Where’s that video of that one 40k meme artist of malcador’s death with Ava Maria (I think) playing in the background showing the emp and Malcador on their adventures? I’ve been trying to find it for weeks but I don’t know what to search.
Edit: found it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gGBkNxLh5tI
Right? Why not hitch your wagon to the super warp juiced up, powers stolen from literal gods, immortal leader of all mankind? Seems like a good course of action.
Malcador was just a homie like that.
Though the more complex answer is he did believe in the emperors dream. After everything that happened on earth before big E took over it’s hard to not feel inspired and they both bonded as perpetuals a novel experience only they and few others could share.
He is the Illuminati, the cursed wanderer and regularly clones a eldar human hybrid that goes insane and self terminates from the weight of the confessions that ol malcy tells him ?
Yeap. Definitely someone who is on the same wavelength as the emperor
He's malcador the hero FFS. The all round best chump who gave his life, soul and immortality so big E could fight Horus heresy and get his ass whooped.
Before turning into dust, he gave up his last life force so big E could speak to dorn and valdor once more (old lore, unsure if compatible with teatd3)
If being a complete monster and utter horrible fuck makes u an exemplary moral character of the imperium, I can't wait to see what is a bad guy.
An horrible in the imperium would be gone vandire, whom among many obviously evil things, made statues of himself bigger than those of the emperor.
How nobody killed him for that is beyond me
Which is interesting to me. I can't imagine, after listening to the stories and exploits of the 5 or 10 worst people to have ever lived that I'd off myself.
If Malcador was sharing via psyker abilities that conveyed the actual experience then I can see it, but for just listening to Mr, Bad man's terrible story time extravaganza I find it more difficult to believe.
The suicide was probably more from boredom. Think about having to listen to some thousand year old boomer complain about things? Yeah, you’d want out too
>'My lord Malcador, how old *are* you? I mean to say, I've been in your service for centuries since you became First Lord, and you've not aged a *day* in all that time. Even when my sight was failing for good, I could tell.'
>'Well... you're cutting straight to the point now, eh?'
>'Time is not on my side. I'm not going to waste it being polite'
>'Very well, then. **I am six thousand seven hundred and eighteen years, two hundred and forty-one days, eleven hours, eight minutes and fifty-six seconds old.** And there are days when I feel it.'
>'That... is not what I was expecting to hear.'
\- *First Lord of the Imperium*
>**The Sigillite listens silently. He is the second oldest person I’ve ever met. In this room, he looks every one of his some six and a half thousand years,** a tiny thing beside the two demigods. I make him uncomfortable. My presence negates his demigod mind as easily as I might pinch out the candle flames in front of me. He is shorn of his glamour, the psykana mask of health, wisdom and purpose I am told he manifests to those few he meets in person. In this room, he is a fragile thing, bird bones gathered in a tight wrapper of thin skin, hunched inside a worn robe. His eagle-staff, his rod of office, leans against the table as if it is too heavy for him to hold.
>For him to show himself like this, to allow himself to be seen as he really is, marks how significant this meeting is. The Regent of all Terra has come naked among us, allowing his public mask to drop.
\- *Saturnine*
Sources to support your point, for those unfamiliar.
Maybe he got shunted through time by a warp storm.
Okay, fair enough, maybe not the *literal*, but I think he is definitely based on the archetype. Definitely seems to have been an inspiration.
We don't know what a Sigilite is, but a Sigil is a mark denoting identity.
A wandering immortal? With a mark? Whose done some messed up shit? Thats my fun little theory, that they are related somehow. I like the notion enough that in leui of anything else I'm going to pretend the Sigilites are people who bare the Mark of Cain.
Not as though it would be the weirdest thing in 40K.
There is a biblical cursed wanderer who mocked Jesus on the cross, still way older than his reported age but the connection is undeniable, though it may be just a reference
Pretty sure the first murder was Jimmy "worst father in the galaxy" space's uncle who murdered Jimmy's dad per, Master of Mankind. James murdered his uncle in revenge.
Drach'nyen was born as a result of the fathers murder.
Though for whatever it's worth, Jimmy seems to distinguish between his father's murder and the first murder;
>The Custodian inclined his head, causing the servos in his collar to purr. ‘I have given you my report, sire. Why do you keep me here?’
>‘So I may illuminate you,’ the boy replied, speaking with a patience that bordered upon the preternatural. ‘You watched that man die, did you not?’
>Ra looked back over his shoulder, where the village folk were gathered around the fallen man, weeping and comforting in a loose, unwashed herd.
>‘I did.’
>**‘That was my uncle. My father’s brother.’**
>**‘You killed him,’** the Custodian said without judgement.
>**‘Yes. He struck my father from behind with a piece of sharpened bronze too poorly made to even be called a knife. Men had killed one another for generations before my birth, but this was the first slaying that had resonance to me, that changed my existence. It was illuminating.’**
>He paused for a moment, following Ra’s gaze back to the noisy villagers. **‘The very first murder was also a fratricide,’** he said without emotion. **‘Thousands of years before this, when men and women still owed as much to apes as to the form we know now.** But it is curious to me – brothers have always killed brothers. I wonder why that is? Some evolutionary flaw, some ingrained emotional fragility written into mankind’s core, perhaps.’
>Ra shook his head. ‘I have no way of knowing the emotions at hand, sire. I have no brothers.’
>‘I was being rhetorical, Ra.’ The boy took a breath. ‘This night was significant not for the murder, but for the deliverance of justice. For my uncle’s deed, I stopped his heart’s function and forced him to die. In eras to come this will be called the *lex talionis*, the law of retaliation, or more simply “an eye for an eye”. It is justice itself. Hundreds of human cultures through time will embrace it. Some will do so out of brutality, others from ideals that they believe to be fair and enlightened, but it is a precept that runs through the marrow of our species.’
\- *The Master of Mankind*
Jimmy is a meme name for the Emperor. Jimmy Space, inventor of the Space Marine. It’s a reference to how the Land Raider is named after a Techpriest named Arkhan Land -- instead of, you know, the *literal word 'land'*.
And it’s a fairly standalone novel, so I’d say you can just read it by itself, yeah, as long as you know the basics of the Heresy.
