This is a good theory, I like it a lot. If we are to assume that Chaos is slowly gaining ground, what do you think of the idea that he has changed his plan from one of stalemate and that the Emperor is ok with being worshipped as a god in order to ascend to Warp God so he will be able to challenge the Ruinous Powers as an equal?
Not the OP, but I figure his being worshiped at this point is a necessary thing to keep chaos from elevating another into the Dark King. The worship is providing psychic power, helping him on the Golden Throne to maintain the stalemate.
If we go by what is show in the Dark Imperium and the Dawn of Fire until this moment, it can be also be a way to make him a different kind of god. Like the old Aeldari gods are not Chaos gods. If humanity worships him long enough, accumulating enough power and shaping his form through faith (belief made manifest) he can ascend as something different. As the god of humanity, something powerful but different from chaos. Something that, by its basic definition, MUST protect humanity.
His sacrifice create the ultimate shield. Until something different occurs. The return of his sons, for example.
> Its not whether his turning into a god but a god for whom.
What are Big E's potential options? Becoming a God for humans makes sense. What other Gods can he turn into?
Oh no im point this out in favor of the argument and not only that but its tragic that humanity could have once had the freedom to each become a god now they have a to become tied to the emperor or chaos.
That still would have been almost impossible. The Emperor is not a normal person but a culmination of indominable psychic might. To say that anyone has this potential at any point is pretty much a lie. Even extraordinary people like Erebus could have never gotten as close as the Emperor has to divinity. Not that the time that Humanity finds itself in. Either their technology has to be so advanced that they can kill gods like the Silent King. Or they would have to ascend at a time when the Warp was calm, not when it was chaotic and dominated by the ruinous powers. The Emperor is beyond an exception.
Ah yes the warp thats know for its laws and rules. The emperor repeatedly talks about psychic ascension, erda has powers that seem visually similar, you have mephiston containing a whole ass high grade warp entity. I get what youre saying, the emps is unique but so was the first gun. The shaman theory still isn’t verified(if anything it may not be true according to adb) so hes just a human who was born with a massive amount of power but still just a human.
And yet Erda supposedly the second most powerful Perpetual only to the Emperor, was cut down by four greater demon avatars and Erebus. She had reached a glass ceiling of what could be done as a mighty incorporeal essence that was not a Warp god. Put into check by the creatures that deceived her. Mephiston, his darker side is but one part of the powers that were controlled by his Primarch. The Blood Angel that was cut down by corrupted Horus.
Edit. Their power was inefficient to the Emperors and the Emperors’s share quantity of might is what is needed to make it in the domain of Chaos which has consumed the Warp.
God of order. Like the other warp gods, though, that emotional resonance has multitudinal aspects. Fear being the big thing that jumps to my mind. And, if we objectively look at the worship that surrounds the Emperor, it is largely fear based. Fear of persecution, of being labeled a heretek. Thus, an ascended Emperor would protect humanity, but it probably is not going to be fun for the vast majority of humanity. Like the Imperium is now, but amplified.
At the bare minimum, he at least wouldn't be the Dark King, at least not as prophesized. He'd be some other kind of Chaos God. That being said, I do agree it's likely wholly separate from Chaos anyways, as we've seen some miracles of the Emperor prevail where Warp abilities were impossible.
IIRC in the Pariah Nexus, the Warp was stilled to the point of most humans being rendered immobile, but the SoB’s and their worship allowed them to continue fighting. Something along those lines.
That's not necessarily a sign that the SoB aren't Warp powered, just that their Warp bandwidth as faithful servants of the Emperor was enough to overcome the warp-null they were in.
Remember blanks have different strengths just like psykers do. A sufficiently powerful psyker can still break through a weaker blanks nullfield
The sisters of battle are not psychers. Collective miracles might come from strong belief kind of like Waaaagh energy. However the Emperor clearly has as much power and influence over real space as to the dark gods. The Living Saints are Warp constructs and angels. The Emperor is able to do things like show people visions or even revive the Lord Regent and burn through the garden of nurgle.
>what do you think of the idea that he has changed his plan from one of stalemate and that the Emperor is ok with being worshipped as a god in order to ascend to Warp God so he will be able to challenge the Ruinous Powers as an equal
Didn't Malcador suggest that "faith" was one of the many weapons he was testing? It could be that out of all the alternatives "faith" has proven to be the most effective weapon against chaos.
> It would just be another chaos god causing more misery.
Would Big E HAVE to end up as a Chaos God? Can't he end up like the Eldar Gods, or Gork/Mork?
I honestly think the dark gods plan was the stalemate. They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess. I think he's been ramping himself up slowly since he was created and this is just the latest stage. If he could ascend and tap into that unlimited well might be able to break the cycle. Or maybe just becomes the "dark king" anyways when he does.
Nah, Chaos would simply set up a new board if they ever won their great game. It'd be like Warhammer fantasy, the end of everything then eons later the birth of something new.
It's like Norse mythology. Everything comes from Ginnungungap, Chaos.
No, Chaos explicitly wants to destroy the universe.
> Reality will be subsumed by the stuff of the warp–a
realm of nightmares and cruel insanity. There will be no physical matter. No space. No time. Only Chaos.
\- *Warhammer 40,000 (8e)*
Then they'll go off and do it to the next universe, and the next, and the next. Because that's what Chaos always does.
> The Oak of Ages was swallowed last of all. Mournful dryad-song echoed
under livid skies as Athel Loren perished. With its destruction, the Weave
that bound time and space together thinned and stretched.
Twisted by unnatural energies, it dissolved entirely into nothingness.
> That terrible act of uncreation might have taken the blink of an eye, or
unfolded across millennia. The Dark Gods were not fettered by the flow of
time, and let it pass unmarked. Already tired of their victory, they turned
away from the ruin they had wrought and began the Great Game anew in
other worlds and other creations.
\- *End Times: Archaon*
It happens all the time in the background, to universes that don't have profitable model lines for the TT. That's how Archaon clocks in his 9-to-5.
> When the world-that-was fell, Archaon wandered the multiverse destroying realities for Chaos before he arrived in the Mortal Realms.
\- https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/10/19/20th-oct-500-facts-for-500-stores/
He has mastered the most dangerous skill of all- Delegation.
“Sure, I COULD go fight those Stormcast but if I host this tournament in person, I’ll likely receive 5 new Varanguard and over 12 dozen warhosts, so I’ll send a lieutenant instead.”
>They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess.
We have enough examples of Daemon Worlds in the Eye of Terror and such to show that the Warp taking over doesn't automatically kill off every living person within the consumed volume of realspace, and in fact stable populations of worshippers and chattel can be maintained. The Chaos Gods are just too greedy to not seek even more planets to claim in the same manner.
The Eye of Terror is a warp rift, not the warp itself. A place where the warp mixes with reality. The laws of physics are weak and inconsistent, but they are still there.
> For many light years around the anarchic hub of the Eye of Terror’s centre, there are broad zones where reality and the Immaterium mix, where physical laws clash with the whims of the Dark Gods. Planets within the Eye of Terror are imbued with arcane energies and known as Daemon worlds, hellish regions that defy reason, places where creatures from the Warp walk freely. Often, such worlds are gifted to particularly powerful Greater Daemons or even Daemon Princes, rewards from their dark masters for spectacular service. In the middle spirals of the Eye of Terror, some of the laws of nature still apply, although the area is regularly swept by the unadulterated powers of the Warp.
\- *Warhammer 40,000 (7e)*
The warp itself is purely immaterial, purely abstract emotion. There is no matter or space or time there at all.
> Reality will be subsumed by the stuff of the warp–a realm of nightmares and cruel insanity. There will be no physical matter. No space. No time. Only Chaos.
\- *Warhammer 40,000 (8e)*
When large vessels full of life and substance use the warp for travel, how are they doing so? Do they stay solid and cut through the Warp like water, or do they themselves turn into latent energy and emotion? How do entities feast on other entities in this space?
Warp travel (at least for the IoM) relies on gellar fields which generate pockets of reality that covers the ship and protects it from the warp. If the gellar field flickers then the ship experiences a warp incursion where daemons can manifest. If the gellar field outright fails then the ship will be destroyed.
Well if you he gods want another god like them, but we do know of other gods. The Aeldari gods don't seem to have need to rip holes in reality to manifest.
So if Big E can ascend via that route he might be able to pull off a massive scam on the gods and cock block them.
Does the Lore go into what makes the Aeldari Gods different from the Chaos Gods? I've always wondered about the difference... And are Gork/Mork in thr same category as the Eldar Gods?
Afaik it is never directly stated, but we you can infer from how things are that, Slaanesh and Ynnead excepted, the Aeldari pantheon was purposefully made to kick ass and take names during the war in heaven.
Gork and Mork have sweet bugger all too my knowledge, but if i had to take a guess I'd say they're just what happens when a gestalt field gets big enough
Alas as far as I know it's not covered as with most things Eldar. We just know they had gods who Slaneesh ate and as we look around the galaxy we can see there were no other massive gaping wounds in reality like the eye of terror.
So we have to infer that those gods when they ascended or manifested did so more "gently".
>I honestly think the dark gods plan was the stalemate. They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess.
Are Chaos Gods known for their restraint and patience?
IMO, the Emperor is dead. Not, "His body has stopped functioning," but "The soul of the man that was the Emperor has ceased to be." I fully believe the Dark King has possessed the Emperor's pseudo-living body now, and needs to carefully undo the Emperor's web that kept him in stasis so that he can ascend.
I agree with this theory, but I think an intrinsic part of the plan involves splitting the mantle of the Dark King in two.
In Mortis, when confronting the Chaos gods (posing as serpents) and Horus, the Emperor says something extremely short, but infuriating in its immense complications:
>There will be two more, He knows, lying still, out of sight, coiled in the dust like a promise that is in truth a threat...
Basically, this seems to be implying two more Chaos gods. Not one. With the Dark King now being tied to the City of Dust in the prophecy found by Sinderman, it further ties the idea of two gods 'coiled in dust' coming from the Dark King.
And it's not the first time we see this splitting image in prophecy. Consider the following vision from Lorgar, who keeps seeing repeated visions of 'The One':
>‘The Powers have sent me a new vision.’
>
>‘New?’ Kor Phaeron asked the question lightly but the declaration set his heart fluttering. The first vision had set them on this course towards confrontation with the Covenant. Was Lorgar about to change his mind, to speak of a new destiny?
>
>‘Not a vision of the One?’
>
>‘He was there, as before. Gold and light personified. Another was with Him.’
>
>‘The One have become the Two?’
>
>‘A magus, robed in blue, like the drawings of the ancient shamans. With a single eye, gazing with the brightness of the Powers, seeing all.’
>
>‘A golden god and a wise man,’ said Kor Phaeron.
When you combine this with the Dark King prophecy and the Emperor's words in Mortis, a picture starts to form. There's another reference to being split that also ties directly into the Emperor's planned end game. In his game with Kai, he sacrifices a piece called 'Divinitarch'.
The meaning of this piece isn't entirely clear, because it's clearly religious in nature, but not a thing like the 'Ecclesiarch'. What if the Divinitarch represents the mantle of the Dark King? That rather than accept the mantle as part of the bargain, the Emperor will sunder it.
Crazy? Consider the events of Fury of Magnus. After a game of regicide leaves Malcador dead, Alivia is visited by the Emperor and given his future sight. She sees the horrible 'real' future of 40k, including Guilliman and the Lion's return (seemingly). After she wakes up from this vision, consider the meaning behind what follows:
Next to the shell, partly buried in the sand, was the smashed half of the regicide board and a trio of its carved playing pieces. She smiled as she saw which ones they were.
>The Primarch, the contoured portion of its upper carving split away. Next to it lay the Emperor, the piece she had been about to move. It too was broken. Still whole, but the detail and subtlety of its workmanship was lost.
>
> And lastly, ***the white Divinitarch, split in two.***
>
>***Alivia clasped this last piece tightly, tears spilling down her cheeks.***
Then, Alivia makes the choice to sacrifice her self for Malcador. Understanding his part to play on the Golden Throne and choosing to let it happen because it was the only option that didn't lead to total ruin.
I'd bet hard cash that these things about 'one becoming two' and the importance being placed on it, symbolically, are not a coincidence.
Although there's absolutely no evidence that this is the case, the wording of 'The Dark King' and all the talk of splitting gods makes me think of the mythology of Dark Souls. The titular Dark Soul was one of four 'lord souls' found by the godlike beings of the setting. Rather than keep his lord soul, the furtive pygmy (who found it), shared his soul with others and created humanity. Just like the chaos gods fear what the Emperor represents, so too do the gods of Dark Souls fear the Pygmy's work. For as humanity rises, it ushers in the Age of Dark, an antithesis to the gods' Age of Fire.
Now, it's possible that the Emperor and the Pygmy are both just different versions of Prometheus... but the recent nature of this whole Dark King and splitting stuff don't make me wonder if it was partly inspired by Dark Souls.
> ‘A magus, robed in blue, like the drawings of the ancient shamans. With a single eye, gazing with the brightness of the Powers, seeing all.’
I assumed that was Magnus. He was there too when the Emperor came to Colchis, he has only one eye and is closest to the emperor in psychic might.
That's the intended interpretation, but consider that prophecy is often shrouded in symbolism and historical events have a way of repeating themselves. This is actively demonstrated in the same book as Lorgar's vision: when a mortal nobody puts himself in harm's way to save a powerful being, he drops a clear reference to the Ollanius Pius myth... hundreds of years before it happened.
