So, I really like the faith that humanity has in the emperor, and the "BURN THE HERETICS" attitude...

MOTHERFUCKER

I AM LITERALLY WATCHING THESE EPISODES FOR THE FIRST TIME RIGHT NOW

I LITERALLY JUST HEARD HIM SAY THAT

THIS IS SOME TZEENTCH LEVEL SHIT RIGHT HERE

Lol, the emperor wasn't humble. He was super egotistic. He just thought that if everyone was an atheist, then the Chaos Gods would stop existing, except it turned out the Chaos Gods were fed by emotion, not faith, so he failed miserably.

ACCORDING TO K E I K A K U

It's generally agreed, when people decide to drop the RP fun, that the Emps wasn't the brightest guy. Whether you want to chalk that up for having too much wisdom, being socially retarded on account of his schizophrenia, or just being good ol' fashioned poor decision making, the dude wasn't the best.

However a lot of the Emperor's past is distorted. Some people choose to believe he was even more of a dick than portrayed, some choose to focus on his good aspects.

Another big divide is if, if the Emps came back, would he have learned from his mistakes? Things like TTS assume yes, while some of the Next Chaos God AUs assume no.

Either way, if you agree with him or not, there's no doubting that his power is just about the only thing standing between humanity and consumption by Chaos.

Well the problem there is hype. You hear all this shit about the Emperor, you get some vague imagine in your head, and then you see the emperor and your reaction is just "so what? that's it?"

See, the Chaos gods don't have any identifiable form. That keeps them mysterious and terrifying. But Emps? I assure you, of all the people who have entered the Emperor's throne room on Holy Terra, at least one person must have THOUGHT: "...By the emperor, it's just a pile of beef jerky on a golden chair."

Like my grandfather used to say, "Always choose the evil that wants to see you acknowledged as the ultimate lifeform in the galaxy."

In spite of how flanderised it is, I kinda like TTS's depiction of Emps' ideology. Like, it's well intentioned and nowhere near as much dickery as we make it out to be when OOC; but it's still seriously flawed and he's completely and utterly intent on seeing his clusterfuck through to the end, damn the cyclonic torpedoes.

I agree. I like how he can be a massive cunt while still clearly being a good guy with good motives.

He was just a really powerful guy. But the ecclesiarchy memed him into godhood after his death ( the warp is the realm of meme magic ).
It feels wrong having pictures of the emperor or models of the custodes. A bit of mystique is always good.

>A bit of mystique is always good.
LaughingBlackLibrary.jpg

Humility gas nothing to do with it. Temps didn't want to be a god because he thought religion was for shit-flinging tree people. It had no place in his humanist utopia vision and he feared if people deified him it'd just lead to another dark age.

My personal theory is that his psychic power was so immense that he influenced anyone near him, specially if they were talking or interacting.

He never had to actually argument or convince someone of something, because he passively brainwashed everyone into his point of view.

This effect was unconscious, he never decided to turn it on, just a side-effect of sheer power like microwave radar arrays unintentionally killing birds in midair. Malcador was a friend because he could negate this power.

But the Primarchs were the first beings whose he depended on, immune to this power, and possibly having something similar on their own. That was why he failed at dealing with them, it was his first time actually depending on people who wouldn't do what he wanted by default.

Emps hung around in the shadows for tens of thousands of years exercising a light touch on human history and only came into the limelight because it was either that or humanity dies. You can say a lot about the dude but fame and self-glorification isn't high on his list. Before BL went full retard with their daddy issues his biggest failing was the he expected the primarchs to be as selfless as he was and he didn't notice the traitors were self-absorbed nutjobs.

I thought he was trying to make all the humans atheists to starve out the chaos gods

He's not really humble at all. The humbleness comes from what bits of personality we can gleam off how his corpse acts and effects those who commune with him.

The Emperor was not humble, but in his interment on the Golden Throne he has been humbled.

I'm a fan because of the creed he preaches, which is pretty damn inspiring and otherwise a nice change of pace from your standard religion. But this is coming from a devoted cogboy of the Omnissiah.

>he expected the primarchs to be as selfless as he was and he didn't notice the traitors were self-absorbed nutjobs.
There's some pretty prime examples of the Emperor mishandling his relationship with some of his sons, even in the really old fluff user. Besides daddy issues is simply the meme way of saying legitimate grudges for people like Lorgar, Magnus and Angron.

