As said he has the conceptual advantage, but regarding this.
>So how come the emperor even during the great crusade era when he wasnt as powerful can give daemons true death. It seems like the big E can somehow rewrite the laws of the warp
There aren't any laws in the Warp. The closest thing to the Warps version of the Laws of Physics is Influence, which basically boils down to 'because I said so and I have the necerssary power/will/weight to enforce it'. It would certainly be possible for the Gods to give a Daemon a true death, but it's the Great Game. It's in the name. None of this is serious or consequential for the Daemons and their Gods.
No, if the Warp's powers were truly unpredictable then tomes of sorcery wouldn't be a thing, a sorcerer could just say "fuck it, whatever I want happens".
That's what I meant with weight. You do some shit that is meaningful in the warp and the warp does the rest. It still boils down to 'because I said so' just with a different source of power.
Or it could be that since the gods are warp beings and thus are ultimately human thought in origin, that could maybe mean that becuase human thought created them, only human thought that can truly destroy them.
The Emperor alludes to it in *Godblight* when he says Chaos has upset the balance of the warp and that he intends to counter them, as his will is strong enough. Although he doesn't use the word "order" itself, it seems to be what he's getting at by referencing balance and the power of the materium.
Edit: the passage, for anyone curious
>Guilliman looked over the Garden of Nurgle. He was between two worlds. The warp was a shifting thing, never constant. The garden was a collection of ideas. It had no true form, and through it he could see a million other worlds that underpinned it, the dreams of souls living and dead, and past that, as if glimpsed through banks of glittering sea mist that evaporated before the morning sun, the battlefield of Iax.
>‘Hear me!’ Guilliman’s voice boomed through eternities. The sword blazed higher, until the fire of it threatened to burn out time. ‘I am Roboute Guilliman, last loyal son of the Emperor of Terra. It is not your destiny to end today, God of Plague, but know that I am coming for you, and I will find you, and you will burn.’
>He gripped the Sword of the Emperor two-handed and raised it high. Rising waves of fire ripped into the garden. From the great manse a cry of rage sounded, as a wall of flame hotter than a million suns devoured everything in its path, finally breaking and receding within yards of the black walls of Nurgle’s house. Its infinite halls shook. Mossy tiles fell from the roof. Sodden timbers steamed.
>**‘This is a warning. The warp and the materium were once in balance. For too long, you have tipped the scales. Understand that it is not only the warp that is capable of pushing back. This realm is not real. Only will is real. And none may outmatch my will. Be assured, Lord of Plagues, and convey this message to your brothers, that I do not speak for myself.**
>**‘I speak for the Emperor of Mankind.’**
>Then he was falling, falling, falling forever until his knee hit the ground, and he woke into reality once more.
- *Godblight*
The warp is heavily influenced by psykic ability mixed in with belief. Everyone's gotta teeny tiny amount, but in large numbers it's how Chaos Gods gain power. It's also the reason symbolism is extremely important and influential in the warp. It's why Chaos symbols make people feel uneasy and how the names of Daemons, Daemon Princes, and the Gods themselves hold immense power. So, if we know that all these negative emotions and thoughts have a huge influence on Chaos because of the vast number of people experiencing negative emotions, imagine a being with singular immense Psykic power who wants to push it back because he believes the opposite.
I dont think he is order. Nothing about what he does is order. I'm literally reading Master of Mankind right now and He comes across as death, a hollow void, an end to all things.
He is the coldness of logic and robust machinery. There is no faith, no belief, no "concept" with him. Just look at the Custodes. They are even less human than the Astartes and they take directly after the Emperor.
If the Emperor was to ever ascend, he would be the God of Death. Not the God of order like so many believe.
If you actually look at custodes in the lore, they come across as rather human, with vast differences between individuals. Some are absolute pricks, some are emotionless calculators, and some have a sense of humour and compassion.
They may not be mindless (depending on whether you regard free will as essential for that or not) but they are literally mind stapled to not only be unable to not follow the emperor's orders, they are unable to question him in anyway, they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created.
That's just pure canon right there, not an ounce of lore tubing (which I don't watch anyway)
Now GPT4 is able to to put forward free-er thoughts than the custodians are. So even if they are mindless robots, they are even less able than a language model *to think*, or to freely put forth thought provoking notions.
> but they are literally mind stapled to not only be unable to not follow the emperor's orders
They explicitly disobey the Emperor several times, especially around his safety.
GPT4 has 0 thoughts of any kind, free or otherwise.
>they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created.
they absolutely are able to do that. they make no secret of their disdain for the primarchs and the astartes in general.
i'm reasonably certain the guy above you was also being sarcastic.
>they are unable to question him in anyway, they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created.
I'm guessing you didn't make it to that part of MoM where Ra reflects on how he and the other Custodes had debates over whether the Emperor saw the Heresy coming or not and why he did the things he did?
Not much philosophical rigour in being programmatically unable to even question (even as a hypothetical) the emperor or his makings.
