The God-Emperor of Mankind

This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

"I have come to eradicate Religion as it is the bane of Man, warped in superstition, ignorance and fear!"

– The Emperor before the Treason of Horus

Conquering the galaxy is one thing, but He was so powerful He never once stopped looking fabulous while doing it. At least until the whole 'Horus' thing, anyway. *BLAM*

"Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please."

– Niccoló Machiavelli

"The Emperor loves no one man. He cannot afford affection - that is the honest practical for the impossible task that faces the Master of Mankind. He did not love His sons, He does not love men, but He does love mankind."

– Roboute Guilliman

"Well, ze Emperor's just zis guy, you know?"

– Gag Halfrunt

The God-Emperor of Mankind, also known as The Emprah, Emps, Big Daddy Emps, The Motherfucking Emperor, Big E, Mr. Xeno Destroyer, Chaos Fister, Golden Daddy, E-Money, Augustus Imperator, Deus-Imperator, Him Upon the Throne, Primogenitor, The Outlander, Him on Earth, All-Father, Rangu, Master of Mankind, The Immortal Emperor, The Golden King, The Omnissiah, The Cartomancer, The Empinator, Jimmy Space, The Fresh Emperor of Sacred Terra, That guy with the bigger gun than you, Golden Boy, Space Jesus, /tg/, The Man-Emperor of Mankind, Glorious Overlord, Lord of Bling, My Manly Man-peror, Lord Sovereign of the Imperium, Starman, The King of Terra, Boney-Em or if you are of different inclinations, called The Anathema, The Carrion Lord, The False Emperor, The Corpse Emperor, The Corpse God, That Twat with the Chair, Space Hitler, Space Stalin, That Loony Shaman-Chassis, giant crunchy psychic sandwich and many more.

He is the figurehead of the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40k universe and has been enthroned on (or rather in) a life-sustaining device known as the Golden Throne for the last ten millenia. He is nigh-on unable to communicate or influence things directly, so day-to-day ruling is done without (and too often in spite of) Him. He is the only sustaining hope for Humanity as faith in him is the only way humans can counter the insidious whispers of Ruin, and the treacherous ways of the Xenos. Futhermore, He powers the only means of Faster than Light Travel through the Astronomican.

The Administratum He ordered to be established, continues to govern the Imperium in His name, but it is generally accepted that the absence of the Emperor's proper guidance is what has turned the Imperium into the hellish mess that it is. In the Imperium, questioning whatever your superior yells at you, is treason and heresy, typically punished by euthanasia (at least in the material realm). He created the 20 Primarchs, who viewed him as their "father". However, thanks to a lot of retcons he saw them more as tools, and instead of names, referred to them by numbers. It goes without saying that would The Emperor be up and about in the 41st millennium, He would be very disappointed. Most fa/tg/uys expect Him to speak in a generic deep,stentorian voice. Though many also would expect him to speak more like another immortal who wishes to guide humanity to the path of Ascension, who may as well be one of his past guises. Clearly the cult of the extragalactic alien self replicating space rock thing didn't work out in the end so he had to try another approach. It would explain why he's so fond of impractically large tanks, walkers, mecha, incredibly unaerodynamic VTOLs and bling though.

The Entire History of the Emprah

Early life

Big E gets all the bitches.

The Emperor is a powerful psyker and (heavily implied to be) (Confirmed by GW) a Perpetual; an immortal with countless lifetimes' worth of knowledge and power and the ambition to use it. According to the fluff, the being that would eventually become known as The Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) on the banks of the Sakarya river to a tribe, possibly in Göbekli Tepe. From his own account, his path towards greatness was spurred on when his uncle murdered his father; so kid-Emps did the responsible thing and gave his uncle a myocardial infarction, or as it's known on the street, a "fucking heart attack". Kid-Emps then realised that humans needed laws, and good laws needed to be given by good leaders (which he defined to refer to himself specifically): setting him on the (xeno/geno)cidal path of self-righteousness and conquest that would continue for the next 38,000 years. Considering that the Imperium's two-headed symbol was used by Hittites, Games Workshop, for all its flaws and pricing policies, can be given credit for doing his history homework. After that, he headed to the first cities of mankind in Sumeria to guide the start of human civilization.

Neoth and Erda back in the ancient days of Chaldea, it all makes so much sense now.

According to Saturnine, one of the Emperor's earliest names was Neoth, in the time shortly after leaving His home and tribe. In the "time of the First Cities" Neoth had become a warlord and king. There He met Erda, a perpetual like Himself, who become one of His closest companions throughout history, by His side up until she caused the Scattering of the Primarchs (so is this a retconn from the story portrayed in "The First Heretic"). Neoth and Erda, father and mother of Primarchs... which begs the question why not all primarchs were born as perpetuals, considering that both "mother" and "father" were (perhaps it's got to do with DIminant and Recessive alleles? Like when two brown-eyed parents produce a blue-eyed baby?).

According to 1st & 2nd edition fluff, his birth was the result of hundreds of human shamans committing ritual suicide to be reborn as a single individual capable of protecting humanity from the Chaos Gods. However, the validity of this fluff is frequently questioned, given it hasn't been "official" since second edition. However, this theory seems unlikely, especially given that other Perpetuals are known to exist, some of which may be even older than the Emperor, and they don't have godlike powers. On the other hand, they also wouldn't have had the memories and soul-stuff of all those shamans telling them what to do. (This theory would go a long way to explaining the seemingly contradictory behaviors of the Emperor - all those shamans have disagreements and Big E has to listen to it all. It's similar to the concept of Abominations in Dune; pre-born children with prescient powers due to being born to a melange ingesting mother - they can access all their genetic ancestors' memory egos but risk being driven insane without the learned discipline of an adult unless they're like Emperor Leto Atreides or his sister) That, and how Erda commented that while each Perpetual was immortal and had special abilities, everyone considered the Emperor's powers to be on a completely different scale. The Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival due to beating them at warp poker to steal the power he needed to create the primarchs (so he would not need to use his own)(see below) and name him Anathema. Yet other fluff tidbits (including a C'Tan who dismissively described him as a "weapon" rather than a God) imply that he is some sort of flesh-construct from the Dark Age of Technology run amok and aping human affectation (similar to the Eldar's Gods originating as warp constructed weapons made by the Eldar under the guidance of the Old Ones during the War in Heaven).

Lore also mentions that He guided humanity throughout history under a number of guises, and many of the probable identities of the Emperor in World History may include but are not limited to Hammurabi (the first man to invent the concept of Written Law), Alexander the Great (the most fabulous conqueror in all of History, with the philosopher Aristotle as his teacher), Julius Caesar (guess why the Imperium spoke Latin), Jesus (as demonstration of his supernatural God-like status and abilities and that He will sacrifice Himself for the progress of Humanity; which is a symbolic idea, as pre-retcon the lore leaned towards the Emperor being one of Jesus' disciples), Napoleon Bonaparte (to dismantle the old stagnating monarchies of Europe and replace them with Revolutionary ideals). And, it has to be assumed, Conan the Barbarian (Yup, he used to be an asshole. A handsome, musclebound asshole. At least before he got wiser) and HE-MAN.

Sometime around the 11th or 12th century, He battled a shard of the Void Dragon in modern-day Libya. He eventually defeated it and locked it on Mars, allowing the Adeptus Mechanicus to control machines... eventually. Of course, it's not entirely clear whether this is true or not -- it's entirely possible that ALL of the Emperor's history is a lazily-crafted lie He throws around because no one can debunk it. Although given how Awesome it sounds, we're going to say it is. Either that, or it's just another example of how Geedubs can't be bothered to keep their stories consistent even about the most important parts of the setting. Just remember to take stuff with a grain of salt, since, you know.

Whatever his actual origins might have been, for the most part He more or less stayed out of the way of humanity's progress during the next 30,000 years of history, including the Dark Age of Technology, though hot-off-the-press fluff indicates He might have been traversing outer space in old-style NASA rockets with the other Perpetuals, to eventually coming to find the planet Molech, where he passed through a gateway that led directly to the fortresses of the four Chaos Gods. Here, he either challenged, bargained, or stole portions of power from a source claimed by the gods as their own. This would earn him the ire of the duped/defeated Ruinous Powers, who consider him as some sort of usurper or that he reneged on some kind of undisclosed deal we haven't been made aware of yet.

Unification Wars

"‘You…’ repeated Uriah, the pain in his bones no match for the pain in his heart. ‘You are the… the… Emperor…’ ‘I am, and it is time to go, Uriah,’ said the Emperor. Uriah looked around at his now gleaming and brightly lit church. ‘Go? Go where? There is nowhere else for me in this godless world of yours.’"

– The Last Church

He returned to Terra at the closing years of the Age of Strife. With Terra cut off from the rest of the Human empire and Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians", in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, E-money decided to reveal Himself, using His mastery of genetic engineering to create the Custodians and cheaper, easier to make Thunder Warriors (the predecessors of the Space Marines). Using the classic "join-me-or-die" strategy, he managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the event called Unification Wars. Then, He made contact with Luna and the Mechanicum of Mars. When dealing with Mars, He called Himself the Omnissiah, and convinced them to build Him weapons and space-ships. Around this time, He also created a useful lie, the Imperial Truth, which states that religion, faith, and superstition must be all banned, because they have never succeeded in unifying the human race during all of Emps' lifetime (although the secret, actual purpose was because Neoth believed that human worship fed the Chaos Gods, although it turns out that he had it backwards: said worship, not being directed at the Chaos gods specifically, was in fact starving them. Since Neoth is now a bona fide Warp entity in his own right, he has very likely realized his mistake). Simply put: the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" mumbo-jumbo never worked before and now must be eradicated; ignoring or forgetting what happened to real-life societies that tried to throw faith and religion under the bus without molding the society towards abandoning religion willingly. He constructed this lie because he believed that belief in such things was feeding the Chaos Gods, but it turns out he had it backwards, and that such belief, being dedicated specifically to something other than said gods, was in fact starving them.

Exception where's He's not a perfect badass? The Last Church. It is permissible to substitute the voice of whatever angry militant atheist appeals to you most/least for the duration of this one (short) story. Also, according to that same story, this asshole wiped out Scandinavia, right when Scandinavia was getting fun again well well well, considering what they did to the other setting no one here is gonna miss them any time soon. According to the Horus Heresy books that mention the Unification Wars, He burned down a lot of things on a partially recovering Terra.

Great Crusade

Now that he was in control the Emperor had a relatively short to-do list, he wanted to: Lead and shape Mankind into a psychic race and surpass the Eldar by learning from their mistakes, unite Humanity under one aegis and allow for instant communication and travel across all human inhabited worlds, and most importantly, prevent another calamity like the Age of Strife or Fall of the Eldar.

In order to achieve this He had to shelter and protect humanity from the fell hand of Chaos, reclaim every single human inhabited world, spacecraft or station, and eliminate anyone who threatened his vision of humanity in any way.

But, before He set out to conquer the stars with the newly-formed Imperial Army (which contained both ground forces and space-borne fleets), He decided to create the twenty Primarchs, using Himself as the genetic template, while splitting the additional power He supposedly acquired from the Chaos Gods (or so the treacherous space cancers claim) into 20 portions, infusing each piece with a fragment of His own personality, to allow them, in turn, to congeal and gestate (just like how daemons are born!) into the indomitable souls of His future Primarchs. Then, He bound each such vessel/soul to their godlike bodies/shells as they formed in their gestation capsules. Let this sink in: each primarch is basically a unique quasi-daemonic (angelic?) soul, bound to a super awesomely tough material body.