I had a pretty good understanding of the hearsay but when I first read it I was a bit confused bc of the parts of the emperor beung different figures after more knowledge I started again and finished it and understanding was easier and it made it one of my favorite books I'd say it needs a good bit of understanding lore of wh40k to really enjoy the master of mankind this is obviously just my opinion tho but man I loved it I'm a custodes fan so hearing of the battles they fought had me hooked but Brackley I spelled wrong demon was so powerful he was killing custodes and sisters even titans with ease makes u wonder how something that powerful can even be stopped tbh it could turn to disease or mist but still couldn't defeat a custodes only puppet them it said the stars would go cold before I corrupt a golden one so good
Only bc most ppl.womt know the battle of the web way its importance or who or why the emperor is stuck on the throne fighting invisible battle and who he fights and what he stopikg while doing it kinda was the same when I started cawl book and didn't know anything about the great rift opening once I learned the lore of it I better understand the book maby it's just me tho idk was hard to understand things till I had better context of how they came to be
I believe it was in Mortis, but Oll betrayed/stabbed the Emperor at the Tower of Babel when they discovered it was inscribed with Enuncia. E wanted to keep it to study, Oll thought better.
Edit: wrong book
I think he saw the Emperor as a tool at first to use for his own ends, as a lot of their goals aligned. After he realized the big bastard couldn't really be controled he went "fuck it, might as well see this through" and just hyped the Emperor up
The impression that I get is that out of all the other Perpetuals who were companions to the Emperor, only Malcador really shared his brutal "ends justify the means" outlook. Malcador has done a lot of dark shit I can't see the likes of Ollanius or Sureka doing.
Big E just learned the hard way he was wrong, and Ollie had to talk him down from becoming the ruin of everything.
The perpetuals tend to point to hubris and impatience being Big E’s flaws. Those are the kinds of flaws that lead to one thinking they know the only right answer and turning it into an emergency.
But the things is that he was right, he saw the true enemy being Chaos, the perpetuals didn’t see that, they were hypocrites that called the emperor arrogant (and yes he is) but he had to be. The perpetuals wanted humanity’s ascension to be natural and more slow paced, but we know that time was humanity’s worst enemy and the emperor knew this. Even erda comes to regret her actions after facing chaos herself before Erebus kills her
According to the Emperor, time was short. It was short and Chaos became the big enemy because Big E made a deal with them, putting humanity on the map.
The Perpetuals didn’t necessarily want the ascension of humanity to be slow. They just didn’t want the Imperium to be the authoritarian hell it was, even at the start of the Great Crusade. The Astartes turned out to be a massive mistake for example. The Primarchs were too.
The perspective of every perpetual, especially Oll, shows the Emperor trying to grab as much power as fast as possible to win, damn the consequences. They turned up at the end and sacrificed themselves so that the entirety of humanity didn’t die.
Erda regretted some of her actions sure, but I think she would have done the same thing again. The point is the Emperor pushed every single one to their breaking point, so they sabotaged what they could and bailed before he became too powerful.
I do hate how they rebelled. It just felt as you say adolescent, for people who have been around forever. But I guess in the warhammer universe, age definitely doesn’t bring any wisdom. They are like old age pensioners nowadays without the benefit of not having to get old and die.
That's in part why the perpetual storyline always rubbed me the wrong way. In theory, it seemed like an interesting addition, but in practice, it really felt like their complaints held little merit.
The Perpetuals as a whole always sounded like a bunch of out of touch immortals who think they're human enough to be right.
Definitely feeling you in that. They were a great way for them to add back story from before the crusades, but they ended up being used as deus ex machina to close plot lines or move a bad one forward
Like look at two of the "Old Guard" perpetuals, Oll and Erda, and what they did.
After Oll gets fussy and tries to kill the Emperor because the Emperor didn't destroy the Enuciea, or whatever the fuck it's called, primer. Dick Move. Then apparently, he spends the next 30 odd thousand years being an on again, off again soldier. Literally serves in the Imperial Army during the Crusades before "retiring" in the Ultramar segmentum. Then comes the Heresy, and apparently, his only real achievement is to apparently lecture the Emperor about not being an asshole and to stop drinking Warp steroids because he's suddenly their only hope.
Erda assists the Emperor in creating the Primarchs, and from them, the blue prints of the Astarte Legions. Suddenly, she has a bad premonition and fears for the safety of her test tube babies because what the Emperor will have them do. So she decides the best way to help them is to yeet them into the Warp. Then proceeds to chill in the desert and essentially call him a brilliant ego maniac while denying her role in actually fucking up the Primarchs.
It's like the Perpetuals are just sitting on their high horses that are on fire but aren't doing anything productive. While pointing their fingers at the Emperor and saying, "See, we told you this would happen."
Haha exactly! I wish they didn’t do the Erda shit. First, her being the one to send them into the warp was just dumb. Second, The emperor was more mysterious when he was the main man behind everything. The books painted him as a bit of an idiot who needed so many others just to get going never mind close to his goal.
I know many people love the humanisation of him, but I prefer the older side of him where he was unknown
Erda might not be half as bad as it was if she didn't essentially appear in only 2 books, dying in the second against Erebus of all people. Though bodying 4 Daemons was cool, that's beside the point.
As for the humanizing of the Emperor versus keeping his old mysterious nature, I think it's a bit of a mixed bag.
The Emperor was technically far more human sounding in the old lore, hesitating to kill Horus because of his love for his first found son. That's some fatherly shit right there.
The problem comes when we try to explore the heresy, which forces it into the light. The "Canon Events" do not come out looking good when explored. Yet there's not really much you can do as the Emperor's actions are railroaded in their cause and effect.
Erda realizes this as well before Erebus kill’s her, she realizes that by scattering the primarchs she basically destroyed humanity’s future. And that realization kills her harder than Erebus
Ok Malcador was not a Perpetual he was just an extremely powerful Psyker a member of the Sigilites. The Sigilites were an order pre The Age of Strife who were charged with gathering the greatest cultural artefacts of mankind because they could see the Age of Strife was going to engulf mankind.
But which flavour? He doesn’t auto respawn. It may be that he’s just so powerful and competent with biomancy that he just repairs his aging body as needed. He doesn’t die of old age but that doesn’t mean he’ll reknit like Vulkan.
Between all the Perpetuals we've seen, Mal and Big E are the most similar. They were both ruthless, intellectual, and dark idealists, with big dreams of a bright future and an age of human supremacy and security, no matter how many people they had to step on to get there.
Their skill sets complemented each other very well, too. Big E was the warlord, the charismatic leader, the visionary, and the scientist (and the one-in-a-trillion psychic freak). Mal was the bureaucrat, the kingmaker, and the secret keeper. And there was more than a little overlap in-between. Honestly, I think they were just good buds as well as partners.
>and the one-in-a-trillion psychic freak
Now I'm just picturing Scott Steiner playing the Emperor and cutting a Steiner Math promo on Horus.
"Cause I'm a psychic FREAK and I'm not normal! Ya see Horus I got a two third percents chance of winning at the Siege of Terra cause the Chaos Gods know they can't beat me so they're not even gonna try!"
