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Iets make it short: its widely known that the Emperor can appear as whatever he wants other people to see. He wants other people to see a giant in a golden armor? He becomes a giant in golden armor! He wants people to see a regular guy? He becomes a regular guy! The Emperor can change his appearance at a whim by the power of psychic illusion. Which made me wonder...what if the impression we have of him, that mighty superhero in shining gold, is an illusion too. After all, no one can know what he really looks like, propably no one ever knew.

Which leads to the fundamental question no one - at least to my knowledge - ever asked: Is Big E really a human? If he has the power to change his looks by a snap of his fingers, then how can we be so sure? For all we know, he could very well be some Eldar waseer who found a dusty old copy of "How to use mind tricks on mon-keigh for dummies" or some other warp tainted xenos.

Well, thats the issue: how can we know?


   
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Daemonic Dreadnought





Eye of Terror

Not human.

He's something like Humanity Transcendent. Doesn't appear to be mortal, can speak to machines, seems to intuit science the way others eat and breathe, take on any appearance, etc.

The character has always struck me as the personification of human ambition and desire. His origins aren't essential to what he represents, it almost doesn't matter where or what he came from.

   
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UK

He came from human origins, whether he still counts as human probably depends on your definition. In the original fluff he was a psychic gestalt formed when the Shamans of old earth (humanity's first generation of psykers) committed ritual suicide and merged their souls to reincarnate as a single individual that pooled their collective psychic power. The purpose of this was to oppose the growing power of the Chaos Gods who threatened humanity's future as a psychic species.

The Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra novels are more ambiguous. The Emperor seems to be the oldest and most powerful of a group of meta humans called the Perpetuals. Whichever source you call from he is basically an immensely powerful psyker. He is Human++.

As for his real appearance, we do get two answers in the books. The first time Corax meets the Emperor, he sees the giant in golden armour, but he also sees through the glamour to what might the Emperor's true appearance. He is described as tall and dark haired with a plain, almost forgettable face. The Emperor refuses to answer directly if it is his true appearance but in Master of Mankind, some Sister of Silence look at the Emperor. It is specifically described that they see his true face since psychic glamours cannot affect them. They see a tall man with a face lined with pain (he is sitting on the Golden Throne at this point).

These suggest that the Emperor is a tall human male somewhere in middle age. He does not actually shape shift but most people looking at him perceive him as fulfilling their own perception of majesty. Notably Lion El' Johnson sees him cowled and robed like a giant Watcher in the Dark. In a typically egocentric moment, he believes this to be the Emperor's true appearance and all others to be illusions but this is to highlight that Johnson is not very savvy to when he himself is being manipulated.

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In the darkest depths of 40k lore, in the days of Rogue Trader, it is mentioned that the God Emperor was born to mortal parents in 8000BC Anatolia. His birth while may had been a natural process, it was also the result of a scheme of humanities wisest and most powerful psykers. These psykers were known as the Shamans. The Shamans foresaw the danger the dark gods had to humanities future, and decided they would pore their power into a being they called 'the New Man'. Though the ritual came at the cost of their life, one year later the being now known as the Emperor of Mankind was born.

Of course much of that ancient knowledge has been distorted through misunderstandings, partial truths, misdirection, and blatant lies. Who can say what the truth is. Perhaps the Emperor, but on the matter his is silent.
   
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[Diogenes]Define Human[/Diogenes]

No, seriously, define human.

I’m defined as human. There’s stuff I can do (wiggling ears, flaring nostrils, keen eye for detail) that other humans can’t. And there’s a whole smorgasbord of stuff other humans can do that I can’t.

Add psychic abilities into that, and the potential to twists someone else’s perception of me as I please?

Doesn’t stop The Emperor still being functionally human.

However, he has other attributes, such as functional immortality and near invulnerability which are so far removed from human norm?

Who knows.

All The Emperor’s gifts could be down to, I dunno, I’m not a genetic scientists, just a couple of rogue genes going live. But from my incredibly limited understanding of species? If The Emperor can still produce children with women? Then he’s close enough?

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I’d say he was human but not homosapian. I haven’t read too much about the perpetuals but they seem to be human in all ways but they can’t die and regenerate endlessly.

