Ollanius Pius

Also memory issues.

Also-Also...

>Pious mourns his family
>Emperor : Why don't you just start a new one, Olly?
>hfw

It is frustrating that he gets retconned all the time even though (in my humble opinion) he is the one that truly shows how far Horus has fallen. Think about it if, Horus killed a Custodes or a Terminator it's not really that big of a deal since those guys are brainwashed, fanatical, slightly dangerous threats. But if Horus killed a normal(-ish?) guardsman then it is tantamount to him killing a civilian. His is truly the sacrifice that convince the Emperor to kill Horus. Damn, why does he have to be retconned

No, this sucks.

What would be more ironically epic is for an immortal saint who happens to be the last catholic in existence to give up his immorality to rescue a jerkass atheist and save all mankind.

His act of sacrifice redeems mankind from the Sins of the Emperor and his secularism.

Feels like someone shit the bed by trying to appeal to fans who are ignorant and are never going to be satisfied unless they got their way to the letter, no matter how much it may not make sense.

No, it's evidence of them trying to pander.

That line of reasoning falls flat when you realize that Horus has indirectly killed who knows how many civilians.

At least with the Custodes or Terminator you could argue that Horus has lost any of the warrior's honor that he may have possessed before.

HH RUINED him with the Perpetual TM bullshit

God I wish they would just fucking retcon the perpetual bullshit...

They both suck.

He's best as a tale told to the working class. The veracity of his sacrifice, his own religious views, or how many real-world wars he's been a part of are irrelevant. All that matters is the guardsmen think he's a hero. Anything added on top takes away from it.

The running theme in 40k is religious domination = bad but the imperium CANNOT get away from it...

The main problem with the whole HH debacle is that the Heresy was supposed to be mythical and nebulous. You were supposed to infer a great deal on your own from bits and pieces. So when you learned more about it you got to piece it together, and the mystery was still there because you just didn't know.

What the HH novels are doing is basically giving you the answer to a murder mystery before making you watch the show.

>The running theme in 40k is religious domination = bad

Not seeing it.

Ecclesiarchy is the major unifying presence in the Imperium and devotion can fuck up deamons.

Pius never did any of that. He just took a blow meant for the Emperor. He didn't inspire the Emperor of Horus' evil (because plunging the galaxy into civil war, nuking Earth and murdering his brother is just typical childish tantrum), he just went "NNNOOOO!" in slow motion and then got blasted by Horus.

Then they decided that the death of a terminator/custodes convinced the Emperor that Horus was bad.

Better written than the primarchs.

A canonical legend.

>The running theme in 40k is religious domination = bad

No, it's not. Religion is 40K has been shown to have positive effects like acting like a shield against Chaos and performing miracles.

The theme of 40K is that tyranny whether cloaked by secularism or religion, leads to bad ends. However, as we saw with the Emperor's regime, Secular tyranny is more destructive and hypocritical than a theological tyranny.

Pious's sacrifice is meant to highlight how the Emperor go things wrong in an ironic way. Pious is saving the muderous bastard who tried to wipe out the faith he holds unto (See "Last Church" where the Emperor kills a catholic priest and burns down his church in the name of progress. The priest predicted the Emperor's future).

and BILLIONS are killed just because LAWL HERESY, when theres no chaos involved. The religious dogma is what's keeping the imperium oppressed and technologically stagnant.

The ecclessiarchy is unifying in the same way that the Kims unified North Korea. Its not good. The running theme of 40k is THE CHURCH IS NOT GOOD FOR HUMANITY. THE EMPEROR WAS RIGHT BUT NOW HE'S GONE

Horus virusbombed a planet. Killing a Joe Schmo to have the Emperor wonder if Horus is evil is just dumb.

>The main problem with the whole HH debacle is that the Heresy was supposed to be mythical and nebulous.

That wasn't intentional.

The Heresy was just something used to justify or explain various things with no greater scheme in mind. It wasn't until the Index Astartes articles that it started to get fleshed out more as a means of explaining the backgrounds of various Space Marine chapters and the Traitor Legions. In fact it's pretty funny how people shit on the Horus Heresy series for basically just going a bit farther than the Index Astartes articles already did.

The nebulousness of it just had the beneficial side effect of coddling neckbeards since no one could really be right or wrong in their interpretation of events.

Personally I like the Horus Heresy novels for being akin to fictional history and have the feeling that it's most ardent detractors are those I just mentioned, people upset that what they thought turned out to be wrong and people can now point to material to tell them they're wrong.