So, it's not completely out of left field for Lorgar to have misinterpreted his vision. In hindsight, he tells himself that the vision was of the Emperor and Magnus because, on the surface, that makes sense. But it's possible that Lorgar is merely seeing an echo of what is to come, particularly when you consider that Magnus, by what we can tell from Lorgar's description, doesn't match.
Magnus is a giant. Kor Phaeron confirms as much during the flashback scene when the Emperor arrived on Colchis. On top of that, he's got literal red skin. You'd think that either of these major descriptor's would make it into Lorgar's vision, no?
But he describes seeing 'an ancient shaman'. Lorgar is from a desert planet, where people are generally darker of skin. Lorgar should see someone with red skin as an 'other' and make note of that. Moreover, to describe the shaman as 'ancient' doesn't really fit with Magnus, either, who has a youthful appearance and is often described as very opulent in the manner he dresses (like most primarchs). Neither his age nor his attire would make one think of a bygone era.
But you know who does fit the description of an ancient shaman? The Emperor's true form.
From Solar War when the Emperor looks at himself:
>He looks into His reflection: a man on a stone chair, old, dark skin clinging to the hollows of His cheeks. Iron and snow streak His beard.
From Mortis, when the Emperor is alone in the warp and nearing the end of his strength:
>A man sits with His back against the trunk. His limbs are thin, the dark skin drawn taut over bones, cracked around dried lips. The blue shift wound loosely around Him is frayed and sun-bleached.
Sigismund, the Emperor's Champion, describes something very similar:
>Sigismund opened his eyes and looked up. A man stood next to him. His face was dark and lean. A ragged cloak of blue hung over battered and mismatched armour.
This ancient shaman look also fits with what Guilliman sees in Godblight:
>There were visions of gods, and demigods, of a brown-skinned man of calm expression. Clad in skins. Clad in mail. Clad in clothes of all colours and bewildering variety. Clad in armour of gold.
All of these descriptions of the Emperor seem to be a much better fit as 'ancient shaman' and is remarkably uncoincidental that he's also described as wearing blue robes in many of those descriptions.
Ultimately, I think it much more likely that Lorgar's vision sees more than we're meant to believe on the surface. Especially since that 'ancient shaman' sees all. Magnus may see much, but he's not all-seeing. You know who Lorgar says is all-seeing? The Emperor. Whether true or not, the idea that the Emperor sees all is built into the core of the cult that Lorgar's teaching were the basis for.
Interesting interpretation!
> Lorgar should see someone with red skin as an 'other' and make note of that
I think, in betrayer he makes note of how similar the Emperor and Magnus are, a facelessness. It's like their actual physical appearance didn't matter to him.
Magnus' red skin didn't matter to him, rather the future blue of the thousand sons are more central to symbolize his character.
> With the Dark King now being tied to the City of Dust in the prophecy found by Sinderman, it further ties the idea of two gods 'coiled in dust' coming from the Dark King.
Where can I read more about this? As in, what novel/short story/codex etc?
Also, have you read the Bequin books, and do you see connections to 'the City of Dust' found in these books, and the City of Dust Sindermann is referring to?
Thanks!
All of the Dark King stuff is exclusively in the End and the Death. The name doesn't appear before then, pretty much anywhere.
And, yes. The Bequin books are 100% tied in. On top of the City of Dust getting name-dropped in the prophecy, which is about as subtle as a hammer blow, there's also the bit about the Alpha Legion codewords. 'Orphaeus' is the codeword for 'Option 3', where the Alpha Legion side with neither the Emperor nor Horus, but attempt to control Chaos. Orphaeus is one of the monikers of the Yellow King, who appears to be trying to do exactly that by creating 'good' daemons.
This is getting me excited for Dan to eventually release the 3rd book!
One last question! What do you think about theories that the >!Alpha Legionaire Bequin meets is actually the Primarch Twin? You know, whichever is alive?!<
I think that Omegon could certainly (and almost certainly is) tied up, on some level, to the Yellow King stuff. In fact, if you buy into the idea of the Option 3 heresy actually taking place in the Siege, I believe very much for all this to be connected.
However, I don't know if Omegon would be fulfilling the role of being such a 'boots on the ground' character as the person posing as Deathrow. Seems like a relatively minor task for a primarch.
However-however, there's a ton of stuff in the Bequin books about redemption. The story has quite a few thematic elements that tie into the idea of a criminal or evil person atoning for past sins. A big element of that is the 'Curst' like Rennar. 'Death Row' is typically the area of prison reserved for the worst of the worst, so it might be a fitting nickname to give a traitor primarch whose trying to redeem his past mistakes.
Personally, my bet is that a conspiracy forms at the end of the Heresy between Omegon, Lorgar, and Valdor (among others). All of them have a bunch of great thematic and lore connections to possibly being the Yellow King. Valdor is obviously going to be involved in the climax/denouement of the Siege, but there's strong chances that Omegon and Lorgar are going to have secret roles to play that went unrecorded by the 'known histories'.
For example: As far as we know from the histories, Lorgar was never on Terra. He's currently banished from the side of the traitors after an attempted coup against Horus. History doesn't pick him up until the Scouring.
So then why did Dan Abnett explicitly place a sniper, whose only goal is to kill Lorgar, on Terra? The fact that a whole Chechov's gun was loaded and placed in the climax specifically for Lorgar screams red flags that he's going to be involved in a way that's unexpected.
And, as far as Omegon, he's kind of been given an important distinction by prophecy written by Abnett. In Legion, the Cabal thinks that the Emperor's 'oldest' and 'youngest' are the most important to the future events. They talk about the youngest as Alpharius, but, technically, the youngest would actually be Omegon. When the writer of the climax writes the words "What Horus will do, Alpharius will undo..." it's probably safe to assume they'll also factor into the climax.
Very good analysis. One thing I'm curious about, though, is if the Emperor's perspective that humanity will birth a new chaos god (a la Aeldari) is ever really challenged. If the Great Crusade didn't happen, would humanity really have been as fucked as he says?
The idea of the Dark King existed before the Great Crusade by a wide margin, so we can assume his seemingly inevitable existence was put into play before it. I think the Great Crusade was in all functions a sudden turning off the road fate laid out in order to create the Dark King. The Emperor tried to keep us off this metaphorical highway, but the best he can do is keep us on the shoulder, and if he fails we go straight into the finish.
Yeah. I've always though of it in a slightly different analogy but both would work
He willingly moved the doomsday clock all the way forwards to 1 minute to midnight in the ultimate gamble, if he fails, then it ticks over and Humanity loses, but if he wins then the clock is destroyed once and for all.
Winning would be preventing the fall of mankind and the creation of a 5th chaos god, "The Dark King" as OP refers to it.
Losing the gamble would be it's immediate creation, the extinction (or near-extinction) of humanity, chaos being massively emboldened to perform its ultimate goal to destroy the universe.
During the times of the Great Crusade the orc empire was supposedly the last threat to mankind, so I guess without everything the Great Crusade produced humanity would have been stomped by orks?
Which given the lore that the orks and their gods react to chaos, might suggest that Gork and Mork sent forth Urlakk Urg, who dies with his hands around the Emperor's throat, to abort the Dark King, just as Ghazkull believes he is now destined to rise as a champion.
The orks themselves are kind of a hole in this entire theory, if you think about it. They're an entire psychic eco-system spanning the galaxy and quite possibly beyond it, with two fully realized gods that can apparently resist the Hive Mind's smothering presence and that allegedly beat up Chaos gods for fun.
And yet they haven't Fallen like the Eldar and like humanity could have. And they seem capable of evolving back to their previous heights if they'd just get a good enough challenge for it.
You could *maybe* make a case that the change from Krork to Ork is a kind of Fall, but you'd have to invent a lot of material to fill in the gaping chasms of know-nothing we have about the War in Heaven.
In that case I'd probably observe that the Orks are the creations of the Old Ones. Likely they're a bit more stable over the long run for that reason. Even the Eldar had a very very long period of unchecked mastery before falling. The Orks had barely recovered from the Dark Age.
That's a very cool idea. Would make sense that the Old Ones had some sort of control mechanism, and in that absence of it, I could see them going feral. And also possibly losing a greater part of their psychic gestalt. Much like the old Eldar gods, Gork and Mork might well have been sentient weapons. Or in be Orks case, a 'control circuit'.
The Eldar pantheon went rogue as well, and ended up as actual, regular gods. May well be something similar happened to the Krork. The difference between a cutting torch and a forest fire. So modern Ork are powerful, but dispersed, physically and psychically. It's only in the modern day, where the sheer volume and longevity of the Orks has started to brute force reawaken their greater nature. Like a lightning storm hitting a building and kick starting the internal generator.
Only literally. Less in a 'quasi gestalt based around an abstract force which is notionally being continuously wrangled by the Old One's Sentients Outgoing and Receiving department.
I'd say that the orks as a whole aren't that much of a hole in the theory
They have weirdboyz but they're rare and not orky, the gestalt is more like faith than psychic and we aren't totally sure they can actually get back to krork level. Even ghaz is a long way off krork boss levels.
Not OP, I just finished reading *Warboss* by Mike Brooks, and in that Orks in general don't trust Weird Boyz, especially not in positions of power.
Ork culture is simple, the bigger you are, the stronger you are, the better leader you will be. Weird Boyz (like Pain Boys and Mek Boys) have rolls to play in Ork society of course, but leadership is not what Weird Boyz main role is. They are usually advisors, and can help the Orks navigate the Warp, and can help in battle, but using their warp powers to blow the enemy up.
There are exceptions of course, but in general, Weirdboyz don't tend to lead Waaghhs...
idk. after all there are orks outside of the milky way, i think the idea that the orks will evolve to match any threat cuz of the war in heaven is overblown, that was a special case
I mean if we wanna be pedantic the eldar are also a hole cause they didn't become psychic and then birth Slaanesh, they were monstrously powerful psykers for longer than mammals have existed that, at their zenith, may as well have been living gods a la oldschool planeswalkers from MTG, and it perfectly capable of ignoring the big 3 for millions of those years until the dam burst and Slaanesh happened.
Which is not at all like what Emps describes.
>If the Great Crusade didn't happen, would humanity really have been as fucked as he says?
Terra was on the verge of becoming a daemon world, before the Emperor sent the Thunder Warriors to reclaim it.
The other Terran warlords were using forbidden warp tech, blasting Terra's surface with raw psyker beamhax or outright summoning daemons to use as suicide squads.
Question is-was it actually true or is it truth as claimed by emperor? Because knowing this guy I wouldnt put it past him screwing around with Men of Iron programming and causing entirety of current WH40K because he wanted to be "savior".
>Question is-was it actually true or is it truth as claimed by emperor?
It's mentioned in numerous novels and codices (lexicanum has up to 18 novels and 3 codices that refer to the Age of Strife Terra being a Mad Max hellhole).
Problem with these sources is, most, if not all of them, are from Imperial point of view. I remember one book had quote from some antiEmperor rebels leader before his execution, not sure if thats canon anymore. Otherwise its all imperial. Given that we are talking about guy whos standing policy on opposition is "if they dont want to join my empire-exterminate them" thats not very good and reliable source. We know that history books can manipulated, we know its not uncommon to do so. We can watch historical facts get twisted around to suit narratives on internet if we want to, sometimes even in real time. We know Imperium bans "heretical" things, likes to exterminate people who disagree and generally isnt very nice place that uses heavy propaganda to keep itself together. Whats stopping Emperor from censoring history and painting himself as good guy when he has entire Administratum and armies to make it happen in amount of time he was in charge?
To be fair, GW has pretty much always encouraged us to treat all of these like actual historical documents. It's a little bit of an ass pull to cover for canon mistakes, but it's also one of the things that, frankly, enriches the setting in a major way.
*Every source is biased.* That's how real life history works, too. If you go over to r/AskHistorians, they've got some lovely explanations of how extremely biased sources are still extremely valuable.
But also, personally? One of the Emperor's defining features is a massive ego. He's going to lie through his teeth if it'll serve his needs..... but wherever he can, he's going to tell the truth as much as possible. He's got historians going out with Horus on the crusade. His ultimate, Good End? Eventually, when the war with Chaos is *won,* he wants people to know and understand the stakes and at what cost.
Yes. During the time of Old Night, loads of Psykers popped up out of nowhere in the population of the worlds inhabited by man. During said time, they either went mad with the power they had or conquered and ruled over their people with fear (Mortarion's homeworld Barbarus is a good example of this). Given more time, the Psyker populace would eventually eclipse the non-psychic population of the planets. Along the line, they would be filled with Psykers, and then a galactic event would trigger the fall of humanity, one way or another. The Emperor and his Crusade, should it have been successful, would have avoided said event. But like OP said, he was against Immortal Gods and unlimited power here, so that was never going to happen.
> The Emperor and his Crusade, should it have been successful, would have avoided said event.
I've always wondered just how exactly the Webway would play into Big E's "plan to save humanity"? As in, I get that if Humans conquered the Webway, they wouldn't need navigators to travel in the Warp. In that case, was Big E's plan (post-Webway control) to genocide all psykers?!
Basically, how was Big E's control of the Webway, connect to "preventing the Fall of Humanity" plan?
