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Yet after his death and 10.000 years later in 40k, the emperor is the main figure of his own religion.

Im not Much of a warhammer lore nerd, but i did read some background Stuff about lorgar. Thats how i get it anyway. He scolded lorgar for spreading the word of the emperor being a god.

Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

Big E did not create his own cult. That was formed after he started doing time as a popsicle on the Golden Throne. Yes, the fact that his empire became exactly what he wanted to avoid is one of the foundational tragic ironies of the setting.

He also doesn't "grant" miracles. Theyre a side effect of the fanatical devotion that the Adepta Sororitas (and at times other humans) give to the idea of their God-Emperor. This results in Warp-based shenanigans, which manifest as miracles.

Sterling191 wrote:
Big E did not create his own cult. That was formed after he started doing time as a popsicle on the Golden Throne. Yes, the fact that his empire became exactly what he wanted to avoid is one of the foundational tragic ironies of the setting.

He also doesn't "grant" miracles. Theyre a side effect of the fanatical devotion that the Adepta Sororitas (and at times other humans) give to the idea of their God-Emperor. This results in Warp-based shenanigans, which manifest as miracles.

Yea. i mean after i read the Whole Lorgar thing i thought: well... thats ironic.

Also i figured the emperor had the power to manifest... miracles through the warp and it was him doing it.. Like in the 9th edition trailer where that sister got her arm repaired. or healed.

Beardedragon wrote:


Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

I think there is an old old short story that suggests post throne Big E has a very fractured psyche with parts of it not knowing what other parts are up to so bits of him may regard itself as a god and grant miracles despite himself (or the Star Child dunnit)

Sterling191 wrote:
Big E did not create his own cult. That was formed after he started doing time as a popsicle on the Golden Throne. Yes, the fact that his empire became exactly what he wanted to avoid is one of the foundational tragic ironies of the setting.

He also doesn't "grant" miracles. Theyre a side effect of the fanatical devotion that the Adepta Sororitas (and at times other humans) give to the idea of their God-Emperor. This results in Warp-based shenanigans, which manifest as miracles.

The cult started well before he was interred in the Golden Throne. There's also what we would know now as a Living Saint manifesting miracles during the Heresy.

Beardedragon wrote:

Also i figured the emperor had the power to manifest... miracles through the warp and it was him doing it.. Like in the 9th edition trailer where that sister got her arm repaired. or healed.

Nope, that's purely the Sister.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Platuan4th wrote:

The cult started well before he was interred in the Golden Throne. There's also what we would know now as a Living Saint manifesting miracles during the Heresy.

The Ecclesiarchy and the deification of the Emperor becoming the driving force behind the Imperium is a post-Horus development. Big E stamped out what he could prior to getting fridged.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

Beardedragon wrote:


Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

I think there is an old old short story that suggests post throne Big E has a very fractured psyche with parts of it not knowing what other parts are up to so bits of him may regard itself as a god and grant miracles despite himself (or the Star Child dunnit)

He was also kind of portrayed that way in the Inquisition War trilogy.

Beardedragon wrote:Yet after his death and 10.000 years later in 40k, the emperor is the main figure of his own religion.

Im not Much of a warhammer lore nerd, but i did read some background Stuff about lorgar. Thats how i get it anyway. He scolded lorgar for spreading the word of the emperor being a god.

Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

Yeah, that's one of the big ironies of the setting.

It's widely seen the Emperor didn't want to be worshipped, but he wasn't able to stop the widespread cult that set itself up around him, and for the surviving authority figures, faith was shown to have effective uses against Chaos and daemons, as well as a tool of morale, so it was tolerated, and gradually became more and more influential.

As for the miracles performed by Sisters and Living Saints - it's debatable how much of a direct link that is to the Emperor, or just to the Warp. Unlike the Legion of the Damned (who, I'm fairly sure, are directly summoned/created by the Emperor), it may well be a case that the Sororitas are manifesting their power indirectly via worship, not through direct gifts.

Read "the last church", a controversial 40k story where the emperor has his thunder warriors destroy the last church on terra.

Unless they retconned it the current ecclisiarchy is based on a copy of lorgar's heretical work that was found in like the imperium's third millennium. I remember reading that somewhere.

The emperor trying to lead humanity from religion was kinda like that scene in "life of brian" where the star was telling a crowd "You're all individuals!" and they shout in unison "Yes we're all individuals!"

