I used to think that the Imperium was an inherently bad government full of inherently bad people...

The Golden Age was definitely better.

And places like the Interex were much better even after the Age of Strife. They were literally doing everything right and only died because the Emperor created the means for Chaos to destroy them.

in all fairness contact between the Interex and Imperium was actually going promisingly well before Errebus and Khor Phareon went and fucked it up

To be fair, the emps expected to be around to help the Imperium through the tough times, and having access to the webway would make running the Imperium infinitely easier.

>The lack of solid information on the Age of Strife

The Age of Strife is named like that for a reason and its conditions were pretty well known. Human power collapsed entirely, what wasn't destroyed by civil conflict was destroyed by aliens and daemons. Humanity was reduced to a handful of isolated groups. The fact that a few managed to do well bears no relation to the overall state of humanity. Whole worlds starved to death - isolated from trade with the rest of the Human worlds.

Imagine if they never united. The Tyranids would have a fucking field day. The Orks would have stomped the galaxy flat a hundred times over. Horus Heresy or not, Chaos would still have easy access to corrupt and attack humans.

The Great Crusade was definitely a step forward. It didn't exactly work out perfectly as is known but compared to the Age of Strife it's a fucking paradise.

The Emperor is a prick. He doesn't trust almost anyone, he doesn't exactly value individual human life very much and he is very much a victim of his own hubris. Even so, he came this close to succeeding. It took 4 fucking deities to put aside their eternal conflict just to deal with this asshole.

The Tyranids might not even have come to the galaxy at all if there was no Astronomicon, and as for the Orks, they unite more in the face of stronger foes; a weak and divided humanity would mean that it wouldn't be enough incentive to build huge WAAAGH!s to attack.

This. Humanity is fucked, but it's more because of Chaos than anything else. The Emperor fought a valiant effort to try and beat them back.

Ok, so first you create the Emperor, right? You make him an absolute Mary Sue, Greatest Psyker in the human race, savior of all mankind, is worshipped by mankind even thoigh he doesn't want to be, and a bunch other awesome shit, right? Then you set up an entire universe of insurmountable threats that only he would be able to take out. Now, here's where the fact that you're a good writer comes in. You're perfectly aware of the Sue you've created... so you decide to spin the whole thing off as a joke... you make everyone blatantly aware of how Terrible having a sue run the human race is... questionable(character-centric) morality, conquering the people of earth, fighting the force of Chaos(but telling no one about what he's doing because only HE could solve the threat.) And generally just being a Sue. Then you realize that hey, he's still a Sue, and the story will never go anywhere interesting, so you give him the axe, a brilliant series of fuck-ups that would become the Horus Heresy, and completely remove the greatest protection from the various threats to Mankind. Thus we have the Grimdark setting we all know and love.

To quote the original creator:

"To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. [...] The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft. It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten."

—Rick Priestly, in a December 2015 interview with Unplugged Games

So yeah, 40k lore was never meant to be taken seriously, and the fact that anyone tried to really fucked up how fun and laughably Grimdark the setting was.

This screen cap is the most inane bullshit ever fucking posted on this board. And whoever thought it was full of relevant information to add context to confused people should hang himself.

No. Shamans aren't separate entities in GE. They fused their souls together. They are a single person. I stopped reading there but seeing how people think this picture is in any way relevant outside of a "bullshit you found" thread shows me I need to get off here. Promptly DELETE THIS

Fuck off you dumb fucking newfag.

You can act like captain hindsight living with knowing what happened. But GE had a plan and worked based on actual evidence, science and physics, there has never been a thing like the chaos gods that the emperor encountered so how the hell was he supposed to know how weak humans are mentally.

>HURR DUER I KNOW HOW THIS ENDS HOW COULDN'T HE KNOW HOW THIS SHIT ENDS

kill yourself you dumb mother fuckers

So, wait. Chaos had officially never been a thing at all through the Age of Strife? The Emperor didn't just vastly strengthen it, he was the one who unleashed it on humanity in the first place?