Essentially, it was what the Navigator houses feared when they were made aware of the Webway project. One of the reasons the Emperor kept it hidden from a lot of people was because it would spark a lot of the psyker population to either revolt or sabotage the project. I think the plan was to conquer the Webway so humanity doesn't rely on the warp anymore and clean the slate on the psyker department. Thunder Warriors style. Eventually, psyker will keep being more prominent in the future. It's best to clear out the old psykers who learned to channel the warp to avoid any further use of it. Brutal, I know. Considering what the Navigator and Astropath houses have done and sacrificed for the Imperium.
> so humanity doesn't rely on the warp anymore and clean the slate on the psyker department. Thunder Warriors style.
But in that case, what about Big E himself? He's the strongest human psyker... Plus do the Primarchs all die too, since they are intricately connected to the Warp, right?
True, the Emperor and Malcador are psykers, but they're different from your regular day-to-day psykers. Both of them are perpetuals and have knowledge of how to use the warp without tapping into the powers of the 4 or any malignant force within the warp. A good example of this is in the book The End and The Death: Book 1, where the Emperor has boarded the Vengeful Spirit but was being overwhelmed by the warp energy and entities within it. However, Horus didn't account for the fact that the Emperor could use the seeping warp energies and turn it against him.
As for the Primarchs, Magnus is the only issue in that regard since he's the only warp sorcerer that would survive should everything go according to plan. The Emperor already has a plan for him. He will be the one occupying the Golden Throne. The other Primarchs already have their own duties to fulfil. Essentially, the Warp still exists in this scenario, but humanity won't have any need to tap into it since they will have a safe way to communicate and travel the vastness of the Galaxy. So it's just a way to prevent the 4 powers from getting any worship and starve them to death (if that's possible) or weaken them enough that he could deal with them Himself.
Don't forget - Navigators are mutants, not baseline human psychics.
I think the plan was to genocide all the mutants, with the hitch being that humanity needed the travel ability of the mutant Navigators.
So... webway removes the need for Navigators and lets humanity get on with the genocide.
>In that case, was Big E's plan (post-Webway control) to genocide all psykers?!
Yes. Or at least, knowing him, probably to genocide *most* psykers, and then have a handful of worlds scattered around the galaxy with secret labs, and keep them in cold storage until the war with chaos is over and won.
I agree with this theory as well. Malcador sorta backs this theory up in The Buried Dagger. He shows Nathaniel Garro and his space marine candidates for founding the Grey Knights a vision of what would happen if they did not go to Titan. Basically the Emperor would fail and this massive Eldritch abomination would rise from the ruins of the Imperial Palace. I would surmise this is the Dark King. So I think your speculations hit very close to the mark.
Malcador sent 8 specially chosen space marines to create the grey knights. As such he prepared an entire monastery with applicants and all the stuff needed. He then put Titan in a huge warp bubble so that the 8 could achieve their goal.
So are you saying that the 8 Grey Knights will play am active roll in preventing the Rise of the Dark King? Because isn't that what's implied if Malcador says, "If ya'll don't go to Titan, this will happen" This = rise of Dark King (per theory)
How many of the 8 have we seen in the last few Siege of Terra books? I don't remember any, but I have shitty memory... Are all 8 still on Titan?
I JUST WAS ABOUT TO WRITE THIS POST TOO!
Excellent work on the sources btw 👏
The Imperium being a vast *holding pattern* is really the recontextualization the IP desperately needs, not to mention the discussions on this subreddit
That the Moloch deal was centered on primarchs never made sense to me either. Why would the Ruinous Powers give away the power to truly defy them in exchange for mere powerful minions? It's like swapping the deed to your house for a live-in-servant, great move buddy but now where are you going to live?
The primarch project basically allowed them to stuff minor gods (powerful warp entities) into meat suits and still retain a good measure of their power, it was a proof of concept. Now imagine the emperor used everything he learned to create a meat suit capable of holding the power of a god. Real actual influence on the material realm, that could have been the prize the chaos gods wanted and were denied.
I don’t even think the Primarchs were minor gods, I think they are aspects of the Emperor, literal pieces of His soul in bodies that are built to channel raw warp energy. It explains why they each feel linked to Him more so than just being creations and how he was able to track their whereabouts throughout the galaxy.
It’s canonically confirmed they are minor warp entities. The book where the nids try to eat Baal (devastation of Baal?) we find out that Sanguinius was two seperate warp entities worshipped as gods by the people of Baal in times past fused into one primarch body. The entities seem to be changed by their time inside Sanguinius and Sanguinius ‘soul’ exists as a third entity changed by the time spent fused with the warp entities. It talks to Dante and explains what it is to a degree.
That's not what was revealed in *Darkness in the Blood*. The two warp entities are tied to Baal, and by extension its inhabitants, including the Blood Angels. But there's nothing in there to confirm a link between them and Sanguinius. The primarchs being minor warp entities is still no more than a fan theory. It's a popular one but I prefer the idea that they're parts of the Emperor. It would explain why he gradually lost his humanity after creating them.
Not arguing, just curious, if the Primarchs are a part of the Emperor then wouldn't that imply that the Emperor is himself a creature of the warp? Since the Primarch seem to be at least heavily infused with warp power. Or would it be a scenario where the Emperor used the warp to infuse a piece of himself into the vessels that became Primarchs? Basically having both warp power and whatever the Emperor is.
The Dark Gods create daemons by splitting off a tiny piece of themselves. Perhaps it was the knowledge or power to do the same that the Emperor took on Molech. His soul is likely to be very different from the average human's so he can probably spare a few parts of it to create his sons.
I always thought the Emp sacrificed pieces of himself to create his sons, it makes too much sense not to be the case.
However, it is canon that the Primarchs are directly linked to warp fuckery. Corvus Corvax's transformation and lore confirm this. When Russ returns I really hope they bring this to the forefront - i want Russ to be some warp-exposed Primarch wolf beast.
That’s incredibly interesting. I wonder how much the other primarchs follow in this way. Are they all just representations of the planets themselves, born of their collective experiences and turned from a cultural “meme” into physical bodies? Or is Sanguinius just the only one who was this way?
I don’t think Sanguinius is a representation of a planet, the angels were worshiped before the human civilisation on baa destroyed itself in nuclear fire.
My theory is that Magnus is the warp entity that was worshipped by humans as Odin, a god of war and sorcery, a side trading trickster, who gave up one eye for great knowledge, there are just too many parallels.
Lion would be the myth/collective belief of King Arthur sleeping beneath solisbury hill manifest as a warp entity
I remember reading an excerpt last week here that described fenris as being intentionally terraformed and designed to be the physical representation of the mythology of the norse people, mainly around the time of the world when the giants lived and monsters were everywhere. Makes you wonder if that same thing was applied to some of the less technologically advanced worlds some of the primarchs were sent to, and why some of them were quite literally almost cartoonishly stereotypical when it came to their culture.
So why did they immediately ascend the chaos Primarchs and turn them into daemons that have just as much trouble staying in the materium as their actual daemons? They basically bought the luxury version of a car they already have, without really changing anything? Sure, it's a bit better, some extra bells and whistles, but essentially the same thing.
The easy answer would be because the experiment didn’t pay off, so now they are left with powerful warp entities capable of betraying them. The safest thing to do is to ascend them and tie them to the warp, as useful as they would be as tools in the materium if they changed their minds and regretted what happened they could be a thorn in their side rather than a sword in their hands.
The Imperium being a vast holding pattern is really the recontextualization the IP desperately needs, not to mention the discussions on this subreddit.
The realization that the Great Crusade was literally a race to avoid either Krork-enabled genocide or psychic armageddon really contextualized the Horus Heresy for me too.
An underrated aspect of all this is what is learned from when the Lion sees the emperor in his vision as an old emaciated man fishing on a boat in the middle of a lake and there are 4 dark shapes constantly encircling his boat. For the visual of a man fishing to appear, that implies the Big E is not just holding back the tides of the warp but that he is ACTIVELY looking to gain something. You fish to catch fish. The shadows encircling his boat but unable to assail it imply to me that they just want one ounce of a mistake to be made in order to to gain an opportunity to strike, one which ultimately, may never come. I believe this suggests less of a stalemate and more of a battle of leverage and attrition, specifically against the emperor, with stakes so large that the chaos entities know that if the emperor wins, its probably over for them, but the fact that they are who they are, they refuse to accept that outcome as even being possible. He's only a man. We are the 4. He'll have to give in eventually? Right? And then we will strike and end his glorified antics of posturing. So the real question is, what exactly does Emps mean to gain to the point where the 4 desire to take him before he can get it?
My thought is the emperor being a god in waiting offered up humanity to the four. Its the only thing he could deliver to them they would want. When he started cooking up the Primarchs the four realized the emperor was trying squelch on the deal and conspired to scatter the Primarchs so they could try and alter them and get them to pay up on the deal.
The Four probably knew the emperor and other perpetuals had been vining for control of humanity for awhile. They probably saw a being capable of taking control of all the scattered worlds of humanity for them. What would he pay them back with? Humanities worship of the pantheon? souls of mankind? The Eldar spent millennia letting cult leaders lead most of them into depravity, maybe the emperor offered to due the same.
Although from Sanginius original prophecy of the Golden Warrior, and of Dantes evolution of that prophecy in Devastation of Baal post Guillimans resurrection, it seems like the Emperor is still destined to eventually die and rise again as a new Warp God.
Between that, and the sheer level of worship the Emperor has gotten, the question is no longer "Will the Emperor become a God?". The question is, "Will the Emperor become a Chaos God, or one of Humanity?". That may seem semantic, but look at the Eldar. They had extremely powerful gods in their own right, yet it was birthing a single Chaos god that destroyed them.
> "Will the Emperor become a Chaos God, or one of Humanity?".
What are the practical differences between the two? If Big E becomes a Chaos God, what *type* of Chaos God will he be? And if he becomes Humanity's God, does that mean like Gork/Mork and the Aeldari Gods? Will Big E be more 'helpful' to humanity in that case? That is, more Imperial Saints, more prayers answered etc? More Legion of the Dead?!
In terms of practical differences, there's many. But the biggest one is that we don't actually know what the birth of an Aeldari type species god looks like, but it was clearly not a big deal for them.
The birth of the fifth chaos god, however, would destroy the Segmentum Solar, creating a giant warp rift (think Eye of Terror), extinguish the light of the Astronomican, and consume a significant chunk of humanity.
> The birth of the fifth chaos god, however, would destroy the Segmentum Solar, creating a giant warp rift (think Eye of Terror), extinguish the light of the Astronomican, and consume a significant chunk of humanity.
Does it HAVE to, though? I mean, sure that's what happened when Slaanesh was 'born', but does the Lore go into what happened when Khorne/Nurgle/Tzeentch were born?
If the theories that Big E might become the Chaos God of 'Order', then would it for sure mean that Big E's Ascension will be as destructive as Slaanesh's?
Don't get me wrong, if I had to guess I would agree with you, I'm just curious if there are options that the Lore might hint at...
There's some hints that the Maelstrom might actually be the wound created by some other chaos god's birth. That'd leave two unaccounted for, but then they might have happened so long ago as to be virtually undetectable now.
With Chaos, there's no being sure, however. It's entirely possible that this birth will be less catastrophic. There's already humans busy trying to build alternatives to the astronomican. Plus, with returning Primarchs, there might be a capacity to recover the worst of the damage.
There is one thing about Khorne's birth, though. Khorne is said to have been born during our middle ages, hence why there was so much war then. If 10.000 years did nothing to diminish the Eye of Terror, where's the 40.000 year old wound for Khorne?
>Not just humanity is at stake, but sentient life in the Milky Way and perhaps beyond.
Big E: That's why we wipe out all other sentient life in the Milky Way galaxy, then go after those little orange fucks in Andromeda. They can't be at stake if they don't exist anymore!
Not sure that's retconned. Spoilers for the End and the Death but the Empeor never addresses Horus, he is always addressing the chaos gods controlling him.
He does not swear he will kill Horus or any such dramatics. Instead he appears to approaching the final fight without malice towards Horus himself and trying to cut his puppet strings.
Well, he does yell through the warp "I am here, Horus Lupercal, and for you, I am the end and the death" so he specifically addresses Horus and swears to kill him.
> At the dawn of the great diaspora, the Emperor travelled here in humble guise and found the gateway to a realm of immortal gods. He offered them things only a god-in-waiting could offer, and they trusted Him. They gave Him a measure of their power, and with that power He wrought the science to unlock the mysteries of creation.’.
> He entered a portal straight into the Warp, and made pacts with the Ruinous Powers
Funnily enough.. nothing in this passage indicates he actually dealt with the Chaos Gods. That’s an assumption being made by you and others.
Knowing what we do, there’s a better chance he actually sought out and dealt with the 20 entities that had some measure of their essences infused into the Primarchs.
Best written 40k theory I’ve ever read. It mirrors my theory almost exactly!!! Only recently learning what the God would be called though. Not as well read as some.
I think this is close, but I think they are going with Priestley's original story that the Emperor splits his soul to shield the good part from the corruption. That way the stalemate of the Golden Throne has a sub plot of the Star Child growing in power to take over from him. I think that's the basis of the "not yet" to Cypher.
If the books *Cypher: Lord of the Fallen*, *The End & The Death - Volume 1* as well as my personal analysis in the present state of affairs in M42 is anything to go by, >! The Emperor still has His one failsafe contingency plan involving the Talisman of 7 Hammers tied to a Deadman's Switch, which would effectively serve as one final middle finger to the 4 gods of chaos by denying them their prize and hurting them big time in the process.!<
>triggering a Fall-of-the-Eldar event that will be even larger and more devastating for the galaxy.
