The God-Emperor of Mankind

This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

I have come to eradicate religion as it is the bane of Man, warped in superstition, ignorance and fear! - One of the ironic memoirs of the Emperor. Needless to say it all went a complete 180 after a certain particular Heresy

Liberating the galaxy is one thing, but he was so powerful he never once stopped looking fabulous while doing it.

We believe in one Lord, the Emperor, the Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Emperor of Mankind, the only Lord of creation, eternally begotten of Humanity, Human from Human, Light from Light, true Lord from true Lord, begotten, not made, of one Being with Humanity; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and came among us. For our sake he has faced down Chaos; he withstood death and was enthroned. To this day he lives on in accordance with the Scriptures; he resides upon Mother Terra and is seated upon the throne of Humanity. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Emperor, the giver of life, who proceeds from Humanity and the from Terra, who with Humanity and upon Terra is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy true and divinely guided Ecclesiarchy. We acknowledge one path for the defense against Chaos. We look for the justice for our dead, and the life of the worlds to come.
++ Ayhmen ++

-- the Creed of the Mankind's Council of Nicene of Holy Terra

"A leader is a dealer in hope."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

The God-Emperor of Mankind, also known as Tha Emprah, Emps, The Big E, E-Money, Master of Mankind, Space Jesus, That Turkish Bastard and also sometimes called The Great and Glorious Big Mac Daddy King Emprah of all things Epic and Awesome (ahem, ahem), or The Anathema, The Carrion Lord, The False Emperor and Corpse on the Throne if you're not a fan of Him, and allegedly Khan Noonien Singh which is totally understandable*BLAM* is the figurehead ruler of the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40k universe and is the only sustaining Hope for Humanity as Faster than Light Travel is entirely dependent on him. The Administratum he established continues to govern the Imperium in his name, but it is generally accepted that the absence of the Emperor's proper guidance is what has turned the Imperium into the hellish mess that it is. In the Imperium, questioning whatever your superior tells (yells at) you the Emperor's word happens to be that day, is treason and heresy, typically punished by death. Were The Emperor up and about in the 41st millennium, it goes without saying that he would be disappoint. Most fa/tg/uys expect him to speak in a generic deep, stentorian voice.

Exception where's he's not a perfect badass? The Last Church. It is permissible to substitute the voice of whatever angry militant atheist appeals to you most/least for the duration of this one (short) story. Also, according to that same story, this asshole wiped out Scandinavia, right when Scandinavia was getting fun again. According to the Horus Heresy books that mention the Unification Wars, he burned down a lot of things on a partially recovering Terra.

The Entire History of the Emprah

File:Majestica.jpg

Big E gets all the bitches.

According to older (read: 1st & 2nd edition) fluff, the being that would eventually become known as the Emperor was born in 8000 BC in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey). Allegedly, this was the result of hundreds of human shamans committing ritual suicide to be reborn as a single individual capable of protecting humanity from the Chaos Gods. However, the validity of this fluff is frequently questioned, given it hasn't been "official" since second edition. That being said, nothing has explicitly contradicted this story, and the only other theory is that the Emperor is a Perpetual, meaning an immortal -but ultimately human- psyker with countless lifetimes' worth of knowledge and power and the ambition to use it. However, this theory seems unlikely, especially given the Chaos Gods apparently view the Emperor as an equal/rival, an honor they give to none of the other known Perpetuals, and the Horus Heresy novels have dropped hints that the Emperor is actually a "we."

The 1st & 2nd edition fluff also mentions that he guided humanity throughout history under a number of guises, such as Jesus, Mohammed, the Buddha, etc. (and, it has to be assumed, Conan the Barbarian). (It is also possible that he was Russian emperor Peter I, purely based on the fact that imperial Russia's symbol was the two-headed eagle, and Peter I was considered huge).

Sometime around the 11th or 12th century, he battled a shard of the Void Dragon in modern-day Libya. He eventually defeated it and locked it on Mars (somehow...), allowing the Adeptus Mechanicus to control machines... eventually. Of course, it's not entirely clear whether this is true or not -- it's entirely possible that ALL of the Emperor's history is a lazily-crafted lie he throws around because no one can debunk it -- but given how Awesome it sounds, we're going to say it is.

