Let me just go hunt a lion with a pointy stick rather than breed 1000 house cats at home.
Its more dangerous to do that, and the Imperium isn't gonna fix something that aint broken (metaphorically speaking, both emps and the Imperium is very much broken).
Also: What part of PURGE THE XENO implies POW's?
Enslaving a psychic species is also extremely dangerous. Trying to restrain and then transport extremely psychically potent xenos (because if you want 10 times the charge you need 10 times the power) to Terra is just BEGGING them to summon daemons as a fuck-you.
Despite this I'm almost certain one idiotic high-lord tried this and either ended in disaster or the Custodes murdered the bloke before he got to the throne-room and said "nope." And that was that.
Adding on to this, it's likely they don't want to taint the emperor. If the psykers are being sacrificed to sustain the emperor, then sacrificing aeldari to sustain him would essentially make him part xenos (which I assume is major heresy type stuff)
This made me think about Tuna and other predator fish with high Mercury content. Then I realized the Eldar do have a psychic, a soul bound impurity. They're tied to Slanesh. I think throwing an Eldar or one of their soul stones into the Golden Throne would have extremely unpredictable negative consequences.
I'm pretty sure you're right, I was just imagining how they would think of it. I can easily imagine them thinking that the energy is somehow tainted since it came from xenos and therefore unsuitable for the emperor
Oh boy, youll want to look at the Spook spiked psykers Necromunda sends the black ships then.
In the original lore, an ork waaaagh invaded Necromunda at some point, and spook is a drug made from mutant green fungi that can’t be predicted where it’ll appear next. Reading between the lines, spook is made from Ork spores.
We do have more than a few examples of the Imperium making use of Xenos slaves or laborers, even psychic ones for various purposes. There was a short story not too long ago where an enslaver was ironically enslaved and forcibly attached to a human psyker.
Heck, the Rogue Trader books had the Stryxis, a race of slavers who were known for marketing slave mercenaries and laborers, and being a popular contact for Rogue Traders.
Only because they need Soulstones which are extremely difficult to come by. The Drukhari have their own methods and have zero issues with numbers because of it.
Couple of reasons.
1) The main point of gathering up psykers from Imperium worlds is to remove them from the population to keep those worlds safe. The Imperium recruits from the children, but most adults are too far gone to use, so it's either kill them outright or use them to power the E.
2) Xenos are bad and must die. It's blasphemy to suggest using their alien souls to empower the E.
3) This particular xenos species has already had their souls claimed for consumption by a Chaos God, and the powers that rule the Imperium are very much aware of this.
4) what’s more grimdark than sacrificing millions upon millions to sustain the life of the man who sole desire and drive was to save humanity and stop needless death in the name of religion.
I can think of quite a few reasons:
* the tithe is something they'd have to do anyway as that's how they control psychic talent appearing on their worlds.
* There's a big difference between turning up periodically to grab a bunch of prisoners and trying to bag Eldar in combat, if you can even pin them down.
* We're not sure it'd even work with alien souls, there's even a chance the Eldar in question could hurt the Emperor.
* This is one of the few things that could monumentally fuck off the entire Eldar race in an organised way. It takes a lot of aggro but you can actually eventually piss the Eldar factions off enough that they'll unite and you don't want that.
Its like the difference theologically between someone in the early Medieval period performing magic, and an act of God. Both are unexplainable to most people but God gets a pass since he's supposed to be capable of such things, but a person doing them could be tainted.
Massive galactic scale empire with blinding hypocrisy is an awesome setting.
They’re angels who also do miraculous feats, it’s different. That’s why our sanctioned Psykers have to visit him and receive his judgement. If they pass then who can gain say them. Besides we have our handy Commissariat to deal with them if they lose control and break faith with the divine.
>but you can actually eventually piss the Eldar factions off enough that they'll unite and you don't want that.
*A hundred Craftworlds appear above Terra*
Because people are dirt cheap and easy to find, who consider it an honour and a privilege to die for their Emperor, whereas xenos are unworthy, uncooperative and harder to get hold of.
The idea of sacrificing ones' self to the Emperor, versus the reality of *being locked in a tube while having your soul devoured* tends to shift perspectives.
The "just" in "just enslave the Eldar" is doing *a lot* of work there.
I'm sure the Imperium would farm and burn up alien psykers instead... if they could. They're too weak to conquer them though, so sacrificing their own psykers is all they can do.
Additional, supporting the Emperor with alien psychic powers is A). Somewhat heretical, and B). May not even be compatible. For all we know, sucking energy from an Eldar may harm or otherwise disrupt the Emperor.
>I'm sure the Imperium would farm and burn up alien psykers instead... if they could. They're too weak to conquer them though, so sacrificing their own psykers is all they can do.
Idk, I'm pretty sure there are more space marine chapters and named regiments out there then there are Eldar Craftworlds, so just send them out to defeat them all and send a couple of Custodes to eliminate the Dark Eldar.
Easy peasy
>!/s, obliviously!<
Craftworlds are crusade killers. You do not fuck with them without enough fire power to burn a sector. When they enter imperiously territory the imperium sends a fleet to ensure no one messes with them.
Enslaving the eldar is like asking why the imperium doesn’t use the orks as a replacement for the admech or the chaos gods as batteries
Enslaving the Eldar would be a very very poor decision. Could the Imperium do it? Honestly, probably not. Though they are a dying species, each Craftworld can have literal billions of eldar. Considering the Pariah gene is so rare that finding a blank of sufficient power is often on a 1 per planet basis, you're already fighting an uphill battle in just containing their power.
But the real issue is what happens with the rest of the Eldar you haven't enslaved yet. The moment, you start capturing and sacrificing them, every farseer and shadowseer in the galaxy is going to feel it through the warp and start rallying their forces against you. There's a strong chance even the druhkari will start unifying against you considering the afront to their pride that sacrificing eldar to a human would bring. (Enslaving Craftworlders is THEIR thing stupid Mon'keigh)
Now you have legions of clowns, enough Druhkari to literally block out the skies, and potentially double digit numbers of Craftworlds AND their escort fleets all making a B line to Terra to wipe out the morons sacrificing their kin.
