They are a massively grotesquely psychically powerful being sitting on top of a chair which amplifies their psychic power immensely.
We also know that Psykers can influence the minds of others. What if the Emperor has just influencing how everyone else percieves the world around them? After all we know that the Emperor changes how others percieve them in order to get the results he wants. When he's around normal folk he appears like a fucking god in golden armour. With the mechanicum he seems more stoic and mechanical. When he appears to the last priest in the last church on terra, he appears as a regular person...
What if Chaos isn't real? What if Horus rebelled because he found a way to break the mind control the Emperor had over him? The Anathame didn't just wound Horus, it broke the spell long enough for him to see what the world actually looks like? What if the reason "Chaos" followers look all horribly grotesque and shit is because the Emperor makes their subjects PERCIEVE them that way so they will fight them and not listen?
The entire Imperium is focused on the idea of ignoring Chaos, ignorance is salvation, don't listen to their "lies"... what if they're all telling the truth? What if, outside of the mind control, once you're broken from the Emperor's spell, the universe is totally normal? Horus never "fell" to Chaos, he just woke up. Horus died trying to kill the Emperor because he knew that doing so would free humanity?
... What if the entire Imperium is under mind control?
Brody Perez
...
Logan Cook
...
Dominic Morris
Fuck.
Parker Price
>What if, outside of the mind control, once you're broken from the Emperor's spell, the universe is totally normal? outside the reach of the astronomican, the universe is still fucked up and full of monsters
Aaron Morgan
I like it.
It's not canon, of course, but I'd definitely use it while GMing a Dark Heresy game. Drop hints, let the PCs figure it out. Refuse to say for years afterwards whether it was actually the truth in my game, or the PCs just got mindfucked by a subtle Tzeenchian plot.
Zachary Reed
As far as we know. Heck, it's pretty heavily implied that 40k fiction is universally plagued by unreliable narrators.
What if the story of 40k is actually the story of trillions of mind controlled slaves fighting against the people who are actually trying to save them?
How do we know the Astronomicon isn't just the mind control beacon? Maybe there are no monsters. Maybe the Emperor has just planted seeds in their minds so that every time they see something which would make them question his control, it triggers something in their minds and suddenly everything's a monster and it's got a hundred eyes and sharp teeth. You're too scared to think rationally, and you just shoot shoot shoot until either it's dead or it kills you. Maybe they're not seeing what's really there!
Jeremiah Lewis
Psykers must be closely controlled and monitored; their mental abilities make them particularly prone to breaking free. Once they do, they often try to free others.
I mean, even in canon people who "fall to chaos" scream about having finally seen the truth. And a 'verse with just one kind of weirdness, psychic powers, might make more sense than psychic powers and sorcery and demons.
Jordan Ross
Hundreds of levels of control from Religious Indoctrination to Secret Police to a massive throbbing psychic orb in space powered by thousands of psykers a day and through which the Emperor brainwashes several trillion people.
This would explain why people "fall" to Chaos so easily. It explains why even though Chaos is full of horrible monsters that scare the living shit out of people they want to go join them. If you really think about it, why the fuck would entire Chapters of the Space Marines want to join Chaos? Why would billions of people and entire planets suddenly turn away from the Imperium because of a "magic spell"?
No, someone sets off an anti-psychic beacon or something and breaks the Emperor's hold on them long enough for people to talk some sense into them. Chaos is basically the Deprogramming efforts of the liberated minds of the galaxy.
Heck I bet the Eye of Terror isn't actually a demon infested hellhole. It's probably just a turbulent region of space which has the ability to block the Emperor's mind control signal. That's why no one's allowed to go near it, it'll break their brainwashing control.
Wyatt Roberts
...
Ryan Roberts
Maybe North Korea really just allows the capitalist pigdogs to exist out of their everlasting mercy, hoping that they will finally open their eyes to juche truth.
Parker Williams
...
Nicholas Cox
...
Matthew Garcia
Nice try Alpharius.
