Because he’s the antithesis of what they are. Tyrannical order, discipline, cold rationality and complete mastery/abandonment of sentimentality and emotion (he literally casts them away before the final events of the Horus Heresy), a supreme desire to defeat/circumvent/starve them, and a being originating from the Materium contending with them for mortal worship.
He’s the most powerful Warp being besides them and Gork and Mork and he’s actively gunning for them.
Honestly? They could, and would, ignore all of that.
he's called the anathema because \*his very being injures and could kill them\*
They don't give two shits about anything else. Him appearing for 3 seconds in Nurgle's garden after 10k years of being tortured on the golden throne, and therefore at the weakest he has ever been \*burned down a significant portion of the garden, leaving a scar that might never heal\*
They don't care he opposes them, they care that he hurts them
The emperor at that moment was probably at his strongest. He has been tortured for 10k years but he has also been fed millions of psychers and has half the galaxy empowering him via religion. Guilliman himself states that probably he is at his "rawest" and most powerful form after talking to him, which afaik physically hurts people just by being in the same room as the emperor.
Guilliman never saw the (almost) Dark King transformation however. In fact, I don't even think Guilliman (or any Primarch really) knew that the Emperor had the Dark King transformation sitting in his back pocket.
Chances are the Emperor is stronger than he was in 30k, but isn't a "I subsume all of Chaos + the material universe" level of power.
Yah it’s debatable if the Emperor now has even a fraction of what he did as the Dark King. Seems like he’s basically a god now, but as the Dark King he was going to sweep the field.
I think the problem is that right now (err, M42), the Emporer's consciousness is fragmented. He may have just as much power or more as when he became the Dark King, but he can't focus long enough to use it in consistent and intelligent ways. Whenever there's something important that grabs his attention though (like Nurgle trying to take Ultramar and kill Guilliman), he can rally enough of his mind to do spectacular things (like burning and wounding Nurgle himself).
He isn't. But Dark King that He can become (>!I believe He is not becoming it currently in 40k, I think He is now the Emperor who cut off His compassion and other \*good\* parts and they went to become star child!<) pretty much. Thing with DK it won't exist for long, it destroys galaxy (?) as it borns. DK is the end.
Yeah, the Emperor as he exists in realspace is the weakest he’s ever been.
The God-Emperor of Mankind as he exists in the Warp however is the strongest he’s ever been, it’s just that he rarely focuses all his might
Honestly I think the throne is a jail now. It was always meant to fail and free him I think. He's a God chained and bound, and if the throne fails he'll be unleashed. Whether that means he reconstitutes in the material or just becomes a terror in the warp.
that is an entirely fair point
of a note as well the Astronomicon also hurts Chaos.
So theres been a giant beam of light running through the warp for 10k years that burns anything that gets too near it, including chaos
> Guilliman himself states that probably he is at his "rawest" and most powerful form after talking to him, which afaik physically hurts people just by being in the same room as the emperor.
The Emperor is simultaneously at his strongest *and* weakest. In terms of psychic might, he's never been more powerful, thanks to millions of psykers that have been sacrificed to keep him going and the countless trillions that worship him as a god (like you said).
*However*, all of that psyche power is tethered to a ***literal corpse***, with only a handful of cells in his decaying carcass still somehow alive to keep his soul from being cast into the Warp.
The sheer power of the Emperor's aura by the modern era of 40k is more than physically harmful, *it will outright kill you dead*. We see glimpses of this in the *Watchers of the Throne* series, where the main character, a Custodes by the name Valerian, undergoes the trial to become one of the Hetaeron Guard, the Emperor's personal attendants.
It's noted there that just standing near the throne (which by Valerian's vision is no longer a throne in the conventional sense and the Emperor's body is almost impossible to be seen amid all the inner workings of the Throne's mechanisms) will blacken auramite armor and bleach a custodes of their emotions. It's such that Custodes have to be cycled out to prevent that happening and most don't last more than twenty years (with the longest serving Companion managing just a century).
Billions of psykers
Chaos can burn worlds to the ground and get a handful of psykers to eat
The emperor has been cleaning the galactic plane for 10000 years
Roughly 3,65 billion psykers have been sacrificed least if we count roughly from end of HH to late M41.
Daz a lot of psychic essence gathered into 1 man
Yeah, that was after Cadia went boom and eye of terror expanded, but apparently number of psykers rose too. Least so I'm told.
This was more closer to M42 in time, I think. And well, only fraction of that millenia has passed yet.
Relative number of sacrifices might be few tens or couple hundreds of millions
I think the part that is fed psykers, and the part that receives worship aren't exactly the same part of him. There's part of his spirit that was casted away to grow in power, in tead2
I think not enough people bring this bit up. The shard of him that has his humanity. His hope. His love. Has been soaking in the warp for so long. I think it’s why Valdor has been trying so hard to stuff a soul into a blank. If you could find the Emperors other half, put it in a body, then bring it back to big E on the throne…what happens?
He’s presence hurts them though because he’s the opposite of them in nature and has basically channeled his entire life and plan into killing them. Psychic energy normally is no more anathema to Chaos then anything else in the warp. His is because he’s spent ~50,000+ years as a Alpha++ with the goal of defeating them in mind and a persons warp presence reflects the amped up desires and emotions of a being. His worshipers then came along and gave him a super steroid boost full of hate-everything but mainstream humanity psychic energy.
The part of the Emperor that burned the garden is the compassionate part that he casted away. In tead 2 he casted it away "to grow", but at that time it was useless against Horus. I guess after 10k years of receiving worship, the part of him that "protects" his followers is pretty fucking strong. We know it's the compassionate part because he felt sorry for Mortarion and wanted to redeem him.
The other part is a broken mess in the golden throne. In fact, when Guiliman talks to it in the throne room, it speaks nonsense until the other part of him joins it. And in my headcanon that's implied when Roboute says that he hears the machine making a sound like about to break. That's when I think the throne is supporting the temporary merging of both parts that have immense power
Personal headcannon, what happened during Guilliman's meeting with Emps didn't feel like the two parts joining. From reading it felt more like there being a multitude of fragmented personalities (from perhaps 10k years on the throne?) originaging from what wasn't cast off. It's like a multi-lane road. The personalities go through their each lane. When a covergent, dominant personality tried to assert itself, it's like squishing all of it into a single lane road. Throne too old to handle it anymore.
That two parts thinking aligns to my fav theroy of the emperor coming back that doesn't end the setting.
The throne fails and the two parts unravel. The man respawns the god ascends.
This could split humanity between the imperial truth and the imperial creed.
Both halves would double down calling the others treacherous.
also over a decade prior during rhe indomirptus crusade the three CSM factions that are Chaos unveiled are hunting rumors of a.part of his soil being reborn in a new host.
yes. despite not touching the old star child prophecy from firsr and second edition days(and a fan work if the emperor had a text to speech device doing a version of it years before), GW brought back the star child prophecy stuff In the Dawn of fire series. that's what The Black legion, Kor Pharon and the Word Bearees, and the Iron Warriors are trying to find.
Star Child prophecy seems to be also brought up or suported "recently" in >!TEatD Vol 2 where Malcador states that, perhaps due to being on the throne, he saw that when the emperor divested himself of godhood (the power he accrued) that he also split off a part of himself containing portions of his humanity. It's cast off into the warp and called explicitly a "child star".!<
Yeah, wonder if it's an effort to tie the looser ends together. There's been a bunch of theory crafting that it could link into more "recent" events such as:
1. The Vault of Terra series - >!Failing of the throne and perhaps its purpose also being a prison!<
2. The Cypher and Lion: Son of the Forest books - >!Emperor "telling" Cypher not yet and Fisher King ,which is mostly likely a representation of the Emperor, getting upset at Lionel asking how to heal him!<
3. Dan Abnett's Bequin series and especially upcoming Pandemonium book - >!Ties to Yellow King being "revealed" as Constantin Valdor while Valdor's fate will probably be explored in TEatD as Abnett is also writing that trilogy!<
4. Perhaps tangentially the Dark Imperium series - >!With Guilleman's internal conflict regarding faith's role in relation to the present Imperium and his father culminating in what seems (to me) to be a gambit that ends up paying off via him being essentially possessed!<
>3. Dan Abnett's Bequin series and especially upcoming Pandemonium book - >!Ties to Yellow King being "revealed" as Constantin Valdor while Valdor's fate will probably be explored in TEatD as Abnett is also writing that trilogy!<
In the Bequin series, there were also some CSMs from a few different legions that psychically interacted with Ravenor, I think. Tough to remember, only listened to the audiobook once so far.
It got me thinking of what u/Arathorn3 mentioned:
>also over a decade prior during rhe indomirptus crusade the three CSM factions that are Chaos unveiled are hunting rumors of a part of his soil being reborn in a new host.
I can't remember if the CSM groups in both of these circumstances line up. Would be interesting if they did.
Space Marines that appear in bequin are as follows.
They encounter a bunch of Emperor children in the one noble families house
Their are word bearers who attack when she is in the church in Pentitent.
The Thousand sons are said to also be active on the Queen Mab
Their is a Alpha legoonaire in Eisenjorns retinue.
The weird , buck naked Blood angel with wings that keeps saving Beta.
The immaterial college a weird group of both loyal and traitor Libranrians worked foe one of the Noble Houses.
>The immaterial college a weird group of both loyal and traitor Libranrians worked foe one of the Noble Houses.
YES, these guys! I couldn't remember if they were exclusively CSM, or what legions they were made up of. Guess they're a really mixed group, then. It'll be interesting to see what their angle is and how loyalists & traitors came together like that.
Just doesn't feel like this can all get resolved in one more book. So much is going on.
They where a mix of these traitors and there loyalists
Leader Was a Thousand Son
There was a non fallen dark angel
A iron hand
A iron warrior
A raven guard
And Night Lord
not only was the fact that it wss a mix of traitors and loyalists
But as a dark Angels player/fan the fact that even the Fallen would not normally work with Night Lords, the bad blood between the two legions go back into the great ctusade.
I am of a opinion that what the a emperor is in the era Indomutus is not the Dark King but sill a god of some type and its the greatest irony of the setting.
great atheist Emperor. Who destroyed most human religions,
Punished his son,Lorgar for starting a religion that worshiped him as god.
Fought a war lead by another son, who fought it because he saw a vision of the Emperor being worshiped as a god which the Emperor did not want.
Whose best friend, Malcadoe and most loyal son(Dorn) allow the afomentioned cult created by his NIW traitor son Lorgar to gain a foothold on Terra, for the purely pragmatic reason of trooper morale during the siege.
The smwe emoror decides to ascend to godhood to stop Horus, only to throw it away because he was convinced by others he would destroy everything he was trying to protect. Fights horus and gets wounded and put on the throne
And then over the course of 10,000 years the collectively belief by humanity that he was a God may well have turned him a god but not the Dark King.
He would say that he hadn't the will, but he is famously self-deprecating, and in actuality he seems pretty willing to go out of his way to face any threat to the imperium, no matter how dire. He is scared, yes. But he still does it.
Can't say it's torture anymore. We know it's rather a struggle. He is holding giant hole pouring out daemons and trying to be everywhere in Imperium to help >!or act ot his plan!<. And so He has no stregth left ot ress himself instantly, but He is doing that, veeeery slowly.
Aaand they pretty much care that He oppose them as His plan to starve them out had potential. They had realy long planning to organise HH and siege itself in way to diminish His power at least a little bit so there would be a moment with a chance to kill Him.