I honestly think he just should've put angron down, or at least have tried to fix him. Of course the emperor has many faults but isn't that of course because he is a man? No man is perfect but the emperor is the closest to it

>I honestly think he just should've put angron down, or at least have tried to fix him.
If the Emperor had saved Angrons Gladiator friends that could have worked too. Like with Russ getting his warriors into space marines Angron having some pals around would have helped immensely. Then perhaps only the closet of his follows would 'earn' the nails as a mark of respect.

Instead of teleporting Angron up, he should have teleported himself and a cadre of Custodes down with him, reinforcing his Spartacus rebellion and achieving victory for them.

That'd certainly be a better way to win him over, by suddenly turning the tide for his doomed but noble rebellion and suddenly revealing that they're all invited to come and liberate the stars from bullies like the ones that had them enslaved. Oh, and also surgery for those nails.

Also he's his Space-Dad. Yes, that's the proper title and form. He came as soon as he could and did what he thought was right, which was participate in a conflict his son believed in, backing his son's side. Which is pretty heartwarming and would probably win anyone over. I can't see that happening any other way with Mortarion, but with Angron I can see that mistakes were made.

It didn't help that angron couldn't actually feel anything but anger. I also thought it was his legions own marines that opted for the nails while angron was against it because it literally drains you of being and turns you into a slaughter machine who lives for fight.

IIRC, it was Angron that ordered the nails put in. He didn't want to like anymore and made bad decisions.

Of course, you'd think that
>turns you into a slaughter machine who lives for fight
would be a positive for a Space Marine, but it seems they still need someone who's fundamentally kind of still able to think like a human to perform the role more intelligibly.

Considering the Emperors extreme reaction to Magnus's warp shenanigans he was quite cavalier about archeotech and demon blades during the Crusade.

Well, Magnus was a big nerd and deserved to get picked on, while Angron was a huge jock and that's just what they do.

>Magnus was a big nerd and deserved to get picked on
Triggered.

Truthfully I just think the Emps was just a bit of scrub when it came to technology. Otherwise how could he miss the dangers of the nails? Angron would have eventually died from them after all.

Literally the Word Bearers. The Emperor's rebuke of Lorgar was one of the root causes of the Horus Heresy.
warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Word_Bearers

this is an artists rendition of the Emperor. who ever looks upon the Emperor was struck blind and even their memories were of infinity. even the machanicus are unable to record His visage. The primarchs "know" what their father looks like but the Emperor is the most powerful psychic being ever and projects either what he wants you to see or what you want to see.

forgive the vagueness but here it is. in one story an agent of a secret cabal is remembering meeting the Emperor. he remembers laying eyes on the Emperor and "seeing" him but he knew it was a psychic vision. the Emperor sensed the scrutiny and honored that unworthy soul a direct sentence. something along the lines of 'you have gifts. we should talk'

>Literary keeps the Imperium alive in a way no one short of a redeemed Magnus could ever do
>Disappointing

who says he missed the dangers of them?

Dude used techno-barbarian soldiers.

>legitimate grudges for people like Lorgar, Magnus
in the old fluff, they didn't have legitimate grievances

>Lorgar please stop burning citizens for not worshiping me, and start conquering planets like you're supposed to.
>Magnus please stop cavorting with daemonic entities, sorcery is dangerous. Stick to psychic powers.

Angron got fucked, but then again it's not like anything he did could have changed the fact that angron was a ticking time bomb in the same way curze was. Better to just treat him like a piece of unstable equipment.

>who says he missed the dangers of them?
He let an entire legion implant dangerous archeotech into their heads that slowly drove them insane knowing that Khorne exists and still thought this was fine.

How angry would you be if it was eventually revealed that the Emperor was the first Chaos God, spawned from the emotion of Hope

Arguably the first 'true' Chaos god but his protfilo wouldn't be truth. That Tzeench's gig. He'd be more about order or at least domination.

>in the old fluff, they didn't have legitimate grievances
>Implying
The Emperors handling of Lorgar was still incredibly petty. All because of his atheistic views.

And Magnus and his was the only legion that the Emperor sets out to destroy before the Heresy according to the old fluff.

