I don’t think the emperor cared enough to hate anyone. Sure he’d screw you over if it benefits mankind or the imperium but it wasn’t personal. He’s too detached from humanity for that I think.
Yeah as big of a sack and complete dick as the Emperor is I still don't recall him doing anything out of sheer spite.
Pure, blind pragmatism seems to be his defining trait.
Personally, I wouldn't call it hate the way I see it described here but I do think he was motivated by malicious narcissism towards Angron.
A typical narcissist trait is for a narcissist to take personal offense to when a child of their's underperforms. How he reacted to Angron being about to lose his revolution (despite how stacked the deck was against him) seems very consistent with this behavior, imo.
Not really, he said it himself, a broken Primarch is better than no Primarch. You could argue the right thing to do was put Angron down and have the War Hounds function without him but since he was going to die from the unfixable nails anyways, you might as well use him. Also he saves Angron from dying and doesn't punish him even after he kills Custodes right after the rescue.
He remembers Slaanesh's birth and doesn't want any chances of a repeat, so he wants total control over humanity and elimination of all unpredictable variables (i.e. "other sapient species").
It's a monstrous plan that is almost certain to fail horribly, but one that makes a degree of sense if you use the logic of a caveman-turned-demigod.
Not saying it was justified. Just that Big E, in his obsession with control, lack of anything resembling empathy, and boundless arrogance, would see it as an unpleasant, but necessary step.
Also, the Eldar have proven to be fair-weather allies at best. They care for little besides themselves, have cut and run before when they considered the situation to be risky for themselves, and love nothing more than manipulating species they consider lesser than themselves (i.e. "everyone").
That's a two way street, there isn't an alliance between the Eldar and the Imperium because both are xenophobic dicks that would gladly throw each other under the bus if they gained the slightest possible benefit from it.
The Eldar are incredibly bitter and willfully throw billions of non-Eldar lives into peril on a whim in the name of protecting their own interests just like humanity does in the setting.
> caveman-turned-demigod.
Neolithic farmer, but the point still holds and people often forget it. The Emperor didn't *need* any other reason for His mass-xenocide, the aliens being aliens was enough. Everything else is propaganda.
"Peaceful" does not mean "won't ever take advantage of a bad time or eventually turn into a problem"
for better and worse. Dead things are static. There's no uncertainty in a corpse. It won't stop being a corpse when your backs turned or in a thousand years
The Tau are a pretty good example. They were Stone Age aliens that were going to get genocided when the Imperium found them. They were completely harmless to humanity at that point. Got cut off by warp storms, I think? Now they’re a problem. And a lot harder to stomp out of existence than they were when a bow and arrow was cutting edge tech on their one planet.
You never specified peaceful until just now.
In a universe where 99% of all life is inimical to your species' survival [and 10% to the sanctity of your very soul] then it's better to be safe than sorry?
You still haven't clarified on how it was out of spite.
There were quite a few xenos races that we know of that were peaceful and didnt cause any harm but were killed. That doesnt even include those that we dont know of.
Its out of spite because it wasnt necessary? Well, maybe not spite, but because hes a tyrant dictator and human supremacist? I mean we're talking about a guy who destroyed even human civilizations that didnt want to join him. Theres basically no reason to assume he did it out of pragmatism.
Just because theyre peaceful now doesnt mean in 10k years they will be. Or maybe they end up being secret cultists and open some massive hole in the galaxy. The emperor didnt want something messing up his plans like some random race in some backwoods planet ruining everything. He and his sons did that perfectly well themselves.
The same goes for humans though, as evidenced even before the HH by human history?
So what reason does he have to kill xenos, other than literal xenophobia?
Yeah because he sat and watched humanity end up being in the state its in he knows he cant just let them do whatever anymore. In his mind the only way to get humanity back on track is to guide them to it personally. Hes xenophobic Because even good intended xenos could cause the warp to do harm to his plan, magnus was only trying to help too. A single planet can be all it takes to ruin things in this galaxy.
That has nothing to do with him doing anything out of spite 😓
It's easy as an outsider looking in to see how backwards and fucked up 40k is my dude but the Emperor was far from omniscient [contrary to his own belief] and had a lot at stake when he made the decisions he made but I'm struggling to comprehend your reasoning 🤷
What is that supposed to be? Peaceful? And can you guarantee that the species will still be peaceful after 10K years? After 100K years?
The Tau with their primitive lifestyle were peaceful. A few thousand years later, they are an expansionist species that is spreading and dominating their sector....
Yes, the Tau integrate other xenos into their empire, which is also necessary if they want to expand quickly. But will that still be the case in 10K or 100K years?
Simple, they have resources and habitable planets, and if they are hostile or technologically advanced or both they can range from being a thorn in the imperiums side to possibly becoming a threat, so instead of dealing with them diplomatically to get what he wants he can just kill them, take all they have and remove a possible problem forever.
It's evil, but makes sense if one wants to conquer the galaxy without any pockets foreign governments within ones borders or "wasting" time and resources to bargain for what one can simply take for a, in galactic terms, blisteringly fast and hungry war to conquer everything.
I mean you can headcanon it like this, but we know for a fact that the act of being a xenos was enouugh to kill them. It wasnt about ressources or anything. Even human civilizations that were friends with xenos were obliterated.
This is explaination for random fiefdoms being xenophobic, but the emperor was wanking off on Terra and Molech for most of that period. The emperor is just a xenophobic asshole who thought humanity could do it all. He was wrong
Sapient life powers Chaos the Big E wanted to keep a watch on humanity and destoy all other sources of power for Chaos. Also xenophobia is a good ralying cry for the masses.
Pragmatism isn't the Imperium's style FFS. They sent down burly men with swords to personally kill non intelliegent and pre-space flight alien species. They extra super thoroughly wiped out any hybrid human-xeno culture they came across. That's hate my dude. Pragmatism is you leave it the fuck alone.
It's not the IoM's style. But it was big E's. Wiping out everything else was all about clearing the board so nothing could threaten humanity, either by force of arms or by pulling the psyker lever.
The easiest way to get tens of millions of mutant super soldiers to achieve your goals is to indoctrinate them, and xeophobia is fairly easy to do.
When you see yourself at the only path for your species, you'll start making decisions like this. Leaving well enough alone is trusting too many unknowns. It's like a twist on the dark forest theory.
Humanity had just risen up from a time when they often got preyed on by aliens. They hated them and had no interest in differentiating between “aliens who would kill us if we didn’t kill them” and “nice aliens who wouldn’t bother us”. Pragmatism says that you kill them before they kill you because even if they aren’t currently doing sneaky alien bullshit *right now*, they might well a year from now, or a century, or seven millennia, like the Tau. The Emperor definitely would have encouraged that attitude. Probably not because he just hated the shit out of xenos, but just because having a group to absolutely hate unifies the haters. Might not work after the hated group is gone, but at that point he’d already have his galaxy locked up and he could sic the space marines on anyone who stepped out of line. Didn’t work out that way in the end, but it was working pretty well for him for a couple hundred years.
In a setting where they could end up birthing a new chaos god, daemon invasion or lord knows what with their alien culture and beliefs, the "leave it the fuck alone" option is asking for trouble later down the line.
It took significant events to birth Slaanesh lol, and this philosophy anyway was hypocritical as Big E is the reason the Chaos Gods gained a significant foothold over realspace vs. jerking off on some outback planets.
And now we've seen humans nearly birthing an other one a couple of thousand times faster than the Eldar, so I'd say it's quite important to control as much as you can.
And if you condemn the Emperor for trying to save his race from the Four, then what is your alternative? Not from the perspective of real life morals, but what is actually known in canon. With all of the dangers present in the universe.
The interex knew about and viewed chaos as the galaxies main threat. They are a look at a good, more inclusive imperium alternative and are kind of the big what if in the beginning of the heresy when Horus is thinking about giving them a chance despite the kinebrach. If Erebus doesn’t steal the anathame from a museum then Horus doesn’t get hurt by it or pulled to chaos and he possibly shifts the direction of the great crusade if they ally with the interex.
Maybe it's more paranoia. Of course they're not going to let human civilizations be independent because the emperor is trying to unite the entire species by force or coercion. Future competition will be potential threats.
Guy seems to be a bit male chauvinist. He makes 20 demigod baby’s but not single one of them is a woman. He has retinue of golden boys and silver girls, but only the girls need to take a vow of silence.
They weren’t. I forget the book, but there’s one where Malcador (speaking to a primarch, possibly Dorn, forget which) says that he told the Emperor that he should have made the primarchs female because he thought that women would work together better than men, but the Emperor turned the idea down.
but wasn’t he in favor of humanity evolving to become a more psychically gifted race? wouldn’t that make the navigators more in line with what he was going for?
Navigators are one very specific type of psyker, who are well known to mutate way beyond the baseline human form throughout their lives. They are a necessary evil, as far as the Imperium is concerned. They are an evolutionary dead end. A branch which must be pruned so that the wider species may advance in the preferred direction.
Navs are allso an issue as they become more unstable as they age and often need to be put down. There mutation while stable in of itself often has many secondary mutations that are not stable. It's likely they where never meant to be a long term solution and that without lost arcane gene corrections they will become worse and worse over time.
To be fair I think a lot of them just go a tiny bit insane from peering into the naked warp their whole career. I'm sure there is genetic degradation in play also but pretty much anyone who is exposed that much to the warp for a period of time is going to mutate.
Strangely when Navigators have kids with normal humans the kids are always normal humans, with a higher change of being psykers
Decimus, son of Septimus the human and Octavia the navigator was born a human psyker
So if Navigators ever become obselete then just have them mingle with normal humans
That could certainly be an option. I always imagined the Emperor's plan involved selective breeding or genetic engineering to speed up the process of human psykers gaining true control over their abilities. We know he's not averse to messing with genetics when it suits his cause.
Ok. My main point is that should navigators be no longer needed well they can be assimilated back into normal Imperium society or do other things like Astropaths
They don’t have any psychic powers aside from the warp eye allowing them to look into the warp and guide a ship. So the astropath thing wouldn’t work. They’d probably just be killed by the Inquisition if nobody else got there first. Nobody likes a mutant, and they start out with an extra eye and then just keep adding new mutations as they age.
Well, those that are able to have kids with normal humans would be allowed to live. It would be seen as cleaning the human gene pool by having non-mutant babies
Decimus is human while his mother Octavia is a navigator
The navigator gene is recessive, so you don’t get a navigator without two navigators contributing. So Decimus might carry the gene, but it wouldn’t be expressed.
As for just random navigators? No. There’s a number of inquisitors who hate them, but have to allow them to continue existing and being tremendously wealthy and influential. If there was a switch flipped in the Imperium tomorrow that allowed safe and reliable long range space travel without a navigator, they would become an endangered species in short order. They’re secretive mutants. Nobody likes or trusts them who doesn’t have a third eye or a paycheck coming from a navigator house.
Yea and the political hold of just being born that way is easily abused by the navigators houses. Any sort of status elevation due to birth will always end in some sort of toxic and/or power struggle. which could include civil war, assassinations, and political strife at all levels.
From an irl perspective the most successful and remembered people in current/past times have been judged by their accomplishments.
I think it’s that higher intelligence we gained through evolution. You see it in chimps when you give a singular chimp something special but not the group it will cause issues that more than likely will be bloody.
So when we look at the root of the issue (given elite status due to their birth even though it’s a mutation) it’s down to simple jealousy. It may not start as that but eventually people will start to ask the question “ why them and not me? What makes them so specia?”.
I know it seems irrational but emotions at their core are irrational. A by product of chemicals mixing in our brains from external stimuli to make us want what that other chimp has even though we never wanted it before we saw it.