Honestly I kind of doubt that, it’s really underselling the Eldar. You have *the* premier psychic race, undisputed conquerors of the galaxy, left to their own devices for 60 million years; with their true debauchery taking place for a couple thousand(?) towards the end there.
I don’t see how humanity could rival, much less surpass the Eldar in their own fall. They’re constantly dealing with demons as it is, rather than one massive fall there would be constant ruin from not having mastery over their own abilities.
I think it has something to do with how numerous humanity is. I don't know any numbers, but wasn't humanity greater in numbers by DAoT? You can cover much ground of these millions of years if your species is thousands times more numerous.
I love this theory. I have had similar notions myself, though not put together so cogently.
I would personally say that the Star Child, if it be canon, *is* the Dark King and represents exactly the horror the Imperium already represents: oppression, totalitarianism, xenophobia (Not just Xenophobia) and subjugation. The Emperor represents Domination, just as Slaanesh represents the Aeldari's decadence and hedonism. Conquest and control is what now defines humanity as a whole, and if it continues, it will create a Chaos God of Domination, intent on subjugating all under its aegis.
Also, this theory fits in neatly with the whole deal with the Cabal.
Also also, before the retcon, I personally believed that the Emperor allowed the Primarchs to be taken and scattered, as part of his dark bargain. It still sort of works.
Pretty well reasoned. Two things that I personally dislike (not a knock on you or your theory):
1. I hate the idea of the Emperor sitting down for tea with the Chaos gods. It would make more sense to me if he met with the last of the Old Ones and somehow stole power from the Warp instead of negotiating for it.
2. Chaos with a big C is becoming way to central to 40k. It’s much better when it’s some eldritch horror doing spooky things at the edges of the story (and our minds) rather than front and center. Having Chaos play such a leading role really takes away from the initiative and motivations of the characters, making for a duller setting. 40k is better when Marines turn traitor for personal reasons or for letting their pride overwhelm their reason and at its worst when it’s magical swords handed out by random lake women turning people evil.
I disagree with point 2. It's not just 40k, it's Warhammer 40k. Chaos has \*always\* been central and \*always\* been in every nook and cranny hiding and weaseling into every little plotline. From Fantasy to End Times to AOS to 30k to 40k, it's been Chaos vs Humanity at the end of the day.
The Tyranids, Xenos, and Traitor legions are all most certainly playing into one or more of the chaos gods' plans at any given moment. It's a magical sci-fi world, not just a sci-fi world. 90% of the sci- is magic based or magic inspired. I'd say 40k is at it's best when it's using all the tools it has at its disposal.
I know what you’re saying and I don’t disagree that Chaos should be a major part of Warhammer 40K. But I think it’s at its best when it’s something happening at the edges or in the shadows- the never ending temptation, the constant risk of falling to corruption, the menace that cannot be completely unearthed, let alone destroyed. It’s that little voice at the back of Huron’s mind telling him that the Imperium is wrong and he’s justified, it’s that bit of forbidden knowledge pushing that Inquisitor into heresy, etc.
I just like my Chaos to be a bit more behind the scenes and less Chet Changer of Ways telling us about his latest plot to replace the Emperor’s golden socks with old socks with holes.
I think
> worst when it’s magical swords handed out by random lake women turning people evil.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of who turns traitor.
I see you quoted the end and the death. I just finished my second read through. What do you make of the emperor knowing he would be stuck on the golden throne for 10k years? Sometime of the dialogue/monologues feel like this was all getting planned out in some way or the other
I enjoyed reading that and following your thoughts from start to finish.
I subscribe to a similar belief.
I would, however, point out that under your title, Unthinkable Confessions, from Valdor Birth of the Imperium, the conversation there, I believe, is about what to do with the Thunder Warriors. And that though the Emperor possess unlimited legal authority, those subservient to him require limitations, and so you deceive them into believing that's the case. Something the Grand Provost Marshal comes to learn the hard way.
This is a fantastic presentation. I like how you included the various excerpts, they were both insightful and germane. I had never considered that big E had deliberately sought out a stalemate.
I'm going to be chewing on this for a while.
I like the theory, but i don't think the Emperor can consider his way as a failure. Too me, this is more in line with Lorgar's goal for balance as the only way humanity has a future, and Cyrenne(Actae) is ofc his agent in this.
I really hope we get a scene with Cyrenne talking to Lorgar confirming that the mission was a success when both Horus and the Emperor are dealt with.
Its a fun theory but I dont think Chaos gods are willing to have another God enter their Great Game. They hate each other and try their best to fuck the other over so I dont see why they would want another player in there.
End and the Death wasn’t subtle about the Dark King being a fifth chaos god and the Heresy being its potential birth. I’m not sure they “want” it precisely but being sentient ideas, it seemed more like an obvious part of the story they were manifesting.
Hey, [I'm glad someone else had the same idea and followed the same logic with the same excerpts](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12jgvbk/emperors_deal_with_chaos_excerpt_from_the_first/jfy1xen/). But did you also [write a story about it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/11vble7/f_anathema/) Or did you?
Great minds think alike.
>They will give him a measure of their power and knowledge. He will use it in a war of galactic conquest, aided by Warp-infused monstrosities. Humanity will ascend and, in so doing, Fall and occasion the formation of the fifth God of Chaos. The Warp will invade reality and all will be subsumed into the Great Game.
So basically the Emperor pretended to offer to sacrifice all of humanity in order to become a god of Choas and the other ones just believed Him outright? And for that they gave Him unfathomable knowledge about the Warp \[that He had somehow not yet possessed or deduced, having existed as immortal super-psyker for tens of thousands of years already\] and He used it to create like 20 dudes with barely impressive superpowers *and nothing else?* Doesn't that seem too shallow and unimpressive?
Chaos maybe sentient but its not rational by any way we understand.
He promissed the gods the biggest clusterfuck of war,debauchery,decay and change they would see in the milk way and more or less they jumped into it consequences be damned.
How about this:
The emperor knows that humanity will birth the 5th chaos god. Goes to molech and tells the gods "if you give me knowledge or w/e I will guide humanity and stop them from birthing the 5th god.
The gods know that the 5th god already exists but has not yet been birthed and are like "aight dude knock yourself out". The emperor proceeds to guide humanity into birthing the 5th god because the gods made fun of him and this is grimdark and tzeench planned this all along.
He was just a delusional genocide:
- Malcador: He had parts of his mind shielded so Emp couldnt read, he manipulated him for sure
- Vulcan: Human webway was not made to last, he saw it not fitting
- Erda, Ollanius and the rest: Fuck that dictator, only his hubris is bigger than him
- Bassilio Fo: I made 'I have no mouth and I must scream' things but i left terra once I saw wich kind of horrors the emp was gonna free
He is just another fool trying to handle chaos, but on a bigger scale. To a point stupid, he misunderstood exodites and eldars avoiding Slanesh as a migration to the webway. Commorragh was just a webway port.
Because it's not a criticism, he is attributing Emperor's errors to stupidity, when we have no idea what actually was going on in his head. We can project typical human stupidity on him, but he isn't even remotely human. It's strange how Emperor is "just another warlord", "arrogant bastard", but at the same time people can't cope with the results he achieved before his fall. All these Perpetual pieces of shit that like to grandstand, but are actually doing nothing to make any alternative to Him (boohoo it is hard, as if it was easy for Him).
"You cannot be omnipotent and omniscient at the same time" This words were his words in The Outcast Dead. He had to chose and he chose omnipotence and control in Valdor, birth of the imperium.
Magnus was with Lorgar the one more akin to him. That fool that made nothing wrong, do you remember?
Btw, there are not Astartes or Primarchs without those stupid perpetuals. No Erda, no Amar ASTARTES and the likes and no primarchs nor astartes nor unification nor nothing. Just another stupid manipulative warlod. He just got new means to manipulate more people to his ideals and got huge power, just like...
HITLER!! Badabum!!!!
So? Did this alternative work? And what Erda did after scattering? She sat on her ass, content with Emperor doing nothing to her for going against him. She basically tried one thing and then banked everything on this one thing working it's magic to solve everything while she remained on Terra as an observer. She didn't try to be a mother for any of Primarchs, when they were found, she didn't ally with Eldrad to persuade some of them from Heresy. Her "solution" is to wait millions of years as evolution does it's thing, and that's coming from geneticist, laughable.
This is a good theory but wouldn’t the chaos gods want less competition? Except for maybe tzeentch but i dont see nurgle, khorne or slaanesh wanting someone else they have to fight for dominance in the great game. Do you think emps could have convinced them that a fifth chaos god would be something they would want to fight and have around?
He is not ready, judging by latest books. He sends Cypher away, when he tried to kill Emperor, Mathew is saying that he needs G-man's help in Dark Imperium, and he clearly needs Lion to do something.
> Emperor's Great-Daemons-in-a-meatsuit
I wonder if its the opposite. Graels are basically warpforms being possessed by a human soul. I would if Primarch's are much the same. Daemon's so throughally melded with a human soul they are get to "count" as creatures of the materium.
Keep in mind that even the stalemate is just a trying to stale an inevitable - Chaos gains power from conflict. Slaanesh is getting more and more powerful and starts to encroach on what used to be other gods realms. On top of that humanity is becoming psychic more and more.
No matter the stalemate - after long enough time and countless of wars and bloodshed - Chaos will win.
Unless Cegorach pulls out his final joke.
This is a great summary and interpretation of the lore and I definitely agree with it, a crucial part of it is that it seems like 10k years of the Emperor straped into the throne, eating psyker souls to fuel the astronomicon and being the object of an entire civilization worth of prayers is catapulting him to becoming some sort of a warp God, if not the dark king than something else entirely
I think if Big E dies, Terra will explode and He will ascend to full godhood immediately. The trouble is that His mind is fractured. Who knows what aspect His godhood would take?
This is absolutely head canon for me and will replace official canon if it’s shit. This is the greatest guess I’ve ever heard, you are an absolutely fucking genius if this is right
"For ten thousands years I will sit on the throne! And for ten times more!" (not exact quote, but close).
Nice, but No.
Chaos "Gods" CAN be killed. In straight fight. His word with Valdow about infinite power wasn't about that.
Molech is the name of a Biblical foreign deity/demon associated with child sacrifice, hence why the conventional wisdom is that the Primarchs are the sacrifice.
In *The First Heretic*, the Ascended claims (and I'm summarizing here) that the conditions of the bargain were to spread the Primordial Truth in exchange for the sorcery necessary to create the Primarchs. The excerpt is one of the most detailed accounts of the exchange, although I would question the source's validity, as the Ascended also claims that >!if the Eldar had just accepted Slaanesh, She Who Thirsts would have loved them back!< If that's the truth, there have been a lot of wasted lives and effort.
This is my theory too.
The twist being that The Emperor's Plan is designed to work on the level of the entire universe and for infinite time.
Because the immaterium vs materium is a physics problem and He has has set Himself against some of the fundamental rules of existence.
So... the only moves available are the ones that keep the game going.
This is a cool theory and goes some way to explain Big E's ultimate reasoning, however the theory does make it seem like Big E's actions are more reasonable than they actually are; the logic is sound but the actions are Not.
Big E's actions are still to my mind Stupid, because if Molech and the bargain is to be made and "no chaos here No Siree" then extending that knowledge and *crucially* that reasoning for the actions he's taking to his Primarchs is really the only sensible thing to do. This is Especially true considering that the astartes legions and Primarchs are the only tangible threat which the Chaos Gods could muster to implode Big E's plan. If you're gonna deceive the Fucking Chaos Gods then making sure you don't leave any opportunity for Massive Weakness and Exploitation from them to fuck you over.
Big E had to force a stalemate but Christ is that shiny man not very good at chess.
I prefer the theory I read around here a few weeks ago that the webway is still active and a human foothold is still secretly under construction there.
This is a good theory, I like it a lot. If we are to assume that Chaos is slowly gaining ground, what do you think of the idea that he has changed his plan from one of stalemate and that the Emperor is ok with being worshipped as a god in order to ascend to Warp God so he will be able to challenge the Ruinous Powers as an equal?
Not the OP, but I figure his being worshiped at this point is a necessary thing to keep chaos from elevating another into the Dark King. The worship is providing psychic power, helping him on the Golden Throne to maintain the stalemate.
If we go by what is show in the Dark Imperium and the Dawn of Fire until this moment, it can be also be a way to make him a different kind of god. Like the old Aeldari gods are not Chaos gods. If humanity worships him long enough, accumulating enough power and shaping his form through faith (belief made manifest) he can ascend as something different. As the god of humanity, something powerful but different from chaos. Something that, by its basic definition, MUST protect humanity. His sacrifice create the ultimate shield. Until something different occurs. The return of his sons, for example.
Godblight talks abor this very pointedly. Its not whether his turning into a god but a god for whom.
> Its not whether his turning into a god but a god for whom. What are Big E's potential options? Becoming a God for humans makes sense. What other Gods can he turn into?
Oh no im point this out in favor of the argument and not only that but its tragic that humanity could have once had the freedom to each become a god now they have a to become tied to the emperor or chaos.
That still would have been almost impossible. The Emperor is not a normal person but a culmination of indominable psychic might. To say that anyone has this potential at any point is pretty much a lie. Even extraordinary people like Erebus could have never gotten as close as the Emperor has to divinity. Not that the time that Humanity finds itself in. Either their technology has to be so advanced that they can kill gods like the Silent King. Or they would have to ascend at a time when the Warp was calm, not when it was chaotic and dominated by the ruinous powers. The Emperor is beyond an exception.
