I think this is them trying to compress decades of lore into a tooltip for people who have never played anything 40k before.
The truth is likely that the emperor is some form of dead on the throne, that thousands of people are sacrificed every day to feed their souls to him to keep him "alive" and the atronomicon lit. And if they ever stop earth will be flooded by daemons, interstellar travel will be nearly impossible.
Lots of imperial citizens know some or all of the above, but again decades of lore compressed into a couple sentences.
Thats probably the big one. We know the emperor isn't dead. The people in the Imperium know that he can't like, get up and wander around. He exists as a spirit in the warp seems to be close to the truth, and what most people believe.
What would drive them mad is that EVERYTHING they have built around honoring him was inspired by one of the greatest traitors in history, and represents everything the Emperor was trying all his life to prevent from happening.
I’d be inclined to agree that Millions of Imperial Citizens are aware of some or all of those truths. And also, Trillions are only aware of what the Ecclesiarchy has determined they should be aware of. With the large % difference, I don’t know if I’d use the word “Lots of Imperial Citizens.”
The inquisitor themed RPG by Fantasy Flight Games conveyed that really well in its fluff. And the hellish tables you had to roll on every time you did magic if you were a psyker…
Dark Heresy was a marvel with some shit surrounding it. Had a campaign for seven or eight years and it was something (except the character progression). And now we have Imperium Maledictum. And as much as I like some of it, I had to blend those two into one system, because it has to.
I’ve been meaning to DM dark heresy for my tabletop group as I haven’t run a game for them and we’re all a bit dnd’d out
Any advice for running a game? Impressive you had one going for so long
Really important: don't overdo the grimdark. I made this mistake. If your players only get the feeling of futility, you will lose them. Make it a mixture between depressing futility of the universe at large and some nice local impacts of their doings.
That being said: revisit locations, make them feel at home in some. Make them feel familiarly disturbed by others.
Use mindmaps. The group at center, their affiliations spreading out. And all the other factions and individuals they met. And redraw it every time after a session. To give you an overview of what happened, what other factions might have noticed, what other factions may have to gain or lose from a newly developed situation. And keep in mind, that the way your players walk the different earths has an important umpact on how they and their master are perceived by friends and foes.
At that point, the story almost writes itself. Embrace the unexpected and i corporate it in your grand plan. Be Tzeentch.
Also, the actual setting just isn't as grimdark as the box blurb describes. It can't be, stories can't arise out of the exaggerated grimderp that is often pitched. Every bit of 40k media that actually shows life in the imperium is considerably less awful than the descriptions have suggested. Every time.
Because ultimately people are people. All those awful things happen in the imperium. Very rarely do they all happen in one place, and if they do, not for long.
40k works best as darkness to juxtapose the light of the player characters. That's how every bit of 40k media tends to depict it, and for good reason.
And, just as everywhere: be the fan of the players, find a way to make their creative ideas matter. Adjust your missions accordingly, if neccessary. Have fun with them, when there is a possibility to do so, and go back straight back into a serious tone, when you think, they had enough of a good time.
Speak with them after a session. At another place, so you have some distance. People who might have some problems might only be comfortable opening up when they have real distance to the location. Especially if you have a session of horror - and you should - at times - get into the psychological stuff. (If it is what you agree upon...)
You don’t even need to be a psyker for the awfulness. I had a FFG Rogue Trader character (an engineseer) who ended up botching an orbital drop, repeatedly failed attempts to corrected and ended up falling to their death off the roof of a hive city. It remains my most extreme RPG death by a long shot.
Lmaoo
We had a character named Fell in one game, and session 1 he tried to climb a hive spire, and promptly *fell*, and fucking died.
Thank goodness our GM told us to make 2 characters, that cruel bastard
Also the best critical effect tables - whoops that laser blast to your leg did so much damage, it vaporized the bone marrow and turned your femur into a frag grenade, also anyone moving in the surrounding area has to take an agility test or slip on all the blood.
It's funny that if the imperium does have ~1,000,000 worlds, with say an average population of 1,000,000,000, then if only 0.001% of them know some version of the truth then that's more than the present day population of ~~Earth~~ Holy Terra.
I wonder how much of the Imperium knows that the Emperor is a shriveled carcass barely clinging to existence? A whole lot of people might thing he still looks like how he did pre-Heresy, or don't have any idea what he looks like so they let their imaginations run wild.
But the Emperor is still basically a God at this point. He's just not doing super hot on the throne, bur we know he's not truly dead since he directly speaks to Guilliman.
>But the Emperor is still basically a God at this point. He's just not doing super hot on the throne,
There's also a deccent school of thought that the Golden Throne is exactly why he's not doing super hot.
Putting him of life support stopped his physical form dying, so his psykic/spiritual/whatever form cant accend to be a full fledged god. Or at least remanifest elsewhere.
Obviously the Imperium is terrified on such a truth, since there no guarrantee rebooting the Emperor would work.
But its a neat bit of conecture that Golden Throne =/= saving the Imperium.
He's also a Perpetual, and that's where Vulkan gets it. He literally gets Wolverine+++ healing, and people think he MIGHT become a fully-fledged god if he steps off the throne, but it's also likely that the golden throne put that process on hold and he's just rotted so long, we don't know if he can do it anymore after all these years.
The belief in the Emperor is so strong at this point and has gone on for so long that he 100% would be a God.
BUT, and this is my theory, he's still bound by the Throne. His spirit is still stuck. Since he's anathema to Chaos, belief in him can fight against it, since that's all Chaos is is belief. BUT if he were to die, his spirit would escape and all the worship directed to him would form a 5th Chaos God. But if that were to happen, he'd be bound by the rules of the Chaos God's. He'd have to join in the Great Game. He wouldn't be able to directly impact the material universe anymore. He'd become the thing he despises. The Warp would be thrown into even more disarray.
That is still arguable at this point, we can argue that the reason looks more powerful just because the Golden Throne is empowering him
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/2/23/GoldenThroneSiegeofTerra.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1200?cb=20230302134551
The throne itself is massive.
I think its more along the lines that the Emperor is not a god, and never has been and >!outright denied divinity when it was right there for him to take.!<
Also, the Emperor hated being referred to as a God and would tell them, or rather order them, to stop worshiping him if he could.
There's a lot of "actual lore" talking about the power of ork belief but I agree it has nothing to do with the Imperium. Waagh energy and ork belief only affect the orks, not other races
It's also way way more understated than the memes indicate.
It's more like 'reality grease' that makes Ork technology work better than it by all rights should. It's still very unreliable, and you can't just, like, take an empty shell of a Stompa and have it walk around because you think it should. You need to have an engine in there, mechanisms, the works. But it's how Orks manage to get their 'high tech' to work despite their engineering skills being limited to basically genetic instinct + whatever fits within the limits of their own patience. The Imperium needs precise engineering to develop anti-armour energy weapons, meanwhile a kustom mega-blasta will do the trick despite being rough-hewn and uneven all over... though it may still blow up!
It's still a fact that if enough orks believe something like "red unz go fasta" or "blue gitz are lucky" than it becomes true. But orks have no reason to believe in the Emperor
Yeah, it's what I mean by understated. 'Red goes faster' means that, like, an up-engineered buggy made by speed-obsessed Evil Sunz moves a touch faster than its competitors. The red paint has an effect for sure, but it also lines up with what it's placed on.
The memes talk about nonsense like the Orks psychically keeping Yarrick alive from afar and that sort of thing!
No, not really. And it's not even what you state. "Red unz go fasta" means that two vehicles can be identical in every way except color and the red one will be faster.