Each of these Primarchs were to have their place: Lorgar was to be the Emperor's Herald and shelter mankind from superstition through enlightenment so that if ever they heard whispers in the dark, they knew it was not natural and to be feared by it, thus denying its embrace. Magnus was to assist the Emperor in sitting on the Golden Throne of earth, thus powering the human Webway shield (somehow), becoming a key figure in Humanity's ascension. Horus was to protect Mankind from external physical threats throughout the Galaxy as Humanity's general. Konrad was to be the enforcer of the Emperor's Laws. Mortarion, His watchguard of wayward deviancy etc.

It was a good plan for building an intergalactic empire, But the Imperium was only one half of the Plan. The other was the Webway, allowing nigh-instantaneous travel and communication, limiting Mankind's reliance on the warp to almost nothing in the form of Warp travel and thus protecting them against the influence of Chaos. Therefore allowing Mankind to evolve in relative safety and security under the direct guidance and control of the Emperor. When Mankind would be ready, we'd be protected from the warp naturally. That was the final crowning achievement that would bring all the Emperor's plans to fruition and pull all the wayward goals into one singular perfect Great Work. All the sacrifice, all the death, all the heartache, the glory, the battles, the trials and tribulation, 48,000 years of history culminating into that one Plan. And it all would've been worth it because Mankind would've been saved for all time. Worth any price, where the ends justified the means, or so he claimed.

Unfortunately things went off to a rocky start before he even began: since the Primarch's power was apparently stolen, The Big Four would inevitably and continually be pissed at Him for using their power for His own ends, so they snatched the Primarchs away (via time-travel-as-a-vision shenanigans, don't even try to explain it here, just read The First Heretic), inside their incubator pods and all, from the secret lab underneath the Himalayas, to scatter them away across the galaxy Most recent fluff from the novel Saturnine brings another female perpetual by the name of Erda into play in the creation of the primarchs (because like any biological being a human requires a father and a mother). She also claims to have been involved in the scattering of the primarchs. If that is a retconn from the previously canon time travel hacks described in "The First Heretic" is not entirely clear. Erda says she allowed the Chaos Gods to snatch the baby primarchs so each could forge their own destinies. As if the story was not confusing enough already. Either way,luckily for the Emperor, some genetic samples were left over from each primarch, so from that He created 20 Legions to serve as the elites of His army: The SPEHSS MEHREENS.

So, with His armies and space-ships complete (minus the Primarchs, which He hoped to find), He embarked upon the Great Crusade, to restore mankind to its rightful place as rulers of the galaxy.

As He found each Primarch, He assigned them command of their respective Legions and to act as His generals, warlords and pantheon of heroes that humanity were meant to emulate, in the quest to unify humanity in the Great Crusade (although, at some point, one of them may have been executed and the other disappeared, leaving only 18 Primarchs and Legions after 100 years of the Great Crusade).

A military campaign of a grand scale, this is also when the SPESS MEHREENS were most awesome and at their peak. Just when things seemed to be going well, the Horus Heresy took place, where 8.5 of the Primarchs and their respective legions rebelled against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew Horus (who was daddy's favourite) but at a great cost. The Emperor was mortally wounded to the point that He had to be put permanently on a life support system known as the Golden Throne. On that day, an untold amount of manly tears was shed. Something seems to have gone wrong though, as the Golden Throne didn't manage to do its job and the Emperor managed to die sometime between the Horus Heresy and M41, although whatever's left of him still sticks around his corpse.

"Modern" Day

Subsequently, 10 thousand years later, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic (okay to be fair this aspect is actually a good thing, given the above problems with Neoth's enforcement of atheism), grimdark empire we all know and love today, in the 41st millennium. In the 500th year of the 41st Millennium (the exact middle of the millennium), which is a few centuries before the Time of Ending began, visions and signs reach out to all walks of life and social status to the Imperium of the Emperor crying, whether it's to lowly denizens of an underhive having dreams about it, to respected sanctioned psykers reading it from the Imperial Tarot, to shamans on feral planets instinctively knowing that the extra rain pouring down lately are tears of sadness from their "sky god".

In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and if nothing was done... presumably the Emperor would be deader? In any case nobody wants to find out, as the Golden Throne is breaking apart the Mechanicus and certain elements at the top of the Imperium tries to contact the Dark Eldar for knowledge on how to repair the thing. The Carrion Throne reveals that a Haemonculus did make it to Terra, he is hunted down by the Inquisitor and the Custodes. The cheeky psycho doctor had absolutely no intention of repairing the thing but wanted to instead marvel upon the largest and greatest psychic pain machine ever constructed that made even a Haemonculus stand in utter awe, and look the cadaver buried within right in the eye sockets before both it and the machine ultimately died.

The Emprah Himself

A typical father-and-son chat between Empy and Horus.

"The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible father..."

– Roboute Guilliman, giving a short, yet accurate biography of the Emperor. Interestingly, no leader, or warlord HERESY!!!

After He shaved his goatee, His chin radiated a brilliant light through the Warp. The Imperial Navy uses this light as a beacon to guide them through that beautifully terrible place. He is sometimes referred to as the Emprah, a joke derived from the voice acting in the Dawn of War game, Soulstorm, specifically Indrick Boreale's final speeches.

It is common knowledge, that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker alive around, humbling even the Eldar. The Emperor is said to be so powerful that He could destroy suns with ease, though He has never actually done so (he however, made a golden sun which he put in the middle of his broken Webway gate to prevent daemons from spilling through, albeit needing to concentrate on powering it for the next ten thousand years. This would indicate that the Emperor does indeed have the power to destroy stars). The Chaos Gods are scared as fuck of the guy, calling him "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to Chaos. Their fear of him cannot be overstated: during a discussion between Ku'Gath and Mortarion, you'd think Ku'Gath was referencing Morgoth. The idea his gathering strength terrified Ku'Gath to the point he feels they're dead if he's active and won't even say his name; whatever Emps is, Chaos is THAT scared of him. The Eldar fear that if the Emperor were to die, a new Eye of Terror would pop out with Terra at its center and possibly a new Chaos God would be born (though seeing as how he's been dead for quite a while and that hasn't happened, their fears are likely unfounded).

He was also capable of summoning what can only be called an army of human souls (including every soldier who had died for him, Ferrus Manus included) to fight for him; an ability utterly unseen in the 40k universe and suggesting that he has some fundamental connection to human souls in the afterlife - a comforting thought compared to dissolving into the Warp to be eaten by daemons and giving some credence to the 40k era theory that when the Time of Ending ...ends... the Emperor and all loyal human souls will join in one final battle against Chaos.

It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, Conan the Barbarian, Chuck Norris, Christopher Lee, Tommy Wiseau, Keanu Reeves, and Jesus.

Overall the Emperor has always had a strong desire to protect and shepherd humanity, even if his methods are a bit... unorthodox. His desire to guide and protect humanity, in addition to his power and foresight made the Emperor as close to a Farseer as humanity was ever going to get. He declared humanity to be superior to all Xenos which was fair enough considering the collapse of the Eldar, planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed in order to protect them from the whispers of Chaos (though at the time he got the whole thing backwards, since said religions were starving the Chaos gods), planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), originally loved the Primarchs as his sons (and then retconned into caring little for the Primarchs being His actual sons. But tools to be disposed of like in a game of Chess.. In "The Outcast dead" he even sort of says outright that he sacrificed Ferrus Manus because he knew he could not win the war and that the most he could hope for was a stalemate, i.e. prevent Chaos from winning), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... all because this was the only way He could foresee humanity surviving the threats to come. Also known as the "Golden Path".

His reign eventually killed more humans (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of all of humanity's dictators in history (ironically that may have been past personas of the Emperor). Even during the Unification Wars, several Terran cultures were wiped out completely (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, just to make a point, even after its forces were defeated and its people ready to surrender), while simultaneously being pretty terrible at incorporating non-Terran elements. Because THAT is just how damn important and dire the circumstances were. An entire galaxy spanning empire needed to be constructed in little under two centuries when the cataclysm was foreseen to occur and ain't no one got time to fart about with treating people the way they deserve if the species won't survive.

Contrary to popular belief, he really did think the post-Ullanor phase through to some degree, Horus was the right choice as Warmaster for no other could command the respect of nearly all his brothers better than Lupercal the First, and Dorn as Praetorian was as correct a decision as was possible to make considering that his talents were put to good use throughout the Heresy that followed. There was no need to put a Primarch in charge of the Council of Terra for the Primarchs were not made to rule, but to serve as generals in retaking the galaxy since his goal was for humanity to be governed by humanity (as he clearly said to Lorgar in "The First Heretic". "This is not my Imperium, it is humanitys". Primarchs like say, Guilliman, though perfect as an administrator, were better suited and needed as generals for the Great Crusade. Stil the whole theory that the Emperor wanted to dispose of the Primarchs once they ceased being useful is utter horseshit, for why would he have created living rooms for all of his sons in the Emperor's palace. And why create 20, functionally immortal tools if he had no plans for them following the crusade. Either way, it's bewildering that no one in the military saw the need for human administration, having godlike Primarchs in charge at the top only serves to increase superstition in a secular galaxy when the idea was to rid humanity of religion and superstition in order to better protect it from warp predation (no matter how bad that idea played out in practice).

After Big E was nearly killed by his favourite son / tool, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia, presumably because he later died (why he hasn't come back to life despite being a perpetual is a highly debated topic). Most of the fluff maintains that His mere existence since then has been living hell (by comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter).... and yet He carries on. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that he will just sit there and remain dead. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite and death's not the handicap it used to be, because it gives Him a fuckton of work to do. Along with being THE lighthouse in the Warp, guiding the Imperial Navy, he also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the nasties of the Warp where they're supposed to be (i.e. not invading realspace to make the lives of all living things miserable). He also does it for the good of humanity (sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it?).

That being said, his love of humanity doesn't exactly extend to his sons. In older lore it did, however, in the retconned lore the Emperor himself states to Arkhan Land (the guy who discovered Land's Speeders/Raiders) that he never considered the Primarchs to be his literal sons and saw them as well-crafted tools so he could get his work done. Likening himself to Geppetto (from 'Pinocchio') in that it is only natural for 20 wooden boys to think of their creator as "Father". Whether He felt any kinship between all of them or only some of them is not entirely known. But it seems like He was all like, "Yall think I'm a bad dad, but look, shit I just made these kids in a lab! I'm not really their dad!". Then again He puts on personas for every occasion (during the meeting, Land saw him as not as a gold armoured god, but as an utterly logical scientist and the Emperor had the whole shtick of people interpreting his words in the manner that made the most sense to them personally) who really knows when He's being genuine or not or how He feels. There must have been a reason why he prevented Vulkan from going completely batshit insane when he was killed over and over by his brother Konrad Kurze after all... but to say it in Guillimans own words (from memory) "our father never loved us, but he certainly does love humanity". Also Guilliman reflects that Big E could not have afforded deep affection for any of his sons, so lets see how the final confrontation between Horus on roid rage and Big E will play out in the end - as in older fluff Big E held back because he couldn't bring it upon himself to snuff out his most favoured son (and it did not read like in "my most favoured screw driver" kind of way). But in the end, despite being the most powerful psyker to have ever lived he may still have been "human" after all, and every living being has emotions. So maybe his biggest "flaw" (if you want to call it such) may have been that he might not have been able to separate himself from his sons (err I mean toolbox) as he would have hoped for.