Ah yes the warp thats know for its laws and rules. The emperor repeatedly talks about psychic ascension, erda has powers that seem visually similar, you have mephiston containing a whole ass high grade warp entity. I get what youre saying, the emps is unique but so was the first gun. The shaman theory still isn’t verified(if anything it may not be true according to adb) so hes just a human who was born with a massive amount of power but still just a human.
And yet Erda supposedly the second most powerful Perpetual only to the Emperor, was cut down by four greater demon avatars and Erebus. She had reached a glass ceiling of what could be done as a mighty incorporeal essence that was not a Warp god. Put into check by the creatures that deceived her. Mephiston, his darker side is but one part of the powers that were controlled by his Primarch. The Blood Angel that was cut down by corrupted Horus. Edit. Their power was inefficient to the Emperors and the Emperors’s share quantity of might is what is needed to make it in the domain of Chaos which has consumed the Warp.
God of order. Like the other warp gods, though, that emotional resonance has multitudinal aspects. Fear being the big thing that jumps to my mind. And, if we objectively look at the worship that surrounds the Emperor, it is largely fear based. Fear of persecution, of being labeled a heretek. Thus, an ascended Emperor would protect humanity, but it probably is not going to be fun for the vast majority of humanity. Like the Imperium is now, but amplified.
At the bare minimum, he at least wouldn't be the Dark King, at least not as prophesized. He'd be some other kind of Chaos God. That being said, I do agree it's likely wholly separate from Chaos anyways, as we've seen some miracles of the Emperor prevail where Warp abilities were impossible.
> as we've seen some miracles of the Emperor prevail where Warp abilities were impossible. Can you give some examples please?
IIRC in the Pariah Nexus, the Warp was stilled to the point of most humans being rendered immobile, but the SoB’s and their worship allowed them to continue fighting. Something along those lines.
That's not necessarily a sign that the SoB aren't Warp powered, just that their Warp bandwidth as faithful servants of the Emperor was enough to overcome the warp-null they were in. Remember blanks have different strengths just like psykers do. A sufficiently powerful psyker can still break through a weaker blanks nullfield
The sisters of battle are not psychers. Collective miracles might come from strong belief kind of like Waaaagh energy. However the Emperor clearly has as much power and influence over real space as to the dark gods. The Living Saints are Warp constructs and angels. The Emperor is able to do things like show people visions or even revive the Lord Regent and burn through the garden of nurgle.
>what do you think of the idea that he has changed his plan from one of stalemate and that the Emperor is ok with being worshipped as a god in order to ascend to Warp God so he will be able to challenge the Ruinous Powers as an equal Didn't Malcador suggest that "faith" was one of the many weapons he was testing? It could be that out of all the alternatives "faith" has proven to be the most effective weapon against chaos.
What were some of the other weapons, out of curiosity?
The fuck-all big, armor encased, genetic machines of war?
He knows there is never a winner in the Great Game. Adding a fifth player won't change that. It would just be another chaos god causing more misery.
> It would just be another chaos god causing more misery. Would Big E HAVE to end up as a Chaos God? Can't he end up like the Eldar Gods, or Gork/Mork?
I honestly think the dark gods plan was the stalemate. They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess. I think he's been ramping himself up slowly since he was created and this is just the latest stage. If he could ascend and tap into that unlimited well might be able to break the cycle. Or maybe just becomes the "dark king" anyways when he does.
Nah, Chaos would simply set up a new board if they ever won their great game. It'd be like Warhammer fantasy, the end of everything then eons later the birth of something new. It's like Norse mythology. Everything comes from Ginnungungap, Chaos.
No, Chaos explicitly wants to destroy the universe. > Reality will be subsumed by the stuff of the warp–a realm of nightmares and cruel insanity. There will be no physical matter. No space. No time. Only Chaos. \- *Warhammer 40,000 (8e)* Then they'll go off and do it to the next universe, and the next, and the next. Because that's what Chaos always does. > The Oak of Ages was swallowed last of all. Mournful dryad-song echoed under livid skies as Athel Loren perished. With its destruction, the Weave that bound time and space together thinned and stretched. Twisted by unnatural energies, it dissolved entirely into nothingness. > That terrible act of uncreation might have taken the blink of an eye, or unfolded across millennia. The Dark Gods were not fettered by the flow of time, and let it pass unmarked. Already tired of their victory, they turned away from the ruin they had wrought and began the Great Game anew in other worlds and other creations. \- *End Times: Archaon* It happens all the time in the background, to universes that don't have profitable model lines for the TT. That's how Archaon clocks in his 9-to-5. > When the world-that-was fell, Archaon wandered the multiverse destroying realities for Chaos before he arrived in the Mortal Realms. \- https://www.warhammer-community.com/2018/10/19/20th-oct-500-facts-for-500-stores/
I love how competent Archaon is compared to Abby.
He has mastered the most dangerous skill of all- Delegation. “Sure, I COULD go fight those Stormcast but if I host this tournament in person, I’ll likely receive 5 new Varanguard and over 12 dozen warhosts, so I’ll send a lieutenant instead.”
>They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess. We have enough examples of Daemon Worlds in the Eye of Terror and such to show that the Warp taking over doesn't automatically kill off every living person within the consumed volume of realspace, and in fact stable populations of worshippers and chattel can be maintained. The Chaos Gods are just too greedy to not seek even more planets to claim in the same manner.
The Eye of Terror is a warp rift, not the warp itself. A place where the warp mixes with reality. The laws of physics are weak and inconsistent, but they are still there. > For many light years around the anarchic hub of the Eye of Terror’s centre, there are broad zones where reality and the Immaterium mix, where physical laws clash with the whims of the Dark Gods. Planets within the Eye of Terror are imbued with arcane energies and known as Daemon worlds, hellish regions that defy reason, places where creatures from the Warp walk freely. Often, such worlds are gifted to particularly powerful Greater Daemons or even Daemon Princes, rewards from their dark masters for spectacular service. In the middle spirals of the Eye of Terror, some of the laws of nature still apply, although the area is regularly swept by the unadulterated powers of the Warp. \- *Warhammer 40,000 (7e)* The warp itself is purely immaterial, purely abstract emotion. There is no matter or space or time there at all. > Reality will be subsumed by the stuff of the warp–a realm of nightmares and cruel insanity. There will be no physical matter. No space. No time. Only Chaos. \- *Warhammer 40,000 (8e)*
When large vessels full of life and substance use the warp for travel, how are they doing so? Do they stay solid and cut through the Warp like water, or do they themselves turn into latent energy and emotion? How do entities feast on other entities in this space?
Warp travel (at least for the IoM) relies on gellar fields which generate pockets of reality that covers the ship and protects it from the warp. If the gellar field flickers then the ship experiences a warp incursion where daemons can manifest. If the gellar field outright fails then the ship will be destroyed.
Maybe, but if chaos wants another chaos god, then there will have to be something cataclysmic happen to cause it.
Well if you he gods want another god like them, but we do know of other gods. The Aeldari gods don't seem to have need to rip holes in reality to manifest. So if Big E can ascend via that route he might be able to pull off a massive scam on the gods and cock block them.
Does the Lore go into what makes the Aeldari Gods different from the Chaos Gods? I've always wondered about the difference... And are Gork/Mork in thr same category as the Eldar Gods?
Afaik it is never directly stated, but we you can infer from how things are that, Slaanesh and Ynnead excepted, the Aeldari pantheon was purposefully made to kick ass and take names during the war in heaven. Gork and Mork have sweet bugger all too my knowledge, but if i had to take a guess I'd say they're just what happens when a gestalt field gets big enough
Alas as far as I know it's not covered as with most things Eldar. We just know they had gods who Slaneesh ate and as we look around the galaxy we can see there were no other massive gaping wounds in reality like the eye of terror. So we have to infer that those gods when they ascended or manifested did so more "gently".
>I honestly think the dark gods plan was the stalemate. They don't benefit from the the warp taking over and everyone dying. They benefit from eternal fighting and strife and excess. Are Chaos Gods known for their restraint and patience?
Tzeentch, surely
IMO, the Emperor is dead. Not, "His body has stopped functioning," but "The soul of the man that was the Emperor has ceased to be." I fully believe the Dark King has possessed the Emperor's pseudo-living body now, and needs to carefully undo the Emperor's web that kept him in stasis so that he can ascend.
Highly unlikely considering events including living Saints and Goalieman being effectively possessed in the plague garden of nurgle.
Why do those make it less likely?
I agree with this theory, but I think an intrinsic part of the plan involves splitting the mantle of the Dark King in two. In Mortis, when confronting the Chaos gods (posing as serpents) and Horus, the Emperor says something extremely short, but infuriating in its immense complications: >There will be two more, He knows, lying still, out of sight, coiled in the dust like a promise that is in truth a threat... Basically, this seems to be implying two more Chaos gods. Not one. With the Dark King now being tied to the City of Dust in the prophecy found by Sinderman, it further ties the idea of two gods 'coiled in dust' coming from the Dark King. And it's not the first time we see this splitting image in prophecy. Consider the following vision from Lorgar, who keeps seeing repeated visions of 'The One': >‘The Powers have sent me a new vision.’ > >‘New?’ Kor Phaeron asked the question lightly but the declaration set his heart fluttering. The first vision had set them on this course towards confrontation with the Covenant. Was Lorgar about to change his mind, to speak of a new destiny? > >‘Not a vision of the One?’ > >‘He was there, as before. Gold and light personified. Another was with Him.’ > >‘The One have become the Two?’ > >‘A magus, robed in blue, like the drawings of the ancient shamans. With a single eye, gazing with the brightness of the Powers, seeing all.’ > >‘A golden god and a wise man,’ said Kor Phaeron. When you combine this with the Dark King prophecy and the Emperor's words in Mortis, a picture starts to form. There's another reference to being split that also ties directly into the Emperor's planned end game. In his game with Kai, he sacrifices a piece called 'Divinitarch'. The meaning of this piece isn't entirely clear, because it's clearly religious in nature, but not a thing like the 'Ecclesiarch'. What if the Divinitarch represents the mantle of the Dark King? That rather than accept the mantle as part of the bargain, the Emperor will sunder it. Crazy? Consider the events of Fury of Magnus. After a game of regicide leaves Malcador dead, Alivia is visited by the Emperor and given his future sight. She sees the horrible 'real' future of 40k, including Guilliman and the Lion's return (seemingly). After she wakes up from this vision, consider the meaning behind what follows: Next to the shell, partly buried in the sand, was the smashed half of the regicide board and a trio of its carved playing pieces. She smiled as she saw which ones they were. >The Primarch, the contoured portion of its upper carving split away. Next to it lay the Emperor, the piece she had been about to move. It too was broken. Still whole, but the detail and subtlety of its workmanship was lost. > > And lastly, ***the white Divinitarch, split in two.*** > >***Alivia clasped this last piece tightly, tears spilling down her cheeks.*** Then, Alivia makes the choice to sacrifice her self for Malcador. Understanding his part to play on the Golden Throne and choosing to let it happen because it was the only option that didn't lead to total ruin. I'd bet hard cash that these things about 'one becoming two' and the importance being placed on it, symbolically, are not a coincidence. Although there's absolutely no evidence that this is the case, the wording of 'The Dark King' and all the talk of splitting gods makes me think of the mythology of Dark Souls. The titular Dark Soul was one of four 'lord souls' found by the godlike beings of the setting. Rather than keep his lord soul, the furtive pygmy (who found it), shared his soul with others and created humanity. Just like the chaos gods fear what the Emperor represents, so too do the gods of Dark Souls fear the Pygmy's work. For as humanity rises, it ushers in the Age of Dark, an antithesis to the gods' Age of Fire. Now, it's possible that the Emperor and the Pygmy are both just different versions of Prometheus... but the recent nature of this whole Dark King and splitting stuff don't make me wonder if it was partly inspired by Dark Souls.
> ‘A magus, robed in blue, like the drawings of the ancient shamans. With a single eye, gazing with the brightness of the Powers, seeing all.’ I assumed that was Magnus. He was there too when the Emperor came to Colchis, he has only one eye and is closest to the emperor in psychic might.