But yeah, as is the imperium is the absolute antithesis and abnegation of everything the emperor and guilleman fought to build and create. Hell, the tau are closer to the emperor's vision than the imperium.

The Emperor is a more powerful being than many of the little g gods that people have worshiped in the real world; stopping people from seeing him as such was always going to be an uphill battle. Unfortunately the Emperor is completely devoid of empathy and does not understand any reasoning other than his own brand of rationality.

It's a case of 'die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain' only, in this case its not the villain as much as a figurehead of hope for humanity, in both realistic and philosophical terms. You can draw a lot of parallels here to real world philosophy, especially Nietzsche and the whole 'death of god' which plays out quite literally in the days of the emperor. The whole thing is rife with hypocrisy and human dichotomy. The emperor himself embodies the highest form of 'might makes right' which is taken on FAITH, a priori as a universal and hence religious truth. Basically the ultimate form of the 'divine right of kings' just dressed up as atheism and Scientism.

You could also argue that the emperor was either intentionally deceptive, or hugely ignorant, of this hypocrisy. you've got a guy who's building a human empire based on science and the absolute denial of any metaphysical element, whilst being a human embodiment of metaphysics, and communicating with those very same metaphysical elements he denies exist, all while creating super human sons who also transcend humanity and the Scientism it reveres, into the metaphysical realm.

It seems that humanity as a wider whole seem ignorant of this in general before the heresy, but even the most ignorant would realise that it was all a lie once they experienced chaos manifest in reality during the course of the heresy. And thus, the illusion shattered, they turn to the only God they know, who was actually a god from the very start, they just didn't know it.

It seems that humanity as a wider whole seem ignorant of this in general before the heresy, but even the most ignorant would realise that it was all a lie once they experienced chaos manifest in reality during the course of the heresy.

Not... really. The various historians [I refuse to use the term 'remembrancer' or whatever it is, on the basis that its absurdly mystical] in the HH series refer to an awful lot of 'forgotten' texts and Terran warlords that involve sorcery, sacrifices and all sorts of things that seem like chaos worship by any other name (Particularly in the case of Kalagann of Ursh, who gets referenced repeatedly in the first couple HH novels).

The Emperor's attempted whitewash of religious impulse was very recent and not very effective.

No I mean they are ignorant of the hypocrisies of the emperor and his ideology. They are unquestioning of the seeming dichotomy of the emperor.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:


You could also argue that the emperor was either intentionally deceptive, or hugely ignorant, of this hypocrisy. you've got a guy who's building a human empire based on science and the absolute denial of any metaphysical element, whilst being a human embodiment of metaphysics, and communicating with those very same metaphysical elements he denies exist, all while creating super human sons who also transcend humanity and the Scientism it reveres, into the metaphysical realm.

I've always been partial to the idea that the Emperor's big problem is he's so far removed from the humanity he's trying to save he no longer understands them. In the case of the metaphysical vs the physical the Emperor's problem would seem to be he doesn't recognise the difference in the same way humanity does. To him it's all part of the same thing, because he is probably the only human to ever really understand how Chaos/the Warp works and interacts with realspace. That being the case, you could see why the Emperor would be so ignorant of the hypocrisy.

the problem with my theory, of course, is the writing of the Horus Heresy novels doesn't quite manage to fully draw this out and quite often leaves the Emperor looking like a bit of an idiot.

There foundations of what became the imperial cult started before the HH. Soldiers needed something to believe in an a figure head, which was the emperor.

The emperor did not seek worship but the eventual repetition was an integral part of Horus’s vision of the future which made him believe the emperor to be a hypocrite and a traitor.

Whisky Horus is injured and having his vision we learnt hat his soldiers have also elevated him to their own figure head and revere him.

Horus then fills this role for much of the forces he is leading as the emperor has become absent by returning to Earth. This allows Horus to become a competitor with the emperor giving people a choice of causes.

The result of the Horus heresy was traumatic and created an atmosphere for humanity to double down on its deification of the emperor trying to find meaning in all the destruction. Over years the cult was officially established as the official religion and was used as a form of control.

By this time all the primarchs are gone and there is no one left to reinforce the original atheist message of the emperor.

I think the emperor created his atheist message because he knew that god worship would ultimately fuel the chaos gods. Now he exits mostly in the warp I think there is a suggestion that he is accepting his worship as it allows him to manifest, occasionally, miracles etc.

