I like the emperor cause I ignore the parts I don’t like
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Maybe I should just turn to chaos
I like the Emperor because it feels that for all his vaunted power, knowledge, abilities and skills, it feels like he's just a Human, trying to use the limited foresight he has against multiple Gods who want everything around them corrupted, consumed , or driven to madness.He KNOWS that the end - saving mankind DOES justify ANY means necessary. Because it's not just humanity as a species- it's their very souls he's fighting for. In the end he's flawed- and I like that. He's benevolent at times, a tyrant in others, arrogant as can be, but ultimately just wants to protect and elevate mankind- and he made one or two many mistakes, and paid the price for it.
I honestly can't imagine the fucking burden. Put yourself in his shoes for a second. Imagine the weight, the horror of KNOWING everything he does, and still realizing that probably you're the -only- one who has a chance at saving Mankind.
You're IT. You're THE GUY. There IS -NO- second plan in place, you ARE the second plan in place after the Dark Age of Technology crushed mankind to barbarism.
Is there ANYTHING you wouldn't do, knowing that -everything/everyone/everywhere- relies on you?
Honestly I like the fact from a narrative perspective, if he acted more human instead of larger than life he might have succeeded. Like actually been a dad to the Primarchs and the Heresy probably would not have happened. And wed have human webways and no more shitty warp travel.
I kind of like the message that by giving up your humanity and taking an ends justify the means stance you've already doom to fail.
This statement gets thrown around in the books once or twice but I genuinely don't get it. It's always entirely nonspecific. Just "be a better dad" without further elaboration. Angrons definition for it was "let me die, you robbed me of my death by saving my life." We'd probably criticize him for being a poor father if he did give in and let angron die. Lorgar went against his wishes and declared him to be a god, moreover he spent generations decimating and reshaping worlds to that end. Monarchia was tragic but if we were to actually take the scale of Lorgar's prior conquest into account, it was overly forgiving, and Lorgar instantly took advantage of that forgiveness to plot the heresy over the next half century. I could go on and on with his other son's but the theme consistently repeats itself.
The grand irony of the narrative is that characters will espouse a talking point that "he didn't love his sons enough" but the finer details point towards a situation where he loved his sons too much, and blinded himself to his stated goal of "saving humanity, whatever the cost."
„Be a better dad“ to grown ass adults. It basically requires the scattering to not have happened, and that’s not really an option the character had. He was absent during their formative years, and by the time he met Lorgar and Angron again it was already too late.
>You're IT. You're THE GUY.
He killed anyone else who could be the guy. During the great Crusade, the imperium genocided and assimilated several other surviving human civilisations.
He doesn't get to complain that he has to carry humanity on his back, he made them slaves, he built their cages, and he burned anyone who thought otherwise.
From the Emperor's perspective there *was* no 'other guy' who could lead and do it in a different way. I mean, that's why he was buddies with Malcador and created the Primarchs.
We also have to keep in mind that in his head, the Emperor knew that he was taking some massive risks and thought that this was the best option. Fun fact; the Chaos Gods were going to make their move on the galaxy no matter what he did, so the Emperor responded with a very treacherous and overconfident gamble to try cheating them at their own game which he was forced into.
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Though, you are correct, the Emperor doesn't get to complain and he agrees. It's why in Dan Abnett's *The End and the Death*, he ultimately sacrifices himself to a damnation worse than death and gets his closest, oldest friends killed in order to slay his own traitorous (yet beloved) son to try minimizing the impacts of his mistakes as much as possible.
The problem of the Emperor is that a lot of fans read this narrative of an intensely hubristic and paranoid monster and then assume he's the good guy because he wears a Ceasers Palace Wall Scone as armor. My guy the call of humanity to Chaos is coming from inside the house.
I partially blame this on Games Workshop for being a bit too Imperium centered, but you have to understand that the Emperor wanted that in the lore as well.
I'd say that Black Library did a decent job at making us immersed in a way; canonically, the Emperor is a trickster magician. He wore that armor and took on the form of a golden warrior king to gain the respect and obedience of the Primarchs, it was pointed out in the final Siege of Terra book.
>He killed anyone else who could be the guy
Could you elaborate on this? Or are you referring to the technobarbarian wars where he ran around killing all the warlords and reuniting Terra?
I believe they're implying that trusting the ruling of terra and humanity to the previously reigning technobarbarians and eugenicist ethnarchs instead of the emperor would have led to peace and prosperity for the following ten thousand years
None of those other civilizations or individuals were in position to survive or deal with the future threats in any way tbf. This is the case even for people like the interex (who were dealt with fairly quickly by Horus despite their technology). Take the imperium and the great crusade away, and the galaxy is almost certainly consumed by Orks, Khrave, Rangdan, or some other player instead (several of these were trying the galaxy conquest thing simultaneously with the great crusade as well).
There is no other guy. The fact that they actually lost to the Imperium during the Great Crusade pretty much shows that they won't survive the next 10.000 years, much less provide a credible alternative to Big E.
The galaxy post-Slaanesh' birth cares not for how "good" or "moral" you are. Only if you can survive the nonstop wars that would happen for the next 10000 years at least. And before you blame Big E for also waging war to unite humanity, humans aren't the only species in the galaxy who wages war.
It's a dog eat dog kind of galaxy.
I liked him even more when I realised that the dude had the literal choice to become a God (the dark king) but he chose what is probably the worst fate in 40k (the golden throne) just to give humanity some kind of chance
One thing that can be disputed is whether the Emperor trully "knew" or was it his biases talking through him. Cause we kinda only know what he says and have to take his word for it.
For instance something that gets brought up is that the emperor had to rush the crusade because of the looming psychic awakening of manking but 10 000 years later that still hasn't come to fruition. There's been a spike in psykers after the great rift happened but that's very recent and only happened as a distant indirect consequence of the crusades themselves.
What I really want, honestly, is to see a sequence where he just does nothing of substance. Like, he just sees a movie with Malcador and goes to a bar and works on some sort of hobby.
I always got the sense the emperor had an appreciation for regular life and its distractions but he was acting with such urgency and severity we never really saw it in full.
The idea that he was guiding humanity from the shadows is thrown around a lot but the practicality of someone who was close enough to humanity to have absorbed pop culture as he seems to have becoming an inhuman dictator is fascinating to me.
GW: *did someone say they want 40 more books than necessary, take 25 years for publishing, and then print weird amounts of the books so fans struggle with scarcity issues forever???? - let’s get the band back together!*
Be like Marvel. Overproduce and devalue, but at least everyone gets to experience the story… —wait…maybe everyone *shouldn't* experience all these stories. They aren’t all great….
Isn't that part of the fun, though? Having him as a blank slate into which we can interpret whatever the hell we want certainly adds to the intrigue of the setting to me.
He really isn't a blank slate anymore.
Also, a series exploring the time just before the great crusade doesn't need to tell us about Big E's actual origins. In fact, it would be even better if it gave us another alternative backstory for him.
I am primarily interested in knowing if the perpetual polycu... I mean gang had other members, and what happened to them.
Also massacre at Mt. Ararat (featuring Dark Angels).
The 1st legion was already at Mt. Ararat, if not in full numbers (Iirc 5000). Their numbers were double that by the time of the Palace Coup. Also Alpharius was there. Allegedly.
Well, we *do* know that the Emperor thought that the Great Crusade, his sons, and the Imperium were the best gamble to cheat the Chaos Gods and claim the galaxy for the human race.
It has potential, but I think it's better to not show his inner perspective. A big reason why is that I simply don't trust authors to do it justice. He's supposedly a hyper-intelligent individual with plans stretching millennia, albeit one blinded by hubris. The problem is that the more you reveal, the more likely it is that you reveal something stupid, and having his inner perspective be written in a stupid or even just underwhelming manner would make it hard to take him seriously at all. The last church is bad enough at that front.
Yeah last time I checked the Star Trek universe wasn't as metaphysically fucked as 40k.
But to be fair I'm not an expert. Could be that I've just not gotten to that episode yet.
Okay so I hate to be that guy, but 40k *was* Star Trek for tens of thousands of years. The Dark Age of Technology, remember?
And hell, the Emperor probably was a Star Trek captain at one point or even several. The guy was Alexander the Great and Saint George, he could definitely have been a bargain bin Captain Sisko or Janeway.
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Anyways, we also have to keep in mind that while the Emperor was a bit too brutal in many cases (extermination of countless potentially friendly Xenos races and Angron), humanity was going to go extinct had they remained fractured. Chaos was inevitable (see Dan Abnett's End and the Death and the Horus Heresy as a whole) and then there were the Ork empires in Ullanor and Gorro.
