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I have started to read through the Black Library HH material more and more recently, but I'm just picking and choosing books as I go rather than following any given timeline. I'm still barely scratching the surface!

I was wondering, when you think of the Emperor, how do you see him (and yes, I know he can appear a thousand different ways to a thousand different people)?

Every reference I come across in passing has the usual 'towering figure of gold' or 'blinding magnificence' lines and to be honest I'm starting to find it all a little repetitive.

I kind of like to think of him being 'comfortable' looking very literally like a normal guy who could sit next to you on the bus, or be behind you in a supermarket queue, without drawing a second glance. No otherworldly gaze, no halo...just...a guy. Regular size, regular muscularity, probably Turkish/ Mediterranean/ Arabic apperance...really at odds with most of the stuff I come across but I don't know, it just seems cool to think of him as looking (and maybe even acting, in private) a little like Average Joe.

If you've seen the 'Primarch Portrait' series, a little like that...I was struck with how the Emperor actually comes across pretty plain, especially next to the Adrian's rendition of some of the primarchs!

Anyway enough rambling frome, what do you think?

And if you can recommend any of the books that feature the Emperor as a prominent character, perhaps portraying him candidly, I'd appreciate it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Edit: 'artist's', not 'Adrian's'...auto-correct...

A desiccated husk on a geiger-esqe throne.

Corpse man on big chair.
When he was alive though? One of the Gaunt's Ghosts books has the living saint, Saint Sabbat, lead a celebration on a planet. Some of the Tanith soldiers get a POV for when they see Sabbat and each one views her differently. Most just look upon her as a Saint but notably, the Tanith Sniper Larkin sees her surveying the crowd as a sniper would, picking out targets and eventually settling on him. IIRC another believes she is judging his soul based on past guilt. The idea seems to be that whatever the personality of the individual, it becomes reflected in the Saint.
Since living saints are imbued with a portion of the Emperor's power, it could then be said that the same thing happens when someone looks upon the Emperor. Custodes, Primarchs, and the Sisters of Silence tend to view him just as a man, a great man but a man nonetheless. Astartes get that extra bit of awe and get more fancy images, and mortals sometimes cannot even look upon the Emperor. In fact, the Emperor blinded everyone who saw him on Nostramo because he gave off so much psychic light.

Honestly I've never read the hours heresy books, so I don't really picture him as a living guy.

I like the idea of him actually being a bit small and innocuous rather than some wall of beefcake, though.

In the "present" day though he's definitely a skellington.

It’s always been my impression that folk always saw what The Emperor needed them to see, using his psychic might to alter perceptions to suit his needs.

Bit of the old shock and awe tactics. As such, one could argue nobody really knows what he looks like. However, given he was born in what is now modern day Turkey, he’s likely to be dark of skin tone and hair.

Remember in the goonies when chunk first finds sloth in the basement ties to a chair watching telly shouting rocky road? The emperor is sloth and 1000 sacrificed psykers are the rocky road

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s always been my impression that folk always saw what The Emperor needed them to see, using his psychic might to alter perceptions to suit his needs.

Bit of the old shock and awe tactics. As such, one could argue nobody really knows what he looks like. However, given he was born in what is now modern day Turkey, he’s likely to be dark of skin tone and hair.

The new Sigismund book has some good descriptions of the Emperor and how He appears.



The Emperor simply appears however He wants people to perceive Him.

Well the Emperor was born around 8000bc in Anatolia. Note that is before the Ottomans enter the region. So the Emperor would look Greekish of maybe like a Hittite. So possibly like a European with a slightly darker skin tone.

I second the whole "completely innocuous" look.

That being said: y'all don't have any faith in the big E!

My personal headcannon is that, contrary to so much of what we are told, he's actually pretty much intact inside the golden throne. Kinda like his son big G was in his stasis thing.

I also like to think that, at some point far far far in the future, something might happen to remove/stop the constant chaos attack thing on his body and in a heartbeat he will rise again and restore the Imperium to a much better state. Not, you know, utopian or anything, but at least a lot less hellish than it is now.

My personal Warhammer 120K is the Emperor having pretty much reconquered our galaxy and somehow defeated (or imprisonned or otherwise put off) the chaos gods and other threats. With that being said, what's the main conflict in Warhammer 120k?

OTHER GALAXIES! Suddenly we have a death match of Galaxy Wide Tyrannids, Lovecraftian beasties, and other stuff way weirder and more powerful than anything in our galaxy.

...but, going back to the main point, I totally think that the big E is super normal looking and probably a bit middle-eastern in his features.

Tygre wrote:
Well the Emperor was born around 8000bc in Anatolia. Note that is before the Ottomans enter the region. So the Emperor would look Greekish of maybe like a Hittite. So possibly like a European with a slightly darker skin tone.

probably blonde, blued eyed like jesus right?

Dai wrote:

Tygre wrote:
Well the Emperor was born around 8000bc in Anatolia. Note that is before the Ottomans enter the region. So the Emperor would look Greekish of maybe like a Hittite. So possibly like a European with a slightly darker skin tone.

probably blonde, blued eyed like jesus right?

I know this is sarcasm, but he is right in saying thinking of Emperor as turk/arab is dumb. We're not sure how ancient Anatolians looked like, it's a region that is close to Greece/Caucasus/Mesopotamia/Levant and inhabitants of all these regions look different. If Emperor looked like Scythians, he would be red-haired and grey-eyed. If like Cumans, another people living close to Anatolia, he would really be blonde and blued eyed (that's literally what quman means, "pale yellow"). So, yeah, imagining him as modern turk is laughably wrong, even without considering that if Emperor was really a member of Turkic peoples instead of any other candidates, they inhabited half of Asia in the past and were as if not more diverse in looks and customs than whole of Europe. You could find any combination of eye color, hair and looks among them, no shapeshifting needed.

I mentioned the Hittites because that is the earliest culture I could find that lived in Anatolia. But 8000bc might predate them. One theory on the Proto-Indo-European homeland was the Anatolian Hypothesis where Proto-Indo-Europeans originated from Anatolia. So somewhat like our Caucasian ancestors. They however came around 3000bc. But my research and Wikipedia is limited. Especially since how far back in time we are talking about. 8000bc is before copper working and after agriculture.

With a text to speech device.

Really though, Mediterranean. Italian in colour(hair eyes and skin), with facial features that are broad that could be both ugly and beautiful.

It seems to make the most sense to me that he would be the medium in all things, more human then human.

I dunno why.

But I picture the Big E as Looking a lot like James Franco.

Tygre wrote:
Well the Emperor was born around 8000bc in Anatolia.

Of course he was.




To me, he looks like a mighty powerful psyker from the DAOT. Something like the art from the Pharon book for VOR: The Maelstrom for the Aspect of the God-King.