generations, what the WB were doing wasn't exactly at breackneck speed threatening stability, seeing as the fluff tried to paint WB planets brought into compliance were amongst the most loyal.

If it was left to the Word bearers it would take 100,000 of years to do what they did on the handful of worlds they converted, their are a million worlds in the Imperium, do the math. Blow back couldn't just be ended by the Night Lords, it would happen everywhere it would take longer than the great crusade it would be a constant religious civil war. If he let it happen naturally he wouldn't have to deal with blowback AT ALL, and it would happen quicker than any militarily forced indoctrination.

Seeing as we have no numbers, we don't know. But that isn't the point, the point was that the WB were spreading faith without your blow back theory, so why did he censor them over it, it clearly was done freely.

And I'm not taking about the blow back being stopped by the Night Lords. I'm saying the Emperor couldn't care less about blow back hence him employing a legion of walking atrocities. How do you think that was perceived?

I’m pretty sure the fluff about the Emperor being the supreme atheist is new, and probably reflects modern UK attitudes towards religion in the same way that the daemonette models were re-done to reflect modern attitudes towards sexuality.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I’m pretty sure the fluff about the Emperor being the supreme atheist is new, and probably reflects modern UK attitudes towards religion in the same way that the daemonette models were re-done to reflect modern attitudes towards sexuality.

Its been around since at least 4th edition, so before the daemonette overhaul. I think that makes it qualify as old.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seeing as we have no numbers, we don't know. But that isn't the point, the point was that the WB were spreading faith without your blow back theory, so why did he censor them over it, it clearly was done freely.

And I'm not taking about the blow back being stopped by the Night Lords. I'm saying the Emperor couldn't care less about blow back hence him employing a legion of walking atrocities. How do you think that was perceived?

You keep ignoring points that I've already made. The Emperor did care about blowback, that's why he made the Primarchs make worlds compliant, the Primarchs couldn't move on to other worlds until the worlds were made compliant. Worlds that couldn't be compliant were destroyed and re-populated, with people that all ready had the Imperial truth, he'd have to repopulate practically every world if he came imposing his religion on them and worlds that were already secular. You keep missing the point, he didn't need to do anything if he let the religion spread naturally, why risk forcing that religion on people, which would cause a whole host of serious problems.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seeing as we have no numbers, we don't know. But that isn't the point, the point was that the WB were spreading faith without your blow back theory, so why did he censor them over it, it clearly was done freely.

And I'm not taking about the blow back being stopped by the Night Lords. I'm saying the Emperor couldn't care less about blow back hence him employing a legion of walking atrocities. How do you think that was perceived?

You keep ignoring points that I've already made. The Emperor did care about blowback, that's why he made the Primarchs make worlds compliant, the Primarchs couldn't move on to other worlds until the worlds were made compliant. Worlds that couldn't be compliant were destroyed and re-populated, with people that all ready had the Imperial truth, he'd have to repopulate practically every world if he came imposing his religion on them and worlds that were already secular. You keep missing the point, he didn't need to do anything if he let the religion spread naturally, why risk forcing that religion on people, which would cause a whole host of serious problems.

And my point was that what the WB did bring worlds into compliance while it would have also done so in a manner of working towards his long term godhood goal you think he holds. Instead, without any blow back from the actions of the WB up to that point, he humiliates them to the bone and destroys their achievements, while crushing a world of the willingly faithful. That's the whole point! The WB plan worked very well and aligned with your theory on the Emperor's end goal and he shat all over it. Why?

You keep missing the point, there was no blow back to the converting done by the WB on their planets, they didn't force it on anyone. So why did the Emperor crush them? It makes no sense in your overall theory. He could have just let it happen and nothing would have come of it. Instead he created the instrument of his downfall. Pretty short sighted for a man with a long term plan.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Seeing as we have no numbers, we don't know. But that isn't the point, the point was that the WB were spreading faith without your blow back theory, so why did he censor them over it, it clearly was done freely.

And I'm not taking about the blow back being stopped by the Night Lords. I'm saying the Emperor couldn't care less about blow back hence him employing a legion of walking atrocities. How do you think that was perceived?

