The real problem with the Emperor and why he was such a bad dad is that the reader knows everything about chaos down to the tiniest detail and the actual character barely understands what he's dealing with.
The Emperor is so built up as an infallible super genius before someone even reads a story and plays the game that the idea that the Emperor doesn't understand who the Chaos gods are, their goals and motivations or their powers and capabilities isn't even considered in the first place even though it was stated way back in 2ED.
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The problem with the Emperor is that he's a superhuman genius with tens of thousands of years of experience and psychic powers, but still pretty fricking terrible at understanding people.
Fans being morons that don't understand the difference between their knowledge and character knowledge is also a big issue, but the writing is pretty flawed too.
I feel like plenty of autistic and other flavors of bad at socializing people can be like that in real life. If anything not being able to understand people while doing everything he can to help them in his godlike misguided way is very much in character for him.
Godlike power in what is just a flawed man is terrifying, and look at how it ends up? How else COULD it have ended? Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And it's easier to count which primarchs aren't autistic at this point
He's clearly smart enough to be high-functioning though, and can literally read their fricking minds.
>Absolute power corrupts absolutely
This is bullshit though.
It's difficult to describe any behaviour Ganker won't call autistic.
That said, the primarchs being mental makes sense to me. They're almost literally peerless: everyone in the universe is either a peon, a fellow primarch, or the Emperor. The latter two they grew up without and spend very little time with later. Of course they don't have any real social or emotional skills.
He doesn’t understand people after thousands of years because he’s just super autistic.
Big E is a DAoT superweapon
don't care, would still answer the call
if you wouldn't you're a fricking homosexual
>Big E is a DAoT superweapon
This.
Literally not canon.
GW and BL does literally not know the canon and should be ignored for all questions regarding lore.
headcannon is more important than any codex from 1998.
The problem with the Emperor is that people keep looking at him as a character when he's a fricking plot-device.
This.
Also this.
Reading Fantasy Empire lore, it is just so much better to have actual human emperors who can be as human as possible. Good dudes and mad crazies. Pretenders and civil strife. Contrast to "superhuman" emps is massive. Not having models is even a bonus because they can die. Karl Franz gets boring as he needs to be good statesman and hammer-swinger. No faults which would be interesting.
Gore Vandire and that Beheader Assassin ofc are functionally (mad ) emperors, but it is basically only two times. Terra Nova split has potential and it barely is mentioned. And at least I ignore 8+ ed marvel lore
Why is this literally every /tg/ thread that isn't a general now?
Seriously make a drinking game out of it, any thread will have some "uhg did we really need THIS clogging up the catalog" equivalent reply within 5-6 posts, literally no other board has this phenomenon
>literally no other board has this phenomenon
They have it, I've seen it, they're just idiots who want attention.
/tgg/ NOW!
The thing is, from a pure storytelling perspective, each of the Primarchs are a representation of one of Humanity's Ur-Legends and Mythologies.
>Russ is the Prose Edda
>Angron is Frankenstein
>Magnus is either Icarus or Faust
>Vulkan is a knight of Arthurian Legends
>Sanguinius is Jesus
>Guilliman is the best of every Greek ruler.
So who the Emperor is largely changes on who he's involved with.
Magnus is literally one big Odin reference anon, and how does Frankenstein fit into a selection of "Ur-Legends"
frankenstein was written at a time where people where electrocuting corpses, making them walk and the idea of mankind being able to play at being god seemed more possible than ever. It was one of the first stories about mankinds need to be responsible with newfound scientific power, but it also features themes of innocent creatures corrupted by the hatred of superstitious mankind (Book monster was a beautifull man with freaky eyes) and the similarities/ conflicts of father and son.
You do have to really stretch to get angron.
Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein is the scientist, wisdom is knowing Frankenstein is the monster, people who read the book know that the there are strong father son parallels in the relationship between them so they both can be called Frankenstein.
Frankenstein is a very basic IQ test.
>true moron: Frankenstein was the monster.
>half-moron: Frankenstein was the doctor.
>non-moron: Doctor Frankenstein was the Monster.
That's not even really true. Society was the Monster, Doctor Frankenstein was just completely unprepared in the one moment he needed to step up and take responsibility, the Creature was innocent and abused by anyone who literally saw him, and it ends up as a cycle of fear and revenge where the Doctor doesn't want the Creature to spawn a terrible race of other undead creatures (which makes no sense by the way) while the Creature by that point in the story is willing to threaten and murder.
