The God-Emperor of Mankind
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
The God-Emperor of Mankind, also known as The Emprah, Emps, Big E, Augustus Imperator, Master of Mankind, Space Jesus, and also sometimes called The Anathema, The Carrion Lord, The False Emperor, The Immortal Emperor or The Corpse on the Throne is the figurehead ruler of the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40k universe and is the only sustaining Hope for Humanity as Faster than Light Travel is entirely dependent on Him. The Administratum He 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 "moronic" and heretical, and is typically punished by peace (at least in the material realm). He created the 20 primarchs, who viewed him as their "father". However, he saw them more as tools, and instead of names, referred to them by numbers. *Dick*. 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.
The Entire History of the Emprah
The Emperor is a Perpetual, meaning an immortal psyker 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. 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. Kid-Emps then realised that humans needed laws, and good laws needed to be given by good leaders: setting him on the xeno/geno-cidal path of self-righteousness and conquest that would continue for the next 38,000 years.
Allegedly, (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 and they don't have godlike powers, the Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival due to his acquisition of powers at a later point (see below).
The 1st & 2nd edition fluff also mentions that He guided humanity throughout history under a number of guises, such as Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Randy 'the Macho Man' Savage etc. And, it has to be assumed, Conan the Barbarian. (It is also possible that He was Russian emperor Peter I, purely based on the fact that imperial Russia's symbol was the two-headed eagle, and Peter I was considered huge (or great, depending on translation))
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.
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
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 the Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians", in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the 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 "join-me-or-die" tactics, He managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the event called Unification Wars. Then, He made contact with the Mechanicum of Mars and calling Himself the Omnissiah, convinced them to build Him weapons and space-ships. Around this time, He also created a doctrine, 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 Emp's lifetime. Simply put: the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" mumbo-jumbo has never worked and now must be eradicated.
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. 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
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 stole from the Gods 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 daemonic soul, bound to a super awesomely tough material body. Though with this power apparently stolen, The Big Four will inevitably and continually be pissed at Him for using their power for His own ends. So the Chaos Gods 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. Luckily for the Emperor, some genetic code was 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 once again make humanity great again.
However, the Emperor himself states to Arkhan Land (the guy who discovered Land Speeders/Raiders) that he never considered the Primarchs to be his 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" even if he felt no sense of kinship towards them in return.
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 was 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 rebel against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew Horus (who was daddy's favorite) 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.
"Modern" Day
Subsequently, 10 thousand years later, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic, 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".
While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psychic-essence prevents daemon kind from directly assailing Terra, while additionally sustaining the psychic-beacon known as the Astronomican, that makes warp travel within 50,000 light years around Terra possible.
It is common knowledge, that the Emperor is the most powerful psyker alive, humbling even the Eldar. It is also suggested that He has guided humanity in a guise of people like Julius Caesar, Conan the Barbarian, Chuck Norris, Christopher Lee and Jesus. It is uncertain as to whether or not His internment on the Golden Throne is a good thing. Some believe that if He were to die, the Imperium would be truly fall into darkness, whereas others believe that if allowed to finally die, He would reincarnate and return to unify the galaxy once more, stronger than ever. Whatever the truth, Games Workshop are probably never going to advance the story, so speculation has little worth. Unless you take Warhammer Fantasy as an example, where the time-line ended. Badly.
The Emprah Himself
- "The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible father..."
- -Roboute Guilliman, giving the most short yet accurate biography of the Emperor.
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.
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 respectively "The Anathema", as in the polar opposite to Chaos. 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.
After He was nearly killed by His son, He was placed upon the Golden Throne and hasn't moved for the past 10 millennia. Most of the fluff maintains that His existence on a day-to-day basis since then is a 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 take a sit and die. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. It gives Him a fuckton of work to do, and 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?). In the last year of M41, tech-priests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and the Emperor is dying. There is a chance of the Emperor returning to life, as well as the risk that He will die forever. If the latter would be the case, then everyone in the galaxy will become a Chaos sex toy/punching bag/plague vector/science experiment. Note that if the Emperor recovers, He'd be several hundred times more powerful. Emps was born of a group of psykers combining their might and souls in one ritual act. Maybe. Since then, Empy has probably gained about 365 gigafucktrillion 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.