You keep ignoring points that I've already made. The Emperor did care about blowback, that's why he made the Primarchs make worlds compliant, the Primarchs couldn't move on to other worlds until the worlds were made compliant. Worlds that couldn't be compliant were destroyed and re-populated, with people that all ready had the Imperial truth, he'd have to repopulate practically every world if he came imposing his religion on them and worlds that were already secular. You keep missing the point, he didn't need to do anything if he let the religion spread naturally, why risk forcing that religion on people, which would cause a whole host of serious problems.

And my point was that what the WB did bring worlds into compliance while it would have also done so in a manner of working towards his long term godhood goal you think he holds. Instead, without any blow back from the actions of the WB up to that point, he humiliates them to the bone and destroys their achievements, while crushing a world of the willingly faithful. That's the whole point! The WB plan worked very well and aligned with your theory on the Emperor's end goal and he shat all over it. Why?

You keep missing the point, there was no blow back to the converting done by the WB on their planets, they didn't force it on anyone. So why did the Emperor crush them? It makes no sense in your overall theory. He could have just let it happen and nothing would have come of it. Instead he created the instrument of his downfall. Pretty short sighted for a man with a long term plan.

No you keep forgetting that I've rebuked the points you've already make, I've addressed why the WB couldn't do what they did on the scale of the whole Imperium it would take them thousands of years, I've explained why the Emperor would have censored them if he wanted to be a god and I've explained why there was no blowback from the WB's This is just going in circles, you keep repeating the same things, you have terrible reading comprehension I'm out.

You keep forgetting that wasn't my main point. I never argued that he should have used the WB, I said he could have. I'm arguing that there was no need to punish the WB that harshly if he had your long term plan. Ironic about the reading comprehension really.

My main point throughtout this thread tl;dr If your theory is correct, how does his treatment of the WB not heavily contradict that.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
You keep forgetting that wasn't my main point. I never argued that he should have used the WB, I said he could have. I'm arguing that there was no need to punish the WB that harshly if he had your long term plan. Ironic about the reading comprehension really.

My main point throughtout this thread tl;dr If your theory is correct, how does his treatment of the WB not heavily contradict that.

It doesn't.

Except for the part where the Emperor directly undermines the foundation upon which the later worship of him is build by doing that to the WB. Lorgar literally wrote the foundational text for the Emperor's godhood and the Emperor crushed him for it, directly setting in motion to eventd that would lead to his physical death. How is that a long term plan? If he really planned on becoming a god later on nothing Lorgar did threatened that.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I’m pretty sure the fluff about the Emperor being the supreme atheist is new, and probably reflects modern UK attitudes towards religion in the same way that the daemonette models were re-done to reflect modern attitudes towards sexuality.

No, it was obviously meant to be some tragic irony, that the man who wanted to end humanity's worship of gods became the supreme god worshipped by humanity. What a twist!

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Except for the part where the Emperor directly undermines the foundation upon which the later worship of him is build by doing that to the WB. Lorgar literally wrote the foundational text for the Emperor's godhood and the Emperor crushed him for it, directly setting in motion to eventd that would lead to his physical death. How is that a long term plan? If he really planned on becoming a god later on nothing Lorgar did threatened that.

I said I'm done, its far to irritating trying to argue with you.

 greyknight12 wrote:
I’m pretty sure the fluff about the Emperor being the supreme atheist is new, and probably reflects modern UK attitudes towards religion in the same way that the daemonette models were re-done to reflect modern attitudes towards sexuality.

Honestly, I don't get this. I used to work at a game store and parents are perfectly fine with buying their children graphically violent games where people get decapitated, shot, tortured, etc... but at soon as there is any kind of nudity (even mild nudity) it's unacceptable. Like seeing a boob is somehow worse then seeing someone get stabbed to death. I feel like we have regressed as a society on the topic of sexuality.

w1zard wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:
I’m pretty sure the fluff about the Emperor being the supreme atheist is new, and probably reflects modern UK attitudes towards religion in the same way that the daemonette models were re-done to reflect modern attitudes towards sexuality.