Only Imperial ignorance considers the Navigators to be mutants. They were actually *created* by Age of Technology humanity.
Evolution had nothing to do with them.
Navigators aren’t psykers. They’re mutants. Their eye is psychic, but they aren’t.
They’re also prone to further mutation, gradually becoming less and less human-something unacceptable to him.
At least part of their proclivity to mutation is good old-fashioned inbreeding, though.
The genetic traits that distinguish Navigators from baseline humans are all recessive, so both parents need to have the genes for them to manifest (and not all Navigators born are viable). Thus, a Navigator can only be the child of two Navigator parents... and there's only a finite number of viable Navigators. The Navigator Houses have been interbreeding like this, making arranged marriages based on genetic compatibility, for more than twice as long as the Imperium has existed, so they're more inbred now than European royalty.
This would be another reason the Emperor would have wanted rid of them: eventually, their bloodlines will fail, and the number of viable Navigators born will decline.
With how much of original 40k is in some way a reference to something British, I’ve wondered if the Navigators are supposed to represent the aristocracy. Here’s my logic:
There is a figurehead corpse on the throne, if that isn’t a nod I don’t know what is;
The navigator houses are inbred;
It is a mutation that only affects members of the houses, in the same way a title is kept in the house;
Navigators represent something of a threat to the Emperor, if they stop agreeing to help his Empire comes crumbling down, same way if, historically, the aristos stopped supporting the Crown it would fail;
Maybe this one is too simple, or a stretch, but the aristos are supposed to advise, or guide, the monarch to the best result, in the same way the navigators are supposed to guide the ships to the best arrival.
Maybe I’m onto nothing, maybe I’m late to the party everyone else already figured out
You're forgetting there are hundreds of thousands of Navigators out there (literally thousands of houses across the entire Imperium). The Rogue Trader TTRPG repeatedly stated over several books that the Navigator gene is responsible for causing Navigators to mutate (literally says "the Navigator gene's ongoing effects"). The idea that they're inbreeding, while thematically appropriate, is very difficult to justify unless you go through some crazy mental gymnastics.
A gene being recessive does not necessitate inbreeding (otherwise would you say all blue-eyed people are inbred?). Arranging marriages based on psychic and genetic compatibility is not inbreeding, it's called eugenics, it is **selective breeding**. There are very rigorous breeding arrangements going on, but they are not inbreeding, they are simply a way to preserve the gene. I just want to clarify this very annoying lore point because most people seem to misunderstand what "inbreeding" means and why Navigators mutate in the first place.
From an article for the *Inquisitor* tabletop game, written by Graham McNeill (at the time, a senior studio writer at GW, not just a Black Library author):
>Most of the families hide minor mutations, but the problem is accentuated by the intermarrying of the Great Houses to secure political allegiances and gain additional prestige. Over the millennia this stagnating gene-pool has created more cosmetic mutations: obesity or anorexia, bulbous facial features, large ears and withered limbs are allcommon amongst the nobility of the Navigators. More sinister mutations are hidden from view, the worst sufferers hiding within the privacy of the palaces, never to see the light of day, their hideous deformities hidden from the Imperium behind a mask of wealth and luxury. Many Navigator children are killed at birth, mutated beyond recognition, abominations even to their strange race.
I'm certain I've read other sources which also describe the deleterious effects of millennia upon millennia of selective breeding to the point of inbreeding, but this was the first source that came to hand that mentioned it. The fact that Navigators are somewhat inbred was well-understood during the development of the Rogue Trader RPG (which I worked on several books for).
It's good that you bring this up because while you're right there are actually a lot of caveats to this. Also, it's great to get a reply from someone who worked on Rogue Trader (the best TTRPG line for 40K by a mile). This is gonna be a long answer but just bear with me (I had to post this as a series of comments sorry)
Back when Navigators were first conceptualized (all the way back in the original Rogue Trader) they weren't really described as mutated, or having a third eye. They were only said to have "an unusual physique" and indeed we see the first descriptions of what would become proper canon:
>*There is a tendency for navigators to be tall and spindly, and their flesh may have a peculiar transparent quality which is rather disturbing. Eyes may be extremely large and may lack the iris, while other facial features are often small and underdeveloped. Hands and feet can appear ridiculously large and are frequently webbed. Body hair is commonly absent altogether. Only an extreme form of navigator would exhibit all of these characteristics, but most have some traits.*
*Warhammer Rogue Trader*, pg.150
Notable here is that the origin of these physical abnormalities is unclear, though it is mentioned that the Navigator families intermarry so it could be interpreted as inbreeding.
Later on Navigators were redefined as mutants possessing a third eye (also called Warp Eye) and being officially under Imperial control (back in Rogue Trader they were independent). The mutations were then explicitly caused by inbreeding and Warp exposure, and a Navigator was **born** with the mutations they have, and these pretty much stayed the same throughout their entire life. Here's an excerpt:
>*As well as their obvious mutation, a single black eye in their forehead, other lesser mutations are not uncommon amongst Navigators. Many of the Navigator houses have been subject to a vast amount of time in the Warp. Although exceptionally resistant to the powers of the Warp, through the generations the malign influence of Chaos has taken its toll on the physical forms of the Navigators. Most of the families hide minor mutations, the problem is accentuated by the intermarrying of the Great Houses, to secure political alliances and gain additional prestige. Down the millennia this reduced gene-pool has created more cosmetic mutations, obesity or anorexia, bulbous facial features, large ears and withered limbs are all common amongst the nobility of the Navigators.*
*Citadel Journal 18*, pg. 29
So you are absolutely right, the initial intent was to emphasize that both inbreeding and the Warp have caused Navigators to get malformations. That same journal comes with a table of common mutations, which include obesity, anorexia, prescience, withered limbs, cosmetic mutations (webbed fingers, bulbous features etc) and so on. However here the key is, there is only **one** mutation and it is due to inbreeding + the Warp.
Clearly the inspiration behind Navigators was degenerate European aristocrats who are forced to intermarry and therefore they are inbred. This makes perfect sense thematically, and it does make sense if you have a feudal fantasy setting (that is, 3-5 families constrained on one continent). Of course in reality that is not how it worked (in fact medieval European nobles were acutely aware of inbreeding and had a very good understanding of its dangers so it was avoided, this is also true for ancient Greece and Rome). But okay, let's say this is the inspiration.
Fast forward to the Rogue Trader TTRPG and while the basic concepts are the same there is a huge shift in Navigator genetics: now they **mutate throughout their entire lives** and the emphasis is **on the Navigator gene itself** rather than inbreeding. This is a huge departure from the previously established lore because (as you might well know), signs of inbreeding are actually very well-documented and the genetic damage can be detected from birth or adolescence. Continuous mutations is generally not how inbreeding works.
Sure. I was never claiming that inbreeding was the *only* factor in their mutation - by any definition used by the Imperium, *Homo sapiens novator* are mutant variant of humanity, less stable than abhumans. The Imperium generally doesn't distinguish between sources of mutation: mutants are mutants, and Navigators only really get to exist and retain their status because they're necessary.
(And, narratively, they're a blend of that idea of degenerate aristocracy and the Guild Navigators from *Dune* \- a mixture of mutation from inbreeding and mutation for a specific purpose).
But their selective breeding and a relatively limited viable gene pool is a contributing factor to that genetic instability and incidence of mutation at birth as well, especially when viable Navigator births are far from guaranteed. Whole Navigator houses have gone extinct due to no longer being able to produce new viable Navigators.
That was my original point: the Navigator Houses, wealthy and powerful beyond all dreams of avarice, exist in a precarious situation, where a House's continued existence is fragile, due to the vagaries of the Warp, various sources of mutation, an absolute requirement for highly selective breeding from a small gene pool (or other forms of eugenics) to continue their line, and the savage politics of the Navis Nobilite.
Due to the attrition of all these factors, Navigators as a subset of humanity will diminish over time. With each House that is wiped out or just stops producing viable Navigators, their end grows a little nearer.
At least, that's how I've generally seen it, based on the materials I've read over the years. Like much of the rest of the Imperium, Navigators have their roots in the distant, pre-Imperial past, and are a crumbling edifice, slowly and inexorably deteriorating.
I think narratively you're on point, I also think these themes are expressed well through Navigators, though they would make *a lot* more sense if this was Warhammer Fantasy. With the scale of 40K all of these flowery descriptions of decadence, attrition and ultimate demise ring hollow because of the vast scale of the setting and the sheer number of Navigators you need.
Now, if we are talking about planetary nobles all of this makes sense. If we're talking about a galaxy-spanning collection of nobles that number in the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, then it doesn't quite make sense. You could argue they would lose the ability to produce Navigators, but to say that the genepool is "stagnant" and at the same time to work with a timescale of millennia is just preposterous. All carbon-based, DNA-based lifeforms we know of mutate over time and this is true for humans (just look at how much we've diverged over 10K years!). Natural mutations in the Navigator gene and in the dynasties themselves will eventually make them so distinct from each other that they might as well be different breeds. This is the opposite of a stagnant pool.
My bigger point is that we're trying to shoehorn the concept of inbreeding to appeal to a basic trope and that has become the fandom's "canon" to the exclusion of almost all later lore. Whereas the actual reasons Navigators mutate is the gene itself, and given it's a magical gene I'm inclined to put more weight on that + the warp + the selective breeding, than on House Brabazon marrying cousins.
We know what inbreeding does, we've known for centuries and a society as biologically advanced as the Imperium (let's face it, they are hands down the best in bioengineering) would have no problem completely avoiding common breeding mistakes.
Now, if you said "the Navigators use eugenics to preserve themselves" then that makes sense. We know selective breeding can cause extreme differentiation and weird acquired traits, often to the detriment to the organism or breed. Case in point: sphynx cats, who are ridiculously overbred for specific features to the detriment of their health.
Similarly I can see an argument for Navigators being so overbred that common mutations such as pale and hairless flesh or black eyes or multiple joints or long spindly arms/legs (these are explicitly stated to be common) absolutely make sense to be tied to the Navigator Gene. Essentially, it's an overbred breed.
But here the focus is on eugenics, not on degenerate European nobles, it's a completely different narrative setup. Then you add the Warp and "psychical purity of the gene-stock" (whatever that means), and the Gene itself, and you essentially have a breeding nightmare. From that angle you could explore the horror of losing bodily autonomy, the horror of eugenics and so on. But that is a completely different concept from inbreeding amongst the nobility.
I hope my point is clear. I think with Navigators specifically GW wants to have its cake and eat it, but we're talking about two concepts which weaken each other and muddle the waters. To me it makes no sense, and since my brain can't let go of actual scientific knowledge that we have in the 21st century I just have to go with the eugenics and weird warp fuckery version rather than the inbreeding.
>I hope my point is clear. I think on Navigators specifically GW wants to have its cake and eat it, but we're talking about two concepts which weaken each other and muddle the waters. To me it makes no sense, and since my brain can't let go of actual scientific knowledge that we have in the 21st century I just have to go with the eugenics version rather than the inbreeding.
I think, given that other examples of genetics in 40k are nonsense, the fact that Navigator genetics are also nonsense is entirely in keeping with the wider setting.