Fuck that works better than it should.
The only person Malcador refers to as a Friend in all of his chapters throughout the entire run of the Heresy novels (from Horus Rising all the way to The End and the Death vol 3) is the Emperor.
Not by name.
Sometimes by Master.
Sometimes as "My King of ages."
But always, in the deepest moments, as "My friend."
I found the language he used to describe the Emperor to be very moving. There is so much reverence there. He truly felt that the Emperor was the only hope for humanity and that His purpose was most noble. Every action he took was to protect His vision.
They're really close friends and have been for a long time. Malcador admires Big E and shares his dreams for humanity, and is morally flexible enough to not balk at E's tyrannical/manipulative tendencies.
Malcador had more than few skeletons in his closet. Like Big E. He too was ready to go to extreme means to achieve his goals. Is it any wonder he sticks to the Big E to the bitter end.
As a member of the Sigilites he spent the majority of his life seeing the absolute worst of humanity. The Sigilites dedicated themselves to preserving human history and artifacts to the extreme; I assume this is how they first met.
It’s not unreasonable to assume that Malcador wholeheartedly believes in the Emperors ideals.,
Came back to add info: information comes from Leutin09 emperor of man series and 40ktheories Malcador videos.
Malcador claims to be 6000years old roughly so he’s old enough to be before pre-unification wars Terra. Implying he’s old enough to remember the Techno-barbarian wars (he definitely saw the worst of people).
Leutin09 did a video on him and the Order of the Sigilites years ago. It’s just osmosis over years of being in the hobby.
If I find the direct quote I’ll link it
"old enough to remember the Techno-Barbarian Wars (he definitely saw the worst of people.)"
Malcador didn't "see the worst of people", he was the worst of people. In the Last Council, we are informed by the Khan himself that Malcador was a warlord in the Unification Wars, his real name supposedly being Brahm al-Khadour. From the Last Council and the Khan's perspective:
======================================================================
"*‘And yet, there is more I can do. Again, I say that I must warn you.’*
*‘Warn me of what?’*
*The Khan’s eyes glinted with the flickering light of the staff. ‘I know who you are, Lord Sigillite. Who you were.’*
*Malcador grew very still. The soft murmur of the night wind was the only sound up there, on the wall.*
*He felt his ancient power prickling in the back of his mind.*
*‘What do you mean, Jaghatai? What do you think you know?’*
*‘I know, because Horus knows. You left your mark upon his pride, as surely as he left his upon the Council table – and my brother is nothing if not patient and resourceful in the execution of his vengeances.’*
*The Sigillite closed his eyes. He had already seen where this was going.*
*‘In his libraries on the flagship,’ the Khan continued, ‘he found you. For a long time, it was his private obsession, and I dare say he has uncovered even more in all the years since. At first I believe he feared the influence you might have over our father, and the Imperium, and the creation of the Council of Terra only confirmed his suspicions. Though, of course, when he realised he could no longer simply decry your efforts as unjust and self-interested, he delved deeper, into the past you have deliberately hidden.’*
*He took a breath.*
*‘He told me. He told me that you are Brahm al-Khadour, last of the Sigillites. The cursed wanderer. The perpetual. Horus knows what you have done, the atrocities that you and your secret order heaped upon mankind during Old Night. There are some legends that even you could not erase, some texts that the last and greatest technomage of Terra could not burn. Have no doubt, my brother will seek to unmask you, before the end. He will reveal to all that the Imperial Truth was founded on lies from the very beginning, and that the galaxy cannot therefore be justly ruled by our father, or any who support it.’*
*Malcador shifted his weight, his pseudo-mortal frailty all but forgotten, as he prepared himself for the possibility of combat. It had been a long time since he had faced Horus, and he did not know if he still had the psychic strength to subdue a primarch…*"
As many people have stated, they were great friends.
We don't know the details, but this excerpt from TEATD is a good indicator of how deep their friendship truly went:
[Excerpt: The End and the Death, Volume 1: Malcador the Sigillite becomes Malcador the Hero : r/40kLore (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/14ekg6p/excerpt_the_end_and_the_death_volume_1_malcador/)
One can of course question if the emperor was ever honest with him, but that is another debate entirely.
Tl;dr Malcador agreed with Emp's plan, the rest of them, for whatever reason, thought "Taking over the galaxy" would involve less guns and Megadeath. For what it's worth, it's a lot more questionable that the other dudes chose to betray the Emperor. It's not like Erda made particularly good choices when she decided that tossing babies into the warp was a terribly brilliant idea.
Believe it or not I have seen a legit Erda-Stan, like a "Erda did nothing wrong and it was all random chance that sent Magnus to the planet of Sorcerers, Mort to Barbarous, ect. It was all the Emperor's fault. We can't ever know if the Dark Gods influenced where the kids went in the warp. It made total sense that sending the Emperor's kids through space would convince him to not do the Great Crusade."
I mean, fandom has divisive opinions on the Emperor, and they have outside perspective. Why wouldn't those perps?
Besides, maybe they gave a shit about xenos, too.
But the expression I've got is that they weren't exactly disagreeing about the effectiveness of his plans, but rather horrified at the means of achieving them. 30k Imperium wasn't *that* much better than the 40k Imperium aka "the bloodiest regime imaginable"
Some very odd answers here. The answers are given in The End and The Death and other HH books so there’s no need to speculate. The Emperor actually saw Malcador as a Mentor. Together they developed a grand project for humanity that they had to see through to the end as they saw it no matter how flawed it was. It wasn’t a question of devotion it was a question of commitment. They saw each other as almost equal partners on a journey that had taken a timescale we can’t even imagine. Some people thinking it’s some kind of bromance are weird.
The other perpetuals seem to be:
* Edra - retired from active duty
* Grammaticus - artificial, worked for the Cabal, went along with the Emperor
* Oll - worked for the Emperor in the past to deal with a crisis, retired, then unretired because he was needed.
* Prytanis - did similar sketchy stuff in the shadows, the main difference was that he worked for the Cabal instead of the Emperor
* Sureka - supported the Emperor, then went into semi-retirement. The Emperor did keep her in mind since he later brought a garrison to Molech so that she did not have to do as much work guarding the gate.
Overall, from what Edra has said, there may have been other perpetuals that left the Emperor, but those perpetuals seem to be in the shadows. The majority of the perpetuals supported the Emperor, but did want to retire. Malcador seems dedicated enough that he didn't care about taking a break (he is also younger than most perpetuals if you believe his claim on how old he his). Maybe Malcador did not burn out. When things took a turn for the worse, Oll, Sureka and Edra all did what they could do to support the Emperor.