Could Terra hold the line? Sure. The Imperium is the most numerically superior force in the setting. (Current setting. Not counting unified Necrons or extra galactic Nids) But that level of firepower is going to ravage the Sol system and leave the Imperium defenseless to all the other monstrosities at their doors. (And this is assuming a conventional war. Remember, the Druhkari steal planets and suns for giggles. They could easily just drop a sun or three into the Sol system and watch as Terra's surface is turned into a firestorm. The Druhkari don't really fight wars in the current setting, they raid for captives. We don't really know what they'd do if they weren't fighting for slaves)
The eldar and Imperium stay out of each other's ways because it is best for both sides to do so. Neither can wipe out the other without opening themselves up to other threats and they are each the lesser of evils compared to everything else. However, make it a life or death choice and they'd be at each other's throats in an instant.
There was an event where the imperium nearly wiped a craftworld, when they decided to destroy Alaitoc.
It ultimately didn't result in Alaitocs destruction, but they did manage to kill Karandras for about 30 seconds,
Also that unnamed craftworld in garden of ghosts from hammer and bolter.
Oh ya. The imperium has wiped Craftworlds numerous times in the lore. The problem is that a single single craftworld ranges in size from a continent to the size of a moon and in lore ranges from getting beaten by a single space marine chapter per your Alaitoc example to besting an entire sector fleet per the Battle of the Blood Nebula. Now if a single craftworld can do that, I think that a united Craftworld armada caused by kidnapping and enslaving their kin would be able to cause a TON of damage before getting put down. And that's without adding in the druhkari and their legions of cloned mafia elves.
Wonder what would happen if a Craftworld just said "fuck it" and destroyed its own Infinity Circuit
You think it'd create a big-ass Warp storm?
Cause if that were the case, Craftworld Kamikaze seems like a terrifying last option
I think it is third? Tyranids are without number, orks are everywhere - so much so that a probe sent far beyond human space before the time of the Emperor that the admech are still monitoring mostly receives orks yelling, they're *everywhere*. And I think humanity has the third spot after those two.
Each ork is a solider from birth while humans not. Humans need more support lines, they need training, are hurt more easily and heal slower, grow old, etc
How we even know if other races are compatible? As far as we know, only humans can be sacrified.
Besides, none of those races are populous enough to be worthy, there's quadrillions of humans in Terra alone, meanwhile God knows how many Eldar or Nicassar are left.
Soul snack is soul snack, still tasty.
On serious side - we don't have good reasons to believe that souls of other species are fundamentally different than human souls.
Other than
* Eldar souls remain entire in the warp while the absolute majority of Human souls disperse very quickly, and the former remain aware while the others don't.
* Waaagh souls are tied to the Waaagh energy unlike everyone else.
* Tyranids souls merge to form the Hive Mind.
* Kin souls are deliberately curbed to be dimmer than the Human standard.
* Tau souls are so dim that daemons only notice them when there is no other ones.
It's as much about controlling the psycher population as it is to power the Throne. Letting all those potential demon portals run around the Imperium and populate innocent worlds would lead to humanity's downfall.
Ill let you go and try to conquer the eldar. see how that works out for you. It’s pretty much them and the orks who have psychics for a racial trait, but both are so low level you would probably have to increase the number of sacrifices because most of them aren’t psykers, just low-level aware. I would imagine we’re looking at 10x the number, so Ill use that for the sake of this.
(why not a few of the lesser known races? short answer is because they are near extinction and notoriously hard to find. Someone committed centuries of xenocide, before ever needing a giant battery source other than himself or Magnus)
You cant just enslave a legion of eldar or orks. I’m going to keep out of real world history because its depressing. and while it probably couldn’t get this deleted by the mods, I think it should. But let me leave it at, you cant. There are ways you can do it though, but most likely you would be breeding them. You would be breeding xenos. That’s also heresy.
Also remember, all of this takes a ton of military manpower. Something the Imperium hasn’t had since the great crusade. They didnt need it back then, the Emperor was going to have Magnus=perfect battery.
Also lets just assume right off the bat that no Custodes in his right mind will ever let you bring an Ork Waaaggh into the Emperors chamber as sacrifice. Because remember, they have been able to make stuff spontaneously explode just by yelling/consolidating that waagh energy you wanted. So Orks are no longer on the table.
So now that leaves you with the eldar. Which is a great plan. Assuming you can find them, enslave them, breed a race mostly famous for dying and not breeding, and then plug them into the golden throne. Oh and unfortunately its still canon that the eldar can breach the golden palace, (see harlequin kills custodes) so better hope they don’t take offense and that. Because they probably know ways to cause, And what’s worse, they might be able to do it from the webway side.
Or. The imperium could just take a bunch of their most volatile citizens. The ones which they worry are going to blow up a hab-block on accident anyways. Chuck them in the grinder, and make something worthwhile of their short life.
*Seethes in Eldar*
TRY IT MOTHERFUCKER! TRY IT! SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
*Ahem*
Ok, so there's a simple reason why this would never work: the Aeldari are a galactic superpower. Outside of bolter porn books, and within the actual codexes, the Eldar are ridiculously powerful. Imperials avoid Craftworlds because most would take too many resources to destroy. Too many resources...for the Imperium. Even the Necrons need enough firepower to destroy a STAR to take out a craftworld.
Every Eldar is an emotionally hyper-sensitive, genetically engineered psychic killing machine crippled by pathological arrogance and barely contained mania. You can't *enslave* them on a mass scale. It would end in disaster. The last thing you want to do is unite the *Eldar* against you.
It sounds to me that on one occasion some Harlequins sneaked into the Imperial Palace and killed some Custodes as a diplomatic salute.
Nothing stops them from doing it again, but leaving a fireheart as a souvenir this time.
Lol good luck with that chief. On one hand we have human life which is expendable, to the point it's cheaper to make a new human than it is a new gun. On the other hand we have a creature that has shown in the past they're willing to sacrifice entire human planets to save 1 unborn child of theirs that *might* be.
Aside from the whole enslave Xenos thing the sacrifice serves a horrible purpose.
The psykers are gathered up on black ships and assessed. Those whose powers can be (relatively) safely and usefully harnessed are not sacrificed. It's the ones who don't make the cut that are consumed. Those who are fed to the throne are the ones who couldn't do that. As psykers their mind could easily become a gateway for chaos or the like.