I thought the modern era canon was that the emperor was a perpetual like all the others but he went to molech and made a deal with the Choas gods for power and that how he became such a powerful psyker. Maybe at that point he became more like a demon than a human
   
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I always thought it was deliberately ambiguous what the Emperor was.

Kind of like theological issues today. Whether the Emperor is or was a god, a human, or the very same GOD we think about today is a matter of debate.

I really hope it stays that way.

Edit: I saw that some of the books are moving away from that ambiguity. Oh well...that takes the mystery and fun out of the setting if you ask me.

I do like though that some of the books contemplate whether the emperor really was just a special mortal human, and whether he was even right or good. That's cool at least.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/12 02:31:12


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Yes, he is basically what humans would/will becomes if they naturally progressed through the universe to reach their peak evolution.

The old ones for example basically became the pinicle of their species evolution, humans eventually would have became that, but the big E just kinda took the short cut by combining the sum of all human knowledge and power of the shamans into a single being.

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In the Great Work a C'tan describes the Emperor as a weapon.
   
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:[Diogenes]Define Human[/Diogenes]

No, seriously, define human.

I’m defined as human. There’s stuff I can do (wiggling ears, flaring nostrils, keen eye for detail) that other humans can’t. And there’s a whole smorgasbord of stuff other humans can do that I can’t.

Pretty much this. Any thread that asks a question along the lines of, "Does X count as a Y," would benefit from defining their criteria for Y. And also from understanding that what counts as Y may get a little fuzzy around the edges. Things are what they are. Words are just our attempt to verbally express a bunch of properties at once.

Dekskull wrote:I always thought it was deliberately ambiguous what the Emperor was.

Kind of like theological issues today. Whether the Emperor is or was a god, a human, or the very same GOD we think about today is a matter of debate.

I really hope it stays that way.

Edit: I saw that some of the books are moving away from that ambiguity. Oh well...that takes the mystery and fun out of the setting if you ask me.

I do like though that some of the books contemplate whether the emperor really was just a special mortal human, and whether he was even right or good. That's cool at least.

See above. What is a "god?" How is it different from a "special mortal human?" Define "right" and "good."

unruler wrote: For all we know, he could very well be some Eldar waseer who found a dusty old copy of "How to use mind tricks on mon-keigh for dummies" or some other warp tainted xenos.

Well, thats the issue: how can we know?

I guess we technically can't be 100% sure that the Emperor isn't secretly a xenos or whatever, but only in the same way you can't be 100% sure that I, Wyldhunt, lack the ability to levitate via telekinesis. Basically, we know enough about the Emperor for it to be difficult for such a twist to be true without it feeling a little out of left field.

Let's use the eldar psyker theory as a starting point. Let's even theorize that the Emprah is a shadowseer because their specialization in illussions, telepathy, and precognition would be pretty appropriate matches for the Big E. This theory starts to look pretty iffy the second we remember that the Emperor has been around anti-psychic phenomenon like the Sisters of Silence. Additionally, the Emperor has been in the presence of primarchs including the extremely psychic Magnus who has communicated with the Emperor psychically. Basically, an aeldari psyker seems unlikely because not being revealed by the Sisters, Magnus, etc. would require a staggering amount of psychic power that is well in excess of what shadowseers are usually shown to be capable of.

So okay. Probably not an eldar psyker. I'd go so far as to say probably not any xenos psyker for the same reasons as above. A xenos psyker hiding as the Emperor would require power and control over psychic powers that basically exceeds anything present in the setting to date. Psychic effects that powerful tend to be very noticable in the warp. We can also probably rule out daemons of the chaos gods being the Emperor. We have a rough idea of what a greater daemon is capable of, and theoretically Magnus is better at this warp stuff than most if not all of them.