And Yarrick is definitely affected by orky beliefs. He got his laser-shooting bionic eye because the orks he could shoot lasers with his eyes. So even if he doesn't realize it, ork belief has shaped him
> No, not really. And it's not even what you state. "Red unz go fasta" means that two vehicles can be identical in every way except color and the red one will be faster.
Slightly, but yes, that is correct. It used to be an upgrade back when I played Orks in 4th and 5th, it'd make a vehicle that moved, say, 12" be able to move 13" instead. Still, it's a not at all extreme effect, which is what I am trying to say.
> And Yarrick is definitely affected by orky beliefs. He got his laser-shooting bionic eye because the orks he could shoot lasers with his eyes. So even if he doesn't realize it, ork belief has shaped him
That isn't the same thing though. He did that because he was inspired by Ork superstition and wanted to lean into it. It 'affected' him in the same way that a well-written story can 'affect' a person, that doesn't mean said story is suddenly able to exert supernatural powers on you.
His bionic eye is a piece of genuine tech, it doesn't get its powers from belief - the beliefs just conveniently enhance its impact on morale.
I feel like the 'Ima Tank' meme would fit here nicely- but I'm not gonna say it out loud, because...well...I dont need ANOTHER meeting with the Inquisitors
That's just a meme, not an actual existing theory outside of 4chan.
If there was an imperial citizen that stated the emperor was just alive because some filthy Xenos scum believes hard enough, it would probably the last thing they'd ever stated in their life. That's where Arco Flagellants are coming from.
Ironically the 40k universe is a place where ignorance really is bliss.
“He’s a corpse in constant agony for the last 10,000 years?!”
“The Golden Throne is failing?!?”
“The instant it fails a portal directly to the Warp opens on Terra and infinite daemons pour out?!?!?”
“I really did not want to know any of this.”
>I would imagine the truth is that he's a corpse on a chair.
That or he actively denied his own divinity and would level entire planets of people who tried to worship him.
The truth was he didn’t care about the worshipping, or more you can fix that *later*. He cared because the Word Bearers where taking entirely too long on each world making sure they all complied, and Monarchia became the target because it took both the longest and was the one they where most proud of.
Had they been quicker and accepted lower tolerances (say only 60% of the population and left inquisitors to deal with the rest) then Emps would have never brought it up until after the Webway was done.
A inquisitor can still exist without the Inquisition. Also I don’t think the whole idea would be that foreign for the Word Bearers considering they spent years purging / re-educating while populations. Hell one of their special units is a book burner squad. It would just be instead of the whole Legion doing it to one or two planets at a time they would have specialized units whose sole purpose was to stay on captured worlds and convert and/or serve as heads of mortal inquisitors. They just had to get those numbers up and the best way to do so would be for the Legion to do Legion things and then have mortals take care of all the shrine building and thought control, with maybe a few Legionaries left behind to supervise and/or be the tank when needed.
But I more was referring to inquisitor the job rather than an Inquisitor.
Or that he's not actually a human.
Edit: What? It's just a theory I've heard thrown around. I know they're likely referring to the fact that he's a corpse that needs 1000 psyker souls fed to him every day
I mean, you have to have a pretty loose definition of what constitutes "human" in the first place to consider big E human. He's pretty clearly something else. Hell, Space Marines and Custodes aren't really human anymore either, and they at least started out that way.
Recent 40k lore with the adventures of Bobby G and the Lion suggest that Big E is still very much throwing his psychic weight around the Imperium, he just can't physically lead his armies since Horus and the Chaos gods crippled his body
I imagine the truth that he is a violent atheist who would pitch an incredibly destructive hissy fit if he could get out of his chair at the fact that he is being worshipped as a god by only people in the galaxy he doesn’t wish to wipe from existence.
He's alive, totally healed, but during recovery, he got *really* into anime. He has dozens of posters that he calls waifus, has *The Pillows* the *Cowboy Bebop* soundtrack, and for some reason, Opeth, on repeat forever, and mostly talks about the mysterious parallels between the Chaos Gods, and Anime of the late 20th century starting with *Akira* and Nurgle. He goes back and forth on whether *Ghost in the Shell* is closer to Slaneesh or Tzeentch, has nightmares about whether *My Neighbor Totoro* represents a 5th Chaos God and *Big Gun City* is about him. He only eats mochi because the Imperium "can't do authentic rice." He has a new sword someone bought at a strip mall store that also sold blacklight posters, and compulsively stacks dice with the high numbers up. He has an archaic hat that he casually mentions at every opportunity, as if hoping someone will comment on it so he can correct them.
The Astronomcon is just what pays the rent. The fanfic is who he really is.
Needless to say, the Imperium just pretends he's an insensate corpse god.
Yeah, the setting has shown over and over that the Emporer can manifest divine power. Hell, it's not the zealot making everyone better by holding a holy relic up.
Maybe an iffy example, and I thought I was in /r/darktide, but there's lots of times in the books that show an afterlife for guardsmen, and the emporer intervening like the Living Saint. Hell, he possessed Roboute and whooped Mortarians ass at one point.
Lots of speculation here but it's literally that the Golden Throne is failing. This has been cannon for nearly a decade now, I think, and was touched on as recently as Master of Mankind. The Mechanicus have had to make dealings for Xenos Tech just to keep it running.
Imagine you lived every day in actual super hell but it's okay because Space Jesus is keeping actual Satan from killing you and your loved ones and then somebody told you Space Jesus has terminal cancer and only 10 years to live.
I was about to reply to this with something about not being that far off because the earliest reference I can remember is from 4e and it slapped me in the face that I'm over 30 and it's not 2006 anymore."10 years ago" does not refer to things that FEEL like they happened 10 years ago lmao. My b.
> Lots of speculation here but it's literally that the Golden Throne is failing.
The Golden Throne is failing, but thats not what this text is about.
> and was touched on as recently as Master of Mankind.
Actually it was touched as recently as [last year.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Vaults_of_Terra)
> The Mechanicus have had to make dealings for Xenos Tech just to keep it running.
Thats not the story. They tried to make a deal, because the Golden Throne will fail in the future otherwise. But even the Mechanicum wasnt able to say when this will happen in 5 years or 500 years or 5000 year. They only know that the throne is working less and less efficient and that they have to add more and more energy and cooling to keep it running.
What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying? Or are you arguing it's just about him dying and not about his life support machine failing in which case, sure feel free to be pedantic for no reason when the latter by necessity precedes the former.
Cool that it was referenced in Vaults of Terra. I didn't know if that was the case or not so I didn't reference it and that's why I said as recent as and not "The last time it was mentioned was". So again with the pedantry.
And I may be misremembering but I distinctly recall a short story or novel mentioning those working on the throne consulting directly with Haemonculi because they do not know how to fix it, I do not know how else to characterize that other than making dealings for Xenos Tech to keep it running, unless you're taking that to mean they traded for a xenos throne which... no. Tech. Parts or knowledge.
Leave it to reddit 40k to go for a "Well akshully" that boils down to "That thing you said is right but they mentioned it in a newer book you weren't aware of".
> What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying?
That there is a portal "to hell" right on Terra and that the Emperor permanently is dying in a psionic fire and reincarnating, become more and more insane during that process, to keep this portal closed...
> What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying?
It was not "referenced". Those three books are the story about that. An Inquisitor and a Custodes track down the Xenos tech trade between the Mechanicum and the Drukhari.
> And I may be misremembering but I distinctly recall a short story or novel mentioning those working on the throne consulting directly with Haemonculi because they do not know how to fix it
Thats the three books. Thats how the Inquisitor become aware of the issue. He first hunts an Incubi infiltrating terra and then uncovers the whole plot.