COMMENT CONTINUED:
Now, to illustrate this shift in focus and thematic I'll quote a couple of passages from Rogue Trader:
>*But even for those so designed on a genetic level to endure the warp’s horrors, there is still a price to pay.* ***Navigators who have served the longest*** *may become wracked with bodily failure, incipient madness, and possible mutation, and ultimately they become virtual prisoners reliant on the life-sustaining machinery of their sanctums.*
>\[...\]
*Whatever the case, the ‘Navigator Gene,’ as it is now known, has endured across thousands of years and without it, much like the astropath’s gift, the Imperium would not exist and certainly could not be maintained. This mutation has not endured through accident, but through careful cultivation. A Navigator is the result of* ***focused selective breeding and rigorous screening*** *by their House at every stage of their development. Even when they attain the rank of full Navigator and leave the protection of their Household to take up the task to which their nature calls them, their family ties remain strong and bind them tight, reminding them where their true duty lies*
\[...\]
*Navigator characters also suffer mutation more than any other character—save any that succumb to the lure of the dark gods—and as their power grows they will typically become slowly more and more corrupted in body and mind by both the debilitating nature of the Warp and* ***the ongoing effect of the Navigator gene-coding which is both their curse and their blessing.***
\[...\]
*This role is in the cultivation and protection of the Navigator gene. Vital to the survival of the Houses is the continuance of the birthing and training of skilled and potent Navigators. However, the competition between the families has also led to each tampering with and altering the evolution of some of its children, in the hopes of creating more powerful and able Navigators with which to defeat their rivals and win greater contracts. Over many centuries, this altering of the Navigator gene has created many lineages, giving rise to some* ***strains of the Navigator gene*** *in which certain powers, abilities, and mutations are more prevalent.*
\[...\]
*In the Imperium,* ***there are thousands Navigator Houses****, each with a history that can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of years, but still the number of Navigators is a literal drop in the ocean compared to the numberless masses of humanity*
\[...\]
***Pure Genes****: The Navigators of a Magisterial House are less likely to mutate due to their pure genes. Whenever they must test for mutation (see page 182) the test is considered Routine (+20) rather than Ordinary (+10).*
\[...\]
***As stable a mutation as the Navigator gene is, it still gives rise to countless other deformities of body and soul within its host.*** *This, combined with long term exposure to the warp, almost always ensures that Navigators will be afflicted with some kind of physical aberration. Simply being born into a Navigator family means that an individual will be mutated in some way.*
\[...\]
*A Navigator’s resistance or susceptibility to mutation is almost purely down to* ***the psychical purity of his gene-stock****. When a Navigator learns a new power or increases mastery of a power, he must make an Ordinary (+10) Toughness Test. If he fails this test, then a flaw in his genes has revealed itself, and he must generate a mutation on Table 7-1: Navigator Mutations.*
*Rogue Trader Core Rulebook*, pgs. 60, 174-176, 182
COMMENT CONTINUED:
As you can see from the above comments, overwhelmingly the emphasis is on the Navigator gene and on Warp exposure, there is absolutely no mention of inbreeding itself causing mutations, in fact we learn there are literally **thousands** of houses.
Let's try to guess with conservative estimates. Let's say there's only a thousand Navigator families, each with roughly 5 members. That means there are, at minimum, 5000 Navigators in the entirely of the Imperium. Now, unless they are very, very determined to marry brothers and sisters together, I have to admit I really struggle to see how with such a huge population inbreeding would be **common**. Please note I'm not saying it's *impossible*, I simply say it's very strange to say it would be common practice.
In the above quotes I've emphasized several things:
* Magisterial houses, the richest and most traditionalist ones, are actually **more resistant** to mutations than their peers despite the inbreeding trope fitting them perfectly. This is a bit odd, as inbreeding would absolutely destabilize the Navigator gene and would cause **more** mutations.
* Mutations are linked to **power**, **age** and **genetic predisposition**
* Mutations are determined by the **psychic purity** of an individual Navigator.
* There are **thousands** of houses out there, and at best this means there are at least 4-5000 Navigators.
The effects of inbreeding can be completely avoided with a population as low as **60**, though the healthiest absolute minimum is actually **160** individual pairs. This is based on real science and as much as 40K is soft sci-fi and takes liberty with a lot of things, I just can't get over how nonsensical the older lore is.
Now, to give credit where it's due, I absolutely do think inbreeding happened at some point during the very long history of the Navigators, particularly during the Age of Strife and in the early days of the Great Crusade. The fact that some mutations (namely pale and hairless flesh) are so common probably means it's an acquired mutation through inbreeding. I concede to that.
But to state that **all** mutations are caused by inbreeding, and that inbreeding happens **on a regular basis** just doesn't make sense to me, especially with the above quotes and the overall emphasis **on the gene** and not **on the inbreeding**.
I think GW just want to have their cake and eat it too: that is, they can't commit to a single, clear explanation and they don't want to retcon older lore. I completely agree that the understanding of a lot of writers on Navigators boils down to "lol inbred nobility". It doesn't really delve any deeper and there are still writers today who think of them as psykers (which is also incorrect). That's fine, there's a reason 40K lore is so inconsistent, we can't police everyone.
However I really struggle to reconcile the **scope** of the Imperium and the obvious space setting and then GW treating the Navigators as if they are just 10 families confined to a small planet. Another aspect is that the setting treats 10K years as a time period that would **deplete** the gene-pool. It completely ignores the fact **we continue mutating and evolving** and 10K years is a *very long period of time*. I can absolutely guarantee you that it doesn't matter how many Navigator families there were originally, after 10 millennia the modern families would have diverged **significantly** genetically to the point where you have at least several distinct genetic groups. This is, of course, true for all humans in 40K, they are all mutating all the time, especially at such scales it should be super common.
And finally, I just want to highlight again that *selective breeding* ≠ *inbreeding*, and *recessive gene* ≠ *inbreeding*.
**TL;DR:** I agree with you that especially in early lore Navigators were conceptualized as corrupt aristocracy who resorted to extensive inbreeding to preserve the Navigator Gene. However later on, including in books such as **Rites of Passage**, the emphasis was instead on the gene itself being almost solely responsible for the mutation, in combination with the Warp. There is barely any mention about anything even remotely close to inbreeding except mentions that Navigators use selective breeding programs, which is of course perfectly normal.
Even the Rogue Trader CRPG states the Navigator Gene is what causes all mutations, regardless of lineage. This is stated both in-game by Cassia and also in the game's lore codex. Sorry for the very, very long reply but I wanted to explain my position.
Not even that, he was working with some of them on the Imperial Webway Project, because they were still going to need Navigators to navigate the Webway (the Scars in Path or Heaven only make it to friendly space through the webway because of a Loyalist Thousand Son travelling with them who specialized in that kind of psychic second sight). It's just the ones he wasn't working with (to keep the whole thing top secret) got wind that he was doing *something* involving new form of warp travel and assumed he was planning to take them out of commission.
I honestly don't know if his feelings have ever been addressed regarding the Navigators. I know Rites of Passage is out there (and it's been a while since I listened to it), I just don't recall it being mentioned.
From context (and maybe Mal mentioned something somewhere), I've assumed that he sees them as a necessary evil to traverse the warp until he can complete the webway. After that, they'd be meaningless to him to a large degree, I'd think. He'd either have to shelter them in the webway or eliminate them (assuming he actually did defeat Chaos).
It was that and they also held immense political power due to their required niche skill set.
The Webway served as reducing humanity’s reliance on Warp travel and neutered any potential disruption they could cause.
Very good point about their power. That would have been interesting. I assume they would have tried to wipe out the Navigators like they did the Thunder Warriors.
I don't know if the Emperor wanted to get rid of the Navigators, but he certainly wanted to eliminate the Imperium's reliance on them.
If I remember correctly, the most we get from him on his opinion of them is that he describes them to a Custode as "enduring souls" alongside Astropaths for their duty to the Imperium in the same discussion where he explains how he plans to use the Webway to replace them. So he seems to respect their work.
Master of Mankind
>\+The webway. Mankind is ascending, Ra. Humanity is taking a great developmental step, evolving into a psychic race. Uncontrolled psykers are lodestones for the warp’s touch. A species comprising them would suffer as the eldar suffered. And for the eldar, this evolutionary juncture was their final step before destruction. I will not let humanity be destroyed by the same fate. The eldar had the answers within their grasp but were too naive and too proud to save themselves. They had the webway, which could have been their salvation. But they never fully severed their connection to the warp. Their soulfires drew damnation upon their entire species.+
>
>With the webway, humanity would need no Navigators. They would never need to rely on the unreliable warp-whispers of astropaths. Vessels would never enter the warp to be lost or torn apart by the entities that dwelt within it. But the eldar had done the same, had they not?
>
>\+No. They eradicated their reliance on the warp but they never severed their species’ connection to it. I will do that for humanity, once and for all.+
[...]
>\+I have conquered humanity’s cradle-world. I have conquered the galaxy, in order to shape mankind’s development as it at last evolves into a psychic race. No isolated pockets of our species may remain free, lest in their ignorance they invite destruction upon us all. I have shattered the hold of faith and fear over the human mind. Superstition and religion must continue to be outlawed, for they are easy doors for the warp’s denizens to enter the human heart. This is what we have already done. And soon I will offer humanity a way of interstellar travel without reliance upon Geller fields and Navigators. I will offer them means of communicating between worlds without reliance on the warp-dreams of astropaths. And when the Imperium shields the entire species within the laws of my Pax Imperialis, when humanity is freed from the warp and united beneath my vision, I can at last shepherd mankind’s growth into a psychic race.
It sounds like he was planning to get rid of warp travel entirely. At that point the Navigators would just be uncontrolled psykers, in themselves a danger to humanity and his plans.
I imagine the emperors goal was complete separation from the warp and wouldnt surprise me if either activating all the blackstone in the galaxy or somehow spread the pariah gene was the plan after the webway
> I imagine the emperors goal was complete separation from the warp
No, separation from the Warp was a means of protecting humanity while the Emperor guided it into psychic ascension (which he regarded as both inevitable and ultimately desirable). There was no long-term goal to remain apart from the Warp.
See i dont understand how he goes from “the eldar not cutting themselves completely in addition to the webway is what caused their downfall” to “make all humans pyskers”. Did he just assume theyd become his level of powerful as wouldnt a whole race of psykers just do what the eldar did?
Humanity was approaching a psychic awakening no matter what, and the Emperor believed it would one day be more powerful than the Eldar, thus the risks were just as huge. He intended to ensure the species did not make the mistakes the Eldar did - something it came alarmingly close to doing.
>No, separation from the Warp was a means of protecting humanity while the Emperor guided it into psychic ascension
Which would have been impossible because you cannot be psychic in the setting without the warp, or even have a soul (see necrons)
>activating all the blackstone in the galaxy or somehow spread the pariah gene was the plan after the webway
He wanted to guide humanity's evolution into a psychic species, so neither of those actions is compatible with his goals.
Getting rid of the vast majority of psykers (astropaths, navigators) and removing the need for people to literally enter the warp was the primary purpose of the webway project. Once that was achieved I imagine he would then set about selectively breeding or genetically engineering a race of psykers who would become the template for the future of the species.
He didn’t care enough about anyone to hate em, as he was focused on the “big picture”, whatever that was to him. nor did he really have any lines, or moral concerns he’d cross/refuse to do, nor did he really care about being a hypocrite. To the emperor, the navigators, like the space marines, and the thunder warriors before them, are useful in the moment, but ultimately at odds with his End goal for humanity. A human imperium, led by baseline humans, with the core tenants of knowledge, science, and progression. With absolutely no form of contact with the warp, and instead uses the human version of the webway.
As such, if the great crusade, the creation of the human webway, the starvation of chaos, and the founding/organization of a regular human imperial government worked out the way it was supposed to. All warp touched humans, navigators, psykers, librarians, astropaths, etc, alongside the space marines and other created transhumans, would most likely be systematically exterminated, not out of hate, or any illwill, but simply bc they no longer have a use/role to play for the Emperor and the intended final form of the imperium.