Michael Johnson
>t. Chaos
Jaxson Torres
But which poster was Alpharius? You? OP? Me?
Jackson Anderson
This is what chaos brainwashed Horus into believing.
Michael Lee
Was Horus brainwashed or was it the Loyalists? What if they're both brainwashed? That'd be a serious mindfuck
Jordan Harris
The Tau are behind it.
Brayden Kelly
Nah, Emps is a frail old man who is very introverted because he used to be Conan the Barbarian and went all of the 21st Centiry and beyond in total fucking isolation, not even the voices of his past algamation of lives there to comfort him. He is, however, unfortunately a cultural disaster on a cosmic scale, what with being the paragon of Mankinds evolutionary stage Yet Accidentally making all of Abrahamic religion (Jude) and popping up around the world with overt philospohies and scientfic discoveries, and I'm 99% he kidnapped Tesla.
He then ruined mankind with his skeleton and skull fetishes from his older days when he was allowed to be cool, setting them up for death by single necromancer, shoved a Ctan into Mars as an opportunity, got a working Eldar/Human world burned because Great Crusade Imperium doesn't do Diplomacy because the Age of strige made everyone retarded, and didn't just fucking straight up train his sons in fighting Chaos, or at least give less vague nudge, nudge wink winks to everything he did in secret to at least keep his sons on their toes.
Also, again, the Imperium was set up to Theocracy because of his aesthetic taste that he imposed on everyone else, fucking goddanm E, let people enjoy their own shit.
But, when you think about it, it all broils down to him being a grade A stereotype of a Fedoralord, which subsequently ruined anything. Nikea was dumb, could've just banned practice of warp discliplines until he helped elaborate it later, allowing for artefacts to be secured and catalouged properly and theory put into practice under a sanctioned occupied prospero or something.
Malcador had his hands full with that fool.
Tyler Ward
Making the male humans lose interest in females to ensure the rise of the Tau. The only one to stand against them is the Emperor but he also wants to eat human souls.
Gabriel Turner
Here is a lot of heresy going on in this thread. Might someone inform the Inquisition please?
Wyatt Richardson
You know, I left my heresy detector back in my room but I can hear it going off all the way over here.
Leo Hill
I might be Alpharius.
Cooper Torres
Fucking weeaboo gamer faggots. They should have stayed in the basement.
Parker Lewis
Better crackpot theory: What if the Emperor knew the Astronomican draws in the Tyranids and is trying to get them to Terra so he could hijack the Hive Mind and be reborn?
Jaxon Bell
Nah, the Nids are pretty much a massive Venus-fly trap Inert organism that sends a tendril out to scour planets of life when the psychic signatue becomes strong enough.
The War In heaven is what initially gained it's attention, but it only moved into space around the time that the Emperor was around, acting as effectively, Life-bait, for a better word.
If it consumes Terra and possibly E's consciousness, it would end up the sum of it's parts become self-aware and would end up effectively a great Old One.
Isaac Butler
Would it, though? The Emperor's mind- even at its fractured state- is powerful enough to maintain a massive beacon of pure psychic power for ten thousand years- increasingly large pile of screaming psychic children helping fuel it or not, it's been accepted that the Emperor is the strongest psionic entity in the setting- he's most likely an equal of the Chaos Gods, only brought down because of his incredibly questionable choices and because the only thing bigger than his psychic powers is his ego. I think it's safe to say that, were big E to be introduced into the hivemind, he'd be able to override it.
At the very least it would be a neat little piece of writefaggotry to behold.
Anthony Miller
Tyranids are the Great Filter.
Jose Phillips
Is his mind fractured?
Jonathan Taylor
Psychic entities feed off worship. The emperor has trillions upon trillions of people worshipping him fervently.
Didn't Gulliman even say that the Emprah was more powerful now than during the Great Crusade?
Maybe it's similar to the whole gestalt ork thing, where when they believe something it just happens (red goes fastah etc.) Gestalt humanism sorta thing