>enlightened sennin: the reader is the monster and Franken Fran his waifu
The Adam Frankie in the book had beautiful proportions and titanic stature, and also transcluscent skin, corpse-like eyes, limp and oily hair, and a malformed nose. You could see his body parts moving around through the surface of his body. As soon as he was animated, Victor fell deep into Uncanny Valley territory and chimped out about seeing his creation in full instead of autistically focusing on one feature at a time.
I mean, I feel like the spirit of what anon is saying is right just not the execution. They are all supposed to be the legends of 40k. Real men twisted by history into demigods and demons with their actual history forgotten.
Also HOW THE FRICK is Angron Frankenstein? He's literally Spartacus. Like his story is literally JUST Spartacus. Also Frankenstein doesn't end up embracing his monstrosity and forcing it on others.
The real problem with the Emperor is that you are a Horus Heresy secondary who is being spoon fed ADB's daddy issues.
First, we will make it easy for your onions brain and use a Disney metaphor you can understand, he did a "Finding Nemo" and searched down the whole galaxy for his missing son. And then did it another 19 times. When he met his sons they were also fully grow adult men so it isn't as though he personally got to raise them in any capacity so he didn't even have a chance to be "a dad" in their formative years. When he did find them, regardless of their flaws, he still gave each of them the most important job in the galaxy.
As for Chaos, he was in an explicitly no-win situation. If he tells people about Chaos they fall, if he doesn't tell them about it they get curious and fall. Ultimately he chose the lesser of two evils knowing that the mere thought of Chaos is enough for their seeds to germinate. You aren't going to search up Two Girls One Cup on your own but if I tell you "don't search up Two Girls One Cup" now you know what it is and at least could search it up.
Finally, the Emperor ultimately sacrificed himself for the good of all humanity and has been in perpetual pain for 10,000 years. No matter what you say led him up to that point the Emperor was a self sacrificing messiah for the entire human race.
sorta but the post mortem is more benign. Literature really shouldnt be subjected to examination like this but to simplify here goes....
emperor quit the great crusade On the way back he took a time out to tell magnus, and jaghatai I guess, that NO PSYKERS, except everyone elses psykers were fine He them went to terra and became incommunicado for literateraly any reason, even Dorn who was told to fortify terra at any cost got told to shut up, Shortly after Magnus used some bad words to tell the emps Horus was evil but emps didnt believe him cuz of the bad words. Horus really was evil and he made angryron, cruze, fulgrim, mortarion, magnus (anyway) lorgrar and probably some others im forgetting evil. He attacked earth but got BTFO by the emperor who died in its defense. TLDR
1. woah cool it with the antisemitism
2. even before the abnettverse the emperor was always implied/explicitly stated to have a trump card against chaos. the chaos gods originally wanted him as a champion of chaos undivided, but he betrayed them and stole their power. They underestimate him but way back in 1ED there was always the implication that he was already a minor chaos god of law and order who protected humanity. Some part of his plan or actions knowingly or by accident is a HUGE existential threat to the chaos gods throttle on the warp.
It might even just be something simple like his presence in the warp can stabilize it, allowing for neutral or benign warp entities safe harbor to recoalesce
see what anon posted here
Finally someone who actually understands this.
Emperor was always between a rock and a hard place when it came to Chaos.
Same with his sons, can't really be a "good dad" when you don't even get the chance to raise them anyway.
All of them were grown ass adults when he found them, the frick is he supposed to do with them? Take them to Terra and play catch in the Palace's backyard?
The big problem with the Emperor (and the Horus Heresy in general) is that he is supposed to be a perfect semi-divine God whose actions and relations are described in minute details by B-tier (or lower) writers.
The Horus Heresy should've been kept vague and mythological, but GW wanted those capeshit bucks.
I dunno, kinda not sharing info with your generals about this very important thing you are fighting is a very big blunder
The Emperor knew all about Chaos tens of thousands of years before the Empire has even been a thing. He's been a psyker for almost 50 thousand years.
This is just wrong. He communed with the chaos gods some time after the year 20000, post the first human warp jump.
>Why did you shitheads do it?