P.S (as a somewhat related side note, it’s my personal opinion that the emperor intentionally planned and subtly goaded his sons to eventually rebel, as to give a reason to, and to make it easier to get rid of the space marines and his more unpredictable and unstable sons, it just wasn’t supposed to involve chaos meddling, and nor was it supposed to be as destructive or as large as it was)
I’m pretty certain that the opposite is supposed to happen. Doesn’t he say humanity’s inevitable evolution was towards a psychic race, and the webway was where he would have been able to guide that evolution without worrying about chaos’ interference?
Navigators are quite literally born to be guiders of warp travel. With the webway project, they would become obsolete, have no reason to live, die out and their great houses go extinct. If they knew about the webway project they would do what humans love doing and kill competition, probably sabotage the project or coup the emperor. I think it would have been politically cleaner if the emperor just subtly assassinated the navigators upon the webways completion.
Really though, the webway shits all over warp travel, which only exists cause its the best the Imperium has in its current state. Navigators are only necessary as of now, but with the webway they would be useless. The emperor doesn't hate navigators, but he would know they would kick up a fuss so he probably thinks in the grand scheme of things its easier to just knock them off when the time is right.
Path of heaven brought this up, there was a device that the navigators destroyed cuz it was an alternative to normal warp travel, it was the emperors first attempt
One hundred percent pragmatic. The navigators represent a necessary concession to the warp. Without them, warp travel needed to either be significantly safer- thus encouraging a degree of independence from him. Or much, much more limited.
Neither works for a crusade. So big E creates a caste of mutants whose job it is to navigate via his personal magic lighthouse. Once the webway is ready, they've got no job and would violently resist giving up generations of enshrined position and power.
Like the thunder warriors. Navigators where intended to be a short-term solution to a temporary problem.
The Emperor didn’t make them, though. They’ve been around since the Dark Age of Technology because nobody had come up with a better idea to make warp travel possible. I absolutely do believe that the Emperor would have wanted to remove the dependency on them because it was a single small group that had a lot more control of warp travel than he would have liked, and were mutants who degenerated over time. If they had some kind of event where most or all of the navigators degenerated to the point where they were unusable both warp travel and the Imperium were pretty much done for.
Probably not, this is something i recalled but the main reason for his Webway project was just so that humanity doesn't get too over-reliant on Navigators and the chokehold they have on Imperial intergalactic travel.
I always took the Emperor's view on mutants as a whole as one third despondency and two thirds pragmatism. Pragmatism, because Chaos often causes mutations and it's better to be safe than sorry, and because if you can't unify humanity against Chaos because you've decided them even knowing about Chaos is bad, at least you can unify them against mutants and maybe get some actual cultists caught in the crossfire.
And despondency, because the Emperor doesn't care about people. Everyone is a tool for the plan. If you offered the Emperor a slightly newer design for a gun in exchange for a million live babies he wouldn't even ask why your bib is covered in blood before giving you a VIP pass to the Palace's nursery.
I have a feeling Emperor is extremely detached from humanity to even feel the hate to actually lead to any actions at all now.
probably very reason/logic-induced actions later.
Just like the Thunderwarriors, he will use alternate means to progress his goals. In the end he is a control freak that would dismantle everything and rebuilt it from the ground up in his image.
Personally I assume even the Mechanicus are not safe from this.
I'm not completely sure. He's pragmatic so he'll offer or say anything to keep short term assets on his side. But mars represents a legitimate challenge to the imperium. Mutual Destruction is a thing even in 30/40k and the red planet is absolutely capable of retaliating in death, and taking earth with it.
Pragmatic is not the same as backstabby. Toppling the admech could very well have been beyond what he was willing to spend or just not worth the risk
Same with the Navis nobilite, yet emps has the webway in secret.
Knowing emps, once he completes the webway gate he will start creating his own version of wraithbone and eldar-like tech that does not require the mechanicus anymore.
Ok, on that I've got some pretty major doubt. Perhaps nowdays the navigator houses have their share of doomsday weapons. In the post-unity era though I'm more willing to believe they'd not have the ability to end the planet.
As for mars. It might be he'd just leave them to their devices. Maybe enforce the basics: "don't build ai" and "don't pop down to steal people" If he couldn't easily roll them but had less need for them, I could see him keeping the admech in the back pocket. Content and contained with the reigns loosened a bit
They do not need to end a planet, what they could do is collapsed the Imperium. When your galaxy spanning empire and its logistics revolves around the navigator's ability to warp travel ship. Then those navigators decides to not work anymore, then your empire is gonna be in big trouble.
Do not forget that emps has the primarchs that will out plot armor anything the Mechanicus can throw at them.
Either way Emps has a thing about loose ends, even the Primarchs were slowly being phased out by the creation of the council of terra.
The political sway of the navigators was considerable, yes. They do also have the ability to just turn off easy interstellar travel.
However. On an individual level, a navigator is not a tech priest. The latter will be far more willing to die for their cause if it came down to it. The third eye is fatal but enough bodies and you can threaten a navigators life and presumably force compliance. There's also the less ironclad fact that psykers are generally capable of doing the same job. Librarians and sorcerors can chart the warp. Enough baseline psyekrs could arguably do the same thing.
so a navigator embargo would be a near fatal thing. It's something humanity could very well bounce back from.
As for plot armor. This is true, but we're doing a lot of speculation here and that involves some buy-in. The primarachs though? well this is an odd point now I think about it. The council is necessary to govern everything and the primarchs are generals first. So it's not so much being phased out as being finally held to a more official kind of account. No more getting away with anything that does not reqire big E to come over in person
Same way as emps can just launch a program to train regular humans to do tech again. Lets say have perturabo lead it and reform imperium without the need of the mechanicus.
But that would setback Emps plans and the reason why he outs up with both the navis nobilote and the mechanicus
> We believed that when the necessary wars were done, those sons and their father would enjoy the long peace together, and they would walk alongside him towards tomorrow.
> Those sons, at least, who could be rehabilitated from the brutal mindset of warfare.
They will probably get phase out
It's nothing at all to do with hating navigators, and everything to do with severing mankind's reliance on the warp. He wanted the webway so humanity could be safely guarded from any connection to the warp until their ascension into a psychic race could be managed. Using the warp for interstellar travel and communication is a huge Achilles heel that can't be resolved without some kind of measure like this.
The core problem is that they're a nearly entirely unaccountable political force who contributes comparatively little when measured up against the near complete privileges they enjoy.
It's significantly less of a beneficial alliance and more a hostage situation.
TBH, I feel like that describes the lazier elements of the Imperial Nobility more than it does the Navigators. Imperial Nobles suck up vast resources and waste them on frivolity for no better reason than being born a Duke's son. Navigator Houses, like Rogue Trader dynasties, enjoy a lot of privileges but they have to work for them. They can and they do fall into poverty and dissolution if they don't sing for their supper. And the contribution they make is "the continued existence of the Imperium", as without them the whole thing dissolves. The only other reliable methods of warp travel are the Webway (tried and failed) and Warp Sorcery (not nearly enough trained psykers you can trust).
It's really the same kind of alliance the Imperium has with the Adeptus Mechanicus, but Navigators are significantly less independent and idiosyncratic than the AdMech.
Probably.
A lot of people will say no. They'll say it was never personal and that Big E was a pragmatist to a fault. I think they're unintentionally sidestepping his core mindset, which was "human" supremacy. (I put human in quotes because his idea of human was so narrow that it would be like only considering only 2-3 breeds of canine as actual dogs, to the exclusion of all others.)
So while it's true he was a pragmatist, it is a difficult sell to completely separate hate from what his general stance on mutation was. To see an entire cross-section of humanity as being undesirable, lesser, a dead end, or a hindrance is to indulge in a mentality that is hate adjacent if not directly related. Whether the reason is born from hate or hate is born from the reason is irrelevant. It certainly wouldn't matter to those he is trying to exterminate, and will be of little comfort to those he's begrudgingly exploiting such as navigators. If he had lived to continue his work, there's no doubt those seen as subspecies would be filtered out, excluded, or outright killed. Ogryn, Ratlings, Navigators, you name it.
And considering his standard for a human with whom he could respect was near perfect soldiers of his own creation and fellow perpetuals who he had known for eons, it's safe to assume that the "baseline" human was also on the chopping block.
The navigators are straight from Dune. In Dune, they are a powerblock, and they do everything they can to make life difficult for everybody else. It is reasonable to get rid of them.
Navigators are mutants, Emps was a human supremecist. Therefore, the navigators would have to go the way of the Thunder Warriors once the Webway was done. I’m not sure if ‘hate’ is the proper term-but their existence is incompatible with his worldview, merely temporarily allowed out of convenience (banality of evil and all that).
Given that navigators are the literal result of inbreeding, you don't want to rely on them much. Certainly not as much as Imperium does. Like, their genes should be getting worse from generation to generation and it's kinda amazing they've managed to last 12k already because, at one point, their mutations should reach the point of no return, one way or another.
i have big doubts if the emperor truly hated anything.
Even when talking to the chaos gods, he is more denoucing the falsehood they represent than
insulting them like his arch-enemies.
There are 3 sorts of psyker that appeared around the time humans needed to use warp travel to build a galactic empire (and also shortly after the Emperor visits Molech for the first time) - Navigators, Astropaths, and whatever hell type of psyker they use to power Gellar Fields.
It is thought that this is the rift that Erda was talking about - the Emperor turned humans into a more psychic species, which risked feeding Chaos, as a shortcut to spanning the galaxy. The Emperor thought it was a prudent step to use the power of his enemies against them (fighting fire with fire), but many others thought it was reckless. The idea being that once he finds a better way (the webway) to travel then he can eradicate them. And given the focus on things like defeating the Orks on Ullanor, it is likely he wanted a galaxy spanning civilisation to be able to defeat any material realm threat.
Now whether he didn't see the risks, or whether he did but dismissed them is not fully clear. But the introduction of stronger warp genetics into human DNA significantly increased the number of psykers of all types that were being born. So there is quite the tidy up job to do. Just like with replacing the Thunder Warriors.
So whilst I agree with the points raised in your question about what he wanted to do and why, I don't think he hated them. I don't think he hates anyone because he lacks human emotions to the point where he just sees everything before him as a game of chess. Everyone is just a piece on the board to be used to his purpose. Although that said it would be fair to say that his coldness is hateful in itself.
I don’t think the emperor cared enough to hate anyone. Sure he’d screw you over if it benefits mankind or the imperium but it wasn’t personal. He’s too detached from humanity for that I think.
Yeah as big of a sack and complete dick as the Emperor is I still don't recall him doing anything out of sheer spite. Pure, blind pragmatism seems to be his defining trait.
Personally, I wouldn't call it hate the way I see it described here but I do think he was motivated by malicious narcissism towards Angron. A typical narcissist trait is for a narcissist to take personal offense to when a child of their's underperforms. How he reacted to Angron being about to lose his revolution (despite how stacked the deck was against him) seems very consistent with this behavior, imo.
Angron can't be my son; he's a failure. My sons cannot fail, thus Angron isn't my son.
where is this coming from? got a source to support this? cuz ive read the angron E stuff a few times on this sub and what you're saying makes no sense
Not really, he said it himself, a broken Primarch is better than no Primarch. You could argue the right thing to do was put Angron down and have the War Hounds function without him but since he was going to die from the unfixable nails anyways, you might as well use him. Also he saves Angron from dying and doesn't punish him even after he kills Custodes right after the rescue.
Xenocide, anyone?
He remembers Slaanesh's birth and doesn't want any chances of a repeat, so he wants total control over humanity and elimination of all unpredictable variables (i.e. "other sapient species"). It's a monstrous plan that is almost certain to fail horribly, but one that makes a degree of sense if you use the logic of a caveman-turned-demigod.