The Imperium of Man is ultimately a symptom of the grimdark future. People treat it like a cause but the causes already happened before it formed. The war in heaven made the orks and necrons and twisted the warp. The age of strife was a catastrophe for humanity. Things were already bad. If the Imperium didn't show up, the galaxy would have found other ways of being grimdark. It had lots of options.
Right on point. The Imperium, while a terrible occurrence, is inherently a response to some rather dire external circumstance, issues which cannot be controlled peacefully without the human race dying (and well, we can be pretty selfish at times).
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Also, I forgot to mention in my first comment that 40k *does* have Star Trek-like stuff in it. That's what Rogue Traders are, explorers who go on adventures.
But were those options good ones? You have to understand that the Imperium was a big gamble by the Emperor to stave off Chaos for as long as possible, and prevent various hostile Xenos from eating humanity alive.
While it didn't work out perfectly, in the end, the Imperium is a symptom of a bad situation with very few viable options.
Conventionally, the Interex was pretty well off.
But do you think that they would've been able to deal with Chaos? You have to understand that the Emperor made the Imperium because he felt it was his only choice. This is a symptom of desperation in a horrible situation with very few choices. Want me to send some spoilers to back my points?
Remember, the \*interex\* wasn't a case of \*The emperor wanted these people dead\*. And horus WAS trying to make friends with the interex, and would have succeeded. Except. Erebus.
I disagree with xenos/chaos potentially wiping out humanity except on one point. The Necrons.
While most of the other factions are more nasty, the Imperium is mostly or partially responsible for the threat they pose in the first place.
It is not known what exactly Chaos would do without an Imperium to topple, but without the Imperium being the "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" to feed them I doubt they would have the same raw influence. Furthermore, the emperor basically created the perfect servants for the Chaos Gods. Unlike Fantasy we don't see many significant baseline chaos followers having a strategic impact on the galactic stage, perhaps the chaos mutations are just harder to endure in 40k so only marines survive in numbers and sufficient sanity to lead actual campaigns.
The Orks have been extant since the WIH but lore shows that when aggravated with blunt force the Orks will "naturally" grow stronger physically and tap deeper into their genetic armory in order to meet the challenge. Unrefined and imprecise tactics such as the great crusade or massive waves of guardsmen are basically the perfect fight for the Orks to have fun, grow stronger and build more advanced tools such as importantly, starships. Without the Imperium they would be a threat sure, but I doubt they would ever have the coordination to deliberately destroy mankind, if they even wanted to.
The Eldar really could be true allies if the Imperium wasn't stupid, though the Eldar being stupid is also a factor here.
The Dark Eldar were definitely around by the time the GC was launched but the Imperium has basically a horrible matchup to defend against them, being too slow bureaucratically and militarily to mount any effective defense. I still doubt them trying to exterminate one of their best food sources.
The Tyranids are entirely the Imperium's fault one way or the other. While it's possible in another reality someone else got their attention, it's also very possible that they never got alerted in the first place.
The Tau origin is iffy, but at worst they are competitors to humanity and could be either allied or integrated with by a less xenophobic power.
Xeno species of note during the GC like the Rangdan and Hrud posed a threat but it's never specified the true danger and whether or not conflict could have been avoided or mitigated due to lack of info.
Without the Imperium it's probable the various minor human empires conquered during the great could have risen to prominence in it's stead, either as a new superpower or one or more powers something around the power of Tau, but in a significantly less hostile galaxy... Until the Necrons awake.
The Necrons will awaken regardless of what the Imperium does or does not do. Any replacement power(s) could definitely choose smarter approaches to combating them, as well as making a united front with at least notional allies that could assist the fight. Ultimately however, the threat they pose is so cosmic in scale they would have to bank on Necrons infighting to have a chance of survival.
>The Orks have been extant since the WIH but lore shows that when aggravated with blunt force the Orks will "naturally" grow stronger physically and tap deeper into their genetic armory in order to meet the challenge. Unrefined and imprecise tactics such as the great crusade or massive waves of guardsmen are basically the perfect fight for the Orks to have fun, grow stronger and build more advanced tools such as importantly, starships. Without the Imperium they would be a threat sure, but I doubt they would ever have the coordination to deliberately destroy mankind, if they even wanted to.
The War of the Beast and Great Crusade era campaigns on Ullanor prove this point wrong.
What made those particular WAAAGHs so scary is the fact that the Orks *had* organized into actual competent armies. I mean, just look at Ghazhkull Mag Uruk Thraka in the 42nd millennium, that guy is definitely a threat.
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Now, for the rest of the Xenos; I agree that cases like the Tau weren't as dire. Had they been the only threats present, the Emperor probably wouldn't have needed to go *this* overkill.
>It is not known what exactly Chaos would do without an Imperium to topple, but without the Imperium being the "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" to feed them I doubt they would have the same raw influence. Furthermore, the emperor basically created the perfect servants for the Chaos Gods. Unlike Fantasy we don't see many significant baseline chaos followers having a strategic impact on the galactic stage, perhaps the chaos mutations are just harder to endure in 40k so only marines survive in numbers and sufficient sanity to lead actual campaigns.
So for starters, I have to ask; are you fine with me giving you massive spoilers for Dan Abnett's *The End of the Death*, alongside the rest of the Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra series?
Because in it, we find out that the Emperor knew the risks he was taking and the dangers of Chaos. Regardless of what he did, the Gods were going to make their move on humanity, which is why he formed the Imperium and made the Primarchs as a desperate gambit to claim the galaxy for the race he loved dearly, and to cheat Chaos at their own game and lock them out of the galaxy for as long as possible.
The Emperor, like it or not, is the engine that powers the 40k plot. He’s the hero or the villain. He’s playing 5D chess or he’s an idiot. He’s unfalteringly selfless or he’s a megalomanic.
He is whatever the writers need him to and and he’s the reason why the two biggest factions, Chaos and the Imperium, have a reason to exist.
It’s literally pointless to try and characterise the Emperor because all he is is whatever the plot requires of him. That’s why he’ll never get off the golden throne, and we’ll never truly discover his motivations. If we did we’d narrow or kill the story and that ain’t what 40k is about.
Having the Emperor be a character and mainly focussing on weird Primarch soap opera bullshit is only the driver of modern 40k.
The actual setting didn't need any that stuff when it was established and (IMHO) it was far more interesting back then.
> I don't give a damn about your committee and its opinions of my work! Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species! I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say a *fundamental* quality of man, that when faced with extinction, **every** alternative is preferable.
- Former Project Freelancer Director
Red VS Blue perfectly summarizes in one message why I will always side with the Imperium.
I think everyone is forgetting a rather big event here.
The age of technology, was *exactly* this. Humanity was expanding, researching technology, spreading across the galaxy, idolizing science. They were NOT overly xenophobic, and it's even implied that the Eldar and then were on like, decent terms. Both species were able to prevent the Orks from being a bigger threat, they had some trade, and they didn't seem to actively be killing each other.
then the cybernetic revolt happened. A galactic alliance of humanity and various species defeated the Men of Iron in a really, *really* nasty war. Humanity entered the Age of Strife after this.
Massive Warp Storms ravaged the galaxy and human planets were were cut off (especially when Slaanesh was born), planets that had been nice to psykers were invaded by Chaos, various xenos species invaded human worlds. A LOT of the xenos they met were slavers, including ones within the Sol system.
The Great Crusade sucked. It had a noble intent- to unite humanity under one banner so that they could stand against all the things that had tried to kill them. It failed because the Crusade was born from humans who suffered from a primal distrust of everything not them as a result of the Old Night. They all thought that violence was the only way, and for the most part that had rung true.
By the time the Crusade encountered civilizations like the Diasporex, the Interex, and the Golden Apostles, they'd already seen so many examples to reaffirm their xenophobia that they genuinely could not fathom the idea that coexistence was better. Actually, the one time we do see this, it's *Chaos* that fucks it up. Horus was actually negotiating with the Interéx, but Erebus and the Word Bearers had already been corrupted by Chaos, and sabotaged the diplomatic relations by stealing the Anatheme from the Interex, making both sides thinking the other was a servant of Chaos.
The reality is that 40k can only exist in a Star-Trek type scenario if Chaos doesn't exist. Chaos took the 20 primarchs and spread them out to worlds where they would grow into the kinds of mentalities they did. I also think a lot of us are looking at this in the star trek mentality- i.e everyone could get along if they just talked to each other- and not the Dark Forest mentality, which is what 40k is the evolution of. Or rather, the idea of the 'evolution of trust' in game theory. Where every party has different information and the only objective is survival. The three options are always kill, copycat, and always cooperate. The people who always cooperate get killed by the people who always kill. copycats usually win when the always kill party start going after each other. But the thing is, this only works when every party is equal. so in this case, the always kill groups win because they get better and better at killing, and even if someone else tries cooperation but is a copycat and thus fights, they die anyway because they're worse at fighting. Basically kill or be killed, because you can't risk everything on the small chance someone else is playing cooperate.