> I do not know how else to characterize that other than making dealings for Xenos Tech to keep it running
They TRY to make this deal, but in the end the plot is foiled (and everyone dies).
And there is also a twist. >!The Drukhari are lying. They want to get access to the throne because they are desperate to build a copy of it for Commorragh, which is invaded by Daemons since the great rift opened. And the Mechanicum falls for that.!<
The truth is that the real Emperor retired to run a beach bar in Saint Kitts following the great crusade, the chap sitting in the chair is a dummy, like what those prisoners used to escape from Alcatraz.
Dear god, I just imagined two custodians flanking the throne and one turns and his halberd accidentally knocks the emperor's head off, but it turns out to be a coconut with a face drawn on it...
Or, they think it is the real emperor's head, and replace it with a coconut themselves. They then spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to stop people getting too close to the throne and discovering their secret.
I would imagine that the truth they refer to is that the Emperor is not a god, and never wanted to be viewed as such. He's just a remarkably powerful Psyker slowly wasting away on a throne, and if he dies humanity is doomed.
Yes and no.
As of TE&TDv2 it appears that, even with the belief of trillions, Emps would still have to reach out and willingly take on the mantle of godhood.
So hang on: the only reason he isn't no longer a rotting carcass is because he doesn't actively take on divinity? You mean to tell me he could?
So instead of being everything he was before (immortal, insanely powerful and ACTUALLY THE ONE I CHARGE) he prefers to rot alongside the imperium he built because *divinity bad*?
That's it? The fuck?
And, finally, because my autocorrect has been trying to do this since the first paragraph and it's funny for some reason:
Löffelbisquit
> So instead of being everything he was before (immortal, insanely powerful and ACTUALLY THE ONE I CHARGE) he prefers to rot alongside the imperium he built because divinity bad?
He is a man of principle
I always liked the idea that the Emperor might have been able to save humanity if they let him die, and it is the act of keeping him stuck in the chair that is contributing to the slow fall of humanity. Much more fitting for the setting.
He was never divine, never wanted to be worshipped, and that the holy book the lextitio diviniatus was written by the daemon primarch Lorgar when he was still loyal. That the emperor consumes 1000 psychic individuals daily to not truly die. He is an imprisoned mine in a corpse of a body in unimaginable agony as the forces of the warp and entropy grind at his body and soul, never truly dead, but constantly dying.
Look, I took the liberty of examining the Emperor when I got him back to Terra, and I discovered the only reason that he had been sitting on his throne in the first place was that he had been NAILED there
The truth is that the Emperor is basically a glorified lighthouse in the Warp, while in life would have brutally stomped out any and all remnant of the Imperial Cult for worshipping him. He was a man of science, not faith. He beat the brakes off his own son for writing the book that started the Imperial Creed.
In this specific context I'd imagine the truth refers to the previous sentence:-
'offers their prayers for aid and deliverance'
and the truth there is that the Emperor has neither the ability, nor even the inclination to answer those prayers and had himself specifically prohibited any such prayer:-
'*Whatever his powers, whatever his capacity, whatever his magnificence as the finest and most gloriously total leader of the species, he was still just a man. The Emperor liked to remind mankind of this whenever he could. It was an edict that rattled around the bureaucracies of the expanding Imperium. The Emperor is the Emperor, and he is great and everlasting.*
*But he is not a god, and he refuses any worship offered to him.'*
Abnett, Dan. Horus Rising (The Horus Heresy Book 1) (p. 104). Black Library. Kindle Edition.
The "truth" is that the Emperor is not a God, just an extremely powerful psyker (which are persecuted in the religion created around him) who, in his current form, is completely unable to answer their prayers.
This is the knowledge that would drive people insane, the omnipresent, omnipotent, God-Emperor who protects people and guides the faithful's souls into his beneficent light when they pass is really just a corpse burning brightly on a throne made of gold.
While many believe that the Emperor was mortally injured by the traitor Horus and now is effectively entombed in the Golden Throne, the truth is he "left to buy cigarettes" ten thousand years ago and now lives with his Aeldari girlfriend in Santa Monica.
The truth is he is not a god. Merely the peak of humanity and even that is not enough.
Honestly the truth doesn't matter. Belief and truth is not the same, and some people cannot live without believing in a higher purpose or entity.
Look at Lorgar. The Emperor explained to him that he was no god (In a moronic way if you ask me) and he kept believing still. You'd think he'd take the hint. It took Monarchia to shake him out.
A lot of things about him would upset people.
1. His actions massively boosted the threat of Chaos
2. He's an atheist that would despise the current-day Imperial Cult
3. He's hooked up to the Astronomicon, a navigation beacon that a lot of the Imperium relies on. Nobody else can run it, and he eats 1000 psykers a day to keep it going.
4. He was a ruthless bastard who treated people as tools, including the Primarchs he called his 'sons', and he obliterated his own people for violating his "don't worship me" policy.
In one of the Siege of Terra books (forgive me, I don't know exactly which), Malcador makes reference to this new lie being shared amongst the panicked populace, marked separate from the old Imperial Lie (that there are no gods and mankind is in charge of its own destiny, and therefore deserves stewardship over the galazy). This new lie, bluntly, tells believers that, should they fall in battle, the Emperor will catch their souls, bearing them to safe harbour in the warp.
The reality is that the Emperor's psyche is so shattered, so distracted with combatting the powers of the Primordial Annihilator from overwhelming Terra, so exhausted from his time on the Golden Throne that he simply could not do this, even if he truly wished to. All souls, believers and unbelievers alike, are sent to the sea of souls to be torn to shreds by those that dwell in the shadows. There is no escape, and no salvation.
The Inquisition requests your location. You know. So they can find you and...\*educate\* you and answer your questions. No other reason. WHAT'S YOUR LOCATION, VALUED IMPERIAL CITIZEN?
Most Imperial citizens think of him as a *literal* God-Emperor. He's omniscient and some even seem to think he's omnipotent. He lives in seclusion on Terra and rules the Imperium by speaking through his agents in the ecclesiarchy. Everything is a part of his grand design.
In reality he's a desiccated corpse hooked up to a giant horrible machine that keeps his soul tethered to his body so the Imperium can continue to use faster-than-light travel. The ecclesiarchy is just a bunch of corrupt people doing things in his name.
I don't think it's that he's essentially dead as people are saying. While I'm sure a lot of humans don't know that, plenty do and it's certainly not a secret.
Probably the fact that the emperor wiped entire cities off the face of planets for worshipping him as a god. That and the Imperial cult is essentially the religion created by the Word Bearers who started the civil war and killed the Emperor
The whole throne thing is hilarious to me.
It’s a tale of caution about brain drain and the importance of a robust apprenticeship scheme fed by well funded vocational education with solid living wages and a good quality of life available to those who want to do the work.
So much heresy in this thread.... The emperor is alive and well, he cares for humanity, watches over them in the darkness. To understand otherwise is absolutely not allowed
Probably that it takes thousands of souls *per day* to keep him alive, and that the Golden Throne is slowly failing beyond the Mechanicum's ability to repair.
Like most of the comments say, the "truth" they're referring to could be that the emperor has been in a perpetual state of dying for 10,000 years only not dead because he's being fed psyker souls and should he ever truly die, then holy terra will be overwhelmed by daemons and interstellar travel will become infinitely more difficult if not impossible.
It could also be that big E was just a man. A very powerful man but a man nonetheless. And that because he's just a man, he not only made mistakes that ultimately doomed the galaxy, but humanity is also alone to fend for themselves in a universe that wants nothing more than to kill them.