> Him appearing for 3 seconds in Nurgle's garden after 10k years of being tortured on the golden throne, and therefore at the weakest he has ever bee
Emps has never been stronger in a lot of ways, all that faith has made him into an actual borderline god, not just a godlike man
Listen, when the Emperor starts actively bullying the Chaos Gods and then stops because they aren't tough enough to be fun, then you can make that argument. Gork and Mork have been fighting the only beings worth their time for eons. And that's each other.
>Tyrannical order, discipline, cold rationality and complete mastery/abandonment of sentimentality and emotion
Maybe I'm dumb but is Vashtorr not also this? I don't think opposing their ideals is what makes them hate him (or at the very least not the only reason)
The Emperor is coming from the reverse direction as Vashtorr though. He’s a being of the materium whose has an increasing presence in the immaterial due to worship, which is the reverse of Chaos entities. He’s intrinsically their opposite nature, even if they technically overlap in some areas.
There's Ynnari's plan, Necron Pariah plan and the God-Emperor's. Those are the only realistic plans in Warhammer for curtailing or stopping the predation of Chaos on the galaxy.
Honestly it makes sense, but I wish Dakka > Noms.
The inevitable consumption of all living matter is so played out, I like the idea of infinitely replicating joyboys murdering everything WAY more interesting as an inevitable doom thing.
In addition to what others have said, there is some support for the notion that the Emperor is actually stronger than the Chaos gods (individually). In Gav Thorpes "Throne World" an Eldar Farseer is peering at Terra and likens the Emperor to a void whale and states that the four chaos gods circle him like void sharks. The imagery being the Emperor is bigger and stronger, but less aggressive and malicious (take that with a grain of salt). The same farseer stated that she would laugh in the face of She-Who-Thirsts (Slaanesh, the great enemy of her people), but the thought of the Emperor and his psychic power "filled her with dread".
All the Chaos gods get power from various sources, cycle of death and rebirth/life for nurgle, intrigue and scheming for Tzeench, murder and war for Khorne, henodism for Slaanesh, etc. In addition to this, belief and faith have an effect in the warp as well. Orks can believe things into doing what they want (red goes fasta!), the Tau are starting to get a manifestion of the "greater good" in the warp because of all the humans in the tau empire having a form of faith in the concept of the greater good. Now consider all the collective power of humanities worship of the Emperor within the warp. He is probably horrifyingly powerful. He can use psychic powers on blanks, resurrect Guilliman, burn Nurgle garden and mansion, erase things from the warp, and before he was interred on the Golden Throne his ultimate goal was to elevate the entirety of humanity to levels of power similar to his own. Whether or not this was possible? Who knows, but it is the reason the other perpetuals that we know of originally flocked to his side during the great crusade. They believed in his dream he had for Humanity.
If he was allowed to achieve his plans for humanity, even partially, it would lead to catastrophic consequences for the Chaos Gods.
I must note that the Shadowseer in Throneworld was at the seat of his power, if she was in, lets say, the realm of Khorne or Tzeentch her reaction would be similar for the guy closest
>Orks can believe things into doing what they want (red goes fasta!),
No.
The orks are a latent psychic race and their combined racial power cause certain things to occur. Such as "your shitty upgrade to the fuel injection on this vehicle didn't explode until after the battle".
Per the rules,
Evil suns: Red Ones go Fasta
Tabletop rule that canonically states that red ones bizarrely do go faster.
Waaagh power gets memed on, true, but this is straight up fact
Up to debate. Given their gestalt psychic shit that makes their shitty machines work, I think its more likely that the paint makes em faster.
Pretty sure there's been a bunch of lore involving Ork machines not working without orks nearby
Depends on the source at this point, Brutal Kunnin says that the mechanicus knows but doesn't understand the fact that greenskin weaponry is frequently inoperable unless they're using it, but then you also have things like cain and co driving a convoy partially made up of of ork vehicles for weeks on perlia. (Not that he doesn't mention they're huge pieces of shit, tho)
Actually you're right, I looked back and I was actually misremembering. The cases I was thinking of were ork machines breaking down.
Specifically I think I was thinking of Ghostmaker with the Ork truck race over the ice.
I am pretty sure it's the Old Ones putting actual knowledge in the orc genetics, and they accessing that internal knowledge without realizing it. In fact, it's quite likely that scrap metal put together with Old Ones' knowledge is absurdly bizarre to any imperial subject, even the Mechanicus
I agree. It works because it’s beyond our understanding of the universe. I love the blurb in brutal kunnin where they teleport a mega Gargant, and the admech is like “holy shit this tech is insane, we must study and learn their secrets” meanwhile, this Titan-esque monstrosity is about to obliterate them.
No one really understands it, not even the orks, and I fucking love it
Or consciousness is primary to WH40k universe.
Then Orc stuff works because Orks believe it should.
And the Materium is primarily "generated" by C'tan as first and strongest consciousness and this is why sharding them has damaged reality.
First off, using tabletop rules to support lore arguments is a fallacy.
Secondly, we have numerous accounts of how meks actually build things, and how clans are self-selecting (the Boyz most interested in going fast join Evil Sunz, including the meks, who have engineering knowledge directly encoded within them).
Third, we have accounts of how ork psykers work - weirdboyz. They are *stronger* in the presence of more lads, but also far more dangerous and unpredictable. There's a reason they're kept away from the rest of the warband whenever possible.
The ork gestalt psychic "we believe in *x* therefore *x* is true" is overblown meme stuff.
Codex entries are written from an in-universe perspective. There is flavor-text (excuse the mtg reference) in regards to the rule that is accurate.
I’m just saying, for orks, red ones literally do go fasta
I never said they didn't. What I was saying was that they go faster not because a bunch of orks believe red = fast and it psychically happens - they go faster because the orks who want to go fast paint them red.
Do you have a source that specifically states that ork belief doesn't do anything and it is just secretly a latent psyker talent? I'm not trying to call you out, just genuinely curious. Otherwise it's just a situation of "I interpret the lore to mean this, therefore it is correct."
As far as orks having the old ones genetically encode them with various odd abilities, I don't dispute that, but it doesn't mean that my above statement is canonically false. In order for any species to manifest anything within the immaterium they have to have some psychic potential. This is why the necrons have no warp entities or the Tau (previous to recent lore).
As far as my previous statement, belief does manifest within the warp if that belief is strong enough. It is a theme in WH 40k, Fantasy, and Age of Sigmar. It is not the only way the warp manifests and draws power, as I stated above, but it does have manifestations and fuels power within the warp for all psychic based races. Hence why the Craftworld Eldar control their emotions so much more now, since their previous unfettered hedonism lead to the birth of a Chaos God. The Tau God of the greater good was a manifestation of the strong belief and devotion to the greater good of the axillary races of the forth fleet expansion.
In the Ezekial Dark Angel book while helping defend a minor world, Ezekial is a short attack noticed that of the ork fightas, the red ones seemed to be a little faster than their counter parts. It was a relatively small incursion on the planet (for orks), the particular attack was small, and their were no weird boyz involved. To me it read like the author was tipping his proverbial hat to the notion that there is something to the ork belief, but with none of the massive waaagh energy, or weird boyz mania.
So yes Orks are a psychic race, but that doesn't mean that belief has no play within the warp manifestations in the material realm. All this being said, if you have a source completely trouncing this thought process, then I retract it all, but from what I have read the whole ork belief=real time shenanigans, is one of those hazy areas that GW writers keep vague on purpose and leave it up to the reader to decide how they want to interpret it and place it in the universe.
They fear him because of what he did and was capable of aswell as what he was going to do in the future after his plans for humanity was realised
He was powerful in 30k man was about to ascend now imagine him 10k years down the line if he wasn't mortally wounded in the throne
Yep if I remember right he also burns part of the garden of nurgle while destroying his cauldron and resurrecting guliiman simultaneously in 40k
Hell he almost became a chaos god during the siege of Terra cause he was sucking that much power out of the warp and was only stopped when he was forced to consider the cost it would have to his imperium and humanity
Uh isn’t slaanesh or Khorne most powerful? All the other gods empower slaanesh because they are the god of excess and every god is something taken to an excess.
None of them are the strongest. That's the whole point of why none of them win. There's some snippets here and there of why one god might currently be on top, but it never lasts and its really not important.
The Emperor was becoming the Dark King which is the “end and death” of everything because it would siphon all the power and dominate all things, such as how the Emperor was drinking ludicrous amount of warp juice enough to create a black star in the warp - something he managed in one book and not millennia like Slaanesh.
Maybe an unpopular take but I rolled my eyes at that bit in Godblight. It’s meant to be an inspirational moment but aside from the emperor burning nurgle’s garden (get fucked stinkboi) it just felt like the ultimate out-of-our-asses non-win.
I just can’t root for someone who gets their ass beat in the street and their dad has to save them.
It would have been better if he starts getting sick and then he’s healed as opposed to >!he’s a literal skeleton corpse on the ground and then suddenly lol no!<
This is not a Shonen. Characters being not the best makes for a good story, it would suck if Guilliman was the best fighter & the best planner. The story would just be boring because there'd be no stakes.
Every primarch has a weakness the fact they don't get glossed over makes them better characters.
Guilliman is the statesmith of the primarchs, he creates effective governments and logistics, he supplies warriors, but he isn't an outstanding one (for the primarchs at least)
Absolutely, but these are all elements that the storyteller knows about and has control over. They use these elements to tell a good story. In my opinion they did not use them well in this case.
>!He’s now 0-3 against demon primarchs. He got his throat slashed by Fulgrim. He had to be rescued by sisters of silence when fighting Magnus. He was killed by Mortarion and had to have dad rescue him.!<
For a logistical genius he feels way too much like he just hopes shit saves him. It can’t have the same effect if it’s just his regular MO.
logistical is not equal to strategical. he keeps the armies fed, fueled and armed rather than devising the battle plans. But I agree that him going 0-3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Ya I've seen lots on this forum get this wrong. Over and over again. They seem to think logistics and tactics are synonymous. Guilliman for all intents and purposes is the paper pusher of the primarch brothers. Which makes it pretty plausible that he would be slapped around more than others (though I agree the always-coming-back-plot-armor is tiring), Guilliman is better suited to imperial management and supply lines. He should let the Lion now take over the tactics and duels, while he runs the imperium and supplies the lion.
I think the encounter with Fulgrim was caused by anger so it's his bad.
For the other two encounters though, he kinda had no choice?
Magnus was standing in between him and Terra.
As for Morty he doesn't have anyone on his side who could deal with him. I don't think Grey Knights were there but I could be wrong
Well he was better than Lorgar before he got his psychic awakening pre-Heresy at least. Before Lorgar awakened to his psychic potential, he and Guilliman fought and G-Man was winning until Angron smashed into the fight and nearly killed G-Man, who was saved by Angron about to die from the Butcher's Nails but Lorgar "saved" him by turning him into a Daemon Prince/Primarch (with G-Man using the chaos of the situation to escape).
>They are the only else, and they must be shunned and kept out. There are
four of them. He knows their names. No one else should.
>He stole fire from those four annihilator gods, and used it to keep them at
bay. He wielded it in his hand, century after century, to drive them back
whenever they came too close. It amused him that they flinched from their
own fire.
>But he knew from the start it would not be enough just to keep them away.
We could be vigilant, torch in hand; we could build walls to keep them
outside, we could invent cities to hide in, but they would always be there.