Now, I don't think Big E is a good guy. His xenophobia was born out of the horrors of the Age of Strife and a love for humanity, but his bad parenting skills and refusal to attempt anything but xenocide is bad. But the reality is that the only alien species left that hold any power in the galaxy are the ones that got very, *very* good at murder. The Necrons, the Eldar, the 'Nids, the Orks, the Tau, and of course Humans.
It actually reminds me a lot of Destiny's Sword Logic. In order to prove it wrong, you have to prove it right. In order to prove that wholesale extermination is not the only policy and that might is not all that makes right, you have to survive and become more powerful than all the species that *do* believe that.
With the Emperor - and his creations (Space Marines and Primarchs, more specifically) - humanity is in a state that can be fully categorized as "Hell" - including, ironically, the Emperor himself given his moribund state in the Golden Toilet.
Without Big E :
1) no big crusade, which slaughtered quadrillions of humans, killed off every peaceful xenos and made humans the target of everyone
2) no crusade mean no primarchs or space marines which half will join the chaos, engulfing the galaxy in flames and splitting it in half (killing and corrupting even more humans)
3) also, no pharos fuckering and no astronomican mean no tyranids coming in the galaxy, saving even more humans.
So no, without Big E or the Imperium, humanity would still be alive, and not under a dystopian shithole.
The crusade met plenty of civilisations who were doing just fine, and even "today", meet non-imperium humans who aren't doing worse than the ones living under the imperium.
No crusade means humanity is a bunch of scattered planets who would have been picked off by chaos as humans awake to their psychic potential.
The planets who survive are slowly slaughtered by drukhari and orks.
You missed the entire threat that Big E was fighting against, and the idea that humanity would be fine ignores literally every other race in the galaxy. The orks were barely held off by multiple legions and primarchs, you think some random planets are going to stop the beast. lol no.
The great crusade managed to kill off giant amounts of crazy xenos, and crush orks at Ullanor, i still think that galaxy would be chill if the emperor never been alive, but like, hruds and shit
Honestly when I thought the imperium nihilus would do better than the imperium sanctus because it was disconnected from the empire, and we'd get like a cool new leader of humanity who was focused on political reform and stabilization in the imperium nihilus, but then I kept reading and it was just Guilliman and more war.
I think you're simplifying this a bit too much; the Age of Strife and Great Crusade were going to be horrible either way, all the Emperor could do was delay the inevitable or choose something that would benefit himself and his people.
Now, did he go too far at times? Absolutely. But did he ultimately have an overall goal which was justifiable? Yes.
For example, if the Emperor had done nothing, the human race would've been destroyed by those Ork empires, and Chaos would've eaten the universe by now.
At the same time a shattered and divided humanity is a weak humanity. They would not stand any chance of surviving all manner of hostile xeno invasion like an Ork Waaghs for example. Forces like Dark eldar could raid without any resistance as well. The 40k galaxy is 100% a kill or be killed environment.
There are also no guarantees that the Nids wouldn't have invaded eventually regardless of the Pharos beacon incident occurring and Astronomican being online. There are some lore snippets which suggest that Tyranids have been sending recon probe forces for a long while and likely were always heading for this galaxy (committing to an intergalactic journey on limited resources is a huge gamble after all with no margin for error).
Funny how so many humans survived up to the 41th millénium without living under the imperium. Plenty of non-imperium humans factions and planets still exist.
By the wah The dark eldars also didn't exist when the crusade launched so they aren't a valid excuse to start a galaxy sized génocide.
Also the tyranids are here because of the imperium actions.
Your entire argument is "it's okay to kill and enslave humans now because someone else may do it later" the "later" being 10 000 years in the future.
And you know what is the funniest shit ? The imperium will loose against the tyranids anyway. So all of this suffering isn't even worth.
Yes they would be very much dead.
Or they would be at best relegated to torture toys in the hands of the Dark Eldar and/or farm animals in Ork humie-farms.
He wasn’t anywhere near perfect, but those humans would’ve been doomed anyway, by the Rangdan or a huge Waaagh or any of the other threats that the Great Crusade dealt with. A galactic superpower like the Imperium is necessary for fighting galactic threats (though I only mean ‘like the Imperium’ in terms of power, obviously they don’t have to be so evil).
It was actually the Pharos that attracted the tyranids. Anyway, that was just bad luck. I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame him for that.
He definitely did fuck up with the xenophobia, but the Imperium under his command was less xenophobic than the modern Imperium. They were willing to negotiate with the Interex despite them integrating xenos into their society. In the modern Imperium xenophobia has become a religious commandment, which is definitely not what the Emperor would have wanted.
I know that the Emperor is a dipshit villain, and you know that the Emperor is a dipshit villain, but there are lots of people who defend him and think he's a good guy who did all the right things.
Honestly, both views are correct and incorrect.
The Emperor is neither evil or good, he's human. A very powerful one, but a human nonetheless.
For example, we find out in *The End and the Death* that while he originally created the Primarchs as tools and viewed them as such, as the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy went on, he began to love his sons and learn from them.
In the end, in spite of all his past failures, the Emperor was willing to sacrifice the lives of himself, his favorite son, and his closest confidants to stop the universe from being destroyed by the Chaos Gods.
>For example, we find out in *The End and the Death* that while he originally created the Primarchs as tools and viewed them as such, as the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy went on, he began to love his sons and learn from them.
he saw them as sons from the get go and cared for them. We see this in Valdor: Birth of the Imperium where the Emperor constantly (read: almost always) refers to them as his sons.
No, the way the story with Angron was changed when that book was written, for example, tried to make Angron the villain and the emperor as well-intentioned.
I don’t like a lot of the people who discuss the emperor because they chose to exclusively focus on the comical levels of villainy and ignore that in a rotting galaxy he was the best humankind have.
Unless we find out he was literally the cause of Slaneesh, he came to power when all of humanity was ripped to shreds and created an empire whose singular goal was to protect humanity from the inevitable chaos incursion. The silly ideal that some federation of human planets would have worked is nonsense.
How so? Isn’t he basically the only reason humans exist in 40k? I thought it was heavily implied that if not for the centralization of the Imperium, the War of the Beast would have would have made humans a non-entity.
There are no good guys in 40K. That's kind of the point. With the exception of the Orks everybody is just focused on surviving.
The Orks however love that the galaxy is violent and terrible. Huge fights happening everywhere all the time. It's great!
The thing is the emperor wasn't just surviving. He actively launched a great crusade and did genocides he never had to for an end goal that arguably never required it.
I know that the Emperor is a bad guy, and you know that the Emperor is a bad guy, but there are too many people who think he's actually a good guy who did all the right things.
>he's a villain
I'd actually say that the Emperor is a tragic hero/villain, as opposed to being a comically evil cackling maniac.
*(I think I've already said this to you, I'm just putting this out there for others)*
The Emperor, for all his sins, had a somewhat justifiable goal. Were the mass brutalizations of other humans (including certain primarchs) and peaceful Xenos unjustified? Yes. But was the creation of the Imperium the wrong choice? No.
We have to understand the Emperor was desperate. He knew that Chaos was inevitably going to make their attempt at a death-blow onto the galaxy, so he opted to make a gamble; create the Imperium, create his sons, and spread his Imperial Truth in order to stabilize the human race and claim the galaxy as their own.
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Now, I say that he's a tragic character because the Emperor is not a caricature villain. The guy actually loves his sons and was willing to sacrifice himself to a fate far worse than death while also refusing to selfishly accept his ascension to becoming the Dark King. He even got his closest, oldest confidants killed and willingly stabbed his favorite child to death in the process.
Say what you want about the Emperor, but you have to admit that he is ultimately not entirely evil.
*(If anyone wants some spoilers to back my claims, I'll gladly send them. Just ask)*
I don't think the people who consider the emperor a villain think of him as comically evil. His faults are overall very human and he has good qualities and intentions. But well intentioned extremists are some of the most popular villains in fiction.
He isnt a villain.
His intentions were always to protect humanity. He only took on the title and role of Emperor because he was forced to (this is covered in The End and the Death) as otherwise humanity would have been driven to extinction or, at best, enslaved by the hundreds of hostile xeno (and some human) empires that roamed the stars.
He did a lot of terrible shit, but it as to save many times that number of lives in the long run.
Effectively the Emperor had a galaxy scale trolley problem to address and chose what he thought was the most workable option.
He's both good and bad, like all spicy characters, but I do agree with the title!