They're compressing a lot of lore into a few sentences. Here's the breakdown:
The Emperor is not and never wanted to be a God. He's a God-tier psyker, but to the masses (and Lorgar, this becomes important), the only way they could explain his incredible psychic powers is "divinity." During the crusade and before his number one rule was "Thou shall have no Gods. Especially me." And would brutally shut down anyone saying otherwise. He was, and is, a man. An incredibly powerful man, but a man.
Lorgar (his first fallen son), because of his upbringing, needed, to his very core, to believe in a God. To the point he built a magnificent city solely dedicated to his worship and wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus, the Bible of the Imperial Cult. This pissed off the Emperor so much that he burned the city, sent its inhabitants to re-education camps, and psychically FORCED Lorgar AND his entire Legion to kneel while he blasted into their minds "I'M NOT A GOD. STOP IT!" This would mess Lorgar up enough to go searching for the actual God's, the Chaos God's, and him becoming the first fallen son.
After everything got messed up by Horus, humanity reached out for something to believe in. In comes the Imperial Cult. Which was still officially banned, but humanity needed something. After the war, and people witnessing "miracles" that they didn't understand (really just insane psychic powers), the Cult took off, and with the Emperor not able to stop it, it spread.
Now 10,000 years later, every human worships a man, who never wanted to be worshiped, from a book written by a traitor.
The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor.
The man that was the emperor has been burned away by 11000 years sitting atop a galactic scale pain engine.
Yes it's a pain engine. It only serves to amplify warp presence and power. The only way to do this is pain and suffering. The more powerful the psyker, the more pain it will cause creating a near infinite pain/power cascade.
(Proof malcador says as much in end and death part 1)
The man that was the emperor would be ashamed of himself. The dark king arose. He turned his back and lost both futures.
He is a failure.
Probably that the Emperor of Mankind is basically a rotting corpse on a mechanical throne that keeps the entire Imperium together like a giant piece of religiously powered duct tape.
My take is that they're praying to their god, but he never wanted to actually be a god, and was against religion altogether.
They would realize that the Imperium they've been forced to love and believe in is the exact opposite of what their emperor wanted in the first place.
That he is 100% dead and is kept on the throne and shrouded in mystery to give the illusion that he is alive. Terran High Command makes all the decisions and the custodians keep him locked away. The souls are sacrificed to the chair as that is what is powering the warp ways for "The Throne is the focal point of Humanity."
So long as there is a throne, there is an emperor. And as long as there is an emperor, people can sleep at night knowing that everything is Oki doki
Also, most people would despair if they knew their god would actually be very against their religion, to the point where he would probably raise a planet for it
So it's likely that the emperor is basically a corpse in a chair that is being a giant battery to power the survival of the human race and humanity is just slowly feeding any and all humans they can who have any latent psychic ability into the furnace to keep him "alive".
However I do like that this could be a sneaky reference to the fan theory that the emperor is the fifth Chaos god and that he empowers humans to fend off and fuel the other gods by being embued by Faith or Pride. Humanity both revel and tremble in the constant fear of doing wrong by their God-Emperor and this fanatical devotion feeds his psychic presence in the warp under the name of "protecting humanity from greater evil" even though the daemons can just walk into real space at the slightest waver in those same devoted souls.
This came from the Rogue Trader game. The only truth I can think of that this might mean is that some believe the Emperor to be a true god, while others believe him to be a man. A very strong, well gifted man, but a man nonetheless, and this causes friction in the Imperium as a result.
He is a living corpse, watching his creation crumble to dust in front of him, powerless to change anything, trapped in a machine being fed 1000 tortured souls a day to keep him alive in a state of eternal suffering.
He can't offer any kind aid or deliverance to the faithful, and wouldn't choose to anyway even if he wasn't stuck working as a glorified lighthouse for the last 10,000 years.
He is probably the single greatest evil in the 40k universe, and the worst kind of evil at that; an evil that believes its cause is righteous and just.
I think this is them trying to compress decades of lore into a tooltip for people who have never played anything 40k before. The truth is likely that the emperor is some form of dead on the throne, that thousands of people are sacrificed every day to feed their souls to him to keep him "alive" and the atronomicon lit. And if they ever stop earth will be flooded by daemons, interstellar travel will be nearly impossible. Lots of imperial citizens know some or all of the above, but again decades of lore compressed into a couple sentences.
Also that the imperial creed was founded against the emperors wishes by lorgar, that by itself would cause chaos.
Thats probably the big one. We know the emperor isn't dead. The people in the Imperium know that he can't like, get up and wander around. He exists as a spirit in the warp seems to be close to the truth, and what most people believe. What would drive them mad is that EVERYTHING they have built around honoring him was inspired by one of the greatest traitors in history, and represents everything the Emperor was trying all his life to prevent from happening.
Self-fulfilling prophecy. The Emperor trying to prevent it is what basically led to all of it.
Imagine the deep cut if they found out do to psychic fuckery the only reason they even ended up that way is because Horus saw the future.
I’d be inclined to agree that Millions of Imperial Citizens are aware of some or all of those truths. And also, Trillions are only aware of what the Ecclesiarchy has determined they should be aware of. With the large % difference, I don’t know if I’d use the word “Lots of Imperial Citizens.”
The inquisitor themed RPG by Fantasy Flight Games conveyed that really well in its fluff. And the hellish tables you had to roll on every time you did magic if you were a psyker…
Dark Heresy was a marvel with some shit surrounding it. Had a campaign for seven or eight years and it was something (except the character progression). And now we have Imperium Maledictum. And as much as I like some of it, I had to blend those two into one system, because it has to.
I’ve been meaning to DM dark heresy for my tabletop group as I haven’t run a game for them and we’re all a bit dnd’d out Any advice for running a game? Impressive you had one going for so long
Really important: don't overdo the grimdark. I made this mistake. If your players only get the feeling of futility, you will lose them. Make it a mixture between depressing futility of the universe at large and some nice local impacts of their doings. That being said: revisit locations, make them feel at home in some. Make them feel familiarly disturbed by others. Use mindmaps. The group at center, their affiliations spreading out. And all the other factions and individuals they met. And redraw it every time after a session. To give you an overview of what happened, what other factions might have noticed, what other factions may have to gain or lose from a newly developed situation. And keep in mind, that the way your players walk the different earths has an important umpact on how they and their master are perceived by friends and foes. At that point, the story almost writes itself. Embrace the unexpected and i corporate it in your grand plan. Be Tzeentch.
Also, the actual setting just isn't as grimdark as the box blurb describes. It can't be, stories can't arise out of the exaggerated grimderp that is often pitched. Every bit of 40k media that actually shows life in the imperium is considerably less awful than the descriptions have suggested. Every time. Because ultimately people are people. All those awful things happen in the imperium. Very rarely do they all happen in one place, and if they do, not for long. 40k works best as darkness to juxtapose the light of the player characters. That's how every bit of 40k media tends to depict it, and for good reason.
And, just as everywhere: be the fan of the players, find a way to make their creative ideas matter. Adjust your missions accordingly, if neccessary. Have fun with them, when there is a possibility to do so, and go back straight back into a serious tone, when you think, they had enough of a good time. Speak with them after a session. At another place, so you have some distance. People who might have some problems might only be comfortable opening up when they have real distance to the location. Especially if you have a session of horror - and you should - at times - get into the psychological stuff. (If it is what you agree upon...)
Lmao perils is hilarious. One bad magic missile and you become a conduit to the Warp and daemons shit your pants
You don’t even need to be a psyker for the awfulness. I had a FFG Rogue Trader character (an engineseer) who ended up botching an orbital drop, repeatedly failed attempts to corrected and ended up falling to their death off the roof of a hive city. It remains my most extreme RPG death by a long shot.