So maybe something like a C'tan? God-like powers that can do pretty much anything. We know that the Deceiver can pull off one heck of an impersonation including inspiring a primarch-esque sense of awe in space marines (as seen in one of the Black Library novels). You could maybe even go so far as to say that giving the necrons knowledge of biotransferrence indicates they're capable of semi-magical science projects and that similar knowledge could have been used to create the primarchs. It's a hard theory to disprove because C'Tans' powers are vague and vast. However, I think Magnus is once again our wrench in the works here. Magnus really seems to indicate in A Thousand Sons that he spoke with the Emperor psychically. He describes exploring the warp together with his dad while he was still in the test tube. It's pretty clear that Magnus did experience the Emperor being explicitly psychic. And the thing is, the fluff around the C'tan seems to be really, really insistent that they're not warp entities using warp-based powers. So while the Deceiver could probably believably pull off any of the Emperor's stunts form the perspective of a non-psyker, I doubt he'd be able to trick Magnus into thinking he was astral projecting into the warp when he wasn't.



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@Wyldhunt

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

The greatest trick the C'tans/Deciever ever pulled was convincing the galaxy they can't do warp-stuff.

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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
[Diogenes]Define Human[/Diogenes]

No, seriously, define human.

I’m defined as human. There’s stuff I can do (wiggling ears, flaring nostrils, keen eye for detail) that other humans can’t. And there’s a whole smorgasbord of stuff other humans can do that I can’t.

Add psychic abilities into that, and the potential to twists someone else’s perception of me as I please?

Doesn’t stop The Emperor still being functionally human.

However, he has other attributes, such as functional immortality and near invulnerability which are so far removed from human norm?

Who knows.

All The Emperor’s gifts could be down to, I dunno, I’m not a genetic scientists, just a couple of rogue genes going live. But from my incredibly limited understanding of species? If The Emperor can still produce children with women? Then he’s close enough?


This is a fantastic take on the question. Hats off to you sir.

   
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Foxy Wildborne







 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
[Diogenes]Define Human[/Diogenes]

No, seriously, define human.

I’m defined as human. There’s stuff I can do (wiggling ears, flaring nostrils, keen eye for detail) that other humans can’t. And there’s a whole smorgasbord of stuff other humans can do that I can’t.

Add psychic abilities into that, and the potential to twists someone else’s perception of me as I please?

Doesn’t stop The Emperor still being functionally human.

However, he has other attributes, such as functional immortality and near invulnerability which are so far removed from human norm?

Who knows.

All The Emperor’s gifts could be down to, I dunno, I’m not a genetic scientists, just a couple of rogue genes going live. But from my incredibly limited understanding of species? If The Emperor can still produce children with women? Then he’s close enough?


Bu he can't drink milk.

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Nomeny wrote:
In the Great Work a C'tan describes the Emperor as a weapon.

It did indeed but you have to consider the C'tan's point of view. Most of the psychic races in the Galaxy were created by the Old Ones to be used as cannon-fodder against the C'tan and the Necrons. From the perspective, the Emperor probably looks like a big ol' doomsday nuke.

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As to whether The Emperor is divine? We need to look at it through the lens of in-universe divinity.

The Chaos Gods are of course revered as Gods, and are stupendously powerful. But, as they cannot manifest in real space? They are therefore categorically not omnipotent. It’s also distinctly arguable they don’t really create anything. Even their Daemons are described as sliver of their own consciousness given (sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent) independent existence. Does that truly count as an act of creation? I’d argue not, particularly as the Daemon, no matter how powerful, has no way to go against its Master’s wishes.

We can also with confidence declare The Emperor as an individual of really quite staggering potency. But again, not omnipotent - and we can strongly debate omnipresent and omniscient. Yet, we see miracles performed via Faith in The Emperor. And given such things still occur within the Pariah Nexus, we can again infer they’re not the result of warp craft. Indeed, strong faith in The Emperor appears to insulate people from the negative effects of the Pariah Nexus.

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Northumberland

Just a little added few thoughts from what MDG was saying about defining humans.

From my own take as an archaeologist, a lot of the work I do is about Prehistory. "Prehistory" is a massive, absurd array of time. For instance: the Lower Paleolithic is roughly 3 million years ago all the way to 300,000 years ago. And all of that centres around early tool use in early species of Homo. From there we go to the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper and then the Mesolithic and Neolithic.

This is a good quick example I found online without going into much detail showing the progression of knapped stone tool use.