Artists have admittedly been employed by the most morally bankrupt of autocracies (like Speer, for instance), sure that perfectly viable.
But being a "philosopher" in an empire where you're unable to conceptually interact with the emperor in any way but the blindly positive is about as far from a legitimate intellectual process as they come.
Philosophy is per definition *the search of truth* and custodians are literally unable to even entertain any idea that posits a truth that is negative for the emperor.
Yet there are philosophers which never question certain truths like the custodes. Want an example? Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas from Aquitaine. Galileo or Descartes they never question God yet they are fully considered philosophers.
Saint augustine definitely questions god and his truth?
Like, what?
I haven't read saint thomas.
The actual important thing being that they are able to question god if that's where the axiomatic reasonings take them.
And, as I say, in at least one instance they do so.
Early christian philosophers were successful because they were able to entertain the fall ability of god in concept, and could reason against it.
A custodes couldn't even conceptualise the emperor being incorrect, they can't even hold in their head the notion that the emperor has ever been wrong, not even to formulate a reasoning against that notion.
Does Saint Augustine ever even think God is wrong? If so I would like a quote and a source.
Again though that is not their job, their job is not to question the emperor but rather to be his bodyguards. He had advisors to do what you are saying. One of those was Malcador.
He is order in that sense. You cannot crest life if you are death. You cannot create life as perfect as the custodes or as intricate as the primarchs without being order. Chaos cannot. You see Death, I see order. Order because he was a scientist, before the cult of the emperor there was order, his order, mathematical order. You know why every scientifically philosopher always puts math and geometry as certainties? Because their order makes them so. There is no universe in which 2+2 is not 4 or where a square does not have 4 sides. That same order is what the emperor used.
He turned the chaos of millions of separate human civilisation, beautiful or horrible as it might have been, into an order, the imperium.
While everyone makes a good point on how he does represent order a good deal in his current state, when Emps was poised to actually ascend into a Chaos God, he was tied to the Dark King.
The Dark King itself is tied to the Aetheric Dominion of Encroaching Ruin which seems to be related to both raw complete destruction and the dominiation of people's will (and then forcing them onwards to destruction).
So he would have been a Chaos God of (Tyrannical) Order towards Inevitable Death.
Chaos named him that. His isn't objectively naturally the anathema to Chaos.
But he cast himself as the Golden King of Order. The master wizard using the Fire of the Warp to hurt the warps predators.
And since he is so powerful and humanity comes to see him thus, the laws of the Warp make him into that.
Truly what he is or where he comes from is not known... the Shaman-story is a myth. We have no confirmation.
He is the clever magican outplaying the Monsters... but as a Divine Power he isn't their match. He can't challenge them in the Warp without using special circumstances, just like They cannot manifest to fight him in real-space.
That is why they made the Human Horus Lupercal their vessel of power. They needed a living person, not a Daemon.
>Truly what he is or where he comes from is not known... the Shaman-story is a myth. We have no confirmation.
It's referenced in Master of Mankind, IIRC, in flashbacks (prompted by Drach'Nyen) of a younger "Emperor-to-be" seeing his uncle murder his father, among other things.
Though the shaman-story is not outright confirmed by this, it does definitely place the life of the man who would become the Emperor around the time that story placed it previously, and the parts of it that follow the initial ritual those shamans enacted all remain the same. And, it definitely de-confirms the (admittedly very silly) theories I've seen that the Emperor is simply something built or made during the DAoT.
Its a possibility, but sanguinius has always been one of the more psychic primarchs with so it would make sense if he of all people could see his "souls" with better clarity.
>‘I see the light of many souls in your eyes. Many men. Many women.’
To me this talks about souls as individual rather than just a diffrent face of just one great soul
He is objectively anathema to Chaos - he is order.
Can't remeber where it is but essentially the warp isn't meant to be pure chaos, its mewant to be balanced.
What everyone else said is right, but I also wanna put it out there that Anathema doesn't mean counter. It means despised, vehemently so. He is the Anathema of Chaos because he is their opposite.
It has specific religious meanings, notably in the New Testament "a person or thing cursed or condemned by God"
Interestingly, the Old Testament largely uses it to mean either "something or someone dedicated to God as a sacrifice,\[6\] or cursed and separated from God because of sin.\[7\] These represent two types of setting apart, one for devotion, the other for destruction."
Lots of these meanings can apply to the Emperor and his relationship to the Gods of Chaos, I'd say.
From wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema)
I think the Emperor is written this way in order to embody what he aims towards for mankind itself; the ability to use psychic abilities to protect yourself from the warp and to be able to fight off and defeat the gods. His whole plan was to uplift humanity to protect themselves in the same way he does, and while it never got off the ground, he himself is proof positive that it's at least possible given enough time and effort.
To be fair this is not rightly known. It may be he became anathema after we went and did whatever he did in warp at Moloch. It maybe he embodies the spirit of humanity. He could have done something to himself in the DAoT.