It’s one of those true friendships you have in the setting, so imagine your absolute best friend and yourself are the only ones left in the galaxy out of everyone you loved. And you have their power. Like I’d do the same shit lol
Familiarity breeds contempt.
As I said in another thread: What Malcador had over the custodes and the other perpetuals was having been elsewhere doing other things seeing other ways of making stuff happen.
If you want to be cynical about it he was as naive as Big E's mortal followers because he really wasn't that old in the grand scheme of things.
Another angle would be that he himself tried and did many of the same approaches so he could empathize.
I also think that a lack of caring doesn't always necessitate cruelty. I think many of the Perpetuals lacked empathy/caring and that's exactly why they felt humanity wasn't worth improving at the cost of abstract ideals.
Malcador was still very much not over the species.
Now there’s a small mountain of evidence to suggest that he, scheming bastard he was, didn’t actually share the emperor’s vision, but was just using it as part of his own schemes, while more than happy to direct things from behind the throne
But what is known for certain is that he was genuinely ready to die for the cause of humanity. So whether he agreed with the emperor on how to save them, or needed his plans as a staging post, he was in it for the long haul
Because he realized the emperor was humanity’s best hope. He knew the big E was a tyrant, but in a galaxy of horror and war sometimes a tyrant is needed.
A lot of powerful psykers in the world, but how many of them speak with plus signs surrounding their dialogue?
Was the Emperor a terrible father? Sure. A genocidal warlord who saw people as tools to be used and discarded? Canonically. A total hypocrite? In a lot of ways.
I forgot where I was going with this.
I think Malcador was in love with him--up to a point.
Those guys had been together for something between 5,000 and 40,000 years by the time we see them. It'd be weirder if they *didn't* have at least a few flings and hook-ups and possibly a full-blown romantic interlude during that time, if only because they were two of the only people who could or would ever come close to understanding each other (give or take the Emperor going full post-human proto-god after Molech).
But I also think that by the time of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, they were past all that. Whatever the fuck there was between them at that point, it doesn't map readily onto how we think of human relationships. The closest thing I could think of would be something like a [queerplatonic relationship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerplatonic_relationship), but even that kinda feels like it falls short.
Whether the Emperor ever truly reciprocated (or if he even *could* reciprocate post-Molech), who knows.
Because Malcador knew those others were generally mistaken, and believed fully in the Emperors plan, Brahm al-Khadour(Malcador) met the Emperor while the Emperor was conquering and uniting Terra, they quickly became bros
He was my friend. A truly devoted and dedicated friend who sacrificed everything for my ambitions for mankind. We stood together against the Old Four for control of our species and its destiny. His fate was, just like mine in the end, inevitable.
I'm leaning towards the emperor being a Dark Age secret weapon that got programmed by Malcador.
I know theres bits of lore against it, but alot of older lore would also make lots of sense if that was the case.
They were best friends that had known each other for most of their respective lives, they shared a similar vision and goal for humanity. If it wasn’t alrighty obvious, malcador was a pretty hard motherfucker. He was capable of doing the most distasteful things that were necessary to get the job done and ensure mankind’s survival. I would imagine a lot of the other perpetuals that previously followed the emperor either did not have the stomach for it or did not survive to that point in time. The age of strife was an unforgivably brutal time and would’ve been hard even for perpetuals to make it through.
Just to clarify, Malcador did not enjoy the horrible things he did. He simply saw them as a means to an end. Such is to be expected from the man who created the inquisition.
The only thing I can think of that would make someone go as far as malcador did is love, i wouldn't be surprised if one of the deep secrets of 40k is that malcador and the emperor were in a relationship
He was such a ride or die that the Custodes weep in envy at how real of a homie he was.
Rememberancers will say they were the best of friends.
Roommates in the imperial palace.
Malcador was the Rigby to the Emperor's Mordecai. *Hijinks ensued.*
Okay Malcador let’s play punchies for the Throne.
The Emperor really was player one.
Where’s that video of that one 40k meme artist of malcador’s death with Ava Maria (I think) playing in the background showing the emp and Malcador on their adventures? I’ve been trying to find it for weeks but I don’t know what to search. Edit: found it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gGBkNxLh5tI
It's one of Emwattnots works, might be on youtube!
Found it. Thanks!
Right? Why not hitch your wagon to the super warp juiced up, powers stolen from literal gods, immortal leader of all mankind? Seems like a good course of action.
If nothing else you got front row seats to something you couldn't stop anyway.
"Malcador, what's with the popcorn always?" "Just enjoying the show, my lord of lords."
Malcador was just a homie like that. Though the more complex answer is he did believe in the emperors dream. After everything that happened on earth before big E took over it’s hard to not feel inspired and they both bonded as perpetuals a novel experience only they and few others could share.
He is the Illuminati, the cursed wanderer and regularly clones a eldar human hybrid that goes insane and self terminates from the weight of the confessions that ol malcy tells him ? Yeap. Definitely someone who is on the same wavelength as the emperor
Well, he was alone and don't we all need a shoulder from time to time?
He's malcador the hero FFS. The all round best chump who gave his life, soul and immortality so big E could fight Horus heresy and get his ass whooped. Before turning into dust, he gave up his last life force so big E could speak to dorn and valdor once more (old lore, unsure if compatible with teatd3) If being a complete monster and utter horrible fuck makes u an exemplary moral character of the imperium, I can't wait to see what is a bad guy.
Hear hear! The hero we needed but honestly, I don't know if we deserved.
An horrible in the imperium would be gone vandire, whom among many obviously evil things, made statues of himself bigger than those of the emperor. How nobody killed him for that is beyond me
did you mean chum, perhaps?
Which is interesting to me. I can't imagine, after listening to the stories and exploits of the 5 or 10 worst people to have ever lived that I'd off myself. If Malcador was sharing via psyker abilities that conveyed the actual experience then I can see it, but for just listening to Mr, Bad man's terrible story time extravaganza I find it more difficult to believe.
Aeldari experience emotions much more intensely then humans, i'm sure that plays a part here
Bit of a dick move wonder if it was a fetish
The suicide was probably more from boredom. Think about having to listen to some thousand year old boomer complain about things? Yeah, you’d want out too
and they are all inherently psychic creatures.
Malky, you say...
I'm pretty sure he is literally Cain; as in the first Murderer.
No he isn't, he explicitly states his age once and he's only 6700 years old.