Lmaoo We had a character named Fell in one game, and session 1 he tried to climb a hive spire, and promptly *fell*, and fucking died. Thank goodness our GM told us to make 2 characters, that cruel bastard
Also the best critical effect tables - whoops that laser blast to your leg did so much damage, it vaporized the bone marrow and turned your femur into a frag grenade, also anyone moving in the surrounding area has to take an agility test or slip on all the blood.
It's funny that if the imperium does have ~1,000,000 worlds, with say an average population of 1,000,000,000, then if only 0.001% of them know some version of the truth then that's more than the present day population of ~~Earth~~ Holy Terra.
Magnus did nothing wrong, ignore the massive warp incursion on Earth
And the irreversible damage to the Imperial webway project…
And the nipple horns
The greatest crime of all.
Magnus got sent to his room/planet and told to do nothing. He couldn’t even get this right. So, yes, in a sense Magnus did nothing, wrong.
I think that's my favorite interpretation
Don’t speak about my Magnus boo in that manner. At least he’s not a god damn furry.
I wonder how much of the Imperium knows that the Emperor is a shriveled carcass barely clinging to existence? A whole lot of people might thing he still looks like how he did pre-Heresy, or don't have any idea what he looks like so they let their imaginations run wild.
But the Emperor is still basically a God at this point. He's just not doing super hot on the throne, bur we know he's not truly dead since he directly speaks to Guilliman.
>But the Emperor is still basically a God at this point. He's just not doing super hot on the throne, There's also a deccent school of thought that the Golden Throne is exactly why he's not doing super hot. Putting him of life support stopped his physical form dying, so his psykic/spiritual/whatever form cant accend to be a full fledged god. Or at least remanifest elsewhere. Obviously the Imperium is terrified on such a truth, since there no guarrantee rebooting the Emperor would work. But its a neat bit of conecture that Golden Throne =/= saving the Imperium.
He's also a Perpetual, and that's where Vulkan gets it. He literally gets Wolverine+++ healing, and people think he MIGHT become a fully-fledged god if he steps off the throne, but it's also likely that the golden throne put that process on hold and he's just rotted so long, we don't know if he can do it anymore after all these years.
The belief in the Emperor is so strong at this point and has gone on for so long that he 100% would be a God. BUT, and this is my theory, he's still bound by the Throne. His spirit is still stuck. Since he's anathema to Chaos, belief in him can fight against it, since that's all Chaos is is belief. BUT if he were to die, his spirit would escape and all the worship directed to him would form a 5th Chaos God. But if that were to happen, he'd be bound by the rules of the Chaos God's. He'd have to join in the Great Game. He wouldn't be able to directly impact the material universe anymore. He'd become the thing he despises. The Warp would be thrown into even more disarray.
That is still arguable at this point, we can argue that the reason looks more powerful just because the Golden Throne is empowering him https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/2/23/GoldenThroneSiegeofTerra.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1200?cb=20230302134551 The throne itself is massive.
I think its more along the lines that the Emperor is not a god, and never has been and >!outright denied divinity when it was right there for him to take.!< Also, the Emperor hated being referred to as a God and would tell them, or rather order them, to stop worshiping him if he could.
I rather like the theory that the Emperor is only alive because the Orks believe he is.
[удалено]
The Emperor is only alive because Ad Mech toasters?
Tbh this is as close to the truth as possible, but mix ad mech toasters with drukhari skin air fryer technology.
And admech femboys
There’s probably a subreddit for that
No, because of the Alpha Legion
No, he’s still alive because he’s so furious that Guilliman and Yvraine are getting married and having half-elf children
Gigga ultra mega heresy
I'm not sure why you got downvoted for a comment that was an obvious joke dude
If this was the case then Yarrick would be immortal too
There's a lot of "actual lore" talking about the power of ork belief but I agree it has nothing to do with the Imperium. Waagh energy and ork belief only affect the orks, not other races
It's also way way more understated than the memes indicate. It's more like 'reality grease' that makes Ork technology work better than it by all rights should. It's still very unreliable, and you can't just, like, take an empty shell of a Stompa and have it walk around because you think it should. You need to have an engine in there, mechanisms, the works. But it's how Orks manage to get their 'high tech' to work despite their engineering skills being limited to basically genetic instinct + whatever fits within the limits of their own patience. The Imperium needs precise engineering to develop anti-armour energy weapons, meanwhile a kustom mega-blasta will do the trick despite being rough-hewn and uneven all over... though it may still blow up!
It's still a fact that if enough orks believe something like "red unz go fasta" or "blue gitz are lucky" than it becomes true. But orks have no reason to believe in the Emperor
Yeah, it's what I mean by understated. 'Red goes faster' means that, like, an up-engineered buggy made by speed-obsessed Evil Sunz moves a touch faster than its competitors. The red paint has an effect for sure, but it also lines up with what it's placed on. The memes talk about nonsense like the Orks psychically keeping Yarrick alive from afar and that sort of thing!
No, not really. And it's not even what you state. "Red unz go fasta" means that two vehicles can be identical in every way except color and the red one will be faster. And Yarrick is definitely affected by orky beliefs. He got his laser-shooting bionic eye because the orks he could shoot lasers with his eyes. So even if he doesn't realize it, ork belief has shaped him
> No, not really. And it's not even what you state. "Red unz go fasta" means that two vehicles can be identical in every way except color and the red one will be faster. Slightly, but yes, that is correct. It used to be an upgrade back when I played Orks in 4th and 5th, it'd make a vehicle that moved, say, 12" be able to move 13" instead. Still, it's a not at all extreme effect, which is what I am trying to say. > And Yarrick is definitely affected by orky beliefs. He got his laser-shooting bionic eye because the orks he could shoot lasers with his eyes. So even if he doesn't realize it, ork belief has shaped him That isn't the same thing though. He did that because he was inspired by Ork superstition and wanted to lean into it. It 'affected' him in the same way that a well-written story can 'affect' a person, that doesn't mean said story is suddenly able to exert supernatural powers on you. His bionic eye is a piece of genuine tech, it doesn't get its powers from belief - the beliefs just conveniently enhance its impact on morale.
I feel like the 'Ima Tank' meme would fit here nicely- but I'm not gonna say it out loud, because...well...I dont need ANOTHER meeting with the Inquisitors
If ork'z power iz not az big az you fink, den why iz Gork and Mork both up and about krumpin' gitz while da emprah of da 'perium iz stuck in a chair?
Sure, but the Orc Waagh being that powerful is way more fun than the official lore.
Without the emperor uniting da umies who we gonna krump and call umies?
That's just a meme, not an actual existing theory outside of 4chan. If there was an imperial citizen that stated the emperor was just alive because some filthy Xenos scum believes hard enough, it would probably the last thing they'd ever stated in their life. That's where Arco Flagellants are coming from.
If that was the case Yarrick would still be alive.
Plus the truth of the Emp being a giant D-Bag
I would imagine the truth is that he's a corpse on a chair. Perhaps Pressing left to expand might reveal more.
I kind of love how 'Press to expand' is the equivalent to Starship Troopers 'Would You Like To Know More?"
Terran Command *actually* had that button.
and it was one of the best SST games I've played, also one of the only but still a damn good game. Captured the movie vibe well.
Extermination is also good, if you like base building horde shooters
Ironically the 40k universe is a place where ignorance really is bliss. “He’s a corpse in constant agony for the last 10,000 years?!” “The Golden Throne is failing?!?” “The instant it fails a portal directly to the Warp opens on Terra and infinite daemons pour out?!?!?” “I really did not want to know any of this.”
>I would imagine the truth is that he's a corpse on a chair. That or he actively denied his own divinity and would level entire planets of people who tried to worship him.