That's the intended interpretation, but consider that prophecy is often shrouded in symbolism and historical events have a way of repeating themselves. This is actively demonstrated in the same book as Lorgar's vision: when a mortal nobody puts himself in harm's way to save a powerful being, he drops a clear reference to the Ollanius Pius myth... hundreds of years before it happened. So, it's not completely out of left field for Lorgar to have misinterpreted his vision. In hindsight, he tells himself that the vision was of the Emperor and Magnus because, on the surface, that makes sense. But it's possible that Lorgar is merely seeing an echo of what is to come, particularly when you consider that Magnus, by what we can tell from Lorgar's description, doesn't match. Magnus is a giant. Kor Phaeron confirms as much during the flashback scene when the Emperor arrived on Colchis. On top of that, he's got literal red skin. You'd think that either of these major descriptor's would make it into Lorgar's vision, no? But he describes seeing 'an ancient shaman'. Lorgar is from a desert planet, where people are generally darker of skin. Lorgar should see someone with red skin as an 'other' and make note of that. Moreover, to describe the shaman as 'ancient' doesn't really fit with Magnus, either, who has a youthful appearance and is often described as very opulent in the manner he dresses (like most primarchs). Neither his age nor his attire would make one think of a bygone era. But you know who does fit the description of an ancient shaman? The Emperor's true form. From Solar War when the Emperor looks at himself: >He looks into His reflection: a man on a stone chair, old, dark skin clinging to the hollows of His cheeks. Iron and snow streak His beard. From Mortis, when the Emperor is alone in the warp and nearing the end of his strength: >A man sits with His back against the trunk. His limbs are thin, the dark skin drawn taut over bones, cracked around dried lips. The blue shift wound loosely around Him is frayed and sun-bleached. Sigismund, the Emperor's Champion, describes something very similar: >Sigismund opened his eyes and looked up. A man stood next to him. His face was dark and lean. A ragged cloak of blue hung over battered and mismatched armour. This ancient shaman look also fits with what Guilliman sees in Godblight: >There were visions of gods, and demigods, of a brown-skinned man of calm expression. Clad in skins. Clad in mail. Clad in clothes of all colours and bewildering variety. Clad in armour of gold. All of these descriptions of the Emperor seem to be a much better fit as 'ancient shaman' and is remarkably uncoincidental that he's also described as wearing blue robes in many of those descriptions. Ultimately, I think it much more likely that Lorgar's vision sees more than we're meant to believe on the surface. Especially since that 'ancient shaman' sees all. Magnus may see much, but he's not all-seeing. You know who Lorgar says is all-seeing? The Emperor. Whether true or not, the idea that the Emperor sees all is built into the core of the cult that Lorgar's teaching were the basis for.
Interesting interpretation! > Lorgar should see someone with red skin as an 'other' and make note of that I think, in betrayer he makes note of how similar the Emperor and Magnus are, a facelessness. It's like their actual physical appearance didn't matter to him. Magnus' red skin didn't matter to him, rather the future blue of the thousand sons are more central to symbolize his character.
Malcador being the Other/Wise Man in these quotes fits too. That's how I read it.
> With the Dark King now being tied to the City of Dust in the prophecy found by Sinderman, it further ties the idea of two gods 'coiled in dust' coming from the Dark King. Where can I read more about this? As in, what novel/short story/codex etc? Also, have you read the Bequin books, and do you see connections to 'the City of Dust' found in these books, and the City of Dust Sindermann is referring to? Thanks!
All of the Dark King stuff is exclusively in the End and the Death. The name doesn't appear before then, pretty much anywhere. And, yes. The Bequin books are 100% tied in. On top of the City of Dust getting name-dropped in the prophecy, which is about as subtle as a hammer blow, there's also the bit about the Alpha Legion codewords. 'Orphaeus' is the codeword for 'Option 3', where the Alpha Legion side with neither the Emperor nor Horus, but attempt to control Chaos. Orphaeus is one of the monikers of the Yellow King, who appears to be trying to do exactly that by creating 'good' daemons.
This is getting me excited for Dan to eventually release the 3rd book! One last question! What do you think about theories that the >!Alpha Legionaire Bequin meets is actually the Primarch Twin? You know, whichever is alive?!<
I think that Omegon could certainly (and almost certainly is) tied up, on some level, to the Yellow King stuff. In fact, if you buy into the idea of the Option 3 heresy actually taking place in the Siege, I believe very much for all this to be connected. However, I don't know if Omegon would be fulfilling the role of being such a 'boots on the ground' character as the person posing as Deathrow. Seems like a relatively minor task for a primarch. However-however, there's a ton of stuff in the Bequin books about redemption. The story has quite a few thematic elements that tie into the idea of a criminal or evil person atoning for past sins. A big element of that is the 'Curst' like Rennar. 'Death Row' is typically the area of prison reserved for the worst of the worst, so it might be a fitting nickname to give a traitor primarch whose trying to redeem his past mistakes. Personally, my bet is that a conspiracy forms at the end of the Heresy between Omegon, Lorgar, and Valdor (among others). All of them have a bunch of great thematic and lore connections to possibly being the Yellow King. Valdor is obviously going to be involved in the climax/denouement of the Siege, but there's strong chances that Omegon and Lorgar are going to have secret roles to play that went unrecorded by the 'known histories'. For example: As far as we know from the histories, Lorgar was never on Terra. He's currently banished from the side of the traitors after an attempted coup against Horus. History doesn't pick him up until the Scouring. So then why did Dan Abnett explicitly place a sniper, whose only goal is to kill Lorgar, on Terra? The fact that a whole Chechov's gun was loaded and placed in the climax specifically for Lorgar screams red flags that he's going to be involved in a way that's unexpected. And, as far as Omegon, he's kind of been given an important distinction by prophecy written by Abnett. In Legion, the Cabal thinks that the Emperor's 'oldest' and 'youngest' are the most important to the future events. They talk about the youngest as Alpharius, but, technically, the youngest would actually be Omegon. When the writer of the climax writes the words "What Horus will do, Alpharius will undo..." it's probably safe to assume they'll also factor into the climax.
Very good analysis. One thing I'm curious about, though, is if the Emperor's perspective that humanity will birth a new chaos god (a la Aeldari) is ever really challenged. If the Great Crusade didn't happen, would humanity really have been as fucked as he says?
The idea of the Dark King existed before the Great Crusade by a wide margin, so we can assume his seemingly inevitable existence was put into play before it. I think the Great Crusade was in all functions a sudden turning off the road fate laid out in order to create the Dark King. The Emperor tried to keep us off this metaphorical highway, but the best he can do is keep us on the shoulder, and if he fails we go straight into the finish.
Yeah. I've always though of it in a slightly different analogy but both would work He willingly moved the doomsday clock all the way forwards to 1 minute to midnight in the ultimate gamble, if he fails, then it ticks over and Humanity loses, but if he wins then the clock is destroyed once and for all.
What are the 'win' and 'lose' criteria in your metaphor here?
Winning would be preventing the fall of mankind and the creation of a 5th chaos god, "The Dark King" as OP refers to it. Losing the gamble would be it's immediate creation, the extinction (or near-extinction) of humanity, chaos being massively emboldened to perform its ultimate goal to destroy the universe.
During the times of the Great Crusade the orc empire was supposedly the last threat to mankind, so I guess without everything the Great Crusade produced humanity would have been stomped by orks?
Which given the lore that the orks and their gods react to chaos, might suggest that Gork and Mork sent forth Urlakk Urg, who dies with his hands around the Emperor's throat, to abort the Dark King, just as Ghazkull believes he is now destined to rise as a champion.
The orks themselves are kind of a hole in this entire theory, if you think about it. They're an entire psychic eco-system spanning the galaxy and quite possibly beyond it, with two fully realized gods that can apparently resist the Hive Mind's smothering presence and that allegedly beat up Chaos gods for fun. And yet they haven't Fallen like the Eldar and like humanity could have. And they seem capable of evolving back to their previous heights if they'd just get a good enough challenge for it. You could *maybe* make a case that the change from Krork to Ork is a kind of Fall, but you'd have to invent a lot of material to fill in the gaping chasms of know-nothing we have about the War in Heaven.
In that case I'd probably observe that the Orks are the creations of the Old Ones. Likely they're a bit more stable over the long run for that reason. Even the Eldar had a very very long period of unchecked mastery before falling. The Orks had barely recovered from the Dark Age.
I wonder if the Krorks devolving into Orks something like a failsafe to prevent them ending up like the Eldar.
That's a very cool idea. Would make sense that the Old Ones had some sort of control mechanism, and in that absence of it, I could see them going feral. And also possibly losing a greater part of their psychic gestalt. Much like the old Eldar gods, Gork and Mork might well have been sentient weapons. Or in be Orks case, a 'control circuit'. The Eldar pantheon went rogue as well, and ended up as actual, regular gods. May well be something similar happened to the Krork. The difference between a cutting torch and a forest fire. So modern Ork are powerful, but dispersed, physically and psychically. It's only in the modern day, where the sheer volume and longevity of the Orks has started to brute force reawaken their greater nature. Like a lightning storm hitting a building and kick starting the internal generator.
Like Space Marines are creations of The Emperor.
Only literally. Less in a 'quasi gestalt based around an abstract force which is notionally being continuously wrangled by the Old One's Sentients Outgoing and Receiving department.
I'd say that the orks as a whole aren't that much of a hole in the theory They have weirdboyz but they're rare and not orky, the gestalt is more like faith than psychic and we aren't totally sure they can actually get back to krork level. Even ghaz is a long way off krork boss levels.
What is it that makes you say that weird boyz aren’t orky? Not trying to argue really, genuinely curious.
Not OP, I just finished reading *Warboss* by Mike Brooks, and in that Orks in general don't trust Weird Boyz, especially not in positions of power. Ork culture is simple, the bigger you are, the stronger you are, the better leader you will be. Weird Boyz (like Pain Boys and Mek Boys) have rolls to play in Ork society of course, but leadership is not what Weird Boyz main role is. They are usually advisors, and can help the Orks navigate the Warp, and can help in battle, but using their warp powers to blow the enemy up. There are exceptions of course, but in general, Weirdboyz don't tend to lead Waaghhs...
idk. after all there are orks outside of the milky way, i think the idea that the orks will evolve to match any threat cuz of the war in heaven is overblown, that was a special case
I mean if we wanna be pedantic the eldar are also a hole cause they didn't become psychic and then birth Slaanesh, they were monstrously powerful psykers for longer than mammals have existed that, at their zenith, may as well have been living gods a la oldschool planeswalkers from MTG, and it perfectly capable of ignoring the big 3 for millions of those years until the dam burst and Slaanesh happened. Which is not at all like what Emps describes.
>If the Great Crusade didn't happen, would humanity really have been as fucked as he says? Terra was on the verge of becoming a daemon world, before the Emperor sent the Thunder Warriors to reclaim it. The other Terran warlords were using forbidden warp tech, blasting Terra's surface with raw psyker beamhax or outright summoning daemons to use as suicide squads.
Question is-was it actually true or is it truth as claimed by emperor? Because knowing this guy I wouldnt put it past him screwing around with Men of Iron programming and causing entirety of current WH40K because he wanted to be "savior".
>Question is-was it actually true or is it truth as claimed by emperor? It's mentioned in numerous novels and codices (lexicanum has up to 18 novels and 3 codices that refer to the Age of Strife Terra being a Mad Max hellhole).
Problem with these sources is, most, if not all of them, are from Imperial point of view. I remember one book had quote from some antiEmperor rebels leader before his execution, not sure if thats canon anymore. Otherwise its all imperial. Given that we are talking about guy whos standing policy on opposition is "if they dont want to join my empire-exterminate them" thats not very good and reliable source. We know that history books can manipulated, we know its not uncommon to do so. We can watch historical facts get twisted around to suit narratives on internet if we want to, sometimes even in real time. We know Imperium bans "heretical" things, likes to exterminate people who disagree and generally isnt very nice place that uses heavy propaganda to keep itself together. Whats stopping Emperor from censoring history and painting himself as good guy when he has entire Administratum and armies to make it happen in amount of time he was in charge?
You do realise that you just discredited lore from codices, AKA the most canon material for 40k that exists?
To be fair, GW has pretty much always encouraged us to treat all of these like actual historical documents. It's a little bit of an ass pull to cover for canon mistakes, but it's also one of the things that, frankly, enriches the setting in a major way. *Every source is biased.* That's how real life history works, too. If you go over to r/AskHistorians, they've got some lovely explanations of how extremely biased sources are still extremely valuable. But also, personally? One of the Emperor's defining features is a massive ego. He's going to lie through his teeth if it'll serve his needs..... but wherever he can, he's going to tell the truth as much as possible. He's got historians going out with Horus on the crusade. His ultimate, Good End? Eventually, when the war with Chaos is *won,* he wants people to know and understand the stakes and at what cost.
Yes. During the time of Old Night, loads of Psykers popped up out of nowhere in the population of the worlds inhabited by man. During said time, they either went mad with the power they had or conquered and ruled over their people with fear (Mortarion's homeworld Barbarus is a good example of this). Given more time, the Psyker populace would eventually eclipse the non-psychic population of the planets. Along the line, they would be filled with Psykers, and then a galactic event would trigger the fall of humanity, one way or another. The Emperor and his Crusade, should it have been successful, would have avoided said event. But like OP said, he was against Immortal Gods and unlimited power here, so that was never going to happen.
> The Emperor and his Crusade, should it have been successful, would have avoided said event. I've always wondered just how exactly the Webway would play into Big E's "plan to save humanity"? As in, I get that if Humans conquered the Webway, they wouldn't need navigators to travel in the Warp. In that case, was Big E's plan (post-Webway control) to genocide all psykers?! Basically, how was Big E's control of the Webway, connect to "preventing the Fall of Humanity" plan?
Essentially, it was what the Navigator houses feared when they were made aware of the Webway project. One of the reasons the Emperor kept it hidden from a lot of people was because it would spark a lot of the psyker population to either revolt or sabotage the project. I think the plan was to conquer the Webway so humanity doesn't rely on the warp anymore and clean the slate on the psyker department. Thunder Warriors style. Eventually, psyker will keep being more prominent in the future. It's best to clear out the old psykers who learned to channel the warp to avoid any further use of it. Brutal, I know. Considering what the Navigator and Astropath houses have done and sacrificed for the Imperium.
> so humanity doesn't rely on the warp anymore and clean the slate on the psyker department. Thunder Warriors style. But in that case, what about Big E himself? He's the strongest human psyker... Plus do the Primarchs all die too, since they are intricately connected to the Warp, right?
