Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

10s of thousands of Psykers are killed every day to keep him alive. Billions die all the time to protect him. Does he even care, about that or those people at all?! Or is He just a monster without empathy or feelings? If He does care, why does He allow it?! He's just a monster. In some ways he's worse then the Dark Elves, and Tyranids, and Ruinous Powers and Orks! The Emperor should just drop dead! For the Good of Everyone!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
He's just a unfeeling, inhuman monster. I bet he enjoys how thousands of Psykers are killed everyday to keep him alive! I bet that was his goal! He deserves to be killed 1 million times over! "Imperial Truth" - Hypocrite! Monster, Mass Murderer! The Emperor should look himself in the Mirror and say what he thinks!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Maybe the Reason the Golden Throne is failing, is because the Emperor deep down wants to die!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
10,000 Psykers a Day are killed to keep the Emperor alive! If you have a conscience, imagine how that feels! That is Absolute Torture! The "Emperor" is a Prisoner!

Of course He cares. Psykers are tasty!

Because its not just 'to keep him alive' its 'to keep everyone alive'.

The Emperor is directly responsible for three things:


The astronomican - I.e. humanities ability to navigate the stars galaxy-wide

Soulbinding astropaths - I.e. humanities interstellar communications

Holding closed the busted imperial Web way gate - stopping daemons eating terra and maybe the whole solar system.

So it doesn't necessarily matter hoe he feels about it: either he keeps going at basically any cost or he's dooming humanity to extinction from any of the various extinction level threats out there.

He wanted to be put on the Throne and its his entire life goal to get humanity as the dominant power in the galaxy. Its just taken a bit longer than expected.

This question presupposes that a rotting carcass on life support being used as a battery for a giant psychic lighthouse actually has "feelings" on anything.

Well. Yes, I expect he does care. But it’s a numbers game on a truly vast scale.

Sure, the daily consumption of Psykers isn’t a pleasant act. But, not only do they apparently sustain The Emperor, but they’re a threat to the Imperium themselves, however unwitting due to possession and even being turned into a squishy warp rift,

The untold numbers of IG deaths in a given day aren’t exactly ideal either.

But….what’s the alternative here? What he does, he does for the species. No Emperor, and it’s straight back to the Horrors of Old Night for everyone. What care for a few million, when it’s to preserve untold trillions?

The scene in Godblight where it shows what happened when Guilliman entered the throne room made the Emperor look like Tzeentch but with more gold. He's definitely conscious and does intervene in human affairs, but at least at the moment, if he revealed his full form to most people, they would go utterly mad.

The emperor has never cared about any one individual human, or any whole planet of humans. But he cares about achieving his vision of human domination of the galaxy. Doesn’t matter how many humans die to
Achieve that

1000 Psychers perish each day, drained of life as they dedicate their psychic might to help the Emperor power the Golden Throne and keep the Light of the Astronomicon burning in the darkness of The Warp.

That's 365,000 a year.
That's 36.5 Million a century.

What a paltry price that is to pay to shield the untold Trillions of Humanity in the Galaxy from a Second Coming of Old Night.

You ask does the Emperor care?

He can't afford to care. There is too much life at stake to abandon his post in the name of compassion for those who sacrifice their lives in service to Humanity.

Assumption: a million human colonies with an average population of 100 million each. Lowball, I know.

Assumption: the average annual death rate per year is 1%. Probably a lot higher in the IoM, but that's around the death rate in a modern developed nation.

So out of 100 trillion human souls, a trillion die every year.

That's 32000 deaths every second.

The equivalent number to those thousand psykers die every 1/30th of a second, a slow-ish snap of a camera shutter. Literally less than the blink of an eye.

If either of those assumptions are higher, 1000 human deaths happen even faster.

Yeah, I don't get complaining about psykers fed to the throne. Feels like grasping at straws by people desperate to show Imperium is bad, when there are zillion better examples of it.

