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If the 30k imperium was an atheistic society.....How can the Horus Hersy.....be a heresy?

Instead of Marines needing "more bolters for this HERESY".....did they "Need more Bolters for this Superstition?"

Was it referred to like that at the time, or is that the terminology that has come in since the regression into worship of the emperor as a deity?

"Heresy" was defined as not wholly agreeing with the big E.

I'd say the E's biggest mistake was concealing the truth about the chaos gods from everyone. (Yeah, I know, it's like Duh!)

Ironically by doing that when people discovered the chaos gods it proved that the E was wrong, which made it even easier to turn against him.

The big E should have told people the truth about the warp and the chaos powers. Hell he should have called chaos 'the primordial annihilator" like the edlar did. Tell people how the dark powers in the warp were fueled by the darkest parts of human minds and manifested the worst parts of the human psyche.

Don't call them gods, call them the ruinous powers, and educate people to resist them. Or at least tell the primarchs the truth ASAP. Hell, come of them might have seen what was happening early on and avoided it.

But yeah, the E basically replaced religion with himself, and so disagreeing with him was heresy. He wanted his people to avoid ignorance yet kept them ignorant of the greatest threat they'd ever face, he said there were no gods and opened the door for the chaos gods to come in thru.

Maybe Guilleman will institute a policy to educate people to the reality of chaos, the warp, etc and how to avoid falling to the chaos powers. Raising the standard of living for the masses would help alleviate the misery and despair that drives so many people to the dark gods.

Yeah, I know, not gonna happen...

In 40k/30k, heresy isn't explicitly religious. It's just "anything against the Imperium = heresy".

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
In 40k/30k, heresy isn't explicitly religious. It's just "anything against the Imperium = heresy".

Well, in 40k the imperium is religious so yeah, it's heresy there.

In 30k it was more like what you just said.

 Matt Swain wrote:

I'd say the E's biggest mistake was concealing the truth about the chaos gods from everyone. (Yeah, I know, it's like Duh!)

Ironically by doing that when people discovered the chaos gods it proved that the E was wrong, which made it even easier to turn against him.

I feel like there is an even deeper level to that... The Chaos Gods are avatars of (mostly) human imagination, and no one had more hands in shaping human imagination, than the Emperor of Man. In a way, he did not just hide the truth about the Chaos Gods, most probably in a very real way he actually created, or at least shaped them.
I mean, there is the vague connection to the Warhammer Fantasy universe, where those gods exist, too, and the Emperor of Man does not, which seems to contradict that idea. Sigmar is kind of the same thing, but he clearly did not have as much of a central role in shaping the WHFB setting like the Emperor in 40k, (I might be wrong on that, I don't follow the Sigmar lore very much)

But for the 40k settings, it makes most sense to view the Chaos Gods as the literal incarnation of the EoMs personal nightmares. Interestingly, most of the Xenos races pretty much ignore them. Orks just don't care about them, Tau got no conception of the Warp, Tyranids might or might not be an entire separate Chaos God themselves, Necrons don't really interact with them in their storyline, either. The only exception of that are the Eldar, which are supposed to have created Slaanesh, and then have lost their entire traditional pantheon to them,... notably AFTER interacting with the EoM!

 AuntHerbert wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:

I'd say the E's biggest mistake was concealing the truth about the chaos gods from everyone. (Yeah, I know, it's like Duh!)

Ironically by doing that when people discovered the chaos gods it proved that the E was wrong, which made it even easier to turn against him.

I feel like there is an even deeper level to that... The Chaos Gods are avatars of (mostly) human imagination, and no one had more hands in shaping human imagination, than the Emperor of Man. In a way, he did not just hide the truth about the Chaos Gods, most probably in a very real way he actually created, or at least shaped them.
I mean, there is the vague connection to the Warhammer Fantasy universe, where those gods exist, too, and the Emperor of Man does not, which seems to contradict that idea. Sigmar is kind of the same thing, but he clearly did not have as much of a central role in shaping the WHFB setting like the Emperor in 40k, (I might be wrong on that, I don't follow the Sigmar lore very much)

Sigmar shaped the setting in so much as the Empire is the dominant power in the Old World, but Chaos attempting to over run and destroy the world predates the very existence of humanity in the setting. All four Chaos Gods are well developed by the time the Old Ones' Warp Gates explode and Daemons nearly over ran everything until the High Elves created the magical vortex that lay at the heart of Ulthuan.

cj95 wrote:
If the 30k imperium was an atheistic society.....How can the Horus Hersy.....be a heresy?

Well... the 30k Imperium was only nominally atheist. Officially it was, but on a practical level, the Imperial Truth was just as much a religious creed as anything that came before it. Their understanding of the universe was in error, and they clung to their creed more out of ignorance than logic and reason.

 Platuan4th wrote:


Sigmar shaped the setting in so much as the Empire is the dominant power in the Old World, but Chaos attempting to over run and destroy the world predates the very existence of humanity in the setting. All four Chaos Gods are well developed by the time the Old Ones' Warp Gates explode and Daemons nearly over ran everything until the High Elves created the magical vortex that lay at the heart of Ulthuan.

Yeah, right, but that's a related, but still different setting. WH40k pre-30k lore about terra breaks mostly down to some cryptic fragments about Men of Gold, Men of Stone and Men of Iron.... and I can't remember any Chaos gods to be even mentioned in the Necron storyline. The Necron trouble in the Immaterium is the Plague of Enslavers that they cause, and they are certainly not the same Chaos Gods, that are present in 30k-40k within the Imperium of Man.

Sure, there are some mentions of foul powers being used by terran warlords,before the unification of terra, and Lorgar heard his crap from someone, but given the few known pieces it's hard to determine what specific properties these deities had, and, given the unknown actual age of the Emperor (40k years I assume, but I haven't found it officially mentioned anywhere, to what event the official 40K timeline even reckons back), it's also impossible to nail down a causal chain, and rule out, that they are something other than the echoes of his personal nightmares in the Immaterium. He is the main shaping factor in the immaterium, after all, and there is no mention of Chaos Gods where and when he is not around to influence the narrative.

Officially, the Emperor was born around 8000 BCE in Anatolia.

The 40k timeline never jumped to a different calendar, so is still CE.

And the Chaos Powers predate him, but were weak during his early life- none fully 'woke' until later (explicitly the Middle Ages for everyone but Slaanesh). Before the Emperors birth, they were strong enough to start eating souls (particularly of psychically strong individuals), which is why the Shaman from all over Earth gathered together, and collectively killed themselves to be reborn as a single entity- the Emperor.

This was all laid out in Realms of Chaos- Lost and the Damned