They should have gone the FW route of making the novels be a historical retelling of the events by later era scholars using information gathered in relation to the Heresy. Have the main characters be people working around the major players and have the events be told from their perspective. You get to experience it all, but still keep everything at an arm's length and can brush inconsistencies and conflicts with "well, it's just their version of the story" or "there's conflicting sources on the event."

On the other hand, he killed Pius personally, in front of the Emperor.

In that case: Nice bit of fluff, and perfect patron saint for the guard.

Meh, I believe there is virtue in simplicity. Adding perpetuals and catholicism into the already complex clusterfuck that is the battle of Terra isn't a good move in my book.

>His act of sacrifice redeems mankind from the Sins of the Emperor and his secularism.
I don't see it.

>and BILLIONS are killed just because LAWL HERESY

The fluff text says that it doesn't matter. Billions die so that trillions live. The Church and Inquisition have kept the Imperium and humanity alive against the threat of the Xenos and Chaos.

The Emperor was wrong and it fucked him up.

There were gods, humanity did need something greater than themselves to believe in, his militant atheism was in large part to blame for everything going to shit and despite his best efforts humanity did become religious again.

and shit as the Imperium is it is holding back things far worse and it is doing so with faith despite what Fedora-Lord Supreme Graham McNeill may claim.

>I don't see it.

Read the Last Church. Pious follows the same faith of the Church that the Emperor destroyed in that book.

See the Emperor's arguments against the Priest. Him saying that religion is no good and that humans don't need it.

In the end of the HH, the Emperor was proven wrong by a Pious soul.

that would have been best. Because like everyone is saying HURR DURR MY version is correct you can now suck it!

it ruined it, we took the primarchs who were Mythical and godlike in their own right. Shitty writers fleshed them out, now they are all man children... Now the Emperor's Imperium is this retardely oppressive tyrrany because...lawwwl secularism is bad m Kay, when before it was a resurgence of mankind, technology was advancing again, man was rebuilding.

Nope stupid people in charge it was worse than 40k HURR DURRR

>what Fedora-Lord Supreme Graham McNeill may claim.

FFS.

You do know that McNeil had the priest sum up the hypocrisy of the Emperor and predict his future?

>going a bit farther

That's the whole point.

There's a difference between stating historical events like WB attacked Calth or SW burned down Prospero and then going into personal details of "Fuck you dad, you never loved me, I'm taking my ball and joining Horus" or making every god damn thing another "just as planned" thing where Pius was destined to save the Emperor and Horus was destined to fail, etc.

The Emperor wasn't wrong in that his actions were starving chaos.

The problem lied with him forgetting how humanity worked because he's been alive so long he can't comprehend humanity anymore. That is untill the next HH book reveales that Emps is just a regular guy.

If the Emperor want the Imperium to be atheist he shouldn't have painted himself as a god. "Look at me I wear golden armour, glows, has magic power that allows me to do super dope shit, mysterious, immortal, and I'll lead you all to bright golden future."

thats just grasping at straws...

Mankind LIKES having a big strong looking leader. Its not necessarily deifying to make yourself look imposing.

>Adding perpetuals and catholicism into the already complex clusterfuck that is the battle of Terra isn't a good move in my book.

They only made him a Perpetual to justify him being present on the Vengeful Spirit. If he was just a regular human you'd wondered why the Emperor brought him along in the first place or how he survived the hellhole that the Vengeful Spirit had become where Custodes and Terminators had not.

>who were Mythical and godlike in their own right.

In the minds of fans

>now they are all man children

They were already man children

In the Index Astartes article about the Alpha Legion it's stated that the only real reason Alpharius turned is because Horus was the only Primarch he was really close to and some of the others talked shit about his preferred method of waging war.

Keep telling yourself that.

>The Emperor wasn't wrong in that his actions were starving chaos.

then he didn't know what he was talking about. Chaos feeds off of feels. I just enjoys worship.

Fanatical atheism is fanatical.

If the Imperium hadn't regressed, his atheism might have worked. His whole idea was that if there's no religion, Chaos has less of a way in, since the gods can't infiltrate as just another snake cult or something.

But since things went to shit and people needed something to believe in, all the myriad of cults were given free reign and the Ecclesiarchy slowly devoured them all until they could march on Terra and claim their rights. It's not like they've been perfect either, plunging the Imperium into a civil war competing with that of the Horus Heresy isn't a small thing.

There's making yourself look imposing and then there's the Emperor's brand of image marketing. He has a HALO a universal symbol of holiness and spirituality.

Did 30k Emperor flaunt around his magic, immortality, etc.? Or was he merely a strong leader type that most people saw from afar and associated all sorts of crap to him?

