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Someone mentioned recently that there is canon precedent for the Dark Emperor of the Stardust Empire being a brother of the Emperor. I find it very unlikely that there is fluff that justifies the Emperor having a brother, and that alone would not bring canon consistency to the rest of the Stardust Empire, but I am wondering if there actually is any canon behind the idea of the Emperor having a brother.

[EDIT]

BTW, I did not write about the Stardust Empire. I did however write fluff about purging it and nearly tabled it in several games for the campaign.

Absolutely not. The Emperor was a one-off creation by the amalgamation of a bunch of Shaman souls. while it's conceivable that some of the souls decided they would go off on their own and form their own gestalt consciousness, there is absolutely nothing in the fluff that even remotely hints at such a possibility.

Given that ALL of the great shamans got together to sacrifice themselves so that their essence could go into ONE pure being - I seriously doubt he has a brother (even a "Twins" style brother who only got the crap bits) so precedent or otherwise, I'd say "NO".

Some fanwank fluff makes me WANT to read CS Goto instead. At least there I know the stupidity and lameness has an end.

Omegus wrote:Absolutely not. The Emperor was a one-off creation by the amalgamation of a bunch of Shaman souls. while it's conceivable that some of the souls decided they would go off on their own and form their own gestalt consciousness, there is absolutely nothing in the fluff that even remotely hints at such a possibility.

I didn't really think so either. He did say it was very old splinter fluff that was published by someone associated with Games Workshop or something like that. He also reads the Wikia Warhammer 40,000 Wiki, which is basically fanfiction and defends it by saying it's very well written and extensive; doesn't see the reason it's extensive because people are making it up.

That Stardust Empire website confuses me, as it seems to have all of the races working in concert to defend it, including Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Orks and Eldar all working side-by-side in the same squads (wtf?), while Tyranids patrol the outskirts (double wtf)??

I would ignore anything and everything this person says. It was never written by anyone anywhere, and it's all made up. "old splinter published by someone who knew a guy who knew a guy who was dating this other guy's sister who had a friend"

chromedog wrote:Given that ALL of the great shamans got together to sacrifice themselves so that their essence could go into ONE pure being - I seriously doubt he has a brother (even a "Twins" style brother who only got the crap bits) so precedent or otherwise, I'd say "NO".

Some fanwank fluff makes me WANT to read CS Goto instead. At least there I know the stupidity and lameness has an end.

I don't agree with what this guy was writing. I started fluff and a campaign where the Sturmkrieg and Volianvan sectors go to ROFLstomp the Stardust Empire. I, on suggestions from Dakka users also, wrote in that the Dark Emperor is just an impostor claiming to be a brother of the Emperor, and that we're going in to end the heresy.

The main trouble with purging the Stardust Empire short of purging it IRL by deleting all the articles is that the Dark Emperor (the user) keeps suddenly writing stories where we surrender and allow the Stardust Emperor to live in peace.

This is also after games where I come close to tabeling him (before he calls it- a "draw" ), often without losing a single model.

Wait whaaat???Like Anti-emperor:-)

He might have had a brother. He was born to a normal human family around 8,000 BC. He probably had lots of siblings.

Of course, none of them would have any of his abilities. They would just be normal humans.

Omegus wrote:That Stardust Empire website confuses me, as it seems to have all of the races working in concert to defend it, including Space Marines, Chaos Marines, Orks and Eldar all working side-by-side in the same squads (wtf?), while Tyranids patrol the outskirts (double wtf)??

That... I've never understood.

He goes on at length IRL explaining it, and justifying why it works; he says that people eventually understand how it works, but I imagine they just say that so he stops.

Personally, I think it's just designed for the table top; I think he writes it so that he can include every race in his army. His table top army is apparently very confusing, with the units represented by models from many different Space Marine armies.

Omegus wrote:I would ignore anything and everything this person says. It was never written by anyone anywhere, and it's all made up. "old splinter published by someone who knew a guy who knew a guy who was dating this other guy's sister who had a friend"

I took a quick peek at the link and the OP should be ashamed for even making this topic. I've read better written stories by five year olds. In no way should this theory be lent credence if that is all that is backing it up.

DarthMarko wrote:Wait whaaat???Like Anti-emperor:-)

I don't understand where the name comes from.

He says that it's supposed to be him in the game. That would probably explain his wife "Fatima."