GE FUNDED ALL HUMAN RELIGIONS IN HOPES OF WEAKENING CHAOS. LOVE THY NEIGHBOURS, WASH DAILY, BE FRUITFUL AND TELL THE TRUTH

THIS ENDS UP FUCKING PEOPLE UP EVEN MORE SO HE DECIDES TO END HIS OWN RELIGION.

CHAOS HAS ALWAYS REMAINED WITHIN THE EYE OF TERROR. WERE YOU.GETTING YOUR INFORMATION FROM THE WORD OF A FRIEND WHO PLAYS CHAOS?

THE ONLY REASON HORUS BETRAYED THE EMPIRE WAS BECAUSE HE WAS LITERALLY FED A POISON STRAIGHT FROM NURGLES INGROWN PUBE PUSS

HOLY FUCK

ASK ME ANOTHER QUESTION THAT CAN BE ANSWERED LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE. THIS THREAD IS BORDERING IN FLAT EARTH THEORY TERRITORY

The only chaos related thing during the age of strife were the storms prohibiting warp travel.

Where the hell did you read G money caused chaos?

No, the god emperor is by all means the perfect representation of humanity and holds all the perfect traits.

The only reason Horus betrayed him was because he was poisoned by lorgars Captain.

This whole thread is heresy. Not even ironically saying this. The only thing everyone is saying is that "HUMANS ARE STUPID AND THE EMPEROR DIDNT KNOW THAT SO ITS HIS FAULT THAT THEY DEVOLVED INTO RELIGIOUS FENATICS AFTER HE LET THEM GO"

ALSO, he was handling shit just fine before his sons were corrupted (read: literally brainwashed by chaotic energy beyond reckoning). You like you assume he has been leading everything into the way it was after he went into literal decay.

Also aliens are all pricks. Get over it. They have no sympathy for us and the emperor has 10,000 years of experience dealing with diplomacy revolving around alien affairs, so acting like a space social justice marine will get you killed, bottom line. Unless of course you are bound to die anyway and the only way to live is by working with aliens to survive so by all means go for it, but don't get distracted.

There are more than just eldar, kroots, tau and orks in space. Read about what fulgrim had to deal with. Humans are priority 1

Doesn't change the fact that old Emps was a tyrant who killed anyone who disagreed with him. Hindsight or not, I'm smart enough to know that's a bad idea, and for his hubris the Emperor just strengthened his worst foe and led to his own death.

Let's not forget the reason his sons were so full or problems in the first place is because they got 'whisked away by chaos' out of fucking no-where.

I still want to know who the fuck wrote this, why it's still unanswered as to how exactly it was achieved, and why it's considered a 'small' detail when it is in fact the largest cause of the Heresy beyond any other factor in 40k lore.

He has had 30,000 years of using diplomacy and steering mankind.

If you wanted to be that guy to challenge GE then just sit down. He has all the answers and wants to just get to the golden age as fast as possible.

You are already leading to the high lords of Terra where people talk and accomplish nothing. GE has actually had enough and doesn't give a fuck. He understands all of humanities needs and can accomplish them all. Thinking you could possibly understand more is just god damn retarded.

Also the only enemy was his own love for his sons. He didn't understand just how final chaos taint is. Chaos can never be removes. As soon as it wears into someone then that person is going down on the dollar coaster. Hence why people shoot a heretic before talking. It sounds "tyrannical" but chaos taint is as final as being bitten by a zombie, no cure.

GE literally could have whipped out Horus with half a second, completely "deleting" his souls from existence. Nothing left, never to be reclaimed. But he thought he could talk to him. And that's why he was so broken.

I'm sorry you're still mad at your dad for stopping you from eating all your Halloween candy in one night, but he loves you. Whether you see it or not.

Who are the two he has to keep an eye on? My 40k lore is rusty

Imagine a chaos god could potentially leave the eye of terror just to pull some magic without a cultist.