And the nails were fatal. WE were gonna burn themselves out. Angron can't plan out of a wet paper bag. He's not a threat on a grand scale.

In the old fluff he was being petty - but it was more because he clearly expected Lorgar to be like the other Primarchs. However Lorgar's decisions are clearly out of proprotion in the old fluf's context.
Think of it this way - the Emperor sees his Primarch's as fully formed adults and gives them responsibilities as he sees fit. All of them do what he tells them to more-or-less except for Lorgar who does almost exactly the opposite of what he asks. SO from Big E's perspective Lorgar is basically either a shitty employee who doesn;t follow the instructions or a rebellious teenager who needs a good talking to. So he does just that and Lorgar flips and we know what happens.
Both sides are sympathetic but the Emperor is clearly supposed to be in the right. In the new fluff Lorgar is clearly mocked and insulted by the man he thinks is a God and is manipulated by his best friends. Lorgar is clearly the victimized party in the context of the story and Big E is clearly the villain.

Didn't Emps order for just Magnus's arrest before Horus contacted Russ privately afterwards, or is that a change to the fluff?

>The Emperors handling of Lorgar was still incredibly petty.
Not particularly, he told the dude to pick up the pace.

>And Magnus and his was the only legion that the Emperor sets out to destroy before the Heresy according to the old fluff.
Because magnus was the only primarch that sent a message dripping with chaos, telling him horus was evil. Without an outsider's knowledge of the events, his treatment of Magnus in the old fluff was completely reasonable.

ALSO also, there were two entire legions he had already disappeared for reasons undisclosed.

>In the old fluff he was being petty - but it was more because he clearly expected Lorgar to be like the other Primarchs.
Expecting rebuke to be positive force? I dont know user. Of course the guy dedicating all of his time and effort into making everyone else realize how special you are was going to take it badly. Then when finally recovers you dont even check in on him?

>Didn't Emps order
Specifically we were talking about the old fluff. In that Emps sends Russ off to kill Magnus and his legion. The only fluff that states this differently is BL and one of the SW codices where it say only the legion was supposed to be killed. Either way Russ showed no attempt at arresting Magnus so it's reallyup in the air. BoP goes with the old fluff but Inferno's out soon so we'll see then.

We were talking about old fluff user.
>two entire legions he had already disappeared for reasons undisclosed.
This was not the case back then and it's still only implied now anyway. Originally the spot were for you to create your own Primarch and legion.

> Magnus in the old fluff was completely reasonable.
It really wasnt. He just couldnt believe Horus would betray him.

>We were talking about old fluff user.
That is the old fluff, user. Unless you want the less-old-but-now-outdated fluff of him admonishing lorgar because of his straight up religious purges of otherwise compliant worlds.

>This was not the case back then
Kinda was, m8. The missing legions are as old as the HH.

>It really wasnt. He just couldnt believe Horus would betray him.
Now you're the one mixing up old and new. First and foremost, he completely did not trust magic.

>The missing legions are as old as the HH.
Yes there has always been 20 legions but there are no mentions of the missing two at all. Not that I remember.

Also I didnt actually mention Lorgar again because my post here addressed that point want really clear my b.

>Now you're the one mixing up old and new. First and foremost, he completely did not trust magic.
Im not. Your quotes from 2nd edition chaos dex if I'm right? either way Magnus's warning was ignored by Emps for two reasons, mistrust of sorcery and the emperors faith in Horus. This faith can be seen all the way up until just before Horus death.

I don't know that I'd say he wasn't bright, it's just that forty thousand years of life would warp anybody's mind and ability to associate with others.

>Either way Russ showed no attempt at arresting Magnus so it's reallyup in the air.

The novel had wanting to take Magnus back alive. Magnus didn't want to go because his legion and world would have been destroyed in the process. So he decided to defend them instead of submitting.

I'm not joining Chaos you ass

*cheering in the background*

we need the astronomicon.

The novel had Russ yelling into a known Chaos operative. He was a fucking idiot.

No Primarch would have been able to surrender after their legion was destroyed.

>I think we deserve better.
He is usurper.

Feet of clay, user

He did what no one wise could have

Then you should convert and join the Cult Mechanicus

God Machine> God Emperor

I really, really like this headcanon

>You can say a lot about the dude but fame and self-glorification isn't high on his list.
This.