Honestly, I don't get this. I used to work at a game store and parents are perfectly fine with buying their children graphically violent games where people get decapitated, shot, tortured, etc... but at soon as there is any kind of nudity (even mild nudity) it's unacceptable. Like seeing a boob is somehow worse then seeing someone get stabbed to death. I feel like we have regressed as a society on the topic of sexuality.

True, I don't think you can honestly argue that if the deamonettes were redesigned over their sexuality it was because of modern attitudes, it being much more about US attitudes.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

True, I don't think you can honestly argue that if the deamonettes were redesigned over their sexuality it was because of modern attitudes, it being much more about US attitudes.

The US didn't used to be this way. The 60s and 70s were fine... according to my dad it wasn't until the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that we started to get prudish again.

w1zard wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

True, I don't think you can honestly argue that if the deamonettes were redesigned over their sexuality it was because of modern attitudes, it being much more about US attitudes.

The US didn't used to be this way. The 60s and 70s were fine... according to my dad it wasn't until the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s that we started to get prudish again.

Curiously here it was exactly the other way around, most of society being far more prudish before quickly shedding it. Still though, Warhammer still has some nipple monsters, but I guess its less suggestive than the deamonettes.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

Curiously here it was exactly the other way around, most of society being far more prudish before quickly shedding it. Still though, Warhammer still has some nipple monsters, but I guess its less suggestive than the deamonettes.

It's a shame, I really liked those old daemonettes. I am a firm believer that an appropriately modeled and painted slaanesh/EC army should get you kicked out of stores in the US.

My take on this is:

Poppa E wanted to eradicate religion in humanity, thus weakening the chaos god's to the extent they could be killed, so any inkling of worship and religion was stamped out as it would always lead to worship of the chaos god's due to human nature (thirst for power, knowledge, etc). After he had conquered the galaxy he would martyr himself, in doing so killing the chaos god's. He would then ascend to godhood and receive worship of him, rather than actually the chaos god's. (Worship, sacrifice, any form of praise to a higher power empowers the chaos god's.) This would lean mankind to absolute enlightenment and acceptance and development of psychic ability could be introduced without danger of corruption. Mankind would be so 'blindly' religious to the emperor that all power lent in their worship went into him, utterly sniffing out other deities. Magnus would sit on the golden throne, sang would rule the galaxy and the other primarchs would fill their roles ( Horus warmaster, Russ executioner, lorgar master of the faith etc)


They way he went about this I disagree with though. I think he was too cold to the primarchs, resulting in many of the key figures in the new age he planned resort to heresy.

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
My take on this is:

Poppa E wanted to eradicate religion in humanity, thus weakening the chaos god's to the extent they could be killed, so any inkling of worship and religion was stamped out as it would always lead to worship of the chaos god's due to human nature (thirst for power, knowledge, etc). After he had conquered the galaxy he would martyr himself, in doing so killing the chaos god's. He would then ascend to godhood and receive worship of him, rather than actually the chaos god's. (Worship, sacrifice, any form of praise to a higher power empowers the chaos god's.) This would lean mankind to absolute enlightenment and acceptance and development of psychic ability could be introduced without danger of corruption. Mankind would be so 'blindly' religious to the emperor that all power lent in their worship went into him, utterly sniffing out other deities. Magnus would sit on the golden throne, sang would rule the galaxy and the other primarchs would fill their roles ( Horus warmaster, Russ executioner, lorgar master of the faith etc)


They way he went about this I disagree with though. I think he was too cold to the primarchs, resulting in many of the key figures in the new age he planned resort to heresy.

I don't think that had anything to do with them turning, when Erebus got his talons in Horus trying to make him turn Horus couldn't say enough good things about the Emperor, many other did also. The Gods tested all the Primarchs and some were left wanting. I think it had to do with wanting power and freedom. Most of the loyal Primarchs were happy with their station in life. Girlyman only cared about Ultramar, Russ only cared about Fenris and serving the Emperor, Sanguinius knew his fate so he didn't care about power etc. Its a coincidence that 9 turned and 9 stayed loyal, Chaos sent the Primarchs into the galaxy from Luna so that they'd be away from the Emperors guidance, they were destined to turn. Look at Angron, it didn't take anything for him to turn, all he needed was to be pointed towards and enemy, same with Cruze to say he could be anything but the petty sadistic killer he was is insane.