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Spartan089 wrote:I took a quick peek at the link and the OP should be ashamed for even making this topic. I've read better written stories by five year olds. In no way should this theory be lent credence if that is all that is backing it up.

That's not my story BTW. I am not defending the Stardust Empire. I am slighly interested in seeing if people have advice I can give the writer to make it fit better, but that's pretty much a lost cause.

Didn't anyone else get the feeling from know no fear that once apon a time the emperor had some hugely powerful mates who used to run around with him? Can't remember names but that guy who used the sacraficial knife to open a hole in reality and the guy who talked to him. No brother though

paulyf wrote:Didn't anyone else get the feeling from know no fear that once apon a time the emperor had some hugely powerful mates who used to run around with him? Can't remember names but that guy who used the sacraficial knife to open a hole in reality and the guy who talked to him. No brother though

There were the Sensei. The Emperor's biological children(born before he began the Great Crusade)

38,000 years worth of descendents.

They are immortal and ageless humans that have psychic abilities, but they are invisible to warp entities and totally immune to other psykers. They draw power without danger and psykers cannot detect or effect them. Including the Emperor himself.

Currently, they are hunted by the Inquisition because they are actively sabotaging the Imperium. They intensely anti-authority(for whatever reason)

Grey Templar wrote: They intensely anti-authority(for whatever reason)

I assume you've never met any teenagers?

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

DarthMarko wrote:Wait whaaat???Like Anti-emperor:-)

I don't understand where the name comes from.

He says that it's supposed to be him in the game. That would probably explain his wife "Fatima."


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Spartan089 wrote:I took a quick peek at the link and the OP should be ashamed for even making this topic. I've read better written stories by five year olds. In no way should this theory be lent credence if that is all that is backing it up.

That's not my story BTW. I am not defending the Stardust Empire. I am slighly interested in seeing if people have advice I can give the writer to make it fit better, but that's pretty much a lost cause.

I'm inclining to certain Christian theory....just jesting ofc

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:He also reads the Wikia Warhammer 40,000 Wiki, which is basically fanfiction and defends it by saying it's very well written and extensive; doesn't see the reason it's extensive because people are making it up.

For good or for bad, that's how the entire franchise works. There's no real difference between, say, a BL novel or such fanfiction. Well, apart from the latter being available for free.

Never heard of the Emperor having a brother in any of the licensed material, though. I think it would be possible to write a story like that (perhaps using Chaos and the Warp), but obviously one would have to be rather careful how to explain that, if he wants people to buy into it. From how it is presented in this thread, it sadly doesn't sound as if the author of the linked material did exercise the necessary amount of caution and autocriticism to focus his creativity into less ... queer channels.

An idea off the top of my head:
At some point during the Great Crusade, Chaos attempts to displace the Emperor like they did it with the Primarchs, but as the Emperor is able to defend himself the ritual goes awry and Tzeentch instead creates a "mirror image" of the Emperor, who is then imprisoned within the Warp but manages to break free many millennia later. Since this mirror image is but a shade of the original Emps and has been tortured by the gods for quite some time, he is much weaker than the original and cannot even remember much of his past. Not exactly a brother, but could work as a "Dark Emperor", especially given that the time in the Warp would serve as an explanation for how his character was twisted (assuming the cliché'd "Dark" prefix hints at something evil).
Alternatively, it was a cloned body of the Emperor as a byproduct of his genetical engineering program, a "vessel" that He wanted to keep as backup if He ever gets seriously injured. The irony obviously being that Chaos still scores a relative "win" in this scenario as they manage to prevent the Emperor from resurrecting, so that the Imperium instead has to improvise with the Golden Throne since the clone was stolen.
If it absolutely has to be a "true" brother, perhaps this could be done with a real human sibling that was spirited away many, many millennia in humanity's distant past, using the very same ritual as above. Perhaps the Emperor "deflected" the kidnapping attempt by rerouting it towards that long-dead natural brother, using the bond between the two as an ersatz-anchor for the spell.

It's all a bit zany, but I suppose you have to pull stuff like this in order to explain it in any way.

Emperor was born to mortal parents in Central Anatolia in the 8th Millennium B.C.. I imagine he had normal brothers and sisters as well, but they died mortal as like his parents they lacked his gift.

As for the Sensei, they more or less have been deleted from fluff. Expect to never hear of them again. Stuff about them on 40k wiki is mostly fanfiction, a problem that wikipedia in general has.