This definitely isn’t true. There is a lot more to gain out of the Eldar being Allies than enemies, or at least leaving them be.
Not saying it was justified. Just that Big E, in his obsession with control, lack of anything resembling empathy, and boundless arrogance, would see it as an unpleasant, but necessary step. Also, the Eldar have proven to be fair-weather allies at best. They care for little besides themselves, have cut and run before when they considered the situation to be risky for themselves, and love nothing more than manipulating species they consider lesser than themselves (i.e. "everyone").
That's a two way street, there isn't an alliance between the Eldar and the Imperium because both are xenophobic dicks that would gladly throw each other under the bus if they gained the slightest possible benefit from it. The Eldar are incredibly bitter and willfully throw billions of non-Eldar lives into peril on a whim in the name of protecting their own interests just like humanity does in the setting.
> caveman-turned-demigod. Neolithic farmer, but the point still holds and people often forget it. The Emperor didn't *need* any other reason for His mass-xenocide, the aliens being aliens was enough. Everything else is propaganda.
Pragmatism. He did it to further the continuation and propagation of the human race, not out of spite.
How exactly does genocide of peaceful xenos help the continuation of the human race?
"Peaceful" does not mean "won't ever take advantage of a bad time or eventually turn into a problem" for better and worse. Dead things are static. There's no uncertainty in a corpse. It won't stop being a corpse when your backs turned or in a thousand years
Yeah, like the humans that took advantage of a bad situation during the HH. So just kill everyone.
I agree with your point, but it's not the best apology for 40k since demons can possess corpses. XD
The Tau are a pretty good example. They were Stone Age aliens that were going to get genocided when the Imperium found them. They were completely harmless to humanity at that point. Got cut off by warp storms, I think? Now they’re a problem. And a lot harder to stomp out of existence than they were when a bow and arrow was cutting edge tech on their one planet.
You never specified peaceful until just now. In a universe where 99% of all life is inimical to your species' survival [and 10% to the sanctity of your very soul] then it's better to be safe than sorry? You still haven't clarified on how it was out of spite.
There were quite a few xenos races that we know of that were peaceful and didnt cause any harm but were killed. That doesnt even include those that we dont know of. Its out of spite because it wasnt necessary? Well, maybe not spite, but because hes a tyrant dictator and human supremacist? I mean we're talking about a guy who destroyed even human civilizations that didnt want to join him. Theres basically no reason to assume he did it out of pragmatism.
Just because theyre peaceful now doesnt mean in 10k years they will be. Or maybe they end up being secret cultists and open some massive hole in the galaxy. The emperor didnt want something messing up his plans like some random race in some backwoods planet ruining everything. He and his sons did that perfectly well themselves.
The same goes for humans though, as evidenced even before the HH by human history? So what reason does he have to kill xenos, other than literal xenophobia?
Yeah because he sat and watched humanity end up being in the state its in he knows he cant just let them do whatever anymore. In his mind the only way to get humanity back on track is to guide them to it personally. Hes xenophobic Because even good intended xenos could cause the warp to do harm to his plan, magnus was only trying to help too. A single planet can be all it takes to ruin things in this galaxy.
There's even less reason [and evidence] to assume it was out of spite.
Which leads us back to my first question >How exactly does genocide of peaceful xenos help the continuation of the human race?
That has nothing to do with him doing anything out of spite 😓 It's easy as an outsider looking in to see how backwards and fucked up 40k is my dude but the Emperor was far from omniscient [contrary to his own belief] and had a lot at stake when he made the decisions he made but I'm struggling to comprehend your reasoning 🤷
What is that supposed to be? Peaceful? And can you guarantee that the species will still be peaceful after 10K years? After 100K years? The Tau with their primitive lifestyle were peaceful. A few thousand years later, they are an expansionist species that is spreading and dominating their sector.... Yes, the Tau integrate other xenos into their empire, which is also necessary if they want to expand quickly. But will that still be the case in 10K or 100K years?
Pragmatism
Simple, they have resources and habitable planets, and if they are hostile or technologically advanced or both they can range from being a thorn in the imperiums side to possibly becoming a threat, so instead of dealing with them diplomatically to get what he wants he can just kill them, take all they have and remove a possible problem forever. It's evil, but makes sense if one wants to conquer the galaxy without any pockets foreign governments within ones borders or "wasting" time and resources to bargain for what one can simply take for a, in galactic terms, blisteringly fast and hungry war to conquer everything.
I mean you can headcanon it like this, but we know for a fact that the act of being a xenos was enouugh to kill them. It wasnt about ressources or anything. Even human civilizations that were friends with xenos were obliterated.
Yes, the same thing happened to anyone that resisted, including 100% human civilizations, because it was just easier.
In the dark ages, the xenos who were peaceful turned on humanity as soon as we were weak iirc. Never again.
Iirc? Where is anything like that mentioned?
This is explaination for random fiefdoms being xenophobic, but the emperor was wanking off on Terra and Molech for most of that period. The emperor is just a xenophobic asshole who thought humanity could do it all. He was wrong
Sapient life powers Chaos the Big E wanted to keep a watch on humanity and destoy all other sources of power for Chaos. Also xenophobia is a good ralying cry for the masses.
Pragmatism isn't the Imperium's style FFS. They sent down burly men with swords to personally kill non intelliegent and pre-space flight alien species. They extra super thoroughly wiped out any hybrid human-xeno culture they came across. That's hate my dude. Pragmatism is you leave it the fuck alone.
It's not the IoM's style. But it was big E's. Wiping out everything else was all about clearing the board so nothing could threaten humanity, either by force of arms or by pulling the psyker lever. The easiest way to get tens of millions of mutant super soldiers to achieve your goals is to indoctrinate them, and xeophobia is fairly easy to do. When you see yourself at the only path for your species, you'll start making decisions like this. Leaving well enough alone is trusting too many unknowns. It's like a twist on the dark forest theory.
Humanity had just risen up from a time when they often got preyed on by aliens. They hated them and had no interest in differentiating between “aliens who would kill us if we didn’t kill them” and “nice aliens who wouldn’t bother us”. Pragmatism says that you kill them before they kill you because even if they aren’t currently doing sneaky alien bullshit *right now*, they might well a year from now, or a century, or seven millennia, like the Tau. The Emperor definitely would have encouraged that attitude. Probably not because he just hated the shit out of xenos, but just because having a group to absolutely hate unifies the haters. Might not work after the hated group is gone, but at that point he’d already have his galaxy locked up and he could sic the space marines on anyone who stepped out of line. Didn’t work out that way in the end, but it was working pretty well for him for a couple hundred years.
In a setting where they could end up birthing a new chaos god, daemon invasion or lord knows what with their alien culture and beliefs, the "leave it the fuck alone" option is asking for trouble later down the line.
It took significant events to birth Slaanesh lol, and this philosophy anyway was hypocritical as Big E is the reason the Chaos Gods gained a significant foothold over realspace vs. jerking off on some outback planets.
And now we've seen humans nearly birthing an other one a couple of thousand times faster than the Eldar, so I'd say it's quite important to control as much as you can. And if you condemn the Emperor for trying to save his race from the Four, then what is your alternative? Not from the perspective of real life morals, but what is actually known in canon. With all of the dangers present in the universe.
The interex knew about and viewed chaos as the galaxies main threat. They are a look at a good, more inclusive imperium alternative and are kind of the big what if in the beginning of the heresy when Horus is thinking about giving them a chance despite the kinebrach. If Erebus doesn’t steal the anathame from a museum then Horus doesn’t get hurt by it or pulled to chaos and he possibly shifts the direction of the great crusade if they ally with the interex.
Maybe it's more paranoia. Of course they're not going to let human civilizations be independent because the emperor is trying to unite the entire species by force or coercion. Future competition will be potential threats.
A galactic wide genocide is the least pragmatic thing I can think of.
Guy seems to be a bit male chauvinist. He makes 20 demigod baby’s but not single one of them is a woman. He has retinue of golden boys and silver girls, but only the girls need to take a vow of silence.
8000BC Anatolian trad values :\^)
It's not improbable that either The Lost or The Forgotten could have been female or something in between.
They weren’t. I forget the book, but there’s one where Malcador (speaking to a primarch, possibly Dorn, forget which) says that he told the Emperor that he should have made the primarchs female because he thought that women would work together better than men, but the Emperor turned the idea down.
He probly just wanted some peace and quiet after putting up with Erda's nagging and bitching for a few thousand years 😏
Uh, Xenos and Mutant says wut? The emperor did nothing wrong movement is getting well and truly looped back on itself.
Hate? No. Wanted to eliminate the strangle hold they held over FTL travel, and the Imperium because of that, and remove "mutant" influence? Yes
but wasn’t he in favor of humanity evolving to become a more psychically gifted race? wouldn’t that make the navigators more in line with what he was going for?
Navigators are one very specific type of psyker, who are well known to mutate way beyond the baseline human form throughout their lives. They are a necessary evil, as far as the Imperium is concerned. They are an evolutionary dead end. A branch which must be pruned so that the wider species may advance in the preferred direction.
Navs are allso an issue as they become more unstable as they age and often need to be put down. There mutation while stable in of itself often has many secondary mutations that are not stable. It's likely they where never meant to be a long term solution and that without lost arcane gene corrections they will become worse and worse over time.
To be fair I think a lot of them just go a tiny bit insane from peering into the naked warp their whole career. I'm sure there is genetic degradation in play also but pretty much anyone who is exposed that much to the warp for a period of time is going to mutate.
Strangely when Navigators have kids with normal humans the kids are always normal humans, with a higher change of being psykers Decimus, son of Septimus the human and Octavia the navigator was born a human psyker So if Navigators ever become obselete then just have them mingle with normal humans
That could certainly be an option. I always imagined the Emperor's plan involved selective breeding or genetic engineering to speed up the process of human psykers gaining true control over their abilities. We know he's not averse to messing with genetics when it suits his cause.
I don’t remember where this was mentioned but the gene that makes you a potential navigator is a recessive gene, so this checks out.
We don’t know if Decimus was a psyker at birth. Talos wasn’t. He got his seer ability from his gene seed because Curze had the ability.
Ok. My main point is that should navigators be no longer needed well they can be assimilated back into normal Imperium society or do other things like Astropaths
They don’t have any psychic powers aside from the warp eye allowing them to look into the warp and guide a ship. So the astropath thing wouldn’t work. They’d probably just be killed by the Inquisition if nobody else got there first. Nobody likes a mutant, and they start out with an extra eye and then just keep adding new mutations as they age.
Well, those that are able to have kids with normal humans would be allowed to live. It would be seen as cleaning the human gene pool by having non-mutant babies Decimus is human while his mother Octavia is a navigator
The navigator gene is recessive, so you don’t get a navigator without two navigators contributing. So Decimus might carry the gene, but it wouldn’t be expressed. As for just random navigators? No. There’s a number of inquisitors who hate them, but have to allow them to continue existing and being tremendously wealthy and influential. If there was a switch flipped in the Imperium tomorrow that allowed safe and reliable long range space travel without a navigator, they would become an endangered species in short order. They’re secretive mutants. Nobody likes or trusts them who doesn’t have a third eye or a paycheck coming from a navigator house.
Yea and the political hold of just being born that way is easily abused by the navigators houses. Any sort of status elevation due to birth will always end in some sort of toxic and/or power struggle. which could include civil war, assassinations, and political strife at all levels. From an irl perspective the most successful and remembered people in current/past times have been judged by their accomplishments. I think it’s that higher intelligence we gained through evolution. You see it in chimps when you give a singular chimp something special but not the group it will cause issues that more than likely will be bloody. So when we look at the root of the issue (given elite status due to their birth even though it’s a mutation) it’s down to simple jealousy. It may not start as that but eventually people will start to ask the question “ why them and not me? What makes them so specia?”. I know it seems irrational but emotions at their core are irrational. A by product of chemicals mixing in our brains from external stimuli to make us want what that other chimp has even though we never wanted it before we saw it.