For one, the psykers used in this way are the 'bad' ones. Psykers with warped talent, who can't control their powers, or are simply mad. Prime material for gate daemons use to invade a planet, so they would be simply put down as catastrophic risk in waiting even if there was no throne by virtually any sane civilization.

But more importantly, they both serve a vital, civilization keeping purpose, and the sacrifice is frankly minimal. Imagine a truck driver dying in a collision in 2022. One person on Earth. That is far bigger life loss, percentage wise, for less important purpose, yet you would be utterly mad if you proposed to ban all trucking on the entire planet because one driver might die - or hell, because of hundreds of thousands of drivers dying in reality each year. Yet people pretending it's some horrible 'crime' think their vastly more extremist stance is somehow in any way justified...

I find the Emperors motivation fascinating. People tend to be hung up on the primarchs but really, they where only active for like 300 years. The Emperor is at least 80.000 years old (differs a bit depending on source). So that’s 79.700 years being primarch less lol. He’s had a multitude of actual biological offspring in that time. And with all his attachments what he chooses to do is put humanity as a whole first. Although he’s definetly not a good guy with all the xeno genociding going on.

Although honestly we know very little about him prior to the unification of terra. He’s probably been all over the galaxy given that it was populated by humans before the warp storms lifted on terra.

Don’t get me wrong. The Emperor isn’t therefore a Good Entity.

At the end of the day, he’s another subscriber to the inherently problematic dogma of Manifest Destiny.

Sure, he doesn’t particularly focus on something within mankind. But it still targets perfectly sentient species for eradication for the crime of Not Being Human.

Great if you happen to be human. Kind of. As he’ll still absolutely squander your life and freedoms in pursuit of an insane goal. Bloody awful if you happen to be Other.

To be fair, the new books about Bobby G suggest that he does in fact, NOT care. About Humanity as a whole. He's kinda a heretic inquisitor who woke up one day to realize he's become the thing he set out to stop. He's a literal god who toys with humanity through the warp. He doesn't even view his sons as people, but tools to be used for his own selfish designs. Which is why they have the whole scene with the Farseer. To determine If he is infact a god. And Bobby ends the series believing in the divinity of the Emperor, but questioning if he needs to be stopped.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
This question presupposes that a rotting carcass on life support being used as a battery for a giant psychic lighthouse actually has "feelings" on anything.

I love the blatant Chaos answer here lol.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
To be fair, the new books about Bobby G suggest that he does in fact, NOT care.

I see this floating around and I always have to question the hypocrisy of it. I mean could we honestly say that big G cares? About all his space marines who are technically his biological offspring (in the same way the Emperor is his father)? We see a lot of astartes die with big G present and at most he appears mildly inconvenienced. Mostly just in a practical way as in “how do I reach my objective with my forces diminished?” Which is exactly how the Emperor appears to act as well. Big G should get off his high horse.

The Emperor works in mysterious ways...

 Nerak wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
To be fair, the new books about Bobby G suggest that he does in fact, NOT care.

I see this floating around and I always have to question the hypocrisy of it. I mean could we honestly say that big G cares? About all his space marines who are technically his biological offspring (in the same way the Emperor is his father)? We see a lot of astartes die with big G present and at most he appears mildly inconvenienced. Mostly just in a practical way as in “how do I reach my objective with my forces diminished?” Which is exactly how the Emperor appears to act as well. Big G should get off his high horse.

I guess his trepidation, if you want to call it that, isn't about being on a high horse, it's about the Emperor becoming the very thing he created the primarchs to defeat. A Warp based god. And everything that the Astartes and Gman know about warp entities, is that they are capricious, unfeeling, monstrous, and downright evil. Hence the final paragraph of the book in question, where Gman basically says, ok, I accept the Emperor is a god. Now the question is, what kind of god is he, and do we need to oppose him? Because the biggest lie in 40k (That everyone parrots but no one actually believes) is that the Emperor loves humanity. He doesn't. Think about it like a chess match. Do you LOVE your king piece? Or your Queen? How about your pawns? Likely not. They are all pieces on a board to him, but they all are forced to literally love him on threat of death or worse.