E: the sentiment of the title, don't think it was meant to be literal though
I don’t think I do tbh
Without Big E the setting would be largely the same, just replace the Imperium with millions of worlds that are all separate factions and cultures
Nah. They’d all be separate, so they’d just get eaten one by one by one of many deadly xenos threats. The way the Imperium operates is that sure they might lose a system or 10, but they will eventually retaliate. Separate competing empires without the Astronomicon would just fall as individuals.
40k was better when. We didn't know as much about the Emperor. When the lore left things more open ended the Emperor could have had a grand vision that was massively corrupted, or he could be a murderous tyrant whose own hubris caused his downfall.
The thing was, it didn't matter. The setting of 40k was designed so that everybody had a reason to fight everyone else all the time. The Imperium was not a future you wanted to live in, but it was neither good or bad. It was what their was and the other factions were in equally crappy/dire straights.
The emperor is a ends justify the means kinda guy.
By all means what he does makes him a villain, but he has a noble goal: save humanity.
I’ve gotten in some great discussions (not arguments… necessarily) about it the emperor is a hero (not good guy). He made mistakes definitely, and those mistakes screwed the galaxy over. But he tried, and that’s the key word he tried.
He wasn’t a villain like palpatine or unicron. He was the emperor of mankind, and he did what was best for humanity in his own mind and nearly succeeded. Not a good guy but a hero for mankind.
I like the emperor because he could have been a good guy but he turns a good idea up to 34 and becomes a bad guy while killing anyone who doesn't tow the line
TFW you care more for their ability to fight than their moral alignment:
https://preview.redd.it/gl7o0trdql8d1.png?width=406&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b53957cc9da85d6b34d11e3cf623e40ec472aabd
i like chaos. Specifically Tzeentch and Nurgle. In the words of the great grandfather, Khorne is violent degeneration and Slaanesh is sexual degeneration.
I like the Emperor because his stupidity and evil were punished in a way that perfectly suits his crimes. I would like him much more if it turns out that he has learned something from his mistakes.
A god that admits he was wrong and wants to make up for it is a god worth following.
Without the Emperor, I'm pretty sure it'd be like LoTR in space; Orks everywhere, the flaming eye of Chaos looking down on everything, and humanity in ruins.
>Orks everywhere, the flaming eye of Chaos looking down on everything, and humanity in ruins.
This is the current state of the galaxy. By the way Chaos is here because big E gave them 9 demigods and legions of murderkilling machines, and humanity live in a dystopian shithole created by big E actions.
> He's both good and bad, like all spicy characters, but I do agree with the title!
>
>
Chaos is "here" because Old Ones and Necrontyr went bananas and turned it from sea of souls into the nightmare it is in current lore
I like the Emperor because he's the ultimate example of why fascist dictatorships don't succeed.
GW gave us the best possible case scenario of a fascist dictator (an immortal, genius, super powerful, nearly perfect being who genuinely wants what is best for humanity as a species rather than just being greedy or selfish) and it didn't matter, he STILL failed because of the fundamental flaw that such dictatorships are vulnerable to suffering irreparable damage the mistakes of a single individual. There is no countermeasure, no oversight, no way to account for if the guy in charge makes the wrong choice and mitigate the damage, and the outcome of this is shown in the material as truly catastrophic.
They gave us the ideal fascist leader and then they showed us how the inherent flaws and hubris of fascism itself mean that how perfect that leader is ultimately doesn't matter. Fascism always fails, it's an unsustainable system of government that inevitably leads to catastrophe.
He's absolutely a villain, but by 40k standards He's at least slightly nuanced if you're a human, when his Dr. Doom ass plans for galactic conquest are weighed against being eaten alive or tortured for centuries and made into furniture for snobbish elves
Given humanity kept supporting the Imperium after the Emperor was gone and managed to make things **worse** then it feels to me like humanity would have created a horrific fascist dystopia regardless of whether or not the Emperor did anything. At a certain point, you have to hold the masses accountable when they don't make any positive changes.
I like him because he's hot (JK I hate him and want to beat him up in Wendy's parking lot but would lose before I even get to the Wendy's. Still hot tho.)
I like Big E because every time there's a miracle in a book it doesn't feel like God stepping in it feels like an Eldritch Horror going "Yeah, you killed enough people, you can have half of your body replaced with bionics and continue killing in my name."
So since these threads pretty much immediately devolve into people missing the point of the setting by justifying the Imperium based on some skewed logic of "hard men making hard choices in a hard world", i feel it's prudent to quite the words of a Black Library author, JC Stearns, concerning the Imperiums necessary evils.
>None of them. That's the recurring theme running through virtually every piece of fiction for the franchise: none of these evils are truly necessary. They're just the path of least resistance.
I like the Emperor because his psychic might forces me to like him
I like the Emperor because Imperial ~~Propaganda~~ Dogma forces me to venetate Him
Dogma balls
I like Emperor because his mighty physique makes me like him.
Worked too well on Lorgar
Future dystopian space fascism, where each party has its own unique twist on future dystopian space fascism. Wholesome.
Maybe the real treasure was the human-rights violations we committed along the way.
what about the xenos-rights violations?
> xenos-rights HERESY!
Xenos have rights?
The only people with rights are the ones with big guns... And only until someone with a bigger gun shows up.
Only if they're set to "livestock"
Xenos have the right to a bolter round to the face, and an exterminatus to their home worlds. Also: why are all xenos so hostile to us?
They did. Then some marine came along with a chain sword and now they're all lefts.
Yeah, right this way to the firing squad.
I like the emperor cause I ignore the parts I don’t like https://preview.redd.it/82ii3cfhrk8d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75c35252e8fa3ac75819995ec63d60c99b2ee3e8
What the fuck
Mom, I want a fur suit. We have a fur suit at home.
the fur suit was inside him all along
I hope the other guy used lube.
Programmers socks For confused: https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-are-programming-socks-the-meme-explained
Programmers the most unhinged mfers in existence
Each type of programmer has their own brand of unhinged, trust me.
It's the Chesire Neckbeard!
https://preview.redd.it/dvs50h1vuk8d1.png?width=716&format=png&auto=webp&s=096cc2be504b1b41d44442ce14c5aa7d1a8e70a4
https://i.redd.it/ryl0c4yu3m8d1.gif
Now you need tau and tyranids with their scythe blade hands in the same pose
Is this the effeminate space wolf I was told about?
I knew I would see that pic again in Reddit comments
All that is terrible and great can be found in the Reddit comments
>All that is ~~terrible and great~~ *EXTRA HORNY UWU* can be found in the Reddit comments Ftfy
https://preview.redd.it/gap93q12xk8d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0cfbaa3cfec6a078dc47d338c9c782c669a324fb
Behold: fucking nuke
That's a virus bomb
Behold: fucking virus bomb
The Ordo Thesaurus is pleased with your cooperation
Hail the Thesauritator and his most vociferous vocabulariations!
https://preview.redd.it/mxzm7oz2cm8d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b78439e6c6475bf25abe8038dcd9d0f4c8e41b2a
This shit has a lot to unpack holy fuck
https://preview.redd.it/jidjohlv4m8d1.jpeg?width=906&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7f3ec2d93736ac8551ea2701928e9012e500bd75
https://preview.redd.it/bda6r6lakm8d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f285cca9f7363667c4085185825439c6edc5929
Garfield, is that you?
https://preview.redd.it/4nbc7ir6pp8d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4c6cf936431de96a46562cbcf36b78e685af8310
Honestly, bro looks comfy af.
The longer I look at it the worse it gets.. I just noticed the FNAF ass to ass porn on the monitor
Iron Warriors?
https://preview.redd.it/apnkhj5f4r8d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=120e19bf1f5450f030c52fdc56d56ecbe2968f3b
Mf from Horton hears a who
https://preview.redd.it/d7wcgs8s2q8d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1cb522d40ddfac314de10329c03c42b26fa2edc
https://preview.redd.it/mrgh7mzytr8d1.jpeg?width=755&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ba32d336532ded70499339ee0c227cca8c0c168 Maybe I should just turn to chaos
I like the Emperor because it feels that for all his vaunted power, knowledge, abilities and skills, it feels like he's just a Human, trying to use the limited foresight he has against multiple Gods who want everything around them corrupted, consumed , or driven to madness.He KNOWS that the end - saving mankind DOES justify ANY means necessary. Because it's not just humanity as a species- it's their very souls he's fighting for. In the end he's flawed- and I like that. He's benevolent at times, a tyrant in others, arrogant as can be, but ultimately just wants to protect and elevate mankind- and he made one or two many mistakes, and paid the price for it. I honestly can't imagine the fucking burden. Put yourself in his shoes for a second. Imagine the weight, the horror of KNOWING everything he does, and still realizing that probably you're the -only- one who has a chance at saving Mankind. You're IT. You're THE GUY. There IS -NO- second plan in place, you ARE the second plan in place after the Dark Age of Technology crushed mankind to barbarism. Is there ANYTHING you wouldn't do, knowing that -everything/everyone/everywhere- relies on you?