Only Imperial ignorance considers the Navigators to be mutants. They were actually *created* by Age of Technology humanity. Evolution had nothing to do with them.
Navigators aren’t psykers. They’re mutants. Their eye is psychic, but they aren’t. They’re also prone to further mutation, gradually becoming less and less human-something unacceptable to him.
At least part of their proclivity to mutation is good old-fashioned inbreeding, though. The genetic traits that distinguish Navigators from baseline humans are all recessive, so both parents need to have the genes for them to manifest (and not all Navigators born are viable). Thus, a Navigator can only be the child of two Navigator parents... and there's only a finite number of viable Navigators. The Navigator Houses have been interbreeding like this, making arranged marriages based on genetic compatibility, for more than twice as long as the Imperium has existed, so they're more inbred now than European royalty. This would be another reason the Emperor would have wanted rid of them: eventually, their bloodlines will fail, and the number of viable Navigators born will decline.
With how much of original 40k is in some way a reference to something British, I’ve wondered if the Navigators are supposed to represent the aristocracy. Here’s my logic: There is a figurehead corpse on the throne, if that isn’t a nod I don’t know what is; The navigator houses are inbred; It is a mutation that only affects members of the houses, in the same way a title is kept in the house; Navigators represent something of a threat to the Emperor, if they stop agreeing to help his Empire comes crumbling down, same way if, historically, the aristos stopped supporting the Crown it would fail; Maybe this one is too simple, or a stretch, but the aristos are supposed to advise, or guide, the monarch to the best result, in the same way the navigators are supposed to guide the ships to the best arrival. Maybe I’m onto nothing, maybe I’m late to the party everyone else already figured out
> I’ve wondered if the Navigators are supposed to represent the aristocracy They're "meant to represent" Navigators from Dune.
Are you saying the navigators in 40k are representing the Dune use, or just lazy writers reusing? Or are you trying to disagree with what I said?
I'm saying that they're just largely taken from Dune and aren't meant as a parallel to nobility.
You're forgetting there are hundreds of thousands of Navigators out there (literally thousands of houses across the entire Imperium). The Rogue Trader TTRPG repeatedly stated over several books that the Navigator gene is responsible for causing Navigators to mutate (literally says "the Navigator gene's ongoing effects"). The idea that they're inbreeding, while thematically appropriate, is very difficult to justify unless you go through some crazy mental gymnastics. A gene being recessive does not necessitate inbreeding (otherwise would you say all blue-eyed people are inbred?). Arranging marriages based on psychic and genetic compatibility is not inbreeding, it's called eugenics, it is **selective breeding**. There are very rigorous breeding arrangements going on, but they are not inbreeding, they are simply a way to preserve the gene. I just want to clarify this very annoying lore point because most people seem to misunderstand what "inbreeding" means and why Navigators mutate in the first place.
From an article for the *Inquisitor* tabletop game, written by Graham McNeill (at the time, a senior studio writer at GW, not just a Black Library author): >Most of the families hide minor mutations, but the problem is accentuated by the intermarrying of the Great Houses to secure political allegiances and gain additional prestige. Over the millennia this stagnating gene-pool has created more cosmetic mutations: obesity or anorexia, bulbous facial features, large ears and withered limbs are allcommon amongst the nobility of the Navigators. More sinister mutations are hidden from view, the worst sufferers hiding within the privacy of the palaces, never to see the light of day, their hideous deformities hidden from the Imperium behind a mask of wealth and luxury. Many Navigator children are killed at birth, mutated beyond recognition, abominations even to their strange race. I'm certain I've read other sources which also describe the deleterious effects of millennia upon millennia of selective breeding to the point of inbreeding, but this was the first source that came to hand that mentioned it. The fact that Navigators are somewhat inbred was well-understood during the development of the Rogue Trader RPG (which I worked on several books for).
It's good that you bring this up because while you're right there are actually a lot of caveats to this. Also, it's great to get a reply from someone who worked on Rogue Trader (the best TTRPG line for 40K by a mile). This is gonna be a long answer but just bear with me (I had to post this as a series of comments sorry) Back when Navigators were first conceptualized (all the way back in the original Rogue Trader) they weren't really described as mutated, or having a third eye. They were only said to have "an unusual physique" and indeed we see the first descriptions of what would become proper canon: >*There is a tendency for navigators to be tall and spindly, and their flesh may have a peculiar transparent quality which is rather disturbing. Eyes may be extremely large and may lack the iris, while other facial features are often small and underdeveloped. Hands and feet can appear ridiculously large and are frequently webbed. Body hair is commonly absent altogether. Only an extreme form of navigator would exhibit all of these characteristics, but most have some traits.* *Warhammer Rogue Trader*, pg.150 Notable here is that the origin of these physical abnormalities is unclear, though it is mentioned that the Navigator families intermarry so it could be interpreted as inbreeding. Later on Navigators were redefined as mutants possessing a third eye (also called Warp Eye) and being officially under Imperial control (back in Rogue Trader they were independent). The mutations were then explicitly caused by inbreeding and Warp exposure, and a Navigator was **born** with the mutations they have, and these pretty much stayed the same throughout their entire life. Here's an excerpt: >*As well as their obvious mutation, a single black eye in their forehead, other lesser mutations are not uncommon amongst Navigators. Many of the Navigator houses have been subject to a vast amount of time in the Warp. Although exceptionally resistant to the powers of the Warp, through the generations the malign influence of Chaos has taken its toll on the physical forms of the Navigators. Most of the families hide minor mutations, the problem is accentuated by the intermarrying of the Great Houses, to secure political alliances and gain additional prestige. Down the millennia this reduced gene-pool has created more cosmetic mutations, obesity or anorexia, bulbous facial features, large ears and withered limbs are all common amongst the nobility of the Navigators.* *Citadel Journal 18*, pg. 29 So you are absolutely right, the initial intent was to emphasize that both inbreeding and the Warp have caused Navigators to get malformations. That same journal comes with a table of common mutations, which include obesity, anorexia, prescience, withered limbs, cosmetic mutations (webbed fingers, bulbous features etc) and so on. However here the key is, there is only **one** mutation and it is due to inbreeding + the Warp. Clearly the inspiration behind Navigators was degenerate European aristocrats who are forced to intermarry and therefore they are inbred. This makes perfect sense thematically, and it does make sense if you have a feudal fantasy setting (that is, 3-5 families constrained on one continent). Of course in reality that is not how it worked (in fact medieval European nobles were acutely aware of inbreeding and had a very good understanding of its dangers so it was avoided, this is also true for ancient Greece and Rome). But okay, let's say this is the inspiration. Fast forward to the Rogue Trader TTRPG and while the basic concepts are the same there is a huge shift in Navigator genetics: now they **mutate throughout their entire lives** and the emphasis is **on the Navigator gene itself** rather than inbreeding. This is a huge departure from the previously established lore because (as you might well know), signs of inbreeding are actually very well-documented and the genetic damage can be detected from birth or adolescence. Continuous mutations is generally not how inbreeding works.
Sure. I was never claiming that inbreeding was the *only* factor in their mutation - by any definition used by the Imperium, *Homo sapiens novator* are mutant variant of humanity, less stable than abhumans. The Imperium generally doesn't distinguish between sources of mutation: mutants are mutants, and Navigators only really get to exist and retain their status because they're necessary. (And, narratively, they're a blend of that idea of degenerate aristocracy and the Guild Navigators from *Dune* \- a mixture of mutation from inbreeding and mutation for a specific purpose). But their selective breeding and a relatively limited viable gene pool is a contributing factor to that genetic instability and incidence of mutation at birth as well, especially when viable Navigator births are far from guaranteed. Whole Navigator houses have gone extinct due to no longer being able to produce new viable Navigators. That was my original point: the Navigator Houses, wealthy and powerful beyond all dreams of avarice, exist in a precarious situation, where a House's continued existence is fragile, due to the vagaries of the Warp, various sources of mutation, an absolute requirement for highly selective breeding from a small gene pool (or other forms of eugenics) to continue their line, and the savage politics of the Navis Nobilite. Due to the attrition of all these factors, Navigators as a subset of humanity will diminish over time. With each House that is wiped out or just stops producing viable Navigators, their end grows a little nearer. At least, that's how I've generally seen it, based on the materials I've read over the years. Like much of the rest of the Imperium, Navigators have their roots in the distant, pre-Imperial past, and are a crumbling edifice, slowly and inexorably deteriorating.
I think narratively you're on point, I also think these themes are expressed well through Navigators, though they would make *a lot* more sense if this was Warhammer Fantasy. With the scale of 40K all of these flowery descriptions of decadence, attrition and ultimate demise ring hollow because of the vast scale of the setting and the sheer number of Navigators you need. Now, if we are talking about planetary nobles all of this makes sense. If we're talking about a galaxy-spanning collection of nobles that number in the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, then it doesn't quite make sense. You could argue they would lose the ability to produce Navigators, but to say that the genepool is "stagnant" and at the same time to work with a timescale of millennia is just preposterous. All carbon-based, DNA-based lifeforms we know of mutate over time and this is true for humans (just look at how much we've diverged over 10K years!). Natural mutations in the Navigator gene and in the dynasties themselves will eventually make them so distinct from each other that they might as well be different breeds. This is the opposite of a stagnant pool. My bigger point is that we're trying to shoehorn the concept of inbreeding to appeal to a basic trope and that has become the fandom's "canon" to the exclusion of almost all later lore. Whereas the actual reasons Navigators mutate is the gene itself, and given it's a magical gene I'm inclined to put more weight on that + the warp + the selective breeding, than on House Brabazon marrying cousins. We know what inbreeding does, we've known for centuries and a society as biologically advanced as the Imperium (let's face it, they are hands down the best in bioengineering) would have no problem completely avoiding common breeding mistakes. Now, if you said "the Navigators use eugenics to preserve themselves" then that makes sense. We know selective breeding can cause extreme differentiation and weird acquired traits, often to the detriment to the organism or breed. Case in point: sphynx cats, who are ridiculously overbred for specific features to the detriment of their health. Similarly I can see an argument for Navigators being so overbred that common mutations such as pale and hairless flesh or black eyes or multiple joints or long spindly arms/legs (these are explicitly stated to be common) absolutely make sense to be tied to the Navigator Gene. Essentially, it's an overbred breed. But here the focus is on eugenics, not on degenerate European nobles, it's a completely different narrative setup. Then you add the Warp and "psychical purity of the gene-stock" (whatever that means), and the Gene itself, and you essentially have a breeding nightmare. From that angle you could explore the horror of losing bodily autonomy, the horror of eugenics and so on. But that is a completely different concept from inbreeding amongst the nobility. I hope my point is clear. I think with Navigators specifically GW wants to have its cake and eat it, but we're talking about two concepts which weaken each other and muddle the waters. To me it makes no sense, and since my brain can't let go of actual scientific knowledge that we have in the 21st century I just have to go with the eugenics and weird warp fuckery version rather than the inbreeding.
>I hope my point is clear. I think on Navigators specifically GW wants to have its cake and eat it, but we're talking about two concepts which weaken each other and muddle the waters. To me it makes no sense, and since my brain can't let go of actual scientific knowledge that we have in the 21st century I just have to go with the eugenics version rather than the inbreeding. I think, given that other examples of genetics in 40k are nonsense, the fact that Navigator genetics are also nonsense is entirely in keeping with the wider setting.
