The God-Emperor of Mankind
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The God-Emperor of Mankind, also known as Tha Emprah, Emps, The Big E, Space Jesus and also sometimes called The Great and Glorious Mac Daddy King of all things Epic and Awesome is the figurehead ruler of the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40k universe and possesses unimaginable levels of manliness. The administration he established continues to fuck up to hell 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) you the Emperor's word happens to be that day, is treason and heresy, typically punished by execution. 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? 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. So FUCK HIM*BLAM*WHERE ARE THESE HERETICS COMING FROM!? WE WILL HAVE TO START A NEW CRUSADE SOON APPARENTLY!. 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
The being who would be known as the Emperor was apparently born 8000 B.C in Anatolia, making him a Proto-Hittite(Hatti?) probably. He was the result of every ancient human tribe's leader/protector psyker from around the world (known as Shamans) entering a suicide pact to be reborn into a single individual who would be able to protect humanity as a whole from the Chaos Gods. How canon this still is has been debated; Games Workshop has been trying to retcon the Chaos Gods existence into predating the Necrons, but nothing has been explicitly stated to deny the Emperor's original origin story (in fact some hints from the Horus Heresy series have been dropped to indicate that it's still canon).
A lot of the Emperor's personal history is unknown, but many speculate that he was originally Conan the Barbarian, of Sumeria. Around the 11th or 12th century, he battled a shard of the Void Dragon in Libya, eventually defeating it and locking it up on Mars, allowing for the eventual rise of the Adeptus Mechanicus. How the hell did he get it there? By kicking it there? He also masqueraded as many prophets, leaders and wise men throughout history to nudge humanity towards a more ordered society, including Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha and so on. If this is true, it took their collective minds that long to see that Peace and Love wasn't working and that the only way for anything to go their way was at gunpoint/swordpoint. Also presumably for most of his life, Big E has been a lot shorter than we now know him to be. He was like... nine feet tall(ish) at his prime (i.e. taller than a primarch) but throughout most of human existence this would have made him kinda obvious. So yeah. He can magically grow. DAKKA DAKKA DA... GREAT, NOW IT'S XENOS! Or his total mastery at every psychic discipline, including Biomancy, allows him to change his size whenever the hell he wants. He just used his awesome mind powers to appear the hell like he wanted to all the non-psychic morons he attempted to lead.
At the close of the Age of Strife, the Emperor re-united humanity when it was falling to ruin with constant wars by establishing the Imperial Army (which included both ground forces and spaceborne fleets), which later became what is known today as the Imperial Guard after a split with the Navy. After that, he made the original 20 Space Marine Legions, each comprised of 10,000 Space Marines rather than the present Chapters of 1,000 (though the legions each grew to have about 100,000 members). Each Space Marine is made using the DNA of a specific Primarch. The Primarchs were lesser clones the Emperor made of himself (nobody else would be badass enough to lead his great armies but his own flesh and blood, after all). However, they still weren't as strong as their father, and not all of them inherited his Psyker abilities (hence why some were jealous and disliked Magnus). Fearing the power that the Emperor would command if the Primarch Project bloomed to full fruition, the Chaos Gods decided to directly intervene to thwart him. Specifically, they used warp magicks to whisk away and then scatter them on different planets throughout the galaxy. What kind of magic? We don't know, but we don't really want to know how SLAANESH did it. The Emperor spent most of the ensuing years finding his sons while conquering or exterminating planets, reestablishing human sovereignty across the galaxy.
As he found each Primarch (at least 18 of the original 20 were found), he assigned them to command each of their respective legions to retake humanity in 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). All agree that the bronze liberal douchebag deserved it. ' *BLAM!* 'EXTRA HERESY!!!
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 daemonkind 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 wold 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, Conan the Barbarian, Chuck Norris, 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.
The Emprah Himself
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 pussy Eldar fear that if the Emperor were to die a new Eye of Terror would be opened and Chaos would take over EVERYTHING!!! *BLAM* Heresy! The Emprah cannot die!
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 process of making astropaths would be like a trip to the dentist). It's literally the mother/father/uncle/2nd Cousin of all mindfucks, so bad that even a Inquisitor would likely go insane as a result (or anybody else for that matter) and yet he continues...