But for the most part he mostly stayed out of the way during the next 30,000 years of human history, including the Dark Age of Technology, though hot off the press fluff indicates he might have been travelling outer space in old-style NASA rockets with the other Perpetuals. Coming to find the planet Molech where he passed through a gateway that led directly to the fortresses of the four Chaos Gods. Here He either challenged, bargained, or stole portions of power from a source claimed by the gods as their own. When He finally emerged, in His possession was the power needed to create His 20 Primarchs. This would earn Him the ire of the duped/defeated Ruinous Powers who would not allow Him to raise His/Their Children. Ensuring that Chaos would stop at nothing to get revenge on Him (and humanity by extension).

He returns to Terra at the closing of the Age of Strife. With Terra cut off from the rest of humanity's former empire and the Terra itself ruled by warring "techno-barbarians" in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the Emperor decided to reveal himself, using his mastery of genetic engineering to create the Thunder Warriors, the predecessors to the Space Marines. Using "join-me-or-die" tactics, he managed to conquer the entirety of Terra during the Unification Wars. Then, he made contact with the Mechanicus on Mars and, calling himself the Omnissiah, convinced them to build him weapons and ships. Around this time, he also created the Imperial Truth, which says that religion, faith, and superstition were all banned; apparently, it took him this long to realize the whole "Peace, Love, and Religion" thing wasn't working.

But, before he set out to conquer the stars with the newly-formed Imperial Army (which contained both ground forces and space-borne fleets), he decided to create the twenty Primarchs to serve as His generals using Himself as the genetic template; splitting the additional power He stole into 20 portions, infusing each with a fragment of His own personality to allow them, in turn, to congeal and gestate (just like how daemons are born!) into the indomitable souls of His future Primarchs. Thus did He bind each mighty soul to their godlike-host bodies as they formed in their gestation capsules. Though with this power apparently stolen from the Gods at Molech, they would inevitably be pissed at him using THEIR power for His own ends. So the Chaos Gods snatched them away (via time-travel-as-a-vision shenanigans) from their incubators in a secret lab underneath the Himalayas and scattered them across the galaxy. Luckily for the Emperor, some genetic code was left over, and so from that he created 20 Legions to serve as the elites of his army: The SPEHSS MEHREENS. So, with his armies complete (minus the Primarchs, which he hoped to find), he embarked on the Great Crusade to once again allow humanity to control the stars.

As he found each Primarch, he assigned them to command each of their respective Legions to retake humanity in the Great Crusade (although, at some point, two of them disappeared or were executed, leaving only 18 Primarchs and Legions at the end of the Great Crusade). A military campaign of a grand scale, this is also when the SPESS MEHREENS were the most awesome and at their peak. Just when things seem to be going well, the Horus Heresy erupts where 9 of the Primarchs and their legions rebel against the Emprah. In the end, the Emperor fought and slew Horus (who was daddy's favorite) but at a great cost. The Emperor was mortally wounded to the point that he had to be put permanently on a life support system known as the Golden Throne (and he humiliated himself in the middle of the fight when he cried. *BLAM* Heresy! Cried manly tears after heroically sacrificing his prodigal son.

Subsequently, without the Emperor's leadership, the Imperium eventually degraded into the theocratic Grimdark empire we all know and love today, in the 41st millennium.

While interred on the Golden Throne, the Emperor's psy-essence prevents daemon kind from directly assailing Terra, and also sustains the psychic-beacon known as the Astronomicon. Without the Emperor, warp travel would not be possible, and everyone on Terra would be raped, both sexually and non-sexually.

It is established that the Emperor is pretty much the most powerful psyker alive, humbling even the Eldar. He is tens of thousands of years old and has been secretly guiding humanity from behind the scenes for much of his lifetime. Theories variously suggest that he was also Sigmar of Warhammer Fantasy Battle fame, Julius Caesar, Conan the Barbarian, Chuck Norris, Christopher Lee, and Jesus. It is uncertain as to whether or not his internment on the Golden Throne is a good thing; some believe that if he were to die, the Imperium would be truly plunged into darkness, whereas others believe that if allowed to finally die he would reincarnate and return to unify the galaxy once more. Whatever the truth of the matter, Games Workshop are never going to advance the story, so it is mostly irrelevant. Unless you take WHFB as a example, where things end. Badly. Or he may be Archaon, because "Lord of Chaos" labels him as a chaos hater willing to sell his soul to steal their powers/gifts to kill them and stop their worship, ultimately killing them. And he has rock-bones (think "space marine ceramite bones", GW loves rehashing old ideas).