>daddy issues is simply the meme way of saying legitimate grudges for people like Lorgar, Magnus and Angron
T H I S

>Heresy
>HERESY

You know the Emperor is the emissary and earthy form of the Omnissiah, right? Any other belief is deviance from Imperial Creed and heresy.

Also:
>not subscribing to the Moirae Tech-Creed
>not believing that the Ecclesiarchy and Mechanicus will merge into one singular religious hierarchy

fucking robots please go

Reading The Last Church, there were people who ideological differences with the Emperor, but who were just normal people. Could be the Emperor was just humoring the guy with words rather than mind-control, but I find that unlikely.

Also there's Malcador who, while the Emperor's psychic buddy, did seem to remain autonomous and operate outside the Emperor's provisions. And also all the planets he set foot on that rebelled pretty quickly. If he could mind-control all the disparate human worlds without bloodshed, the Great Crusade would have gone by a lot quicker and not needed violence save for when aliens were involved.

Occam's Razor seems to indicate that the simplest explanation is that the Emperor has to use his words or his Imperium's overwhelming military strength in order to impose his order.

Rick Priestley is rolling in his grave, having been killed by the degree to which you've misinterpreted the setting and very expediently buried in the hours since this thread was started.

Yeah, I know, but I was talking about god machines, not machine gods. OP just wanted something that looked more awesome, so I thought I'd direct him to the great works of man. But while I'm being heretical, the Void Dragon is the true Omnissiah, to suggest otherwise is foolish denial of the truth.

On a semi related note, does anyone have better art of Titans?

Humbleness or lack thereof aside, Emps denying his divinity is very well established/infamous by now. It also arguably has its roots in Rogue Trader ("The Emperor, for his part, suffers from no illusion about his humanity and sees himself only as the first servant of mankind."); later sources - specifically the HH CCG/art books (pic related) and then the novels - just made him much more outspoken on the matter.

>He looked at the pages again. Here was the truth of it, the crucial mark of difference between his breed of man and the local variety. They were heathens. They continued to embrace the superstitions that the fundamental strand of mankind had set aside. Here was the promise of an afterlife, and an ethereal world. Here was the nonsense of a faith in the intangible.

>Karkasy knew that there were some, many perhaps, amongst the population of the compliant Imperium, who longed for a return to those ways. God, in every incarnation and pantheon, was long perished, but still men hankered after the ineffable. Despite prosecution, new credos and budding religions were sprouting up amongst the cultures of Unified Man. Most vigorous of all was the Imperial Creed that insisted humanity adopt the Emperor as a divine being. A God-Emperor of Mankind.

>The idea was ludicrous and, officially, heretical. The Emperor had always refused such adoration in the most stringent terms, denying his apotheosis. Some said it would only happen after his death, and as he was functionally immortal, that tended to cap the argument. Whatever his powers, whatever his capacity, whatever his magnificence as the finest and most gloriously total leader of the species, he was still just a man. The Emperor liked to remind mankind of this whenever he could. It was an edict that rattled around the bureaucracies of the expanding Imperium. The Emperor is the Emperor, and he is great and everlasting.

>But he is not a god, and he refuses any worship offered to him.

The emperor wasn't exactly humble, nor was he egotistical. He was simply aloof and always thought about the long term, reasoning that he knew better than everyone else and that they were regarded if they didn't see that. He never bothered to have relationships or really have feelings for any of his sons because he dealt he was beyond that shit, and his sons should be too. That's his one glaring flaw, he's seems so much fucked up shit that things such as love and compassion were seen as petty bullshit that only served to delay his grand design. He's become mentally incapable of seeing others as people, only as tools that further propagate humanity's dominance, and he was frustrated that his Primarchs couldn't see that clearly the way he can. The one exception to this is Malcador who was already extradonarily exceptional by mere human standards.

I developed this headcanon precisely to explain how utterly dumb the Emprah's arguments were in The Last Church, things theologians and priests learn to answer right at the beginning. Being atheist like me is no excuse to be ignorant and unwilling to actually discuss religion with religious people.

And this is an unconscious effect, not mind-control. People act according to his desires and expectations, and he expected violence after witnessing humanity for tens of thousand of years.

And things went the Emperor's ways in that story. The priest killed himself for no good reason, more like a racionalization of being subjected to His Will.