Pretty sure Angron turned because everyone he loved was killed by an apathetic douche and he only wasn't in agony when killing.

I don't see how Mortarion, Fulgrim, Horus were destined to turn. Honestly I'd argue if you put any Traitor Primarch on a less atrocious world they'd be fine. Except Fulgrim who just needed keeping away from demon swords.

pm713 wrote:
Pretty sure Angron turned because everyone he loved was killed by an apathetic douche and he only wasn't in agony when killing.

I don't see how Mortarion, Fulgrim, Horus were destined to turn. Honestly I'd argue if you put any Traitor Primarch on a less atrocious world they'd be fine. Except Fulgrim who just needed keeping away from demon swords.

The only reason that he joined the great crusade was because Kharn said he'd be able to fight across the galaxy. He turned because they'd be more carnage with Horus, it made it easy that he hated the Emperor, even before he turned all he cared about was fighting.

I find the thread on the Emperor's 'mind control' powers interesting, and possibly worth pursuing further.

The Emperor might be of overwhelming psychic power; but he still has to largely obey the laws of the materium when it comes to how psychic power is applied. So we should theoretically be able to gauge the difficulty of what he would have to do, the limitations and the consequences by examining how it works for other high level psykers.

When we read the Ravenor books, we can see how a Delta level psyker works. He's capable of invading the mind of a normal person and puppeting them; but they can fight back. He can try to extract knowledge from them, but the more schooled they are in resistance (Cognitae training, etc) and the stronger willed that they are; the harder it is to get what you want out of them. It essentially turns into a battle of wills, and whilst the psyker has an edge (being psychically attacked is exhausting), success is not guaranteed.

It's certainly a long way from being able to simply rip all the knowledge you need from someone.

Even if you can acquire the information you need, you need to be able to absorb it yourself, and then impart it in a coherent manner to others. For a technpriest at the top of his game, the Emperor would in effect have to learn every little piece of binaric cant and technical detail/experience/training.

Furthermore, even in the puppeteering aspect, the host has jerkier movements and other giveaways. A possessor is simply never quite as at home in somebody else's body as the owner is. An interesting additional facet that we have seen when Daemons start possessing others is that the more they try and draw on the knowledge of the host, the more the possessed is able to come to the fore (see the Night Lords Captain in the NL trilogy).

It could be argued that Ravenor and daemons are too low level; but we get a glimpse of the next level up with the likes of Esarhaddon. He's Alpha level and capable of just throwing his mind out like a lassoo to capture others and puppeteer them directly on a scale of thousands at a time. But even then, he was limited to an extent in this by geographic proximity and was directly controlling the bodies, rather than the minds. Varan the Undefeatable was able to co-opt even the most hardened of opponents into willingly serving him through psychic domination; but again, he required them to be within psychic reach. He couldn't just reach out and subjugate an entire planet. His way of domination was more subtle than Esarhaddon's; because he insinuated himself psychically rather than simply blasting the gates down with pure psychic strength.

Probably the most notable in terms of psychic domination would be Teturact from the Soul Drinkers novels. He apparently dominated worlds, and drew much of his strength from the belief and subsuming of others souls. But even he couldn't just automatically co-opt the Soul Drinkers, I believe.

In short, good old Empy could probably do anything he liked to a tech-priest in front of him. If he was in orbit over Mars, he could likely puppeteer a good section of the planet directly. But in terms of actually trying to rip the information from their minds, he'd likely need to be within a certain geographic distance of any individual to try and perform such a feat; with additional distance and other complications increasing the difficulty. That's without even taking into account psy-damping technology and the like.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Pretty sure Angron turned because everyone he loved was killed by an apathetic douche and he only wasn't in agony when killing.

I don't see how Mortarion, Fulgrim, Horus were destined to turn. Honestly I'd argue if you put any Traitor Primarch on a less atrocious world they'd be fine. Except Fulgrim who just needed keeping away from demon swords.