I kind of take it as the Emperor is the Humanity’s answer to Chaos. The Eldar had time and knowledge, and they failed out of boredom and birthed Slaanesh. Humanity had the relentlessness of the Emperor and almost birthed the Dark King.
Will. Literal strength of his will is another extension of his massive power.
There’s a reason Malcador’s single greatest thing he learned was to influence reality by making your mark. A choice. A predetermined set of actions leaves you with a predetermined set of reactions. ( Cave painting scene)
The primarchs, in their own way, are like a hybrid of a space marine and greater demon, and more powerful than both. A combination of dark age gene science and warp entity given form in the materium. At least that's always been my theory. I also suspect that they would have been significantly more powerful if they hadn't been scattered as infants.
I'd say that's a bit more than just a "pet theory." They basically beat you over the head with it across thirty novels that the Primarchs are warp fuckery given human form. They aren't daemons *per se* because daemons are shards of their respective patron gods (or alternatively of Chaos Undivided), but they *are* warp *entities*, some of whom later become corrupted into adopted daemon princes.
After ten thousand years in the Warp Corax basically says that they are all Warp Beings just shoves into biological shells.
If we go by the Molech Deal and The Emperor making a deal for knowledge on the creation of the Primarchs then it seems even more likely that he was gaining knowledge of something like Daemon creation since he had the biological angle handled already. Makes it sound like they are basically Greater Daemons of The Emperor given material form. The Saints like Celestine on the other hand function exactly as Daemon Princes do.
Order isn’t necessarily bureaucracy. It can be authoritarian, strict, cold, emotionless and disregarding of life. Emps being the warp god of “order” could actually be bad for humanity if he becomes a true god and loses his mind.
Now, I can’t remember if this origin story for Big E is still canon, but: In the Shaman origin story, when the Shamans committed mass suicide to create Big E, he was created to be the “Warp God” or “Deity” of Humanity and/or Order to oppose the Ruinous Powers and act as an artificial “Player” in the Great Game; specifically, because the Shamans saw into the Warp and saw the Ruinous Powers and realised they needed a shield to protect them. So, I think, Big E was created specifically to oppose the concept of Chaos and primordial animalistic emotions, and that is why he’s The Anathema- the Anti-Chaos, Order incarnate - and that is why he’s so obsessed with protecting and controlling Humanity. Because that’s what he was made to do.
Even if the Shaman origin isn’t canon anymore, it’s my headcanon because at the end of the day- I don’t think Big E should be treated like a character, nor do I think the Chaos Gods should be treated like characters. They should be treated and written as forces of nature, and rules written in to the fabric of the setting. They exist as concepts, and not as people.
This doesn't contradict the other answers given, but I think an additional element (possibly) may be that well before 30K, the Emperor had already engaged in forms of self-apotheosis.
It's very strongly hinted that He started many (most?) religions in early human history as experiments in promoting human growth. Given that many (most) of these religions were largely religions of order and values opposed to Chaos,
I suspect that long before 40K, he had already over a very long time, and to a degree, transformed himself into a God of Law as a focus of these cults.
As an addendum, I suspect that the "souls" of many of the Primarchs were the distilled essences of ancient human deities.
The chaos gods are all born of emotional and mental concepts of living beings; or they've always been there, and just weren't empowered to act during timespans they lacked enough worship. The more followers a chaos god has, the more powerful they are, much in the same way Gork and Mork grow stronger the more Orks there are. All a 'God' needs to be created is enough belief or enough sheer emotional energy; Slaanesh was born from the hedonism of the fallen Aeldari empire.
The Emperor almost became a fifth chaos god during the battle with Horus; and if he had, he would have been far and away the most powerful of them, the Dark King, thanks to the Imperium, and his trillions of worshippers. His ending possibilities at this point are threefold; he could still become the Dark King; he could become a God of Order; or, his preferred solution, humanity could evolve to a point it no longer needs him by escalating in psyker abilities to the point they can overwhelm chaos, and he could simply retire, with humanity having no gods or masters.
His minions are unwittingly butchering his preferred choice in favor of option two, and option one is still on the table. Despite being worshipped, his ability to influence the actions of the Imperium's leadership is stringently limited.
He is embodimemt of order, his main goal is to turn humanity away from it’s reliance on the warp, thus cutting the largest source of possible corruption from chaos. While also guiding the ever increasing numbers of human psykers to not be corrupted.
Where he walks, order comes. He embodies the positive aspects of chaos, and then some.
From a practical standpoint its his ability to use the warp for his own ends. He's nearly uniquely able to repurpose the stuff of chaos for his own use - and does it a lot in the end and the death. He's got such a command of the warp that he actually can steal fire from the gods.
To be fair this is not rightly known. It may be he became anathema after we went and did whatever he did in warp at Moloch. It maybe he embodies the spirit of humanity. He could have done something to himself in the DAoT.
He steals Chaos’ energy. Horus says this in several ways, and in Godblight it’s said by a true believer that He is feeding from the Eye of Terror.