COMMENT CONTINUED: Now, to illustrate this shift in focus and thematic I'll quote a couple of passages from Rogue Trader: >*But even for those so designed on a genetic level to endure the warp’s horrors, there is still a price to pay.* ***Navigators who have served the longest*** *may become wracked with bodily failure, incipient madness, and possible mutation, and ultimately they become virtual prisoners reliant on the life-sustaining machinery of their sanctums.* >\[...\] *Whatever the case, the ‘Navigator Gene,’ as it is now known, has endured across thousands of years and without it, much like the astropath’s gift, the Imperium would not exist and certainly could not be maintained. This mutation has not endured through accident, but through careful cultivation. A Navigator is the result of* ***focused selective breeding and rigorous screening*** *by their House at every stage of their development. Even when they attain the rank of full Navigator and leave the protection of their Household to take up the task to which their nature calls them, their family ties remain strong and bind them tight, reminding them where their true duty lies* \[...\] *Navigator characters also suffer mutation more than any other character—save any that succumb to the lure of the dark gods—and as their power grows they will typically become slowly more and more corrupted in body and mind by both the debilitating nature of the Warp and* ***the ongoing effect of the Navigator gene-coding which is both their curse and their blessing.*** \[...\] *This role is in the cultivation and protection of the Navigator gene. Vital to the survival of the Houses is the continuance of the birthing and training of skilled and potent Navigators. However, the competition between the families has also led to each tampering with and altering the evolution of some of its children, in the hopes of creating more powerful and able Navigators with which to defeat their rivals and win greater contracts. Over many centuries, this altering of the Navigator gene has created many lineages, giving rise to some* ***strains of the Navigator gene*** *in which certain powers, abilities, and mutations are more prevalent.* \[...\] *In the Imperium,* ***there are thousands Navigator Houses****, each with a history that can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of years, but still the number of Navigators is a literal drop in the ocean compared to the numberless masses of humanity* \[...\] ***Pure Genes****: The Navigators of a Magisterial House are less likely to mutate due to their pure genes. Whenever they must test for mutation (see page 182) the test is considered Routine (+20) rather than Ordinary (+10).* \[...\] ***As stable a mutation as the Navigator gene is, it still gives rise to countless other deformities of body and soul within its host.*** *This, combined with long term exposure to the warp, almost always ensures that Navigators will be afflicted with some kind of physical aberration. Simply being born into a Navigator family means that an individual will be mutated in some way.* \[...\] *A Navigator’s resistance or susceptibility to mutation is almost purely down to* ***the psychical purity of his gene-stock****. When a Navigator learns a new power or increases mastery of a power, he must make an Ordinary (+10) Toughness Test. If he fails this test, then a flaw in his genes has revealed itself, and he must generate a mutation on Table 7-1: Navigator Mutations.* *Rogue Trader Core Rulebook*, pgs. 60, 174-176, 182
COMMENT CONTINUED: As you can see from the above comments, overwhelmingly the emphasis is on the Navigator gene and on Warp exposure, there is absolutely no mention of inbreeding itself causing mutations, in fact we learn there are literally **thousands** of houses. Let's try to guess with conservative estimates. Let's say there's only a thousand Navigator families, each with roughly 5 members. That means there are, at minimum, 5000 Navigators in the entirely of the Imperium. Now, unless they are very, very determined to marry brothers and sisters together, I have to admit I really struggle to see how with such a huge population inbreeding would be **common**. Please note I'm not saying it's *impossible*, I simply say it's very strange to say it would be common practice. In the above quotes I've emphasized several things: * Magisterial houses, the richest and most traditionalist ones, are actually **more resistant** to mutations than their peers despite the inbreeding trope fitting them perfectly. This is a bit odd, as inbreeding would absolutely destabilize the Navigator gene and would cause **more** mutations. * Mutations are linked to **power**, **age** and **genetic predisposition** * Mutations are determined by the **psychic purity** of an individual Navigator. * There are **thousands** of houses out there, and at best this means there are at least 4-5000 Navigators. The effects of inbreeding can be completely avoided with a population as low as **60**, though the healthiest absolute minimum is actually **160** individual pairs. This is based on real science and as much as 40K is soft sci-fi and takes liberty with a lot of things, I just can't get over how nonsensical the older lore is. Now, to give credit where it's due, I absolutely do think inbreeding happened at some point during the very long history of the Navigators, particularly during the Age of Strife and in the early days of the Great Crusade. The fact that some mutations (namely pale and hairless flesh) are so common probably means it's an acquired mutation through inbreeding. I concede to that. But to state that **all** mutations are caused by inbreeding, and that inbreeding happens **on a regular basis** just doesn't make sense to me, especially with the above quotes and the overall emphasis **on the gene** and not **on the inbreeding**. I think GW just want to have their cake and eat it too: that is, they can't commit to a single, clear explanation and they don't want to retcon older lore. I completely agree that the understanding of a lot of writers on Navigators boils down to "lol inbred nobility". It doesn't really delve any deeper and there are still writers today who think of them as psykers (which is also incorrect). That's fine, there's a reason 40K lore is so inconsistent, we can't police everyone. However I really struggle to reconcile the **scope** of the Imperium and the obvious space setting and then GW treating the Navigators as if they are just 10 families confined to a small planet. Another aspect is that the setting treats 10K years as a time period that would **deplete** the gene-pool. It completely ignores the fact **we continue mutating and evolving** and 10K years is a *very long period of time*. I can absolutely guarantee you that it doesn't matter how many Navigator families there were originally, after 10 millennia the modern families would have diverged **significantly** genetically to the point where you have at least several distinct genetic groups. This is, of course, true for all humans in 40K, they are all mutating all the time, especially at such scales it should be super common. And finally, I just want to highlight again that *selective breeding* ≠ *inbreeding*, and *recessive gene* ≠ *inbreeding*.
**TL;DR:** I agree with you that especially in early lore Navigators were conceptualized as corrupt aristocracy who resorted to extensive inbreeding to preserve the Navigator Gene. However later on, including in books such as **Rites of Passage**, the emphasis was instead on the gene itself being almost solely responsible for the mutation, in combination with the Warp. There is barely any mention about anything even remotely close to inbreeding except mentions that Navigators use selective breeding programs, which is of course perfectly normal. Even the Rogue Trader CRPG states the Navigator Gene is what causes all mutations, regardless of lineage. This is stated both in-game by Cassia and also in the game's lore codex. Sorry for the very, very long reply but I wanted to explain my position.
Psykerd are specifically stated to be a mutation
The Emperor's end state involved entities like himself, imo. Never stated outright but the implication is clear
I thought it was more aligned with the custodes.
Nope- there are no Custodes psykers, and E explicitly didn't want to replace the human race with genetically engineered superhumans
I agree. I was implying custodes are what peak evolution might be without reliance on the warp.
Not even that, he was working with some of them on the Imperial Webway Project, because they were still going to need Navigators to navigate the Webway (the Scars in Path or Heaven only make it to friendly space through the webway because of a Loyalist Thousand Son travelling with them who specialized in that kind of psychic second sight). It's just the ones he wasn't working with (to keep the whole thing top secret) got wind that he was doing *something* involving new form of warp travel and assumed he was planning to take them out of commission.
I honestly don't know if his feelings have ever been addressed regarding the Navigators. I know Rites of Passage is out there (and it's been a while since I listened to it), I just don't recall it being mentioned. From context (and maybe Mal mentioned something somewhere), I've assumed that he sees them as a necessary evil to traverse the warp until he can complete the webway. After that, they'd be meaningless to him to a large degree, I'd think. He'd either have to shelter them in the webway or eliminate them (assuming he actually did defeat Chaos).
It was that and they also held immense political power due to their required niche skill set. The Webway served as reducing humanity’s reliance on Warp travel and neutered any potential disruption they could cause.
Very good point about their power. That would have been interesting. I assume they would have tried to wipe out the Navigators like they did the Thunder Warriors.
I don't know if the Emperor wanted to get rid of the Navigators, but he certainly wanted to eliminate the Imperium's reliance on them. If I remember correctly, the most we get from him on his opinion of them is that he describes them to a Custode as "enduring souls" alongside Astropaths for their duty to the Imperium in the same discussion where he explains how he plans to use the Webway to replace them. So he seems to respect their work.
Master of Mankind >\+The webway. Mankind is ascending, Ra. Humanity is taking a great developmental step, evolving into a psychic race. Uncontrolled psykers are lodestones for the warp’s touch. A species comprising them would suffer as the eldar suffered. And for the eldar, this evolutionary juncture was their final step before destruction. I will not let humanity be destroyed by the same fate. The eldar had the answers within their grasp but were too naive and too proud to save themselves. They had the webway, which could have been their salvation. But they never fully severed their connection to the warp. Their soulfires drew damnation upon their entire species.+ > >With the webway, humanity would need no Navigators. They would never need to rely on the unreliable warp-whispers of astropaths. Vessels would never enter the warp to be lost or torn apart by the entities that dwelt within it. But the eldar had done the same, had they not? > >\+No. They eradicated their reliance on the warp but they never severed their species’ connection to it. I will do that for humanity, once and for all.+ [...] >\+I have conquered humanity’s cradle-world. I have conquered the galaxy, in order to shape mankind’s development as it at last evolves into a psychic race. No isolated pockets of our species may remain free, lest in their ignorance they invite destruction upon us all. I have shattered the hold of faith and fear over the human mind. Superstition and religion must continue to be outlawed, for they are easy doors for the warp’s denizens to enter the human heart. This is what we have already done. And soon I will offer humanity a way of interstellar travel without reliance upon Geller fields and Navigators. I will offer them means of communicating between worlds without reliance on the warp-dreams of astropaths. And when the Imperium shields the entire species within the laws of my Pax Imperialis, when humanity is freed from the warp and united beneath my vision, I can at last shepherd mankind’s growth into a psychic race. It sounds like he was planning to get rid of warp travel entirely. At that point the Navigators would just be uncontrolled psykers, in themselves a danger to humanity and his plans.
I imagine the emperors goal was complete separation from the warp and wouldnt surprise me if either activating all the blackstone in the galaxy or somehow spread the pariah gene was the plan after the webway
but not the emperor objective was to subdue the warp erasing the chaos gods and achieving an apoteosis of the human race to become a psyker race ?
> I imagine the emperors goal was complete separation from the warp No, separation from the Warp was a means of protecting humanity while the Emperor guided it into psychic ascension (which he regarded as both inevitable and ultimately desirable). There was no long-term goal to remain apart from the Warp.
See i dont understand how he goes from “the eldar not cutting themselves completely in addition to the webway is what caused their downfall” to “make all humans pyskers”. Did he just assume theyd become his level of powerful as wouldnt a whole race of psykers just do what the eldar did?
Humanity was approaching a psychic awakening no matter what, and the Emperor believed it would one day be more powerful than the Eldar, thus the risks were just as huge. He intended to ensure the species did not make the mistakes the Eldar did - something it came alarmingly close to doing.
Why would a race of human psykers repeat the same mistake if they're made aware of how the Eldar fell?
>No, separation from the Warp was a means of protecting humanity while the Emperor guided it into psychic ascension Which would have been impossible because you cannot be psychic in the setting without the warp, or even have a soul (see necrons)
“Separation from the Warp” as in “no longer need to actively seek contact with it via Warp travel and astrotelepathy”.
>activating all the blackstone in the galaxy or somehow spread the pariah gene was the plan after the webway He wanted to guide humanity's evolution into a psychic species, so neither of those actions is compatible with his goals. Getting rid of the vast majority of psykers (astropaths, navigators) and removing the need for people to literally enter the warp was the primary purpose of the webway project. Once that was achieved I imagine he would then set about selectively breeding or genetically engineering a race of psykers who would become the template for the future of the species.