Why? He is maybe 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. Or perhaps a combination of Tzeentch perpetuating the stalemate and the influence of Necron technology is doing that. 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 so look up! 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.(insert Commissar quote here) Pfft, as if Cegorach, Tzeentch, or the Deceiver are going to let one of their paradox poker buddies die.
- "The Emperor was a brilliant scientist, a powerful warrior, and great psyker, but he was a terrible father..."
- -Rowboat Girlyman, Primarch of the Ultramarines,
telling it like it isBitching.
Every Saturday night the Emperor gets together with Tzeentch, the Deceiver, and Cegorach for a game of Paradox Poker. They have to use a new pocket dimension for each of these games because the sheer amount of dickery and JUST AS PLANNED causes the dimension they play in to collapse. Nobody has ever won one of these games. Any who try to watch these games without possessing similar mastery of the fine art of dickery and JUST AS PLANNED will find that their heads will explode into a shower of Necrons(even though it was they who built the damn pockety dimension...), Eldar, SPESS MEHREENS, and Daemons as they cannot comprehend the true form of the game.
But the Emperor is disappoint, because he wanted the Imperium to be a utopi-*BLAM* HERESY THE IMPERIUM IS THE PERFECT VISION OF THE EMPRAH THE WAY IT IS! *BLAM* HERESY THIS MAN IS AN IMMPOSTER AND THE EMPEROR HAS NOT YET PERFECTED THE IMPERIUM AND WILL DO THAT ONCE HE IS RESURRECTED!
Worship of the Emperor
Humans worship the Emperor as the one true God. If you're an atheist, then he's the closest thing they have to a proper caring and nurturing god, so you might as well let them. Humans are more than willing to die in his name or skullfuck the next guy who says anything remotely bad about him. Now, the only reason the Imperium worship 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, including draining the power of the Chaos Gods by eliminating all kinds of religion and remaining an atheist empire.
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. Although, the Emperor was only half-right about this because he didn't realize that Chaos runs off emotion rather than worship, thus his starvation plan 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. His plan wouldn't have killed the Gods but would have removed them from the Materium. Without cultist-chan, 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 safe from those damned Chaos. Who gives a shit if Cornholio and friends are powerful if they are unable to do shit with the power? Answer, Emprah knows BEST!!!!
However, 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. 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 lizards who exist only to feed and grow...
- aeons-old zombie-terminator robots from space set on culling all life from the galaxy...
- diabolical celestial beings literally as old as the stars themselves whose single concern is harvesting souls for consumption...
- green-hued xeno-barbarians whose past-times, 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 whom 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 and evil...
- nightmare horrors made real who will rape and/or eat 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
Matt WardFuck you, he's your problem. Not ours. - and fuck knows who's the guy in the cardboard box...
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.
The possible death of the Emperor
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. There are however, 2 possible outcomes of what will happen if the Emperor should ever die:
The Star Child
Although years of GW's marketing and fluff upgrades have made the claim rather dubious, many fa/tg/guys 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 Emprasoul fragment is the Star Child, another god waiting to be reborn - or perhaps be reincarnated into human flesh. (anyone call for one master scout mcvenner) 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 al of the Sensei and sacrifice them in the golden throne at the moment of Empra's death and he will become the Sensei-Emprah(Numen). Yay! HERESY!!!
The new Eye of Terror
The Eldar however, say 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. Additionally, a new Chaos God would 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. Some also fear that a fifth Chaos God's presence would just crush reality as-is reverting everything back into the immaterium.
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 and Oll Persson. So all he simply needs to do is die and wait a couple of hours/days and he'll be reborn again. In theory at least.
The Emperor's list of Things to do after Resurrection
Too important to be a sub-section of this article; moved to its own article: Emperor's To-Do List
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?"
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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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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 Emperor of all Catkind! Nyuh!
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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?
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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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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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How do you kill what can not die?
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Emperor Rule 63! NO EXCEPTIONS!
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THE EMPEROR IS NOT A WOMAN! AND THIS ONE IS UGLY, TOO!
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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'.
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 worshipped 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 (actually I'm riffing off the Catholic creed from one of the real historical Councils of Nicene)
See Also
- The Imperium, for the empire he founded.
- Sigmar Unberogen, for his considerably more awesome and far more manly Warhammer Fantasy counterpart.
You will respect the Emperor's authority...*HAMMER BLOW* HERESY!!! - This thread which makes the Emperor even cooler.