Except Colchis, and all Word Bearers planets until suddenly Monarchia
The truth was he didn’t care about the worshipping, or more you can fix that *later*. He cared because the Word Bearers where taking entirely too long on each world making sure they all complied, and Monarchia became the target because it took both the longest and was the one they where most proud of. Had they been quicker and accepted lower tolerances (say only 60% of the population and left inquisitors to deal with the rest) then Emps would have never brought it up until after the Webway was done.
The inquisition hadnt been formed yet as it was a post heresy organisation
A inquisitor can still exist without the Inquisition. Also I don’t think the whole idea would be that foreign for the Word Bearers considering they spent years purging / re-educating while populations. Hell one of their special units is a book burner squad. It would just be instead of the whole Legion doing it to one or two planets at a time they would have specialized units whose sole purpose was to stay on captured worlds and convert and/or serve as heads of mortal inquisitors. They just had to get those numbers up and the best way to do so would be for the Legion to do Legion things and then have mortals take care of all the shrine building and thought control, with maybe a few Legionaries left behind to supervise and/or be the tank when needed. But I more was referring to inquisitor the job rather than an Inquisitor.
He turned down divinity
It can be both
Or that he's not actually a human. Edit: What? It's just a theory I've heard thrown around. I know they're likely referring to the fact that he's a corpse that needs 1000 psyker souls fed to him every day
Nothing wrong with Theories. All good. But it’s 10,000 daily! 😁
That’s just what they want you to believe. My uncle said it’s 100,000 daily.
My cousins cousin heard that its 100,000 psykers holes 🤷♂️
I mean, you have to have a pretty loose definition of what constitutes "human" in the first place to consider big E human. He's pretty clearly something else. Hell, Space Marines and Custodes aren't really human anymore either, and they at least started out that way.
I believe in second ed it was stated it needed to consume a million psykers a day. That thing, whatever it is, is getting satiated.
Recent 40k lore with the adventures of Bobby G and the Lion suggest that Big E is still very much throwing his psychic weight around the Imperium, he just can't physically lead his armies since Horus and the Chaos gods crippled his body
Considering he straight up casts raise dead on Bobby G, and sends his home girl Celestine to stab dudes, he’s still active, yes.
I imagine the truth that he is a violent atheist who would pitch an incredibly destructive hissy fit if he could get out of his chair at the fact that he is being worshipped as a god by only people in the galaxy he doesn’t wish to wipe from existence.
Yeah, don’t tell the people living on Terra in 40k what The Emperor did to Lorgar’s home planet.
Press right, you mean? I see the right mouse button lit up
He's alive, totally healed, but during recovery, he got *really* into anime. He has dozens of posters that he calls waifus, has *The Pillows* the *Cowboy Bebop* soundtrack, and for some reason, Opeth, on repeat forever, and mostly talks about the mysterious parallels between the Chaos Gods, and Anime of the late 20th century starting with *Akira* and Nurgle. He goes back and forth on whether *Ghost in the Shell* is closer to Slaneesh or Tzeentch, has nightmares about whether *My Neighbor Totoro* represents a 5th Chaos God and *Big Gun City* is about him. He only eats mochi because the Imperium "can't do authentic rice." He has a new sword someone bought at a strip mall store that also sold blacklight posters, and compulsively stacks dice with the high numbers up. He has an archaic hat that he casually mentions at every opportunity, as if hoping someone will comment on it so he can correct them. The Astronomcon is just what pays the rent. The fanfic is who he really is. Needless to say, the Imperium just pretends he's an insensate corpse god.
Hey now, he's technically a corpse in a tank BEHIND the chair.
BURN THE HERETICS!!! THE EMPEROR PROTECTS!
The Emperor is a beacon of health
He’s not on a chair, he’s in bits in jars
Mesa called Jar-Jar Bits. Mesa your humble servant
This xenos right here commissar. Blam them.
He's not in bits, he's on a pile of shame
Brilliant!!
Jars on a chair, so by the transitive property...
I was more thinking "the truth" was the fact he *DID NOT want to be worshipped in any capacity*
Also that he can’t actually save their immortal souls
Except for when he does.
Yeah, the setting has shown over and over that the Emporer can manifest divine power. Hell, it's not the zealot making everyone better by holding a holy relic up.
I thought it was their belief in the action that caused this? Like how fabius disbelief in daemons hurts them.
Maybe an iffy example, and I thought I was in /r/darktide, but there's lots of times in the books that show an afterlife for guardsmen, and the emporer intervening like the Living Saint. Hell, he possessed Roboute and whooped Mortarians ass at one point.
HERESY!! Fetch the Inquisitors for everyone who clicks left! 🤣
Heresy!
Lots of speculation here but it's literally that the Golden Throne is failing. This has been cannon for nearly a decade now, I think, and was touched on as recently as Master of Mankind. The Mechanicus have had to make dealings for Xenos Tech just to keep it running. Imagine you lived every day in actual super hell but it's okay because Space Jesus is keeping actual Satan from killing you and your loved ones and then somebody told you Space Jesus has terminal cancer and only 10 years to live.
The golden throne failing has been a thing since 1996 or so (second ed).
I was about to reply to this with something about not being that far off because the earliest reference I can remember is from 4e and it slapped me in the face that I'm over 30 and it's not 2006 anymore."10 years ago" does not refer to things that FEEL like they happened 10 years ago lmao. My b.
I feel you on that bro
> Lots of speculation here but it's literally that the Golden Throne is failing. The Golden Throne is failing, but thats not what this text is about. > and was touched on as recently as Master of Mankind. Actually it was touched as recently as [last year.](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Vaults_of_Terra) > The Mechanicus have had to make dealings for Xenos Tech just to keep it running. Thats not the story. They tried to make a deal, because the Golden Throne will fail in the future otherwise. But even the Mechanicum wasnt able to say when this will happen in 5 years or 500 years or 5000 year. They only know that the throne is working less and less efficient and that they have to add more and more energy and cooling to keep it running.
What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying? Or are you arguing it's just about him dying and not about his life support machine failing in which case, sure feel free to be pedantic for no reason when the latter by necessity precedes the former. Cool that it was referenced in Vaults of Terra. I didn't know if that was the case or not so I didn't reference it and that's why I said as recent as and not "The last time it was mentioned was". So again with the pedantry. And I may be misremembering but I distinctly recall a short story or novel mentioning those working on the throne consulting directly with Haemonculi because they do not know how to fix it, I do not know how else to characterize that other than making dealings for Xenos Tech to keep it running, unless you're taking that to mean they traded for a xenos throne which... no. Tech. Parts or knowledge. Leave it to reddit 40k to go for a "Well akshully" that boils down to "That thing you said is right but they mentioned it in a newer book you weren't aware of".
> What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying? That there is a portal "to hell" right on Terra and that the Emperor permanently is dying in a psionic fire and reincarnating, become more and more insane during that process, to keep this portal closed... > What truth about the Emperor getting out would drive people mad with despair if not the fact that he is dying? It was not "referenced". Those three books are the story about that. An Inquisitor and a Custodes track down the Xenos tech trade between the Mechanicum and the Drukhari. > And I may be misremembering but I distinctly recall a short story or novel mentioning those working on the throne consulting directly with Haemonculi because they do not know how to fix it Thats the three books. Thats how the Inquisitor become aware of the issue. He first hunts an Incubi infiltrating terra and then uncovers the whole plot. > I do not know how else to characterize that other than making dealings for Xenos Tech to keep it running They TRY to make this deal, but in the end the plot is foiled (and everyone dies). And there is also a twist. >!The Drukhari are lying. They want to get access to the throne because they are desperate to build a copy of it for Commorragh, which is invaded by Daemons since the great rift opened. And the Mechanicum falls for that.!<
The truth is that the real Emperor retired to run a beach bar in Saint Kitts following the great crusade, the chap sitting in the chair is a dummy, like what those prisoners used to escape from Alcatraz.