>He has a HALO a universal symbol of holiness and spirituality.

When exactly? His personal insignias have been an eagle head, lightning bolt and the palantine aquila. Halo hasn't been in his heraldry.

The whole 40K seem like jab at secularism.

Lets list all the known atheists/secularists

-The Emperor.

Liar, tyrant, thief, and mass murder. The poster boy for good intentions paving the way to hell

-Fabius Bile the Clonelord

Despite his current situation, He is the last true believer of the Imperial Truth. He is a degenerate mad scientist who tainted the genepool of humanity and destroyed countless billions.

-Goge Vandire

Closet secularist whose hatred of the church led to one of the bloodiest and disastrous eras of the Imperium

Cathedrals on everything, religious looking iconography, depicted having a halo, calling your great military conquest a crusade, installing chaplain as an official rank in the legions, referring to your super soldiers as your Angels of Death. I imagine there is more.

Traditionally his armor was just white and he had the eagle on his back. He was more roman than GODLIKE

um... no post depiction of the Emperor adds all that stuff.

So? Horus was also standing above the dead body of Sanguinius. It just makes the Emperor seem autistic to have some IG propaganda myth be that important to him.

>Keep telling yourself that.

I don't have to. The book is there for you to read.

Not on his heraldry no. I'm saying on his person

And so far as I can tell it was written completely straight.

its more the fact the Emperor never really saw his space marines as true humanity, just a tool to use for safeguarding it. Like a more autonomous servitor.

So while the primarchs fighting primarchs was horrific to the emperor, it still followed the whole " This is how it's supposed to work" Then emps see s a regular joe get blasted and the sudden realization hits.

Its like when you lose a loved one. It can take a LONG time before you realize, "They are actually gone" then something happens that just triggers it in your mind that they are never coming back. Pious was meant to be that realization that "This shit is forever fucked"

Also keep in mind the Emperor's sense of time is skewed because of how long he's lived. The Heresy in his sense of reality happened in the blink of an eye.

I always took that shit for the writers not being able to write outside of 40k. It pissed me off how 30k Space Marines were the same as 40k Space Marines and the whole " BLESSED BE HIS NAME!" bullshit in Horus Rising.

None of that should have been happening

Or the Emperor was always a hypocritical turd who was planning to ascend to true godhood at some point.

Or he was not as smart as he thought he was.

>Then emps see s a regular joe get blasted and the sudden realization hits.

The Emperor saw more human death than any single living being in the galaxy. He himself killed humans sometimes because it was convenient for him to do so. Heck, John and Alivia made comments about how bloodthirsty the Emperor is. Alivia would know him the best being as ancient as he is and being a empath as well.

You cannot convince me he would care about Horus brushing a side a human more than the fact that he killed Sangy whom the Emperor cared for like a son.

I know its not a Forgeworld model because they haven't even made a hint that they're doing the Emperor, but Hot Damn thats a fine looking model.

>Cathedrals on everything

You mean Gothic architecture?

>religious looking iconography

What makes it religious?

>depicted having a halo

Depicted by whom?

>calling your great military conquest a crusade

Well, the etymology of the word comes from Latin and the term "to mark with a cross." Cross is not just a religious symbol anymore than a swastika is just a Nazi symbol. Hell, the Emperor's heraldry before the aquila was crossed lightning bolts.

>installing chaplain as an official rank in the legions

Chaplain was originally a custodian of relics. SM chaplains are not religious per se and do not, for example, adhere to the teachings of the Imperial Cult, for example. They merely uphold the legion traditions and reliquary, as well as the legion records.

>Angels of Death

And an angel is a messanger or an envoy. Marines are the Emperors messengers/envoys of death. The deliver death.

>So while the primarchs fighting primarchs was horrific to the emperor, it still followed the whole " This is how it's supposed to work"
No, it's the opposite of how it was supposed to work.

Where?

Except regardless of which version of Pious you use, he still thinks Horus can be redeemed after Sanguinius' death, and it takes the death of nameless marine X / ollanius to snap him into the realisation that the warmaster that he treated as a son is nothing more than a monster.

Roman emperors were deified after death and these were just regular humans, a psychic powerhouse that makes everyone orgasm at the sheer sight of him within several miles, can read minds and glows with a golden halo is not that hard to put on a pedestal and worship.

Typical chaos bullshit. Let me guess you main daemons?
Emps had no intention of "ascedning" seeing as how he was basically a material god anyway. His heart laid truly with Humanity. He didn't care about the Space Marines because they were a tool for preserving humanity. The problem again is that Emps lost all vestigase of his humanity along the way.