The Emprah Himself

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

-Roboute Guilliman, giving the most short yet accurate biography of the Emperor.

A typical father and son chat between Empy and Horus.

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

The Emperor is said to be so powerful that he could destroy suns with ease, though he has never actually done so. The Chaos Gods are scared as fuck of the guy, and hope he dies so they can take over the universe. If the God Emperor were to arise again Chaos would be FUCKED. The Eldar fear that if the Emperor were to die a new Eye of Terror would be opened and Chaos would take over everything. Whether this is true is unknown, but the Imperium is not too keen on finding out.

After he was nearly killed by his son, he was placed on the Golden Throne and hasn't been able to move for the past few millennia. Most of the fluff maintains that his existence on a day-to-day basis since then is a living hell (By comparison, the torture astropaths go through when becoming one would be like a trip to the dentist). It's the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even an Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter) and yet he continues. Why? He may be the universe's most powerful vegetable, but that doesn't mean that he can just sit down and die. Oh no, it's exactly the opposite. It gives him a fuckton of work to do, and along with being the lighthouse of the warp guiding the Imperial Navy, he also needs to make the aforementioned astropaths, as well as keeping all the nasties of the warp where they're supposed to be and not spilling over into reality and make the lives of all human beings miserable. He also does it for the good of man. (sounds kinda familiar, don't it?) In the last year of M41 techpriests discovered that the Golden Throne is failing and the Emperor is dying. There is a 50/50 chance of the Emperor returning to life or dying forever and everyone in the Imperium becoming a Chaos sex toy/punching bag/plague vector/science experiment. Note that if the Emperor recovers he'd be several hundred times more powerful. Emps was born because of tens of thousands Psykers combining their souls. Since then Empy has probably gained about 3650000000 souls since he got put on that throne.

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

-Magnus the Red

For all his desire to guide and protect humanity, there is a lot of proof, particularly from the Horus Heresy books and some short stories, that the Emperor was not Space Jesus, but Space Hitler. He declared humanity the superiors of xenos, setting the basis for humanity's genocidal xenophobia (and the hatred of nearly every xenos race in turn); planned to destroy all mention of religion by force of arms if needed; planned to reunite humanity under his rule no matter what anyone else wanted/thought, again by force of arms if needed; cared little for the primarchs as his actual sons, thinking of them as generals and tools rather than his children, screwing over several in his efforts to recruit them (hence causing their later betrayals), carried out many unethical and morally questionable experiments and so on. He helped Corvus turn his homeworld (and moon) into a great place to live, but for some reason didn't bother doing this for Olympia or Nostromo- in both cases this contributed to the Primarchs turning traitor. Plus, while he kept the already moral-as-fuck Vulkan at his side for decades, risking the Salamanders' existence in the process, he totally neglected his least stable sons, i.e. the ones who really needed some guidance. And that whole sorcery issue which divided the Primarchs, kept Mortarion estranged from him and led to the Wolves destroying Prospero? Could probably have been avoided if he'd listened to Jaghatai Khan and a) told his sons the truth about the Warp and his plans (we don't even know what the lost Primarchs are called, isn't that enough proof that they can all keep a secret?) and b) explained that they all had psychic potential and c) showed them all how to use it responsibly.

His reign killed more humans than the entire rest of humanities dictators in history up to that point combined, and that's assuming you don't count all the other sapient organisms that might or might not have deserved it. Even during the Unification Wars several Terran cultures were wiped out wholesale (Orioc on Antarctica, for example, was razed to the ground for being religious, after its forces were defeated and its people were ready to surrender, just to make a point), and Imperial culture was pretty bad at incorporating non-Terran elements. For example, there's basically no trace left of the Interex, Auretian Technocracy and Diasporex.