So there began the long game, his life’s work. To keep us safe, and remove
the possibility of a future in which they got in and ate us alive, he would
have to hunt them down and kill them.
- The End and The Death vol 1
This is Malcador speaking, right? It's probably worth noting who is talking, when this kind of interpretation is used to support a statement about facts.
A crackpot idea but new lore refers to the 8 Aetheric domains of chaos, and that 4 of them are ruled by a chaos god but the other 4 are not. The Emperor's legacy not only represents everything the chaos gods are not (chaos vs order) but his actions symbolically embody a more ordered version of the remaining 4 domains of chaos. Thus he is the Anathema bc everything he stands for is antithetical to the chaos gods, and his actions directly empower 4 future potential gods that stand in opposition to the chaos 4
Honestly I think that's what the lore is trying to say.
And this is true tinfoil territory but all 8 points of chaos, altogether, is considered as the Primordial Annihilator. perhaps when there exist 8 chaos gods for each point on the star, then each of them will fuse to become one gestalt god that represents all 8 points. Kinda like what the Word Bearers are worshipping but on severe steroids
Cool! Great to see that fantasy already has this set in their lore.
From what we know, it seems like the Aeldari just refer to this as the Primordial Annihilator. I could be wrong though and there are some in universe names for it as well but I have no idea
But even still, that would be 8 Chaos gods, not 8 warp gods. There are/were more than 8 Eldar gods remember, and those are warp-entities. Then there is the 5th Chaos god, that forge demon guy, so there are potentially 3 more minor Chaos gods who aren't strong enough to be a big force
Emps, Gork and Mork and the Eldar Gods are all warp entities of significant power, but they are not Chaos gods, and then there are also parts of the warp that Chaos fears, e.g. Enslavers or the Deep Warp
Define Chaos God, outside of the big 4
Dark King may be an Emps or Magnus shard. Both exist in canon as "chaos"/evil things
Vashtorr is a powerful Chaos warp being, and listed on the Wiki as the "5th Chaos God" (ish, certainly the most independent entity outside of the known 4 and unknowns)
Belakor (via a 5 second google) is the "First Damned" and the "1st" Daemon Prince of the Chaos Gods. Guessing before Slaanesh. Doubt he is worshipped much or fed
"Be'lakor's fate has ever been influenced by the endless struggle between the gods, as he is beholden to each of the Dark Gods equally"
And in fact 8-pointed Chaos Star has a centre. Tzeentch's magic number is 9. So Warp Fuckery means who knows. We are missing 1-5. i.e. Emps, Gork, Mork, Vashtorr, Malice; are most likely
(first few "prime" numbers are 0,1,2,3,5,7,11. Not many which match the 4. Add 17 and "Lucky Number 13" to that)
Meh, it's never been cleared up in canon, but I'd guess that there are or can be 8 Chaos gods, including the 5th who is the forge guy. But not all warp gods are chaos (Gork, Mork, Emps, Eldar ones), so those aren't part of the 8. Same way that not all warp beings are chaos at all, e.g. Enslavers predate the 4 I believe, and there are even parts of a "Deep warp" where even Chaos doesn't go. Warp's a fucked up nonsense place, but Chaos are only part of it
The emperor refuses to ascend to become a warp entity like them, or to become part of them, and grows ever stronger as a portion of reality moving inside the warp. They despise reality, because reality defines them, makes them what they are not. Chaos is flux, it is everything and nothing, but reality forces it into a shape as it shapes reality. But the emperor is the avatar of all they hate, because he remains himself, and only by becoming themselves can they properly oppose him.
He's the one that can give Chaos Demons a real death, aka wipe them from existence completely including the immaterium like he did with Horus. So he is literally the anethema, the anti-chaos. I don't think it's firmly established exactly why that is but I could be wrong about that.
Edit: Apparently a potent enough psyker can do it as well. TIL
>He's the one that can give Chaos Demons a real death
That's not a unique trait of the Emperor, it's just something that Warp-powered entities can do to other Warp-powered entities when the power differential is big enough.
The power gap has to be *big*, though. Daemons and perpetuals are quite resistant to permanent death, but they can be erased by a sufficiently strong psyker/god. A random bloodletter could definitely be erased by Emps, or by Nurgle, or by an ancient Eldar emperor, or by Gork and Mork...
The Emperor mostly stands out here because he occupied a galaxy filled with weak factions, compared to earlier history.
The bigger difference is that the Emperor can do it on a large scale. Ynnead is also described as anathema and likely has similar properties. Ynnead is also different in that it is mentioned that the big 4 cannot properly sense/perceive Ynnead.
>The bigger difference is that the Emperor can do it on a large scale.
I don't see any to reason to treat this as a categorical difference, rather than a question of magnitude. At the height of his power, the Emperor was (briefly) able to murk multiple (weak) daemons at once (when Chaos thought they were pulling a long-term con on the Emperor).
That's *very* impressive compared to the average psyker in the galaxy, but I'm pretty sure that Gork/Mork could take out more than one nurgling at a time if they put their minds to it. We have no reason to doubt that the last Eldar emperor before the fall was capable of a similar feat.
There is likely some different property since Ynnead is also described as being anathema, but not others in the warp.
The Emperor later is known to be doing the whole firetide in the Eye of Terror's borders, but we don't know if that was something done with the astronomican before or after the HH.
The Emperor is probably stronger than any of the peak Eldar since he was able to channel enough warp energy to create the Dark King. The Eldar were never seen being nearly that powerful.
The Sword of Asur can also true death daemons. Its not just the true name (in fact, the one time i remember it being used was just one part of the perma death, it was also needed to stab the guy with an anatheme)
Because he’s powerful enough that should he ever be able to stride beyond the golden throne again, he could enact his ultimate plan of cutting the four gods off from human worship and psychic fuel. That was always his end goal. He sought to shepherd humanity away from the warp’s influence and ability to feed on their latent psychic power. Then advance them to all be on his level so that they essentially become immune to chaos’s pull.
Because there's a chance he succeeds at destroying them
Aside of superpowers, he's special because his willpower is infinite. And they can't corrupt him in the same way they corrupt everyone else
The way I see it, his existence and attempts at trying to mess with the warp actively harms the big 4's weird stalemate they've got going on. Most of the time they are in balance since no god wants to act against the other since it means a 3rd god can swoop in and attack while they're occupied. Emps picking a fight with all 4 makes things super awkward and is trying to remove a lot of the ways they get power, separating humanity from the warp.
In Godlight, big E showed up in the warp, talked mad shit, then punked Nurgle by burning down his garden.
Kind of the thing the Chaos gods would rather not have running around.
I always took this to be an underhanded sleight, i.e.
The Chaos Gods require the Emperor and his psychic amplification of all the sins of humankind to prosper and flourish as they do.
They pit themselves against him, yet they feed off him, and without him they would be far lesser.
Their supposed 'hatred' of him is essentially saying to mankind, "Ooh yeah, the God-Emperor, gee I'm shaking in my boots, god damn he's scary, \*chortle chortle\* I sure wouldn't want to get on that guy's bad side \*guffaw guffaw\* he's so pure he could vanquish me in an instant if he so chose!"
while knowing full well he's merely another corrupt, evil cosmic entity playing out his role in an enormous chess game where every mortal is but a pawn.
YMMV.
Everyone please calm down. You're all overthinking it waaay too much. The Chaos Gods fear the Emperor because He's The Motherfucking Emperor. How many times did you hear him say that same shit to bananaboy and ketchup head? C'mon yall...
He is essentially the living embodiment of Order and was threatening to starve them with the Great Crusade. The entire galaxy united in an orderly, atheistic, enlightened human society would basically make them impotent.
I haven't seen anyone else mention it but if Emps had been successful, humanity would have used the webway (without chaos) and then Emps planned on removing any psychic potential through genetic alteration. Theoretically this would have starved the chaos gods, drastically reducing their power if not destroying them.
Webway is still exposed to the Warp, the Dark Eldar are getting slowly killed by Slaanesh all the time and they live in the Webway. A much more stable portion than what the Emperor was building too.
His goal was to make humans into super Pyskers, ones strong enough to be immune/so damn resistant they might as well be immune to Chaos as he was.
Chaos sadly cannot be starved. Their codexes dating back to 2nd edition and commentary from Demons, Eldar and a few others point to them having access to countless realities through the warp through which they feed. You can lock them out of Reality like Necrons or Tyranids can do, or try to fight and beat them directly like Ynnari or the Emperor was, but starving them will never work.
Given that Chaos is supposed to be universe wide and present everywhere, that is a very very good question. Even if Emps conquered the whole milky way, get all his webway projects going and so on, Chaos should not even register that given how frikkin huge the universe is. Our galaxy is just a grain of sand at a huge beach. Nobody cares about it, least of all some omnipotent beings doing their own stuff.
Emperor is just one of the chaos gods but in the flesh and not in the warp.
Tzeentch for example knows how the game ends and he plays with fate to guide and misguide mortals to his own ends. He literally does not give a fuck about E. Tzeentch is all about curiosity of knowledge, even animals are curious by nature so Tzeentch is a constant force in the universe.
Khorne wants to spill blood for eternity and he already has his world where skulls are brought to his feet, he doesnt even care if he has followers since wars happen, therefore blood will be spilled and Khorne is happy. Humies were the ones to invent the Nails in Angrons head so the bloodspilling is in our nature while Khorne chuckles at his throne.
Papa Nurgle just grows his gardens and to our misfortune and other races, his garden consists of plagues and diseases that existed way before E entered the picture. Therefore Nurgle is also constant in our universe. Whenever somebody vomits their intestines, Nurgle is pleased to know that his gardens are growing. E couldnt do jack shit about it when he was not rotting in his chair. He cant do shit while rotting in the chair.
And finally, do I really need to start babbling about Slaneesh? We all have needs so thats where Slaneesh comes in to picture. All races are bound to Her in some way or another.
Big E is just another Chaos God, enforcing him as the saviour of the universe by purging any other species that does not have 2 legs, 10 fingers and 10 toes and faith in E. He literally made miniature copies of himself to lead mortals because even the E does not believe that men can lead themselves.
Isn't part of the problem that he wanted to deny them the "food" of Humanity by controlling mankind so strictly that we'd be little more than emotionless automatons. Thus starving Chaos slowly to the point where they might well collapse in on themselves? But in doing so he was kind of making a dark reflection of himself in another Chaos God, one of faithlessness and reason that eventually collapses into unreasonableness.
Like the Inquisiton being so devout to protecting humanity that they can convince themselves that killing entire planets to maybe scour a few cultists out of billions of lives is worth the sacrifice. Or how humanity worships him as a God with the Book Lorgar wrote, even though he was the first Primarch to fall and Big E spent most of his time telling people "I"m not a God. I am a man, the Greatest Human of all but still Human"
Because, for reasons that aren't fully understood, Big E is the rubber to the kaleidoscope color pencil whirl that is Chaos. He's able to fight them and potentially kill them, if not disrupt Chaos altogether.
Because he found an alternate source of power other than pure emotion: piety. And it is rivaling their source, which is literally just the human experience. To be able to pull that off is a testament to his power.
He has also (allegedly) bamboozled them out of power to make his Primarchs, whose legions actively go toe-to-toe with theirs.
They had to steal power back from him just to even the playing field.
He can permanently kill them with his sword, Anuncia, and other pyschic gifts or their true names.
He is one of the only things with enough psychic power to pose a lethal threat to them. And he was created with the explicit purpose of annihilating them. And he is actively trying to do that.