• On that note, Aaron Demski-Bowden has insisted that nothing the Emperor says in Master of Mankind should be taken at face value. Moreover, the Emperor is inconsistent in how He describes the Primarchs. While He uses numbers and "it" when talking to Ra and Land, at the end of a book He's referring to Horus by name and as a "he", not an "it". AD-B has doggedly refused to clarify, because he enjoys watching the arguments he's kicked off. As noted in "Valdor: Birth of the Imperium" by Cris Wraight, it was noted by Valdor and Malcador that they were both surprised by the Emperor referring to the Primarchs, his planned generals, as sons. Valdor noted that the Emperor's emotions "are ebbing still" with Malcador saying all three predicted this and that victory had a price.
• However, in Laurie Goulding's audiobook: Malcador First Lord of the Imperium; Malcador pretty much spells out exactly the same thing, saying that the primarchs were designed to be "conqueror's tools and nothing more", and had been manipulated into conflict with each other from the very start so that they would eventually destroy each other and pave the way for a "human" civilisation, rather than a "transhuman" one and that the Horus Heresy was always part of the plan. He does later have a minor breakdown and admit that he was forced to lie though, but is not clear on what elements. As a result, it is entirely possible (and in fact more likely) that there was no such plan to have the Primarchs destroy each other and that Malcador was merely trying to hide the fact that things had gone off the rails. This is confirmed in The Board Is Set short story by Gav Thorpe, which seemingly reconfirms Malcador's admission as the the Big E and His bestie play a game of cards with each Primarch represented (heavily implied). In such a game, Mal takes the role of "Warmaster" (symbolically representing Chaos) whilst Big E played the position of the "Emperor". The two play out the entire events of the Horus Heresy and even hypothetical scenarios had they played each Primarch differently against the others, though they still get caught off guard from time to time as the rules change unexpectedly. Though Malcador only belated understands that considering this was a symbolic game of "what if?" rather than simply a means of devising strategy. So, while Emps and Mal were partly responsible for the current state of everything; if Malcador's "lie" was that it was all planned and that everything was under control, then the truth would be an acknowledgement that their opponents (the Chaos Gods) actually existed which was something they had been denying for centuries. Now they were backed into a corner and desperately scrambling to find a solution that didn't fuck everything.

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents daemon kind from directly assailing Terra through the broken remains of the Imperial Webway (in the form of a golden sun), while additionally sustaining and managing the psychic-beacon known as the Astronomican, that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.

An interesting theory is that if Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act then maybe Empy has gained all human souls since he got put on that Throne {see: leveling in Dark Souls), as he is the afterlife now, provided one excludes the veritable Hell that is the Warp (and all that stuff the Eldar get up to).

A question that remained unanswered for a long time is that, is the above thing the only thing he is capable of doing these days? Or can he communicate with others? In the past few supplicants were allowed an audience with the Emperor though the fluff's always been iffy on whether or not they talked, or if it was more a spiritual visit to a shrine. The recent advance in the timeline revealed that the newly revived Guilliman had an audience with him for a whole day in which they did talk (and he still seems to have some sort of connection to the Custodes), so yes, he can. But then, what is he waiting for before waking the sleepy beauty up? It could be that he literally couldn't talk to anyone before that, considering that even Guilliman shuddered at the thought of the mental sand blasting that was speaking with the Emperor. It's possible the same communion might destroy a mortal, or kill the comatose Lion by accident. Perhaps the only thing stopping the Emperor from direct governance of the Imperium is his psychic voice delivering the equivalent of an Ordinatus blast every time he uses it, so he cannot chastise the incompetence of the High Lords for fear of killing them outright.

Speaking of talking to him, when Roboute was revived from stasis and finally got to Terra to talk to dad, Roboute noted the Emperor regarded him with the interest one would regard a tool. He also reflects on how he feels that the Emperor's psychic might has grown since his death, but that his humanity has gone as well, to the point that Guilliman thinks that even if he is a god he doesn't deserve to be worshiped. However, following the Plague Wars Guilliman has considered the possibility that his ascension may have been a plan B for humanity following the failure of the Imperial Truth, and both Mortarion and Ku'Gath believe the Emperor is gathering energy to create what they call an "Unliving Legion".

"He's been up to all sorts of things, our beloved father. Consorting with Xenos, resurrecting ancient technology. Don't believe that he is blameless in this..."

– Magnus the Red

In contrast to the above quote, the Emperor (and the Imperium as a byproduct) fucking hates aliens, though not without reason. During the Age of Strife numerous Xenos races exploited humanity's trust and either raided, lollygagged, looted or all of the above and were generally a nuisance the entire time. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop all that from happening again is to wipe out all Xenos that might even think to pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few Xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, or possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all. Ever since His ascension, the Imperium mostly forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated, but on the other hand, the most common xenos are massive dicks and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to Horus Rising, the idea of letting Xenos exist and then eventually grow stronger is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the Interex/Diasporex).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. Graham McNeill generally portrays Him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), Dan Abnett portrays Him as competent but bloodthirsty, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays Him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile (and even this is counterbalanced by his portrayal in Master of Mankind, where he's interestingly a mixture of all the previous portrayals at once - which is kinda of appropriate really). Chris Wraight, as far as he has portrayed Him, has done so through the eyes of Jaghatai Khan, showing Him as deeply flawed and distant from His own sons, but also countering that He was working towards goals even the Primarchs couldn't fully grasp. Even in Path of Heaven, where the Khan gets close to learning the secrets of the Webway project, he's shown to not have all the cards (the Emperor's knowledge that humanity is evolving into a psychic race, for example).

On another note, long before the Horus Heresy novel series, there were hidden gems Noobs are not aware of, such as a text describing the fight between Horus and the Emperor (although it wasn't written especially well), or Conspiracy Theories. One of them was actually the possibility that the Emperor was already dead when Rogal Dorn managed to reach him; however, in the aforementioned text, Horus had realised that he had been wronged and deceived by the Chaos Gods, who immediately ceased to possessed the Warmaster and fled before the Emperor's final Force attack bring woe to both of them. What if the Emperor had spared him or if the Warmaster survived somehow? In Olden Fluff, all Primarchs were Psykers and originally supposed to be shining examplars of Human free from the taint of the Empyrean which they failed to bear true potential due to their early contact with the Warp, via the Dark Gods abducting them pedobear style.

This in turn was what caused their mutations and unique characteristics and diversity which was more of a metaphor that each Primarch was an image of humanity themselves; in fact, much of the powers of the Primarchs, like the Emperor, would have come from their psychic abilities. It is known that Sensei's powers include health, regeneration, greater athletic prowess and overpowering their Strength stat when they try to attack something, thus it would not be surprising if it was also the case for Primarchs (baby Sanguinius was super healthy and immune to Baal's radiations, Curze crawled out of his molten drop-pod and crater while screaming in pain and fled immediately, instinctively, into the darkness, and later his body was fully healed) prior to the new fluff messing everything up, 'cause BL writers have trouble getting their shit together.

But back to where we are; the notion that the Emperor was dead forebodes a terrible possibility, in which the corpse that Rogal Dorn took back on Terra's Imperial Palace was not Big E but of Horus being passed as the Emperor... and was worshipped as such for Ten Thousand Years. While this has become highly unlikely, it would both be a great and GRIMDARK plot twist and an immense source of Lulz especially when you mix in the events of Gathering Storm 3 with Roboute Guilliman.

On His Pragmatism and Flaws

The Emperor was a firm believer that the ends justified the means and was pragmatic in the extreme, and yet at the same time, it was this very same pragmatism that ultimately led to his downfall:

• Though his pragmatism made him a superb ruler in wartime, the ultra-militarized society He had created was entirely dependent on the Imperium being constantly at war. Even if the Great Crusade had proceeded exactly as the Emperor expected, it still would have run out of enemies eventually. And when you have a few trillion newly unemployed soldiers with no other skills beyond killing on your hands and no other purpose in life beyond said killing...well, they tend to get rowdy. He should have realized this already when he had to mop up the surviving Thunder Warriors. It remains unknown how the Imperium would have continued to look after the Great Crusade was completed and how the large military would be scaled down- or if such a feat could even be possible with a civilization he designed to work only in the presence of a steady stream of conquests. Sure, some of the primarchs and legions had other skills like Guilliman's political organization, but the rank-and-file? Or the likes of the World Eaters? There are hints that he might have planned to fix that by arranging the Primarchs to come to blows with each other, but we all know exactly how well that turned out- which if anything makes him look even more foolish as a result.
• The Emperor's concern for humanity as a whole belied his refusal to acknowledge that humanity was not just a species, but also a group of individuals with infinite variety and whose goals did not necessarily support His own. The fact that other human civilizations such as the Interex had already found ways to fight against Chaos on their own (granted what they did makes them partially responsible for the setting being so fucked) and were just as advanced as the Imperium (if not more so) meant nothing to him/his plan. In his mind, he alone knew what was good for humanity and anything short of total submission to the Imperium was grounds for destruction even (or especially) if they were doing a better job than he was. In effect, all his efforts were performed in the name of an abstraction that arguably never existed in the first place.
• He made a critical mistake in that trying to erase religion without replacing it with secular ideals that had the same degree of universal appeal. Lacking the immortality and inhumanly grand perspective of the Emperor, it's a basic part of human nature to look for meaning and purpose in a cause greater than oneself, especially in the harsh and grimdark universe that was the Old Night. The Imperial Truth tried to do this, but it didn't take into account that "reason", "logic", and "humanism" were by definition too mundane to be suited for the replacement of the old religions, as they were poor substitutes for finding individual meaning. The fact that the Imperial Cult took off so quickly after the Emperor's internment on the Golden Throne (and is arguably the only thing keeping the Imperium a remotely unified entity in the present) is proof that the Emperor was once again either too stubborn for his own good or too divorced from the "normal" human condition to understand the value of belief. Most likely the latter, the Khan recounts scrambling to even converse with the Emperor, Custodes have an internal study schools to try figure out out what exactly he meant in his orders and how it applies to the modern day. Yes, his Companions have what are basically rabbis Talmudically mulling over every syllable the Emperor ever uttered. In either case, all it accomplished was giving all four of the Ruinous Powers a reason to get rid of him, while also giving them an invaluable tool to do so in the form of Lorgar. And all while he was telling the Primarchs that daemons were just another Xenos race in an ill-advised attempt to dispense with their mythological appearance and obvious possession of supernatural powers. This attempt left them vulnerable for Chaotic corruption among themselves or their Legions. Yes, He gave them incredibly vague warnings, but those were not even close to the amount of information He needed to give them. Or, for those of us who think this sounds just a little bit religious for our tastes and don't want to get into a philosophical debate over the importance of belief, imagine the trillions of citizens who had gone their whole lives worshiping a belief only to have ol' Emps turn up and just say "No" without a word of explanation beyond "its bad".
• For a guy who says he's trying to avoid the same mistakes the Eldar made, his obsession with human supremacy and the supposed "purity" of the human form (as defined by what, his own opinion?) are almost indistinguishable from the pre-Fall Eldar's certainty that they were the rightful rulers of the galaxy. Even if humanity did become a purely psychic race, nothing would stop it from making another Chaos God by accident. It's not a stretch to hypothesize that this was itself a ploy for him to use the collective psychic power of humanity to elevate himself to the status of godhood, where he could truly rule with infinite power.
  • The only beings who knew how to create new parts of the Webway were the Old Ones, and they're all dead. At best, the Webway project would've delayed the inevitable before the fact that nobody can figure out how to keep it working became obvious. And since the Warp already bleeds into the Webway at the best of times...well, the whole thing would've been rendered pointless if or when the Warp completely breaks through into the Webway.
  • The so-called mistakes and subsequent "Fall" of the Eldar may have been foreseen and apparently planned for. By the close of the 41st Millennium, the psychic gestalt of the conscious-dead Eldar have formed the new god Ynnead, quite probably proving that willpower eventually counters desire and completing the Eldar's psychic ascension as a species. The Emperor may not have been aware of this and humanity's own psychic awakening may not have been as tragic, but to give him credit, his own endgame is somewhat similar in wanting to nurture mankind's psychic ascension but without the catastrophe. He is possibly positioning himself to become the focus for humanity's willpower rather than needing enough souls to die before they gestalt together, becoming a guiding will rather than a collective one.
• Most damningly of all, his total disregard for the possibility that the Primarchs might actually have their own thoughts and feelings ended up being one of the key reasons why so many of the Legions ended up falling to Chaos in the first place:
  • The humiliation of Lorgar was the ultimate catalyst for the Horus Heresy, and is probably the most colossal failure the Emperor has ever produced. This event is what showed the future "heretics" (and us) who the Emperor truly is behind his charisma and lofty dreams. Lorgar was so enthralled with his father that he not only worshipped him as a god but made it his life's goal to convince others to do so as well. He built gleaming monuments and cities in His name. He trained an entire legion to glorify their perfect and benevolent father. Suddenly, the Ultramarines descend and obliterate the greatest of Lorgar's cities and the Emperor himself forces Lorgar's entire legion to kneel before the invaders. The Emperor tells his most admiring son that he, alone of all his brothers, has failed. It would be as if God set Vatican City on fire, kicked the pope over, put out the fire by covering him in dog shit, and then told him to quit being such a fucking pussy. The main thing this incident says about Lorgar is that he's such a tough motherfucker that he didn't break down completely forever or kill himself upon the revelation that the most powerful and perfect being he can even imagine hates him, personally. The Emperor took the leader of the most powerful religious organization in the galaxy and kicked him straight into the claws of evil gods powered by belief. However, the biggest irony, considering that religion is the only power that can counterattack and fend off Chaos, is that the Ecclesiarchy used religion to battle Chaos for several millenia using very book that Lorgar wrote. The Emperor basically threw out the smartest and safest option to counter Chaos due to his stupidity and narrow-mindness. (Unless it really WAS a test as the Anchorite believe).
  • Angron's case is self-explanatory; honestly, if it weren't for Emps sending him into battle so often he would have rebelled sooner. Sure, he couldn't just let one of his Primarchs get himself killed in a slave revolt, but you'd think he'd send down some of the War Hounds or something instead of warping him away and earning Angron's undying hatred. Instead he could have earned Angron's undying love, furious loyalty and the worst case, a martyr Primarch who'd die from the nails and gotten rid of: was one fucked up dusty planet's short term compliance worth the whole shit roller coaster, we will never know. Why a man superman Primarch (god damn it!) who knew only killing (not even war, just murdering people with MURDER NAILS JAMMED IN HIS BRAIN), and is traumatized to ETERNALLY HATE HIS LORD should be controlling 100,000+ Space Marines is something only the Emperor and his divine ass can fathom.
  • Fulgrim's road to damnation started because he decided to loot a Slaaneshi-possessed sword. Knowing nothing about Chaos, Fulgrim had no idea he was using an incredibly dangerous warp artifact that that would lead to untold consequences. It didn't help that his strict xenophobic teachings prevented Fulgrim from taking Eldrad's advice about the Laer Blade into account.
  • Even with the Webway fuck-up (which itself could have been prevented had the Emperor not kept it a secret from the most important people in his plans) Magnus might have remained a loyalist if the Emperor had brought Magnus to the Great Work earlier, or had him stationed on Terra along with Dorn, or even just listened to his warning that Horus had turned traitor. Instead, he totally disregarded Magnus's entirely correct warning in favor of allowing Russ (the one Primarch who most wanted Magnus dead) to arrest him because he didn't like the way said warning was delivered. And with the door already broken, he could have simply psy-phoned Magnus to clear it all up instead of jumping to conclusions. Then again, Magnus wouldn't even comply to his demand to stop practising sorcery...
  • Similarly to Angron, Mortarion always resented the Emperor for not letting him get to kill his adoptive father, and when the Emperor refused to give him an answer about the obvious piece of Warp-tech that was the Golden Throne he concluded that the Emperor was a hypocrite and the Imperial Truth was bullshit.
  • The Emperor, being the wisest and most powerful human psyker in the galaxy of all people, should have been able to see that Konrad Curze was an unstable psyker who was on the fast road to devolving into insanity due to his uncontrolled talents. And if he already was aware of it, then at best he was being incredibly careless. And what with the whole Night Lords comprise of criminals, one must really question his divine quality control. Or maybe he is just totally rely on his large huge brain capacity to manage things, and simply dismiss things that can't fit in.
  • Completely ignoring that Perturabo needlessly had one in ten men in his legion killed by decimation under flimsy pretenses. Coupled with the fact that Perturabo was originally a peaceful, diplomatic soul; these two should have triggered some alarm bells about his mental stability. While it was said that the Emperor considers the Primarchs more of tools and less of his children, in retrospect it was obvious that there was plenty of favoritism going on. Seriously, why can't the Big E act like a spiritual psychiatrist for ONE FUCKING MOMENT?
  • Horus himself was only pushed to fall because the Chaos Gods played on his worries that he wasn't fit to be Warmaster combined with the unrealized, greater fear that the Emperor never cared for him as a person and that he, the other Primarchs, and the Astartes as a whole would have no place in the Imperium after the Great Crusade's conclusion. (Horus likely being aware of what happened to the Thunder Warriors when they outlived their usefulness at the end of the Unification Wars probably stoked that particular fire nicely.) You'd have thought the Emperor's most beloved 'son' would at least have been shown the special rooms in the Imperial Palace the Emperor made specifically for the Primarchs to live in after the Great Crusade ended, or at least discussed what he had planned for them when they weren't needed as generals any longer, but no.
  • Perhaps the biggest kicker to this is that if we're going to take all of Black Library into account, the Emperor never truly cared for the Primarchs at all (loyalist and traitor included), viewing them as nothing more than powerful but ultimately expendable tools to further the ambitions of Humanity's survival and ascendancy. As determined by the Emperor, of course.
    • Although one can always argue that the remaining Primarchs stayed loyal either because they believed in his vision for humanity or were too loyal to be turned, there's no telling exactly how long that might have gone on after the Great Crusade's end - some of them showed signs of disloyalty to the Emperor even during the Heresy, only staying on his side either out of loyalty to Mankind as a whole (Guilliman and his Imperium Secundus come to mind here), by recognizing the other side as an even greater evil (like Jaghatai), or only because the Imperium is on the winning side (if Curze's trolling was true; The Lion, which probably isn't true considering he stabbed him in the next paragraph and told Curze that he didn't care and that he was balls-to-the-wall loyal).
    • To clarify the above point, after Guilliman's meeting with the Emperor following the Primarch's revival, he noted that while he loved humanity as a whole, the Emperor was practically incapable of caring about individual people, even the Primarchs. Everything and everyone was just a tool to him. While some might interpret this as the Emperor simply being a dick, you have to understand his situation; he's an immortal superhuman with a plan to uplift humanity. The fact he's immortal means he would be unable to form any meaningful relationships with mortals, because he'll always outlast them in one way or another. His plan also involved tons of sacrifices for the greater good *BLAM!* HERESY!, common good, when you're forced to sacrifice anything to continue your plans; you can't afford to be too attached to someone you might have to throw into the fire in a split second. The Emprah is cursed to always looking forward to the endless road of the future, so he can never live in nor understand the concept of the present. As a result, his plans failed to account for the fact others might not just meekly go along with his plans without question and became further detached from the real human condition.
• Overall, and quite ironically, the main reason why the Emperor's plan was doomed to fail in time was because while the Emperor understood the path on what humanity must take for a brighter future, he himself was either unable or unwilling to understand humanity. Instead, he chose to remain distant from them and act like he was above their understanding, and that they should just simply follow him because he's the Emperor and he alone knows what's best for humanity, because shut up or be on the receiving end of a boltgun. (Even more ironically, this was how the majority of the gods that humanity originally believed in acted as well, and at least they had the excuse that they really were divine. For all his efforts to remove religion, the Emperor played the part of a god hilariously well.) Lastly, maybe the Emperor understood that his Primarchs were unstable and unreliable. Given the issues with the Thunder Warrior's he had to know all of this was coming eventually just from past experience. But it's possible he just didn't expect it to be in the form of a team death match. He could see Kurze being unstable enough eventually that he and his Legion would need to be removed but expected it to be individual Legions and Primarchs that would need censure but couldn't foresee his own flaws causing enough gulfs with each of his Primarchs that they would have a reason to band together. If that was the case, he was a poor father and a poor leader not to see his own arrogance as a flaw in his design. If it is true that he had always intended the Primarchs' rivalries to grow to the point that they would begin fighting each other, all of the above is even more damning since it means he had made them flawed on purpose and yet failed to see how Chaos would gladly exploit said flaws at the first opportunity it got.

On another note, the fact his ossified self has managed to shed tears and there was an incident where everyone across the Imperium saw statues of the Emperor weeping tears of blood due the incoming disasters of the End Times may mean that he has finally started to realize how horribly he fucked up on every possible level. Or maybe it's hurting even more than ever to stay sit at the Golden Throne.

The latter is far more likely; according to Roboute Guilliman, when he met with the Emperor after his revival, He treated Guilliman as a mere tool without showing even the faintest display of affection or care for him as a person. One can only assume that 10,000 years on the Golden Throne has done absolutely nothing to make the Emperor be less of an asshole; in fact, he's described as being human in name alone, and Guilliman believes that even if he is a god he doesn't deserve to be worshipped.

tl;dr He was a horribly flawed but still well-meaning OCD workaholic with a "The needs of the many" outlook on life meaning he couldn't afford to show trust, love or compassion to anything but mankind as a whole, not even his "sons". Ultimately however even though his complete separation from the human condition helped him make the hard decisions, it was a decision he paid the ultimate price for and a large contributor to the Horus Heresy being as terrible as it was. If you have experience in pedagogy, he is your typical working dad who can't spare time to raise sons and makes *very* bad, fatigue influenced decisions, and after they grow up, wonders why they grow to hate him/be distant. Add the lack of a loving mother figure for the kids, and well...