It can be said that the Emperor was such an asshole due to the state of the universe he found himself in and that he acted as he did believing small (small as in billions versus trillions, though the death toll of the Imperium's wars are probably in the trillions by now) sacrifices were all for the greater good (Now where have we heard that before?) but that doesn't change the fact he began a crusade that would have culled billions and destroy entire xenos species even if the campaign had gone well and not ended in the Horus Heresy (assuming that the Emperor would have allowed it to end at all). (And that's ignoring the extremely likely theory that Emps caused the Horus Heresy in the first place through his utterly incompetent and pinheaded mismanagement of the Word Bearers.)

Plus, he really didn't think the post-Ullanor phase through at all, except for appointing Horus as Warmaster and Dorn as Praetorian. At the very least he should've had Guilliman take over administrative duties to avoid taxes being imposed prematurely on newly compliant worlds, seeing as the civilian administrators helped to alienate a lot of his soldiers.

To be fair, the whole reason humanity (and the Emperor) hates aliens is because during the Age of Strife, numerous xenos races exploited humanity's weakness by raiding, looting, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Then the Emperor comes along and decides that the best way to stop it from happening again is to wipe out all xenos that might pose a threat to the fledgling Imperium. However, those few xenos species that did not pose an immediate threat to humanity were usually made protectorates similar to the Tau government (unless they resisted, were in the way, possessed a planet, influenced human culture at all, or were intelligent at all, in which case the results were predictable). Ever since his ascension, the Imperium forgot about the part where harmless aliens are tolerated and just thinks they should all be killed. But on the other hand, the most common xenos are dicks and aren't exactly willing to buddy up with the Imperium themselves. Plus, at least according to Horus Rising, the idea of letting xenos exist is wrong on every level to the Imperium (hence the whole mess with the Interex/Diasporex).

To be even more fair (and meta), the triumvirate of Horus Heresy authors tend to have their own interpretation of the Big E. Graham McNeill generally portrays him as competent and benevolent (if flawed), Dan Abnett portrays him as competent but bloodthirsty, while Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile.

Ironically, the whole hatred-of-all-xenos thing helped to tip the Word Bearers into Chaos worship, as Chaos' emissaries presented themselves as mankind's only protection against aliens.

Worship of the Emperor

What the Emperor looked like before Horus decided to bitchslap him. Notice the giant skull. How did that skull get so big? Is it a plastic faux-skull, or is it an alien skull? (What he doesn't want you to know is that the E is actually a midget, the armour is a mech and that's a regular skull) Anyway, back on topic. You don't get to see the Emperor out of armor very often.

Humans worship the Emperor as the one true god. Now, the only reason the Imperium worships the Emperor is that after his fight with Horus and his internment into the Golden Throne, they pretty much forgot what the Emperor taught them and began to worship him. Ol' Empy did not actually tell anyone of the Chaos Gods as part of his plan to starve them, withholding the information even from the Primarchs in hopes of protecting them from corruption on account of ignorance being bliss. Unfortunately this became part of why the Horus Heresy happened in the first place, as while not knowing the existence of the chaos gods could have prevented his servants from falling to the temptation of worshipping some very REAL gods, it also left them without the knowledge of what to do when faced with the influence of said deities. Plus, it's pretty damn hard to fight against something if you don't know that it exists. The Horus Heresy novels also mentioned the Interex, another atheist empire who do understand that Chaos existed but treated it secularly and scientifically, rendering them more proficient with dealing with Chaos than the Imperium.

The Emperor was actually AGAINST any kind of religion as part of his Imperial Truth and plan for mankind to be a utopia of science and reason, even if the object of worship would be himself like when he told Lorgar to fuck off with the God-Emperor worship. The Emperor was only half-right about this because he didn't realize that Chaos runs off emotion rather than worship, thus his plan to weaken them wouldn't have been ultimately successful in the long run. While Chaos does draw more power from direct worship to them, even if worship of them is stopped at large, they can still draw from the everyday emotions. Without cultists, there would be no summoning of demons. Without uncontrolled psykers, few possessions would occur. Thus, without religion and warp travel, the Chaos Gods and their minions wouldn't be able to access the Materium (for the most part). Hence why the Emperor tried to access the Webway where Mankind can be able to travel through space while minimizing exposure to Chaos. Who gives a shit about the Ruinous Powers if they're stuck in the Warp?