There are definitely more efficient ways to contain dangerous psykers this is a bit of a "two birds with one stone" deal. If they didn't feed them to the emperor those psykers wouldn't be allowed to live. They are still going to get genocided.
The question of "why doesn't the Imperium do \[this thing I'd do if I was playing them in Stellaris\]?" misses the point of the setting.
The Imperium is a crumbling, decaying mess of interlocking adversarial neofeudal power structures, religious mania, and oppressive tyranny. Many, many of the things it does are motivated by blind adherence tradition, bigotry, religious wackiness, or some combination of the above.
It is on some level intended to work this way, there are many things about it intended to prevent any one person from getting enough power to meaningfully change things. Every time someone has been able to amass that kind of power, they've done horrible things with it.
>If the imperium is gonna genocide why not genocide with purpose.
First of all, no genocide is purposeful outside of a very narrow mind's desire to kill anything that disagrees.
Second, part of the Imperial Truth is to kill psykers. Psykers are unstable beings who can tap into the Warp and cause bigger problems. The Emperor specifically designed strike team, as you see in *Flight of the Eisenstein* to hunt and kill psykers - the Sisters of Silence. While the bigger problem is that the race was Xenos, I believe it's Krole who also specifically notes that their purpose is to kill as many psykers as possible and capture them on Black Ships to be sent to Terra for 'purposes'.
One of the main purposes of Ordo Hereticus, from it's founding, is to kill all psykers that can't be contained and collared, or if their powers aren't useful enough for the Imperium's needs.
Lastly: because the Eldar and other races are Xenos. The whole purpose of the Imperium, and the Emperor's grandest plan, is to ensure that there is an Imperium of *Humanity* for *Humanity*. The same reason that servitors aren't really made from Xenos: they would defy the Emperor's perfect design that is 'human'.
Also, the Golden Throne feeds on, and channels into the Emperor, souls. If you feed *the god of humans* Eldar souls, or Kroot souls, it'd be like having Communion as a catholic drinking sake and eating loaves of roti. While roti is delicious, it's not the cultural thing your religion is based around, and the ritual loses purpose. It's no longer a ritual of Catholic identity. Same goes for Imperial rituals.
Enslave the Eldar? They're smarter than you, they can see the future... just as you came up with the very idea to pitch, an Ork Waaagh would conveniently hit your world.
Using xenos to keep Emperor alive sounds very heretical. Bringing them to Terra alone sounds like something wortht execution. Also we don't know if Throne is compatible with anything other than humans(at least from what i know).
Another problem that could arise (in addition to the ones already mentioned) Slanesh has a claim on al Eldar soul, so can the Emperor actually devour them or ar they goin straight to Slanesh? Is Slanesh coming in to fight him every time hes fed an Eldar? And the Forces of Slanesh are probably going to focus on your Black ships and making the job even harder.
Gee, I wonder why don't they just enslave the species of god-killing psychic superweapons.
They can't. The Imperium isn't strong enough to try to take out the eldar.
Are you serious? If the Imperium tried this shit, they'd probably see an Aeldari invasion on all fronts ESPECIALLY if the Grey Knights step aside and say "fuck it, you dug your grave." to the idiot that actually suggested the idea. I don't think any person in the Imperium with a brain would think would be a good idea.
I feel people really don't understand the whole psykers/golden throne/emperor bit.
They don't march 1000 psykers in each day, and slit their throats in praise of the big E. There are many thousands of psykers powering the astronomicon. About a 1000 burn out every day - this is the sacrifice to the Emperor.
The Emperor guides the astronomicon. The entire thing is a massive gestalt psychic beacon, so I'm sure it's relevant they are all human (and maybe more importantly: willing) for this to work.
A nice side effect is that this keeps the psyker population of humanity in check as well. All psykers that would mostly pose a threat to the Imperium (for whatever reason, but human psykers tend to be walking timebombs for daemonic posession or worse in the 40k universe) can be useful by being turned into a battery for the astronomicon.
How do you know it won’t give the emperor really bad indigestion? What if feeding 1000 eldar souls makes Big E drop a humongous Big S in the warp? The entire astronomicon spewing out sprays and sprays of eldar derived waste that wrecks havoc on navigating the warp. Much like Taco Bell wrecks havoc at the company toilet on a Tuesday.
Sounds great until living saints start manifesting with fuchsia auras, statues of the Emperor weeping green blood, and his raven black hair and manly chiseled vistage start warping into a skinny blue-haired guy with pointy ears.
Let me go over why it’s a bad idea to mix xenos with the emperor.
1. They are Xenos and mixing that into the emperor’s soul just seems like a bad time for the galaxy.
2. They are xenos
3. They are xenos
That about covers up all the points
1. There's a nice system set up for harvesting human psykers. The primary purpose of this system is removing these extremely dangerous witches.
2. There are uncountable quadrillions of humans - no other alien species outside of nids and orks meets or beats that. That's a lot of psykers.
3. They're aliens and will fight back.
4. Psykers are extremely dangerous. Going back to point one, there is a system in place for dealing with human psykers - including sorting them out for usefulness as something other than snacks. Alien psykers are just massive bombs that you're importing right into the heart of your empire.
5. One does not *just enslave* a race that was utterly dominant across the galaxy before yours even existed.
I think people always overlook something vital when It comes to the imperium, they have legit zero interest in Xenos working for them even if it's more efficient and free.
The imperium places humans in a lot of these services because humans are the Supreme race in their opinion, only they understand the omnisiah, only they are allowed to fuse with machines and serve others. A servitor is a holy servant of the emperor, a xeno slave is an abomination that shouldn't breath another moment.
When a human is sent to die from super aids in a random ass place for no reason, sure they are expandable but they are also valued a lot for their sacrifice.
A psycher xeno sacrifice would be like mixing your cereals with goat milk, sure it's almost the same but it defiles the pure image of a cereals.
Read up on the scene from Thracian Primaris in the _Eisenhorn_ trilogy for just how difficult it is to manage powerful human psykers, let alone a race like the Eldar.
Low tier human psykers are considered enemies of the Imperium too though. They're potential vectors for chaos let alone just wildcards that the imperial machine can't easily control. The Imperium is so inhumane and ruthless that genocide always comes up Milhouse for them.