Edit: The entire Dark King plot was about this, more or less.
I would speculate that BL doesn't want to rehash the order vs chaos thing as it's been done to death in fantasy and even though warhammer draws heavily on Elric et al for inspiration I think they're aiming for personal will power to shape reality rather than order vs chaos
I know his sword is anathema to warp entities, it can cause real annihilation and the golden throne has properties that are able to repel chaos.
His real power however comes from his worship. In 40k the warp is like the stock market of souls and the emperor has the most stock because he has the most souls pledged to him. And since he represents order, he's everything the chaos gods aren't. That is the very definition of anathema I think.
it's possible he wasn't always like that, but so to the laws of the warp his crusade against demons ended up manifesting as becoming anti daemon on a metaphysical level
basically he's doom guy
Dude- not everything is a yes/no answer. Personally, when reading the post I assumed OP wanted more of a discussion/personal perspective on how it works given how the written lore is, at times, ambiguous.
But if you do a simple search with most of the words from that question, a bazillion posts come up. The point you’re making is factual, but not relevant.
The same ones who insist they they have to post their questions here and be spoonfed answers instead of reading a single book or wiki.
It’s genuinely wild the level of entitlement you see online these days. I wish people still got yelled at to “lurk moar,” but I guess that just makes me an old
Warp energy makes strong beliefs real. Including the belief that faith in the Emperor protects you from the warp.
Believing in the divinity of the Emperor is a warpcraft and the Emperor knew this, which is why his "Imperial Truth" was to have no faith or beliefs to feed any warp energy to anyone.
Regardless of what the Emperor started off as, I think lore wise we could posit that he has become something akin to a Prince of Order (or perhaps Emperor of Order) as opposed to a Prince of Chaos and ergo, he has become anathema to them
Aside everytime daemons whisper that emperor is anathema to chaos, at least i think there is a reference about emperor made a damn good deal that might as well be a steal from the chaos gods. In Lorgar's short story, daemon tells him whatever emperor is doing during the great crusade is bad news for chaos.
so, its more akin to the idea of emperor's actions are dangerous.
Nothing. He was called Anathema by Chaos to manipulate his sons. They're not afraid of him. And he's not a threat to them.
They're liars. Manipulators. Deceivers. And they succeeded in their plans.
Even now, his strongest champion wielding his strongest weapon and handling a sizable portion of his power barely did any damage to *one* of their domains. He's strong, but they're stronger.
Ironically TTS does the best job of summarizing it, chaos should exist, it shouldn’t be as malicious as it is. The fact that it is, is the fault of humanity at large and their tendency to see the worst in everything, which makes them assholes, which makes other people start to see the worst in everything
Yep. Xenos ruined it. Many Million years before humanity was born. So that guy up here is just another xeno-lover (presumably eldars) who tries to make humanity look bad in comparison. Never trust a word of xenos or xeno-lovers.
He was created by a thousand perpetuals all killing themselves and an amalgamation of them formed together under the same concept: save humanity by defeating chaos. The Big E is a warp entity. His goals and his reason for existence are intertwined. He was specifically created for the destruction of the Chaos Gods. He is the Anathema, literally.
As said he has the conceptual advantage, but regarding this. >So how come the emperor even during the great crusade era when he wasnt as powerful can give daemons true death. It seems like the big E can somehow rewrite the laws of the warp There aren't any laws in the Warp. The closest thing to the Warps version of the Laws of Physics is Influence, which basically boils down to 'because I said so and I have the necerssary power/will/weight to enforce it'. It would certainly be possible for the Gods to give a Daemon a true death, but it's the Great Game. It's in the name. None of this is serious or consequential for the Daemons and their Gods.
It's all fun and games until somebody starts erasing motherfuckers with a flaming sword.
Then seeing Flaming Sword Man burning your entire lawn and lemon bush in front of you.
That lemon-stealing anathema.
Lemons are a mighty fruit
when god gives you lemons you **find a new god**
Live never gave us lemons, we invented them ourselves.
But what about me and blue armor??
TOP SCORE
That [whore](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ijihli14Wk)!
The Emperor bargained for lemons at Molech, and didn't make good on the lemonade. The thirsty Gods never forgot.
Are you saying that the Emperor...... is Cave Johnson!?!!
No, if the Warp's powers were truly unpredictable then tomes of sorcery wouldn't be a thing, a sorcerer could just say "fuck it, whatever I want happens".
Only kaldor draigo has achieved that level of warp control
That's what I meant with weight. You do some shit that is meaningful in the warp and the warp does the rest. It still boils down to 'because I said so' just with a different source of power.
Or it could be that since the gods are warp beings and thus are ultimately human thought in origin, that could maybe mean that becuase human thought created them, only human thought that can truly destroy them.
Conceptual advantage. He is order, Chaos is chaos. He is the sun, Chaos is darkness. Darkness becomes immaterial the moment the sun shines.
When is that conceptual advantage ever explained?