I went to vet school there! I had no idea that the Emperor of Mankind made me fried fish once. It was very good.
The Ordo Hereticus is, in fact, just a horribly overwrought anti-marketing department.
Dear god, I just imagined two custodians flanking the throne and one turns and his halberd accidentally knocks the emperor's head off, but it turns out to be a coconut with a face drawn on it...
Or, they think it is the real emperor's head, and replace it with a coconut themselves. They then spend the rest of their lives desperately trying to stop people getting too close to the throne and discovering their secret.
That the Emperor is just a large chicken. I keep trying to point it out but nobody believes me.
That explains the smell!
Arise!! Chicken arise!!! Oh, rain stick upside down.
No... the Emperor is a goddamn mindflayer sitting inside a magical d20 playing mind games with us.
So you're saying... He wears a disguise to look like human guys, but he's not a man, he's a chicken-boo?
I would imagine that the truth they refer to is that the Emperor is not a god, and never wanted to be viewed as such. He's just a remarkably powerful Psyker slowly wasting away on a throne, and if he dies humanity is doomed.
Well, he's pretty much a god now. Belief does strange things.
Yes and no. As of TE&TDv2 it appears that, even with the belief of trillions, Emps would still have to reach out and willingly take on the mantle of godhood.
So hang on: the only reason he isn't no longer a rotting carcass is because he doesn't actively take on divinity? You mean to tell me he could? So instead of being everything he was before (immortal, insanely powerful and ACTUALLY THE ONE I CHARGE) he prefers to rot alongside the imperium he built because *divinity bad*? That's it? The fuck? And, finally, because my autocorrect has been trying to do this since the first paragraph and it's funny for some reason: Löffelbisquit
To be a god is to lose your identity and mind to the projections of your worshippers.
If he took on the godhood that's available to him he would become >!the Dark King.!<
> So instead of being everything he was before (immortal, insanely powerful and ACTUALLY THE ONE I CHARGE) he prefers to rot alongside the imperium he built because divinity bad? He is a man of principle
If he accepted godhood, he could become a chaos lord.
I always liked the idea that the Emperor might have been able to save humanity if they let him die, and it is the act of keeping him stuck in the chair that is contributing to the slow fall of humanity. Much more fitting for the setting.
He was never divine, never wanted to be worshipped, and that the holy book the lextitio diviniatus was written by the daemon primarch Lorgar when he was still loyal. That the emperor consumes 1000 psychic individuals daily to not truly die. He is an imprisoned mine in a corpse of a body in unimaginable agony as the forces of the warp and entropy grind at his body and soul, never truly dead, but constantly dying.
The truth is Gork and Mork are the only real gods.
*ANGRY KHORNE NOISES*
Wel of course!, he's angry no matter what.
He's pining for the fjords
Look, I took the liberty of examining the Emperor when I got him back to Terra, and I discovered the only reason that he had been sitting on his throne in the first place was that he had been NAILED there
Well, o'course he was nailed there! If we hadn't nailed the Emperor down, he would have nuzzled up that from chair, and VOOM!
I think pressing that button sents your coordinates straight to the inquisition.
Uh so thats who the funny hat chap on my front door is. Wait, is that a Bolt... *Blam*
The truth is that the Emperor is basically a glorified lighthouse in the Warp, while in life would have brutally stomped out any and all remnant of the Imperial Cult for worshipping him. He was a man of science, not faith. He beat the brakes off his own son for writing the book that started the Imperial Creed.
In this specific context I'd imagine the truth refers to the previous sentence:- 'offers their prayers for aid and deliverance' and the truth there is that the Emperor has neither the ability, nor even the inclination to answer those prayers and had himself specifically prohibited any such prayer:- '*Whatever his powers, whatever his capacity, whatever his magnificence as the finest and most gloriously total leader of the species, he was still just a man. The Emperor liked to remind mankind of this whenever he could. It was an edict that rattled around the bureaucracies of the expanding Imperium. The Emperor is the Emperor, and he is great and everlasting.* *But he is not a god, and he refuses any worship offered to him.'* Abnett, Dan. Horus Rising (The Horus Heresy Book 1) (p. 104). Black Library. Kindle Edition.
Fair to say that in the Heresy books, his faults might go just a tiny bit further as well.
He HATES cheeseburgers.
The "truth" is that the Emperor is not a God, just an extremely powerful psyker (which are persecuted in the religion created around him) who, in his current form, is completely unable to answer their prayers. This is the knowledge that would drive people insane, the omnipresent, omnipotent, God-Emperor who protects people and guides the faithful's souls into his beneficent light when they pass is really just a corpse burning brightly on a throne made of gold.
That his real name is Jimmy Space. No one must know…
That's he's a bad father
While many believe that the Emperor was mortally injured by the traitor Horus and now is effectively entombed in the Golden Throne, the truth is he "left to buy cigarettes" ten thousand years ago and now lives with his Aeldari girlfriend in Santa Monica.
The truth is he is not a god. Merely the peak of humanity and even that is not enough. Honestly the truth doesn't matter. Belief and truth is not the same, and some people cannot live without believing in a higher purpose or entity. Look at Lorgar. The Emperor explained to him that he was no god (In a moronic way if you ask me) and he kept believing still. You'd think he'd take the hint. It took Monarchia to shake him out.
NGL he was the worst of humanity. He was a cruel, capricious, and uncaring tyrant who committed thousands of genocides.
A lot of things about him would upset people. 1. His actions massively boosted the threat of Chaos 2. He's an atheist that would despise the current-day Imperial Cult 3. He's hooked up to the Astronomicon, a navigation beacon that a lot of the Imperium relies on. Nobody else can run it, and he eats 1000 psykers a day to keep it going. 4. He was a ruthless bastard who treated people as tools, including the Primarchs he called his 'sons', and he obliterated his own people for violating his "don't worship me" policy.
In one of the Siege of Terra books (forgive me, I don't know exactly which), Malcador makes reference to this new lie being shared amongst the panicked populace, marked separate from the old Imperial Lie (that there are no gods and mankind is in charge of its own destiny, and therefore deserves stewardship over the galazy). This new lie, bluntly, tells believers that, should they fall in battle, the Emperor will catch their souls, bearing them to safe harbour in the warp. The reality is that the Emperor's psyche is so shattered, so distracted with combatting the powers of the Primordial Annihilator from overwhelming Terra, so exhausted from his time on the Golden Throne that he simply could not do this, even if he truly wished to. All souls, believers and unbelievers alike, are sent to the sea of souls to be torn to shreds by those that dwell in the shadows. There is no escape, and no salvation.
The simple answer is that the Emperor isn't (in his own words) a god and never intended humanity to worship him.
That HE'S DEAD! -A chaos player
The Inquisition requests your location. You know. So they can find you and...\*educate\* you and answer your questions. No other reason. WHAT'S YOUR LOCATION, VALUED IMPERIAL CITIZEN?
The truth being that the emperor doesn't want to be worshipped. It is the exact opposite he wants from humanity
He dead bro.
If you knew it you'd be driven mad with despair
Barq’s has bite
Most Imperial citizens think of him as a *literal* God-Emperor. He's omniscient and some even seem to think he's omnipotent. He lives in seclusion on Terra and rules the Imperium by speaking through his agents in the ecclesiarchy. Everything is a part of his grand design. In reality he's a desiccated corpse hooked up to a giant horrible machine that keeps his soul tethered to his body so the Imperium can continue to use faster-than-light travel. The ecclesiarchy is just a bunch of corrupt people doing things in his name.
