The Emperor:

[Weaver]

pre-thread disclaimer:
Okay folks. This is an opinion thread. That means things that are discussed in here will not necessarily be pure canon. In all honesty, this is really more from a literary standpoint than it is from an in-universe fluff standpoint.

When I started playing Warhammer (not too long ago, mind you. I'm not Rogue Trader Veteran like some of the gents on here. Not old enough Actually around the time 3rd Edition was released) I gobbled up fluff like nobody's business. And in the early stages, I formed this image of who the Emperor was, and it fixed in my head. He was quite the dude during his time. By far the greatest man to have ever lived in the Galaxy. He was a leader like no other, the finest tactician, the most brilliant orator, the genius in all things scientific, practical, and theoretical, and one of, if not the, most powerful psychic beings to boot. But in spite of all this, he was a human being. Not some ancient warp spawned entity of incalculable power and device, not some god given mortal form.

He was a human being.

Through his natural born talents, lifetime of study and practice, and creativity and a bit of luck, he set about his great task of making Humanity the dominant race of the galaxy, and damn near accomplished it too. He dragged his species out of the darkness of the age and brought about centuries of enlightenment and expansion. He was the epitome of what humanity could accomplish, through ambition and drive. The very definition of self-made success.

Now, the further I delved into fluff, the more I found out how wrong I was about all this. No, he 'no mere man'. He was some ancient being, spawned from the collected souls of shamans (what the hell..?) and was responsible essentially for everything amazing that humanity had accomplished. He was not the next in the line of great men like DaVinci, Einstein, Gandhi. He wasDaVinci, Einstein, and Gandhi[/i] (or at least, responsible for all their ideas and ideals. Heaven forbid we let that stay attributed to their own individual genius...). He was, instead of a man who accomplished godhood through his feats, a god who dallied in manhood. Indeed, he even started having absurd things like 'ineffable plans' and all that nonsense.

All this spoiled things a bit for me. Because I liked the Emperor as a man. The greatest man to have ever lived, true, but a man no less. It made all of his accomplishments seem all that much more spectacular, and all of his failings seem that much more understandable. Of course he was arrogant, prideful, and nearsighted as well as all of his positive things. He was only human.

I dunno, it seems to me like this has made the character of the Emperor so much more shallow and uninteresting. Instead of being a mortal struggling in a cold, uncaring galaxy full of Lovecraftian entities were either malicious or neutral towards him, he's become just another god in a galaxy full of gods all in one giant contest to see who's plans are the most ineffable. Boring, I say! Next they'll be telling us that the Emperor had planned the Horus Heresy all along, (Not entirely implausible, after that bit of crap squeezed out in Mechanicus about him being responsible for the Adeptus Mechanicus and setting up Mars for his future reception as the Omnissiah. Seriously...?).

Anyway, I was just wondering what you all thought of this, whether I was the only one who got this impression/felt this way or if there are some other folks out there who agree with me.

[dooombot]

i'm in agreement here.

the good thing about this being a game is we can ignore all the fluff we don't like. To me the Emperor will always be a man. The greatest man, yes, but a man just the same.

The whole bit about Shamans is, frankly, stupid IMO. As is the whole 'guiding of humanity since time immemorial'.

Until the GW Thought-Police come and take me away for brain-scrubbing, I will disregard all this.

[Jihad_Ragsta]

Yeah, I'm with you on this too. Cos I'm somewhat of a grimy old warhammer fan (17 years? Summat like that...) I still consider the Emperor a man. An awesome psyker, but still a man

[Idaan]

I'm in agreement too. The Emperor being the result of mass suicide of pre-human shamans ranks up with Sensei, Starchild, Space Dwarfs and other early stuff in terms of silliness. Though I know and understand how more seasoned 40k fans can feel nostalgia towards these bits of fluff, I find them not fitting my vision of the verse.

Though what really ruined the Emperor as a character for me is that in HH books he's described as a frowning 3 metre tall mute giant in blinged out power armour. I mean, where's the gravitas in that? Is BL literature written by Orks that important people have to be the size of a small car?

[Hector]

Whilst I agree that he was a man, so in fat have no conflict with the theories here... I like a bit of conflict so...

He was a god, probabaly a Chaos God who through use of the webway managed to take a human host, but thanks, possibly to some ancient work, was unable to go back to the Warp, (and thanks to a thread on here yesterday) it is very probable that as this god would have to be a major power, that he was Malal, which may put credence as to why the other Four Chaos gods and the Humans fight moe agianst each other than they do any other non-human.