Thanks.

Basically he fucked up at most basic thing - being human. It was his strength and allowed him do create Imperium comparatively fast. But in the end it was also this same quality that leaded to all the most outrageous shit happenings.

Priest died because he didn't want to be a part of the world (galaxy) the Emperor was going to create, and made of point of martyring himself to prove his point. That's actually a pretty powerful statement, rather than no good reason.

Still, I can see where you're coming from. Lots of warp-stuff can influence the environment around it, and the Emperor, as the most powerful singular psychic being in the Materium, attuned the world around him to his own subconscious. Of course, there's individuals who can resist, just as there's individuals who can resist the taint of the warp. You could argue that such resistance is the ability of an individual to push back against the warp harder than the warp pushes them.

It might also explain the change in his character since his interment on the Throne, becoming humbled and seemingly more benevolent since he's forced to think back on his monumental failures, glaring mistakes, and watch as the Imperium he built becomes a desperate, crumbling wreck of perpetual suffering in order to claw another hour of survival and hold back the dark. If anything, should the Emperor ascend, this is precisely how a benevolent deity would behave, rather than as the rash and impetuous Emperor of the Great Crusade.

>since he's forced to think back on his monumental failures, glaring mistakes, and watch as the Imperium he built becomes a desperate, crumbling wreck of perpetual suffering in order to claw another hour of survival and hold back the dark.

Empy needs a hug for his pains.

I love how ADB said it (I love his writing style in all the awesomeness he provides) when Sevatar says he became blind and his eyes filled with gold for a week when he laid unprotected eyes on him.

One learns in psychoanalysis that the best racionalizations are those that stand on their own as a valid reason. Of course, me deciding that the priest died because's of having his unconscious warped by the Emprah's unconscious is arbitrary. Defining what is reason and what is racionalization requires plenty of deep therapy and that is not possible in this case.

>You could argue that such resistance is the ability of an individual to push back against the warp harder than the warp pushes them.
The "tide" analogy is used often, isn't? One could liken the Emprah's as an gravity well in his own right, disturbing the Warp. A Jupiter to the Chaos Gods' Suns.

10.000 years of forced self-introspection is a bitch. And that he became humanity's greatest martyr archetype must feel like sweating molten lead. That truly is grim and dark, no irony here. He might be the most tragic character in the setting, tops even Prometheus and the Eagle.

Still, there must be some good moments to interrupt the angst, like the pic.

Actually, this is a very interesting note.

Lorgar himself states that this is a very uncharacteristic act for the Emperor. Like, why WOULDN'T he come down to help the gladiators and win his son's undying loyalty?

The only explanation is that the gladiators were Khorne-tainted. Remember, the Emperor didn't send *anyone* down - He didn't even send Marines, which means that he feared Chaos infection. The only guy he snatched away was Angron, specifically, and that's because Angron was his son and he loved him.

This actually means Angron was doomed. From the very beginning, the Emperor knew "Jesus, he's fucked up. But he's still my boy, I can't leave him here." Remember, the Emperor is a GIANT softy - He knows Curze's fucked up, but takes him along anyway. The first thing he says to Curze is an attempt to calm him.

He also gets fucked up by Horus for holding back: the moment ol' Emps gets serious, he annihilates Horus so totally Horus dies forever. The only logical explanation is that the Emperor knows he can salvage his sons as soon as he's done with the Webway project. Once that's over, he can spend a thousand years (Remember, they all live forever) making Angron a normal person again.

When you consider that the Emperor has eternity, and regards the Webway Project as just something he has to finish before embarking on anything else, his decisions make a lot of sense. All his 'bad decisions' are simply stopgap measures until he finishes his work, the way your Dad will put you off for an afternoon so he can finish his project.

>When you consider that the Emperor has eternity, and regards the Webway Project as just something he has to finish before embarking on anything else, his decisions make a lot of sense. All his 'bad decisions' are simply stopgap measures until he finishes his work, the way your Dad will put you off for an afternoon so he can finish his project.

More like "if you fucking morons actually used some critical thinking instead of being braindead excuse me commissar stupid fucks" they'd figure out what was obvious.

It's like the fucking morons who don't understand the DoW1 cinematic and thought the marines were morons for "charging uphill" and "not waiting for reinforcements" even though every single action was explainable.