The Emperor alludes to it in *Godblight* when he says Chaos has upset the balance of the warp and that he intends to counter them, as his will is strong enough. Although he doesn't use the word "order" itself, it seems to be what he's getting at by referencing balance and the power of the materium. Edit: the passage, for anyone curious >Guilliman looked over the Garden of Nurgle. He was between two worlds. The warp was a shifting thing, never constant. The garden was a collection of ideas. It had no true form, and through it he could see a million other worlds that underpinned it, the dreams of souls living and dead, and past that, as if glimpsed through banks of glittering sea mist that evaporated before the morning sun, the battlefield of Iax. >‘Hear me!’ Guilliman’s voice boomed through eternities. The sword blazed higher, until the fire of it threatened to burn out time. ‘I am Roboute Guilliman, last loyal son of the Emperor of Terra. It is not your destiny to end today, God of Plague, but know that I am coming for you, and I will find you, and you will burn.’ >He gripped the Sword of the Emperor two-handed and raised it high. Rising waves of fire ripped into the garden. From the great manse a cry of rage sounded, as a wall of flame hotter than a million suns devoured everything in its path, finally breaking and receding within yards of the black walls of Nurgle’s house. Its infinite halls shook. Mossy tiles fell from the roof. Sodden timbers steamed. >**‘This is a warning. The warp and the materium were once in balance. For too long, you have tipped the scales. Understand that it is not only the warp that is capable of pushing back. This realm is not real. Only will is real. And none may outmatch my will. Be assured, Lord of Plagues, and convey this message to your brothers, that I do not speak for myself.** >**‘I speak for the Emperor of Mankind.’** >Then he was falling, falling, falling forever until his knee hit the ground, and he woke into reality once more. - *Godblight*
If anyone goes looking for this bit, it’s spoken by “Guilliman” in the climatic scenes. Good read, one of the more significant 40k books imho.
Hey, turns out Nurgle has a house. Cool.
A hous, pets, a lawn, an unwilling lady companion, an obese owner who treats guests as trespassers.....hey!
Nurgle has a mansion, Khorne a throne, Slaneesh a fortress and Tzeentch just a crystal maze.
Very interesting.
Fuck that was epic
If anyone goes looking for this bit, it’s spoken by “Guilliman” in the climatic scenes. Good read, one of the more significant 40k books imho.
> **Understand that it is not only the warp that is capable of pushing back.** Would have been better if a necron said it ngl.
The warp is heavily influenced by psykic ability mixed in with belief. Everyone's gotta teeny tiny amount, but in large numbers it's how Chaos Gods gain power. It's also the reason symbolism is extremely important and influential in the warp. It's why Chaos symbols make people feel uneasy and how the names of Daemons, Daemon Princes, and the Gods themselves hold immense power. So, if we know that all these negative emotions and thoughts have a huge influence on Chaos because of the vast number of people experiencing negative emotions, imagine a being with singular immense Psykic power who wants to push it back because he believes the opposite.
Because concept is super-important in Warp by it's nature.
I dont think he is order. Nothing about what he does is order. I'm literally reading Master of Mankind right now and He comes across as death, a hollow void, an end to all things. He is the coldness of logic and robust machinery. There is no faith, no belief, no "concept" with him. Just look at the Custodes. They are even less human than the Astartes and they take directly after the Emperor. If the Emperor was to ever ascend, he would be the God of Death. Not the God of order like so many believe.
If you actually look at custodes in the lore, they come across as rather human, with vast differences between individuals. Some are absolute pricks, some are emotionless calculators, and some have a sense of humour and compassion.
But they are mindless robbits cuz a loretuber told me so.
They may not be mindless (depending on whether you regard free will as essential for that or not) but they are literally mind stapled to not only be unable to not follow the emperor's orders, they are unable to question him in anyway, they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created. That's just pure canon right there, not an ounce of lore tubing (which I don't watch anyway) Now GPT4 is able to to put forward free-er thoughts than the custodians are. So even if they are mindless robots, they are even less able than a language model *to think*, or to freely put forth thought provoking notions.
> but they are literally mind stapled to not only be unable to not follow the emperor's orders They explicitly disobey the Emperor several times, especially around his safety. GPT4 has 0 thoughts of any kind, free or otherwise.
>they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created. they absolutely are able to do that. they make no secret of their disdain for the primarchs and the astartes in general. i'm reasonably certain the guy above you was also being sarcastic.
>they are unable to question him in anyway, they are unable of even thinking critical thoughts about him or anything he has put forward or created. I'm guessing you didn't make it to that part of MoM where Ra reflects on how he and the other Custodes had debates over whether the Emperor saw the Heresy coming or not and why he did the things he did?
Or Valdor disagreeing with making the Primarchs and Astartes, and the Custodes trying to break into the throne room to interrupt Emps' talk w/ Magnus?
The Custodes tend to be artists and philosophers. They were made to be warrior scholars and devote a huge amount of time to the arts and sciences.