I'll just dangle this hook now and...

[DarkMatter2]

Even in Rogue Trader he was depicted as being a god like nearly omniscient uberpsyker whose consciousness protected humanity spread across the galaxy. If he is so powerful in terms of psychic abilities, then calling him "just a man" because he isn't (in your version) 9 feet tall or able to crush a Space Marine with his bare hands only reflects a shallow viewpoint. If his consciousness is galactic, then he is less "just a man" than the largest and most steroid addled of Space Marines.

Any notion that he was just a clever man is wishful thinking based on the false principle that this would somehow make the fluff "deeper."

[Kirill]

I can't help but disagree..

There's a lot to be said about his origins, being the accumulation of the souls of ritual suicide shamans. And then there's the Sensei, and his return, being the starchild. A lot to be said, and quite a lot of it said in the form of strange facial expressions and odd grunting noises.

While i love the aspects that he is a man, struggling for his race in a dark, ever murderous galaxy, i can't help but love the idea of him being the puppet master even more.
Perhaps puppet master is a bit much, but it still gets my point across.
There's something i love so much about that enigmatic shadow, sitting right in front of you that you just can't grasp or see or pretend to understand.
His dream is to see you succeed, his plans ever reaching to take hold of the future and forge you and it, so humanity will live and be free.

I probably take it all to seriously, too. Imagining him in our world, in the times we've experienced, and the times we will experience. And it doesn't really have much bearing on the conversation of the Emperor as a figure of a tabletop wargame, and this doesn't exactly help from a fluff/literary point of view. But to give him a history, to represent him as great figures, it makes him feel like he's just there. Like everything he is working for is real. This really is (For me, at least) the ultimate incarnation of fluff and texture for 40k, to bring it so that you can damn near taste it and give you a piece of it inside your own mind.
To have so many ties into the past, thought our age does wonders for him as a character i can have a relationship with.

As he is, he evokes more in me than he does as a man. He doesn't do so well as a character inside the fluff perhaps, the distance of being a 'god-like' being dulls him down and makes him seem like the rest of the background, adding a sense that he's just like everyone else, in a bad way.
But ultimately i think he succeeds in doing more for me than he otherwise would.

TL;DR: Emperor as a puppet master works well for me and i can relate and enjoy his character much better than if he was a man.
Maybe i should just start typing those instead of whole walls of text. >.>

[Philip S]

pre-thread disclaimer:Anyway, I was just wondering what you all thought of this, whether I was the only one who got this impression/felt this way or if there are some other folks out there who agree with me.

I think you have an impression of the Emperor and you like it, so why not stick to it. As GW constantly point out; there is no such thing as 'canon' regarding 40K, it is all lies, half truth and myth. If ou do no like something you do not have to include it. It's a giant sandbox of ideas.

I put the Emperor as the Greek god Zeus. Not much to back this up, but it seems to suit. Seeing as the Emperor is a super powerful psyker, and he is associated with thunder. I think he is a thunder god, like Zues, but probably all the thunder gods of ancient earth. I wrote something about it here: Of Ghods and Primarchs

I'm quite happy to come up with all kinds of ideas for 40K, and I think you should stick to your guns and believe what you want. After all, the history of the Emperor is really only known to the Emperor, and any background that claims to know may be a chaos plot (even my ideas!).

The most important thing is to have fun, pick the bits you like, and share your thoughts with others.

Philip

[pookie]

why cant he have been both? after all he was a Human, born of parents, so will have had the same traits that you and i have, yet he was also something wholly diffrent, after all if he had been just a man, 40K wouldnt exhist.

remeber 40k is Sci Fantasy, not Sci Fiction, theres whole heaps of diffrences, its liek Star Trek and Star Wars. Both set in space, both use space ships, yet one deals with real 'life' tech, the other fantasy 'tech'.

[Maidel]

To me the Emperor will always be a man. The greatest man, yes, but a man just the same.

The whole bit about Shamans is, frankly, stupid IMO. As is the whole 'guiding of humanity since time immemorial'.

But I dont get it.

If you are saying hes 'just a man' how did he live for 1000s of years.

Ok - even if you count out the bit about being born in the dark ages - he united earth, conquered mars and ruled the ever expanding imperium for hundreds of years before the hersey - how can 'just a man' do that?