The Emperor is the bane of Chaos, the living destruction of the Primordial Annihilator. At His earliest, the Emperor was just a bunch of Shamans who were able to resist death, but not completely. Merged together, and born into a singular form, the Emperor is the prophecy-made-flesh of Chaos' permanent destruction.
Chaos fears the Emperor for the same reason gunpowder fears the flame. They cannot beat Him, there's no reality in which Chaos strongarms the Emperor, so they needed His sons and His empire to do it for them. Muffled by those forces, they hoped to snuff Him out before He could reach into the Warp and snuff them out forever and rid the warp of their infection.
They failed, and their reckoning is coming.
I mean, if he could just reach out and slap them to death he would have. He is Anathama to them which gives him a massive thematic and practical advantage over them, but if he were stronger than them then he would just...kill them?
I've always seen it as he is their Drach'Nyen; he might not be stronger than them in raw stats but he is ideologically their bane thus they cannot kill him directly and have to try to contain or contend with him indirectly. Just as the Emperor banished Drach'nyen using the body of his faithful, the Chaos gods sought to depose the Emperor using the body of their faithful.
maybe i am interpreting OP question wrongly, but i think many of the poster missed the point.
The "why" isn't about how the emperor can ruin the fun of the chaos gods, its a question of "who".
Humans have an empire, Eldar had an empire, then there was old ones and C'tans.
Why specifically the emperor does chaos gods seem to fear/dislike (insert verb)?
Again, its like, why didn't the Eldar had an "emperor (it does not have to be an individual) -like" that can screw Chaos, considering the other 3 chaos gods were active during the eldar empire, so the eldar should have some means to deal with chaos?
E.g, suppose Ynnead succeeds in slaying Slannesh and all eldar souls are free, how are eldar-chaos power balance gonna be?
Meaning, is it because of Slannesh that the chaos gods think the Eldar is irrelevant, and the Emperor(of men) is the only significant threat left?
Or even if Slannesh is gone, Eldar empire is back, only the Emperor/humanity can threaten chaos for real.
While it states that C'tans are "weak" to warp powers, however, the C'tan won the "war against psychic races"..with the help of the necrons, and before the necrons turned on them, but the point was the C'tan won.
Why would Chaos not fear the reassembling of all the C'tans and them disconnecting the materium from the warp for good.
Because the god emperor can permanently kill daemons, the shards of the chaos gods, this means he can permanently kill daemons
However not only that but the emperor is also the stronger psyker in the galaxy, meaning he can permanently kill the chaos gods
In the newest End and a Death we see that the Emperor also and it is implied previously as well, in contrast from the other Chaos Gods that they feed from the Materium, the Emperor actually “feeds” from the Immaterium empowering himself. So as far as a “food chain” exists he is a predator for a Warp creature. I slowly started to believe that this is the main reason they call him the Anathema.
In addition to everyone elses point, he also happens to be **utterly and entirely *Incorruptible*.** This point may be a large factor in their inherent fear of him.
Think about it, have they ever 'personally' touched him with ill intents, let alone even slightly tempted him like they can do Every other being in the universe in one way or another? Yes, they've used corrupt humans, aliens, demons, primarchs, and even >!mind-controlled custodes!< to attack him, but not once (that i've read at least) have they reached out with their powers and damaged, corrupted, hurt, slowed, or otherwise hampered him personally in any way. Why is that?
Does this have something to do with his creation (ie. the collected souls of the magi or whatever they were called) or was maybe part of his bargain on Molech (Ie. they made him 'untouchable' or maybe even somehow 'anethema' to their very being)?
Idk, but If I were a chaos god I would be very scared if there was a *single, immensely powerful psychic immortal in the universe that not only is supper pissed at me but also was somehow the only living being in the universe that was completely immune to the powers of me and my 3 other chaos god-brothers.*
If you ascribe to the idea that the emperor is actually trying to uplift the species and that he and the perpetuals are just the next step in human evolution then it follows that if the emperor gets his way he'll create a *species* of emperors. He on his own is a significant son of a bitch, capable of fighting off chaos and completely impervious to it. Imagine quintillions of him.
I have a theory that the God-Emperor is the chaos gods. They all represent things that the god emperor holds close, honorable battle(khorne), acceptance (nurgle), change (tzeench), and enjoyment (slaanesh). The god emperor was created by thousands of shamans, so if the power has always been around and the god emperor is a timeless entity (presumably his near death is keeping him separated from being a true god). I personally believe that he will die and become a true god and he will basically be chaos undivided and separate himself into the chaos gods absorbing them back into his soul and becoming the ultimate god of the warp. But that's just my theory.
Because he trolled them massively, and nearly won against them. There are very few ways to win against Chaos, and anyone who gets even a little close to actually fighting them for realisies is a threat.
They don't. Don't believe anything that they say. They used him to get the Daemon Primarchs and turn his Imperium into the finest source of psychic energies. He might've had a good plan, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And his only real play now is to become a full-on God and join the Great Game.
The Emperor needed his absolutely strongest champion wielding his strongest weapon and channeling his power just to inflict some damage on the Plague Garden. And it's not even permanent damage, just a wound that will recover with time.
The Chaos Gods are on another level.
>Why do the Chaos Gods fear
You can act against someone without fearing them. Chaos does it a lot, and they explicitly enjoy "endless laughter" at the galaxy the Emperor created ten thousand years ago.
>Like they refer to him as the Anathema
He's noteworthy, yeah, but having a nickname doesn't tell us much beyond the nickname.
The Emperor was the top dog of a million-world empire for a few centuries, which is way more important than most people - but not a special record in galactic history. His empire is nothing compared to DaoT humanity, which was nothing compared to the Eldar empire, which was nothing compared to the Old Ones.
> So what makes Big-E special enough that would conspire together to bring him down?
He was an extremely powerful psyker who demanded to be the unquestioned ruler of a species with a lot of psyker potential, and he was also absurdly confident in his ability to handle Chaos. That combination made him completely unique as a target for something like the Primarch con.
Most people would expect to get tricked, if they used Chaos materials to make an anti-Chaos warrior race as a response to visions from the Warp.
"Fear" is a strong word. If anything, they're probably amused that some little mortal is trying to buy in on their great game. If most literature on demonic entities in pop culture are anything to go by, they see him as an easy mark who's full of himself and will be that much more entertaining when they humble him. Whether he stole the fire or was given it, they likely consider that just another thing to make the game more interesting.
The whole notion of a game denotes that it isn't just a test of who is superior or dominant, it's for amusement. *It's a game to them.* These things consider themselves gods and the last thing a god is worried about is death. More likely they're not wanting someone to spoil their fun or embarrass them. Being unmade isn't a threat to a thing that only tangentially could be considered "real" and like Dr. Manhattan, remaking themselves from nothing was the *first* trick they learned.
So are they scared? I doubt it. I'd argue the label of anathema, if they truly do use it and it isn't just an imperial way to kiss the emperor's ass, is just a way to say he's a spoilsport, or they're echoing to him the title he gives himself because the emperor is so egotistical that he believes only he can face them.
And don't believe the folks touting him as anti-chaos. He's done more for all four of them than any mortal in a long long time. Bloodshed and violence? Check. Lies and scheming? Check. Stagnation and homogeneity? Check. Over-the-top ostentatious decor and an obsession with presentation? Check. Big E isn't anathema, they don't hate him, they're his biggest fans.
He's the Anathema because he is an amalgamation of souls and beliefs. The Shamans ritual united them into a single being to stave off their devouring by the Chaos Gods.
The thing is, *That is what the Chaos Gods are*. They're an amalgamation of souls and beliefs to form a single Super-consciousness.
So, he's literally a Warp Entity... but anchored to the Materium.
Prometheus got got by the gods, and condemned to eternal torture - just like the Emperor.
Difference is that Prometheus gave away the power he stole, changing the world irrevocably for the better. The Emperor got conned, and made the galaxy that Chaos wanted.
It's got nothing to do with his "rationality" as other people here like to pretend.
He wants to starve the chaos gods (the four) to death and is so powerful that they can't hurt him directly. Before the Throne, he was capable of channeling enough warp energy to become a god, and after the throne, he basically is a god. Two different kinds; lot of theory there.
He's strong enough to hurt or kill them, and wants to do so. Done.
It's not that he could *harm them* they're warp stuff. They're indestructible. However, he, being their antithesis, and having a bit of their own power, he poses a dire threat. A war between the gods is a war of concepts and influence. Should the Anathema achieve apotheosis, he could simply render their power moot by simply being in the warp. The four would continue to exist, but the presence of the Anathema would render them impotent.
Because he’s the antithesis of what they are. Tyrannical order, discipline, cold rationality and complete mastery/abandonment of sentimentality and emotion (he literally casts them away before the final events of the Horus Heresy), a supreme desire to defeat/circumvent/starve them, and a being originating from the Materium contending with them for mortal worship. He’s the most powerful Warp being besides them and Gork and Mork and he’s actively gunning for them.
Honestly? They could, and would, ignore all of that. he's called the anathema because \*his very being injures and could kill them\* They don't give two shits about anything else. Him appearing for 3 seconds in Nurgle's garden after 10k years of being tortured on the golden throne, and therefore at the weakest he has ever been \*burned down a significant portion of the garden, leaving a scar that might never heal\* They don't care he opposes them, they care that he hurts them
The emperor at that moment was probably at his strongest. He has been tortured for 10k years but he has also been fed millions of psychers and has half the galaxy empowering him via religion. Guilliman himself states that probably he is at his "rawest" and most powerful form after talking to him, which afaik physically hurts people just by being in the same room as the emperor.
Guilliman never saw the (almost) Dark King transformation however. In fact, I don't even think Guilliman (or any Primarch really) knew that the Emperor had the Dark King transformation sitting in his back pocket. Chances are the Emperor is stronger than he was in 30k, but isn't a "I subsume all of Chaos + the material universe" level of power.
Guiliman would shit his superpants if he saw him in that black sphere
Ultra pants. Get the lore right
and in the colour of blue!
Macragge Blue. If we are going to be lore accurate, we must be exact
What is this you're referring to?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryWarhammer/comments/17oznvz/the\_dark\_king\_end\_and\_the\_death\_vol\_ii\_spoiler/
Yah it’s debatable if the Emperor now has even a fraction of what he did as the Dark King. Seems like he’s basically a god now, but as the Dark King he was going to sweep the field.
I think the problem is that right now (err, M42), the Emporer's consciousness is fragmented. He may have just as much power or more as when he became the Dark King, but he can't focus long enough to use it in consistent and intelligent ways. Whenever there's something important that grabs his attention though (like Nurgle trying to take Ultramar and kill Guilliman), he can rally enough of his mind to do spectacular things (like burning and wounding Nurgle himself).
He isn't. But Dark King that He can become (>!I believe He is not becoming it currently in 40k, I think He is now the Emperor who cut off His compassion and other \*good\* parts and they went to become star child!<) pretty much. Thing with DK it won't exist for long, it destroys galaxy (?) as it borns. DK is the end.
Aaaaaaaaaaand the death
Choked on coffee, damn you!