>It was funny.
>You suck; I'm going to ban religion and starve you to death.
https://awesomeliesblog.wordpress.com/2022/02/20/the-nature-of-chaos/
1989 design doc on Chaos.
An additional issue is people think the emperor is a dad.
He's not. Literally all the primarchs were created as sentient tools and any semblance of parental care was purely on the emperor's part to get them to do something.
I think this wasn't really elaborated on in early editions/black library. Later on though they show that the emperor absolutely had a paternal bond with the primarchs, one that was problematic for him and prevented him from utilizing them correctly. In his fight with horus, even pre abbnetverse, hes depicted as shedding his humanity and love for horus as his son to be able to strike him down. In the old version of the duel the Emperor holds back until he sees Sanguinus die.
In the new version we see the Emperor multiple times explicitly show that he is torn between seeing them as failed tools and real sons. Some parts of the emperor's psyche calls Guilliman a traitor and failure, a tool that didn't meet it's purpose. But parts of him also call him his last hope, the last loyal son, the hope of a species, the inheritor of his legacy.
It might be my headcannon, as is often the case with 40k, but the writers have clearly showed he both cares but will sacrifice them if necessary to achieve his goals. Would the primarchs have been slain like the Thunder Warriors after peace was achieved? Most likely, horus ruminates as much in the very first book of the HH back in 2006. But that doesn't mean he didn't have a special relationship with them.
You can hate nu-40k and black library but I think that having just the one Primarch return in the form of Guilliman is functional. Its just the story is shit around it.
It is highly, highly unlikely that the Primarchs or Legions would have been eradicated. It is almost a certainty that their massive intake of new marines would have been halted, and probably downsized in general, but it is unlikely in the extreme that he was going to exterminate them all. Why would he, when he can let time and attrition do the job for him?
Because the primarchs were more superhuman and the Emperor was a human supremacist. There is a reason Horus was named Warmaster but not appointed to the High Lords of Terra.
He put normal humans above Horus, which was part of the seed of his downfall. He also killed every single superhuman follower he had when their purpose was fulfilled.
The Primarchs were intended to be Perpetuals to walk alongside him. Once they had done their work, they could all, Primarch and Emperor, step back into the shadows. He also never killed his Custodians, and they were far more superhuman than anything short of a Primarch.
He used the Thunder Warriors, then killed them. The custodes he kept, but there are many references in the books that imply he was going to kill the Space Marines when he was done with them, and maybe the Primarchs too.
And the vast, vast majority of those references are space marines worried that they will be dispensed with. Usually traitor space marines. Again: no Custodian was dispensed with, and they are 100% superhuman. So the assertion that he killed every superhuman is simply wrong.
>killed
He never had the opportunity dumbass. It's like saying he didn't want to conquer the entire galaxy because a civil war happened before he finished doing so.
Lol. Two space marines arguing about the Emperor's intentions in this thread.
no evidence of this. custodes were his first superhuman creation and he never turned on them
Sauce on Custodes coming before Thunder Warriors? Thunder Warriors were genetically unstable and basically had like 3x the amount of harmful mutations as the geneseed that made it to the space marines. They all black raged basically. If he had the technology to make custodes, why would he not just make Space Marines and bother with the botched Thunder Warriors?
>If he had the technology to make custodes, why would he not just make Space Marines and bother with the botched Thunder Warriors?
Why bother with Astartes at all if he can make Custodes?
Because Custodes are far more expensive than Space Marines, and the Emperor had very few candidates who he deemed worthy of the program.
Custodes are irrelevant to the question of if he could make Astartes than why would ever make Thunder Warriors?
I kind of agree. I have a friend who read the Impossible City book and he said it did a decent job of being about the Emperor and having him still not lose the mystique.