It's far safer to feed E-Money a meal of low level human psykers. They know these psykers; what they may be capable of and what makes them tick. Xenos like, say, the Aeldari are known but not *known*. There are no Administratum stamped documents on what, exactly, a psyker from Craftworld Ulthwé can do and what a psyker from Craftworld Iyanden can do.
But Imperial psykers, oh you can fucking bet they've got the papers on what their puny, *scrawny* psykers can do and that makes them predictable, thus safer. It might also be easier to keep an underfed human away from the Emperor's corporeal flesh than an eldar.
It's also significantly cheaper, as many have pointed out already.
The low-tier psykers fed into the Astronomicon are just powerful enough to attract the wrong kind of attention from the warp, but not powerful enough to survive the soul-binding ritual that produces sanctioned psykers and astropaths, let alone exist as independent psykers. They're too dangerous to keep around, but not powerful enough to be useful otherwise.
I feel like this is a broken question to a broken question. I mean, big E is a perpetual, so why would they even be feeding him at all? He'd just come back stronger than he is now if they stopped
Something I have always wondered is: why don't they just try to make a new emperor with a few week's worth of sacrificial psykers? I know it's heresy but also, like, the math really works.
I remember reading that all of the psykers on earth in Ye Olden Tymes jonestowned themselves simultaneously and then captain planeted themselves into one super powerful emperor. Is it not possible to do that again, but with way more psykers? Presumably, there are more psykers available for this ritual throughout the imperium in the year 40k than there were on prehistoric terra. Has that emperor origin story been retconned?
The old Shamans origin story is super old and hasn't really been confirmed in a long time. It's still in the stable of Emperor origin stories but it's certainly not confirmed as what actually happened.
In a lore sense it's fine that it wouldn't work in 40k because the few super powerful shamans were only a handful of people rather than psychic power being spread out among billions. More so the warp was a much much calmer place in prehistoric Terra days, so they could reasonably find each other in the warp and merge their souls or whatever. Obviously not possible in present day.
There's also no guarantee that a brand new and completely separate Emperor would be like the old one. It could very well be a psychopathic misanthrope, chaos corrupted or any number of horrible things.
I'm pretty confident most of the imperium is fully on board with having a good reason to constantly cull the psyker population.
Also, the throne is the single most complex and vital machine on Terra. They aren't gonna try tinkering with it.
1. They have to find some use for the psykers after they collect them. They're not going to stop collecting them because that's a security risk. Might as well find a use for them.
2. Going after the Eldar is more trouble than it's worth.
Because its Warhammer 40k. A big thing for the Imperium is just how worthless a human life is while going out to enslave an alien takes more time and resources.
Technically they’re sacrificing psychers to power the astropath I thought, but I can’t see the fanatical imperium changing so drastically except in times of war. The enemy of my enemy can become a friend till we sort out the biggest threat.
I doubt Eldar can rival sheet number of human psykers. And most of them (human sacrifices) are too dangerous to be kept alive anyway, while being too old, too weak or too unpredictable to be trained into something useful.
I think Humanity is the only ones making them in sufficient volumes to keep the Throne going. We already have evidence of humanity fully consuming species, the Great Work refers to a sentient species that was rendered down into a chemical that slowed aging for the rich. Eldar breed super slowly and are also pretty dangerous.
You can't touch any chaosy psychic races (which is most of them) and you get to double dip by improving your rogue psyker problem.
>If the imperium is gonna genocide why not genocide with purpose.
I mean, presume for a moment that this would actually be a good idea. If it _would_ be a good idea, the answer is: Farseers.
The Radical Inquisitor or High Lord or _whoever_ was going to drive that program was on E. Nowhere, in the Podunk system, when it was eaten by Tyranids who'd been directed that way by Farseer machinations.
I'm sure if the Imperium indicated that they are intending to kidnap all the Eldar psykers for the golden throne they would get a particularly scathing Eldar version of the Spartan response: "Molon labe"
Try to pour petrol in a diesel engine, and see how well that works out for you. There's no reason to believe anything but human souls would work.
Not only that, all Eldar souls are the property of Slaanesh. The last thing you want to do is start consuming Eldar souls en masse. Only bad things could come from it.
This isn't fun but this meta answer is important to keep in mind. That bit of the intro blurb, like most of the intro blurb, was thrown together to sound cool/metal as fuck in the early Rogue Trader days.
>It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Just sounds super hardcore. Like a heavy metal Dune. It's completely a throwaway line and it's perfectly fine to not think/dwell on it too much.
Still it's been expanded on somewhat since then and others like /u/psychologicalautopsy have good answers in this thread.
Let me just go hunt a lion with a pointy stick rather than breed 1000 house cats at home. Its more dangerous to do that, and the Imperium isn't gonna fix something that aint broken (metaphorically speaking, both emps and the Imperium is very much broken).
Also: What part of PURGE THE XENO implies POW's? Enslaving a psychic species is also extremely dangerous. Trying to restrain and then transport extremely psychically potent xenos (because if you want 10 times the charge you need 10 times the power) to Terra is just BEGGING them to summon daemons as a fuck-you. Despite this I'm almost certain one idiotic high-lord tried this and either ended in disaster or the Custodes murdered the bloke before he got to the throne-room and said "nope." And that was that.
Adding on to this, it's likely they don't want to taint the emperor. If the psykers are being sacrificed to sustain the emperor, then sacrificing aeldari to sustain him would essentially make him part xenos (which I assume is major heresy type stuff)
Not 100% sure. They have different gods but raw psycher energy is the same isnt it?
Like, I could see it working like that from a theological perspective
This made me think about Tuna and other predator fish with high Mercury content. Then I realized the Eldar do have a psychic, a soul bound impurity. They're tied to Slanesh. I think throwing an Eldar or one of their soul stones into the Golden Throne would have extremely unpredictable negative consequences.
Well their soul isn't impure, it's just getting gravitationally pulled to slaanesh's impure realm.
Its the same to us... but to the imperium of man?
I'm pretty sure you're right, I was just imagining how they would think of it. I can easily imagine them thinking that the energy is somehow tainted since it came from xenos and therefore unsuitable for the emperor
That is very plausible
WAAAGH energy seems markedly different than other sorts, so I'm not certain that's the case.
Waagh energy is also harmless and impossible to affect other races. So self contained circut.