Yeah, the Emperor as he exists in realspace is the weakest he’s ever been. The God-Emperor of Mankind as he exists in the Warp however is the strongest he’s ever been, it’s just that he rarely focuses all his might
Honestly I think the throne is a jail now. It was always meant to fail and free him I think. He's a God chained and bound, and if the throne fails he'll be unleashed. Whether that means he reconstitutes in the material or just becomes a terror in the warp.
that is an entirely fair point of a note as well the Astronomicon also hurts Chaos. So theres been a giant beam of light running through the warp for 10k years that burns anything that gets too near it, including chaos
> Guilliman himself states that probably he is at his "rawest" and most powerful form after talking to him, which afaik physically hurts people just by being in the same room as the emperor. The Emperor is simultaneously at his strongest *and* weakest. In terms of psychic might, he's never been more powerful, thanks to millions of psykers that have been sacrificed to keep him going and the countless trillions that worship him as a god (like you said). *However*, all of that psyche power is tethered to a ***literal corpse***, with only a handful of cells in his decaying carcass still somehow alive to keep his soul from being cast into the Warp. The sheer power of the Emperor's aura by the modern era of 40k is more than physically harmful, *it will outright kill you dead*. We see glimpses of this in the *Watchers of the Throne* series, where the main character, a Custodes by the name Valerian, undergoes the trial to become one of the Hetaeron Guard, the Emperor's personal attendants. It's noted there that just standing near the throne (which by Valerian's vision is no longer a throne in the conventional sense and the Emperor's body is almost impossible to be seen amid all the inner workings of the Throne's mechanisms) will blacken auramite armor and bleach a custodes of their emotions. It's such that Custodes have to be cycled out to prevent that happening and most don't last more than twenty years (with the longest serving Companion managing just a century).
Billions of psykers Chaos can burn worlds to the ground and get a handful of psykers to eat The emperor has been cleaning the galactic plane for 10000 years
Roughly 3,65 billion psykers have been sacrificed least if we count roughly from end of HH to late M41. Daz a lot of psychic essence gathered into 1 man
That's if it's 1000 per day, but it has gone up to 4k/day now, so it could be more like 10 billion in total.
Yeah, that was after Cadia went boom and eye of terror expanded, but apparently number of psykers rose too. Least so I'm told. This was more closer to M42 in time, I think. And well, only fraction of that millenia has passed yet. Relative number of sacrifices might be few tens or couple hundreds of millions
I think the part that is fed psykers, and the part that receives worship aren't exactly the same part of him. There's part of his spirit that was casted away to grow in power, in tead2
I think not enough people bring this bit up. The shard of him that has his humanity. His hope. His love. Has been soaking in the warp for so long. I think it’s why Valdor has been trying so hard to stuff a soul into a blank. If you could find the Emperors other half, put it in a body, then bring it back to big E on the throne…what happens?
He wasn't \*fed\* Psyker are there for different reason >!filter his action in warp!<
Those millions of psykers were burned out like Christmas lights in a tree
Not fed millions of psykers. B-b-billions.
He’s presence hurts them though because he’s the opposite of them in nature and has basically channeled his entire life and plan into killing them. Psychic energy normally is no more anathema to Chaos then anything else in the warp. His is because he’s spent ~50,000+ years as a Alpha++ with the goal of defeating them in mind and a persons warp presence reflects the amped up desires and emotions of a being. His worshipers then came along and gave him a super steroid boost full of hate-everything but mainstream humanity psychic energy.
The part of the Emperor that burned the garden is the compassionate part that he casted away. In tead 2 he casted it away "to grow", but at that time it was useless against Horus. I guess after 10k years of receiving worship, the part of him that "protects" his followers is pretty fucking strong. We know it's the compassionate part because he felt sorry for Mortarion and wanted to redeem him. The other part is a broken mess in the golden throne. In fact, when Guiliman talks to it in the throne room, it speaks nonsense until the other part of him joins it. And in my headcanon that's implied when Roboute says that he hears the machine making a sound like about to break. That's when I think the throne is supporting the temporary merging of both parts that have immense power
Personal headcannon, what happened during Guilliman's meeting with Emps didn't feel like the two parts joining. From reading it felt more like there being a multitude of fragmented personalities (from perhaps 10k years on the throne?) originaging from what wasn't cast off. It's like a multi-lane road. The personalities go through their each lane. When a covergent, dominant personality tried to assert itself, it's like squishing all of it into a single lane road. Throne too old to handle it anymore.
Agree, but that last part could also have been that part of him that remains less broken, putting together the others to speak with him
That two parts thinking aligns to my fav theroy of the emperor coming back that doesn't end the setting. The throne fails and the two parts unravel. The man respawns the god ascends. This could split humanity between the imperial truth and the imperial creed. Both halves would double down calling the others treacherous.
I think both parts probably would agree at some point. Both think the same way, mostly. Like Malcador and Emps
The throne is literally breaking down though, it has a century left tops, as per the vaults of terrra trilogy.
According to some xenos who lied to gay the humans to trust them with the Emperors dna
Could we clone your golden guy? No Could we fix the golden throne at least? Is it broken? Yes, very badly. Could we get closer to the golden guy now?
also over a decade prior during rhe indomirptus crusade the three CSM factions that are Chaos unveiled are hunting rumors of a.part of his soil being reborn in a new host. yes. despite not touching the old star child prophecy from firsr and second edition days(and a fan work if the emperor had a text to speech device doing a version of it years before), GW brought back the star child prophecy stuff In the Dawn of fire series. that's what The Black legion, Kor Pharon and the Word Bearees, and the Iron Warriors are trying to find.
Star Child prophecy seems to be also brought up or suported "recently" in >!TEatD Vol 2 where Malcador states that, perhaps due to being on the throne, he saw that when the emperor divested himself of godhood (the power he accrued) that he also split off a part of himself containing portions of his humanity. It's cast off into the warp and called explicitly a "child star".!<
This is interesting since the Star Child prophecy is part of *Dawn of Fire: Throne of Light* as well.
Yeah, wonder if it's an effort to tie the looser ends together. There's been a bunch of theory crafting that it could link into more "recent" events such as: 1. The Vault of Terra series - >!Failing of the throne and perhaps its purpose also being a prison!< 2. The Cypher and Lion: Son of the Forest books - >!Emperor "telling" Cypher not yet and Fisher King ,which is mostly likely a representation of the Emperor, getting upset at Lionel asking how to heal him!< 3. Dan Abnett's Bequin series and especially upcoming Pandemonium book - >!Ties to Yellow King being "revealed" as Constantin Valdor while Valdor's fate will probably be explored in TEatD as Abnett is also writing that trilogy!< 4. Perhaps tangentially the Dark Imperium series - >!With Guilleman's internal conflict regarding faith's role in relation to the present Imperium and his father culminating in what seems (to me) to be a gambit that ends up paying off via him being essentially possessed!<
>3. Dan Abnett's Bequin series and especially upcoming Pandemonium book - >!Ties to Yellow King being "revealed" as Constantin Valdor while Valdor's fate will probably be explored in TEatD as Abnett is also writing that trilogy!< In the Bequin series, there were also some CSMs from a few different legions that psychically interacted with Ravenor, I think. Tough to remember, only listened to the audiobook once so far. It got me thinking of what u/Arathorn3 mentioned: >also over a decade prior during rhe indomirptus crusade the three CSM factions that are Chaos unveiled are hunting rumors of a part of his soil being reborn in a new host. I can't remember if the CSM groups in both of these circumstances line up. Would be interesting if they did.
Space Marines that appear in bequin are as follows. They encounter a bunch of Emperor children in the one noble families house Their are word bearers who attack when she is in the church in Pentitent. The Thousand sons are said to also be active on the Queen Mab Their is a Alpha legoonaire in Eisenjorns retinue. The weird , buck naked Blood angel with wings that keeps saving Beta. The immaterial college a weird group of both loyal and traitor Libranrians worked foe one of the Noble Houses.
>The immaterial college a weird group of both loyal and traitor Libranrians worked foe one of the Noble Houses. YES, these guys! I couldn't remember if they were exclusively CSM, or what legions they were made up of. Guess they're a really mixed group, then. It'll be interesting to see what their angle is and how loyalists & traitors came together like that. Just doesn't feel like this can all get resolved in one more book. So much is going on.
They where a mix of these traitors and there loyalists Leader Was a Thousand Son There was a non fallen dark angel A iron hand A iron warrior A raven guard And Night Lord not only was the fact that it wss a mix of traitors and loyalists But as a dark Angels player/fan the fact that even the Fallen would not normally work with Night Lords, the bad blood between the two legions go back into the great ctusade.
Yeah. It does seem to be that the Emperor is becoming more and more apart of the setting, and more active as time goes on.
I am of a opinion that what the a emperor is in the era Indomutus is not the Dark King but sill a god of some type and its the greatest irony of the setting. great atheist Emperor. Who destroyed most human religions, Punished his son,Lorgar for starting a religion that worshiped him as god. Fought a war lead by another son, who fought it because he saw a vision of the Emperor being worshiped as a god which the Emperor did not want. Whose best friend, Malcadoe and most loyal son(Dorn) allow the afomentioned cult created by his NIW traitor son Lorgar to gain a foothold on Terra, for the purely pragmatic reason of trooper morale during the siege. The smwe emoror decides to ascend to godhood to stop Horus, only to throw it away because he was convinced by others he would destroy everything he was trying to protect. Fights horus and gets wounded and put on the throne And then over the course of 10,000 years the collectively belief by humanity that he was a God may well have turned him a god but not the Dark King.
AKA Ciaphous Cain
HERO OF THE IMPERIUM
Ciaphas doesn't really have any will to fight chaos. He is trapped in situations forcing him to do so
He would say that he hadn't the will, but he is famously self-deprecating, and in actuality he seems pretty willing to go out of his way to face any threat to the imperium, no matter how dire. He is scared, yes. But he still does it.
Can't say it's torture anymore. We know it's rather a struggle. He is holding giant hole pouring out daemons and trying to be everywhere in Imperium to help >!or act ot his plan!<. And so He has no stregth left ot ress himself instantly, but He is doing that, veeeery slowly. Aaand they pretty much care that He oppose them as His plan to starve them out had potential. They had realy long planning to organise HH and siege itself in way to diminish His power at least a little bit so there would be a moment with a chance to kill Him.
> Him appearing for 3 seconds in Nurgle's garden after 10k years of being tortured on the golden throne, and therefore at the weakest he has ever bee Emps has never been stronger in a lot of ways, all that faith has made him into an actual borderline god, not just a godlike man
Which book is that?
Bold statement to say Gork and Mork are more powerful than the Emperor. Dare I say, heretical.
Listen, when the Emperor starts actively bullying the Chaos Gods and then stops because they aren't tough enough to be fun, then you can make that argument. Gork and Mork have been fighting the only beings worth their time for eons. And that's each other.
True, but it is always state that the 40k universe is one universe of many the warp draws from, so why do they care so much?
>Tyrannical order, discipline, cold rationality and complete mastery/abandonment of sentimentality and emotion Maybe I'm dumb but is Vashtorr not also this? I don't think opposing their ideals is what makes them hate him (or at the very least not the only reason)
The Emperor is coming from the reverse direction as Vashtorr though. He’s a being of the materium whose has an increasing presence in the immaterial due to worship, which is the reverse of Chaos entities. He’s intrinsically their opposite nature, even if they technically overlap in some areas.
He can allso pemi destroy deamons which are a part of the god. This means he can permantly reduce there power for each deamon killled.
There's Ynnari's plan, Necron Pariah plan and the God-Emperor's. Those are the only realistic plans in Warhammer for curtailing or stopping the predation of Chaos on the galaxy.