However, he made a critical mistake in disregarding the human need to believe in something greater than oneself, and despite his best efforts with the Imperial Truth reason and logic simply weren't enough to fill the place of religion. Ironically, his solution was not to suppress faith but to redirect it towards something else, intended to be the idea of the Imperium, but because of his own unmatched psychic powers and enigmatic nature that "something else" ended up being the Emperor himself. After he went off being the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe, and lost direct control of the Imperium of man, belief in him sort of helped the Imperium stand together, even if it basically dropped 99.9% of humanity's IQ in the process- with the warp being what it is, the act of worshiping the Emperor supercharged his power in the Immaterium to the point of being truly godlike, even while his body is stuck in its current state of near-death. The Imperium's faith in the Emperor is basically their biggest anchor of bravery and perseverance in a universe where humanity is constantly beset by:

• Unimaginably massive swarms of voracious space locust who exist only to feed and grow...
• Aeons-old zombie-terminator robots set on culling all life from the galaxy...
• Diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars themselves whose single desire is harvesting souls for consumption...
• Green-hued xeno-barbarians whose pastimes, ambitions, job skills, and dreams can basically be summed-up as bludgeoning...
• Technologically advanced space communists wanting to assimilate everyone in their quasi Hindu-Communist empire and who take after Billy Mays...
• Snooty and uncaring space elves that can read minds and who eat, sleep, and live in planet-sized battle cruisers...
• Psychotic, hedonistic space elves who routinely torture others to the point of death for sheer amusement before grinding their remains into refined cocaine...
• Fanatical zealots that knowingly devote themselves to all that is insane...
• Nightmare horrors made real who will rape and eat, usually simultaneously, any sentient being they get their goat-hooves on...
• Deformed, demented traitors clad in power armor and aided by the evilest forms of weaponry and sorcery ever conceived...
• Homicidal alien, lizard, insect, cyborg type monster-pirates that horribly kill you for fun...
• Malignant, omnipotent intelligence from beyond the cosmos, exerting all the power at their disposal to prevent any faction from breaking the stalemate or upsetting the dreadful status quo...
• And fuck knows who the guy in the cardboard box is...

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

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

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

The possible death of the Emperor

Badass and glorious.

With the Golden Throne being constantly damaged and the Techpriests are too power-armor-on-head rebooted to do anything about it, it is certainly possible that the Emperor may die one day, which will obviously result in all of the Imperial worlds and factions to cry tears of disappointment and subsequently devolve into chaos (maybe even with a capital "C"). There are however, 3 possible outcomes of what will happen if the Emperor should ever die:

The new Eye of Terror

Conventional wisdom and the Eldar, says that in the event that the Emperor dies, a new Eye of Terror will be created, plunging Holy Terra and all nearby planets into the Warp. The current main rulebooks says all of reality will be plunged into the warp if the Emperor dies. Even the Ecclesiarchy agrees that if the Emperor were ever to die, humanity would be FUCKED at the barest minimum.

This is supported by the fact that the Golden Throne (itself a portal to the Webway) was broken by Magnus, causing a warp tear to occur on Terra which the Emperor has had to spend every second for the last 10,000 years concentrating on to keep it from getting any bigger (the Adeptus Custodes has spent the same amount of time chopping up daemons that jump through). If he were to die or his attention were to waver for too long it would grow and rip the Imperium apart.

Additionally, a new Chaos God could be created, which will most certainly be a God of all the Grimdarkness in the galaxy, ensuring that it would eclipse all of the powers of the other Gods as the Emperor would finally be the God of all, this is especially true since nearly everything that is grimdark comes from Chaos and the entire WH40K setting is itself a massive pile of it... that or Malal would burst back into existence, which does have some possibility of happening since Malal was the Chaos god of Atheism, which was the "truth" of the Emperor's Imperial Truth.

Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality as-is reverting everything back into the immaterium. But that's unlikely since the birth of the last chaos god, Slaanesh, did not destroy reality and he/she/it/xe was fueled by the near extinction of a race far more psychically powerful then humanity.