- "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
For all His desire to guide and protect humanity, there is a lot of proof, particularly from the Horus Heresy books and some short stories, that the Emperor was not Space Jesus, but Space Hitler. He declared humanity to be superior to all xenos (setting the basis for our genocidal xenophobia and the hatred of nearly every xenos race by default), planned to destroy every shard of religion by force of arms if needed, planned to reunite humanity under His rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought of that (again by force of arms if needed), cared little for the primarchs being His actual sons (thinking of them as generals and tools rather than biological offspring, and screwing over several of them in His efforts to recruit them / making them follow orders (hence causing some of their later betrayals)), carried out many unorthodox, morally questionable experiments and much much more... For example: He helped Corvus Corax turn his home-world (and moon) into a great place to live, but for some reason didn't bother doing this for Olympia or Nostramo... in both cases this contributed to the Primarchs of those worlds to turn traitor. Plus, while He kept the already moral-as-fuck Vulkan at His side for decades, risking the Salamanders' existence in the process, He totally neglected His least stable sons, i.e. the ones who really needed at least SOME level of fatherly love/guidance. And that whole sorcery issue that divided the Primarchs, kept Mortarion estranged from Him and led to the Wolves destroying Prospero? Could probably have been avoided if He'd listened to Jaghatai Khan and a) told His sons the truth about the Warp and His plans with the human Webway (we don't even know what the lost Primarchs are called, isn't that enough proof that they can all keep a secret?) and b) explained that they all had psychic potential and c) showed them all how to use it responsibly.
His reign eventually killed more humans (not even counting those who were innocent) than the entire total of humanity's dictators in history. 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. For example, there's basically no trace left of the Interex, Auretian Technocracy and Diasporex.
His flawed nature is most infamously apparent in Graham McNeill's short story "The Last Church", where this unfathomably wise, all-knowing superhuman presents his ironclad argument against organized religion which ultimately consists of cherry-picking, liberal use of straw-men, and an overall theme of "I'm right, you're wrong. Shut up." Not that his opponent, Uriah Olathaire, fares much better, as he responds with the equally ironclad intellectual rebuttal: "Well, that's just your opinion, man." and "Stop hurting my feelings!" so maybe it's just bad writing. 13 year-olds on Reddit have had more substantive and productive debates about theology than these two. In the end, the Emperor announces his intent to bring down organized religion WITH A FUCKING CRUSADE, completely undermining the entire point of the argument that he had literally been having five minutes ago, under the justification "It's okay when I do it." To be fair to McNeill, there are many fans who hold that the author was intentionally writing a subpar argument for the Emperor in order to show that in spite of all his brilliance and wisdom, even he can be a bit of a tool.
No matter with whom your allegiance lies, you, the reader, you can't deny that the Emperor's mentality of believing that "small (small as in billions versus trillions, though the death toll of the Imperium's wars are probably in the untold bazillions by now) sacrifices are all made for the greater good" is kinda asshole:y? (Now where have we heard that before?) All of this is still excluding the genocides and culling of untold number of alien civilizations, empires, kingdoms, communities, species and races since the start of the Great Crusade... that ended abruptly anyway, with Horus taking up the rebellion and initiating a human genocide on a galactic level. So indirectly, alien justice was served, when humanity got the same treatment as the aliens they invaded earlier.
Plus, He really didn't think the post-Ullanor phase through at all, except for appointing Horus as Warmaster and Dorn as Praetorian. At the very least, He should've had Guilliman take over administrative duties to avoid taxes being imposed prematurely on newly compliant worlds, seeing as the civilian administrators helped to alienate a lot of his soldiers. And let's not even start talking about the alienation and His utterly incompetent and pinheaded mismanagement of the Word Bearers, that led to the Chaos Gods taking root in the ranks of the primarchs to start with... But maybe He planned for The Heresy to start, who knows?
To be fair, the whole reason humanity (and the Emperor) hates aliens is because during the Age of Strife, numerous xenos races exploited humanity's trust and made raids, lollygags, loots, and generally were being a nuisance. 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, possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all, or were intelligent at all, in which case the results were predictable). Ever since His ascension, the Imperium forgot about the part where harmless aliens could be tolerated. But on the other hand, the most common xenos are 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. 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).
Ironically, the whole hatred-of-all-xenos thing helped to tip the Word Bearers into Chaos worship, as Chaos' emissaries presented themselves as mankind's only protection against aliens.