Planning for the Horus Heresy

To throw a spanner into the works when considering whatever the Emperor's "goals" might have been: A very interesting claim was made by Malcador himself to his dying confidante Sibel Niasta that the Heresy was all part of the plan, that the Primarchs were designed as "conquering tools and nothing more", set on course to fight for dominance and eventually turn on each other and challenge the Emperor directly. This is corroborated by what we already "knew" from Master of Mankind and the Emperor's own attitudes towards the Primarchs (which admittedly has constantly been shown to be shifting. As has been frequently pointed out the final confrontation between Horus and the Emperor - as we currently know it - would not make any sense if he merely considered them to be disposable tools anyway. Why "hold back" then to start out with?). The Primarchs were manipulated against each other with unequal favour, jealousies stoked in order to achieve this, and he also claims that those who would not be manipulated never reach the end game. What is not certain is whether he was speaking the whole truth since he does later admit privately just after the conversation that he had to lie to mortals to spare their sorrow, so what parts he "lied" about are uncertain (he could've made the whole "just as planned" story up, it could've all been true and he was regretting manipulating the Primarchs and their legions, it could even refer to a single sentence where he implies that the Emperor will save her soul after death); he also admits that the outcome had been altered by the great enemy who had emboldened their champions and started the battle early so he did not know with absolute certainty how it was going to turn out. Also, if all of the above Malcadors statemenent "if we could have saved just one of them I wish it would have been Lorgar" makes even less sense.

However, as shown from "The Board is Set" or the novel "The Outcast dead" Malcador and the Emperor were certainly shown to have considerable amounts of foreknowledge regarding the Horus Heresy and certainly did play the Primarchs against each other in order to attempt to counter the manipulations of Chaos. However in the Board is Set, Malcador is shown that the Primarch's destinies were not necessarily fixed and could have been played in different ways; some Primarchs were sacrificed for greater goals like you would remove a figure from the board to give you a better edge. Whilst the Emperor had the knowledge that certain others were crucial to final victory. Malcador is also shown to not have been aware of the full plan or the flow of destinies; he is unaware of how certain seeming "winning" strategies are left unplayed because they have unexpected knock-on effects, or that certain moves played early or late could have had disastrous consequences.

• Such as why the "Invincible Bastion" is not used to take the "Lord of Hearts" early on in the war, since it would force both of the "Twin" pieces to switch sides to the Warmaster and be able move on the Emperor's home space and cause the game to be lost. This is also significant because it shows that whichever side the Primarch had joined could have been variable, and did not automatically mean that it was working towards the same goal as its leaders.
• Malcador was also surprised to find out that the game could be changed by factors they might be unaware of, such as the "Corruption" of the Lord of Clouds in the mid-game when they had expected him to resist like he had in their previous playthroughs. The Emperor appeared genuinely saddened by this change, hinting that he either still cared about them even when they had already turned against him, or that some Primarchs could have potentially been recovered and returned to the fold after the conflict had ended. Malcador was also shocked to think that the Emperor could be blind-sided by such an alteration; with Malcador only beginning to see the game for what it truly might have been, rather than simply a means of testing strategy.
• It is important to note that from the beginning of the game, the "Primarch" pieces were essentially blank slates, and only gained their unique shapes and identities as part of their first activations after the Scattering, possibly indicating that the Primarchs could have potentially switched roles with one another depending on the first few moves. (Perhaps Sanguinius could have become the Lord of Hearts? or Perturabo become the Invincible Bastion?)
• Before the first move takes place, the pieces were arranged ten per side, which was more than available Primarchs at the time. The Emperor had his own golden piece but the "Lord of Hearts" began the game in blue and became switched in the first move (giving the Warmaster eleven pieces after the first move) while the "Twins" would not be divided until the second move, providing twenty-one pieces on the board. Ignoring the additional piece "the Fool" that Malcador had never seen before, means that there must have been one other significant player somewhere that we are not aware about. That and the division of units under the control of the "Emperor" and "Warmaster" in the game would have been very different from the apparent division of Loyalist/Traitor Primarchs in the actual conflict, meaning that the roles they played and were expected to play did change drastically as the game progressed.

Taking several factors into account, it is absolutely certain that Malcador and the Emperor had enough foreknowledge to know that the Horus Heresy was going to happen from the point of the Scattering onward. To say that it was all part of his "Grand Plan" would be a stretch, that many of the Primarchs had municipal gifts (Perturabo's architectural mastery, Fulgrim's artistry etc), came with purposes suited to the Emperor's grand plan for a post-human society (Magnus' and the Webway, Mortarion as a witchseeker) and he definitely created one of them "different" from the rest with the explicit purpose of teaching the others how to settle down after a lifetime of war shows that the Emperor probably did have a plan for his Primarchs that didn't involve losing half of them and then chaining himself to the Golden Throne. Otherwise why make twenty Primarchs with gifts related to your post-battle plans in the first place if you knew you were going to lose half of them? People who claim that this outcome was all part of the Emperor's plan have either missed or forgotten the fact that his opponent in the "game" was Chaos, and not Malcador (Malcador and Emps switched places several times in their playthroughs which Malcador thought was just a means of testing strategy until it finally dawned on him that there was more to it) and that the Chaos Gods had their own plans for the Primarchs too and were fully capable of changing the rules whenever it suited them. Not to mention the Cabals of alien psykers manipulating humanity for their own outcome, Immortal humans that interfere with predictions of the future, and extradimensional beings trying to stop the primordial annihilator from manifesting all by making their own moves and causing more complications.

If anything; The Board is Set goes a long way in explaining why the Emperor couldn't do any more with his advanced notice of impending conflict as any wrong move he made could have immediately spelled disaster for humanity. Plus the Emperor's foresight was not perfect and it did not necessarily marry up with his practical knowledge; even though the game he played with Malcador showed the "Double Edged Sword, The Uncrowned Monarch and The Angel spending most of the game off to the side, the Emperor had no idea what they were actually doing until Malcador relayed the message from Leman Russ. His psychic foresight seems to have been shrouded in allegory and symbolism, rather than concrete certainty.

Also note that "destiny" is different from what the Primarchs were "designed" for (case in point: Magnus being designed to operate the Golden Throne, but also being destined to damage it). While Emperor had designed all of his Primarchs for specific tasks, he would not have been able to identify the destined role that each Primarch was meant to play until events had already been set into motion and pulled them onto certain paths. He might been able to guess that Magnus was "the Library" or that Dorn was the "Invincible Bastion" but could not have been certain until the first moves of the game had been made. So until then he could only treat the Primarchs according to their gifts; hailing them as heroes, building them statues and trying to steer them away from obvious sources of corruption such as sorcery or religion. Even if the Emperor had suspected which ones would turn against him and tried to eliminate them before they became problems, their destinies could have unfolded in a completely different way, potentially causing a similar conflict to happen albeit with a different combination of playing pieces on the board, or alternatively sacrificing any control he might have actually had over the Primarchs and still have ended up with a disaster on his hands. Also bearing in mind that he still needed to complete the Great Crusade and his Webway project; to put those plans on hold until the issue with Primarchs had sorted themselves out would probably have done him no good either because like the Emperor himself, Chaos is capable of playing the long game.

Lorgar is an interesting issue: Malcador once claimed that if he could have saved just one of the traitor Primarchs, it should have been Lorgar. However, from the Board is Set, the Emperor points out that game doesn't start with any piece other than the "Chosen", strongly hinted to represent Lorgar with his initial swaying of Horus and thus beginning the Heresy. This implies that no matter what moves are planned for, or what Primarchs ended up on either side; Chaos will always have a "Chosen" piece to start the game with. If Horus had been protected, Lorgar might have simply started the conflict with someone else, making Chosen/Lorgar perhaps the more crucial piece. Though keep in mind that Malcador speaks with the benefit of hindsight, and as mentioned previously, the Emperor was not omniscient, it is possible that neither of them were to fully realise that Lorgar was the Chosen until the first move of the game had already been made. What is most tragic is that Lorgar really wanted the love and approval of his father and was probably the most fanatically loyal to him in the early days, so turning him into Chaos most pivotal piece is a cruel irony. If it were possible to have actually saved Lorgar before the conflict started, it would have probably unbalanced the game as Chaos would have been forced to find a different Primarch to fill the role of "Chosen", potentially upending the game altogether.

Until the end of the Heresy, Malcador was not actually aware of how the final conflict actually played out; having seen himself only as an advisor, he was ignorant of his own role. The Emperor showed him in the final days that his piece, "The Fool", would switch places with the Emperor to snatch victory and allow the "Uncrowned Monarch" to play his "Salvation" strategy and win the game against chaos by tearing the throat out of the serpent. Malcador's "lie" to his servant was most likely to provide the illusion of control; when in fact the Emperor and Malcador were desperately seeking to find an alternate solution that would not doom everyone. But pretty much like the Emperor stated in "The Outcast dead": "Sometimes the only victory possible is to keep your opponent from winning.".

But what does all that mean for The Duel?

Yeah...about that. Regarding the Emperor's duel with Horus, we're all reasonably sure we know the old story. The Emperor faces down Horus, and had the power to roflstomp him, but his love for his favorite son prevented him from going all out, and Emps gets his ass kicked. It takes an extraordinarily callous killing by Horus to finally convince the Emperor that Horus is completely beyond saving, and Emps blasts him full power to put an end to the Horus Heresy. The rising problem here is that this version of events heavily relies on the Emperor's compassion (particularly towards his sons), compassion that the Horus Heresy books and Dark Imperium repeatedly assert that he never had, either then or in the 41st millennium. For example, the Emperor put down his Thunder Warriors as soon as they served their purpose, and he didn't even pretend to care about Angron and his Butchers nails, asserting that he would keep him as long as he had a use for him, and so on. Anyway, without compassion, the duel scene in its current form simply does not work. After all Horus had done in the years before, in a room with the maimed corpse of Sanguinius, a loyal and beloved (as far as it goes with Big E, at least) son of his, there is really no way he would have gone all fatherly love on Horus and not just blasted him, or at least tried to. (Maybe the current form is Imperial propaganda trying to conceal the fact that Horus simply kicked his shiny golden ass for some reason?) So what the hell actually happened? A very good question, at this point. Laurie Goulding has implied that when the Heresy books finally get to it, the final duel may play out very differently from how we think we know it. It certainly wouldn't be the first time it's been retconned.

One possible explanation for why Emps' couldn't immediately obliterate Horus is perhaps due to divided attention and strength. During the fight, Malcador was being taxed to the core and maybe the Emps was lending his power to buy Malcador some more time and thus was not able to actually unleash his full strength on Horus. However, Malcador had already received the same speech about being used as a disposable pawn by the Emperor for the sake of the overall goal, and knew he was going to die anyway as the Throne-switcharoo had been planned before the traitors had even arrived at Terra, so the Emperor would have no reason to stall just to save one man, even if they were genuinely friends. The Emperor also knew in advance that the outcome would be his entombment on the Throne; when he found out about this he claimed that it was more than he expected but went so far as to tell his Custodians that his dream for the future of humanity was pretty much dead. Without the support of Magnus (who was always intended to sit on the Throne) unless someone came around with the knowledge to fix the Throne he would be trapped there until it it failed but according to his discussions with Malcador there was room for "Salvation" to come later. One other possible suggestion for why the Emperor might have stalled is perhaps his prescience glimpsed some preferable alternative to simply pasting Horus then and there, but until that gets resolved it can only be speculation.