Regeneration

No, not the Doctor Who kind. The Horus Heresy novel 'Vulkan Lives' heavily implies that the Emperor is a Perpetual like John Grammaticus, Vulkan, Oll Persson and Anval Thawn, all of who were able to survive things which should have completely obliterated them. So all he simply needs to do is die and wait a couple of hours/days and he'll be reborn again (in the "get up off the ground and dust himself off" sense (Though one has to wonder why the emperor would have had himself interred in the Golden Throne in the first place if he thought he'd heal)). In theory, at least. Vulkan, for instance, was driven mad by the torturous experiences he had endured under the Night Haunter, and they were child's play compared to sitting in unthinkable agony unable to move or speak for ten thousand years rotting alive. However, a more commonly held belief is that he will get up, re-establish the Imperial Truth, and just be a cool guy.

In fact, a whole faction of the Inquisition: Thorianism exists to investigate this possibility, looking for possible signs that the Emperor's consciousness can be transferred elsewhere, allowing him to walk amongst men once more. (That said, they don't know about the existence of Perpetuals and would rather look for a new body to place the Emperor's soul into.)

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

Not only that, but having him stand up to stretch his legs before the hole in reality caused inadvertently caused by Magnus is fixed or have someone powerful enough to replace him would potentially cause the same result as a new Eye of Terror (see above). As towards the end of the Horus Heresy, he only moved from the seat in the final battle when Malcador the Sigillite (the third most powerful "known" human psyker - after Magnus) took his place temporarily, which was still enough to crumble him to dust.

The Star Child

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

This theory is tied closely to the Sensei Illuminati, a group of either supremely enlightened individuals or dangerous mutant heretic xenos-fuckers, depending on which side of the Inquisition you're on. The Illuminati plan to catch all of the Sensei and sacrifice them in the golden throne at the moment of Emperor's death and he will become the Sensei-Emprah(Numen). Yay! HERESY!!!

The fluff revealed that the Illuminati were a minor Tzeentch cult and the sensei were effectively brainwashed soon-to-be sacrifices in an attempt to bring Tzeentch to the materium. Needless to say, they have been purged by the Inquisition. The fluff in the Bronislaw Czevak Jac Draco books revealed that the Ordo Hydra (a small splinter faction of the Illuminati who seek to turn humanity into a psychic hivemind) is a Tzeentch cult, but that the general Illuminati population - including many Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and the Exorcists chapter as well as their unknown successor chapters - are genuinely incorruptible by Chaos and freely permitted to access the Black Library along with Harlequin Solitaires. Except that is a bizarre fusion of new and old fluff. The Inquisition Trilogy was retconned away. It is like the nuance of the Squats being eaten by Tyranids versus never having existed in the first place.

Gallery

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

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  The guiding light in the Imperium of Man shines forever bright

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  The Emperor protects man from all.

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

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  Son, I am disappoint.

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  Yearbook photo.

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  His groove, do not ruin it.

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

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

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  He makes for one helluva action figure

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  The Em-purr-or of all Catkind!Nyuh! HERESY!!!*BLAM*

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  Just imagine if the Chaos Gods didn't scatter the primarchs through out the galaxy... Wait where's that little scamp Omegon? (just off picture, sneaking up behind Guilliman)

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  Death is no excuse to stop bein' pimp.

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  Thinking to himself, "I really, REALLY hate Horus!"

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  He might be the most powerful psychic vegetable in the universe but the Custodes can't give him a decent hygiene program.

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  Not so divine now, is he? HERESY!*BLAM*

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  Roll d6; stays on the field on seven or less

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

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  Down but not out.

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  In all His miniature glory

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  The Carrion Lord with his two left arms.

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

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  Probably the best model of him yet

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

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  Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

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  You all know you wanna see how this pans out!

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  How do you kill what can not die?

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  Emperor Rule 63! NO EXCEPTIONS!

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  Not actually the God-Emperor; besides it is Heresy to believe that The Immortal God Emperor looks like Cher.

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  Oh, give it a fucking rest...

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

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

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  Perhaps with a better armor design, Emps might not have been late for Horus's after school soccer games and things might have turned out differently.

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  The Emperor in Rainbow Form

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

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

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

See Also

• The Imperium, for the empire he founded.
• Sigmar Unbroken, his Warhammer Fantasy Battles counterpart.
• Emperor's To-Do List
• This thread which makes the Emperor even cooler.
• A series on Youtube, it shows what would happen if the Emperor had a Text to Speech device.
• If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device article in 1d4chan.