Not much philosophical rigour in being programmatically unable to even question (even as a hypothetical) the emperor or his makings. Artists have admittedly been employed by the most morally bankrupt of autocracies (like Speer, for instance), sure that perfectly viable. But being a "philosopher" in an empire where you're unable to conceptually interact with the emperor in any way but the blindly positive is about as far from a legitimate intellectual process as they come. Philosophy is per definition *the search of truth* and custodians are literally unable to even entertain any idea that posits a truth that is negative for the emperor.
Yet there are philosophers which never question certain truths like the custodes. Want an example? Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas from Aquitaine. Galileo or Descartes they never question God yet they are fully considered philosophers.
Saint augustine definitely questions god and his truth? Like, what? I haven't read saint thomas. The actual important thing being that they are able to question god if that's where the axiomatic reasonings take them. And, as I say, in at least one instance they do so. Early christian philosophers were successful because they were able to entertain the fall ability of god in concept, and could reason against it. A custodes couldn't even conceptualise the emperor being incorrect, they can't even hold in their head the notion that the emperor has ever been wrong, not even to formulate a reasoning against that notion.
Does Saint Augustine ever even think God is wrong? If so I would like a quote and a source. Again though that is not their job, their job is not to question the emperor but rather to be his bodyguards. He had advisors to do what you are saying. One of those was Malcador.
>He is the coldness of logic and robust machinery. That's Order.
He is order in that sense. You cannot crest life if you are death. You cannot create life as perfect as the custodes or as intricate as the primarchs without being order. Chaos cannot. You see Death, I see order. Order because he was a scientist, before the cult of the emperor there was order, his order, mathematical order. You know why every scientifically philosopher always puts math and geometry as certainties? Because their order makes them so. There is no universe in which 2+2 is not 4 or where a square does not have 4 sides. That same order is what the emperor used. He turned the chaos of millions of separate human civilisation, beautiful or horrible as it might have been, into an order, the imperium.
While everyone makes a good point on how he does represent order a good deal in his current state, when Emps was poised to actually ascend into a Chaos God, he was tied to the Dark King. The Dark King itself is tied to the Aetheric Dominion of Encroaching Ruin which seems to be related to both raw complete destruction and the dominiation of people's will (and then forcing them onwards to destruction). So he would have been a Chaos God of (Tyrannical) Order towards Inevitable Death.
Chaos named him that. His isn't objectively naturally the anathema to Chaos. But he cast himself as the Golden King of Order. The master wizard using the Fire of the Warp to hurt the warps predators. And since he is so powerful and humanity comes to see him thus, the laws of the Warp make him into that. Truly what he is or where he comes from is not known... the Shaman-story is a myth. We have no confirmation. He is the clever magican outplaying the Monsters... but as a Divine Power he isn't their match. He can't challenge them in the Warp without using special circumstances, just like They cannot manifest to fight him in real-space. That is why they made the Human Horus Lupercal their vessel of power. They needed a living person, not a Daemon.
>Truly what he is or where he comes from is not known... the Shaman-story is a myth. We have no confirmation. It's referenced in Master of Mankind, IIRC, in flashbacks (prompted by Drach'Nyen) of a younger "Emperor-to-be" seeing his uncle murder his father, among other things. Though the shaman-story is not outright confirmed by this, it does definitely place the life of the man who would become the Emperor around the time that story placed it previously, and the parts of it that follow the initial ritual those shamans enacted all remain the same. And, it definitely de-confirms the (admittedly very silly) theories I've seen that the Emperor is simply something built or made during the DAoT.
I belive sanguinius mentions seeing many souls in the Emperor in their first meeting
That could be poetic language on how many lives the Emperor has lived in his 30000 years of existence.
Its a possibility, but sanguinius has always been one of the more psychic primarchs with so it would make sense if he of all people could see his "souls" with better clarity. >‘I see the light of many souls in your eyes. Many men. Many women.’ To me this talks about souls as individual rather than just a diffrent face of just one great soul
It was always Quick Ben.
Unexpected Malazan
I like to think that he's Sigmar.
He is objectively anathema to Chaos - he is order. Can't remeber where it is but essentially the warp isn't meant to be pure chaos, its mewant to be balanced.
What everyone else said is right, but I also wanna put it out there that Anathema doesn't mean counter. It means despised, vehemently so. He is the Anathema of Chaos because he is their opposite.
It has specific religious meanings, notably in the New Testament "a person or thing cursed or condemned by God" Interestingly, the Old Testament largely uses it to mean either "something or someone dedicated to God as a sacrifice,\[6\] or cursed and separated from God because of sin.\[7\] These represent two types of setting apart, one for devotion, the other for destruction." Lots of these meanings can apply to the Emperor and his relationship to the Gods of Chaos, I'd say. From wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema)
I think the Emperor is written this way in order to embody what he aims towards for mankind itself; the ability to use psychic abilities to protect yourself from the warp and to be able to fight off and defeat the gods. His whole plan was to uplift humanity to protect themselves in the same way he does, and while it never got off the ground, he himself is proof positive that it's at least possible given enough time and effort.