On a rather related note, one can assume E-Money knew the tragic cases of Magnus, Curze & Angron and all of his sons through premonitions. Given that the future can be changed (as in the case of the Lion who feared the future of Curze) though not necessarily changed for the better or come without consequences (such as knowing that Rogal Dorn could have defeated Horus early in the war, but Alpharius would have assaulted Terra and resulted in a Chaos win anyway) the only options available to E-Money were to salvage the best he could from a shit situation.

Anyway, he is now stuck on the Throne guiding his subjects in the few ways available to him in his current state as an all-powerful vegetable.

Perhaps, or perhaps not, to have hesitated out of love for a son, the final weakness during the last test to save mankind, that would have shown why the Emperor couldn't afford to love anyone, not even his own sons, and turned him into what he is now. Though more recent fluff shows him to have always been more pragmatic than that. While he did seemingly care for his "sons", his foresight had shown him that half of them would turn to Chaos and move against him (whether or not you believe Malcador's statement that it was planned from the start). Perhaps he even saw that there would always be half the Primarchs turning to Chaos and all the Emperor could do was choose which ones and try to plan for them. Maybe the two missing Primarchs were dealt with just to try and reduce the number of Primarchs and Legions involved without crippling the Great Crusade. Though even with this foreknowledge, the Emperor was on the back foot and many of the actions of the Horus Heresy involved playing the Primarchs against each other to prevent an overall Chaos victory rather than achieving an Imperial win.

ADB on the Emperor in Master of Mankind

TL;DR: Everyone whom has the chance to be in the Emperor's presence perceives something different, based on their own experiences and expectations. Nothing He ever says should be taken at face value, since it is 'warped' by the narrator's interpretation.

In response to criticisms on his portrayal of the Emperor, ADB posted this detailed answer:

That's true, and I definitely wanted to bring out a better understanding of his vision and what he was up against, but that's also lore I'd wager anyone with a deep knowledge of the setting already had a handle on to some degree, whether explicitly or not. What I wanted to avoid was too much "new" stuff. You have to put in something new, and thankfully what little newness I do introduce in my work is seemingly well-regarded, but I've always said our job (as I see it) is to illustrate the setting and show what it's like to live there, not to set it in stone. As much as the fandom adores "advancing the storyline", it's not something that interests me, by and large. I try my best to show things from the perspectives of characters on the ground level, bring a few perceptions of the setting through the lens of my own imagination and the insight I'm lucky enough to get endlessly talking about the setting with its creators and inheritors, and then get out. Most of my books are, to some extent, not definitive. They're about Some Guy, not the entire faction.

Grimaldus in Helsreach has no bond to the wider war on Armageddon and hates that he's been left behind by the Black Templars, but he's (hopefully) a good example of what it feels like to be a Black Templar, and to think like one, and - crucially - what it feels like to be a human around them. Talos and the other characters of First Claw spend a trilogy unable to decide what the Night Lords Legion really was, and each of them remembers their glory days differently. I didn't want to speak for the whole Legion. Hyperion in The Emperor's Gift is a largely generic Grey Knight present in dire circumstances. HH-wise, I didn't want to show all of the Word Bearers and base a book around the expectations of Kor Phaeron, Lorgar, and Erebus, so I focused on the Serrated Sun in the middle of the changes taking place across the galaxy. Savage Weapons is largely about Corswain, not about Curze and the Lion. The Master of Mankind is about Ra, Zephon, Jaya, and Land in the heart of the Emperor's plans for the species, not about the Emperor himself. As much as I wrote about Angron and Lorgar, they get significantly less in-their-heads screen time than most other primarchs in most other books.

It's harder to do that with the Heresy, but - again - I do my best to present individual experiences and mindsets in characters like Khârn, Argel Tal, and Ra, rather than definitive looks at the entire Chapter/Legion/faction and setting its events in stone. I try to present a feel for how it is to live inside that culture and be part of the experiences they go through; it's about immersion into the Chapter or Legion, presenting them as believable and real, not definitively saying "All of Chapter X are like Y." So: I'm reluctant to talk about TMoM and the Emperor's perception in that book in any real detail, partly because the book is still new and there's a lot individual readers would do better discovering for themselves without my thoughts in public, and partly because everything I'd say is ultimately in the book. Anything I say will be taken out of context or weaponised one way or another somewhere, and used in a way that makes me sigh, cringe, or a dramatic melange of both that shall hereafter be called the sigh-cringe. (Plus, most of all, I have faith in readers. They don't need me defining anything, even if it might be interesting for a few peeps.)

So, I'll just say this. The Master of Mankind is entirely from the perspectives of people that meet the Emperor in pretty specific circumstances. There are, obviously, other circumstances to come. Nothing in it is definitive, even less so than my usual work. Any definitive statement you can make about how the Emperor sees something or does something is almost always contradicted in the book itself. That's not an escape clause or an excuse. It's the point. Writing him definitively would've been the easiest and most disappointing thing in the world. (And on that note, remember, everyone views 40K differently. What Person X is absolutely certain is the truth of the Emperor and the best way to present him would be laughed off by Persons A, B, and C. The flip side to that is that not every perspective is founded in fact or understanding. The earliest "I've not read this yet, but..." criticisms and misunderstandings of TMoM in, ah, certain reddit/chan-style locations was regarded by GW IP folks as, I quote: "These angry people seem to be beholden to a version of 40K that has never existed...") But in all seriousness, I don't want to delve too deeply into explaining the ways the Emperor's contradictions matter or don't matter. They're there, and they're definitely formative - totally agree - if not exactly definitive. With the Emperor, a lot of interaction is about getting out what you put in. You get what you give. Your perceptions and expectations are reflected back on you because that's how the human brain perceives everything (a fact that cannot be overstated; the science behind it is fascinating and all-important), especially when you're talking about someone who exists on that plane of power. At one point the Emperor makes mention of the notion that he's not even speaking, that being near to him allows the conveyance of meaning through psychic osmosis, and communication telepathically. He's not even talking. It's raw understanding filtering through a mind, or just the way the mortal mind comprehends the aura of what the Emperor intends, or, or, or... That's what I mean. TMoM is littered with that stuff. Does he only address the primarchs by number instead of name? Some characters will swear he does that, and doesn't that just perfectly match their perspectives of the primarchs as either emotionally-compromised "too-human" things that think they're sons (Ra), or genetic masterworks that have become galaxy-damning screw-ups that have literally let the galaxy burn and brought the Imperium to its knees, leading people to be exiled from their homeworlds (Land). Do you think Sanguinius will agree? Or care that's what mortals think? The Emperor's portrayal on that isn't even consistent between Ra and Diocletian, two of his Custodians - and on PAGE ONE, the only time he interacts with a primarch himself, and the one and only thing he says to Magnus the Red is...? "Magnus."

Like... that's a pretty strong indication that the interactions which follow are playing by different rules. Ra sees the Warlord of Humanity, just a man, but a great mean, weary and defiant, burdened by responsibility. Daemons see their annihilation, and go insane in his presence. One of the Knights, as they're marching through the Throne Room, is caught in religious rapture, unable to do anything but stare at the glorious halo of the Emperor of Mankind on the Golden Throne. One of the Sisters of Silence, in the same room, literally just sees a man in a chair. Another character, not Imperial, asks a Custodian if the Emperor even breathes. She believes he's a weapon left out of its box from the Dark Age of Technology. (With thanks to Alan Bligh for that one, he adores that theory.) So I don't think it's exactly a spoiler to say that if and when I get to write a character like Sanguinius in the Emperor's presence, or Malcador, they'd have entirely different experiences than Ra and Land. I'd loved to have had that in TMoM, but as much as it would've given wider context, these aren't rulebooks and essays; it would've been self-indulgent for the sake of 'hoping people get it', and cheapened the story being told, which was ultimately in a very narrow and confined set of circumstances. Breaking out of that narrative would be offering a sense of scope and freedom I was specifically trying to avoid in a claustrophobic siege story. Because theme and atmosphere is a thing.

Worship of the Emperor

What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to bitchslap Him so hard he ended up spending the next 10,000 years on the Golden Throne as a rotting corpse. Notice the giant skull. How did that skull get so big? Is it a plastic faux-skull, or is it an mutant or even an alien skull? (What He doesn't want you to know is that The E is actually a midget, the armor is a mech and that that's a regular-sized skull) *BLAM!* Anyway, back to the topic at hand. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often. But he still looks fabulous without his armor.

"We believe in one Lord, the Emperor, the Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Emperor of Mankind, the only Lord of creation, eternally begotten of Humanity, Human from Human, Light from Light, true Lord from true Lord, begotten, not made, of one Being with Humanity; through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and came among us.
For our sake he has faced down Chaos; he withstood death and was enthroned.
To this day he lives on in accordance with the Scriptures; he resides upon Mother Terra and is seated upon the throne of Humanity.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.
We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy.
We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos.
We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
++ Ayhmen ++"

– the Creed of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra (Most Christian elegan/tg/entlemen will recognize it as a bastardized version of The Apostle's Creed)

"Did Horus not say that you sought godhood? He built a rebellion upon that claim. How he would gloat, to see the Imperium now"

– Roboute Guilliman

The Imperium advocates worship the Emperor as the one true God through the Imperial Creed. This creed is propagated and its adherence is enforced by the Adeptus Ministorum and the Inquisition. All citizens and fighters of the Imperium have little-to-no say about their choice in faith (or lack thereof); they must worship the Emperor through the various Ministorum-approved faiths throughout the galaxy (due to varying cultures, many planets have their own way of worshiping the Emperor. Although these are heavily regulated by the Ministorum to weed out any heretical influences.), there is no middle road or compromise that doesn't involve the apostate being on the receiving end of a state-sponsored public lynching. Anyone who defies or deviates from the teachings of the Imperial Creed (or even is just perceived to defy it), whether willingly or unwillingly (after all, incompetence is inexcusable in the eyes of the Emperor), is condemned as a heretic and is executed (whether its going to be fast or excruciatingly slow is dependent on the person judging the condemned). Even if someone hasn't disobeyed the Imperial Creed but is deemed to have will be treated as if they broke the Creed. Forgiveness for one's sins is possible, although these cases are exorbitantly rare (at least the ones that doesn't end with the accused being condemned to a glorious death, and it usually is extremely painful.). It doesn't help that some of the members of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition are so batshit insane that they are killing countless innocent followers of the Imperial Creed for no reason.

Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, they realized what he taught them when he preached the Imperial Truth was complete bullshit. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption by hoping that ignorance is bliss, unfortunately, this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place. Some saw that the Emperor lied to them by holding the truth hidden, some did not know how to handle the temptation the Gods conveyed, some did not even know that they were manipulated all this time and by whom, some would try to seek out something to place their faith upon, not realizing what would needed to be done to become chosen in the eyes of the Gods. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the Interex, another atheist empire who understood that threat of Chaos, but treated that information secularly and scientifically: they told every citizen everything that was known about "Kaos", and thus resisted the taint altogether (which basically shows how ineffective the Imperial Truth really was and how much the Emperor has screwed up). Unfortunately this still made them targets and the Imperium was used by Chaos as a cats-paw to wipe them out.