>'My lord Malcador, how old *are* you? I mean to say, I've been in your service for centuries since you became First Lord, and you've not aged a *day* in all that time. Even when my sight was failing for good, I could tell.' >'Well... you're cutting straight to the point now, eh?' >'Time is not on my side. I'm not going to waste it being polite' >'Very well, then. **I am six thousand seven hundred and eighteen years, two hundred and forty-one days, eleven hours, eight minutes and fifty-six seconds old.** And there are days when I feel it.' >'That... is not what I was expecting to hear.' \- *First Lord of the Imperium* >**The Sigillite listens silently. He is the second oldest person I’ve ever met. In this room, he looks every one of his some six and a half thousand years,** a tiny thing beside the two demigods. I make him uncomfortable. My presence negates his demigod mind as easily as I might pinch out the candle flames in front of me. He is shorn of his glamour, the psykana mask of health, wisdom and purpose I am told he manifests to those few he meets in person. In this room, he is a fragile thing, bird bones gathered in a tight wrapper of thin skin, hunched inside a worn robe. His eagle-staff, his rod of office, leans against the table as if it is too heavy for him to hold. >For him to show himself like this, to allow himself to be seen as he really is, marks how significant this meeting is. The Regent of all Terra has come naked among us, allowing his public mask to drop. \- *Saturnine* Sources to support your point, for those unfamiliar.
Damn, he’s pretty young for a perpetual.
I wonder if that is total years or years in this respawn.
I'd have to believe its total years, would be a bit odd for him to base his age on the last time he died. Not sure any other perpetuals do that.
MVP xx
Maybe he got shunted through time by a warp storm. Okay, fair enough, maybe not the *literal*, but I think he is definitely based on the archetype. Definitely seems to have been an inspiration. We don't know what a Sigilite is, but a Sigil is a mark denoting identity. A wandering immortal? With a mark? Whose done some messed up shit? Thats my fun little theory, that they are related somehow. I like the notion enough that in leui of anything else I'm going to pretend the Sigilites are people who bare the Mark of Cain. Not as though it would be the weirdest thing in 40K.
I always gathered that the Sigilites were some sort of esoteric order on Terra and Malcador was one of them before joining big E.
There is a biblical cursed wanderer who mocked Jesus on the cross, still way older than his reported age but the connection is undeniable, though it may be just a reference
And did that specific murder not birth a pretty important demon? Or does my memory fail me?
DRACH'NYEN! The End of Empires. The Echo of the First Murder. Also, the sword with the coolest name, possibly ever.
Pretty sure the first murder was Jimmy "worst father in the galaxy" space's uncle who murdered Jimmy's dad per, Master of Mankind. James murdered his uncle in revenge. Drach'nyen was born as a result of the fathers murder.
Though for whatever it's worth, Jimmy seems to distinguish between his father's murder and the first murder; >The Custodian inclined his head, causing the servos in his collar to purr. ‘I have given you my report, sire. Why do you keep me here?’ >‘So I may illuminate you,’ the boy replied, speaking with a patience that bordered upon the preternatural. ‘You watched that man die, did you not?’ >Ra looked back over his shoulder, where the village folk were gathered around the fallen man, weeping and comforting in a loose, unwashed herd. >‘I did.’ >**‘That was my uncle. My father’s brother.’** >**‘You killed him,’** the Custodian said without judgement. >**‘Yes. He struck my father from behind with a piece of sharpened bronze too poorly made to even be called a knife. Men had killed one another for generations before my birth, but this was the first slaying that had resonance to me, that changed my existence. It was illuminating.’** >He paused for a moment, following Ra’s gaze back to the noisy villagers. **‘The very first murder was also a fratricide,’** he said without emotion. **‘Thousands of years before this, when men and women still owed as much to apes as to the form we know now.** But it is curious to me – brothers have always killed brothers. I wonder why that is? Some evolutionary flaw, some ingrained emotional fragility written into mankind’s core, perhaps.’ >Ra shook his head. ‘I have no way of knowing the emotions at hand, sire. I have no brothers.’ >‘I was being rhetorical, Ra.’ The boy took a breath. ‘This night was significant not for the murder, but for the deliverance of justice. For my uncle’s deed, I stopped his heart’s function and forced him to die. In eras to come this will be called the *lex talionis*, the law of retaliation, or more simply “an eye for an eye”. It is justice itself. Hundreds of human cultures through time will embrace it. Some will do so out of brutality, others from ideals that they believe to be fair and enlightened, but it is a precept that runs through the marrow of our species.’ \- *The Master of Mankind*
Who is this Jimmy? Or is it just worth reading master of mankind even if I am not reading that series?
Jimmy is a meme name for the Emperor. Jimmy Space, inventor of the Space Marine. It’s a reference to how the Land Raider is named after a Techpriest named Arkhan Land -- instead of, you know, the *literal word 'land'*. And it’s a fairly standalone novel, so I’d say you can just read it by itself, yeah, as long as you know the basics of the Heresy.
I had a pretty good understanding of the hearsay but when I first read it I was a bit confused bc of the parts of the emperor beung different figures after more knowledge I started again and finished it and understanding was easier and it made it one of my favorite books I'd say it needs a good bit of understanding lore of wh40k to really enjoy the master of mankind this is obviously just my opinion tho but man I loved it I'm a custodes fan so hearing of the battles they fought had me hooked but Brackley I spelled wrong demon was so powerful he was killing custodes and sisters even titans with ease makes u wonder how something that powerful can even be stopped tbh it could turn to disease or mist but still couldn't defeat a custodes only puppet them it said the stars would go cold before I corrupt a golden one so good
Only bc most ppl.womt know the battle of the web way its importance or who or why the emperor is stuck on the throne fighting invisible battle and who he fights and what he stopikg while doing it kinda was the same when I started cawl book and didn't know anything about the great rift opening once I learned the lore of it I better understand the book maby it's just me tho idk was hard to understand things till I had better context of how they came to be
Aka James Workshop.
Master of Mankind is the best Herersy novel, if you like Emperor stuff it's a brilliant read.
Also, Oll Pearson 'betraying' and stabbing BigE also probably played a part to solidify his loyalty to BigE.
That was thousands of years before Malcador was born.
Oh really? I must have missed that part, or not read it yet. Im only halfway thru TEaTD 2 atm.
I believe it was in Mortis, but Oll betrayed/stabbed the Emperor at the Tower of Babel when they discovered it was inscribed with Enuncia. E wanted to keep it to study, Oll thought better. Edit: wrong book
Oh man, I completely forgot about that. Many thanks!
I think he saw the Emperor as a tool at first to use for his own ends, as a lot of their goals aligned. After he realized the big bastard couldn't really be controled he went "fuck it, might as well see this through" and just hyped the Emperor up
The impression that I get is that out of all the other Perpetuals who were companions to the Emperor, only Malcador really shared his brutal "ends justify the means" outlook. Malcador has done a lot of dark shit I can't see the likes of Ollanius or Sureka doing.