I think he realised early on that humans biggest risk in the galaxy were being of chaos and everything from the unification wars onwards was part of a plan to protect humans from the warp whilst establishing themselves as the dominant sentient race in the galaxy.

On the Living Saints, and Sisters of battle:

We have established that strait-up Psykers and Sorcery are 2 different, but related, things.

Psykers are born with powers, can be girded to the warp, but have an easier time with it.

Sorcery can be done by anyone, easier for Psykers, but a group of "normies" can summon/create effects. This somewhat suggests psychic potential in all that can be gathered and focused into effect.

I think Living Saints and Sisters of Battle unknowing perform the latter. An entire Army focusing faith create the Miracles.

mrFickle wrote:

I think the emperor created his atheist message because he knew that god worship would ultimately fuel the chaos gods. Now he exits mostly in the warp I think there is a suggestion that he is accepting his worship as it allows him to manifest, occasionally, miracles etc.

Which is ironic, because you could argue that moralistic religions actually promoting harmony in humanity would actually weaken the chaos god's, whereas the constant warfare waged to enforce your scientific rationalism on unwilling sections of humanity would give them all the fuel they require. I like to think this is what makes the story similar to a Greek tragedy. The emperor is a demi god, and wants to go good for humanity, but ultimately ruins it all through his own folly.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Unless they retconned it the current ecclisiarchy is based on a copy of lorgar's heretical work that was found in like the imperium's third millennium. I remember reading that somewhere.

No, it comes from Fatidicus, since at least 2nd edition Sisters of Battle codex. According to this hallowed tome of knowledge, the Emperor was already worshiped as a god before his death, and was even more worshiped after his internment in the golden throne, but Ecclesiarchy directly descend from one specific cult, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, founded by Fatidicus (real name lost to history). We learn that Fatidicus was a respected and famous officer of the Imperial Army during the Siege of Terra and that he died at the age of 120. So the Temple was founded very close to the Horus Heresy, less than 100 years after! It took a lot of time for the Temple to grow though, and it was only considered the official religion of the Imperium early in the 32th millenium.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
Unless they retconned it the current ecclisiarchy is based on a copy of lorgar's heretical work that was found in like the imperium's third millennium. I remember reading that somewhere.

No, it comes from Fatidicus, since at least 2nd edition Sisters of Battle codex. According to this hallowed tome of knowledge, the Emperor was already worshiped as a god before his death, and was even more worshiped after his internment in the golden throne, but Ecclesiarchy directly descend from one specific cult, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, founded by Fatidicus (real name lost to history). We learn that Fatidicus was a respected and famous officer of the Imperial Army during the Siege of Terra and that he died at the age of 120. So the Temple was founded very close to the Horus Heresy, less than 100 years after! It took a lot of time for the Temple to grow though, and it was only considered the official religion of the Imperium early in the 32th millenium.

The current Ecclesiarchy is based off of the Confederation of Light, which swept the Temple of the Saviour Emperor from power with the fall of Vandire.

If one goes by the Dark Heresy RPG line, remnants of the Temple are in hiding with the aid of secret supporters, biding their time, hoping for a new counter-reformation to retake power and sweep away what they perceive as the heretics that have taken over the Ecclesiarchy.

Beardedragon wrote:
Yet after his death and 10.000 years later in 40k, the emperor is the main figure of his own religion.

Im not Much of a warhammer lore nerd, but i did read some background Stuff about lorgar. Thats how i get it anyway. He scolded lorgar for spreading the word of the emperor being a god.

Am i mistaken? Also why would he grant miracles to the sisters of battle, if he does not want to be worshipped?

The warp is a dimension where belief manifests into tangible beings who in turn affect reality in ways that the believers think they should. It creates a feedback loop, whereby people who believe a certain way receive incentives to believe harder in that certain way by the warp entities that their belief created.

So, the Emperor as a warp god is not necessarily exactly the same as the emperor as a man. They may in fact even be entirely separate entities, or it's possible that the emperor's personality in life is being eroded by how the warp functions.

The people of the imperium believe in the emperor as a god, and the imperial creed dictates what kind of worship the emperor will respond to, much more so than the emperor's actual will. it's clear from his conversation with Guilliman and the fact that the astronomicon is still lit and the webway gate is still closed that some element of the emperor's original intent and will is still active, but it's also clear from the way his miracles manifest for the faithful of the imperium that some aspect of him is being changed by the warp to act more like the god the people of the imperium want him to be.