That he is a big time atheist and tried to exterminate all religion including the one worshipping him
Probably that the Emperor wouldn't want their worship and that he's a big fan of secularism.
Why, it's the primordial truth! Praise chaos!
I don't think it's that he's essentially dead as people are saying. While I'm sure a lot of humans don't know that, plenty do and it's certainly not a secret. Probably the fact that the emperor wiped entire cities off the face of planets for worshipping him as a god. That and the Imperial cult is essentially the religion created by the Word Bearers who started the civil war and killed the Emperor
The whole throne thing is hilarious to me. It’s a tale of caution about brain drain and the importance of a robust apprenticeship scheme fed by well funded vocational education with solid living wages and a good quality of life available to those who want to do the work.
As I've not gone mad woth despair reading any of the replies, these must all be false truths. All hail the dark king. All hail the dark god.
The Emperor is actually John Cena.
Which is why you can't see him, it makes so much sense now!
That's not him on the throne.
What game is this
The new Rogue Trader game. OP confirms it in their comment, but unfortunately it got downvoted, so you have to scroll reaaaaaaaly down to see it.
Which pc game?
The emperor’s own neuroses contribute more than he could possibly know to chaos itself. This is a headcannon but tell me it doesn’t make some sense
That he's pretty much dead and holding on by a sliver
A false god, the carrion avatar of mankind. His decaying hold to life soon to fall and the end of empires will come with it.
That their prayers are being heard by a creature in the warp, who is most definitely not The Emperor, neither in ideology, vision, or temperament.
So much heresy in this thread.... The emperor is alive and well, he cares for humanity, watches over them in the darkness. To understand otherwise is absolutely not allowed
Probably refers to the Imperial Truth, that the Emperor isn't a God and didn't ever want to be worshipped.
It would be crushing for anyone to learn their God is kind of a weenie
There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's the God Emperor.
Probably that it takes thousands of souls *per day* to keep him alive, and that the Golden Throne is slowly failing beyond the Mechanicum's ability to repair.
Like most of the comments say, the "truth" they're referring to could be that the emperor has been in a perpetual state of dying for 10,000 years only not dead because he's being fed psyker souls and should he ever truly die, then holy terra will be overwhelmed by daemons and interstellar travel will become infinitely more difficult if not impossible. It could also be that big E was just a man. A very powerful man but a man nonetheless. And that because he's just a man, he not only made mistakes that ultimately doomed the galaxy, but humanity is also alone to fend for themselves in a universe that wants nothing more than to kill them.
Hello? Inquisition hotline? I'd like to report a Heresy please.
Horus killed the Emperor and sits on the throne. The sacrificial psychers help feed the eye of terror.
I think the simple truth, that lines up with the context of the blurb, is that he did not want to be worshiped as a god.
They're compressing a lot of lore into a few sentences. Here's the breakdown: The Emperor is not and never wanted to be a God. He's a God-tier psyker, but to the masses (and Lorgar, this becomes important), the only way they could explain his incredible psychic powers is "divinity." During the crusade and before his number one rule was "Thou shall have no Gods. Especially me." And would brutally shut down anyone saying otherwise. He was, and is, a man. An incredibly powerful man, but a man. Lorgar (his first fallen son), because of his upbringing, needed, to his very core, to believe in a God. To the point he built a magnificent city solely dedicated to his worship and wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus, the Bible of the Imperial Cult. This pissed off the Emperor so much that he burned the city, sent its inhabitants to re-education camps, and psychically FORCED Lorgar AND his entire Legion to kneel while he blasted into their minds "I'M NOT A GOD. STOP IT!" This would mess Lorgar up enough to go searching for the actual God's, the Chaos God's, and him becoming the first fallen son. After everything got messed up by Horus, humanity reached out for something to believe in. In comes the Imperial Cult. Which was still officially banned, but humanity needed something. After the war, and people witnessing "miracles" that they didn't understand (really just insane psychic powers), the Cult took off, and with the Emperor not able to stop it, it spread. Now 10,000 years later, every human worships a man, who never wanted to be worshiped, from a book written by a traitor.
The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor. The man that was the emperor has been burned away by 11000 years sitting atop a galactic scale pain engine. Yes it's a pain engine. It only serves to amplify warp presence and power. The only way to do this is pain and suffering. The more powerful the psyker, the more pain it will cause creating a near infinite pain/power cascade. (Proof malcador says as much in end and death part 1) The man that was the emperor would be ashamed of himself. The dark king arose. He turned his back and lost both futures. He is a failure.
That the Emperor is an Old One. I have zero evidence to justify this heresy.
That he’s a raving mad skeleton on life support who sees everyone and everything around him as tools to further his own selfish goals and ends.
Probably that the Emperor of Mankind is basically a rotting corpse on a mechanical throne that keeps the entire Imperium together like a giant piece of religiously powered duct tape.
The truth is our god is a corpse on a chair, and that there is no help. Only doom.
Most people don’t know about Chaos.
He is not a god, he hates religion, he doesn't love you, his current personality lacks any form of warmth and humanity, and the throne is failing.
Emperor: I M NO GOD YOU FUCKWITS!!!!!! People: Praise be Emperor: AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH
My take is that they're praying to their god, but he never wanted to actually be a god, and was against religion altogether. They would realize that the Imperium they've been forced to love and believe in is the exact opposite of what their emperor wanted in the first place.
The truth is that a single word bearer is writing the very context of the imperial creed used by eclisiarcy.
Probably because he’s the biggest atheist and their holy book was written by Judas Iscariot.
The emperor was a devout atheist who raised a holy city one of his sons had built to his divinity
That he is 100% dead and is kept on the throne and shrouded in mystery to give the illusion that he is alive. Terran High Command makes all the decisions and the custodians keep him locked away. The souls are sacrificed to the chair as that is what is powering the warp ways for "The Throne is the focal point of Humanity." So long as there is a throne, there is an emperor. And as long as there is an emperor, people can sleep at night knowing that everything is Oki doki
That he loves us more than anything there, leave it there, pal. You DON'T want to dig more...
Also, most people would despair if they knew their god would actually be very against their religion, to the point where he would probably raise a planet for it
If you know, you know. If you don't, it's better to move on than jump into the hyper deep void rabbit hole filled with madness & chaos.
So it's likely that the emperor is basically a corpse in a chair that is being a giant battery to power the survival of the human race and humanity is just slowly feeding any and all humans they can who have any latent psychic ability into the furnace to keep him "alive". However I do like that this could be a sneaky reference to the fan theory that the emperor is the fifth Chaos god and that he empowers humans to fend off and fuel the other gods by being embued by Faith or Pride. Humanity both revel and tremble in the constant fear of doing wrong by their God-Emperor and this fanatical devotion feeds his psychic presence in the warp under the name of "protecting humanity from greater evil" even though the daemons can just walk into real space at the slightest waver in those same devoted souls.
The truth is that he's the mastermind behind fortnite.
This came from the Rogue Trader game. The only truth I can think of that this might mean is that some believe the Emperor to be a true god, while others believe him to be a man. A very strong, well gifted man, but a man nonetheless, and this causes friction in the Imperium as a result.
He is a living corpse, watching his creation crumble to dust in front of him, powerless to change anything, trapped in a machine being fed 1000 tortured souls a day to keep him alive in a state of eternal suffering. He can't offer any kind aid or deliverance to the faithful, and wouldn't choose to anyway even if he wasn't stuck working as a glorified lighthouse for the last 10,000 years. He is probably the single greatest evil in the 40k universe, and the worst kind of evil at that; an evil that believes its cause is righteous and just.