The only reason that he joined the great crusade was because Kharn said he'd be able to fight across the galaxy. He turned because they'd be more carnage with Horus, it made it easy that he hated the Emperor, even before he turned all he cared about was fighting.

Which I think you can chalk up to the Nails.

Possibly tangential, but seemingly salient thoughts:

Talking about the religion of Mars without talking about the specifics of the religion of Mars is probably an error. Mars didn't worship some random Sun god or something. They worshipped knowledge, and viewed the Omnissiah as the person who possessed the sum total of knowledge (as an obvious reference to a Messiah). It's even made clear in Mechanicum that not all Martians believe the Omnissiah is an ACTUAL person, as much as a concept (and not all Martians who believe in the Omnissiah believed that it was the Emperor).

Worshipping a concept like knowledge (even if it might be incarnated in a particular person) is very different than most religions. Revering 'provable facts' is an odd sort of 'faith'. It may be that the Emperor believed that, once his personal project was completed, that the Martian 'priesthood' would be in possession of substantially greater knowledge about the universe, and less inclined to view it through any spiritual lens. So it may have been a sort of 'fact-based' faith that he viewed as compatible with his goals.



In Master of Mankind (I believe), it seems fairly well established that the Emperor understands that the increasing psychic 'resonance' of humanity is the greatest threat to our survival as a species, and the psychic resonance is shaped (not powered by) faith in unpredictable ways. However, the current state (before the Horus Heresy) of Mankind requires the use of psychics for stellar travel and navigation, so there is no way to reduce mankind's psychic potential without fatally undermining our position as a species.

Thus, his great project was to discover, explore, understand, and take control of the web way, the massive subspace network utilized but not created by the Eldar (still created by the Old Ones I think). Once this project was complete, Mankind would have no irreplaceable need for psychics (as we could travel and navigate the universe through the web way) and the Emperor could take steps to reduce and eliminate our psychic presence, which would irrevocably weaken Chaos and protect humanity.

It's unclear what he would have done about his OWN psychic potential, but I don't see any concrete suggestion that he wished to become a god himself. The war on faith, to me, seems to have multiple aspects. First, he views faith as something that is fundamentally destructive to humanity, as mentioned in The Last Church. Second, I think he views it as an incorrect understanding of the universe (he's not a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Taoist or whatever, so he obviously doesn't himself think any particular religion is correct). Third, he views it as potentially tied to Chaos, in that you may have a faith which is just an incorrect set of beliefs, or you may end up worshipping a chaos entity that is materially empowered by your worship. So there's multiple reasons for him to suppress it, none of which require him to be surreptitiously supporting faith.

Then, separate from faith, but not completely independent, is the knowledge of Chaos. Just the knowledge that psychic activity can empower, release, and entreat with Chaos entities like daemons means that unscrupulous/desperate/deluded individuals will do so. He may have judged that it would be easier to clamp down on psychic interaction with Chaos by scrupulously denying that information to Humanity rather than by informing them all about it and sternly forbidding any use for that purpose. It's almost like Dad telling the kids to keep out of the workshop, rather than explaining to them what every tool does and how to operate them safely, especially if Dad was planning on selling off his tools anyway.

Personally, think the Emperor is a sneaky SOB who is capable of making contingency plans in his machinations. Not Tzeetchian levels of plotting, but still much better than the average human or even chaos daemon.

His primary plan was the webway. There was no space in the webway plan for religion, that was too easily subverted by Chaos . He worked to stamp it out, and that included slapping down he Word Bearers.

His backup plan seems to have been godhood.He gave Logar the time needed to set the Cult of the Empreror in motion before trying to bring him into line with the Imperial Creed. Unfortunately, this all went awry when he lost fir Logar and the World Bearers, then Horus and the other traitor legions to Chaos. He won the Heresy, but a a cost probably higher than her foresaw.

Still he has either acheived or nearly achieved godhood. The power of the new Imperial Creed is undeniable with the power of the faith of the Sisters of Battle, Celestine and the Living Saints, long with the spectral Legions of the Damned all pointing towards the his ascention.