In a time frame of about 1 million years, we see a lot of hominin species expanding and retracting in the spread from Africa until (more or less) we get three, Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus*. A lot of the earlier species certainly co habited the same spaces and Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis existed until at least 75kya and 25kya respectively. Homo sapiens didn't really arrive until around 300kya. All three used tools, created works of art and lived in societal groups. Although not certain, both of our other close species likely had some form of language. For definite, Homo sapiens and neanderthalensis certainly interbred in the 100 thousand years they cohabited the same areas.


Why am I bothering with typing all this? Well over a century of academic archaeology, poor Homo neanderthalensis has been much maligned. Still to this day, people say Neanderthals are stupid, slow, crag headed and dumb. But in fact, they had larger brain cases than ourselves, there is a lot of examples of their artwork and body modification and were apex predators. In fact they loved ochre and used in on themselves, their garments and their artworks. We see evidence for impressive burial practices, musical instruments The reason for them being so dismissed? Well, this is an unfortunate holdover to white supremacy and colonialism. This was just a part of 19th century, early 20th century thinking. Now, not to get too political, but essentially Homo sapiens must have been superior and everything else is a filthy savage. It's the same thinking of it was impossible for the pyramids to have been built by those Egyptians unless it was aliens or a bunch of caucasoid supermen doing it (this sounds like a joke but unfortunately wasn't). Now since the 1970s onwards, we've finally seen a big change in pushing for how intelligent they really were. In fact, they were no different from Homo sapiens. It took a long time for us to get that point, in fact even in the 80s and early 90s you still had academics refusing to believe that Neanderthals were making art and saying that that it must have been Homo sapiens using their caves at that brief moment in time.

This finally brings me to my point. What makes us human? Archaeologists have taken those things we closely associate with humanity, like ritual, empathy, music and art and looked for it in the archaeological remains of archaic hominids. And we find it in so many of them.

The Emperor is certainly "human" but that doesn't necessarily mean he is homo sapiens. A lot of 40k goes into detail concerning these points, with abhumans and the differences with humans that had evolved and changed throughout the Old Night. Space Marines themselves are so mutated by gene-enhancement that they are barely human, yet they still carry out human functions and ideals.

I like the way The Emperor is described in the Guy Hayley novels I have been reading, particularly in Cawl's Great Work. In it, the Emperor portrays himself in a myriad of forms but at his basic, perhaps "original" form, he is a simple, bland brown skinned man. Perhaps this is how he wants to portay himself when he is at his most "human".


*you are all allowed one smirk at Homo erectus

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 Karhedron wrote:
Nomeny wrote:
In the Great Work a C'tan describes the Emperor as a weapon.

It did indeed but you have to consider the C'tan's point of view. Most of the psychic races in the Galaxy were created by the Old Ones to be used as cannon-fodder against the C'tan and the Necrons. From the perspective, the Emperor probably looks like a big ol' doomsday nuke.


How do we know that the perpetuals weren’t created by the old ones? The Orks have clearly been designed to create occasional exceptional Orks to fulfil leadership roles and other specialties. Why would they make humans to just all be basically the same.
   
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 MinscS2 wrote:
@Wyldhunt

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

The greatest trick the C'tans/Deciever ever pulled was convincing the galaxy they can't do warp-stuff.

*Mind blown* :O


ATTENTION
. Psychic tests are unfluffy. Your longing for AV is understandable but misguided. Your chapter doesn't need a separate codex. Doctrines should go away. Being a "troop" means nothing. This has been a cranky service announcement. You may now resume your regularly scheduled arguing.
 
   
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mrFickle wrote:
 Karhedron wrote:
Nomeny wrote:
In the Great Work a C'tan describes the Emperor as a weapon.

It did indeed but you have to consider the C'tan's point of view. Most of the psychic races in the Galaxy were created by the Old Ones to be used as cannon-fodder against the C'tan and the Necrons. From the perspective, the Emperor probably looks like a big ol' doomsday nuke.


How do we know that the perpetuals weren’t created by the old ones? The Orks have clearly been designed to create occasional exceptional Orks to fulfil leadership roles and other specialties. Why would they make humans to just all be basically the same.


I’d go with “reasonable inference”.