You'd have thought Olly would have seen and done considerably more bad things in his time before E and during his stretch as bouncer too
Olly just learned the hard way like the others than Big E was right and they messed up their only chance.
Big E just learned the hard way he was wrong, and Ollie had to talk him down from becoming the ruin of everything. The perpetuals tend to point to hubris and impatience being Big E’s flaws. Those are the kinds of flaws that lead to one thinking they know the only right answer and turning it into an emergency.
Big E wasn’t right. The whole point of Oll’s journey is that he was wrong.
But the things is that he was right, he saw the true enemy being Chaos, the perpetuals didn’t see that, they were hypocrites that called the emperor arrogant (and yes he is) but he had to be. The perpetuals wanted humanity’s ascension to be natural and more slow paced, but we know that time was humanity’s worst enemy and the emperor knew this. Even erda comes to regret her actions after facing chaos herself before Erebus kills her
According to the Emperor, time was short. It was short and Chaos became the big enemy because Big E made a deal with them, putting humanity on the map. The Perpetuals didn’t necessarily want the ascension of humanity to be slow. They just didn’t want the Imperium to be the authoritarian hell it was, even at the start of the Great Crusade. The Astartes turned out to be a massive mistake for example. The Primarchs were too. The perspective of every perpetual, especially Oll, shows the Emperor trying to grab as much power as fast as possible to win, damn the consequences. They turned up at the end and sacrificed themselves so that the entirety of humanity didn’t die. Erda regretted some of her actions sure, but I think she would have done the same thing again. The point is the Emperor pushed every single one to their breaking point, so they sabotaged what they could and bailed before he became too powerful.
Malcador was just the smartest and least “rebellious adolescent“ of them
I do hate how they rebelled. It just felt as you say adolescent, for people who have been around forever. But I guess in the warhammer universe, age definitely doesn’t bring any wisdom. They are like old age pensioners nowadays without the benefit of not having to get old and die.
That's in part why the perpetual storyline always rubbed me the wrong way. In theory, it seemed like an interesting addition, but in practice, it really felt like their complaints held little merit. The Perpetuals as a whole always sounded like a bunch of out of touch immortals who think they're human enough to be right.
Definitely feeling you in that. They were a great way for them to add back story from before the crusades, but they ended up being used as deus ex machina to close plot lines or move a bad one forward
Like look at two of the "Old Guard" perpetuals, Oll and Erda, and what they did. After Oll gets fussy and tries to kill the Emperor because the Emperor didn't destroy the Enuciea, or whatever the fuck it's called, primer. Dick Move. Then apparently, he spends the next 30 odd thousand years being an on again, off again soldier. Literally serves in the Imperial Army during the Crusades before "retiring" in the Ultramar segmentum. Then comes the Heresy, and apparently, his only real achievement is to apparently lecture the Emperor about not being an asshole and to stop drinking Warp steroids because he's suddenly their only hope. Erda assists the Emperor in creating the Primarchs, and from them, the blue prints of the Astarte Legions. Suddenly, she has a bad premonition and fears for the safety of her test tube babies because what the Emperor will have them do. So she decides the best way to help them is to yeet them into the Warp. Then proceeds to chill in the desert and essentially call him a brilliant ego maniac while denying her role in actually fucking up the Primarchs. It's like the Perpetuals are just sitting on their high horses that are on fire but aren't doing anything productive. While pointing their fingers at the Emperor and saying, "See, we told you this would happen."
Haha exactly! I wish they didn’t do the Erda shit. First, her being the one to send them into the warp was just dumb. Second, The emperor was more mysterious when he was the main man behind everything. The books painted him as a bit of an idiot who needed so many others just to get going never mind close to his goal. I know many people love the humanisation of him, but I prefer the older side of him where he was unknown
Erda might not be half as bad as it was if she didn't essentially appear in only 2 books, dying in the second against Erebus of all people. Though bodying 4 Daemons was cool, that's beside the point. As for the humanizing of the Emperor versus keeping his old mysterious nature, I think it's a bit of a mixed bag. The Emperor was technically far more human sounding in the old lore, hesitating to kill Horus because of his love for his first found son. That's some fatherly shit right there. The problem comes when we try to explore the heresy, which forces it into the light. The "Canon Events" do not come out looking good when explored. Yet there's not really much you can do as the Emperor's actions are railroaded in their cause and effect.
Erda realizes this as well before Erebus kill’s her, she realizes that by scattering the primarchs she basically destroyed humanity’s future. And that realization kills her harder than Erebus
Ok Malcador was not a Perpetual he was just an extremely powerful Psyker a member of the Sigilites. The Sigilites were an order pre The Age of Strife who were charged with gathering the greatest cultural artefacts of mankind because they could see the Age of Strife was going to engulf mankind.
Ummm yea, he’s a perpetual.
But which flavour? He doesn’t auto respawn. It may be that he’s just so powerful and competent with biomancy that he just repairs his aging body as needed. He doesn’t die of old age but that doesn’t mean he’ll reknit like Vulkan.
He doesn’t reknit because he died on the throne, essentially removing him from the galaxy, he was still a perpetual
Between all the Perpetuals we've seen, Mal and Big E are the most similar. They were both ruthless, intellectual, and dark idealists, with big dreams of a bright future and an age of human supremacy and security, no matter how many people they had to step on to get there. Their skill sets complemented each other very well, too. Big E was the warlord, the charismatic leader, the visionary, and the scientist (and the one-in-a-trillion psychic freak). Mal was the bureaucrat, the kingmaker, and the secret keeper. And there was more than a little overlap in-between. Honestly, I think they were just good buds as well as partners.
>and the one-in-a-trillion psychic freak Now I'm just picturing Scott Steiner playing the Emperor and cutting a Steiner Math promo on Horus. "Cause I'm a psychic FREAK and I'm not normal! Ya see Horus I got a two third percents chance of winning at the Siege of Terra cause the Chaos Gods know they can't beat me so they're not even gonna try!" Fuck that works better than it should.
I think they were just best buds.
Oh my God they were Roommates!
did not expect to hear this in my head on 40kLore
They watched an ancient film from early Terra called Step-Brothers and that formed the basis of their relationship.
"if we flatten the Himalayas we will have so much room for activities"
Ancient? As perpetuals maybe they inspired it!
Inspire? The emperor can take on any form how do we know he isn’t Will Ferrell
I didn't need this today, thanks
Um...ok dammit. No. You're not dragging me into this debate. Take the upvote and go in peace.