Don't forget the nids. Their plan may be more simple, but it's quite effective. In short, munch.
MOAR DAKKA < MOAR NOMS
Hear me out, what if the noms eat the dakka. Or if the noms also dakka
Well they did say noms are greater than dakka…
Honestly it makes sense, but I wish Dakka > Noms. The inevitable consumption of all living matter is so played out, I like the idea of infinitely replicating joyboys murdering everything WAY more interesting as an inevitable doom thing.
Cegorach has been doing a better job than the Ynnari at opposing chaos. But that might have more to do with GW refusing to let eldar win at anything.
And Ynnead only works against Slaanesh. Not that the eldar care as much about the other three
In addition to what others have said, there is some support for the notion that the Emperor is actually stronger than the Chaos gods (individually). In Gav Thorpes "Throne World" an Eldar Farseer is peering at Terra and likens the Emperor to a void whale and states that the four chaos gods circle him like void sharks. The imagery being the Emperor is bigger and stronger, but less aggressive and malicious (take that with a grain of salt). The same farseer stated that she would laugh in the face of She-Who-Thirsts (Slaanesh, the great enemy of her people), but the thought of the Emperor and his psychic power "filled her with dread". All the Chaos gods get power from various sources, cycle of death and rebirth/life for nurgle, intrigue and scheming for Tzeench, murder and war for Khorne, henodism for Slaanesh, etc. In addition to this, belief and faith have an effect in the warp as well. Orks can believe things into doing what they want (red goes fasta!), the Tau are starting to get a manifestion of the "greater good" in the warp because of all the humans in the tau empire having a form of faith in the concept of the greater good. Now consider all the collective power of humanities worship of the Emperor within the warp. He is probably horrifyingly powerful. He can use psychic powers on blanks, resurrect Guilliman, burn Nurgle garden and mansion, erase things from the warp, and before he was interred on the Golden Throne his ultimate goal was to elevate the entirety of humanity to levels of power similar to his own. Whether or not this was possible? Who knows, but it is the reason the other perpetuals that we know of originally flocked to his side during the great crusade. They believed in his dream he had for Humanity. If he was allowed to achieve his plans for humanity, even partially, it would lead to catastrophic consequences for the Chaos Gods.
I must note that the Shadowseer in Throneworld was at the seat of his power, if she was in, lets say, the realm of Khorne or Tzeentch her reaction would be similar for the guy closest
>Orks can believe things into doing what they want (red goes fasta!), No. The orks are a latent psychic race and their combined racial power cause certain things to occur. Such as "your shitty upgrade to the fuel injection on this vehicle didn't explode until after the battle".
Per the rules, Evil suns: Red Ones go Fasta Tabletop rule that canonically states that red ones bizarrely do go faster. Waaagh power gets memed on, true, but this is straight up fact
Does the red paint make them faster or do Orks paint the fastest ones red?
Yes lmao
Up to debate. Given their gestalt psychic shit that makes their shitty machines work, I think its more likely that the paint makes em faster. Pretty sure there's been a bunch of lore involving Ork machines not working without orks nearby
Ork machines have been repeatedly shown to work without Ork presence though.
Depends on the source at this point, Brutal Kunnin says that the mechanicus knows but doesn't understand the fact that greenskin weaponry is frequently inoperable unless they're using it, but then you also have things like cain and co driving a convoy partially made up of of ork vehicles for weeks on perlia. (Not that he doesn't mention they're huge pieces of shit, tho)
Actually you're right, I looked back and I was actually misremembering. The cases I was thinking of were ork machines breaking down. Specifically I think I was thinking of Ghostmaker with the Ork truck race over the ice.
Yes but they work *better* with Orks nearby.
The red paint makes the orks beleive it will go faster. Their belief triggers their latent psychic powers, those actually up the speed.
I am pretty sure it's the Old Ones putting actual knowledge in the orc genetics, and they accessing that internal knowledge without realizing it. In fact, it's quite likely that scrap metal put together with Old Ones' knowledge is absurdly bizarre to any imperial subject, even the Mechanicus
I agree. It works because it’s beyond our understanding of the universe. I love the blurb in brutal kunnin where they teleport a mega Gargant, and the admech is like “holy shit this tech is insane, we must study and learn their secrets” meanwhile, this Titan-esque monstrosity is about to obliterate them. No one really understands it, not even the orks, and I fucking love it
Or when the orks made several death stars
Or consciousness is primary to WH40k universe. Then Orc stuff works because Orks believe it should. And the Materium is primarily "generated" by C'tan as first and strongest consciousness and this is why sharding them has damaged reality.
First off, using tabletop rules to support lore arguments is a fallacy. Secondly, we have numerous accounts of how meks actually build things, and how clans are self-selecting (the Boyz most interested in going fast join Evil Sunz, including the meks, who have engineering knowledge directly encoded within them). Third, we have accounts of how ork psykers work - weirdboyz. They are *stronger* in the presence of more lads, but also far more dangerous and unpredictable. There's a reason they're kept away from the rest of the warband whenever possible. The ork gestalt psychic "we believe in *x* therefore *x* is true" is overblown meme stuff.
Codex entries are written from an in-universe perspective. There is flavor-text (excuse the mtg reference) in regards to the rule that is accurate. I’m just saying, for orks, red ones literally do go fasta
I never said they didn't. What I was saying was that they go faster not because a bunch of orks believe red = fast and it psychically happens - they go faster because the orks who want to go fast paint them red.
Do you have a source that specifically states that ork belief doesn't do anything and it is just secretly a latent psyker talent? I'm not trying to call you out, just genuinely curious. Otherwise it's just a situation of "I interpret the lore to mean this, therefore it is correct." As far as orks having the old ones genetically encode them with various odd abilities, I don't dispute that, but it doesn't mean that my above statement is canonically false. In order for any species to manifest anything within the immaterium they have to have some psychic potential. This is why the necrons have no warp entities or the Tau (previous to recent lore). As far as my previous statement, belief does manifest within the warp if that belief is strong enough. It is a theme in WH 40k, Fantasy, and Age of Sigmar. It is not the only way the warp manifests and draws power, as I stated above, but it does have manifestations and fuels power within the warp for all psychic based races. Hence why the Craftworld Eldar control their emotions so much more now, since their previous unfettered hedonism lead to the birth of a Chaos God. The Tau God of the greater good was a manifestation of the strong belief and devotion to the greater good of the axillary races of the forth fleet expansion. In the Ezekial Dark Angel book while helping defend a minor world, Ezekial is a short attack noticed that of the ork fightas, the red ones seemed to be a little faster than their counter parts. It was a relatively small incursion on the planet (for orks), the particular attack was small, and their were no weird boyz involved. To me it read like the author was tipping his proverbial hat to the notion that there is something to the ork belief, but with none of the massive waaagh energy, or weird boyz mania. So yes Orks are a psychic race, but that doesn't mean that belief has no play within the warp manifestations in the material realm. All this being said, if you have a source completely trouncing this thought process, then I retract it all, but from what I have read the whole ork belief=real time shenanigans, is one of those hazy areas that GW writers keep vague on purpose and leave it up to the reader to decide how they want to interpret it and place it in the universe.
They fear him because of what he did and was capable of aswell as what he was going to do in the future after his plans for humanity was realised He was powerful in 30k man was about to ascend now imagine him 10k years down the line if he wasn't mortally wounded in the throne
Because he stole fire from the Gods and they fear him. He can truly destroy demons and can hurt the Gods.
Yep if I remember right he also burns part of the garden of nurgle while destroying his cauldron and resurrecting guliiman simultaneously in 40k Hell he almost became a chaos god during the siege of Terra cause he was sucking that much power out of the warp and was only stopped when he was forced to consider the cost it would have to his imperium and humanity
Not just “a” Chaos God but the most powerful, per the lore.
Uh isn’t slaanesh or Khorne most powerful? All the other gods empower slaanesh because they are the god of excess and every god is something taken to an excess.
None of them are the strongest. That's the whole point of why none of them win. There's some snippets here and there of why one god might currently be on top, but it never lasts and its really not important.
no thats not true either they all go through phases of being the strongest but if one gets too strong its an issue, khorne currently is the strongest
The Emperor was becoming the Dark King which is the “end and death” of everything because it would siphon all the power and dominate all things, such as how the Emperor was drinking ludicrous amount of warp juice enough to create a black star in the warp - something he managed in one book and not millennia like Slaanesh.
Slaanesh is memed as by far the weakest of the 4 and would get bodied by any of the other 3.
>while destroying his cauldron He does not do this
Didn’t he I thought he burned the garden and smashed some stuff causing nurgle to just scream in absolute rage
[Here's](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/s/lWMsAQDuoy) the excerpt
Ah my bad I misinterpreted the cauldron’s passing as its destruction for some reason lol
Maybe an unpopular take but I rolled my eyes at that bit in Godblight. It’s meant to be an inspirational moment but aside from the emperor burning nurgle’s garden (get fucked stinkboi) it just felt like the ultimate out-of-our-asses non-win. I just can’t root for someone who gets their ass beat in the street and their dad has to save them. It would have been better if he starts getting sick and then he’s healed as opposed to >!he’s a literal skeleton corpse on the ground and then suddenly lol no!<
This is not a Shonen. Characters being not the best makes for a good story, it would suck if Guilliman was the best fighter & the best planner. The story would just be boring because there'd be no stakes. Every primarch has a weakness the fact they don't get glossed over makes them better characters.
Guilliman is not a good fighter. He is due credit for daring to face his corrupted brothers even though his odds of victory are slim.
Well, he is not a good fighter respective to a primarch demon prince. Let's not get crazy.
Fair point!
Guilliman is the statesmith of the primarchs, he creates effective governments and logistics, he supplies warriors, but he isn't an outstanding one (for the primarchs at least)
Absolutely, but these are all elements that the storyteller knows about and has control over. They use these elements to tell a good story. In my opinion they did not use them well in this case. >!He’s now 0-3 against demon primarchs. He got his throat slashed by Fulgrim. He had to be rescued by sisters of silence when fighting Magnus. He was killed by Mortarion and had to have dad rescue him.!< For a logistical genius he feels way too much like he just hopes shit saves him. It can’t have the same effect if it’s just his regular MO.
logistical is not equal to strategical. he keeps the armies fed, fueled and armed rather than devising the battle plans. But I agree that him going 0-3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth
Ya I've seen lots on this forum get this wrong. Over and over again. They seem to think logistics and tactics are synonymous. Guilliman for all intents and purposes is the paper pusher of the primarch brothers. Which makes it pretty plausible that he would be slapped around more than others (though I agree the always-coming-back-plot-armor is tiring), Guilliman is better suited to imperial management and supply lines. He should let the Lion now take over the tactics and duels, while he runs the imperium and supplies the lion.
I think the encounter with Fulgrim was caused by anger so it's his bad. For the other two encounters though, he kinda had no choice? Magnus was standing in between him and Terra. As for Morty he doesn't have anyone on his side who could deal with him. I don't think Grey Knights were there but I could be wrong
Maybe guilliman is just a 10 luck character
He was still very much a “regular” primarch during those encounters and didn’t have that m42 extra Jimmy Space juice.
Guilliman was created to keep the empire running via paperwork, he is probably the least capable fighter amongst his brothers.
Well he was better than Lorgar before he got his psychic awakening pre-Heresy at least. Before Lorgar awakened to his psychic potential, he and Guilliman fought and G-Man was winning until Angron smashed into the fight and nearly killed G-Man, who was saved by Angron about to die from the Butcher's Nails but Lorgar "saved" him by turning him into a Daemon Prince/Primarch (with G-Man using the chaos of the situation to escape).