The Old Ones certainly created The Eldar, and may have created the Orks (Krorks are not necessarily Orks after all. Names are just names)

But on Earth? They didn’t create our ancestor species. Oh no. My understanding is they simply kicked off the soup that would eventually lead to Humanity. Other than that, we weren’t a controlled evolution. So I’d argue they did not create the Perpetuals. But, their initial genetic tinkering/gobbing in the primordial soup may simply have created the potential of Perpetuals.

Example. Let’s say I create a hybrid plant. It’s been done before and is seemingly not that difficult. Look to Loganberries as evidence. Now. The plant i create, The Bunghole is of course my creation. But if I then leave it’s species entirely alone for millions of years? Can any of its subsequent evolutions and resulting traits be said to be my creations too?

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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As to whether The Emperor is divine? We need to look at it through the lens of in-universe divinity.

The Chaos Gods are of course revered as Gods, and are stupendously powerful. But, as they cannot manifest in real space? They are therefore categorically not omnipotent. It’s also distinctly arguable they don’t really create anything. Even their Daemons are described as sliver of their own consciousness given (sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent) independent existence. Does that truly count as an act of creation? I’d argue not, particularly as the Daemon, no matter how powerful, has no way to go against its Master’s wishes.

We can also with confidence declare The Emperor as an individual of really quite staggering potency. But again, not omnipotent - and we can strongly debate omnipresent and omniscient. Yet, we see miracles performed via Faith in The Emperor. And given such things still occur within the Pariah Nexus, we can again infer they’re not the result of warp craft. Indeed, strong faith in The Emperor appears to insulate people from the negative effects of the Pariah Nexus.

God I love 40K background!


GW has been inconsistent on SoB and their miracles. When Cadia fell and the pylon network was activated, it described how daemons faded away, but also the light of St. Celestine also faded, implying the two are both linked to the warp.

How I reconcile the two depictions is that faith and miracles whether from the Chaos gods or the Emperor are still warp based but they are less easily stopped, coming as they do from a "higher" power, compared to the warp manipulations of a mortal psyker. However they are not entirely immune. The faith of the SoB helped protect them from the will sapping effects of the Pariah Nexus but it was not indefinite and the effects of the Nexus still wore away at them.
   
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 lord_blackfang wrote:


Bu he can't drink milk.


Turns out the golden throne is just the Emperor's toilet and he's had a horrible case of the runs due to his lactose intolerance. Horus tricked him into drinking milk during the siege of terra...what a jerk
   
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The Emperor being technically unable to drink milk is my favourite bit of accidental 40k lore.
   
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Iracundus wrote:
 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As to whether The Emperor is divine? We need to look at it through the lens of in-universe divinity.

The Chaos Gods are of course revered as Gods, and are stupendously powerful. But, as they cannot manifest in real space? They are therefore categorically not omnipotent. It’s also distinctly arguable they don’t really create anything. Even their Daemons are described as sliver of their own consciousness given (sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent) independent existence. Does that truly count as an act of creation? I’d argue not, particularly as the Daemon, no matter how powerful, has no way to go against its Master’s wishes.

We can also with confidence declare The Emperor as an individual of really quite staggering potency. But again, not omnipotent - and we can strongly debate omnipresent and omniscient. Yet, we see miracles performed via Faith in The Emperor. And given such things still occur within the Pariah Nexus, we can again infer they’re not the result of warp craft. Indeed, strong faith in The Emperor appears to insulate people from the negative effects of the Pariah Nexus.

God I love 40K background!


GW has been inconsistent on SoB and their miracles. When Cadia fell and the pylon network was activated, it described how daemons faded away, but also the light of St. Celestine also faded, implying the two are both linked to the warp.

How I reconcile the two depictions is that faith and miracles whether from the Chaos gods or the Emperor are still warp based but they are less easily stopped, coming as they do from a "higher" power, compared to the warp manipulations of a mortal psyker. However they are not entirely immune. The faith of the SoB helped protect them from the will sapping effects of the Pariah Nexus but it was not indefinite and the effects of the Nexus still wore away at them.


We could argue Celestine is more a Daemon of The Emperor for sure - but that doesn’t by extension extend to Acts of Faith by mortals?

Sorry if it seems I’m splitting hairs to be a phallus. I’m splitting hairs because I find it makes for interesting conversation!

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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

We could argue Celestine is more a Daemon of The Emperor for sure - but that doesn’t by extension extend to Acts of Faith by mortals?