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
On the Living Saints, and Sisters of battle:

We have established that strait-up Psykers and Sorcery are 2 different, but related, things..

Is that established, or is that the belief of unreliable narrators?
The game treats them as exactly the same.

I'm legitimately curious, because the 8th rulebook pretty much dumps a lot of background information to focus on a brief history of the Imperium and then zeroes in on factions.
Older books don't have those as separate concepts at all, so where does that actually come from?

I've seen it in HH books, of course, but it usually comes out of the mouths of Thousand Sons who are actively being lied to, or Space Wolf 'shaman' librarians who wallow in their ignorance and pretend it's wisdom.

We’ve spent a lot of time debating it and working it out. Think of it this way: alchemy and chemistry are both about the transformation of materials. But they are hardly the same thing. Additionally, one can be a psyker (and even an adherent of the Ruinous Powers) without being a sorcerer.

Slipspace wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:


You could also argue that the emperor was either intentionally deceptive, or hugely ignorant, of this hypocrisy. you've got a guy who's building a human empire based on science and the absolute denial of any metaphysical element, whilst being a human embodiment of metaphysics, and communicating with those very same metaphysical elements he denies exist, all while creating super human sons who also transcend humanity and the Scientism it reveres, into the metaphysical realm.

I've always been partial to the idea that the Emperor's big problem is he's so far removed from the humanity he's trying to save he no longer understands them. In the case of the metaphysical vs the physical the Emperor's problem would seem to be he doesn't recognise the difference in the same way humanity does. To him it's all part of the same thing, because he is probably the only human to ever really understand how Chaos/the Warp works and interacts with realspace. That being the case, you could see why the Emperor would be so ignorant of the hypocrisy.

the problem with my theory, of course, is the writing of the Horus Heresy novels doesn't quite manage to fully draw this out and quite often leaves the Emperor looking like a bit of an idiot.

Well, I don't personally read any of the novels, so I am not real "up" on what they might say. But from what I hear, I'm not keen on what's in them.

One way to think along these lines though, might be that the Emperor was not really against a sort of Scientism, but rather was attempting to establish a Rational/Empirical order. What he fails to realize is this mode of thinking, or rather, a mode of Being perhaps, just does not suffice. While there is a "noble intent" possible in rejecting the notion of the Transcendental, I think it is flatly incorrect from the pragmatic sense.

So, in a way, we can think of The Emperor failing for exactly the sort of reason QAR suggests. He was the Transcendental telling people to not believe in the Transcendental. So, in a way, he was trying to enforce a new normative role of Rationalism, and perhaps something of a Scientism too, if we want, but not just as a mode of thinking, but as the primary, essential, necessary mode Being.

Lorgar is a sort of hero, in this sense, who points out just how mistaken that is.

The Emperor was AT BEST ambivalent about religion. He had no trouble playing up implication that he is the Omnissiah as part of his alliance with Mars, for example.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H wrote:

Lorgar is a sort of hero, in this sense, who points out just how mistaken that is.

Pity they didn’t go with this angle.

 Manchu wrote:
We’ve spent a lot of time debating it and working it out. Think of it this way: alchemy and chemistry are both about the transformation of materials. But they are hardly the same thing.

They are the same thing though. The parts of alchemy that work are chemistry- and have consistent results that lead to scientific explanations as to why they work (chemistry). The rest is just fluff and nonsense. The local high school chemistry teacher can twirl his mustache about alchemy all he wants, but water is still H2O.

Additionally, one can be a psyker (and even an adherent of the Ruinous Powers) without being a sorcerer.

Sure. A sorcerer pretends his various candles and trappings work, or a devout follower of the Emperor calls a psyker a sorcerer. If neither of those happen, they're still just a psyker.

The point is, does the setting actually differentiate here, and if so, where? Otherwise, its all just unreliable narrator fluff and labels.

 Manchu wrote:
The Emperor was AT BEST ambivalent about religion. He had no trouble playing up implication that he is the Omnissiah as part of his alliance with Mars, for example.

 H wrote:

Lorgar is a sort of hero, in this sense, who points out just how mistaken that is.