Worship of the Emperor
Humans worship the Emperor as the one true God. Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after His fight with Horus and His internment into the Golden Throne, they pretty much forgot what the Emperor taught them when He preached the Imperial Truth. 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.
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?
Regarding the religion angle: the Emperor very much realized that Chaos runs off emotion, all everyday emotion, and not just worship; the stronger the emotions, the stronger the Gods get. The problem with religion is that it allows too many avenues for Daemons to exploit: a whisper here and a miracle there, then you get people praying to them, then shortly afterwards you get a planet turned inside out. His plan was not to starve the chaos gods of sustenance and ultimately defeat them, he knew it was impossible, his plan was just to prevent them from touching humanity ever again.
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, even if it basically dropped 99.9% of humanity's IQ in the process. 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 is still stuck in it's current physical state of near-death. 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 it's 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...
- 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...
- Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun...
- 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 humanities potential fall...
- 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. 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.
The possible death of the Emperor
With the Golden Throne being consistently worn out, and the Tech-priests too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it, it is certainly possible that the Emperor may die one day, which will obviously result in all of the Imperial worlds and factions to cry tears of disappointment and subsequently devolve into chaos (maybe even with a capital "C"). There are however, 3 possible outcomes of what can happen if the Emperor eventually dies:
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 it's center, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets/systems(?) into the Warp. The current main rulebook says that all of reality will be plunged into the warp if the Emperor dies. 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 (while the Adeptus Custodes have spent the same amount of time chopping up daemons that slip through the crack). They will not be able to stop a full daemonic invasion if the rift would open fully.
Additionally, a new Chaos God could be created (just like with the Eye of Terror and the Eldar), which will most certainly be a God of all the Grimdarkness in the galaxy, ensuring that it would eclipse all of the powers of the other Gods, as the Emperor would finally be the God of all. This is especially true, since nearly everything that is grimdark stems from Chaos and the entire WH40K setting is itself a massive pile of it... That or Malal would burst back into existence, which does have some possibility of happening, since Malal was/is the Chaos god of Atheism, which was the "truth"-part of the Emperor's "Imperial Truth" doctrine.
Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality by merging the Materium (reality) and the Warp into a singular dimension. But that's unlikely, since the birth of the latest Chaos God, Slaanesh, did not destroy reality and he/she/it/xe was fueled by the near extinction of a race far more psychically powerful than humanity. On the other hand, Slaanesh was forced to battle Khorne and most of the Eldar Gods during it's first birth moments. That would not be the case if the 5th Chaos God would be born.
Regeneration
No, not the Doctor Who kind. The Horus Heresy novel 'Vulkan Lives', heavily implies that the Emperor is a Perpetual, just like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson and Anval Thawn, all of who were able to survive deaths that should have completely obliterated their bodies. 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 (Though one has to wonder why the Emperor would have had Himself interred in the Golden Throne in the first place if He thought He'd heal. Probably to power the Astronomican?)). 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.
In fact, a whole faction of the Inquisition: Thorianism exists to investigate this possibility; 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.)
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, who's 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.
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, for 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. 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.
Gallery
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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
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The Emperor protects man from all.
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Son, I am disappoint.
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Yearbook photo.
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His groove, do not ruin it.
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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 someone!
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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!"
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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? -
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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How do you kill what can not die?
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Emperor Rule 63! NO EXCEPTIONS!
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Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher.
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Oh, give it a fucking rest...
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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 fairly amicable when he meets an elf/eldar who isn't a complete failure.
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Perhaps with a better armor design, Emps might not have been late for Horus's after school soccer games and things might have turned out differently.
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The Emperor in Rainbow Form
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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. CONNECTION, BITCHES!
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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 Emprah is watching you Masturbate!
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He might be the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe but the Custodes can't give him a decent hygiene program.
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Just imagine if the Chaos Gods didn't scatter the primarchs through out the galaxy... Wait where's that little scamp Omegon? (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!"
See Also
- The Imperium, for the empire he founded.
- Sigmar Unbroken, his Warhammer Fantasy Battles counterpart.
- Emperor's To-Do List
- This thread which makes the Emperor even cooler.
- A series on Youtube, it shows what would happen if the Emperor had a Text to Speech device.
- If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device article in 1d4chan.