So no, the Emperor does not care about you, unless you are able to help him achieve his ultimate goal.

Probably he genuinely cared about humanity once, presumably he guided humans to the DAOT when humans had a galaxy wide civilisation without all the horror and all the science to make it nice

Then he just got fed up with the setbacks became to powerful and his head went up his arse

"Was this way once LONG ago" is the literal staple of every former hero in 40k. Once battled a warboss and tore off his arm. Now he's just an old dying husk of a man.

Bobby G was the Emperor's son, now he's just a tool of destruction, a demi-god Hercules to the Ultimate God Zeus. Real Greek similarities there.

Sanguinus was the favorite son of the Emperor, but now he's just a guy in a suit of golden armor that sometimes talks to Dante.

Horus was the best of the Primarchs, now he's been deleted from existence.

The Imperium is a wide glimpse of a failed aspiration, a great conglomeration of what ifs, might have beens, and coulda woulda shouldas.

The Emperor is to put it in today's parlance, Nick Fury. Had an idea to save humanity by building a team. Found out the entire structure he's built in 50+ years was actually a secret Nazi project to destroy humanity. Now Captain America is Dante, Bobby G is Hawk Eye, and Hulk is Vulkan. The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

If that were the case then surely the Chaos Gods would have already fallen?

The God-Emperor doesn’t care about human lives IMO. He cares about the continuation of the species. Or he did anyway; who knows what motivates his remnants?

 Denny wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

If that were the case then surely the Chaos Gods would have already fallen?

The God-Emperor doesn’t care about human lives IMO. He cares about the continuation of the species. Or he did anyway; who knows what motivates his remnants?

This feeds into really quite deep topics.

For instance, whilst the Chaos Gods are formed of quite natural emotions? Their presence in The Warp unbalances it, ensuring plenty of associated emotions for them and their Daemons to feast on, because they can influence Real Space.

But Real Space also influences The Warp, hence The Nightbringer giving species whole and nascent a sense of mortality is believed to be the main upsetting factor.

The Emperor is quite possibly a strong enough soul to survive transition and become a Warp Entity in His own right. But he’s kind of one foot in, one foot out. I think it’s entirely possible that whilst he never wanted to become a God, it’s happened anyway via the worship of untold trillions over 10,000 years. And of course, Psykers are needed to maintain the Astronomicon. That isn’t inherently a sacrifice, just a cost. But rote becomes tradition. Tradition becomes orthodoxy. Orthodoxy becomes ritual, and at that point an unavoidable cost becomes a Ritualised Sacrifice - with all that seems to entail.

Perhaps his straddling the point of life and death acts as a balance, a way for Him to retain some semblance of control whilst his Warp self is moulded and changed by the worship and demands of the Imperial Faith.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

That comparison is manifestly unfair... to Squirrel Girl.

 Dysartes wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

That comparison is manifestly unfair... to Squirrel Girl.

To be fair to those involved, I was trying to say the Primaris Project is a complete Rules Break, that no one asked for, and is very wonky and badly explained, but seemingly over powered. So, Squirrel Girl. A wall breaking "hero" that has badly defined and wonky superpowers. So is also feared by people like Wolverine, who in this case is Feadyx (Spelling) Grandmaster of Assassins. But only because she single handidly beat up Thanos.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Denny wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

If that were the case then surely the Chaos Gods would have already fallen?

The God-Emperor doesn’t care about human lives IMO. He cares about the continuation of the species. Or he did anyway; who knows what motivates his remnants?

This feeds into really quite deep topics.

For instance, whilst the Chaos Gods are formed of quite natural emotions? Their presence in The Warp unbalances it, ensuring plenty of associated emotions for them and their Daemons to feast on, because they can influence Real Space.