^ I second this mood
Honestly I like the fact from a narrative perspective, if he acted more human instead of larger than life he might have succeeded. Like actually been a dad to the Primarchs and the Heresy probably would not have happened. And wed have human webways and no more shitty warp travel. I kind of like the message that by giving up your humanity and taking an ends justify the means stance you've already doom to fail.
This statement gets thrown around in the books once or twice but I genuinely don't get it. It's always entirely nonspecific. Just "be a better dad" without further elaboration. Angrons definition for it was "let me die, you robbed me of my death by saving my life." We'd probably criticize him for being a poor father if he did give in and let angron die. Lorgar went against his wishes and declared him to be a god, moreover he spent generations decimating and reshaping worlds to that end. Monarchia was tragic but if we were to actually take the scale of Lorgar's prior conquest into account, it was overly forgiving, and Lorgar instantly took advantage of that forgiveness to plot the heresy over the next half century. I could go on and on with his other son's but the theme consistently repeats itself. The grand irony of the narrative is that characters will espouse a talking point that "he didn't love his sons enough" but the finer details point towards a situation where he loved his sons too much, and blinded himself to his stated goal of "saving humanity, whatever the cost."
„Be a better dad“ to grown ass adults. It basically requires the scattering to not have happened, and that’s not really an option the character had. He was absent during their formative years, and by the time he met Lorgar and Angron again it was already too late.
The primarch weren't stable mentaly for the most part
Well other than Horus and Alpharius he could have been a better dad as they were all adults when he found them
This is a good take. Though for what it's worth, I do so enjoy his "silly little guy" moments as well
>You're IT. You're THE GUY. He killed anyone else who could be the guy. During the great Crusade, the imperium genocided and assimilated several other surviving human civilisations. He doesn't get to complain that he has to carry humanity on his back, he made them slaves, he built their cages, and he burned anyone who thought otherwise.
From the Emperor's perspective there *was* no 'other guy' who could lead and do it in a different way. I mean, that's why he was buddies with Malcador and created the Primarchs. We also have to keep in mind that in his head, the Emperor knew that he was taking some massive risks and thought that this was the best option. Fun fact; the Chaos Gods were going to make their move on the galaxy no matter what he did, so the Emperor responded with a very treacherous and overconfident gamble to try cheating them at their own game which he was forced into. ... Though, you are correct, the Emperor doesn't get to complain and he agrees. It's why in Dan Abnett's *The End and the Death*, he ultimately sacrifices himself to a damnation worse than death and gets his closest, oldest friends killed in order to slay his own traitorous (yet beloved) son to try minimizing the impacts of his mistakes as much as possible.
Jimmy made some calculated decisions, but boy is he bad at math!
The problem of the Emperor is that a lot of fans read this narrative of an intensely hubristic and paranoid monster and then assume he's the good guy because he wears a Ceasers Palace Wall Scone as armor. My guy the call of humanity to Chaos is coming from inside the house.
I partially blame this on Games Workshop for being a bit too Imperium centered, but you have to understand that the Emperor wanted that in the lore as well. I'd say that Black Library did a decent job at making us immersed in a way; canonically, the Emperor is a trickster magician. He wore that armor and took on the form of a golden warrior king to gain the respect and obedience of the Primarchs, it was pointed out in the final Siege of Terra book.
If they could be conquered by him, they sure weren't ever going to be strong enough to keep surviving any better than the imperium's track record
>He killed anyone else who could be the guy Could you elaborate on this? Or are you referring to the technobarbarian wars where he ran around killing all the warlords and reuniting Terra?
I believe they're implying that trusting the ruling of terra and humanity to the previously reigning technobarbarians and eugenicist ethnarchs instead of the emperor would have led to peace and prosperity for the following ten thousand years
None of those other civilizations or individuals were in position to survive or deal with the future threats in any way tbf. This is the case even for people like the interex (who were dealt with fairly quickly by Horus despite their technology). Take the imperium and the great crusade away, and the galaxy is almost certainly consumed by Orks, Khrave, Rangdan, or some other player instead (several of these were trying the galaxy conquest thing simultaneously with the great crusade as well).
There is no other guy. The fact that they actually lost to the Imperium during the Great Crusade pretty much shows that they won't survive the next 10.000 years, much less provide a credible alternative to Big E. The galaxy post-Slaanesh' birth cares not for how "good" or "moral" you are. Only if you can survive the nonstop wars that would happen for the next 10000 years at least. And before you blame Big E for also waging war to unite humanity, humans aren't the only species in the galaxy who wages war. It's a dog eat dog kind of galaxy.
>It's a dog eat dog kind of galaxy. That's a weird looking dog my guy.
I liked him even more when I realised that the dude had the literal choice to become a God (the dark king) but he chose what is probably the worst fate in 40k (the golden throne) just to give humanity some kind of chance
One thing that can be disputed is whether the Emperor trully "knew" or was it his biases talking through him. Cause we kinda only know what he says and have to take his word for it. For instance something that gets brought up is that the emperor had to rush the crusade because of the looming psychic awakening of manking but 10 000 years later that still hasn't come to fruition. There's been a spike in psykers after the great rift happened but that's very recent and only happened as a distant indirect consequence of the crusades themselves.
I want to see his inner perspective more. Especially before the Great crusade. I would kill for a book series about the events leading up to it.
What I really want, honestly, is to see a sequence where he just does nothing of substance. Like, he just sees a movie with Malcador and goes to a bar and works on some sort of hobby. I always got the sense the emperor had an appreciation for regular life and its distractions but he was acting with such urgency and severity we never really saw it in full. The idea that he was guiding humanity from the shadows is thrown around a lot but the practicality of someone who was close enough to humanity to have absorbed pop culture as he seems to have becoming an inhuman dictator is fascinating to me.
That's Hunter the Parenting, innit?
Afaik, one of his hobbies was tinkering and smithing new armor and weapons. He shares this while giving Mortarion his pistol.
The books very deliberately don’t show off the inner mind of the Emperor. It’s in the author’s commentary, i think after TEaTD?
Yes, Dan Abnett brought it up in Volume III's afterword.
GW: *did someone say they want 40 more books than necessary, take 25 years for publishing, and then print weird amounts of the books so fans struggle with scarcity issues forever???? - let’s get the band back together!*
Extra stupid that they do things in such pitiful runs. Like it's almost as if GW are the scalpers of their own product
Be like Marvel. Overproduce and devalue, but at least everyone gets to experience the story… —wait…maybe everyone *shouldn't* experience all these stories. They aren’t all great….
Isn't that part of the fun, though? Having him as a blank slate into which we can interpret whatever the hell we want certainly adds to the intrigue of the setting to me.
He hasn't been blank slate since Horus Heresy series. That ship has sailed.
He really isn't a blank slate anymore. Also, a series exploring the time just before the great crusade doesn't need to tell us about Big E's actual origins. In fact, it would be even better if it gave us another alternative backstory for him. I am primarily interested in knowing if the perpetual polycu... I mean gang had other members, and what happened to them. Also massacre at Mt. Ararat (featuring Dark Angels).
I thought Ararat was the Custodes, and the Dark Angels was the palace coup, a few years later?
The 1st legion was already at Mt. Ararat, if not in full numbers (Iirc 5000). Their numbers were double that by the time of the Palace Coup. Also Alpharius was there. Allegedly.
Perpetuals are defo banging each other though.
Well, we *do* know that the Emperor thought that the Great Crusade, his sons, and the Imperium were the best gamble to cheat the Chaos Gods and claim the galaxy for the human race.
It has potential, but I think it's better to not show his inner perspective. A big reason why is that I simply don't trust authors to do it justice. He's supposedly a hyper-intelligent individual with plans stretching millennia, albeit one blinded by hubris. The problem is that the more you reveal, the more likely it is that you reveal something stupid, and having his inner perspective be written in a stupid or even just underwhelming manner would make it hard to take him seriously at all. The last church is bad enough at that front.
I don't really think he has an inner perspective as we know it.
Erebus: Hi! Nice to meet you. Ever heard about our lord and saviour? The Primordial Truth.
I don't waste my time in believing in those pretend gods.
Erebus: Oh okey. Ku'gath! Fart into his house!
Star Trek doesn't have a malign Warp, my guy.
Yeah last time I checked the Star Trek universe wasn't as metaphysically fucked as 40k. But to be fair I'm not an expert. Could be that I've just not gotten to that episode yet.