But it requires so much god damn energy that it's not worth it, khorn would rather fuck a skull, nurgle would rather take a cum bath, slaanesh would rather provide said cum. But tzeench knew that there was literally no possible way to win. He couldn't bullshit his way out if this.

The chaos gods consider GE to be another chaos god, a chaos god to oppose the rest.r ead up on that, it's sourced by GW

The primarchs were seen as their end so the chaos gods did literally everything they could to get them out of GEs child custody.

For everything else you can't find in books and wikis - Just make it up in your head. This isn't a structured story, this is a mythos. You aren't supposed to know everything and you couldn't possibly claim to know everything. But we are given hints every so often so to avoid stupid threads like this that claim cannon.

It still seems too easy. Idk, the largest inciting factor of the Heresy has nothing to do with the Primarchs themselves and an incident of which nothing exists in the lore like it. I'm not even talking logic here, it's just in terms of structure that this massive occurrence is treated as a footnote that massively pisses me off.

Distanced from it. He understands humanity, but he's not exactly on the ground floor.

>Also aliens are all pricks. Get over it. They have no sympathy for us

Nonsense. The necrons are our friends and allies. Matt Ward says so.

>It sounds "tyrannical" but chaos taint is as final as being bitten by a zombie, no cure.
This is the correct way of thinking about this. All the bad things the Emperor had to do were for the good of humanity. He had a plan all along and just wanted humans to become a prosperous species.

I really like the way it's written actually. I think it gives a pretty decent idea (especially the last couple paragraphs) of the point of view of a being as old as the Emperor

There was no "science and evidence", the Emperor took a gamble, and lost.
He thought the Chaos Gods were powered by worship, turns out it was actually emotion that fed them.
His plan would have worked, but instead secured his demise and the rise of Chaos. That's sort of the gist of 40k, even the all-seeing fall to their own hubris.

Stop trying to understand everything. The mystery is what has driven fans to develop their own theories. Thats all. If it bugs you then don't go into a thread and tell new fans bullshit that pisses off lorefags like myself and immediately throw others off and bounces them from getting into warhammer completely.

If "fuck" is really the best word to describe the circumstance of your life then I really don't have anything more to say

>They fused their souls together. They are a single person.
False. The Emperor has personally stated in canon that they are many.

After his soul was splintered heavily by the battle with Horus and the strain the golden throne puts on him

Not even. It may be his own cannon and so he's welcome to ponder evermore on the god emperor. But he's writing about this, like it is true, then telling new fans that it's "how it actually works" and then throws the picture of GE as a fumbling and confused teenager. No, GE isn't confused about anything. And he doesn't take orders from any one. The shamans have fused their soul into 1. GE is the next evolutionary fork of a human, he is a benevolent Kars.

The user is spreading his stupid around. Make up your own canon and look at any screen cap dubiously for this good reason.

No, his speech pretty clearly paints it as a multitasking thing.

Hmm I never said it was canon though. I would think that anyone looking at a screencap would understand the contents of said screencap is just that user's thoughts because no one would be retarded enough to believe random shit.
What I did say though, is that I liked his writing especially in regard to the last couple paragraphs.

Hey to each his own. But considering the tone of the cap was smug it is confusing.

...

Btfo

>‘I’ve heard enough,’ said Loken, turning away. ‘I’ll leave now. Don’t worry, I’ll say nothing. I’ll make no waves, but I’m disappointed in you all. Someone can return my blade to me tomorrow.’

>‘Please,’ Aximand began.

>‘No, Horus! You meet in secret, and secrecy is the enemy of truth. So we are taught! Truth is everything we have! You hide yourselves, you conceal your identities… for what? Because you are ashamed? Hell’s teeth, you should be! The Emperor himself, beloved by all, has ruled on this. He does not sanction this kind of activity!’

>‘Because he doesn’t understand!’ Torgaddon exclaimed.

>Loken turned back and strode across the chamber until he was nose to nose with Torgaddon. ‘I can hardly believe I heard you say that,’ he snarled.