The problem is, when you start pulling at a bit of the fluff that you dont like - you realise that other bits start unravelling - unfortunately its a take it all or leave it all situation.

[ashc]

The way the Emperor has been written does take a lot of the mythos away, and makes it feel like he didn't achieve much at all to be honest, except for, as I have stated before, acting like a massive tool. Maybe this was his original intent? - If it was, then it was a resounding success.

[ToXiK]

But I dont get it.

If you are saying hes 'just a man' how did he live for 1000s of years.

Ok - even if you count out the bit about being born in the dark ages - he united earth, conquered mars and ruled the ever expanding imperium for hundreds of years before the hersey - how can 'just a man' do that?

The problem is, when you start pulling at a bit of the fluff that you dont like - you realise that other bits start unravelling - unfortunately its a take it all or leave it all situation.

quoted for truth...
The big E is far more than a man thats just something we have to cope with although in the more recent HH books he has the traits of man and seems alot more human

[Maidel]

quoted for truth...
The big E is far more than a man thats just something we have to cope with although in the more recent HH books he has the traits of man and seems alot more human

I dont think they are mutually exclusive - the primarches were made in a lab - and they were still 'human' -

Emperor = human emotions, shaman infused super body.

Works for me

[Dvil]

Though what really ruined the Emperor as a character for me is that in HH books he's described as a frowning 3 metre tall mute giant in blinged out power armour. I mean, where's the gravitas in that? Is BL literature written by Orks that important people have to be the size of a small car?

I'd just like to play devil's advocate here and point out that (similar to Maidel's point) if he was indeed merely human, then in order to survive for the >200 years it took to unify Terra and perform the Great Crusade then he would have certainly needed to make himself live longer than most. Since most Astartes are made to be 2/2.5 metres by their Marinehood, couldn't the big E have given himself a souped-up version to become 3m tall?

[Gue'Vesa'Vre Kilo]

I dont think they are mutually exclusive - the primarches were made in a lab - and they were still 'human' -

Emperor = human emotions, shaman infused super body.

Works for me

I'm in agreement with this. The Emperor gained the powers and intelligence from the Shaman, therefore he lives that long, therefore he achieves so much. Yet he did not neccessarily gained the 'experience' from the shamans, as in experiences of life, therefore he has human emotions, which are flawed, therefore he makes mistakes, therefore... The Horus Heresy happens.

[ToXiK]

I dont think they are mutually exclusive - the primarches were made in a lab - and they were still 'human' -

Emperor = human emotions, shaman infused super body.

Works for me

where the pimarches human though even there marines saw them as demi gods only just below the emperor marines couldnt look them in the face or answer there questions when first meeting them.

we know they can die via poisons and decapertation could the emperor?

[Maidel]

where the pimarches human though even there marines saw them as demi gods only just below the emperor marines couldnt look them in the face or answer there questions when first meeting them.

we know they can die via poisons and decapertation could the emperor?

Well they certainly ACTED human - the primarches shown in the HH books were all bickering children who fell to chaos because of greed, vanity or personal weakness.

and the emperor could die like any other - he would be dead now if not for the golden throne - the same as guilliman would be dead if not for his stasis field.

[ToXiK]

yeah they act human but then so does the Emperor in the the last church both are infused with the warp and the primarches are from the dna of the Emperor then surly neither are human?

[Bishop Rook]

He's supposed to be the greatest psyker ever, yet Eldrad apparently could farsee better, and he nearly gets choked by a Ork (we know that there are regular psykers capable of ripping Titans apart, yet the Emperor has trouble with one Ork!?).

He's supposed to be a brilliant scientist, but he didn't even create power armor (it was recovered from an STC) and he had a helping hand from the Chaos Gods in creating the Primarchs.

He's supposed to be a great leader, but made massive errors in judgement during the Great Crusade, pissing off half the Primarchs.

I think it's safe to say that most of what we know about the Emperor is Imperial propaganda. Whenever we're told things about him, usually from an Imperial perspective, he's always painted as perfect. Whenever we're shown things about him, he's... less impressive.

So no, he's hardly impressive if he was just a man, nevermind something more.

[ARVO]

If the Emperor planned the Horus Heresy it would add so much more depth to the story. It's an essential part of the human condition that we need to suffer before we realize what we are doing wrong. The Emperor knows us better than we know ourselves. That's why he is what he is.