In the Emperor's long game, he knew that humanity was evolving into a psychic species with even more potential than the Eldar, and look what happened to them? E-money wanted mankind to be a utopia of science and reason, by eliminating religion (and thus preventing the temptations of daemons), controlling psykers (and thus preventing random daemonic possessions), and eliminating warp travel by creating the Human Webway (and thus eliminating all human contact with Chaos when traveling through the Warp). He wanted to isolate humanity from the Chaos Gods, cause who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp with no way of getting out?

However, He made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite His best efforts, nothing was enough to fill the place of religion in human society. Ironically, the best solution would be not to suppress faith but to redirect it towards something else, but because of his natural awesomeness, unmatched psychic powers and enigmatic nature, that "something else" ended up being the Emperor himself. After He went off being the most powerful psychic cucumber in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium, belief in Him sort of helped the Imperium stand together against all odds. With the Warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged His power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while His body shut down and died. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

• Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locust who exist only to feed and multiply their biomass...
• Older-than-Chaos-itself zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy...
• Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars, whose single desire is harvesting all living souls...
• A race of nigh-unkillable barbarians, genetically engineered to have pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams only be about rip and tear...
• Technologically superior space communists wanting to assimilate everyone in their quasi heirarchical-Communist empire and who take after Billy Mays...
• Humanoid wingless bird men cannibals who absorb traits from what they eat
• Humanoid insects with claws capable of ripping through the toughest armour
• Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and to have Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position in planet-sized battle cruisers...
• Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine...
• Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane...
• Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on...
• Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived...
• Traitors who turn their backs on the Imperium and try to destroy it...
• Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun (and who may be the puppets of an older and even more malignant civilization)...
• Giant Swarms of Worms in cloaks who might be older than The Old Ones who are more sadistic that the Dark Eldar and More Manipulative than regular Eldar and Feed on Humans in the Most Disgusting and Painful way imaginable (Hint it Involves Maggots.)...
• Massive insectoid hive mind filled to the brim with heavy firepower and has a slow but growing empire that is one of the largest in the galaxy, dwarfing the Tau several hundred times over and is seen as the next successor of galactic domination after humanity's potential fall...
• Humanoid Rats that cause anything, living or not, to rapidly decay through touch...
• Malignant, omnipotent intelligence from beyond the cosmos, exerting all the power at their disposal to prevent any faction from breaking the stalemate or upsetting the dreadful status quo...
• And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is...

Without their faith in the Emperor after His internment into the Golden Throne, the fragments of the Imperium would have fought against each other again like in the pre-Great Crusade days and subsequently devolved into what they were before the Emperor revealed Himself. So yes, much like IRL religion, it gives them hope and courage to fight on and survive in a universe that leaves the grimdark faucet running everyday and night.

It's worth noting that good ol' Empy wouldn't have had nearly as much of a problem with all this unwanted worship if He hadn't, just as a quick example, insisted on wearing horrifyingly ornate solid gold armour and a big glowy halo at all times. Or on carrying a flaming sword of righteousness. Or on building continent-sized monuments to His vanity. Or on decking all His personal troops and favored genetic experiments in as much bling as they could possibly carry. Or on being eleven fucking feet tall. Or on creating a functional pantheon of genetically engineered demigods, one of whom looked like and was referred to as a literal Angel. If you look like space-Jesus and act like space-Jesus, people are going to take those observations to their extreme conclusions, like what Lorgar did when he wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus, which can be summarized as "Ordinary men can't blow up suns and carry big glowy halos at all times, only a God can, therefore the Emprah is God." This is made even more relevant given that the fluff very strongly implies that the Emperor was Jesus.

That said, to Games Workshop's credit His being buttfucked by His own hubris and disregard for the humanity He claimed to be guiding in this manner was probably intentional as a classic tale of Greek Tragedy.

On the Death of the Emperor

Son, I am disappoint.

With the Golden Throne being consistently worn out, and the Tech-priests too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it (at least until they finish studying Malcador's staff, provided GW doesn't forget that plot point), it is certainly possible that the Golden Throne may stop working entirely, though what this might do is up for debate, since the Emperor has been dead for a very long time now.

Yes, yes, you read that right, the Emperor is dead. Now quit your shrieking and take a fecking chill pill, there's more to it than that. Being the single most powerful psyker in the history of the human race, the death of his physical body isn't the same "GAME OVER, MAN!" it would be for the rest of us mortals. The Emperor's mummified corpse is still inhabited by his spirit much the same way as Lord Kroak, except he's powering the Astronomican (and possibly keeping the warp from swallowing Terra) instead of being hauled around on a golden anti-gravity palanquin to smite the enemies of the Imperium with golden fire.

Back to the matter at hand, with how arcane and ill-understood the Golden Throne's workings are all we have to go on are theories. It might be somehow enhancing his psychic abilities through its connection to his corpse and this would be lost when it gives out, or (rather more likely seeing as how parts keep failing and yet nothing changes) it might be something the AdMech keeps running since they think it's doing something that it isn't. No one knows, and no one really wants to find out.

In any case, a lot of fa/tg/uys don't seem to know that the Emperor's dead, and so a lot of theories arise as to what might happen if something that already happened ends up happening. Click expand to view these theories and keep in mind, these are all kept with their fa/tg/uys speculation intact.

The new Eye of Terror

Conventional wisdom and the Eldar says that in the event that the Emperor dies, a new Eye of Terror will be created with Terra at its center, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets/systems(?) into the Warp. Even the Ecclesiarchy agrees that if the Emperor were ever to die, humanity would be FUCKED at the barest minimum.

This is supported by the fact that the Golden Throne (itself a portal to the Webway) was broken by Magnus, causing a warp tear to open on Terra, which the Emperor has had to spend every second for the last 10,000 years concentrating on to keep from getting any bigger. Now the Throne is also beginning to show signs of irreversible breakdown, but what happens if(/when?) Big E dies is actually which of the two fails first.

According to the Old Earth novel, the Golden Throne has a Vulkan-forged device called Talisman of Seven Hammers that acts as a dead man's switch: it supposedly will destroy all of Terra if the Throne finally kicks it. The Talisman has never been referred to in previous fluff, though the fullest implications of the Throne failing have never been explored either.

In any event, the death of the Emperor's physical body is theorized by some fans (and the Eldar in-universe) to have the potential to create a new Chaos God and a new Eye of Terror, assuming that the warp rift the Emperor was keeping closed doesn't create a new Eye of Terror first. The effect of Vulkan's talisman is a wildcard, as it was shown to have the capability to annihilate (not merely banish) a Greater Daemon even before it was connected to the Throne, and earlier in the same section the residual energy left over in the Emperor's fulgurite was sufficient to make an army of Bloodletters simply not be there any more. Connecting the talisman to the Throne magnifies its power to the point that the Emperor believes it would not merely deny Chaos their victory on Terra, but can strike a blow against them "the likes of which they will never recover from". Chaos may still get their warp rift, but may be burned badly by the Emperor's final "fuck you".

Regeneration

No, not the Doctor Who kind. Various Horus Heresy novels present the Emperor as a Perpetual, just like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson, Alivia Sureka and Anval Thawn, all of who were able to survive multiple deaths that completely obliterated their bodies in the process. So all He simply needs to do is for his current material body to die normally, and wait a couple of hours/days and He'd be reborn again (in the "get up off the ground and dust Himself off" sense. As for the question of why he simply didn't wait to resurrect into a spanking new body before being interred in the Throne, refer to that giant warp tear in the webway project and the *urgent* need to keep it sealed at all times.

All of this is still speculation (duh). Vulkan, for instance, was driven mad by the torturous experiences he had endured thanks to Night Haunter, and they were child's play, compared to sitting in unthinkable agony, unable to move or speak for ten thousand years while feeling Himself rotting away. And don't you forget that nose itch. However, a more commonly held belief is that He will get up, re-establish the Imperial Truth, and just be a cool guy. Too bad the Warp rift and the Astronomican don't have time to wait for him to do so.

A whole faction of the Inquisition, Thorianism, exists to investigate the possibility of regeneration; looking for possible signs that the Emperor's consciousness can be transferred elsewhere, allowing Him to walk among his children once more. (That said, they don't know about the existence of Perpetuals and would rather look for a new body to place the Emperor's soul into.) That being said: This may be the best option if they can keep the Emperor powering the Astronomican with one body while having his mind in a different body wandering around.

Opponents to Thorianism generally see that encouraging this is a terrible idea, as having the Emperor rise in a physical form would only cause a schism in the Imperium, as many people would not believe it to be true, having been ruled and brainwashed by the Ecclesiarchy over thousands of years, which would lead to another major civil war.

But think about it: when Malcador took up the Throne so that the Emperor could fight Horus, the device consumed his vitality; and Malcador was not as blessed as the Emps with regen abilities to recover. Now imagine a weakened, crippled being, whose top priority immediately after killing His son is to stop the Webway gate from spilling forth. You don't have time (and nor does the galaxy) to recover from your wounds. So you sit upon the Throne and it consumes you slowly from that point onwards. The chair is stopping any sort of healing factor.

This is supported by Path Of Heaven, when Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars use the Dark Glass device to boogie woogie back to Terra. Much like Malcador, the one who uses the Dark Glass device is reduced to ashes just using it for a couple of moments, and the Dark Glass also has a Throne unit to control it, though it is described as the Golden Throne’s lesser cousin. The Golden Throne is described by the Chief Librarian using Dark Glass as “far greater, immensely more powerful, older, fouler, set deeper in the fabric of both reality and unreality.”So just what is the Golden Throne? From way above, we know it’s a pain engine powerful enough to make a Haemonculus blush, those using it need to be powerful Psykers to actually control it, it consumes the souls of those who use it, unless that person also has innate regenerative capabilities (which, oh, let’s see, leaves us with basically Emps or Magnus), and it exists both in reality and in the Warp. The Emperor himself in Master of Mankind is evasive on where he found the “core” of the Throne. Now imagine you’re Rogal Dorn on the Vengeful Spirit and you’ve just found the bodies of Sanguinius and Horus and a dying Emprah. You race back to the Palace because surely Malcador, the only person to even come close to knowing the Emperor should be able to help, only to find him strapped to a machine that is literally turning him to dust. You have no idea what the hell this thing is (because you’re a good kid and keep out of dad’s basement) but your Father tells you to strap him into the thing. You do it, even though Pops is weak and it just Gammorah’d the last guy to sit in it. Not a great situation but you do what dad says. Now he’s stuck there, unable to regenerate but also unable to get up lest demons invade/that sun dad left in the Webway blows up. Fast forward 10,000+ years, you’re dead, and everyone is too stupid to realize it’s a fucking PAIN ENGINE and not a life support system. The Emperor was literally slapped into the equivalent of an infinite soul shriver while at his absolute weakest. If he could just stop sealing the Webway gate while someone else (Magnus) took a pew, he could possibly stretch his legs out and be right as rain. So maybe, just maybe, the Golden Throne breaking down isn’t a bad thing? (fuck, Age of the Emprah here we come)

Or someone could slap a good-ol' Gellar Field over the Webway portal, completely solving the problem. Doh! I forgot! That wouldn't be Grimdark! Shit.