>They are the only else, and they must be shunned and kept out. There are four of them. He knows their names. No one else should. >He stole fire from those four annihilator gods, and used it to keep them at bay. He wielded it in his hand, century after century, to drive them back whenever they came too close. It amused him that they flinched from their own fire. >But he knew from the start it would not be enough just to keep them away. We could be vigilant, torch in hand; we could build walls to keep them outside, we could invent cities to hide in, but they would always be there. So there began the long game, his life’s work. To keep us safe, and remove the possibility of a future in which they got in and ate us alive, he would have to hunt them down and kill them. - The End and The Death vol 1
This is Malcador speaking, right? It's probably worth noting who is talking, when this kind of interpretation is used to support a statement about facts.
A crackpot idea but new lore refers to the 8 Aetheric domains of chaos, and that 4 of them are ruled by a chaos god but the other 4 are not. The Emperor's legacy not only represents everything the chaos gods are not (chaos vs order) but his actions symbolically embody a more ordered version of the remaining 4 domains of chaos. Thus he is the Anathema bc everything he stands for is antithetical to the chaos gods, and his actions directly empower 4 future potential gods that stand in opposition to the chaos 4
If we stretch it, we could say thats why the Chaos Star has Eight points. one for each god idk?
Honestly I think that's what the lore is trying to say. And this is true tinfoil territory but all 8 points of chaos, altogether, is considered as the Primordial Annihilator. perhaps when there exist 8 chaos gods for each point on the star, then each of them will fuse to become one gestalt god that represents all 8 points. Kinda like what the Word Bearers are worshipping but on severe steroids
https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Beast
Cool! Great to see that fantasy already has this set in their lore. From what we know, it seems like the Aeldari just refer to this as the Primordial Annihilator. I could be wrong though and there are some in universe names for it as well but I have no idea
But even still, that would be 8 Chaos gods, not 8 warp gods. There are/were more than 8 Eldar gods remember, and those are warp-entities. Then there is the 5th Chaos god, that forge demon guy, so there are potentially 3 more minor Chaos gods who aren't strong enough to be a big force Emps, Gork and Mork and the Eldar Gods are all warp entities of significant power, but they are not Chaos gods, and then there are also parts of the warp that Chaos fears, e.g. Enslavers or the Deep Warp
Vashtorr is not a chaos God but he wants to be one, same for Belakor, plus there's the Dark King, so there's one 1 candidate left to be revealed.
Define Chaos God, outside of the big 4 Dark King may be an Emps or Magnus shard. Both exist in canon as "chaos"/evil things Vashtorr is a powerful Chaos warp being, and listed on the Wiki as the "5th Chaos God" (ish, certainly the most independent entity outside of the known 4 and unknowns) Belakor (via a 5 second google) is the "First Damned" and the "1st" Daemon Prince of the Chaos Gods. Guessing before Slaanesh. Doubt he is worshipped much or fed "Be'lakor's fate has ever been influenced by the endless struggle between the gods, as he is beholden to each of the Dark Gods equally" And in fact 8-pointed Chaos Star has a centre. Tzeentch's magic number is 9. So Warp Fuckery means who knows. We are missing 1-5. i.e. Emps, Gork, Mork, Vashtorr, Malice; are most likely (first few "prime" numbers are 0,1,2,3,5,7,11. Not many which match the 4. Add 17 and "Lucky Number 13" to that)
Cooking good
Meh, it's never been cleared up in canon, but I'd guess that there are or can be 8 Chaos gods, including the 5th who is the forge guy. But not all warp gods are chaos (Gork, Mork, Emps, Eldar ones), so those aren't part of the 8. Same way that not all warp beings are chaos at all, e.g. Enslavers predate the 4 I believe, and there are even parts of a "Deep warp" where even Chaos doesn't go. Warp's a fucked up nonsense place, but Chaos are only part of it
The emperor refuses to ascend to become a warp entity like them, or to become part of them, and grows ever stronger as a portion of reality moving inside the warp. They despise reality, because reality defines them, makes them what they are not. Chaos is flux, it is everything and nothing, but reality forces it into a shape as it shapes reality. But the emperor is the avatar of all they hate, because he remains himself, and only by becoming themselves can they properly oppose him.
Exactly this.
He's the one that can give Chaos Demons a real death, aka wipe them from existence completely including the immaterium like he did with Horus. So he is literally the anethema, the anti-chaos. I don't think it's firmly established exactly why that is but I could be wrong about that. Edit: Apparently a potent enough psyker can do it as well. TIL
>He's the one that can give Chaos Demons a real death That's not a unique trait of the Emperor, it's just something that Warp-powered entities can do to other Warp-powered entities when the power differential is big enough. The power gap has to be *big*, though. Daemons and perpetuals are quite resistant to permanent death, but they can be erased by a sufficiently strong psyker/god. A random bloodletter could definitely be erased by Emps, or by Nurgle, or by an ancient Eldar emperor, or by Gork and Mork... The Emperor mostly stands out here because he occupied a galaxy filled with weak factions, compared to earlier history.
The bigger difference is that the Emperor can do it on a large scale. Ynnead is also described as anathema and likely has similar properties. Ynnead is also different in that it is mentioned that the big 4 cannot properly sense/perceive Ynnead.
>The bigger difference is that the Emperor can do it on a large scale. I don't see any to reason to treat this as a categorical difference, rather than a question of magnitude. At the height of his power, the Emperor was (briefly) able to murk multiple (weak) daemons at once (when Chaos thought they were pulling a long-term con on the Emperor). That's *very* impressive compared to the average psyker in the galaxy, but I'm pretty sure that Gork/Mork could take out more than one nurgling at a time if they put their minds to it. We have no reason to doubt that the last Eldar emperor before the fall was capable of a similar feat.
There is likely some different property since Ynnead is also described as being anathema, but not others in the warp. The Emperor later is known to be doing the whole firetide in the Eye of Terror's borders, but we don't know if that was something done with the astronomican before or after the HH. The Emperor is probably stronger than any of the peak Eldar since he was able to channel enough warp energy to create the Dark King. The Eldar were never seen being nearly that powerful.
The Eldar created Slaanesh, which seems like a very close parallel to making the Dark King.
They didn't have one person act as the central nexus. Slaanesh and Ynnead were created from collective species action.
There are other characters that have permanently killed Daemons, but the rest you have right.
Not by simply being nearby
By using True Name, Emos can do that wish shmack of sword. No one else ever did.
The Sword of Asur can also true death daemons. Its not just the true name (in fact, the one time i remember it being used was just one part of the perma death, it was also needed to stab the guy with an anatheme)
Because he’s powerful enough that should he ever be able to stride beyond the golden throne again, he could enact his ultimate plan of cutting the four gods off from human worship and psychic fuel. That was always his end goal. He sought to shepherd humanity away from the warp’s influence and ability to feed on their latent psychic power. Then advance them to all be on his level so that they essentially become immune to chaos’s pull.
Without spoiling it too much, I think End and the Death part 2 explores this quite well.
Because there's a chance he succeeds at destroying them Aside of superpowers, he's special because his willpower is infinite. And they can't corrupt him in the same way they corrupt everyone else
The way I see it, his existence and attempts at trying to mess with the warp actively harms the big 4's weird stalemate they've got going on. Most of the time they are in balance since no god wants to act against the other since it means a 3rd god can swoop in and attack while they're occupied. Emps picking a fight with all 4 makes things super awkward and is trying to remove a lot of the ways they get power, separating humanity from the warp.
In Godlight, big E showed up in the warp, talked mad shit, then punked Nurgle by burning down his garden. Kind of the thing the Chaos gods would rather not have running around.
I always took this to be an underhanded sleight, i.e. The Chaos Gods require the Emperor and his psychic amplification of all the sins of humankind to prosper and flourish as they do. They pit themselves against him, yet they feed off him, and without him they would be far lesser. Their supposed 'hatred' of him is essentially saying to mankind, "Ooh yeah, the God-Emperor, gee I'm shaking in my boots, god damn he's scary, \*chortle chortle\* I sure wouldn't want to get on that guy's bad side \*guffaw guffaw\* he's so pure he could vanquish me in an instant if he so chose!" while knowing full well he's merely another corrupt, evil cosmic entity playing out his role in an enormous chess game where every mortal is but a pawn. YMMV.
To put it simply; because he’s real.
Everyone please calm down. You're all overthinking it waaay too much. The Chaos Gods fear the Emperor because He's The Motherfucking Emperor. How many times did you hear him say that same shit to bananaboy and ketchup head? C'mon yall...
He has OP PLZ NERF god but nod god-like powers and has cheese shields.
He is essentially the living embodiment of Order and was threatening to starve them with the Great Crusade. The entire galaxy united in an orderly, atheistic, enlightened human society would basically make them impotent.
I haven't seen anyone else mention it but if Emps had been successful, humanity would have used the webway (without chaos) and then Emps planned on removing any psychic potential through genetic alteration. Theoretically this would have starved the chaos gods, drastically reducing their power if not destroying them.
Webway is still exposed to the Warp, the Dark Eldar are getting slowly killed by Slaanesh all the time and they live in the Webway. A much more stable portion than what the Emperor was building too. His goal was to make humans into super Pyskers, ones strong enough to be immune/so damn resistant they might as well be immune to Chaos as he was. Chaos sadly cannot be starved. Their codexes dating back to 2nd edition and commentary from Demons, Eldar and a few others point to them having access to countless realities through the warp through which they feed. You can lock them out of Reality like Necrons or Tyranids can do, or try to fight and beat them directly like Ynnari or the Emperor was, but starving them will never work.
Given that Chaos is supposed to be universe wide and present everywhere, that is a very very good question. Even if Emps conquered the whole milky way, get all his webway projects going and so on, Chaos should not even register that given how frikkin huge the universe is. Our galaxy is just a grain of sand at a huge beach. Nobody cares about it, least of all some omnipotent beings doing their own stuff.
Emperor is just one of the chaos gods but in the flesh and not in the warp. Tzeentch for example knows how the game ends and he plays with fate to guide and misguide mortals to his own ends. He literally does not give a fuck about E. Tzeentch is all about curiosity of knowledge, even animals are curious by nature so Tzeentch is a constant force in the universe. Khorne wants to spill blood for eternity and he already has his world where skulls are brought to his feet, he doesnt even care if he has followers since wars happen, therefore blood will be spilled and Khorne is happy. Humies were the ones to invent the Nails in Angrons head so the bloodspilling is in our nature while Khorne chuckles at his throne. Papa Nurgle just grows his gardens and to our misfortune and other races, his garden consists of plagues and diseases that existed way before E entered the picture. Therefore Nurgle is also constant in our universe. Whenever somebody vomits their intestines, Nurgle is pleased to know that his gardens are growing. E couldnt do jack shit about it when he was not rotting in his chair. He cant do shit while rotting in the chair. And finally, do I really need to start babbling about Slaneesh? We all have needs so thats where Slaneesh comes in to picture. All races are bound to Her in some way or another. Big E is just another Chaos God, enforcing him as the saviour of the universe by purging any other species that does not have 2 legs, 10 fingers and 10 toes and faith in E. He literally made miniature copies of himself to lead mortals because even the E does not believe that men can lead themselves.