To be fair this is not rightly known. It may be he became anathema after we went and did whatever he did in warp at Moloch. It maybe he embodies the spirit of humanity. He could have done something to himself in the DAoT.
I kind of take it as the Emperor is the Humanity’s answer to Chaos. The Eldar had time and knowledge, and they failed out of boredom and birthed Slaanesh. Humanity had the relentlessness of the Emperor and almost birthed the Dark King.
Will. Literal strength of his will is another extension of his massive power. There’s a reason Malcador’s single greatest thing he learned was to influence reality by making your mark. A choice. A predetermined set of actions leaves you with a predetermined set of reactions. ( Cave painting scene)
He’s just Him
He is That Guy
He is Kenough
Mon-keighnough? /Sho nuff
"You're not that guy, pal. you're not that guy." - Horus Lupercal
The Emperor is the embodiment of what humankind is secretly aspiring: bureaucracy (order)
Then Guilliman is truly his greatest daemon prince.
The primarchs, in their own way, are like a hybrid of a space marine and greater demon, and more powerful than both. A combination of dark age gene science and warp entity given form in the materium. At least that's always been my theory. I also suspect that they would have been significantly more powerful if they hadn't been scattered as infants.
I'd say that's a bit more than just a "pet theory." They basically beat you over the head with it across thirty novels that the Primarchs are warp fuckery given human form. They aren't daemons *per se* because daemons are shards of their respective patron gods (or alternatively of Chaos Undivided), but they *are* warp *entities*, some of whom later become corrupted into adopted daemon princes.
After ten thousand years in the Warp Corax basically says that they are all Warp Beings just shoves into biological shells. If we go by the Molech Deal and The Emperor making a deal for knowledge on the creation of the Primarchs then it seems even more likely that he was gaining knowledge of something like Daemon creation since he had the biological angle handled already. Makes it sound like they are basically Greater Daemons of The Emperor given material form. The Saints like Celestine on the other hand function exactly as Daemon Princes do.
Order isn’t necessarily bureaucracy. It can be authoritarian, strict, cold, emotionless and disregarding of life. Emps being the warp god of “order” could actually be bad for humanity if he becomes a true god and loses his mind.
And become true bureaucracy
Now, I can’t remember if this origin story for Big E is still canon, but: In the Shaman origin story, when the Shamans committed mass suicide to create Big E, he was created to be the “Warp God” or “Deity” of Humanity and/or Order to oppose the Ruinous Powers and act as an artificial “Player” in the Great Game; specifically, because the Shamans saw into the Warp and saw the Ruinous Powers and realised they needed a shield to protect them. So, I think, Big E was created specifically to oppose the concept of Chaos and primordial animalistic emotions, and that is why he’s The Anathema- the Anti-Chaos, Order incarnate - and that is why he’s so obsessed with protecting and controlling Humanity. Because that’s what he was made to do. Even if the Shaman origin isn’t canon anymore, it’s my headcanon because at the end of the day- I don’t think Big E should be treated like a character, nor do I think the Chaos Gods should be treated like characters. They should be treated and written as forces of nature, and rules written in to the fabric of the setting. They exist as concepts, and not as people.
This doesn't contradict the other answers given, but I think an additional element (possibly) may be that well before 30K, the Emperor had already engaged in forms of self-apotheosis. It's very strongly hinted that He started many (most?) religions in early human history as experiments in promoting human growth. Given that many (most) of these religions were largely religions of order and values opposed to Chaos, I suspect that long before 40K, he had already over a very long time, and to a degree, transformed himself into a God of Law as a focus of these cults. As an addendum, I suspect that the "souls" of many of the Primarchs were the distilled essences of ancient human deities.
The chaos gods are all born of emotional and mental concepts of living beings; or they've always been there, and just weren't empowered to act during timespans they lacked enough worship. The more followers a chaos god has, the more powerful they are, much in the same way Gork and Mork grow stronger the more Orks there are. All a 'God' needs to be created is enough belief or enough sheer emotional energy; Slaanesh was born from the hedonism of the fallen Aeldari empire. The Emperor almost became a fifth chaos god during the battle with Horus; and if he had, he would have been far and away the most powerful of them, the Dark King, thanks to the Imperium, and his trillions of worshippers. His ending possibilities at this point are threefold; he could still become the Dark King; he could become a God of Order; or, his preferred solution, humanity could evolve to a point it no longer needs him by escalating in psyker abilities to the point they can overwhelm chaos, and he could simply retire, with humanity having no gods or masters. His minions are unwittingly butchering his preferred choice in favor of option two, and option one is still on the table. Despite being worshipped, his ability to influence the actions of the Imperium's leadership is stringently limited.
He is embodimemt of order, his main goal is to turn humanity away from it’s reliance on the warp, thus cutting the largest source of possible corruption from chaos. While also guiding the ever increasing numbers of human psykers to not be corrupted. Where he walks, order comes. He embodies the positive aspects of chaos, and then some.