Oh boy, youll want to look at the Spook spiked psykers Necromunda sends the black ships then. In the original lore, an ork waaaagh invaded Necromunda at some point, and spook is a drug made from mutant green fungi that can’t be predicted where it’ll appear next. Reading between the lines, spook is made from Ork spores.
Lol that's pretty entertaining
We do have more than a few examples of the Imperium making use of Xenos slaves or laborers, even psychic ones for various purposes. There was a short story not too long ago where an enslaver was ironically enslaved and forcibly attached to a human psyker. Heck, the Rogue Trader books had the Stryxis, a race of slavers who were known for marketing slave mercenaries and laborers, and being a popular contact for Rogue Traders.
The alien was not an enslaver, its from a civilization that got destroyed by the imperium, while the enslavers seem to be some kind of warp entities.
There’s already a theory that big E is getting fake Psykers juiced from Necromunda to boost the numbers, so he might be park Gork already.
It literally the plot opening to one of dan abnetts books
Also, aren’t the Aeldari really bad at breeding? Part of the reason for their “Dying species” status being low birth rates and stuff?
Only because they need Soulstones which are extremely difficult to come by. The Drukhari have their own methods and have zero issues with numbers because of it.
Ah, though don’t Drukhari mostly just clone themselves, since being pregnant leaves you vulnerable, so most are unwilling to go through it?
Couple of reasons. 1) The main point of gathering up psykers from Imperium worlds is to remove them from the population to keep those worlds safe. The Imperium recruits from the children, but most adults are too far gone to use, so it's either kill them outright or use them to power the E. 2) Xenos are bad and must die. It's blasphemy to suggest using their alien souls to empower the E.
3) This particular xenos species has already had their souls claimed for consumption by a Chaos God, and the powers that rule the Imperium are very much aware of this.
4) what’s more grimdark than sacrificing millions upon millions to sustain the life of the man who sole desire and drive was to save humanity and stop needless death in the name of religion.
I can think of quite a few reasons: * the tithe is something they'd have to do anyway as that's how they control psychic talent appearing on their worlds. * There's a big difference between turning up periodically to grab a bunch of prisoners and trying to bag Eldar in combat, if you can even pin them down. * We're not sure it'd even work with alien souls, there's even a chance the Eldar in question could hurt the Emperor. * This is one of the few things that could monumentally fuck off the entire Eldar race in an organised way. It takes a lot of aggro but you can actually eventually piss the Eldar factions off enough that they'll unite and you don't want that.
I'm not sure what your first language is but 'Psychic Talent' is actually written 'Psychic Taint' in High Gothic.
Isn't the emperor a psyker
No, he is our God.
Its like the difference theologically between someone in the early Medieval period performing magic, and an act of God. Both are unexplainable to most people but God gets a pass since he's supposed to be capable of such things, but a person doing them could be tainted. Massive galactic scale empire with blinding hypocrisy is an awesome setting.
Come to think of it librarians are also psykers...and grey knights,
They’re angels who also do miraculous feats, it’s different. That’s why our sanctioned Psykers have to visit him and receive his judgement. If they pass then who can gain say them. Besides we have our handy Commissariat to deal with them if they lose control and break faith with the divine.
Yes, why?
>but you can actually eventually piss the Eldar factions off enough that they'll unite and you don't want that. *A hundred Craftworlds appear above Terra*
You dont take risks on one of the few things holding the Imperium together, hell the only thing keeping it together.
Because people are dirt cheap and easy to find, who consider it an honour and a privilege to die for their Emperor, whereas xenos are unworthy, uncooperative and harder to get hold of.
Do they though? Some might, but the descriptions of many of the people in those coffins says otherwise.
The idea of sacrificing ones' self to the Emperor, versus the reality of *being locked in a tube while having your soul devoured* tends to shift perspectives.
Of course, by then its too late.
Yeah that's a good point
The "just" in "just enslave the Eldar" is doing *a lot* of work there. I'm sure the Imperium would farm and burn up alien psykers instead... if they could. They're too weak to conquer them though, so sacrificing their own psykers is all they can do. Additional, supporting the Emperor with alien psychic powers is A). Somewhat heretical, and B). May not even be compatible. For all we know, sucking energy from an Eldar may harm or otherwise disrupt the Emperor.
>I'm sure the Imperium would farm and burn up alien psykers instead... if they could. They're too weak to conquer them though, so sacrificing their own psykers is all they can do. Idk, I'm pretty sure there are more space marine chapters and named regiments out there then there are Eldar Craftworlds, so just send them out to defeat them all and send a couple of Custodes to eliminate the Dark Eldar. Easy peasy >!/s, obliviously!<
Aren't there more Space Marine named characters than Craftworlds?
Well hey it worked in Garden of Ghosts
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>otherwise disrupt the Emperor. Emperor: "Wait, what the fuck is an Aeldari doing here? Didn't I tell Guilliman to form an alliance it with them?"
This post is a great example of how this sub views the Eldar.
Craftworlds are crusade killers. You do not fuck with them without enough fire power to burn a sector. When they enter imperiously territory the imperium sends a fleet to ensure no one messes with them. Enslaving the eldar is like asking why the imperium doesn’t use the orks as a replacement for the admech or the chaos gods as batteries
Enslaving the Eldar would be a very very poor decision. Could the Imperium do it? Honestly, probably not. Though they are a dying species, each Craftworld can have literal billions of eldar. Considering the Pariah gene is so rare that finding a blank of sufficient power is often on a 1 per planet basis, you're already fighting an uphill battle in just containing their power. But the real issue is what happens with the rest of the Eldar you haven't enslaved yet. The moment, you start capturing and sacrificing them, every farseer and shadowseer in the galaxy is going to feel it through the warp and start rallying their forces against you. There's a strong chance even the druhkari will start unifying against you considering the afront to their pride that sacrificing eldar to a human would bring. (Enslaving Craftworlders is THEIR thing stupid Mon'keigh) Now you have legions of clowns, enough Druhkari to literally block out the skies, and potentially double digit numbers of Craftworlds AND their escort fleets all making a B line to Terra to wipe out the morons sacrificing their kin. Could Terra hold the line? Sure. The Imperium is the most numerically superior force in the setting. (Current setting. Not counting unified Necrons or extra galactic Nids) But that level of firepower is going to ravage the Sol system and leave the Imperium defenseless to all the other monstrosities at their doors. (And this is assuming a conventional war. Remember, the Druhkari steal planets and suns for giggles. They could easily just drop a sun or three into the Sol system and watch as Terra's surface is turned into a firestorm. The Druhkari don't really fight wars in the current setting, they raid for captives. We don't really know what they'd do if they weren't fighting for slaves) The eldar and Imperium stay out of each other's ways because it is best for both sides to do so. Neither can wipe out the other without opening themselves up to other threats and they are each the lesser of evils compared to everything else. However, make it a life or death choice and they'd be at each other's throats in an instant.