But Real Space also influences The Warp, hence The Nightbringer giving species whole and nascent a sense of mortality is believed to be the main upsetting factor.

The Emperor is quite possibly a strong enough soul to survive transition and become a Warp Entity in His own right. But he’s kind of one foot in, one foot out. I think it’s entirely possible that whilst he never wanted to become a God, it’s happened anyway via the worship of untold trillions over 10,000 years. And of course, Psykers are needed to maintain the Astronomicon. That isn’t inherently a sacrifice, just a cost. But rote becomes tradition. Tradition becomes orthodoxy. Orthodoxy becomes ritual, and at that point an unavoidable cost becomes a Ritualised Sacrifice - with all that seems to entail.

Perhaps his straddling the point of life and death acts as a balance, a way for Him to retain some semblance of control whilst his Warp self is moulded and changed by the worship and demands of the Imperial Faith.

Perhaps he's on the cusp of becoming a warp entity and is fighting to resist that at every turn and the resulting strain of that is that he can't repair his living body. So he's stuck between the two states, stuck in place, trapped and unable to move for 10thousand years whilst all he built falls more and more toward what he wanted to avoid; whilst the lure and prayer offered to him grows and grows. He is a corpse on a throne in both reality and the warp.

We know that Sisters of Battle seem to get some magical reward for their prayer and that implies some demonic/warp entity element taking place.

Yeah. I mean, I may be way off the money on this one. But I think it’s a more interesting stage of affairs than “Da Emprah Always Wanted To Be A Gurd”.

Just….reluctant deity, with associated powers is such an interesting thing to explore.

My view on this is heavily influenced by Pratchett, where Faith Defines Form of course. And I don’t think that’s entirely embraced by 40K.

I’ll just have to….*bites knuckle* read my Realms of Chaos books. Again.

Oh such hardship I endure to bring my Dear Dakkanauts interesting things to discuss.

Darn it stop trying to shill your loot group via subtle mentions of your Realms of Chaos books and Rogue Trader stuff that some of us still need to pick up one day

Silly you!

You know full well my shameless plugs are about as subtle as a Face Eater Squig to the..erm…Face.

But we are here to help! Even if another Dakkanaut thinks I’m a bunghole*, or think that I think they’re the bunghole**, Loot Comes First.

*A fair cop

**Even if I do, Loot Comes First.

Further thoughts on Reluctant God.

Yes The Emperor is ensconced upon the Golden Throne. And that’s the sole reason Psykers are sacrificed to Him - but remember my earlier point about necessary cost becoming ritual sacrifice over time.

But we know that position was intended for Magnus - not The Emperor.

Hence I don’t think he ever intended to become a God.

My take on The Imperial Truth however is that the intention was to move mankind away from general belief in the supernatural. Sure you can’t deny Things Live In The Warp. But, overtime, you could get the general population to regard them simply as esoteric Xenos, and not to be treated with.

That feeds into my opinion about why Chaos had little if any foothold during The Golden Age of Mankind. I mean, we used The Warp, and spread far and wide. Yet there’s little to no evidence of worship, at least until it all came crashing down and survivors turned to superstition instead of science, either by desperation or design. That could have been regained. Not quickly. Not easily. But regained all the same.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
The Primaris Project is Squirrel Girl.

That comparison is manifestly unfair... to Squirrel Girl.

To be fair to those involved, I was trying to say the Primaris Project is a complete Rules Break, that no one asked for, and is very wonky and badly explained, but seemingly over powered. So, Squirrel Girl. A wall breaking "hero" that has badly defined and wonky superpowers. So is also feared by people like Wolverine, who in this case is Feadyx (Spelling) Grandmaster of Assassins. But only because she single handidly beat up Thanos.

Deadpool fans and Squirrel Girl fans are just a couple of many reasons to detest the Marvel fan base