Pity they didn’t go with this angle.

Indeed, which is a big part of why I prefer my headcannon to the official lore.

I personally want more "literary quality" in there. I want philosophical depth. In my headcannon, I try to add that, for better or worse of course, but it is just what "makes sense" to me, far more than what is seemingly the haphazard way the official lore does it.

Voss wrote:They are the same thing though. The parts of alchemy that work are chemistry- and have consistent results that lead to scientific explanations as to why they work (chemistry). The rest is just fluff and nonsense. The local high school chemistry teacher can twirl his mustache about alchemy all he wants, but water is still H2O.

That is a pretty bare-bones notion of what alchemy was about though.

Consider: "Until quite recently science was interested only in the part that alchemy played in the history of chemistry, concerning itself very little with the part it played in the history of philosophy and religion. The importance of alchemy for the historical development of chemistry is obvious, but its cultural importance is still so little known that it seems almost impossible to say in a few words wherein that consisted. In this introduction, therefore, I have attempted to outline the religious and psychological problems which are germane to the theme of alchemy. The point is that alchemy is rather like an undercurrent to the Christianity that ruled on the surface. It is to this surface as the dream is to consciousness, and just as the dream compensates the conflicts of the conscious mind, so alchemy endeavours to fill in the gaps left open by the Christian tension of opposites." -C.G. Jung, in Psychology and Alchemy

Also: "Slowly, in the course of the eighteenth century, alchemy perished in its own obscurity. Its method of explanation—“obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius” (the obscure by the more obscure, the unknown by the more unknown)—was incompatible with the spirit of enlightenment and particularly with the dawning science of chemistry towards the end of the century. But these two new intellectual forces only gave the coup de grâce to alchemy. Its inner decay had begun at least a century earlier, at the time of Jakob Böhme, when many alchemists deserted their alembics and melting-pots and devoted themselves entirely to (Hermetic) philosophy. It was then that the chemist and the Hermetic philosopher parted company. Chemistry became natural science, whereas Hermetic philosophy lost the empirical ground from under its feet and aspired to bombastic allegories and inane speculations which were kept alive only by memories of a better time.1 This was a time when the mind of the alchemist was still grappling with the problems of matter, when the exploring consciousness was confronted by the dark void of the unknown, in which figures and laws were dimly perceived and attributed to matter although they really belonged to the psyche. Everything unknown and empty is filled with psychological projection; it is as if the investigator’s own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness. What he sees in matter, or thinks he can see, is chiefly the data of his own unconscious which he is projecting into it. In other words, he encounters in matter, as apparently belonging to it, certain qualities and potential meanings of whose psychic nature he is entirely unconscious. This is particularly true of classical alchemy, when empirical science and mystical philosophy were more or less undifferentiated." -C.G. Jung, in Psychology and Alchemy

I find it rather reductive to just consider alchemy as "bad" or "misinformed" chemistry though. Sure, in a sense, yes, it was misguided in a number of things. But, let us not forget the Isaac Newton was actually an alchemist as well. It was more than just chemistry with "fluff and nonsense" though. Not in the empirical science sense though, of course. Which is the lens through which we judge everything now. But, actually, such a blanket dismissal of the metaphysics as notional nonsense is actually, ironically, just what this thread is about. It's metaphysical "study" was, in all likelihood, historically important and likely still is, from a phenomenological standpoint. That is, what it meant as an exporation of the phenomena of consciousness, rather than the phenomena of simple matter or chemicals.

H, you’re spot on.

An how much moreso would intent, methodological perspective, emotional mindset, state of consciousness, etc., play into the issue of interacting with a realm where such factors form the basis of “reality”?

Voss wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
We’ve spent a lot of time debating it and working it out. Think of it this way: alchemy and chemistry are both about the transformation of materials. But they are hardly the same thing.

They are the same thing though. The parts of alchemy that work are chemistry- and have consistent results that lead to scientific explanations as to why they work (chemistry). The rest is just fluff and nonsense. The local high school chemistry teacher can twirl his mustache about alchemy all he wants, but water is still H2O.

Additionally, one can be a psyker (and even an adherent of the Ruinous Powers) without being a sorcerer.

Sure. A sorcerer pretends his various candles and trappings work, or a devout follower of the Emperor calls a psyker a sorcerer. If neither of those happen, they're still just a psyker.