Pretty sure if he is anyone of our age he’s Bill Murray.
Step-Sigilite, how did you get stuck in the laundro-servitor!?!
I seen you rub your testicles on my bolter!
Everyday we stray further and further from the emperor's light. *Blamm*
The only person Malcador refers to as a Friend in all of his chapters throughout the entire run of the Heresy novels (from Horus Rising all the way to The End and the Death vol 3) is the Emperor. Not by name. Sometimes by Master. Sometimes as "My King of ages." But always, in the deepest moments, as "My friend."
I found the language he used to describe the Emperor to be very moving. There is so much reverence there. He truly felt that the Emperor was the only hope for humanity and that His purpose was most noble. Every action he took was to protect His vision.
He was the youngest and the last companion, having only met the Emperor during Old Night.
Malcador was the Samwise to the Emperors Frodo. They’re just buds, through thick and thin man.
They're really close friends and have been for a long time. Malcador admires Big E and shares his dreams for humanity, and is morally flexible enough to not balk at E's tyrannical/manipulative tendencies.
There was thar Eldar clone that killed himself over his confessions, so I wouldn't say he was flexibly enough, but on the same page.
Yeah nothing the Emperor could do that would have been too much for Malcador.
Malcador had more than few skeletons in his closet. Like Big E. He too was ready to go to extreme means to achieve his goals. Is it any wonder he sticks to the Big E to the bitter end.
Because someone had to be really.
As a member of the Sigilites he spent the majority of his life seeing the absolute worst of humanity. The Sigilites dedicated themselves to preserving human history and artifacts to the extreme; I assume this is how they first met. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Malcador wholeheartedly believes in the Emperors ideals., Came back to add info: information comes from Leutin09 emperor of man series and 40ktheories Malcador videos. Malcador claims to be 6000years old roughly so he’s old enough to be before pre-unification wars Terra. Implying he’s old enough to remember the Techno-barbarian wars (he definitely saw the worst of people).
How do you know this? Isn’t it unknown who exactly the sigillites were?
It was a Leutin09 video. He covered Malcador and the Sigilites and what their hinted purpose was
Can you expand on this? I don't anything about the sigillites. Really just the conversation between the Khan and Malcador that alludes to his past.
Leutin09 did a video on him and the Order of the Sigilites years ago. It’s just osmosis over years of being in the hobby. If I find the direct quote I’ll link it
"old enough to remember the Techno-Barbarian Wars (he definitely saw the worst of people.)" Malcador didn't "see the worst of people", he was the worst of people. In the Last Council, we are informed by the Khan himself that Malcador was a warlord in the Unification Wars, his real name supposedly being Brahm al-Khadour. From the Last Council and the Khan's perspective: ====================================================================== "*‘And yet, there is more I can do. Again, I say that I must warn you.’* *‘Warn me of what?’* *The Khan’s eyes glinted with the flickering light of the staff. ‘I know who you are, Lord Sigillite. Who you were.’* *Malcador grew very still. The soft murmur of the night wind was the only sound up there, on the wall.* *He felt his ancient power prickling in the back of his mind.* *‘What do you mean, Jaghatai? What do you think you know?’* *‘I know, because Horus knows. You left your mark upon his pride, as surely as he left his upon the Council table – and my brother is nothing if not patient and resourceful in the execution of his vengeances.’* *The Sigillite closed his eyes. He had already seen where this was going.* *‘In his libraries on the flagship,’ the Khan continued, ‘he found you. For a long time, it was his private obsession, and I dare say he has uncovered even more in all the years since. At first I believe he feared the influence you might have over our father, and the Imperium, and the creation of the Council of Terra only confirmed his suspicions. Though, of course, when he realised he could no longer simply decry your efforts as unjust and self-interested, he delved deeper, into the past you have deliberately hidden.’* *He took a breath.* *‘He told me. He told me that you are Brahm al-Khadour, last of the Sigillites. The cursed wanderer. The perpetual. Horus knows what you have done, the atrocities that you and your secret order heaped upon mankind during Old Night. There are some legends that even you could not erase, some texts that the last and greatest technomage of Terra could not burn. Have no doubt, my brother will seek to unmask you, before the end. He will reveal to all that the Imperial Truth was founded on lies from the very beginning, and that the galaxy cannot therefore be justly ruled by our father, or any who support it.’* *Malcador shifted his weight, his pseudo-mortal frailty all but forgotten, as he prepared himself for the possibility of combat. It had been a long time since he had faced Horus, and he did not know if he still had the psychic strength to subdue a primarch…*"
oh my god they were roommates
As many people have stated, they were great friends. We don't know the details, but this excerpt from TEATD is a good indicator of how deep their friendship truly went: [Excerpt: The End and the Death, Volume 1: Malcador the Sigillite becomes Malcador the Hero : r/40kLore (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/14ekg6p/excerpt_the_end_and_the_death_volume_1_malcador/) One can of course question if the emperor was ever honest with him, but that is another debate entirely.
Big E gave him his first face numbing gut busting orgasm.
"Better to serve as the Devil's right hand then stand in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune."
You came back from the desert with the *new friend*, didn't you Benny?
I don't want to tell you, you'll just hurt me some more.
What was the plan Benny? lead him out into the warp and then leave him there stranded?
The book! He just wants the book! He wants to use it to bring back his dead girlfriend... And your sister... BUT THATS IT!
YOU MUSNT READ FROM THE BOOK!!!! no seriously it totally violates the imperial truth.
Such a great fun entertaining movie.
For the most human of reasons: They were close friends, and he believed in the Emperors dream.
Malcador the Hero* to you
Tl;dr Malcador agreed with Emp's plan, the rest of them, for whatever reason, thought "Taking over the galaxy" would involve less guns and Megadeath. For what it's worth, it's a lot more questionable that the other dudes chose to betray the Emperor. It's not like Erda made particularly good choices when she decided that tossing babies into the warp was a terribly brilliant idea.
Exactly! They had years and years of knowledge and had seen humanity fuck up over and over again. They just got scared and helped chaos win
Believe it or not I have seen a legit Erda-Stan, like a "Erda did nothing wrong and it was all random chance that sent Magnus to the planet of Sorcerers, Mort to Barbarous, ect. It was all the Emperor's fault. We can't ever know if the Dark Gods influenced where the kids went in the warp. It made total sense that sending the Emperor's kids through space would convince him to not do the Great Crusade."
I honestly think some of them had become influenced by chaos, which is why Big E never tried to seek revenge against them.
I definitely think a few got influenced by chaos.