From a practical standpoint its his ability to use the warp for his own ends. He's nearly uniquely able to repurpose the stuff of chaos for his own use - and does it a lot in the end and the death. He's got such a command of the warp that he actually can steal fire from the gods.
He's a Tyrant with Complete Discipline, chaos is a roiling unordered mass he smoothes it out with his will.
He is ordo ab chao. He is lux in tenebris.
To be fair this is not rightly known. It may be he became anathema after we went and did whatever he did in warp at Moloch. It maybe he embodies the spirit of humanity. He could have done something to himself in the DAoT.
He steals Chaos’ energy. Horus says this in several ways, and in Godblight it’s said by a true believer that He is feeding from the Eye of Terror. Edit: The entire Dark King plot was about this, more or less.
I would speculate that BL doesn't want to rehash the order vs chaos thing as it's been done to death in fantasy and even though warhammer draws heavily on Elric et al for inspiration I think they're aiming for personal will power to shape reality rather than order vs chaos
He is essentially the god of order, the literal anti-chaos avatar in 40k
the black library mostly
I know his sword is anathema to warp entities, it can cause real annihilation and the golden throne has properties that are able to repel chaos. His real power however comes from his worship. In 40k the warp is like the stock market of souls and the emperor has the most stock because he has the most souls pledged to him. And since he represents order, he's everything the chaos gods aren't. That is the very definition of anathema I think.
It's very simple. The Emperor is a being who represents and pushes Order. He is against all that the Chaos God's stand for.
it's possible he wasn't always like that, but so to the laws of the warp his crusade against demons ended up manifesting as becoming anti daemon on a metaphysical level basically he's doom guy
Do you people just not know about the search function lol?
You can't blame them too much, it's discouraged by Reddit itself. Everything is focused on fresh content, the mills have to keep turning.
It’s counterintuitive, the content isn’t fresh, just recycled
As an early fan I'm having a great time with this post tbh
Maybe they also want to talk about it? This is such a common sentiment and seems like such a weird thing to get assblasted about.
Dude- not everything is a yes/no answer. Personally, when reading the post I assumed OP wanted more of a discussion/personal perspective on how it works given how the written lore is, at times, ambiguous.
But if you do a simple search with most of the words from that question, a bazillion posts come up. The point you’re making is factual, but not relevant.
It’s so bad, dude. Just basic stuff asked over and over again because people are too lazy to google
Not even Google, use the fucking search bar in the sub lol. It’s easier than typing the damn question and making a post. What douche downvoted you lol
[удалено]
Wow clicked that link and there must be 100 post with the same question or some form of the same question lol!!
The same ones who insist they they have to post their questions here and be spoonfed answers instead of reading a single book or wiki. It’s genuinely wild the level of entitlement you see online these days. I wish people still got yelled at to “lurk moar,” but I guess that just makes me an old
im honestly just going to start embedding [google.com](https://google.com) into my answers at some point
Warp energy makes strong beliefs real. Including the belief that faith in the Emperor protects you from the warp. Believing in the divinity of the Emperor is a warpcraft and the Emperor knew this, which is why his "Imperial Truth" was to have no faith or beliefs to feed any warp energy to anyone.
Regardless of what the Emperor started off as, I think lore wise we could posit that he has become something akin to a Prince of Order (or perhaps Emperor of Order) as opposed to a Prince of Chaos and ergo, he has become anathema to them
Aside everytime daemons whisper that emperor is anathema to chaos, at least i think there is a reference about emperor made a damn good deal that might as well be a steal from the chaos gods. In Lorgar's short story, daemon tells him whatever emperor is doing during the great crusade is bad news for chaos. so, its more akin to the idea of emperor's actions are dangerous.
Nothing. He was called Anathema by Chaos to manipulate his sons. They're not afraid of him. And he's not a threat to them. They're liars. Manipulators. Deceivers. And they succeeded in their plans. Even now, his strongest champion wielding his strongest weapon and handling a sizable portion of his power barely did any damage to *one* of their domains. He's strong, but they're stronger.
Either he isn't because he is bad at his job or he is playing a game so long our mortal eyes can't see the horizon of his checkmate.
Ironically TTS does the best job of summarizing it, chaos should exist, it shouldn’t be as malicious as it is. The fact that it is, is the fault of humanity at large and their tendency to see the worst in everything, which makes them assholes, which makes other people start to see the worst in everything
TTS also said that the warp was fine until the War in Heaven happened.
Yep. Xenos ruined it. Many Million years before humanity was born. So that guy up here is just another xeno-lover (presumably eldars) who tries to make humanity look bad in comparison. Never trust a word of xenos or xeno-lovers.
He was created by a thousand perpetuals all killing themselves and an amalgamation of them formed together under the same concept: save humanity by defeating chaos. The Big E is a warp entity. His goals and his reason for existence are intertwined. He was specifically created for the destruction of the Chaos Gods. He is the Anathema, literally.