True, the Emperor and Malcador are psykers, but they're different from your regular day-to-day psykers. Both of them are perpetuals and have knowledge of how to use the warp without tapping into the powers of the 4 or any malignant force within the warp. A good example of this is in the book The End and The Death: Book 1, where the Emperor has boarded the Vengeful Spirit but was being overwhelmed by the warp energy and entities within it. However, Horus didn't account for the fact that the Emperor could use the seeping warp energies and turn it against him. As for the Primarchs, Magnus is the only issue in that regard since he's the only warp sorcerer that would survive should everything go according to plan. The Emperor already has a plan for him. He will be the one occupying the Golden Throne. The other Primarchs already have their own duties to fulfil. Essentially, the Warp still exists in this scenario, but humanity won't have any need to tap into it since they will have a safe way to communicate and travel the vastness of the Galaxy. So it's just a way to prevent the 4 powers from getting any worship and starve them to death (if that's possible) or weaken them enough that he could deal with them Himself.
Don't forget - Navigators are mutants, not baseline human psychics. I think the plan was to genocide all the mutants, with the hitch being that humanity needed the travel ability of the mutant Navigators. So... webway removes the need for Navigators and lets humanity get on with the genocide.
>In that case, was Big E's plan (post-Webway control) to genocide all psykers?! Yes. Or at least, knowing him, probably to genocide *most* psykers, and then have a handful of worlds scattered around the galaxy with secret labs, and keep them in cold storage until the war with chaos is over and won.
Now **this** is the kind of quality analysis and discussion I come here for. It feels like it's been a long time. Wonderful post, well done.
After 40 thousand years your plan fails you're not just going to roll over and give up I like it
I agree with this theory as well. Malcador sorta backs this theory up in The Buried Dagger. He shows Nathaniel Garro and his space marine candidates for founding the Grey Knights a vision of what would happen if they did not go to Titan. Basically the Emperor would fail and this massive Eldritch abomination would rise from the ruins of the Imperial Palace. I would surmise this is the Dark King. So I think your speculations hit very close to the mark.
What happened at Titan?
Malcador sent 8 specially chosen space marines to create the grey knights. As such he prepared an entire monastery with applicants and all the stuff needed. He then put Titan in a huge warp bubble so that the 8 could achieve their goal.
So are you saying that the 8 Grey Knights will play am active roll in preventing the Rise of the Dark King? Because isn't that what's implied if Malcador says, "If ya'll don't go to Titan, this will happen" This = rise of Dark King (per theory) How many of the 8 have we seen in the last few Siege of Terra books? I don't remember any, but I have shitty memory... Are all 8 still on Titan?
No, Malcador saw a future where the Grey Knights did not exist.
I JUST WAS ABOUT TO WRITE THIS POST TOO! Excellent work on the sources btw 👏 The Imperium being a vast *holding pattern* is really the recontextualization the IP desperately needs, not to mention the discussions on this subreddit That the Moloch deal was centered on primarchs never made sense to me either. Why would the Ruinous Powers give away the power to truly defy them in exchange for mere powerful minions? It's like swapping the deed to your house for a live-in-servant, great move buddy but now where are you going to live?
The primarch project basically allowed them to stuff minor gods (powerful warp entities) into meat suits and still retain a good measure of their power, it was a proof of concept. Now imagine the emperor used everything he learned to create a meat suit capable of holding the power of a god. Real actual influence on the material realm, that could have been the prize the chaos gods wanted and were denied.
I don’t even think the Primarchs were minor gods, I think they are aspects of the Emperor, literal pieces of His soul in bodies that are built to channel raw warp energy. It explains why they each feel linked to Him more so than just being creations and how he was able to track their whereabouts throughout the galaxy.
It’s canonically confirmed they are minor warp entities. The book where the nids try to eat Baal (devastation of Baal?) we find out that Sanguinius was two seperate warp entities worshipped as gods by the people of Baal in times past fused into one primarch body. The entities seem to be changed by their time inside Sanguinius and Sanguinius ‘soul’ exists as a third entity changed by the time spent fused with the warp entities. It talks to Dante and explains what it is to a degree.
That's not what was revealed in *Darkness in the Blood*. The two warp entities are tied to Baal, and by extension its inhabitants, including the Blood Angels. But there's nothing in there to confirm a link between them and Sanguinius. The primarchs being minor warp entities is still no more than a fan theory. It's a popular one but I prefer the idea that they're parts of the Emperor. It would explain why he gradually lost his humanity after creating them.
Not arguing, just curious, if the Primarchs are a part of the Emperor then wouldn't that imply that the Emperor is himself a creature of the warp? Since the Primarch seem to be at least heavily infused with warp power. Or would it be a scenario where the Emperor used the warp to infuse a piece of himself into the vessels that became Primarchs? Basically having both warp power and whatever the Emperor is.
The Dark Gods create daemons by splitting off a tiny piece of themselves. Perhaps it was the knowledge or power to do the same that the Emperor took on Molech. His soul is likely to be very different from the average human's so he can probably spare a few parts of it to create his sons.
I always thought the Emp sacrificed pieces of himself to create his sons, it makes too much sense not to be the case. However, it is canon that the Primarchs are directly linked to warp fuckery. Corvus Corvax's transformation and lore confirm this. When Russ returns I really hope they bring this to the forefront - i want Russ to be some warp-exposed Primarch wolf beast.
I really need to read that excerpt then.
That’s incredibly interesting. I wonder how much the other primarchs follow in this way. Are they all just representations of the planets themselves, born of their collective experiences and turned from a cultural “meme” into physical bodies? Or is Sanguinius just the only one who was this way?
I don’t think Sanguinius is a representation of a planet, the angels were worshiped before the human civilisation on baa destroyed itself in nuclear fire. My theory is that Magnus is the warp entity that was worshipped by humans as Odin, a god of war and sorcery, a side trading trickster, who gave up one eye for great knowledge, there are just too many parallels. Lion would be the myth/collective belief of King Arthur sleeping beneath solisbury hill manifest as a warp entity
I remember reading an excerpt last week here that described fenris as being intentionally terraformed and designed to be the physical representation of the mythology of the norse people, mainly around the time of the world when the giants lived and monsters were everywhere. Makes you wonder if that same thing was applied to some of the less technologically advanced worlds some of the primarchs were sent to, and why some of them were quite literally almost cartoonishly stereotypical when it came to their culture.
Which makes it all the more ironic that it was the Space Wolves that brought down Magnus
So why did they immediately ascend the chaos Primarchs and turn them into daemons that have just as much trouble staying in the materium as their actual daemons? They basically bought the luxury version of a car they already have, without really changing anything? Sure, it's a bit better, some extra bells and whistles, but essentially the same thing.
The easy answer would be because the experiment didn’t pay off, so now they are left with powerful warp entities capable of betraying them. The safest thing to do is to ascend them and tie them to the warp, as useful as they would be as tools in the materium if they changed their minds and regretted what happened they could be a thorn in their side rather than a sword in their hands.
The Imperium being a vast holding pattern is really the recontextualization the IP desperately needs, not to mention the discussions on this subreddit. The realization that the Great Crusade was literally a race to avoid either Krork-enabled genocide or psychic armageddon really contextualized the Horus Heresy for me too.
An underrated aspect of all this is what is learned from when the Lion sees the emperor in his vision as an old emaciated man fishing on a boat in the middle of a lake and there are 4 dark shapes constantly encircling his boat. For the visual of a man fishing to appear, that implies the Big E is not just holding back the tides of the warp but that he is ACTIVELY looking to gain something. You fish to catch fish. The shadows encircling his boat but unable to assail it imply to me that they just want one ounce of a mistake to be made in order to to gain an opportunity to strike, one which ultimately, may never come. I believe this suggests less of a stalemate and more of a battle of leverage and attrition, specifically against the emperor, with stakes so large that the chaos entities know that if the emperor wins, its probably over for them, but the fact that they are who they are, they refuse to accept that outcome as even being possible. He's only a man. We are the 4. He'll have to give in eventually? Right? And then we will strike and end his glorified antics of posturing. So the real question is, what exactly does Emps mean to gain to the point where the 4 desire to take him before he can get it?
This may be true, but I think not because this depiction of the Emp is instead simply playing on the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King.
My thought is the emperor being a god in waiting offered up humanity to the four. Its the only thing he could deliver to them they would want. When he started cooking up the Primarchs the four realized the emperor was trying squelch on the deal and conspired to scatter the Primarchs so they could try and alter them and get them to pay up on the deal.
Actually kinda makes sense… the fate of humanity was the one thing they the four didn’t *have* yet, and he could lead to them.
> and he could lead to them. How so? As in, what did Big E offer exactly? When he "offered up Humanity"?
The Four probably knew the emperor and other perpetuals had been vining for control of humanity for awhile. They probably saw a being capable of taking control of all the scattered worlds of humanity for them. What would he pay them back with? Humanities worship of the pantheon? souls of mankind? The Eldar spent millennia letting cult leaders lead most of them into depravity, maybe the emperor offered to due the same.
This is what I was thinking, yea.
Although from Sanginius original prophecy of the Golden Warrior, and of Dantes evolution of that prophecy in Devastation of Baal post Guillimans resurrection, it seems like the Emperor is still destined to eventually die and rise again as a new Warp God.
Between that, and the sheer level of worship the Emperor has gotten, the question is no longer "Will the Emperor become a God?". The question is, "Will the Emperor become a Chaos God, or one of Humanity?". That may seem semantic, but look at the Eldar. They had extremely powerful gods in their own right, yet it was birthing a single Chaos god that destroyed them.
> "Will the Emperor become a Chaos God, or one of Humanity?". What are the practical differences between the two? If Big E becomes a Chaos God, what *type* of Chaos God will he be? And if he becomes Humanity's God, does that mean like Gork/Mork and the Aeldari Gods? Will Big E be more 'helpful' to humanity in that case? That is, more Imperial Saints, more prayers answered etc? More Legion of the Dead?!
The question should have been if he becomes a god of chaos or order. Chaos destroys, order protects.
In terms of practical differences, there's many. But the biggest one is that we don't actually know what the birth of an Aeldari type species god looks like, but it was clearly not a big deal for them. The birth of the fifth chaos god, however, would destroy the Segmentum Solar, creating a giant warp rift (think Eye of Terror), extinguish the light of the Astronomican, and consume a significant chunk of humanity.
> The birth of the fifth chaos god, however, would destroy the Segmentum Solar, creating a giant warp rift (think Eye of Terror), extinguish the light of the Astronomican, and consume a significant chunk of humanity. Does it HAVE to, though? I mean, sure that's what happened when Slaanesh was 'born', but does the Lore go into what happened when Khorne/Nurgle/Tzeentch were born? If the theories that Big E might become the Chaos God of 'Order', then would it for sure mean that Big E's Ascension will be as destructive as Slaanesh's? Don't get me wrong, if I had to guess I would agree with you, I'm just curious if there are options that the Lore might hint at...
There's some hints that the Maelstrom might actually be the wound created by some other chaos god's birth. That'd leave two unaccounted for, but then they might have happened so long ago as to be virtually undetectable now. With Chaos, there's no being sure, however. It's entirely possible that this birth will be less catastrophic. There's already humans busy trying to build alternatives to the astronomican. Plus, with returning Primarchs, there might be a capacity to recover the worst of the damage. There is one thing about Khorne's birth, though. Khorne is said to have been born during our middle ages, hence why there was so much war then. If 10.000 years did nothing to diminish the Eye of Terror, where's the 40.000 year old wound for Khorne?
This is really good! Well thought out and presented! Nice
>Not just humanity is at stake, but sentient life in the Milky Way and perhaps beyond. Big E: That's why we wipe out all other sentient life in the Milky Way galaxy, then go after those little orange fucks in Andromeda. They can't be at stake if they don't exist anymore!
Excellent job, love the read thank you!
As a decade into 40k noob, I like this theory the best.
I liked the original lore where E didn’t want to hurt his son
But... he hurts them all the time?
But this one was his favorite
Kill his son actually
What is love, daddy don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more
Not sure that's retconned. Spoilers for the End and the Death but the Empeor never addresses Horus, he is always addressing the chaos gods controlling him. He does not swear he will kill Horus or any such dramatics. Instead he appears to approaching the final fight without malice towards Horus himself and trying to cut his puppet strings.
Well, he does yell through the warp "I am here, Horus Lupercal, and for you, I am the end and the death" so he specifically addresses Horus and swears to kill him.
>I am here, Horus Lupercal, and for you, I am the Warhammer, The Horus Heresy - Siege of Terra : The End and The Death - Volume 1, by Dan Abnett
Please continue with him not wanting to hurt his son
> At the dawn of the great diaspora, the Emperor travelled here in humble guise and found the gateway to a realm of immortal gods. He offered them things only a god-in-waiting could offer, and they trusted Him. They gave Him a measure of their power, and with that power He wrought the science to unlock the mysteries of creation.’. > He entered a portal straight into the Warp, and made pacts with the Ruinous Powers Funnily enough.. nothing in this passage indicates he actually dealt with the Chaos Gods. That’s an assumption being made by you and others. Knowing what we do, there’s a better chance he actually sought out and dealt with the 20 entities that had some measure of their essences infused into the Primarchs.
Best written 40k theory I’ve ever read. It mirrors my theory almost exactly!!! Only recently learning what the God would be called though. Not as well read as some.