The Star Child

Although years of GW-marketing and fluff "upgrades" have made the third claim rather dubious, many fa/tg/uys and optimists still hold out on the theory stating that when the Emperor screwed Horus's soul to the wall, part of the Emperor's soul was also cast into the Warp. This Soul Fragment is called the Star Child, a god waiting to be reborn, or perhaps be reincarnated back into a human body (anyone call for one scout Mkvenner). If the remains of the Emperor were ever to die, the tiny spark of soul left in his body would re-unite with the greater whole within the Warp, and according to prophecy, force the four Chaos Gods into stalemate, while the races of the galaxy would be left to battle it out in one last great Ragnarök scenario (called the End Times).

This theory is tied closely to the Illuminati, a group of either supremely enlightened individuals or dangerous mutant heretics (depending on which side of the Inquisition you're on). The Illuminati plan to catch all of the Sensei and sacrifice them upon the Golden Throne at the moment of Emperor's death.

In a bizarre fusion of new and old fluff, it has been revealed that the Illuminati were a minor Tzeentch cult and the Sensei were effectively brainwashed soon-to-be sacrifices in an attempt to bring Tzeentch to the materium. Needless to say, they have been purged by the Inquisition. The fluff in the Jac Draco books revealed that the Ordo Hydra (a small splinter faction of the Illuminati who seek to turn humanity into a psychic hive-mind) is a Tzeentch cult, but that the general Illuminati population - including many Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and the Exorcists Chapter (as well as their unknown successor chapters) are genuinely incorruptible by Chaos and are freely permitted to access the Black Library along with Harlequin Solitaires. Ultimately, all this would be rendered irrelevant as the Inquisition Trilogy was retconned away. It's just like that frustrating moment you experience when you don't know if the Squats have been nommed by Tyranids or have never existed in the first place. Kinda like Schrödinger's Cat. Schrödinger's Space Dorf.

Beyond the Emperor

As stated in The Master of Mankind, the Emperor himself considers he already lost the game to save Mankind's from consuming itself into the Warp while attempting to give the evolutionary jump, with the loss of the Webway he seems to have concluded the only thing that remains is a long decline and there is nothing else to do but to wage an ever losing war. Or is it? The Emperor himself recognized He isn't omniscient, His foresight can't reach all. When Guilliman shows up, the Emperor is amazed that humanity has still managed to survive and the Imperium is still alive.

During recent years the writers of Games Workshop have been hinting at a few facts, let us consider the following:

• The future is not absolutely written, and this comes from Chaos itself; even Tzeentch can't predict everything perfectly, requiring him to ask his insane bird-oracle to clarify on these events.
• The fall of the Imperium may be inevitable, but mankind may live on. Given the sheer scope of the human exodus, it's not outside the realm of possibility that some remnant of the Dark Age of Technology has continued unchanged from its original height, though it's very unlikely. For this to be the case it would somehow have to avoid nearly all xenos, chaos influence/worshipers, have its own way of dealing with latent psykers so that they don't be used be Daemons or worse and never have met any of the other traders, explorators and travelers in general that make up how the current Imperium discovers new planets.
• The Cadian Pylons, while destroyed, were developed by beings that still exist. The fact the Necrons are still around opens the possibility that they may yet be capable of building replacements, and thanks to Trazyn we know they are capable of closing of warp storms. Oh, and it seems like Uncle Cawl is working on that.
• The Akashic Records truly exist and are somehow linked to Ark Mechanicus ships such as Speranza, this simple fact means all already existing knowledge is never lost forever, but merely incredibly hard to acquire.
• Creating humans immune to Chaos is a reality, both the Exorcists and the Grey Knights are evidence to this, and while the process is excruciatingly slow, highly prone to failure and prohibitive in resources it means Mankind can achieve through artificial means a sort of new evolutionary step.
• Not all Eldar died during the Fall, even if we are talking about 1 percent of the race it's still a great deal of individuals, and the fact they have managed to kick-start an anti-Chaos god is something no one, not even the Emperor managed to foresee (assuming he did not know that is what the Infinity Circuits were for, which he no doubt did considering how old he is). Eldrad has ultimately demonstrated there are other ways to fight Chaos (by being a dick).
  • And thanks to Eldrad waking Ynnead up early (if only barely), Roboute Guilliman was awakened from stasis. Now he is preparing a new generation of Super Space Marines along with some awesome new gear to help take down Chaos. Plus some of the other loyalist Primarchs are still out there, and there is a possibility that they could return to help lead the Imperium fight it's many enemies.
  • And for that matter, Eldrad declared by the end of The War of The Beast that the futures of Mankind and the Eldar are irrevocably interlinked. But, he did nothing to build on that, the dumbass. Add to that the fact the necrons too have given the Imperium a hand a few times and you suddenly notice there are more parties than the Emperor interested in not letting the human race fall. Despite the Imperium's completely justified hatred of xenos, they may be mankind's best chance of survival. That said, we still do have to remember that both the Eldar and Necrons want the Imperium and each other out of the way eventually in order to rebuild their empires, and the Imperium isn't keen on relying too heavily on the entities who will turn on them in a tip of the hat. On the other hand, desperate times call for desperate measures and who knows what the future could bring? Well, at least the Eldar to have more or less accepted their empire will never return and that sticking with the Imperium is their best bet for survival and power in the universe from now on. Which broke the balance and caused plot progression.
• Nobody saw the Tyranids coming because they hadn't even noticed the Galaxy was inhabited until the whole mess with the Pharos device. Not the Chaos Gods, not the Emperor, not the Eldar (though Orikan saw them coming), and the Tyranids are both an outside context issue for the galaxy (being the only faction with galactic pull that is completely and unambiguously disconnected from the War in Heaven or the Horus Heresy that serves as everyone else's origin stories) ties and a wild card in the fate of the Galaxy.
• If the Emperor wasn't a god to begin with, millennia of worship and countless psyker souls empowering him means that he's almost certainly a god now- and he knows it. Even when wielded by a "mere" Primarch his sword alone is capable of permanently destroying Greater Daemons (keep in mind that during Great Crusade and before he seems not to be able to do that), and given enough time his power might eclipse that of Chaos itself. (Though one could argue that Chaos powers up much faster than the Emperor due to having more sources to feed one and possibly having more worshippers)
• Finally, there is humanity itself. While He failed to take into account the fact that humanity is a mass of individuals rather than an abstraction, He also underestimated how this could work for good as well as evil. For every traitor and heretic, there is an equally devoted believer in the inherent goodness of mankind willing to stand against the Ruinous Powers, and it is on the individual level that the struggle between the Ruinous Powers and humanity is ultimately fought and decided upon.

Yes, the Emperor failed to avoid mankind's inherent flaws to hinder His Great Work (ironically, because He was guilty of several of them as well), but He also failed to see a lot of the good things mankind can bring in. In yet another twist of irony, his incapability to predict us may even thwart his own prediction of humanity's doom. At the very least, humanity accomplished more and survived longer than anyone expected, even the Emperor.

Indeed, this is Warhammer 40,000, a cautionary tale about the End of Empires, but so was Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and, although we may not like the AoS-ification of the setting, there may still be more than just a complete failure for the future of Mankind and the Emperor.

Thought for the day: "The man who has nothing can still have faith."

Gallery

This section contains PROMOTIONS! Don't say we didn't warn you.

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  Put this everywhere to praise him, on your windows, the neighbours, just all your hive city.

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  Son, I am disappoint. Empy's disappointment occurred well before this moment.

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  Now in animated ultra HD for your heresy needs.

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  The Big E upon the Golden Throne (before the decay set in)

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  The guiding light in the Imperium of Man shines forever bright. He's also Arnold Schwarzenegger. Try unseeing that now bitches.

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  The Emperor protects man from all.

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  Yearbook photo.

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  His groove, do not ruin it. Or you'll get schooled.

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  Emps laying down some rules, mid combat from the looks of it

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  That is EXACTLY the same look that's on Batman's face when he's about to put the beatdown on some little bitch!

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  He makes for one helluva action figure

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  The Em-purr-or of all Catkind! Nyah!

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  Death is no excuse to stop bein' pimp.

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  Thinking to himself, "I really, REALLY hate Horus!" Then again he never liked Horus in the first place.

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  The Emperor isn't looking good here.

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  Roll d6; stays on the field on seven or less

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  A real man never dies, even when he's killed.

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  Down but not out.

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  In all His miniature glory

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  The Carrion Lord with his two left arms. *BLAM* how the fuck did that heretic get past the custodes?

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  This painting sold for $900, that lucky ca/tg/url...

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  Probably the best model of him yet

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  Oh God-emperor, how did this get here? I am not good with computers.

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  Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

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  You all know you wanna see how this pans out!

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  The same situation, but improved! *BLAM* Silence Heretic!

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  How do you kill what can not die?

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  Emperor Rule 63! NO EXCEPTIONS! *BLAM* Heresy! Extra Heresy!

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  Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher. *BLAM* HERESY!, no make that extra Hersey

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  Oh, give it a fucking rest...

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  On second though... this one is... nice. - *BLAM* Heresy!

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  Yeah. We get it. The Emperor sits upon the Golden 'Throne'.

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  Unbeknownst to many 40k fans, ol'Emps is actually fairly amicable when he meets an elf/eldar who isn't a complete and utter failure.

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  The Emperor in Rainbow Form, and his theme tone!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDZoyNzuWbQ&t=10s

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  The symbol of the town Konya in Turkey. In Central Anatolia. Emprah's birthplace. CONNECTION, BITCHES!

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  The symbol of ancient (1600BC) Hittite Empire from Anatolia, which, unknown to many, is Emperor's first try at conquering the world.

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  In alternate universe 32-B, Mao Zedong rules the People's Republic of Mankind

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  The Emperor has just discovered Rule 34.

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  The Emperor is a man of simple tastes.

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  The Emprah is watching you Masturbate!

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  The very first image of the Emperor, dating back to Rogue Trader.

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  Kawaii Emprah teaching us about the evils of heretics, while displaying his mighty Pauldrons.

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  Perhaps with a better armor design (or if he actually cared about him), The Big E might not have been late for all of Horus's after school soccer games and things might have turned out a lot differently.

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  Just imagine what would had happened if the Chaos Gods didn't scatter the primarchs through out the galaxy and The Emperor didn't have to start the Great Crusade to go and look for them... Wait a minute, where is that little scamp Omegon? (he's just off picture, sneaking up behind Guilliman)

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  "Why IS IT that hot dogs come in packs of 8, and hot dog buns come in packs of 12? So people will have to buy 3 packs of hot dogs and 2 of hot dogs buns, hereby promoting imperial production of course! Ketchup sold separately!"

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  Having him look at you like this is a reliable indicator of how soon people are going to start referring to you in past-tense.

See Also

• The Imperium, for the empire he founded.
• Malcador the Sigillite, the Emperors best bro.
• The Primarchs, the Emperors "sons".
• Sigmar, his Warhammer Fantasy Battles and Age of Sigmar counterpart (especially in the latter).
• Emperor's To-Do List

This thread which makes the Emperor even cooler.

• If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device
• Heresy from the Emprah’s point of view