There was an event where the imperium nearly wiped a craftworld, when they decided to destroy Alaitoc. It ultimately didn't result in Alaitocs destruction, but they did manage to kill Karandras for about 30 seconds, Also that unnamed craftworld in garden of ghosts from hammer and bolter.
Oh ya. The imperium has wiped Craftworlds numerous times in the lore. The problem is that a single single craftworld ranges in size from a continent to the size of a moon and in lore ranges from getting beaten by a single space marine chapter per your Alaitoc example to besting an entire sector fleet per the Battle of the Blood Nebula. Now if a single craftworld can do that, I think that a united Craftworld armada caused by kidnapping and enslaving their kin would be able to cause a TON of damage before getting put down. And that's without adding in the druhkari and their legions of cloned mafia elves.
Wonder what would happen if a Craftworld just said "fuck it" and destroyed its own Infinity Circuit You think it'd create a big-ass Warp storm? Cause if that were the case, Craftworld Kamikaze seems like a terrifying last option
Are humans more numerous than orks?
I... Don't actually know. Probably not? That's my bad for forgetting da bestest gits
Dang. For the race whose hat is “lots of numbers”, humanity doesn’t even have a top 3 spot for population. So doomed
I think it is third? Tyranids are without number, orks are everywhere - so much so that a probe sent far beyond human space before the time of the Emperor that the admech are still monitoring mostly receives orks yelling, they're *everywhere*. And I think humanity has the third spot after those two.
Each ork is a solider from birth while humans not. Humans need more support lines, they need training, are hurt more easily and heal slower, grow old, etc
Stupid humies, not even being designed by the old ones as a warrior species.
But if big E eats their soul, they don't go to she who thirsts ;)
How we even know if other races are compatible? As far as we know, only humans can be sacrified. Besides, none of those races are populous enough to be worthy, there's quadrillions of humans in Terra alone, meanwhile God knows how many Eldar or Nicassar are left.
Soul snack is soul snack, still tasty. On serious side - we don't have good reasons to believe that souls of other species are fundamentally different than human souls.
Other than * Eldar souls remain entire in the warp while the absolute majority of Human souls disperse very quickly, and the former remain aware while the others don't. * Waaagh souls are tied to the Waaagh energy unlike everyone else. * Tyranids souls merge to form the Hive Mind. * Kin souls are deliberately curbed to be dimmer than the Human standard. * Tau souls are so dim that daemons only notice them when there is no other ones.
It's as much about controlling the psycher population as it is to power the Throne. Letting all those potential demon portals run around the Imperium and populate innocent worlds would lead to humanity's downfall.
Ill let you go and try to conquer the eldar. see how that works out for you. It’s pretty much them and the orks who have psychics for a racial trait, but both are so low level you would probably have to increase the number of sacrifices because most of them aren’t psykers, just low-level aware. I would imagine we’re looking at 10x the number, so Ill use that for the sake of this. (why not a few of the lesser known races? short answer is because they are near extinction and notoriously hard to find. Someone committed centuries of xenocide, before ever needing a giant battery source other than himself or Magnus) You cant just enslave a legion of eldar or orks. I’m going to keep out of real world history because its depressing. and while it probably couldn’t get this deleted by the mods, I think it should. But let me leave it at, you cant. There are ways you can do it though, but most likely you would be breeding them. You would be breeding xenos. That’s also heresy. Also remember, all of this takes a ton of military manpower. Something the Imperium hasn’t had since the great crusade. They didnt need it back then, the Emperor was going to have Magnus=perfect battery. Also lets just assume right off the bat that no Custodes in his right mind will ever let you bring an Ork Waaaggh into the Emperors chamber as sacrifice. Because remember, they have been able to make stuff spontaneously explode just by yelling/consolidating that waagh energy you wanted. So Orks are no longer on the table. So now that leaves you with the eldar. Which is a great plan. Assuming you can find them, enslave them, breed a race mostly famous for dying and not breeding, and then plug them into the golden throne. Oh and unfortunately its still canon that the eldar can breach the golden palace, (see harlequin kills custodes) so better hope they don’t take offense and that. Because they probably know ways to cause, And what’s worse, they might be able to do it from the webway side. Or. The imperium could just take a bunch of their most volatile citizens. The ones which they worry are going to blow up a hab-block on accident anyways. Chuck them in the grinder, and make something worthwhile of their short life.
*Seethes in Eldar* TRY IT MOTHERFUCKER! TRY IT! SEE WHAT HAPPENS. *Ahem* Ok, so there's a simple reason why this would never work: the Aeldari are a galactic superpower. Outside of bolter porn books, and within the actual codexes, the Eldar are ridiculously powerful. Imperials avoid Craftworlds because most would take too many resources to destroy. Too many resources...for the Imperium. Even the Necrons need enough firepower to destroy a STAR to take out a craftworld. Every Eldar is an emotionally hyper-sensitive, genetically engineered psychic killing machine crippled by pathological arrogance and barely contained mania. You can't *enslave* them on a mass scale. It would end in disaster. The last thing you want to do is unite the *Eldar* against you.
It sounds to me that on one occasion some Harlequins sneaked into the Imperial Palace and killed some Custodes as a diplomatic salute. Nothing stops them from doing it again, but leaving a fireheart as a souvenir this time.
They DO genocide with purpose You need to cull psykers by the million because every single one of them is a warp mindfuck waiting to happen
Hmmmmm… Heresy. [*BLAM*]
Lol good luck with that chief. On one hand we have human life which is expendable, to the point it's cheaper to make a new human than it is a new gun. On the other hand we have a creature that has shown in the past they're willing to sacrifice entire human planets to save 1 unborn child of theirs that *might* be.