He can't remember what the trivial struggle of the day to day is because he simply cannot conceive that any more.

dono, I found it and My god its pretty

>The fluff text says that it doesn't matter. Billions die so that trillions live.

That's kind of the point. This is a dangerous mentality.

>a psychic powerhouse that makes everyone orgasm at the sheer sight of him within several miles, can read minds and glows with a golden halo

Do give some examples of this being how all the billions of plebs knew him during the Crusade.

But I concede that I was wrong since the HH books never described him as having one (If I remembered it right).

>Nails in your brain personality disorder

Unless you're Tau, at which point it's for the greater good.

Way I see it, both outcome is flawed. If the Imperium is atheist the Chaos Gods would still exist as they feed on emotion not devotion in fact without a strict "moral" dogma that the Imperium heavily enforces and such mankind's unrestricted curiosity will definitely entice more of them into Chaos. But of course the Imperium being theocratic does impede progress and takes human right out of consideration.

>What are Word Bearers

>This is a dangerous mentality.

Not in 40K. It's the mentality that's keeping humanity alive. There is no other alternative.

Chaos gods feed on your emotions regardless of how religious you are. But when you ban religion, they can't form cults and promote the idea that "hey, if you just get aids and spread it around, you get closer to god" or something like that.

And Humanity is as much of a monster as anyone else in the setting.

There are no good guys in 40k. Only shades of cunt.The human flavour of cunt is religious zealotry.

>Emps had no intention of "ascedning" seeing as how he was basically a material god anyway

That's why he bargained with the Chaos Gods for knowledge and power? That's why he had them make him a god to fulfill his promise to them....

And it works, user.

Enjoy your moral high ground as you get enslaved/killed/raped/eaten by the other guys,

No. That's bad writing if taken seriously.

>WB
>plebs
>millions

First of, they were hardcore religious to begin with, they didn't start off neutral and then just come to the conclusion the Emperor was a god. Second, they pushed their ideology on others. Those people didn't just come to the realization on their own. Did the WB even know the full extent of the Emperor's abilities and that he was an immortal super-being from distant past and all that crap?

>And Humanity is as much of a monster as anyone else in the setting.

Yes and? Morality is worthless when survival on the line.

Who cares about good and evil? No one is making a morality argument here.

If you read first 3 books of HH, it's pretty clearly laid out that people went along with what was stated in Lectitio Divinitatus based on their personal needs, experiences and evidence. WB just took it to the extreme but the core need to believe remained and Emperor was too easy not to worship, especially when worshiping him had the knock-on impact on warp.

Thing is even if it is banned religion and cults will still exist. Just look at China. My whole point is that it doesn't matter if the Imperium is secular or theocratic since Chaos gods will still exist and make everyone miserable.

A fucking mary sue that makes no sense and has half the fandom bitching about him despite knowing fuck-all about him. Pius should have just been wholly retconned and the story should return to an Imperial Fist jumping in front of Horus.

Daily reminder that everyone who saw through the Emperor's aura thought he was shit.

Daily reminder that Rick Priestley conceived the Horus Heresy as a parody on Paradise Lost, and that Ollanius Pios was never supposed to be anything more than a piece of propaganda to motivate the IG and that you were never supposed to buy into the propaganda.

He should have worried about line of succession much earlier. Thinking that if you are powerful and don't have an age problem is equal to immortality is dumb. But Emperor's lust for power is more or less confirmed so there are no surprises here. He knew what he should have done - creating a robust government capable of holding Imperium on the right path even if all current leaders died in one day - but he always found other things to do leaving this part for the next day. Cause he actually didn't want to do it for it would have lessened his own grip on the Imperium.

>cults will still exist

Murder's illegal and that still happens. So I guess lets legalize it because fuck me, banning it hasn't and we've just put a lot of people in jail for nothing.

Fringe cults needing to constantly operate in the shadows and be constantly at risk of getting busted is very different from major religion running shit. Yes, the Chaos gods still exist, but the power they get from people going by their day to day business is way less than if they could convince people to give into their base desires. Chaos exists even in the super-religious 40k with no ill effect on the dark gods.

>people went along with what was stated in Lectitio Divinitatus based on their personal needs, experiences and evidence

Were they all people who knew the Emperor was an immortal super-being with godlike powers and a glowing halo around his head, or people who just thought that? Also, what would have they done if texts like Lectitio Divinitatus and WB didn't exist to promote religion?

>Emperor was too easy not to worship

Cult of personality exists even with regular humans.

>worshiping him had the knock-on impact on warp

And this was something everyday people could witness first-hand or was there something else to it?