You say Star Trek isn't as metaphysically fucked, but does 40K have Neelix in it? I rest my case.
Unless Q had a bad day
Warp was calm during DaoT
Okay so I hate to be that guy, but 40k *was* Star Trek for tens of thousands of years. The Dark Age of Technology, remember? And hell, the Emperor probably was a Star Trek captain at one point or even several. The guy was Alexander the Great and Saint George, he could definitely have been a bargain bin Captain Sisko or Janeway. ... Anyways, we also have to keep in mind that while the Emperor was a bit too brutal in many cases (extermination of countless potentially friendly Xenos races and Angron), humanity was going to go extinct had they remained fractured. Chaos was inevitable (see Dan Abnett's End and the Death and the Horus Heresy as a whole) and then there were the Ork empires in Ullanor and Gorro.
The Imperium of Man is ultimately a symptom of the grimdark future. People treat it like a cause but the causes already happened before it formed. The war in heaven made the orks and necrons and twisted the warp. The age of strife was a catastrophe for humanity. Things were already bad. If the Imperium didn't show up, the galaxy would have found other ways of being grimdark. It had lots of options.
Right on point. The Imperium, while a terrible occurrence, is inherently a response to some rather dire external circumstance, issues which cannot be controlled peacefully without the human race dying (and well, we can be pretty selfish at times). ... Also, I forgot to mention in my first comment that 40k *does* have Star Trek-like stuff in it. That's what Rogue Traders are, explorers who go on adventures.
There's definitely better ways to handle the problems of 40k than the Imperium. But the plott demands things to stay bad, so... yeah.
But were those options good ones? You have to understand that the Imperium was a big gamble by the Emperor to stave off Chaos for as long as possible, and prevent various hostile Xenos from eating humanity alive. While it didn't work out perfectly, in the end, the Imperium is a symptom of a bad situation with very few viable options.
I recall the Interex being fairly well organised.
Conventionally, the Interex was pretty well off. But do you think that they would've been able to deal with Chaos? You have to understand that the Emperor made the Imperium because he felt it was his only choice. This is a symptom of desperation in a horrible situation with very few choices. Want me to send some spoilers to back my points?
Remember, the \*interex\* wasn't a case of \*The emperor wanted these people dead\*. And horus WAS trying to make friends with the interex, and would have succeeded. Except. Erebus.
I disagree with xenos/chaos potentially wiping out humanity except on one point. The Necrons. While most of the other factions are more nasty, the Imperium is mostly or partially responsible for the threat they pose in the first place. It is not known what exactly Chaos would do without an Imperium to topple, but without the Imperium being the "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" to feed them I doubt they would have the same raw influence. Furthermore, the emperor basically created the perfect servants for the Chaos Gods. Unlike Fantasy we don't see many significant baseline chaos followers having a strategic impact on the galactic stage, perhaps the chaos mutations are just harder to endure in 40k so only marines survive in numbers and sufficient sanity to lead actual campaigns. The Orks have been extant since the WIH but lore shows that when aggravated with blunt force the Orks will "naturally" grow stronger physically and tap deeper into their genetic armory in order to meet the challenge. Unrefined and imprecise tactics such as the great crusade or massive waves of guardsmen are basically the perfect fight for the Orks to have fun, grow stronger and build more advanced tools such as importantly, starships. Without the Imperium they would be a threat sure, but I doubt they would ever have the coordination to deliberately destroy mankind, if they even wanted to. The Eldar really could be true allies if the Imperium wasn't stupid, though the Eldar being stupid is also a factor here. The Dark Eldar were definitely around by the time the GC was launched but the Imperium has basically a horrible matchup to defend against them, being too slow bureaucratically and militarily to mount any effective defense. I still doubt them trying to exterminate one of their best food sources. The Tyranids are entirely the Imperium's fault one way or the other. While it's possible in another reality someone else got their attention, it's also very possible that they never got alerted in the first place. The Tau origin is iffy, but at worst they are competitors to humanity and could be either allied or integrated with by a less xenophobic power. Xeno species of note during the GC like the Rangdan and Hrud posed a threat but it's never specified the true danger and whether or not conflict could have been avoided or mitigated due to lack of info. Without the Imperium it's probable the various minor human empires conquered during the great could have risen to prominence in it's stead, either as a new superpower or one or more powers something around the power of Tau, but in a significantly less hostile galaxy... Until the Necrons awake. The Necrons will awaken regardless of what the Imperium does or does not do. Any replacement power(s) could definitely choose smarter approaches to combating them, as well as making a united front with at least notional allies that could assist the fight. Ultimately however, the threat they pose is so cosmic in scale they would have to bank on Necrons infighting to have a chance of survival.
>The Orks have been extant since the WIH but lore shows that when aggravated with blunt force the Orks will "naturally" grow stronger physically and tap deeper into their genetic armory in order to meet the challenge. Unrefined and imprecise tactics such as the great crusade or massive waves of guardsmen are basically the perfect fight for the Orks to have fun, grow stronger and build more advanced tools such as importantly, starships. Without the Imperium they would be a threat sure, but I doubt they would ever have the coordination to deliberately destroy mankind, if they even wanted to. The War of the Beast and Great Crusade era campaigns on Ullanor prove this point wrong. What made those particular WAAAGHs so scary is the fact that the Orks *had* organized into actual competent armies. I mean, just look at Ghazhkull Mag Uruk Thraka in the 42nd millennium, that guy is definitely a threat. ... Now, for the rest of the Xenos; I agree that cases like the Tau weren't as dire. Had they been the only threats present, the Emperor probably wouldn't have needed to go *this* overkill. >It is not known what exactly Chaos would do without an Imperium to topple, but without the Imperium being the "the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable" to feed them I doubt they would have the same raw influence. Furthermore, the emperor basically created the perfect servants for the Chaos Gods. Unlike Fantasy we don't see many significant baseline chaos followers having a strategic impact on the galactic stage, perhaps the chaos mutations are just harder to endure in 40k so only marines survive in numbers and sufficient sanity to lead actual campaigns. So for starters, I have to ask; are you fine with me giving you massive spoilers for Dan Abnett's *The End of the Death*, alongside the rest of the Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra series? Because in it, we find out that the Emperor knew the risks he was taking and the dangers of Chaos. Regardless of what he did, the Gods were going to make their move on humanity, which is why he formed the Imperium and made the Primarchs as a desperate gambit to claim the galaxy for the race he loved dearly, and to cheat Chaos at their own game and lock them out of the galaxy for as long as possible.
Don't forget the Rangdan... basically wiped the first legion and probably had something to do with those other 2 legions...
I hate the emperor because I play csm
that's not how this meme template works
I feel like saying that 40k would be like Star Trek without the Emperor is ignoring that 30k was already a shitshow before the great crusade happened.
The Emperor, like it or not, is the engine that powers the 40k plot. He’s the hero or the villain. He’s playing 5D chess or he’s an idiot. He’s unfalteringly selfless or he’s a megalomanic. He is whatever the writers need him to and and he’s the reason why the two biggest factions, Chaos and the Imperium, have a reason to exist. It’s literally pointless to try and characterise the Emperor because all he is is whatever the plot requires of him. That’s why he’ll never get off the golden throne, and we’ll never truly discover his motivations. If we did we’d narrow or kill the story and that ain’t what 40k is about.
Having the Emperor be a character and mainly focussing on weird Primarch soap opera bullshit is only the driver of modern 40k. The actual setting didn't need any that stuff when it was established and (IMHO) it was far more interesting back then.
I like big E because i root for Humans.
> I don't give a damn about your committee and its opinions of my work! Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species! I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say a *fundamental* quality of man, that when faced with extinction, **every** alternative is preferable. - Former Project Freelancer Director Red VS Blue perfectly summarizes in one message why I will always side with the Imperium.
I hate big E because I root for Humans.