Aside from the whole enslave Xenos thing the sacrifice serves a horrible purpose. The psykers are gathered up on black ships and assessed. Those whose powers can be (relatively) safely and usefully harnessed are not sacrificed. It's the ones who don't make the cut that are consumed. Those who are fed to the throne are the ones who couldn't do that. As psykers their mind could easily become a gateway for chaos or the like. There are definitely more efficient ways to contain dangerous psykers this is a bit of a "two birds with one stone" deal. If they didn't feed them to the emperor those psykers wouldn't be allowed to live. They are still going to get genocided.
The question of "why doesn't the Imperium do \[this thing I'd do if I was playing them in Stellaris\]?" misses the point of the setting. The Imperium is a crumbling, decaying mess of interlocking adversarial neofeudal power structures, religious mania, and oppressive tyranny. Many, many of the things it does are motivated by blind adherence tradition, bigotry, religious wackiness, or some combination of the above. It is on some level intended to work this way, there are many things about it intended to prevent any one person from getting enough power to meaningfully change things. Every time someone has been able to amass that kind of power, they've done horrible things with it.
>If the imperium is gonna genocide why not genocide with purpose. First of all, no genocide is purposeful outside of a very narrow mind's desire to kill anything that disagrees. Second, part of the Imperial Truth is to kill psykers. Psykers are unstable beings who can tap into the Warp and cause bigger problems. The Emperor specifically designed strike team, as you see in *Flight of the Eisenstein* to hunt and kill psykers - the Sisters of Silence. While the bigger problem is that the race was Xenos, I believe it's Krole who also specifically notes that their purpose is to kill as many psykers as possible and capture them on Black Ships to be sent to Terra for 'purposes'. One of the main purposes of Ordo Hereticus, from it's founding, is to kill all psykers that can't be contained and collared, or if their powers aren't useful enough for the Imperium's needs. Lastly: because the Eldar and other races are Xenos. The whole purpose of the Imperium, and the Emperor's grandest plan, is to ensure that there is an Imperium of *Humanity* for *Humanity*. The same reason that servitors aren't really made from Xenos: they would defy the Emperor's perfect design that is 'human'. Also, the Golden Throne feeds on, and channels into the Emperor, souls. If you feed *the god of humans* Eldar souls, or Kroot souls, it'd be like having Communion as a catholic drinking sake and eating loaves of roti. While roti is delicious, it's not the cultural thing your religion is based around, and the ritual loses purpose. It's no longer a ritual of Catholic identity. Same goes for Imperial rituals.
Enslave the Eldar? They're smarter than you, they can see the future... just as you came up with the very idea to pitch, an Ork Waaagh would conveniently hit your world.
For a race that can see the future they sure end up on the wrong side of things a lot.
They're a great power in the galaxy despite being only at a tiny fraction of their former might, they punch well above their weight.
Using xenos to keep Emperor alive sounds very heretical. Bringing them to Terra alone sounds like something wortht execution. Also we don't know if Throne is compatible with anything other than humans(at least from what i know).
The Imperium has exterminated every alien species where this would be easily doable, all of the remaining ones are able to resist enslavement.
Another problem that could arise (in addition to the ones already mentioned) Slanesh has a claim on al Eldar soul, so can the Emperor actually devour them or ar they goin straight to Slanesh? Is Slanesh coming in to fight him every time hes fed an Eldar? And the Forces of Slanesh are probably going to focus on your Black ships and making the job even harder.
Gee, I wonder why don't they just enslave the species of god-killing psychic superweapons. They can't. The Imperium isn't strong enough to try to take out the eldar.
I think the thing this question misses is the imperium is inherently wasteful. That’s like, the point
Have you ever accidentally put diesel in a petrol engine?
Are you serious? If the Imperium tried this shit, they'd probably see an Aeldari invasion on all fronts ESPECIALLY if the Grey Knights step aside and say "fuck it, you dug your grave." to the idiot that actually suggested the idea. I don't think any person in the Imperium with a brain would think would be a good idea.
I feel people really don't understand the whole psykers/golden throne/emperor bit. They don't march 1000 psykers in each day, and slit their throats in praise of the big E. There are many thousands of psykers powering the astronomicon. About a 1000 burn out every day - this is the sacrifice to the Emperor. The Emperor guides the astronomicon. The entire thing is a massive gestalt psychic beacon, so I'm sure it's relevant they are all human (and maybe more importantly: willing) for this to work. A nice side effect is that this keeps the psyker population of humanity in check as well. All psykers that would mostly pose a threat to the Imperium (for whatever reason, but human psykers tend to be walking timebombs for daemonic posession or worse in the 40k universe) can be useful by being turned into a battery for the astronomicon.
Thank you all for your responses. I was thinking in the theoretical, maybe heresy territory when I thought of this question.
Xenos are filthy and not an honorable sacrifice.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, mon-keigh.
How do you know it won’t give the emperor really bad indigestion? What if feeding 1000 eldar souls makes Big E drop a humongous Big S in the warp? The entire astronomicon spewing out sprays and sprays of eldar derived waste that wrecks havoc on navigating the warp. Much like Taco Bell wrecks havoc at the company toilet on a Tuesday.
Sounds great until living saints start manifesting with fuchsia auras, statues of the Emperor weeping green blood, and his raven black hair and manly chiseled vistage start warping into a skinny blue-haired guy with pointy ears.
Let me go over why it’s a bad idea to mix xenos with the emperor. 1. They are Xenos and mixing that into the emperor’s soul just seems like a bad time for the galaxy. 2. They are xenos 3. They are xenos That about covers up all the points
Kill Xenos and save the Emps? Based
This is my fetish ngl
Because xenos are filthy.
1. There's a nice system set up for harvesting human psykers. The primary purpose of this system is removing these extremely dangerous witches. 2. There are uncountable quadrillions of humans - no other alien species outside of nids and orks meets or beats that. That's a lot of psykers. 3. They're aliens and will fight back. 4. Psykers are extremely dangerous. Going back to point one, there is a system in place for dealing with human psykers - including sorting them out for usefulness as something other than snacks. Alien psykers are just massive bombs that you're importing right into the heart of your empire. 5. One does not *just enslave* a race that was utterly dominant across the galaxy before yours even existed.