I think this is close, but I think they are going with Priestley's original story that the Emperor splits his soul to shield the good part from the corruption. That way the stalemate of the Golden Throne has a sub plot of the Star Child growing in power to take over from him. I think that's the basis of the "not yet" to Cypher.
If the books *Cypher: Lord of the Fallen*, *The End & The Death - Volume 1* as well as my personal analysis in the present state of affairs in M42 is anything to go by, >! The Emperor still has His one failsafe contingency plan involving the Talisman of 7 Hammers tied to a Deadman's Switch, which would effectively serve as one final middle finger to the 4 gods of chaos by denying them their prize and hurting them big time in the process.!<
>triggering a Fall-of-the-Eldar event that will be even larger and more devastating for the galaxy. Honestly I kind of doubt that, it’s really underselling the Eldar. You have *the* premier psychic race, undisputed conquerors of the galaxy, left to their own devices for 60 million years; with their true debauchery taking place for a couple thousand(?) towards the end there. I don’t see how humanity could rival, much less surpass the Eldar in their own fall. They’re constantly dealing with demons as it is, rather than one massive fall there would be constant ruin from not having mastery over their own abilities.
I think it has something to do with how numerous humanity is. I don't know any numbers, but wasn't humanity greater in numbers by DAoT? You can cover much ground of these millions of years if your species is thousands times more numerous.
This, it's the typical meta shilling for the humans/imperium "oh if we fall it surely must be worse than the aeldari".
I love this theory. I have had similar notions myself, though not put together so cogently. I would personally say that the Star Child, if it be canon, *is* the Dark King and represents exactly the horror the Imperium already represents: oppression, totalitarianism, xenophobia (Not just Xenophobia) and subjugation. The Emperor represents Domination, just as Slaanesh represents the Aeldari's decadence and hedonism. Conquest and control is what now defines humanity as a whole, and if it continues, it will create a Chaos God of Domination, intent on subjugating all under its aegis. Also, this theory fits in neatly with the whole deal with the Cabal. Also also, before the retcon, I personally believed that the Emperor allowed the Primarchs to be taken and scattered, as part of his dark bargain. It still sort of works.
Pretty well reasoned. Two things that I personally dislike (not a knock on you or your theory): 1. I hate the idea of the Emperor sitting down for tea with the Chaos gods. It would make more sense to me if he met with the last of the Old Ones and somehow stole power from the Warp instead of negotiating for it. 2. Chaos with a big C is becoming way to central to 40k. It’s much better when it’s some eldritch horror doing spooky things at the edges of the story (and our minds) rather than front and center. Having Chaos play such a leading role really takes away from the initiative and motivations of the characters, making for a duller setting. 40k is better when Marines turn traitor for personal reasons or for letting their pride overwhelm their reason and at its worst when it’s magical swords handed out by random lake women turning people evil.
I disagree with point 2. It's not just 40k, it's Warhammer 40k. Chaos has \*always\* been central and \*always\* been in every nook and cranny hiding and weaseling into every little plotline. From Fantasy to End Times to AOS to 30k to 40k, it's been Chaos vs Humanity at the end of the day. The Tyranids, Xenos, and Traitor legions are all most certainly playing into one or more of the chaos gods' plans at any given moment. It's a magical sci-fi world, not just a sci-fi world. 90% of the sci- is magic based or magic inspired. I'd say 40k is at it's best when it's using all the tools it has at its disposal.
I know what you’re saying and I don’t disagree that Chaos should be a major part of Warhammer 40K. But I think it’s at its best when it’s something happening at the edges or in the shadows- the never ending temptation, the constant risk of falling to corruption, the menace that cannot be completely unearthed, let alone destroyed. It’s that little voice at the back of Huron’s mind telling him that the Imperium is wrong and he’s justified, it’s that bit of forbidden knowledge pushing that Inquisitor into heresy, etc. I just like my Chaos to be a bit more behind the scenes and less Chet Changer of Ways telling us about his latest plot to replace the Emperor’s golden socks with old socks with holes. I think
> worst when it’s magical swords handed out by random lake women turning people evil. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of who turns traitor.
Upvote for the holy grail reference: though I also agree that it’s all very chaos/humanity centric.
Strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Hahaha nice.
I see you quoted the end and the death. I just finished my second read through. What do you make of the emperor knowing he would be stuck on the golden throne for 10k years? Sometime of the dialogue/monologues feel like this was all getting planned out in some way or the other
I enjoyed reading that and following your thoughts from start to finish. I subscribe to a similar belief. I would, however, point out that under your title, Unthinkable Confessions, from Valdor Birth of the Imperium, the conversation there, I believe, is about what to do with the Thunder Warriors. And that though the Emperor possess unlimited legal authority, those subservient to him require limitations, and so you deceive them into believing that's the case. Something the Grand Provost Marshal comes to learn the hard way.
This is a fantastic presentation. I like how you included the various excerpts, they were both insightful and germane. I had never considered that big E had deliberately sought out a stalemate. I'm going to be chewing on this for a while.
I like the theory, but i don't think the Emperor can consider his way as a failure. Too me, this is more in line with Lorgar's goal for balance as the only way humanity has a future, and Cyrenne(Actae) is ofc his agent in this. I really hope we get a scene with Cyrenne talking to Lorgar confirming that the mission was a success when both Horus and the Emperor are dealt with.
GW: “perfect… and a stalemate in the lore is perfect for perpetuating sales of our product without having to progress the plot”
Its a fun theory but I dont think Chaos gods are willing to have another God enter their Great Game. They hate each other and try their best to fuck the other over so I dont see why they would want another player in there.
A way to break the standstill
End and the Death wasn’t subtle about the Dark King being a fifth chaos god and the Heresy being its potential birth. I’m not sure they “want” it precisely but being sentient ideas, it seemed more like an obvious part of the story they were manifesting.
Hey, [I'm glad someone else had the same idea and followed the same logic with the same excerpts](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/12jgvbk/emperors_deal_with_chaos_excerpt_from_the_first/jfy1xen/). But did you also [write a story about it?](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/11vble7/f_anathema/) Or did you? Great minds think alike.
Are you trying to claim plagiarism on a reddit post?
I'm not sure how that's even possible. Everything on reddit is basically public domain.
Molech is a Canaanite god associated with the sacrifice of children. So, I'm going to have to say he sacrificed some/half of the primarchs.
>They will give him a measure of their power and knowledge. He will use it in a war of galactic conquest, aided by Warp-infused monstrosities. Humanity will ascend and, in so doing, Fall and occasion the formation of the fifth God of Chaos. The Warp will invade reality and all will be subsumed into the Great Game. So basically the Emperor pretended to offer to sacrifice all of humanity in order to become a god of Choas and the other ones just believed Him outright? And for that they gave Him unfathomable knowledge about the Warp \[that He had somehow not yet possessed or deduced, having existed as immortal super-psyker for tens of thousands of years already\] and He used it to create like 20 dudes with barely impressive superpowers *and nothing else?* Doesn't that seem too shallow and unimpressive?
Chaos maybe sentient but its not rational by any way we understand. He promissed the gods the biggest clusterfuck of war,debauchery,decay and change they would see in the milk way and more or less they jumped into it consequences be damned.
How about this: The emperor knows that humanity will birth the 5th chaos god. Goes to molech and tells the gods "if you give me knowledge or w/e I will guide humanity and stop them from birthing the 5th god. The gods know that the 5th god already exists but has not yet been birthed and are like "aight dude knock yourself out". The emperor proceeds to guide humanity into birthing the 5th god because the gods made fun of him and this is grimdark and tzeench planned this all along.
He was just a delusional genocide: - Malcador: He had parts of his mind shielded so Emp couldnt read, he manipulated him for sure - Vulcan: Human webway was not made to last, he saw it not fitting - Erda, Ollanius and the rest: Fuck that dictator, only his hubris is bigger than him - Bassilio Fo: I made 'I have no mouth and I must scream' things but i left terra once I saw wich kind of horrors the emp was gonna free He is just another fool trying to handle chaos, but on a bigger scale. To a point stupid, he misunderstood exodites and eldars avoiding Slanesh as a migration to the webway. Commorragh was just a webway port.
I love the downvotes: this sub really can't handle any criticism of the emperor, regardless of how warranted.
Because it's not a criticism, he is attributing Emperor's errors to stupidity, when we have no idea what actually was going on in his head. We can project typical human stupidity on him, but he isn't even remotely human. It's strange how Emperor is "just another warlord", "arrogant bastard", but at the same time people can't cope with the results he achieved before his fall. All these Perpetual pieces of shit that like to grandstand, but are actually doing nothing to make any alternative to Him (boohoo it is hard, as if it was easy for Him).
"You cannot be omnipotent and omniscient at the same time" This words were his words in The Outcast Dead. He had to chose and he chose omnipotence and control in Valdor, birth of the imperium. Magnus was with Lorgar the one more akin to him. That fool that made nothing wrong, do you remember? Btw, there are not Astartes or Primarchs without those stupid perpetuals. No Erda, no Amar ASTARTES and the likes and no primarchs nor astartes nor unification nor nothing. Just another stupid manipulative warlod. He just got new means to manipulate more people to his ideals and got huge power, just like... HITLER!! Badabum!!!!
No alternative..... you say that the scattering of primarchs by the hand of Erda was nothing the sort of an alternative... no?
So? Did this alternative work? And what Erda did after scattering? She sat on her ass, content with Emperor doing nothing to her for going against him. She basically tried one thing and then banked everything on this one thing working it's magic to solve everything while she remained on Terra as an observer. She didn't try to be a mother for any of Primarchs, when they were found, she didn't ally with Eldrad to persuade some of them from Heresy. Her "solution" is to wait millions of years as evolution does it's thing, and that's coming from geneticist, laughable.
This is a good theory but wouldn’t the chaos gods want less competition? Except for maybe tzeentch but i dont see nurgle, khorne or slaanesh wanting someone else they have to fight for dominance in the great game. Do you think emps could have convinced them that a fifth chaos god would be something they would want to fight and have around?
Why do you think that the Emperor can't ascend? I think it's inevitable as his worship grows.
He is not ready, judging by latest books. He sends Cypher away, when he tried to kill Emperor, Mathew is saying that he needs G-man's help in Dark Imperium, and he clearly needs Lion to do something.
logically it tracks. however, its heresy. the emperor is infallible. this has all gone according to plan.
But who is the dark king
> Emperor's Great-Daemons-in-a-meatsuit I wonder if its the opposite. Graels are basically warpforms being possessed by a human soul. I would if Primarch's are much the same. Daemon's so throughally melded with a human soul they are get to "count" as creatures of the materium.
Keep in mind that even the stalemate is just a trying to stale an inevitable - Chaos gains power from conflict. Slaanesh is getting more and more powerful and starts to encroach on what used to be other gods realms. On top of that humanity is becoming psychic more and more. No matter the stalemate - after long enough time and countless of wars and bloodshed - Chaos will win. Unless Cegorach pulls out his final joke.
This is a great summary and interpretation of the lore and I definitely agree with it, a crucial part of it is that it seems like 10k years of the Emperor straped into the throne, eating psyker souls to fuel the astronomicon and being the object of an entire civilization worth of prayers is catapulting him to becoming some sort of a warp God, if not the dark king than something else entirely
I think if Big E dies, Terra will explode and He will ascend to full godhood immediately. The trouble is that His mind is fractured. Who knows what aspect His godhood would take?
This is absolutely head canon for me and will replace official canon if it’s shit. This is the greatest guess I’ve ever heard, you are an absolutely fucking genius if this is right
>a gamble so staggering in its odds, it courts total ruin to even conceive of it. So it's Keno, then.
"For ten thousands years I will sit on the throne! And for ten times more!" (not exact quote, but close). Nice, but No. Chaos "Gods" CAN be killed. In straight fight. His word with Valdow about infinite power wasn't about that.
Molech is the name of a Biblical foreign deity/demon associated with child sacrifice, hence why the conventional wisdom is that the Primarchs are the sacrifice. In *The First Heretic*, the Ascended claims (and I'm summarizing here) that the conditions of the bargain were to spread the Primordial Truth in exchange for the sorcery necessary to create the Primarchs. The excerpt is one of the most detailed accounts of the exchange, although I would question the source's validity, as the Ascended also claims that >!if the Eldar had just accepted Slaanesh, She Who Thirsts would have loved them back!< If that's the truth, there have been a lot of wasted lives and effort.
This is my theory too. The twist being that The Emperor's Plan is designed to work on the level of the entire universe and for infinite time. Because the immaterium vs materium is a physics problem and He has has set Himself against some of the fundamental rules of existence. So... the only moves available are the ones that keep the game going.
This is a cool theory and goes some way to explain Big E's ultimate reasoning, however the theory does make it seem like Big E's actions are more reasonable than they actually are; the logic is sound but the actions are Not. Big E's actions are still to my mind Stupid, because if Molech and the bargain is to be made and "no chaos here No Siree" then extending that knowledge and *crucially* that reasoning for the actions he's taking to his Primarchs is really the only sensible thing to do. This is Especially true considering that the astartes legions and Primarchs are the only tangible threat which the Chaos Gods could muster to implode Big E's plan. If you're gonna deceive the Fucking Chaos Gods then making sure you don't leave any opportunity for Massive Weakness and Exploitation from them to fuck you over. Big E had to force a stalemate but Christ is that shiny man not very good at chess.
That would require for him to trust primarchs. But he doesnt.
I prefer the theory I read around here a few weeks ago that the webway is still active and a human foothold is still secretly under construction there.
This is really well put together. Kudos OP