>‘It’s true,’ said Torgaddon, not backing down. ‘The Emperor isn’t a god, but he might as well be. He’s so far removed from the rest of mankind. Unique. Singular. Who does he call brother? No one! Even the blessed primarchs are only sons to him. The Emperor is wise beyond all measure, and we love him and would follow him until the crack of doom, but he doesn’t understand brotherhood, and that is *all* we meet for.’

Angron and Curze I'd imagine.

It's understandable.

But the #1 thing a smart and effective officer in the military knows is that you need to separate yourself from your men. You can't be seen "like one if the guys" because that fucks up unit cohesion entirely.

Unless an order is positively suicidal an order shouldn't be refused. So the soldiers complaining that the emperor is too far away to be seen as a leader are really just whining of poor soldiers who were probably being given orders by their dads. And we're poor soldiers regardless because they didn't have a finer CO

GE has had friends before. But they are either men of such astounding characters or are immortal.

The custodes are probably all of these exceptional men that the emperor liked so much. Maybe they were even immortal that G money knew and gave immortality. Hence why they are still around after potentially serving him for 20,000 years.

You could insert a chick Norris joke or say one of the custodes was batman and Rambo. Doesn't really matter. But you have to consider just what kind of man could be given the position of custodes.

>This Thread
>Such Heresy
>Almighty Nurgle Be Praised

No one doubts that the Emperor wanted humanity to become a prosperous species, it's just that Hitler wanted the same thing and just because you have grand ideas for the future doesn't mean you can be a massive dick. In this case, through systematically destroying religion and hiding the existence of chaos, thus causing chaos to become stronger and making humanity vulnerable to its influence.

>GE hid chaos from humans like Ethereals did to tau
>Farsight was right, Farsight was always right

Farsight is a fucking Gundam character.

What I find confusing about the Emperor is his absolute mistrust of psykers. His treatment of Magnus, the Librarian program at Nikaea and general lack of freedoms towards those that are most like him are puzzling to me.

If he had introduced a program on the same level as the Adeptus Astronmican to grow and foster the talents of the psykers of humanity things wouldn't be where they are now. Humanity is going to be a psychic race, and there is nothing but misinformation, prejudice and death awaiting them in the time of the Imperium. Truly his greatest mistake is not harnessing the psychic potential of humanity and using it to forward his goals and survival.

And who created Erebus and Kor Phaeron?

A bunch of Word Bearer's led by Argel Tal were transported back in time by a daemon prince and shot up the devices keeping Chaos from taking the primarchs.

As far as I understand it big E either knew that psykers where simply too dangerous to tolerate until shit was stable and largely done. Or he is just trying to keep the growing pains under control as man evolves into a more capable race

The Big E made the biggest mess possible, but it's not like they've actually tried to clean it up.

The ten thousand year history of the IoM is mostly made up of enormous corruption and going way too far with even the most reasonable ideas.

THIS SCREENCAP DOESN'T AGREE WITH MY HEADCANNON, THEREFORE I SHALL SHITPOST.

Well, at least now you can understand why he's called the false emperor who betrayed the humanity by the csm

>As far as I understand it big E either knew that psykers where simply too dangerous to tolerate
This is fundamentally untrue. Untrained and vulnerable psykers are dangerous, Trained and powerful psykers are the greatest asset of the Imperium for fighting back against the powers of the warp.

The Emperor leaving the psykers of humanity in the dark is the stupidest decision he made.

Can anyone explain to me how is Be'lakor and the Emperor any different from each other?

>Both courted the Chaos Gods and fooled them into giving them their power
>both manipulated the galaxy from the shadows
>both sired sons to do their bidding and advance their plans
>both were punished by the Chaos Gods and left a shadow of their former glory
>both plot their revenge on the Chaos Gods and hope one day to topple them

He could just as easily be referring to the souls of those faithful to him.
Your headcanon isn't necessarily correct. Get over it.