Then you're missing the point of Pious.

His death was meant to signify that there was more to life than just existing, and that having morals and living - and dying - for a good purpose was better than mindless zealotry for the sake of religious fanaticism.

That's not what I'm saying. All I'm saying is secular/non-secular Chaos God will still exist and in fact by not having a shield that is another religion the Chaos gods might be more effective in tempting people.

>crusade was still under way
>had formed the senate
>had plans for what to do with marines after the crusade
>working on solving the problem with psykers
>working on invading the webway to cut down on the need for the warp
>didn't think ahead

wut?

Longevity is not a problem in the setting. People can, with the right treatments and drugs live several lifetimes. So he had plenty of time to accomplish things and pick a successor once everything was ready.

This was not his first rodeo. He had been major historical and religious figures in the past, so he knows how to do stuff and then fade into history. If everything had gone right, by M41 we would have just remembered him as that one dude that conquered the galaxy. Maybe as several dudes, because he could have very well spend the next 10,000 years editing records and changing history to make his contributions seem less grand and distribute the glory to several figures.

And when religion is ok, it makes it easier for false prophets to infect the population with their teachings. How does the pleb on Assend IV know the difference between Totes Legit(tm) religion and Wrongbad(tm) religion? They're both taught by an authority figure that demands us to give ourselves to their god.

Exactly, it doesn't matter the outcome Chaos will still exist and propagate.

Ok, but how does that redeems mankind exactly?

Not to mention the other things like honor, duty, friendship, brotherhood, or loyalty that could have motivated him into going all bodyguard.
Or the fact that the HH seems to hint that the Emprah was right, since in the last church he's particularly angry at large scale massacres, and Horus turned on the Imperium because of gods.
Hard to go "religious belief is good" due to of one (useless) sacrifice when half the galaxy is burning because of it.

>angron

>he's particularly angry at large scale massacres

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhhahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah Holy fucking shit.

If this was the case then holy shit the Emperor was Chris Chan levels of autismotron retarded. His means of expressing his anger at the large scale massacres perpetrated by religious institutions of the past was to set up and operate a totalitarian regime more dogmatic and fanatically devoted than any theocracy could dream of that ran day to day on large scale massacres.

If what you say is true they must have intentionally written him to be retarded.

Nah, this time was different, it was first time he operated openly and pretty much stated from the start - "Alright, I run this shit, now and forever, but I'm not God, k?"
He did everything for humanity but the problem was in that he asked of Mankind what he asked of himself - normally a positive trait in a leader, but he was beyond humanity so much he forgot that people can fall to corruption easier than expected and in the most unlikely of places. You can give people superpowers and create demigods, but you can't augment human psyche.

>If he was just a regular human you'd wondered why the Emperor brought him along in the first place or how he survived the hellhole that the Vengeful Spirit had become where Custodes and Terminators had not.

>Horus uploads bait.jpg and lowers his ship's shields
>Emprah seizes the opportunity does an emergency mass teleport with everyone present in that wing of the Palace, including the poor comms-specialists, majordomos, imperial guards, and the janitor.
>Confused battle everywhere on Horus' flagship.
>Pius arrives at the bridge, either directly, or after encountering nothing but empty corridors, or avoiding traitors already occupied with terminators and custodes.
>See Horus, Horus sees him.
>sprotch

Was that really that hard to imagine?
For all we know, there were thousands of guardmen teleported on that ship, and Pius was simply the last surviving one.

Yep, the last church isn't very good from a theological PoV. I guess it's hard to represent millenia-old superhuman beings, though.
However, the story makes it clear that he sees his domination over mankind as the only way to prevent complete extinction of the human race. And after a 5000 years long age of strife, it's not hard to see where he comes from.

You can read it here (thanks yu-gi-oh...wait, what?!) :
forum.yugiohcardmaker.net/topic/293158-the-last-church-a-story-about-the-good-and-bad-of-atheism-and-religion/

Longevity won't help here. Problem is not even people die. Problem is that people die suddenly.

And he assumed himself to be above that. Professional bias.

Never thought this thread would get this long thanks for participating and sharing your opinions guys

>this time was different

Did he say that and mean it?

I mean, if he has been many figures in the past, how were they different? You don't become a leader of a nation or a religion and not run shit.

You need to open that a little more.

The priest was correct about everything and anything the Emperor said was invalidated by his own actions and the results of them.

Someone dying for the person he believed in was meant to signify there was more more to life than zealotry?

Do you even read what you fucking type?

>Thinking having faith in man is the same as being a religious zealot
>CheckOutThisAsshole.jpeg