Even now in nu-40k we don't really have any idea on his origins, the extent of his powers, what he really looks like... HIS NAME.
not sure why we would get these answer in 40k vice 30k. we do know what he looks like though, a boring old man suffering intense pain. This is what sisters of silence see and they are the only ones unaffected by his glamours. Name doesnt really matter, probably has had literally hundreds if not thousands of names at this point.
custodians were personally created by the emperor, individually. Thats pretty much all we know is that they are unique pieces of genetic artistry. The mass produced guys go through an evolution and power up as time goes but the ones the emperor personally creates are basically exquisite from day one. Now granted we dont know how custodes are made post heresy, and they clearly are so maybe its different now, but thats your answer for the unification war period
The first Custodians appeared during his earliest conquests on Terra in the Age of Strife. That was before the first Thunder Warriors, they came very close to one another but the general timelines seems to be that he started making Custodians and by the time he had a dozen or so he realised that he needed something that was faster to make.
adb is that you? how come you only got one siege of terra book?
daily reminder that if you are not a word bearer fan you aint white
Lorgar was right all along !
the problem with the emperor is he is insanely powerful, to the extent that you HAVE to sideline him to have actual conflict. Its the superman problem, to tell any compelling story you have to have kryptonite. In HH they decided on "he cant leave le throne because magnus" which is extremely underwhelming. Like if magnus could completely sideline the emperor and cripple the webway project on accident how was it ever going to succeed? Also why isnt the webway always chaos' trump card in every situation if they can just commit infinite daemons through it? Of course you arent supposed to as questions about this its just a macguffin to prevent the emperor from winning the heresy on day 1.
I think there are a lot of things that are heavily in Chaos favor during the heresy.
1. Communication is extremely poor at the FTL level, going exclusively through Astropaths or letters sent via warp mail carrier. This means the emperor had no idea about shit like Istvann V. Because he is relying on the reports of (as far as he knows) loyal Horus, he has no reason to suspect anything is wrong.
2. He is in another dimension fighting demons and trying to master webway technology.
3. The primarchs dont work together at all, none of them trust each other. This made it easy for Horus to sick Russ on Magnus and turn the other primarchs.
4. As powerful as the Emperor is he relies on ships to do FTL, just like any other human, so he can't be anywhere at any time. The front of the Great Crusade could be months or years away from Terra potentially.
yeah sorry I wasnt clear, im not trying to debate in universe power levels, im saying from a structural point of view in story telling a character like the emperor is pretty much impossible to have as an active character, they only work as a background myth
>Is it though?
Always was, never mind 40k. But even more so there, where chaos corruption generally starts as a bargain struck when backed into a corner by chaos itself. Not as a result of having power.
>The closest thing Big E had to peers kept telling him how engineering immortal Super Soldiers was a bad idea
You mean the peer that sabotaged his super soldier plan? Not sure why you'd assume that was a reliable source of information.
it is funny how the writers dont realize that the character moralizing about how his project would go wrong was literally the one who made it go wrong. Also they are so bad at writing her plan is literally moronic. We have to believe erda is pretty smart so how did she expect "i teleported le primarchs around, one literally to somewhere else on terra" to translate into the emperor forgetting about them and deciding space marines were a bad idea
Writter wanted the emperor to be gray, but he was against super-satan so it failed.
There are no gods in 40k, there are aliens native to another dimension of physical reality and there are psychic powers.
Technically the one who said creating super soldiers was bad, was also the one who betrayed him and started the sequence of events that led to the Heresy.
That suggests that space marines were a perfectly good idea, and perpetuals were a mistake.
But they seem to have an even worse betrayal rate than primarchs.
Fair enough.
Not sure what you mean by investment though. As far as I know no one knew how to create them.
I think at that point you're basically second-guessing the setting itself. Arguably marines ought to be far more useful than either the fiction or games suggest, because on the whole the strategically brilliant super-elite highly mobile super soldiers ought to be mostly doing is zipping around fighting lots of battles they basically can't lose and fricking off before the enemy can react. Which would be annoying to play and boring to read about.
A fair fight is a tactical failure, but a practical necessity for (pick-up) games.
Rogue Trader marines weren't any different from other editions. Until Primaris I mean.
>"the best of the best of the best,"
They are, but most of the time not even that is enough, luck is an important factor in the life of a space marine.
The problem with the Emps is that what was once called “fluff” became “lore” and myth became a decade+ long series of books that autisticly explain the most minutiae of details, written with mid tier writers about godlike beings tens of thousands of years into the future.
This extreme juxtaposition with the “fluff” it’s based on meant the entire Horus Heresy is the writers writing themselves out of corner after corner they have written themselves into.
Except that's literally not true. The Emperor has had almost nothing explained about him and they actually retconned what little we did know about him as us actually knowing nothing about him.