Everyone bitches about Big E leaving everyone is ignorance. This is wh40k you fucking babies, not star trek. Can you even possibly imagine what would have happened had the truth of chaos become widespread? There was no inquisition. How the everliving fuck would the new imperium have stomped out all those idiots checking up on this new thing they just heard about?

>hurr durr things would have just worked out better

I mean shit, right before He conquered terra, chaos was ALREADY taking apart mankind piece meal.

I swear half you guys treat this fictional universe like it's mlp or something.

He could have told the Primarchs. He knew that Magnus had conversations with the Chaos Gods. Why didn't he tell them what they were instead of telling him to stop it without explaining why?

And you treat it like it isn't what it is. Shit's a tragedy.

Basically everyone who could make a bad decision for the wider Imperium does. Everyone who tries to do the right thing does the wrong thing, everyone who tries to do the wrong thing succeeds until billions die. The only thing that keeps anything afloat is singular acts of heroism by extraordinary people and ludicrous amounts of bloodshed.

No one is making the best of anything. Everyone is making everything worse. It's GRIMDARK.

What canon? Inquisition Wars is a heretic tome meaning it's not canon. The Emperor never talked after his entombment ever.

>This is wh40k you fucking babies
God youre a whiny faggot arent you. Just because it's grimdark doesnt mean it has to be grimderp

>There was no inquisition.
There should have been. Expecting everything to work out when youre going afk for 50 years? Retarded.

>had the truth of chaos become widespread?
Imagine people being educated enough not to fall, and to watch their neighbors, for signs of corruption. Yes their would still be traitors and heretics, but there would also be those there to fight back.

>chaos was ALREADY taking apart mankind piece meal.
Yes and he left it vulnerable to the same weaknesses that the age of strife caused, ignorance and regression.

>I swear half you guys treat this fictional universe like it's mlp or something.
Go fuck yourself with a chainsaw.

>Imagine people being educated enough not to fall, and to watch their neighbors, for signs of corruption. Yes their would still be traitors and heretics, but there would also be those there to fight back.

The Daemon codex says the mere knowledge of Slaanesh existence is enough to cause whole worlds to fall. Also the same paragraph, it says that the Imperium, despite the best efforts of the Inquisition, is having its core subverted and rotten by Chaos. It's only a matter of time until they reach the point of the Eldar fall.

So no. Ignorance is the best weapon against Chaos. I mean see the Tau. They have al most zero instances of Chaos invasion even among their human converts.

Jesus dude, any reason why you're so salty about this? You've literally just spouted your opinion at another opinion. Calm down.

>any reason why you're so salty about this?
>you fucking babies
>hurr durr
>I swear half you guys treat this fictional universe like it's mlp or something.

If he wanted to have a proper conversation then he shouldn't have started it of as a shit flinging contest.

>And you treat it like it isn't what it is.
Read your own post fool. Everything you just described is exactly what happened with emps. You call me wrong then describe wh40k the same way I would. I merely remarked that people bitching about Big E doing shit in maybe not the best manner is business as usually. Just because he's a perfect golden man according the what the average agri/world believes, doesn't mean we have any reason to get surprised when *gasp* he might not actually be.
It's like stating constantly how arrogant the eldar are, like it's somehow a surprise.

Oh, I thought you were one of those people trying to say that 40k is actually nobledark and the Imperium of Man does everything in the most absolute utilitarian and not corrupt way and actually would have crumbled years ago if they had tried to advance. Even though literally all the source material and thematic overviews say otherwise.

...

>hurr durr
>shit flinging contest
>proper conversation
Alright dude, we have some laughs here, and some of those laughs are at some legitimately stupid shit but if you're gonna throw your nose that high in the air over something someone typed on Veeky Forums, then you're on your own.

Not canon. GW came out and STAMPED the book series that this came from with the Heretic Tome stamp.

This is one of few times in history that GW officially declared something was uncanon.

Really?