He was supposed to have siblings...but they were all mortal.

Lynata wrote:

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:He also reads the Wikia Warhammer 40,000 Wiki, which is basically fanfiction and defends it by saying it's very well written and extensive; doesn't see the reason it's extensive because people are making it up.

For good or for bad, that's how the entire franchise works. There's no real difference between, say, a BL novel or such fanfiction. Well, apart from the latter being available for free.

Never heard of the Emperor having a brother in any of the licensed material, though. I think it would be possible to write a story like that (perhaps using Chaos and the Warp), but obviously one would have to be rather careful how to explain that, if he wants people to buy into it. From how it is presented in this thread, it sadly doesn't sound as if the author of the linked material did exercise the necessary amount of caution and autocriticism to focus his creativity into less ... queer channels.

An idea off the top of my head:
At some point during the Great Crusade, Chaos attempts to displace the Emperor like they did it with the Primarchs, but as the Emperor is able to defend himself the ritual goes awry and Tzeentch instead creates a "mirror image" of the Emperor, who is then imprisoned within the Warp but manages to break free many millennia later. Since this mirror image is but a shade of the original Emps and has been tortured by the gods for quite some time, he is much weaker than the original and cannot even remember much of his past. Not exactly a brother, but could work as a "Dark Emperor", especially given that the time in the Warp would serve as an explanation for how his character was twisted (assuming the cliché'd "Dark" prefix hints at something evil).
Alternatively, it was a cloned body of the Emperor as a byproduct of his genetical engineering program, a "vessel" that He wanted to keep as backup if He ever gets seriously injured. The irony obviously being that Chaos still scores a relative "win" in this scenario as they manage to prevent the Emperor from resurrecting, so that the Imperium instead has to improvise with the Golden Throne since the clone was stolen.
If it absolutely has to be a "true" brother, perhaps this could be done with a real human sibling that was spirited away many, many millennia in humanity's distant past, using the very same ritual as above. Perhaps the Emperor "deflected" the kidnapping attempt by rerouting it towards that long-dead natural brother, using the bond between the two as an ersatz-anchor for the spell.

It's all a bit zany, but I suppose you have to pull stuff like this in order to explain it in any way.

Those sound like good ideas, though it would be hard to fully integrate the rest of the Stardust Empire. That won't be easy, especially with the whole thing about intigrating all the races into a single Empire; that and his 14 chapters that all the races are a part of... and the two Chaos legions.

I'll let him know about those ideas. Unfortunately, I'm not sure he really understands how far out some of his stuff is, and how some elements of it can never really ever be reconciled with the canon.

I'm going to try to have him go at the angle that the Imperium maybe just though of the Stardust Empire as a sector for a long time, didn't see all the xenos, and wasn't aware of the "Dark Emperor" who was leading it and posing as a brother of the Emperor. Come to think of it, I'm afraid that Dark Emperor (the user) is going to insist on being a full brother of the Emperor. I'm not quite sure why. He does get some strong ideas though.


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On the subject of canon and fan fiction, I think it's worth making the distinction. Ideally, fanfiction could be put in with canon, as it's all the same story and expanding the universe, but the fact that so many people write badly and sometimes blatantly contradict canon means that can't really happen.

The man who would become the God-Emperor either has been an immortal alive since 8000 BC, and, using various guises and powers, appears throughout human history as some sort of legendary figure or someone taking part in events of major historical significance, or is constantly reincarnated as one who does such things. Eventually, all of Old Earth's most powerful shamans (psykers, of course) committed ritual suicide so that he could be born/incarnated as his most-recent, mega-powerful form that ended the Techno-Barbarian Wars on Terra, united the Imperium, and began the Great Crusade.

... history of the God-Emperor has changed several times throughout the various editions. The Sensei go back quite a ways, and are the children of the God-Emperor from throughout his history, all of whom are immortal and yet somehow being hunted and exterminated by the Inquisition. Not entirely sure how that is supposed to work.

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:Unfortunately, I'm not sure he really understands how far out some of his stuff is, and how some elements of it can never really ever be reconciled with the canon.

I fear so, too. Myself, I think I would actually avoid dealing with such cases at all as they seem like a lost cause. Kudos for your perseverance and patience, tho!