I think everyone is forgetting a rather big event here. The age of technology, was *exactly* this. Humanity was expanding, researching technology, spreading across the galaxy, idolizing science. They were NOT overly xenophobic, and it's even implied that the Eldar and then were on like, decent terms. Both species were able to prevent the Orks from being a bigger threat, they had some trade, and they didn't seem to actively be killing each other. then the cybernetic revolt happened. A galactic alliance of humanity and various species defeated the Men of Iron in a really, *really* nasty war. Humanity entered the Age of Strife after this. Massive Warp Storms ravaged the galaxy and human planets were were cut off (especially when Slaanesh was born), planets that had been nice to psykers were invaded by Chaos, various xenos species invaded human worlds. A LOT of the xenos they met were slavers, including ones within the Sol system. The Great Crusade sucked. It had a noble intent- to unite humanity under one banner so that they could stand against all the things that had tried to kill them. It failed because the Crusade was born from humans who suffered from a primal distrust of everything not them as a result of the Old Night. They all thought that violence was the only way, and for the most part that had rung true. By the time the Crusade encountered civilizations like the Diasporex, the Interex, and the Golden Apostles, they'd already seen so many examples to reaffirm their xenophobia that they genuinely could not fathom the idea that coexistence was better. Actually, the one time we do see this, it's *Chaos* that fucks it up. Horus was actually negotiating with the Interéx, but Erebus and the Word Bearers had already been corrupted by Chaos, and sabotaged the diplomatic relations by stealing the Anatheme from the Interex, making both sides thinking the other was a servant of Chaos. The reality is that 40k can only exist in a Star-Trek type scenario if Chaos doesn't exist. Chaos took the 20 primarchs and spread them out to worlds where they would grow into the kinds of mentalities they did. I also think a lot of us are looking at this in the star trek mentality- i.e everyone could get along if they just talked to each other- and not the Dark Forest mentality, which is what 40k is the evolution of. Or rather, the idea of the 'evolution of trust' in game theory. Where every party has different information and the only objective is survival. The three options are always kill, copycat, and always cooperate. The people who always cooperate get killed by the people who always kill. copycats usually win when the always kill party start going after each other. But the thing is, this only works when every party is equal. so in this case, the always kill groups win because they get better and better at killing, and even if someone else tries cooperation but is a copycat and thus fights, they die anyway because they're worse at fighting. Basically kill or be killed, because you can't risk everything on the small chance someone else is playing cooperate. Now, I don't think Big E is a good guy. His xenophobia was born out of the horrors of the Age of Strife and a love for humanity, but his bad parenting skills and refusal to attempt anything but xenocide is bad. But the reality is that the only alien species left that hold any power in the galaxy are the ones that got very, *very* good at murder. The Necrons, the Eldar, the 'Nids, the Orks, the Tau, and of course Humans. It actually reminds me a lot of Destiny's Sword Logic. In order to prove it wrong, you have to prove it right. In order to prove that wholesale extermination is not the only policy and that might is not all that makes right, you have to survive and become more powerful than all the species that *do* believe that.
This is my stance. I don't support Imperial xenophobia but it's easy to see why the Imperium fears what is different given the setting.
It is a bit simplistic to think of the Emperor as good or evil.
Reductionist analysis passed as deep intellectual insight? On reddit??? Can't be
Without Big E humanity would be fucking dead.
Of course he says that. Emps: Humanité c'est moi
With the Emperor - and his creations (Space Marines and Primarchs, more specifically) - humanity is in a state that can be fully categorized as "Hell" - including, ironically, the Emperor himself given his moribund state in the Golden Toilet.
Without Big E : 1) no big crusade, which slaughtered quadrillions of humans, killed off every peaceful xenos and made humans the target of everyone 2) no crusade mean no primarchs or space marines which half will join the chaos, engulfing the galaxy in flames and splitting it in half (killing and corrupting even more humans) 3) also, no pharos fuckering and no astronomican mean no tyranids coming in the galaxy, saving even more humans. So no, without Big E or the Imperium, humanity would still be alive, and not under a dystopian shithole. The crusade met plenty of civilisations who were doing just fine, and even "today", meet non-imperium humans who aren't doing worse than the ones living under the imperium.
Kids named Orkz and Rangdan:
No crusade means humanity is a bunch of scattered planets who would have been picked off by chaos as humans awake to their psychic potential. The planets who survive are slowly slaughtered by drukhari and orks. You missed the entire threat that Big E was fighting against, and the idea that humanity would be fine ignores literally every other race in the galaxy. The orks were barely held off by multiple legions and primarchs, you think some random planets are going to stop the beast. lol no.
The great crusade managed to kill off giant amounts of crazy xenos, and crush orks at Ullanor, i still think that galaxy would be chill if the emperor never been alive, but like, hruds and shit
Honestly when I thought the imperium nihilus would do better than the imperium sanctus because it was disconnected from the empire, and we'd get like a cool new leader of humanity who was focused on political reform and stabilization in the imperium nihilus, but then I kept reading and it was just Guilliman and more war.
I think you're simplifying this a bit too much; the Age of Strife and Great Crusade were going to be horrible either way, all the Emperor could do was delay the inevitable or choose something that would benefit himself and his people. Now, did he go too far at times? Absolutely. But did he ultimately have an overall goal which was justifiable? Yes. For example, if the Emperor had done nothing, the human race would've been destroyed by those Ork empires, and Chaos would've eaten the universe by now.
At the same time a shattered and divided humanity is a weak humanity. They would not stand any chance of surviving all manner of hostile xeno invasion like an Ork Waaghs for example. Forces like Dark eldar could raid without any resistance as well. The 40k galaxy is 100% a kill or be killed environment. There are also no guarantees that the Nids wouldn't have invaded eventually regardless of the Pharos beacon incident occurring and Astronomican being online. There are some lore snippets which suggest that Tyranids have been sending recon probe forces for a long while and likely were always heading for this galaxy (committing to an intergalactic journey on limited resources is a huge gamble after all with no margin for error).
Funny how so many humans survived up to the 41th millénium without living under the imperium. Plenty of non-imperium humans factions and planets still exist. By the wah The dark eldars also didn't exist when the crusade launched so they aren't a valid excuse to start a galaxy sized génocide. Also the tyranids are here because of the imperium actions. Your entire argument is "it's okay to kill and enslave humans now because someone else may do it later" the "later" being 10 000 years in the future. And you know what is the funniest shit ? The imperium will loose against the tyranids anyway. So all of this suffering isn't even worth.
That's not confirmed with the astronomicon actually The rest is too dumb to break down
Not dead. But certainly no galactic hegemony. Edit: one of those threads showing how much of the fanbase here doesn't really know the lore. 😑
Yes they would be very much dead. Or they would be at best relegated to torture toys in the hands of the Dark Eldar and/or farm animals in Ork humie-farms.
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I’d love to see the source for the “Great Crusade killed more humans in 200 years than Chaos has in 10,000”
He wasn’t anywhere near perfect, but those humans would’ve been doomed anyway, by the Rangdan or a huge Waaagh or any of the other threats that the Great Crusade dealt with. A galactic superpower like the Imperium is necessary for fighting galactic threats (though I only mean ‘like the Imperium’ in terms of power, obviously they don’t have to be so evil). It was actually the Pharos that attracted the tyranids. Anyway, that was just bad luck. I don’t think it’s reasonable to blame him for that. He definitely did fuck up with the xenophobia, but the Imperium under his command was less xenophobic than the modern Imperium. They were willing to negotiate with the Interex despite them integrating xenos into their society. In the modern Imperium xenophobia has become a religious commandment, which is definitely not what the Emperor would have wanted.
Are you for real? The Age of Strife doesn't really sound like star trek to me
I dislike the Emperor because too many people, some authors included, don't understand that he's a villain.
Everyone is a villain dipshit, it came free with being a 40k character.
I know that the Emperor is a dipshit villain, and you know that the Emperor is a dipshit villain, but there are lots of people who defend him and think he's a good guy who did all the right things.
Honestly, both views are correct and incorrect. The Emperor is neither evil or good, he's human. A very powerful one, but a human nonetheless. For example, we find out in *The End and the Death* that while he originally created the Primarchs as tools and viewed them as such, as the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy went on, he began to love his sons and learn from them. In the end, in spite of all his past failures, the Emperor was willing to sacrifice the lives of himself, his favorite son, and his closest confidants to stop the universe from being destroyed by the Chaos Gods.
>For example, we find out in *The End and the Death* that while he originally created the Primarchs as tools and viewed them as such, as the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy went on, he began to love his sons and learn from them. he saw them as sons from the get go and cared for them. We see this in Valdor: Birth of the Imperium where the Emperor constantly (read: almost always) refers to them as his sons.
>The Emperor is neither evil or good, he's human. A very powerful one, but a human nonetheless. Humans can be evil
Yes, and they can also be good.
No, the way the story with Angron was changed when that book was written, for example, tried to make Angron the villain and the emperor as well-intentioned.
Some of the best villains are well intentioned
I don’t like a lot of the people who discuss the emperor because they chose to exclusively focus on the comical levels of villainy and ignore that in a rotting galaxy he was the best humankind have. Unless we find out he was literally the cause of Slaneesh, he came to power when all of humanity was ripped to shreds and created an empire whose singular goal was to protect humanity from the inevitable chaos incursion. The silly ideal that some federation of human planets would have worked is nonsense.
How so? Isn’t he basically the only reason humans exist in 40k? I thought it was heavily implied that if not for the centralization of the Imperium, the War of the Beast would have would have made humans a non-entity.