The point is, does the setting actually differentiate here, and if so, where? Otherwise, its all just unreliable narrator fluff and labels.

The GW, Black Library, and Dark Heresy stuff has never quite explicitly laid out the difference, though seems to imply the below (which is also my personal headcanon):

A psyker manipulates warp energy directly to create their effects, and the magnitude of effects is limited by the psyker's ability. Sorcery is interacting with the entities of the warp and getting them to do or power things for you, and is limited by the strength of the entity in question. This can be through pacts or through some form of coercion, such as using a daemon's True Name. A sorcerer need not necessarily have to be a psyker themselves. That would explain how cultists can perform rituals resulting in supernatural effects. Their efforts weaken the barrier between realspace and the warp, and attract one or more warp entities to them. A sorcerer that is also a psyker can do both, manipulate warp energy themselves and get warp entities to do stuff for them.

The actual in-game effects might be similar or even identical, but the method of how the result is achieved is different.

Iracundus wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
We’ve spent a lot of time debating it and working it out. Think of it this way: alchemy and chemistry are both about the transformation of materials. But they are hardly the same thing.

They are the same thing though. The parts of alchemy that work are chemistry- and have consistent results that lead to scientific explanations as to why they work (chemistry). The rest is just fluff and nonsense. The local high school chemistry teacher can twirl his mustache about alchemy all he wants, but water is still H2O.

Additionally, one can be a psyker (and even an adherent of the Ruinous Powers) without being a sorcerer.

Sure. A sorcerer pretends his various candles and trappings work, or a devout follower of the Emperor calls a psyker a sorcerer. If neither of those happen, they're still just a psyker.

The point is, does the setting actually differentiate here, and if so, where? Otherwise, its all just unreliable narrator fluff and labels.

The GW, Black Library, and Dark Heresy stuff has never quite explicitly laid out the difference, though seems to imply the below (which is also my personal headcanon):

A psyker manipulates warp energy directly to create their effects, and the magnitude of effects is limited by the psyker's ability. Sorcery is interacting with the entities of the warp and getting them to do or power things for you, and is limited by the strength of the entity in question. This can be through pacts or through some form of coercion, such as using a daemon's True Name. A sorcerer need not necessarily have to be a psyker themselves. A sorcerer that is also a psyker can do both, manipulate warp energy themselves and get warp entities to do stuff for them.

The actual in-game effects might be similar or even identical, but the method of how the result is achieved is different.

Hmm. An interesting idea. It should still be possible to narrow down when that transition happened, at least roughly.
Rogue Trader actively avoided the idea- it was very Psychic/Psionics/Psykers and nothing but (though most of the psychic powers came right from WFB lists of magic spells- like Hammerhand, and were barely altered at all) and mutants were nuclear, biological or chemical in origin.

It wasn't the Realm of Chaos books- while there are Summoned Daemons (as a pre-battle ritual), it stomps on the idea of Daemon Summoning 'spells' pretty hard, and talks a lot about warp intrusion into the minds of psykers or even teleported accidents, so its keeping most of the veneer of pseudo-scientific psionics. It definitely opens the possibilities of rituals but mostly actively avoids them for 40k beyond a game mechanic (you have to do it during army creation and spend points, and keep in mind any army list limitations)

Have to do more digging to better track the possible transition points.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Read "the last church", a controversial 40k story where the emperor has his thunder warriors destroy the last church on terra.

Unless they retconned it the current ecclisiarchy is based on a copy of lorgar's heretical work that was found in like the imperium's third millennium. I remember reading that somewhere.

The emperor trying to lead humanity from religion was kinda like that scene in "life of brian" where the star was telling a crowd "You're all individuals!" and they shout in unison "Yes we're all individuals!"

But yeah, as is the imperium is the absolute antithesis and abnegation of everything the emperor and guilleman fought to build and create. Hell, the tau are closer to the emperor's vision than the imperium.

That little 103 page short is one of, if not my favorite piece of science fiction ever written. If anyone has not read it, then do yourself the favor and do so. It is insanely good (or at least, I thought so).

Someone mentioned that the emperor's psyche is fractured, and I want, (and trust me, I am NOT claiming accuracy here) that a story of something to that effect was in the old 2nd edition Dark Millenium expansion book. I'll see if I can find the short story, but that book is put up somewhere and I have a paper due tonight and I may not get to it right away.