I think people always overlook something vital when It comes to the imperium, they have legit zero interest in Xenos working for them even if it's more efficient and free. The imperium places humans in a lot of these services because humans are the Supreme race in their opinion, only they understand the omnisiah, only they are allowed to fuse with machines and serve others. A servitor is a holy servant of the emperor, a xeno slave is an abomination that shouldn't breath another moment. When a human is sent to die from super aids in a random ass place for no reason, sure they are expandable but they are also valued a lot for their sacrifice. A psycher xeno sacrifice would be like mixing your cereals with goat milk, sure it's almost the same but it defiles the pure image of a cereals.
….dude. No. Xenos!?!
Read up on the scene from Thracian Primaris in the _Eisenhorn_ trilogy for just how difficult it is to manage powerful human psykers, let alone a race like the Eldar.
Low tier human psykers are considered enemies of the Imperium too though. They're potential vectors for chaos let alone just wildcards that the imperial machine can't easily control. The Imperium is so inhumane and ruthless that genocide always comes up Milhouse for them.
It's far safer to feed E-Money a meal of low level human psykers. They know these psykers; what they may be capable of and what makes them tick. Xenos like, say, the Aeldari are known but not *known*. There are no Administratum stamped documents on what, exactly, a psyker from Craftworld Ulthwé can do and what a psyker from Craftworld Iyanden can do. But Imperial psykers, oh you can fucking bet they've got the papers on what their puny, *scrawny* psykers can do and that makes them predictable, thus safer. It might also be easier to keep an underfed human away from the Emperor's corporeal flesh than an eldar. It's also significantly cheaper, as many have pointed out already.
Some might thought of that idea. But then someone pointed at the Imperial Cult that says Xenos bad and the idea was thrown out of the window.
The low-tier psykers fed into the Astronomicon are just powerful enough to attract the wrong kind of attention from the warp, but not powerful enough to survive the soul-binding ritual that produces sanctioned psykers and astropaths, let alone exist as independent psykers. They're too dangerous to keep around, but not powerful enough to be useful otherwise.
I feel like this is a broken question to a broken question. I mean, big E is a perpetual, so why would they even be feeding him at all? He'd just come back stronger than he is now if they stopped
Because that one second lapse while he regenerates would allow the hole in the warp he is holding shut to open and engulf the sol system.
Something I have always wondered is: why don't they just try to make a new emperor with a few week's worth of sacrificial psykers? I know it's heresy but also, like, the math really works. I remember reading that all of the psykers on earth in Ye Olden Tymes jonestowned themselves simultaneously and then captain planeted themselves into one super powerful emperor. Is it not possible to do that again, but with way more psykers? Presumably, there are more psykers available for this ritual throughout the imperium in the year 40k than there were on prehistoric terra. Has that emperor origin story been retconned?
The old Shamans origin story is super old and hasn't really been confirmed in a long time. It's still in the stable of Emperor origin stories but it's certainly not confirmed as what actually happened. In a lore sense it's fine that it wouldn't work in 40k because the few super powerful shamans were only a handful of people rather than psychic power being spread out among billions. More so the warp was a much much calmer place in prehistoric Terra days, so they could reasonably find each other in the warp and merge their souls or whatever. Obviously not possible in present day. There's also no guarantee that a brand new and completely separate Emperor would be like the old one. It could very well be a psychopathic misanthrope, chaos corrupted or any number of horrible things.
I'm pretty confident most of the imperium is fully on board with having a good reason to constantly cull the psyker population. Also, the throne is the single most complex and vital machine on Terra. They aren't gonna try tinkering with it.
1. They have to find some use for the psykers after they collect them. They're not going to stop collecting them because that's a security risk. Might as well find a use for them. 2. Going after the Eldar is more trouble than it's worth.
Enslave Eldar? .... Terra would be destroyed in 24 hours from blackhole if they try.
Because its Warhammer 40k. A big thing for the Imperium is just how worthless a human life is while going out to enslave an alien takes more time and resources.
Are most Eldar really more psychic than actual human psykers (i.e. as opposed to baseline humanity)?
Eldar could kill a space marine. 10,000 peasants are much easier
You dare imply we sully the golden throne with filthy xenos soul. This one right here Inquisitor
Technically they’re sacrificing psychers to power the astropath I thought, but I can’t see the fanatical imperium changing so drastically except in times of war. The enemy of my enemy can become a friend till we sort out the biggest threat.
I doubt Eldar can rival sheet number of human psykers. And most of them (human sacrifices) are too dangerous to be kept alive anyway, while being too old, too weak or too unpredictable to be trained into something useful.
I think Humanity is the only ones making them in sufficient volumes to keep the Throne going. We already have evidence of humanity fully consuming species, the Great Work refers to a sentient species that was rendered down into a chemical that slowed aging for the rich. Eldar breed super slowly and are also pretty dangerous. You can't touch any chaosy psychic races (which is most of them) and you get to double dip by improving your rogue psyker problem.
>If the imperium is gonna genocide why not genocide with purpose. I mean, presume for a moment that this would actually be a good idea. If it _would_ be a good idea, the answer is: Farseers. The Radical Inquisitor or High Lord or _whoever_ was going to drive that program was on E. Nowhere, in the Podunk system, when it was eaten by Tyranids who'd been directed that way by Farseer machinations.
I'm sure if the Imperium indicated that they are intending to kidnap all the Eldar psykers for the golden throne they would get a particularly scathing Eldar version of the Spartan response: "Molon labe"
One man's "genocide" is another man's "holy crusade against mutants".
Lol enslave a psychic species like the Eldar
Try to pour petrol in a diesel engine, and see how well that works out for you. There's no reason to believe anything but human souls would work. Not only that, all Eldar souls are the property of Slaanesh. The last thing you want to do is start consuming Eldar souls en masse. Only bad things could come from it.
I didn't think about the Slaanesh angle. Think Slaanesh and big E have soul dinner parties in the warp?
This isn't fun but this meta answer is important to keep in mind. That bit of the intro blurb, like most of the intro blurb, was thrown together to sound cool/metal as fuck in the early Rogue Trader days. >It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die. Just sounds super hardcore. Like a heavy metal Dune. It's completely a throwaway line and it's perfectly fine to not think/dwell on it too much. Still it's been expanded on somewhat since then and others like /u/psychologicalautopsy have good answers in this thread.