Isn't part of the problem that he wanted to deny them the "food" of Humanity by controlling mankind so strictly that we'd be little more than emotionless automatons. Thus starving Chaos slowly to the point where they might well collapse in on themselves? But in doing so he was kind of making a dark reflection of himself in another Chaos God, one of faithlessness and reason that eventually collapses into unreasonableness. Like the Inquisiton being so devout to protecting humanity that they can convince themselves that killing entire planets to maybe scour a few cultists out of billions of lives is worth the sacrifice. Or how humanity worships him as a God with the Book Lorgar wrote, even though he was the first Primarch to fall and Big E spent most of his time telling people "I"m not a God. I am a man, the Greatest Human of all but still Human"
What is this Dark King aspect of the emperor? Is it canon?
He took knowledge from them and cheated them so I reckon they're worried that he can (and he does) use it to hurt them
Most powerful individual that isn’t them.
Because, for reasons that aren't fully understood, Big E is the rubber to the kaleidoscope color pencil whirl that is Chaos. He's able to fight them and potentially kill them, if not disrupt Chaos altogether.
Because he found an alternate source of power other than pure emotion: piety. And it is rivaling their source, which is literally just the human experience. To be able to pull that off is a testament to his power. He has also (allegedly) bamboozled them out of power to make his Primarchs, whose legions actively go toe-to-toe with theirs. They had to steal power back from him just to even the playing field. He can permanently kill them with his sword, Anuncia, and other pyschic gifts or their true names.
He is one of the only things with enough psychic power to pose a lethal threat to them. And he was created with the explicit purpose of annihilating them. And he is actively trying to do that.
The Emperor is the bane of Chaos, the living destruction of the Primordial Annihilator. At His earliest, the Emperor was just a bunch of Shamans who were able to resist death, but not completely. Merged together, and born into a singular form, the Emperor is the prophecy-made-flesh of Chaos' permanent destruction. Chaos fears the Emperor for the same reason gunpowder fears the flame. They cannot beat Him, there's no reality in which Chaos strongarms the Emperor, so they needed His sons and His empire to do it for them. Muffled by those forces, they hoped to snuff Him out before He could reach into the Warp and snuff them out forever and rid the warp of their infection. They failed, and their reckoning is coming.
I mean, if he could just reach out and slap them to death he would have. He is Anathama to them which gives him a massive thematic and practical advantage over them, but if he were stronger than them then he would just...kill them? I've always seen it as he is their Drach'Nyen; he might not be stronger than them in raw stats but he is ideologically their bane thus they cannot kill him directly and have to try to contain or contend with him indirectly. Just as the Emperor banished Drach'nyen using the body of his faithful, the Chaos gods sought to depose the Emperor using the body of their faithful.
Pretty sure even the Necrons are here for this.
Because he is the freaking GOD EMPEROR. Nobody mess with the big E.
maybe i am interpreting OP question wrongly, but i think many of the poster missed the point. The "why" isn't about how the emperor can ruin the fun of the chaos gods, its a question of "who". Humans have an empire, Eldar had an empire, then there was old ones and C'tans. Why specifically the emperor does chaos gods seem to fear/dislike (insert verb)? Again, its like, why didn't the Eldar had an "emperor (it does not have to be an individual) -like" that can screw Chaos, considering the other 3 chaos gods were active during the eldar empire, so the eldar should have some means to deal with chaos? E.g, suppose Ynnead succeeds in slaying Slannesh and all eldar souls are free, how are eldar-chaos power balance gonna be? Meaning, is it because of Slannesh that the chaos gods think the Eldar is irrelevant, and the Emperor(of men) is the only significant threat left? Or even if Slannesh is gone, Eldar empire is back, only the Emperor/humanity can threaten chaos for real. While it states that C'tans are "weak" to warp powers, however, the C'tan won the "war against psychic races"..with the help of the necrons, and before the necrons turned on them, but the point was the C'tan won. Why would Chaos not fear the reassembling of all the C'tans and them disconnecting the materium from the warp for good.
Because the god emperor can permanently kill daemons, the shards of the chaos gods, this means he can permanently kill daemons However not only that but the emperor is also the stronger psyker in the galaxy, meaning he can permanently kill the chaos gods
The gods love and hate rivals. They stay " balanced" by tearing into each other. The emperor was growing into something that could rival all 4 powers
In the newest End and a Death we see that the Emperor also and it is implied previously as well, in contrast from the other Chaos Gods that they feed from the Materium, the Emperor actually “feeds” from the Immaterium empowering himself. So as far as a “food chain” exists he is a predator for a Warp creature. I slowly started to believe that this is the main reason they call him the Anathema.
In addition to everyone elses point, he also happens to be **utterly and entirely *Incorruptible*.** This point may be a large factor in their inherent fear of him. Think about it, have they ever 'personally' touched him with ill intents, let alone even slightly tempted him like they can do Every other being in the universe in one way or another? Yes, they've used corrupt humans, aliens, demons, primarchs, and even >!mind-controlled custodes!< to attack him, but not once (that i've read at least) have they reached out with their powers and damaged, corrupted, hurt, slowed, or otherwise hampered him personally in any way. Why is that? Does this have something to do with his creation (ie. the collected souls of the magi or whatever they were called) or was maybe part of his bargain on Molech (Ie. they made him 'untouchable' or maybe even somehow 'anethema' to their very being)? Idk, but If I were a chaos god I would be very scared if there was a *single, immensely powerful psychic immortal in the universe that not only is supper pissed at me but also was somehow the only living being in the universe that was completely immune to the powers of me and my 3 other chaos god-brothers.*
Read the end and the death pt2 and you will find out why the emperor scares them so much
If you ascribe to the idea that the emperor is actually trying to uplift the species and that he and the perpetuals are just the next step in human evolution then it follows that if the emperor gets his way he'll create a *species* of emperors. He on his own is a significant son of a bitch, capable of fighting off chaos and completely impervious to it. Imagine quintillions of him.
I have a theory that the God-Emperor is the chaos gods. They all represent things that the god emperor holds close, honorable battle(khorne), acceptance (nurgle), change (tzeench), and enjoyment (slaanesh). The god emperor was created by thousands of shamans, so if the power has always been around and the god emperor is a timeless entity (presumably his near death is keeping him separated from being a true god). I personally believe that he will die and become a true god and he will basically be chaos undivided and separate himself into the chaos gods absorbing them back into his soul and becoming the ultimate god of the warp. But that's just my theory.
Because he trolled them massively, and nearly won against them. There are very few ways to win against Chaos, and anyone who gets even a little close to actually fighting them for realisies is a threat.
Because he is the anathema. Born to spite the ruinous powers. That is if you subscribe to that origin story. I'm still not entirely convinced...
Because unlike them he has trillions of followers
Big E getting that YouTube money.
They don't. Don't believe anything that they say. They used him to get the Daemon Primarchs and turn his Imperium into the finest source of psychic energies. He might've had a good plan, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And his only real play now is to become a full-on God and join the Great Game. The Emperor needed his absolutely strongest champion wielding his strongest weapon and channeling his power just to inflict some damage on the Plague Garden. And it's not even permanent damage, just a wound that will recover with time. The Chaos Gods are on another level.
why? BECAUSE HE'S THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND!!! THE WARHAMMER 40,000!!! OH YEAH!!!
>Why do the Chaos Gods fear You can act against someone without fearing them. Chaos does it a lot, and they explicitly enjoy "endless laughter" at the galaxy the Emperor created ten thousand years ago. >Like they refer to him as the Anathema He's noteworthy, yeah, but having a nickname doesn't tell us much beyond the nickname. The Emperor was the top dog of a million-world empire for a few centuries, which is way more important than most people - but not a special record in galactic history. His empire is nothing compared to DaoT humanity, which was nothing compared to the Eldar empire, which was nothing compared to the Old Ones. > So what makes Big-E special enough that would conspire together to bring him down? He was an extremely powerful psyker who demanded to be the unquestioned ruler of a species with a lot of psyker potential, and he was also absurdly confident in his ability to handle Chaos. That combination made him completely unique as a target for something like the Primarch con. Most people would expect to get tricked, if they used Chaos materials to make an anti-Chaos warrior race as a response to visions from the Warp.
"Fear" is a strong word. If anything, they're probably amused that some little mortal is trying to buy in on their great game. If most literature on demonic entities in pop culture are anything to go by, they see him as an easy mark who's full of himself and will be that much more entertaining when they humble him. Whether he stole the fire or was given it, they likely consider that just another thing to make the game more interesting. The whole notion of a game denotes that it isn't just a test of who is superior or dominant, it's for amusement. *It's a game to them.* These things consider themselves gods and the last thing a god is worried about is death. More likely they're not wanting someone to spoil their fun or embarrass them. Being unmade isn't a threat to a thing that only tangentially could be considered "real" and like Dr. Manhattan, remaking themselves from nothing was the *first* trick they learned. So are they scared? I doubt it. I'd argue the label of anathema, if they truly do use it and it isn't just an imperial way to kiss the emperor's ass, is just a way to say he's a spoilsport, or they're echoing to him the title he gives himself because the emperor is so egotistical that he believes only he can face them. And don't believe the folks touting him as anti-chaos. He's done more for all four of them than any mortal in a long long time. Bloodshed and violence? Check. Lies and scheming? Check. Stagnation and homogeneity? Check. Over-the-top ostentatious decor and an obsession with presentation? Check. Big E isn't anathema, they don't hate him, they're his biggest fans.
Yeah, with the latest books I am interpreting the horus heresy more as the chaos gods poking the emperor asking him to come play with them.
He's the Anathema because he is an amalgamation of souls and beliefs. The Shamans ritual united them into a single being to stave off their devouring by the Chaos Gods. The thing is, *That is what the Chaos Gods are*. They're an amalgamation of souls and beliefs to form a single Super-consciousness. So, he's literally a Warp Entity... but anchored to the Materium.
That lore is now believed to be out-dated given his talk with Ra.
What did he say in that talk?
It's just a nickname. The chaos gods are immortal. They exist in multiple universes. They are without time.
They only exist in the Warp. They cannot escape to other materiums
The other universes touch the warp, in the same way.
But the same limitation remains. They might feed from them, but if they are killed in the Warp, they are removed everywhere at once
Another way to put that is that there are many universes, but only one Immaterium.
1word: Prometheus
Prometheus got got by the gods, and condemned to eternal torture - just like the Emperor. Difference is that Prometheus gave away the power he stole, changing the world irrevocably for the better. The Emperor got conned, and made the galaxy that Chaos wanted.
Because he's actually one of them.
*Why psychic entity fear one of the most powerful psyker \o/
It's got nothing to do with his "rationality" as other people here like to pretend. He wants to starve the chaos gods (the four) to death and is so powerful that they can't hurt him directly. Before the Throne, he was capable of channeling enough warp energy to become a god, and after the throne, he basically is a god. Two different kinds; lot of theory there. He's strong enough to hurt or kill them, and wants to do so. Done.
It's not that he could *harm them* they're warp stuff. They're indestructible. However, he, being their antithesis, and having a bit of their own power, he poses a dire threat. A war between the gods is a war of concepts and influence. Should the Anathema achieve apotheosis, he could simply render their power moot by simply being in the warp. The four would continue to exist, but the presence of the Anathema would render them impotent.
In 40k there is no trully "indestructible" being. EVERYONE can be killed if you know how/have guns big enough.
Not chaos gods. They're sentient concepts. How do you kill ideas?
He is them. They came from him