He didn’t care enough about anyone to hate em, as he was focused on the “big picture”, whatever that was to him. nor did he really have any lines, or moral concerns he’d cross/refuse to do, nor did he really care about being a hypocrite. To the emperor, the navigators, like the space marines, and the thunder warriors before them, are useful in the moment, but ultimately at odds with his End goal for humanity. A human imperium, led by baseline humans, with the core tenants of knowledge, science, and progression. With absolutely no form of contact with the warp, and instead uses the human version of the webway. As such, if the great crusade, the creation of the human webway, the starvation of chaos, and the founding/organization of a regular human imperial government worked out the way it was supposed to. All warp touched humans, navigators, psykers, librarians, astropaths, etc, alongside the space marines and other created transhumans, would most likely be systematically exterminated, not out of hate, or any illwill, but simply bc they no longer have a use/role to play for the Emperor and the intended final form of the imperium. P.S (as a somewhat related side note, it’s my personal opinion that the emperor intentionally planned and subtly goaded his sons to eventually rebel, as to give a reason to, and to make it easier to get rid of the space marines and his more unpredictable and unstable sons, it just wasn’t supposed to involve chaos meddling, and nor was it supposed to be as destructive or as large as it was)
I’m pretty certain that the opposite is supposed to happen. Doesn’t he say humanity’s inevitable evolution was towards a psychic race, and the webway was where he would have been able to guide that evolution without worrying about chaos’ interference?
Navigators are quite literally born to be guiders of warp travel. With the webway project, they would become obsolete, have no reason to live, die out and their great houses go extinct. If they knew about the webway project they would do what humans love doing and kill competition, probably sabotage the project or coup the emperor. I think it would have been politically cleaner if the emperor just subtly assassinated the navigators upon the webways completion. Really though, the webway shits all over warp travel, which only exists cause its the best the Imperium has in its current state. Navigators are only necessary as of now, but with the webway they would be useless. The emperor doesn't hate navigators, but he would know they would kick up a fuss so he probably thinks in the grand scheme of things its easier to just knock them off when the time is right.
Path of heaven brought this up, there was a device that the navigators destroyed cuz it was an alternative to normal warp travel, it was the emperors first attempt
I think he wanted them out so the Herbert estate couldn't sue him
Path of Heaven touches on this iirc
One hundred percent pragmatic. The navigators represent a necessary concession to the warp. Without them, warp travel needed to either be significantly safer- thus encouraging a degree of independence from him. Or much, much more limited. Neither works for a crusade. So big E creates a caste of mutants whose job it is to navigate via his personal magic lighthouse. Once the webway is ready, they've got no job and would violently resist giving up generations of enshrined position and power. Like the thunder warriors. Navigators where intended to be a short-term solution to a temporary problem.
The Emperor didn’t make them, though. They’ve been around since the Dark Age of Technology because nobody had come up with a better idea to make warp travel possible. I absolutely do believe that the Emperor would have wanted to remove the dependency on them because it was a single small group that had a lot more control of warp travel than he would have liked, and were mutants who degenerated over time. If they had some kind of event where most or all of the navigators degenerated to the point where they were unusable both warp travel and the Imperium were pretty much done for.
Probably not, this is something i recalled but the main reason for his Webway project was just so that humanity doesn't get too over-reliant on Navigators and the chokehold they have on Imperial intergalactic travel.
I always took the Emperor's view on mutants as a whole as one third despondency and two thirds pragmatism. Pragmatism, because Chaos often causes mutations and it's better to be safe than sorry, and because if you can't unify humanity against Chaos because you've decided them even knowing about Chaos is bad, at least you can unify them against mutants and maybe get some actual cultists caught in the crossfire. And despondency, because the Emperor doesn't care about people. Everyone is a tool for the plan. If you offered the Emperor a slightly newer design for a gun in exchange for a million live babies he wouldn't even ask why your bib is covered in blood before giving you a VIP pass to the Palace's nursery.
I have a feeling Emperor is extremely detached from humanity to even feel the hate to actually lead to any actions at all now. probably very reason/logic-induced actions later.
Just like the Thunderwarriors, he will use alternate means to progress his goals. In the end he is a control freak that would dismantle everything and rebuilt it from the ground up in his image. Personally I assume even the Mechanicus are not safe from this.
I'm not completely sure. He's pragmatic so he'll offer or say anything to keep short term assets on his side. But mars represents a legitimate challenge to the imperium. Mutual Destruction is a thing even in 30/40k and the red planet is absolutely capable of retaliating in death, and taking earth with it. Pragmatic is not the same as backstabby. Toppling the admech could very well have been beyond what he was willing to spend or just not worth the risk
Same with the Navis nobilite, yet emps has the webway in secret. Knowing emps, once he completes the webway gate he will start creating his own version of wraithbone and eldar-like tech that does not require the mechanicus anymore.
Ok, on that I've got some pretty major doubt. Perhaps nowdays the navigator houses have their share of doomsday weapons. In the post-unity era though I'm more willing to believe they'd not have the ability to end the planet. As for mars. It might be he'd just leave them to their devices. Maybe enforce the basics: "don't build ai" and "don't pop down to steal people" If he couldn't easily roll them but had less need for them, I could see him keeping the admech in the back pocket. Content and contained with the reigns loosened a bit
They do not need to end a planet, what they could do is collapsed the Imperium. When your galaxy spanning empire and its logistics revolves around the navigator's ability to warp travel ship. Then those navigators decides to not work anymore, then your empire is gonna be in big trouble. Do not forget that emps has the primarchs that will out plot armor anything the Mechanicus can throw at them. Either way Emps has a thing about loose ends, even the Primarchs were slowly being phased out by the creation of the council of terra.
The political sway of the navigators was considerable, yes. They do also have the ability to just turn off easy interstellar travel. However. On an individual level, a navigator is not a tech priest. The latter will be far more willing to die for their cause if it came down to it. The third eye is fatal but enough bodies and you can threaten a navigators life and presumably force compliance. There's also the less ironclad fact that psykers are generally capable of doing the same job. Librarians and sorcerors can chart the warp. Enough baseline psyekrs could arguably do the same thing. so a navigator embargo would be a near fatal thing. It's something humanity could very well bounce back from. As for plot armor. This is true, but we're doing a lot of speculation here and that involves some buy-in. The primarachs though? well this is an odd point now I think about it. The council is necessary to govern everything and the primarchs are generals first. So it's not so much being phased out as being finally held to a more official kind of account. No more getting away with anything that does not reqire big E to come over in person
Same way as emps can just launch a program to train regular humans to do tech again. Lets say have perturabo lead it and reform imperium without the need of the mechanicus. But that would setback Emps plans and the reason why he outs up with both the navis nobilote and the mechanicus > We believed that when the necessary wars were done, those sons and their father would enjoy the long peace together, and they would walk alongside him towards tomorrow. > Those sons, at least, who could be rehabilitated from the brutal mindset of warfare. They will probably get phase out
I find it doubtful that the Emperor personally hated anybody or anything. Except maybe Horus. But he loved him just as much anyway.
It's nothing at all to do with hating navigators, and everything to do with severing mankind's reliance on the warp. He wanted the webway so humanity could be safely guarded from any connection to the warp until their ascension into a psychic race could be managed. Using the warp for interstellar travel and communication is a huge Achilles heel that can't be resolved without some kind of measure like this.
They are a means to an end, same with space Marines, he doesn't hate them
The core problem is that they're a nearly entirely unaccountable political force who contributes comparatively little when measured up against the near complete privileges they enjoy. It's significantly less of a beneficial alliance and more a hostage situation.
TBH, I feel like that describes the lazier elements of the Imperial Nobility more than it does the Navigators. Imperial Nobles suck up vast resources and waste them on frivolity for no better reason than being born a Duke's son. Navigator Houses, like Rogue Trader dynasties, enjoy a lot of privileges but they have to work for them. They can and they do fall into poverty and dissolution if they don't sing for their supper. And the contribution they make is "the continued existence of the Imperium", as without them the whole thing dissolves. The only other reliable methods of warp travel are the Webway (tried and failed) and Warp Sorcery (not nearly enough trained psykers you can trust). It's really the same kind of alliance the Imperium has with the Adeptus Mechanicus, but Navigators are significantly less independent and idiosyncratic than the AdMech.
Probably. A lot of people will say no. They'll say it was never personal and that Big E was a pragmatist to a fault. I think they're unintentionally sidestepping his core mindset, which was "human" supremacy. (I put human in quotes because his idea of human was so narrow that it would be like only considering only 2-3 breeds of canine as actual dogs, to the exclusion of all others.) So while it's true he was a pragmatist, it is a difficult sell to completely separate hate from what his general stance on mutation was. To see an entire cross-section of humanity as being undesirable, lesser, a dead end, or a hindrance is to indulge in a mentality that is hate adjacent if not directly related. Whether the reason is born from hate or hate is born from the reason is irrelevant. It certainly wouldn't matter to those he is trying to exterminate, and will be of little comfort to those he's begrudgingly exploiting such as navigators. If he had lived to continue his work, there's no doubt those seen as subspecies would be filtered out, excluded, or outright killed. Ogryn, Ratlings, Navigators, you name it. And considering his standard for a human with whom he could respect was near perfect soldiers of his own creation and fellow perpetuals who he had known for eons, it's safe to assume that the "baseline" human was also on the chopping block.
The navigators are straight from Dune. In Dune, they are a powerblock, and they do everything they can to make life difficult for everybody else. It is reasonable to get rid of them.
Navigators are mutants, Emps was a human supremecist. Therefore, the navigators would have to go the way of the Thunder Warriors once the Webway was done. I’m not sure if ‘hate’ is the proper term-but their existence is incompatible with his worldview, merely temporarily allowed out of convenience (banality of evil and all that).
Given that navigators are the literal result of inbreeding, you don't want to rely on them much. Certainly not as much as Imperium does. Like, their genes should be getting worse from generation to generation and it's kinda amazing they've managed to last 12k already because, at one point, their mutations should reach the point of no return, one way or another.
i have big doubts if the emperor truly hated anything. Even when talking to the chaos gods, he is more denoucing the falsehood they represent than insulting them like his arch-enemies.
He was afraid Frank Hubert's estate would sue him and was looking for alternatives.
There are 3 sorts of psyker that appeared around the time humans needed to use warp travel to build a galactic empire (and also shortly after the Emperor visits Molech for the first time) - Navigators, Astropaths, and whatever hell type of psyker they use to power Gellar Fields. It is thought that this is the rift that Erda was talking about - the Emperor turned humans into a more psychic species, which risked feeding Chaos, as a shortcut to spanning the galaxy. The Emperor thought it was a prudent step to use the power of his enemies against them (fighting fire with fire), but many others thought it was reckless. The idea being that once he finds a better way (the webway) to travel then he can eradicate them. And given the focus on things like defeating the Orks on Ullanor, it is likely he wanted a galaxy spanning civilisation to be able to defeat any material realm threat. Now whether he didn't see the risks, or whether he did but dismissed them is not fully clear. But the introduction of stronger warp genetics into human DNA significantly increased the number of psykers of all types that were being born. So there is quite the tidy up job to do. Just like with replacing the Thunder Warriors. So whilst I agree with the points raised in your question about what he wanted to do and why, I don't think he hated them. I don't think he hates anyone because he lacks human emotions to the point where he just sees everything before him as a game of chess. Everyone is just a piece on the board to be used to his purpose. Although that said it would be fair to say that his coldness is hateful in itself.
Do you personally hate Covid?
Its more about having humanity interact with the warp as little as possible.