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:On the subject of canon and fan fiction, I think it's worth making the distinction. Ideally, fanfiction could be put in with canon, as it's all the same story and expanding the universe, but the fact that so many people write badly and sometimes blatantly contradict canon means that can't really happen.

Well, the same can be said about all the stuff that Black Library and FFG are putting out.

Aside from the bad writing. I agree that it's probably very hard to find fanfiction that is able to keep up with the best of licensed publications, qualitywise. Consistency between source origins, however, has unfortunately never been a big thing in this franchise, regardless where you look.

Harriticus wrote:Emperor was born to mortal parents in Central Anatolia in the 8th Millennium B.C.. I imagine he had normal brothers and sisters as well, but they died mortal as like his parents they lacked his gift.

As for the Sensei, they more or less have been deleted from fluff. Expect to never hear of them again. Stuff about them on 40k wiki is mostly fanfiction, a problem that wikipedia in general has.

The Sensei havn't been deleted from the fluff. They are still a canon part of the backstory. GW just hasn't touched on the subject in forever(cause it doesn't sell models)

I'm a firm believer in the fact that the Emperor would have had siblings, enough so that I've convinced myself that Malcador was probably His brother. Many people seem to disagree, but we have no real 'canon' here, so it's up for debate.
What we do know, as has been mentioned above, is that right now, 2012, the Emperor is 10,000 years old, around 8000BC, there wasn't really any contraception, lots of people would live in large family groups, so it may be safe to assume that He did have mortal siblings. It could be like the whole Jesus Christ thing, so much evidence to say that he did have siblings (Even some pointing to Judas as his actual brother), yet so much covered up in 2000 years to turn him into a divine being. Imagine how much could be covered up in almost 50,000 years from birth.
The real answer is that, whilst we can speculate, and that both sides of the argument will continue to raise valid points, we simply do not, and cannot know.

No, Malcador cannot be his Brother.

All human psykers at the time of the Emperor's birth were part of the Emperor himself.

It took over 20,000 years for the human race to develop psykers again(canon fact) and since Malcador is a Psyker he cannot be that old.


And yes, Jesus had mortal siblings, as in the children of Mary and Joseph. Doesn't change that he was the son of God.

Harriticus wrote:Emperor was born to mortal parents in Central Anatolia in the 8th Millennium B.C.

Where is this written?

The Emperor did not have a brother, as he vas born via the sacrifice of 8 of Earth's most powerful psykers.

8?

More like thousands. Where did you pull 8 out of?

Sir Samuel Buca wrote:I'm a firm believer in the fact that the Emperor would have had siblings, enough so that I've convinced myself that Malcador was probably His brother. Many people seem to disagree, but we have no real 'canon' here, so it's up for debate.
What we do know, as has been mentioned above, is that right now, 2012, the Emperor is 10,000 years old, around 8000BC, there wasn't really any contraception, lots of people would live in large family groups, so it may be safe to assume that He did have mortal siblings. It could be like the whole Jesus Christ thing, so much evidence to say that he did have siblings (Even some pointing to Judas as his actual brother), yet so much covered up in 2000 years to turn him into a divine being. Imagine how much could be covered up in almost 50,000 years from birth.
The real answer is that, whilst we can speculate, and that both sides of the argument will continue to raise valid points, we simply do not, and cannot know.

Unfortunately for your arguments, the principle of parsimony is that where we do not know, we do not suppose more than is necessary to sustain the facts we do know. There is no reason to assume that the Emperor had a brother, much less to assume that even if he did, said brother(s) didn't just die 48,000 years before the present day of the Warhammer 40,000 setting, let alone that Malcador was his brother.

I'd be cautious too in using speculations about Jesus as a parallel, since they're every bit as specious; there is no contemporary archaeological or documentary evidence to suggest Jesus existed, much less that anything supernatural could be attributed to him, and there are arguably less assumption-laden explanations which treat the Jesus of the gospels as an entirely mythical figure. Respectable academic historians do not concern themselves with questions about the details of Jesus' life, since there is simply no evidence to discuss; that a profitable niche in publishing exists is yet further evidence of human credulity.

DeffDred wrote:

Harriticus wrote:Emperor was born to mortal parents in Central Anatolia in the 8th Millennium B.C.

Where is this written?

Realm of Chaos books.

well since duality seems a common theme in 40K, why not

also a child doesn't just appear, there had to be a woman to carry it, no? so any other child she may have had would then be his brother or sister


and he has his own kids, so why not siblings?