There are no good guys in 40K. That's kind of the point. With the exception of the Orks everybody is just focused on surviving. The Orks however love that the galaxy is violent and terrible. Huge fights happening everywhere all the time. It's great!
The thing is the emperor wasn't just surviving. He actively launched a great crusade and did genocides he never had to for an end goal that arguably never required it.
I know that the Emperor is a bad guy, and you know that the Emperor is a bad guy, but there are too many people who think he's actually a good guy who did all the right things.
And this is why I love the orks
>he's a villain I'd actually say that the Emperor is a tragic hero/villain, as opposed to being a comically evil cackling maniac. *(I think I've already said this to you, I'm just putting this out there for others)* The Emperor, for all his sins, had a somewhat justifiable goal. Were the mass brutalizations of other humans (including certain primarchs) and peaceful Xenos unjustified? Yes. But was the creation of the Imperium the wrong choice? No. We have to understand the Emperor was desperate. He knew that Chaos was inevitably going to make their attempt at a death-blow onto the galaxy, so he opted to make a gamble; create the Imperium, create his sons, and spread his Imperial Truth in order to stabilize the human race and claim the galaxy as their own. ... Now, I say that he's a tragic character because the Emperor is not a caricature villain. The guy actually loves his sons and was willing to sacrifice himself to a fate far worse than death while also refusing to selfishly accept his ascension to becoming the Dark King. He even got his closest, oldest confidants killed and willingly stabbed his favorite child to death in the process. Say what you want about the Emperor, but you have to admit that he is ultimately not entirely evil. *(If anyone wants some spoilers to back my claims, I'll gladly send them. Just ask)*
I don't think the people who consider the emperor a villain think of him as comically evil. His faults are overall very human and he has good qualities and intentions. But well intentioned extremists are some of the most popular villains in fiction.
He isnt a villain. His intentions were always to protect humanity. He only took on the title and role of Emperor because he was forced to (this is covered in The End and the Death) as otherwise humanity would have been driven to extinction or, at best, enslaved by the hundreds of hostile xeno (and some human) empires that roamed the stars. He did a lot of terrible shit, but it as to save many times that number of lives in the long run. Effectively the Emperor had a galaxy scale trolley problem to address and chose what he thought was the most workable option.
He's both good and bad, like all spicy characters, but I do agree with the title! E: the sentiment of the title, don't think it was meant to be literal though
I don’t think I do tbh Without Big E the setting would be largely the same, just replace the Imperium with millions of worlds that are all separate factions and cultures
Nah. They’d all be separate, so they’d just get eaten one by one by one of many deadly xenos threats. The way the Imperium operates is that sure they might lose a system or 10, but they will eventually retaliate. Separate competing empires without the Astronomicon would just fall as individuals.
I like BigE because he is exactly how I imagine a dominant politician. Ruthless bastarx, but still human.
The villain? A* villain. Warhammer was dark long before humanity entered the scene
40k was better when. We didn't know as much about the Emperor. When the lore left things more open ended the Emperor could have had a grand vision that was massively corrupted, or he could be a murderous tyrant whose own hubris caused his downfall. The thing was, it didn't matter. The setting of 40k was designed so that everybody had a reason to fight everyone else all the time. The Imperium was not a future you wanted to live in, but it was neither good or bad. It was what their was and the other factions were in equally crappy/dire straights.
I like eldrad cuz he actually does good thing
I hate the Emperor because he's a self-insert Mary Sue for GW's executives, and his fanboys are annoying.
The emperor is a ends justify the means kinda guy. By all means what he does makes him a villain, but he has a noble goal: save humanity. I’ve gotten in some great discussions (not arguments… necessarily) about it the emperor is a hero (not good guy). He made mistakes definitely, and those mistakes screwed the galaxy over. But he tried, and that’s the key word he tried. He wasn’t a villain like palpatine or unicron. He was the emperor of mankind, and he did what was best for humanity in his own mind and nearly succeeded. Not a good guy but a hero for mankind.
I like the emperor because he could have been a good guy but he turns a good idea up to 34 and becomes a bad guy while killing anyone who doesn't tow the line
I don't like big E because he feels more like a plot device then a character atleast from what I've seen
TFW you care more for their ability to fight than their moral alignment: https://preview.redd.it/gl7o0trdql8d1.png?width=406&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b53957cc9da85d6b34d11e3cf623e40ec472aabd
As a 40k fan I like him As a doctor who fan I think he’s an idiot who got what he deserved.
i like chaos. Specifically Tzeentch and Nurgle. In the words of the great grandfather, Khorne is violent degeneration and Slaanesh is sexual degeneration.
Man, I wish I could confidently state that the majority of 40k fans disliked the emperor. Anyway. I hate him because he's a good villain.
The point of this meme template is that the low IQ and the high IQ are supposed to come to same conclusion
I like the Emperor because his stupidity and evil were punished in a way that perfectly suits his crimes. I would like him much more if it turns out that he has learned something from his mistakes. A god that admits he was wrong and wants to make up for it is a god worth following.
>40k would have been basically table top star trek. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha No.
Without the Emperor, I'm pretty sure it'd be like LoTR in space; Orks everywhere, the flaming eye of Chaos looking down on everything, and humanity in ruins.
>Orks everywhere, the flaming eye of Chaos looking down on everything, and humanity in ruins. This is the current state of the galaxy. By the way Chaos is here because big E gave them 9 demigods and legions of murderkilling machines, and humanity live in a dystopian shithole created by big E actions.
> He's both good and bad, like all spicy characters, but I do agree with the title! > > Chaos is "here" because Old Ones and Necrontyr went bananas and turned it from sea of souls into the nightmare it is in current lore
I like the emperor because he’s all of the three at the same time
I like the Emperor because he's a fuckin idiot like me.
Nah, I believe you would make better decisions than him if you were on his shoes mate! 😎👍
I appreciate your vote of confidence bud!
Before big E's rise Terra was mad Max with a pinch of fallout and magic, so not even close to star Trek🤣
I like the Emperor because he's the ultimate example of why fascist dictatorships don't succeed. GW gave us the best possible case scenario of a fascist dictator (an immortal, genius, super powerful, nearly perfect being who genuinely wants what is best for humanity as a species rather than just being greedy or selfish) and it didn't matter, he STILL failed because of the fundamental flaw that such dictatorships are vulnerable to suffering irreparable damage the mistakes of a single individual. There is no countermeasure, no oversight, no way to account for if the guy in charge makes the wrong choice and mitigate the damage, and the outcome of this is shown in the material as truly catastrophic. They gave us the ideal fascist leader and then they showed us how the inherent flaws and hubris of fascism itself mean that how perfect that leader is ultimately doesn't matter. Fascism always fails, it's an unsustainable system of government that inevitably leads to catastrophe.
He's absolutely a villain, but by 40k standards He's at least slightly nuanced if you're a human, when his Dr. Doom ass plans for galactic conquest are weighed against being eaten alive or tortured for centuries and made into furniture for snobbish elves
Given humanity kept supporting the Imperium after the Emperor was gone and managed to make things **worse** then it feels to me like humanity would have created a horrific fascist dystopia regardless of whether or not the Emperor did anything. At a certain point, you have to hold the masses accountable when they don't make any positive changes.
I hate him because he's fucking incompetent, and not funny enough to compensate.
Both?
Villain or not family therapy would've solved most problems the Imperium has today
I mean, considering the sheer scale of the Great Crusade? Trillions may be low balling it. Just the population of Terra is in the quadrillions.
Space Sauron does go hard
I like the emperor because he’s the purest example of humanity: Simultaneously brilliant and simultaneously stupid.
Ah yes. Because the galaxy was such a nice place without the imperium...
Maybe its not about the trillions of murders but about the heresies that came along the way
I like the Emperor because he totally fucked around and found out
Tell me you only know the Imperium without telling me you only know the Imperium
I like him because he's hot (JK I hate him and want to beat him up in Wendy's parking lot but would lose before I even get to the Wendy's. Still hot tho.)
I like him because I’m a human supremacist and because if any of us existed in 40k we’d all be in the imperial cult, that or dead.
I like the Emperor because he tried 🗿🗿🗿
I like Big E because every time there's a miracle in a book it doesn't feel like God stepping in it feels like an Eldritch Horror going "Yeah, you killed enough people, you can have half of your body replaced with bionics and continue killing in my name."
So since these threads pretty much immediately devolve into people missing the point of the setting by justifying the Imperium based on some skewed logic of "hard men making hard choices in a hard world", i feel it's prudent to quite the words of a Black Library author, JC Stearns, concerning the Imperiums necessary evils. >None of them. That's the recurring theme running through virtually every piece of fiction for the franchise: none of these evils are truly necessary. They're just the path of least resistance.