Sorry if it seems I’m splitting hairs to be a phallus. I’m splitting hairs because I find it makes for interesting conversation!

That's kind of my own headcanon on the matter. In another recent thread, I supported the idea that acts of faith utilize a different mechanism for manifesting than psychic powers do. I suggested this is similar to red paint making things faster for orks or eldar exarchs being able to punch/melt through ceramite with the burning hands exarch power. Basically, it seems like some clearly supernatural phenomenon that are probably warp-based (due to seeming to be connected to the thoughts and feelings of the mortals involved) manifest without using whatever mechanism causes us to roll psychic tests and take penalties from a culexus assassin.

Celestine is essentially a daemon prince and thus impacted as heavily by disconnection from the warp as that would imply. The acts of faith, on the other hand, use the no-psychic-test-involved mechanism and thus might be immune.


ATTENTION
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There is actual canon to support the claim of Humanity's faith in an object, or it's percieved divinity, is enough to shift the tides of the warp, thus making the object, into a rough interpretation of a God. Dumbed down: If enough people believe in something, it becomes true, whether or not it actually is. It's a real world maxim for the stupidity of humans, and I suspect it's a joke on the part of the authors of the book in question, that this thing that proves humanity is stupid, is literally what drives the flows of the warp. Human stupidity can be weaponized. Oh god, cheeto man really was the emperor....I get that meme now.
   
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FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
There is actual canon to support the claim of Humanity's faith in an object, or it's percieved divinity, is enough to shift the tides of the warp, thus making the object, into a rough interpretation of a God. Dumbed down: If enough people believe in something, it becomes true, whether or not it actually is. It's a real world maxim for the stupidity of humans, and I suspect it's a joke on the part of the authors of the book in question, that this thing that proves humanity is stupid, is literally what drives the flows of the warp. Human stupidity can be weaponized. Oh god, cheeto man really was the emperor....I get that meme now.


A lot of game systems and fiction use the idea of humanity's faith or belief reshaping reality and gods being fed/strengthened by faith, so I wouldn't call it a GW specific "joke".

In 40K though humanity's yearning to believe in something and the tendency to anthropomorphize if there is no single figure to worship suggests maybe Lorgar was right, in that humanity needed its faith to be shaped and directed rather than let it take its own wild course. For example, the Tau 4th Sphere Expansion has all but been confirmed by GW in the latest Codices to have encountered first daemons in the warp, coming through its human and other alien auxiliaries, and then a warp entity that resembled a human's conception of a Tau Ethereal and the Greater Good personified. This warp entity saved the 4th Sphere Expansion fleet and led them out of the warp safely, but its presence and image disgusted the Tau who saw this as a perversion of their ideal of the Greater Good.

Basically in 40K, if humans are not given something to believe in and their beliefs carefully groomed and shaped, they will still find something else to believe in and this may have unforeseen consequences. The 30K Imperial Truth, like the 40K Tau Greater Good, is just too abstract of an ideal for enough humans to believe in it as an ideal. The masses end up creating gods.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/15 21:04:37


 
   
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Morally-Flexible Malleus Hearing Whispers




No, it's a book, where a Farseer of Ulthwe literally states that a god is a manifestion in the Warp, caused by a large outpouring of Faith.

That's it. A God is just something with an incredible amount of faith behind it. He said, the emperor is a god, Gman is a god, and the Saint C is a god, essentially. The book kinda ends on a cliff hanger of Gman realizing that the Emperor is a capricious and selfish god, that doesn't really care about humanity. And what should be done about that.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut




 Gert wrote:
The Emperor being technically unable to drink milk is my favourite bit of accidental 40k lore.

I need some context for this
   
Made in de
Oozing Plague Marine Terminator





Spoiler:
 Olthannon wrote:
Just a little added few thoughts from what MDG was saying about defining humans.

From my own take as an archaeologist, a lot of the work I do is about Prehistory. "Prehistory" is a massive, absurd array of time. For instance: the Lower Paleolithic is roughly 3 million years ago all the way to 300,000 years ago. And all of that centres around early tool use in early species of Homo. From there we go to the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper and then the Mesolithic and Neolithic.