That saddens me, that bit just feels inspirational, sort of.

I can see that.
to be fair it's not the first time actual story telling the the emperor was declared noncanon.
wasn't the some detailed story of him confronting horus that no longer is?

You're so smart and informed.

Thanks for condescending from your flotilla of knowledge to educate us weak-minded peons.

I mean, he's right. Just look at the picture in Early 40k stuff oozes that same 2000AD satire.

...

>He has all the answers and wants to just get to the golden age as fast as possible.

He THINKS he has all the answers. If he had all the answers and was truly perfect, he'd be incapable of failing, and he most certainly failed.

40K was designed as satire of people like you. See The Emperor was never the good guy and neither is the Imperium. You think they are because you're exactly the kind of person they were envisaged as a parody of.

Shut up, Carnac, go be a cynical chaos cocksucker somewhere else.

Not Carnac, Carnac would be sucking off Necrons or Tau.

I'm just not an idiot. 40K is satire. It's about humanity being awful, not humanity being typical beleaguered good guys. If you guys had your way 40K would be identical to every other space opera ever.

The creator of the game has said straight up that you are wrong. Give it up.

Also,
>accepting that mankind isn't perfect
>cynical

Lel, you really are exactly what 40K is taking the piss out of.

If not for the Emperor, the Interex might've become the new model for humanity.

>shits on the Imperium
>not Carnac

Rick no longer works on 40K and he even says that 40K evolved beyond his writing. You are wrong.

Whatever helps you sleep.

>Bumps a shit thread from the grave so he can post a provocative comment and watch this idiotic shitstorm continue.

You cheecky cunt.

Exactly what my boyfriend calls me. Weird.

Nice argument.

Everyone in 40K should be shat on. All the factions, anyway. None of them are 'right' and none of them are the good guys. Even modern fluff describes the Imperium as a retarded system that is strangling itself and only functions at all due to sheer inertia. It explicitly killed better human civilizations during its creation.

Put your HFY boner away, 40K is not about that.

So the question, then, is: what's someone heroic to do? What is the right thing to do?

Ciaphas Cain is a good example of a true hero who doesn't really mesh with the Imperial definition of heroism.

But the point of 40K is that we've let things get so bad that one person cannot possibly make things better on the whole. The Interex were basically doing everything right until the Emperor's poor parenting destroyed them. They are an example of what could have been, what the Emperor and the Imperium have denied the galaxy. That's their entire narrative purpose.

So what we need, then, is to have multiple people gathered together to do the right thing. The one person can't change anything on their own, but perhaps they can start something.

Is the Tau Empire a possibility? Or will that not work, for various reasons?

And here I thought the narrative purpose was to sell plastic miniature figures.

Tau can't work because even the Ethereals kept the nature of the Warp secret from Gen. Pop. Tau are not a magic silver bullet to save the galaxy. They are a minor parasite that siphons important Imperial resources that are needed to deal with threats far more potent.

If the Imperium just left them alone, there'd be no problem. But that one policy seems rather simpler to deal with than trying to fix issues in the Imperium. It would just involve trying to convince the Ethereals that it would be conducive to the Greater Good.

>the Interex

you mean that society that all we know of is from like 20 pages in Horus Rising? Why do you fags keep bringing this up?

>Is the Tau Empire a possibility?
Tau are truly fucked in any number of different scenarios. If one of their human pops is an alpha plus psyker, If the nids show up in force because of their meddling with genestealers, If their meddling with AI and new technology goes wrong, if their empire becomes too spread out to govern under the influence of the etherials, if if if. But so far things are going well buy eventually they will get their 'welcome to the 41st millennium gift' and it going to hurt them bad. But thats the fun of 40k waiting for the shoe to drop.

I wonder, sometimes, if Tau could somehow acquire Necron pylon technology to create large zones of Warp-null space around planets with humans living on them, to shut down the psyker problem before it started. Though for some reason, it doesn't seem to be damaging them so far.

The fucked up culture of Cholchis