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Now, I'm going only off of what I have read on the Horus Heresy novels/audio dramas in summaries, but what was to happen to the Emperor after he had accomplished his Great Crusade? He created the Thunder Warriors, but purposefully left their genetics to cause them to die at a certain stage. Enter the Primarchs and Space Marines, which would be the galaxy's new finest warriors, but it was stated that Malacador that 'mankind' would inherit the Imperium, as stated in the audio drama First Lord of the Imperium that "the Imperium is not for the post-humans, but for mankind. Malcador said that the likes of the Primarchs and their respective Legions were to be eliminated through infighting, but where does that leave the Emperor? What was he to do and go after the Great Crusade? He is one of these "post-humans", being a perpetual with astonishing physical and psychic powers, so does he leave the rule of the Imperium to mankind or still rule over it?

the emperor apparently thought one day mankind wouldn't need him anymore he'd be able to basicly retire and go back to living quietly in the shadows. Malcador thought they'd ALWAYS need him

Personally I think the Emperor was the kind of person who'd always see that "one more thing" that people needed help with so he'd be in charge forever always claiming it would be until he wasn't needed. The only thing that would change that is someone pulling a Horus and stabbing him while Chaos buffed.

The Emperor had a really involved plan but by the time of the crusade he was haphazardly making it up as he went along. I think I can guess what his plan for the primarchs and the Imperium was but the plan he’d be working on for a long time didn’t involve making space marines.

"The Emperor had lost the Primarchs and the first action of his renewed war against the Chaos Powers. The Primarchs could not be recreated and even if this were possible there was not time to do it. The birth pangs of Slaanesh grew louder and louder as the time of his waking grew near. The Emperor evolved another plan. Using genetic material which had been imprinted from the Primarchs into laboratory gholems, some of their qualities could be reproduced as discrete biological organs. By implanting these organs into a young growing body a person with some of the qualities of the Primarchs could be created..."

This is according to be background that I know that’s older and doesn’t have much from the HH series or black legion series.


I think his plan was to make the Primarchs into innovators and cultural figures that could lead in different areas of society, eg medicine, engineering, rural communities, spiritual/cultural practices, literature etc. there are some quotes that lead me to think that.

That gels with some other theories that the Emperor had a grand master plan but he knew he was on a tight schedule to start due to the lifting of the Warp storms due to slaaneshs birth. So becuase nterference of the Gods scattering the Primarchs, a large part of his early plans had to be scrapped and he had to start improvising due to the time crunch. I imagine if 5he Great Crusade didn’t get moving fast enough, he was worried some other Alien empire might grow too powerful to quickly and by the time the nascent Imperium encounter them it would be too late to become the dominant species in the Milky Way.

I am just going to leave this here

In a statement Malcador later made to the magister and astropath Sibel Niasta, a dying servant and friend, which he stated was a lie to comfort humanity, he claimed that he and the Emperor had intended to agitate the Primarchs and ultimately turn them against one another. The resulting conflict between them was intended to purge those Primarchs and Astartes who were not worthy of elading humanity once the Great Crusade's objectives had been completed. Their goal, Malcador claimed, was to eliminate the Space Marine Legions just as they had the earlier Thunder Warriors. The result would be that in the wake of the Great Crusade, only mortal humans, not genetically-engineered superhumans would be the true inheritors of the galaxy. But the Chaos Gods intervened to corrupt half of the Primarchs before the plan could come to fruition, leading to the Horus Heresy and the collapse of all the Emperor's carefully laid plans to restore Mankind's golden age.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Malcador_the_Sigillite

Like others, I honestly don't see Emps as the sort of guy who is ready to let go of absolute power once he has it his grasp. After checking off the following on his To-Do-List:

- Conquer the entire galaxy and genociding each and every form of sapient alien life
- Seal off the Warp from realspace forever by completing the Imperial Webway
- deactivate the Astronomican and genocide the Navigators (now no longer needed thanks to the Webway)
- let the Primarchs and their Space Marines retire and slowly die out

...he would have stayed in charge as supreme absolute ruler of a galactic Pax Humana and, after a while, may well have set his scientists to the task of developing intergalactic space travel (the Necrons and Tyranids managed to do it, so it has to be scientifically possible within the rules of the 'verse) and prepared for conquering neighboring galaxies, with the eventual end goal (talking about millions of years in the future here) of uniting the entire universe under human (read: his) rule.

I always saw the Emperor as being largely inspired by god-Emperor Leto II and similarly was working on his own Golden Path, which was the Great Crusade. If it succeeded I imagine he would have allowed himself to fade into the background again and minimize his involvement like before he made himself known when he decided to step into the limelight and reunify Terra.

Either that, or decide his "great Work" was complete and allow himself to finally die, or transcend into a warp being etc etc.

 Psionara wrote:
Now, I'm going only off of what I have read on the Horus Heresy novels/audio dramas in summaries, but what was to happen to the Emperor after he had accomplished his Great Crusade? He created the Thunder Warriors, but purposefully left their genetics to cause them to die at a certain stage. Enter the Primarchs and Space Marines, which would be the galaxy's new finest warriors, but it was stated that Malacador that 'mankind' would inherit the Imperium, as stated in the audio drama First Lord of the Imperium that "the Imperium is not for the post-humans, but for mankind. Malcador said that the likes of the Primarchs and their respective Legions were to be eliminated through infighting, but where does that leave the Emperor? What was he to do and go after the Great Crusade? He is one of these "post-humans", being a perpetual with astonishing physical and psychic powers, so does he leave the rule of the Imperium to mankind or still rule over it?

Basically the end game was once the Great Crusade was over, the space marines would then act as the leaders of worlds and nations, primarchs would take over as governing and cultural leaders. This is why each primarch seems to strongly exemplify a trait of humanity, fulgrim being the artistic patron, vulkan the craftsman, guliman the statesmen, ect ect.

The marines them selves would become the police force of the universe and the peace keepers their production would just be greatly slowed down or the marines distributed throughout the galaxy to run it. Putting like 10 or even 100 space marines per planet would be more then enough to police and govern it.

One thing to keep in mind is the original plan was to raise all of the primarchs together in a tightly controlled environment to make them model statesmen. He was probably hoping for 20 Bobby Gs mixed with Horus.

Instead he got a bunch of teenage demi gods who on their best days were a mess over all with a few exceptions. This led to the emperor having to ad lib a lot of what was probably his original plan and cut corners. He was on a very limited time table and lost a huge chunk of it with most of the kids missing.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Basically the end game was once the Great Crusade was over, the space marines would then act as the leaders of worlds and nations, primarchs would take over as governing and cultural leaders. This is why each primarch seems to strongly exemplify a trait of humanity, fulgrim being the artistic patron, vulkan the craftsman, guliman the statesmen, ect ect.

The marines them selves would become the police force of the universe and the peace keepers their production would just be greatly slowed down or the marines distributed throughout the galaxy to run it. Putting like 10 or even 100 space marines per planet would be more then enough to police and govern it.

To be fair, this is what the marines themselves have come up with unless the last 20 books or so went into it more than the early ones.

Because I wonder what he told the thunder warriors before he finished conquering earth. Probably nothing just like he seems to have said to the marines.