This is a good quick example I found online without going into much detail showing the progression of knapped stone tool use.




In a time frame of about 1 million years, we see a lot of hominin species expanding and retracting in the spread from Africa until (more or less) we get three, Homo sapiens, Homo neanderthalensis and Homo Erectus*. A lot of the earlier species certainly co habited the same spaces and Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis existed until at least 75kya and 25kya respectively. Homo sapiens didn't really arrive until around 300kya. All three used tools, created works of art and lived in societal groups. Although not certain, both of our other close species likely had some form of language. For definite, Homo sapiens and neanderthalensis certainly interbred in the 100 thousand years they cohabited the same areas.


Why am I bothering with typing all this? Well over a century of academic archaeology, poor Homo neanderthalensis has been much maligned. Still to this day, people say Neanderthals are stupid, slow, crag headed and dumb. But in fact, they had larger brain cases than ourselves, there is a lot of examples of their artwork and body modification and were apex predators. In fact they loved ochre and used in on themselves, their garments and their artworks. We see evidence for impressive burial practices, musical instruments The reason for them being so dismissed? Well, this is an unfortunate holdover to white supremacy and colonialism. This was just a part of 19th century, early 20th century thinking. Now, not to get too political, but essentially Homo sapiens must have been superior and everything else is a filthy savage. It's the same thinking of it was impossible for the pyramids to have been built by those Egyptians unless it was aliens or a bunch of caucasoid supermen doing it (this sounds like a joke but unfortunately wasn't). Now since the 1970s onwards, we've finally seen a big change in pushing for how intelligent they really were. In fact, they were no different from Homo sapiens. It took a long time for us to get that point, in fact even in the 80s and early 90s you still had academics refusing to believe that Neanderthals were making art and saying that that it must have been Homo sapiens using their caves at that brief moment in time.

This finally brings me to my point. What makes us human? Archaeologists have taken those things we closely associate with humanity, like ritual, empathy, music and art and looked for it in the archaeological remains of archaic hominids. And we find it in so many of them.

The Emperor is certainly "human" but that doesn't necessarily mean he is homo sapiens. A lot of 40k goes into detail concerning these points, with abhumans and the differences with humans that had evolved and changed throughout the Old Night. Space Marines themselves are so mutated by gene-enhancement that they are barely human, yet they still carry out human functions and ideals.

I like the way The Emperor is described in the Guy Hayley novels I have been reading, particularly in Cawl's Great Work. In it, the Emperor portrays himself in a myriad of forms but at his basic, perhaps "original" form, he is a simple, bland brown skinned man. Perhaps this is how he wants to portay himself when he is at his most "human".


*you are all allowed one smirk at Homo erectus


I'm just here to say that this is quality content and it's unfortunate nobody reacted to this. Thank you!
   
Made in gb
Master Engineer with a Brace of Pistols





Northumberland

EviscerationPlague wrote:
 Gert wrote:
The Emperor being technically unable to drink milk is my favourite bit of accidental 40k lore.

I need some context for this


It's a good gag and only probably true. Basically the genome within certain populations evolved rapidly to allow us to continue to be lactose tolerant after childhood. In a lot of the world it never occurred. So a lot of Asian, African and South American populations are mainly lactose intolerant. Now based on current evidence the genome started to come into being around 10,000 years ago, started to spread rapidly a few thousand years after, but there was a paper which came out years ago that said 6,000 years ago. The Emperor is meant to have been "born" 8,000 years ago in Anatolia and thus might not have been able to drink milk!

Essentially it seems to have evolved in colder climes where milk stays like milk for a bit longer, whereas in warmer parts of the world milk turns into yoghurt which has less lactase in it. Interestingly, as soon as there is evidence for milk consumption in humans, you get evidence for cheese almost at the same time.


However, given that humanity regressed into some weird state after all the atomic war on Earth, who knows what they can and can't drink. I seem to recall that there's a whole bit where the Emperor basically regenerates the entire human population of Terra so that they are back to "normal" after the Unification War.


@sgt. Cortez thanks!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/06/16 07:48:31


One and a half feet in the hobby


My Painting Log of various minis:
# Olthannon's Oscillating Orchard of Opportunity #

 
   
 
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