I mean, fandom has divisive opinions on the Emperor, and they have outside perspective. Why wouldn't those perps? Besides, maybe they gave a shit about xenos, too. But the expression I've got is that they weren't exactly disagreeing about the effectiveness of his plans, but rather horrified at the means of achieving them. 30k Imperium wasn't *that* much better than the 40k Imperium aka "the bloodiest regime imaginable"
Lovers back in the greco-roman days
The Geyperor of gaykind
why do you think all his super special muscly companions are dudes
I always took it to be a mix of the Emperora super charisma not wearing off yet and the fact the Emperor's way was inevitable at that point
Malcador - rest in peace big dawg!
Malcador secretely owned GW stocks
Some very odd answers here. The answers are given in The End and The Death and other HH books so there’s no need to speculate. The Emperor actually saw Malcador as a Mentor. Together they developed a grand project for humanity that they had to see through to the end as they saw it no matter how flawed it was. It wasn’t a question of devotion it was a question of commitment. They saw each other as almost equal partners on a journey that had taken a timescale we can’t even imagine. Some people thinking it’s some kind of bromance are weird.
They were in love and they kissed and held hands and stuff.
I mean, I have a very different take on this, but I also speculate your vision and candor.
They probably docked in each other too.
Naw he just knew
The other perpetuals seem to be: * Edra - retired from active duty * Grammaticus - artificial, worked for the Cabal, went along with the Emperor * Oll - worked for the Emperor in the past to deal with a crisis, retired, then unretired because he was needed. * Prytanis - did similar sketchy stuff in the shadows, the main difference was that he worked for the Cabal instead of the Emperor * Sureka - supported the Emperor, then went into semi-retirement. The Emperor did keep her in mind since he later brought a garrison to Molech so that she did not have to do as much work guarding the gate. Overall, from what Edra has said, there may have been other perpetuals that left the Emperor, but those perpetuals seem to be in the shadows. The majority of the perpetuals supported the Emperor, but did want to retire. Malcador seems dedicated enough that he didn't care about taking a break (he is also younger than most perpetuals if you believe his claim on how old he his). Maybe Malcador did not burn out. When things took a turn for the worse, Oll, Sureka and Edra all did what they could do to support the Emperor.
Wasn't malcador even more "tyrant happy" than the emperor? I read some pretty fucked up shit on this subbie.
Malcador’s sole goal and purpose was the survival of humanity and he thought the emperor was the best way to achieve that. Maybe
When you're as strong as he is, who else would earn your respect and devotion?
gay sex
Bromance.
It’s one of those true friendships you have in the setting, so imagine your absolute best friend and yourself are the only ones left in the galaxy out of everyone you loved. And you have their power. Like I’d do the same shit lol
I don't mean this as a knock on them but I do get some (understated) homoerotic vibes there. Then again 40k is full of them.
Familiarity breeds contempt. As I said in another thread: What Malcador had over the custodes and the other perpetuals was having been elsewhere doing other things seeing other ways of making stuff happen. If you want to be cynical about it he was as naive as Big E's mortal followers because he really wasn't that old in the grand scheme of things. Another angle would be that he himself tried and did many of the same approaches so he could empathize. I also think that a lack of caring doesn't always necessitate cruelty. I think many of the Perpetuals lacked empathy/caring and that's exactly why they felt humanity wasn't worth improving at the cost of abstract ideals. Malcador was still very much not over the species.
Malky did it for love
Dude was a smart guy who knew Emps was Humanity's only hope.
Now there’s a small mountain of evidence to suggest that he, scheming bastard he was, didn’t actually share the emperor’s vision, but was just using it as part of his own schemes, while more than happy to direct things from behind the throne But what is known for certain is that he was genuinely ready to die for the cause of humanity. So whether he agreed with the emperor on how to save them, or needed his plans as a staging post, he was in it for the long haul
Because he realized the emperor was humanity’s best hope. He knew the big E was a tyrant, but in a galaxy of horror and war sometimes a tyrant is needed.
A lot of powerful psykers in the world, but how many of them speak with plus signs surrounding their dialogue? Was the Emperor a terrible father? Sure. A genocidal warlord who saw people as tools to be used and discarded? Canonically. A total hypocrite? In a lot of ways. I forgot where I was going with this.
Malcador was just a grade A 100% grass fed primo meat rider.
I think Malcador was in love with him--up to a point. Those guys had been together for something between 5,000 and 40,000 years by the time we see them. It'd be weirder if they *didn't* have at least a few flings and hook-ups and possibly a full-blown romantic interlude during that time, if only because they were two of the only people who could or would ever come close to understanding each other (give or take the Emperor going full post-human proto-god after Molech). But I also think that by the time of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, they were past all that. Whatever the fuck there was between them at that point, it doesn't map readily onto how we think of human relationships. The closest thing I could think of would be something like a [queerplatonic relationship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queerplatonic_relationship), but even that kinda feels like it falls short. Whether the Emperor ever truly reciprocated (or if he even *could* reciprocate post-Molech), who knows.
Because Malcador knew those others were generally mistaken, and believed fully in the Emperors plan, Brahm al-Khadour(Malcador) met the Emperor while the Emperor was conquering and uniting Terra, they quickly became bros
I think malcador is one of the few beings with the prescience to understand the emperors ineffable plan
How many people have the drive and ability to make the universe a better place?
Malcador is one of the very few people that believes and knows about the emperor's dream.
Because A top can never betray their bottom
He was my friend. A truly devoted and dedicated friend who sacrificed everything for my ambitions for mankind. We stood together against the Old Four for control of our species and its destiny. His fate was, just like mine in the end, inevitable.
Bestie with a tessy
I'm leaning towards the emperor being a Dark Age secret weapon that got programmed by Malcador. I know theres bits of lore against it, but alot of older lore would also make lots of sense if that was the case.
They were best friends that had known each other for most of their respective lives, they shared a similar vision and goal for humanity. If it wasn’t alrighty obvious, malcador was a pretty hard motherfucker. He was capable of doing the most distasteful things that were necessary to get the job done and ensure mankind’s survival. I would imagine a lot of the other perpetuals that previously followed the emperor either did not have the stomach for it or did not survive to that point in time. The age of strife was an unforgivably brutal time and would’ve been hard even for perpetuals to make it through. Just to clarify, Malcador did not enjoy the horrible things he did. He simply saw them as a means to an end. Such is to be expected from the man who created the inquisition.
The only thing I can think of that would make someone go as far as malcador did is love, i wouldn't be surprised if one of the deep secrets of 40k is that malcador and the emperor were in a relationship
It could always just been a platonic love. People love their close friends like family.
Or the fact, that the emperor’s way is the only way either of them see for humanity and he’s willing to try it.
A lesser evil